| 264. The History of the Esoteric School 1904–1914, Volume One: Individually Given Exercises
|
|---|
| The principle of Saturn is the physical basis of the sun: eternal growth, eternal progress of the moon: holding back, retarding, solidification of Mars: courage to introduce the aggressive into the life of the senses, the red blood of Mercury: leading out of the life of the senses of Jupiter: liberation of the ego of Venus: rising in love. The colors correspond to these planets and the principles: Saturn - Green Sun - Orange Moon - Violet Mars - Red Mercury - Yellow Jupiter - Blue Venus - Indigo 1 The hexagram corresponds to currents in the astral body, but this is not to be understood as a line figure; the double triangle is only an average. |
| The principle of Jupiter (Zachariel. Blue. Tin): Liberation of the ego. Power. Father. The principle of Venus (Anael. Indigo. Copper): The rising in pure love. Love. Son. |
| 264. The History of the Esoteric School 1904–1914, Volume One: Individually Given Exercises
|
|---|
On the essence of practice |
| 254. The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century: Lecture X
25 Oct 1915, Dornach Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond |
|---|
| It is important to know this, for there is a tendency among most people, indeed among many of our friends too, not to leave the normal form of consciousness at any price but to remain in it and to bring the spiritual world into the ordinary consciousness: that is to say, not to let the Ego emerge but to bring the spiritual world into the Ego. It is knowledge of the spiritual world that should be brought into the ordinary consciousness, not the spiritual world itself. |
| 254. The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century: Lecture X
25 Oct 1915, Dornach Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond |
|---|
If we are to enter more deeply into the matters which cannot fail to interest us at the present time, it is necessary to keep clearly in mind a certain aspect of human consciousness as it is today. Let us think of certain characteristics of this consciousness of which we have been speaking during the past weeks. This consciousness holds us within a domain shut off on the one side by the veil placed before us by the phenomena of nature through which, to begin with, our consciousness cannot penetrate, and on the other side, by the veil of our own life of soul, of our thinking, feeling and willing. The nature of our consciousness is such that when we look inwards, we are able to a certain extent to experience our thinking, feeling and willing in their human form, to experience them consciously. But again, we cannot penetrate behind the veil. Hence we can say: As regards the veil of the phenomena of nature on the one side, with the objective reality behind, our consciousness is directed towards a veil which, to begin with, may not be pierced. On the other side, there are the manifestations of the life of soul, behind which lies the subjective reality. We contemplate it but we cannot immediately break through the veil. Within these frontiers, within these two parallel lines, as it were, is our present consciousness, to which, when we look out through the sense-organs, the world of nature presents itself; when we look inwards, there is the world of soul. This is how the consciousness we have as human beings today, is organised. We know that this consciousness differs from man's earlier consciousness with its heritage of ancient clairvoyance; but we know too that this inherited clairvoyance faded away and that our present consciousness, when functioning normally on the physical plane, is as described above. The question may be asked: Why is it that our consciousness today is constituted as it is? The reason is that during the present cycle of evolution, as well as everything else that has been described, we have to develop the true relationship that should prevail between one human soul and another. Our present form of consciousness, therefore, has a very definite task. During the earlier periods of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon we lived in different states of consciousness, and in the future periods of Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan, our consciousness will again be different. We are gradually preparing for these different forms of consciousness. In our present cycle of evolution we have to develop in ourselves, through the way we relate ourselves to the world, the form of consciousness belonging to this cycle; and besides all that must be developed in connection with the moral life, there is also the fact that through this form of consciousness there can unfold the right relationship of one human soul to another, a relationship we had not acquired before the beginning of the Earth-period and without which, if we do not acquire it during the Earth-period, we shall not be able to maintain our existence during the periods of Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. In the periods of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon preceding the Earth-period, man had not, in this sense, acquired the right relationship to other men; in a certain sense he was too close to them. During the Old Moon period, conditions were still such that the will of one had a direct effect upon the other; the other felt, was affected by, the will of his fellow-being. Moreover, this process was regulated and guided by the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies. Had this guidance by the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies continued, man would never have reached complete freedom in cosmic existence. The guidance had at some point to cease. Hence the necessity of a form of consciousness which as it were makes a frontier possible between one man and another. The fact is that on the one side our vision does not penetrate through nature, and on the other side the world of soul causes the relation of one soul to another to be such that a certain frontier is created between them. That this frontier exists is due to our present form of consciousness, a special characteristic of which is that what we actually experience are reflections, mirror-images. This, of course, applies also to relationships between man and man. Because, when we meet another human being we have in our present form of consciousness a mere reflection, we cannot approach him in so arbitrary a way that we pour the content of our consciousness into his soul. If, therefore, our consciousness is normally developed, this prevents us from coming unduly close to the consciousness of another. I might also put it like this: the forces of our consciousness and intelligence are so organised that we can neither exercise too great an influence upon the other man, nor can he exercise too great an influence upon us—because the fact that our own consciousness is mirrored, separates us from him. This is a matter of very great importance for the understanding of human evolution. Whenever there is a defect in the normal consciousness, what happens is at once evident. Think of a person whose consciousness is not quite normal, who has a touch of what we have recently encountered in the form of “mystical eccentricity”—to use a rather harsh expression, but one that is often very apt. Suppose such a person is inclined to all sorts of fanciful delusions, based upon certain experiences which are abnormal in our day. You will always find that a person with abnormal consciousness of this kind has a far greater influence upon other souls than one with normal consciousness. To put it rather crudely, a person who is a little mad in one direction or another can have a far stronger influence upon his fellowmen than one who is normal; and by strengthening his consciousness, a normal man must protect himself from the influence of one who is abnormal. An abnormal man, as long as he is not recognised, is always a certain danger to his fellow-men, because they allow themselves to be too strongly influenced by him and because they are too ready to regard him as a rare, out-of-the-common phenomenon. Precisely where there are perforations in the mirror of consciousness, too strong an influence passes over through these perforations to the other person. Thus in the present epoch of evolution we acquire our particular form of consciousness in order that the right relationship of one human soul to another in the world may be established. Now, from all that has been said in these lectures, the following is clear: on yonder side of the veil of nature lies the Ahrimanic world with all the beings I have described; on yonder side of the veil of the life of soul lies the Luciferic world with all the characteristic features I have described. Man is, as it were, shut in between the Ahrimanic world and the Luciferic world. If he pierces only a little behind the veil of nature, he cannot help becoming acquainted with the Ahrimanic world. If he pierces a little behind the veil of the life of soul, he will inevitably become acquainted with the Luciferic world. We have behind us a certain epoch during which man was safeguarded against making too great an advance towards the one side or the other. But we are now living in a time of transition, when human souls needs must advance towards the one side or the other. This must inevitably happen, for again it is demanded by the present phase of man's evolution. As you know, we are now living in the age of the development of the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul and moving towards that of the development of the Spirit-Self. Such development has a long preparation behind it. When, in the Sixth post-Atlantean epoch of culture, the Spirit-Self is fully developed, man's life of soul will be different in very many respects from what it is today. The human intellect will have a much more objective power than is the case now. Mankind is already approaching this more objective intellectual life. Evidences may be seen on every hand and I have spoken of the matter in many lectures. A life of soul is approaching of which it may be said that the intellect will be outspread as a power to which men must submit—as a power working objectively in a realm outside the souls of men. We are still living in times when many human beings are safeguarded against this objective power by a strong, assertive individuality. But this protection will be less and less possible the nearer we come to the Sixth post-Atlantean epoch. A time will actually come when phenomena now only in the initial stages will be far, far more strongly in evidence. Even now, one who knows how to assess happenings in the world can form a true judgment in regard to this phenomenon. It is well known, for example, that writers in certain newspapers and periodicals are very far from saying only what springs from their own souls. They represent the intelligence of certain circles, an objective intelligence which rides rough-shod and of which they are only the speaking trumpets. It is extremely important to keep this in mind, for it is a phenomenon which will become more and more prevalent. Now there is a very definite prospect ahead. When the intelligence of certain people is objectivised—and it has been so objectivised ever since public literature has existed—it becomes more and more possible for Ahriman to take possession of the intelligence of men. That is a prospect which Spiritual Science must place before us, for it is Ahriman's constant and fiercest endeavour to strangle men's individual intelligence and appropriate it for himself, so that it may pass into his power and be used to serve his own purposes. I have told you that there is a mysterious connection between the higher forces of intelligence in the beings who serve Ahriman and the forces of man's lower nature. Ahriman's perpetual endeavour is to appropriate the intelligence of human beings and not allow them to realise what they can achieve through their own intelligence. Think of the last conversation between Benedictus and Ahriman in the Mystery Play The Soul's Awakening. Before Ahriman disappears, he says:
A profound secret is contained here, a secret of which every student of Spiritual Science should be aware. Men must strive as time goes on to keep their intelligence under their own individual control, to keep unceasing watch over it. This is essential, and it is well that man should know with what enticing and powerful words Ahriman approaches him, trying to wring his intelligence from him. More and more it will behove men to be alert to such moments. For Ahriman takes full advantage of moments when, in full waking life, a man falls into a state of vertigo or dizziness, into a kind of twilight consciousness, when he feels not quite securely anchored in the physical world and begins to yield himself to the whirl of the universe, when he does not stand firmly and steadily on his own feet as an individuality. These are the moments when it behoves him to be on his guard, for it is then that Ahriman easily gets the upper hand. The best way in which we can protect ourselves is to develop clear, exact thinking, not simply skimming over things in thought as is the general custom today. We should go even farther and try to avoid colloquialisms and current catchwords, for directly we use such words which come, not from thought but from habits of speech, we are not exercising thinking—even if only for a very short time. These are particularly dangerous moments because they are not heeded. We should really be careful to avoid using words behind which there is not sufficient reflection. Such self-training, precisely in these intimate details, should be undertaken by those who are in earnest about the tasks of the age. After all that has been said in these lectures it will not be difficult for you to realise what is necessary. But Lucifer, too, endeavours by way of the will to bring man into a condition where he does not act out of well-considered impulses, but out of impulses springing merely from temperament and inclination. Here again, Lucifer takes hold and makes us his prey. And it is easiest for him to find his prey when a large number of people give way to such impulses which surge in the dark foundations of the life of soul without rising into the sphere of the individual will. If impulses springing from temperament and vague inclinations bring us into connection with groups of human beings in such a way that we feel ourselves part and parcel of a group, we are at once caught into a whirl in which the judgment of the individual will is wrested from us; and it must not be wrested from us, for if it is, Lucifer gains too great a power over us. We must strive for objectivity in this respect. Again, when there is some deviation from the sphere of normal consciousness, these are moments favourable for Lucifer. Very radical symptoms may appear, but there are also more intimate phenomena, when, for instance, we allow our actions to be determined by obscure feelings of affiliation and the like. The more flagrant, more radical, deviations of consciousness are those where the will becomes defective or so weak that a man can do no other than surrender himself entirely to his life of soul with what amounts to the exclusion of his will. Modern psychiatrists have adopted certain technical terms for these particularly radical phenomena. For example, they speak of “imperative” or “insistent” ideas (Zwangsvorstellungen)1. These ideas arise in people whose consciousness is not adjusted in the way that is right and proper for the physical plane. If due strength of will is lacking, ideas arise which a man cannot expel from his consciousness—imperative or insistent ideas, as they are called. I will give an example that has actually been observed in clinics.—A man once saw another who had a cancerous tumour in the face; he saw the tumour and as he was a man of very weak will, he has believed ever since that cancer germs are everywhere; he is convinced that these germs are present wherever he goes. In other words, his will is not strong enough to drive down into the subconsciousness the idea once aroused in him. That is a particular instance of an imperative or insistent idea. But the same kind of thing makes its appearance in very diverse forms among people whose will is not sufficiently developed, and then it is easy for Lucifer to get power over them. Another aberration of consciousness has been called by modern psychiatrists “a morbid fear of touch” (Berührungsfurcht). The sign of this condition is that people in whom the will is insufficiently developed shrink from every contact with other human beings or objects; they are frightened of being touched by others or by objects. The “morbid fear of touch” is another technical term used in modern psychiatry. Many other such aberrations of consciousness could be mentioned. These very aberrations show what the normal state of our consciousness should be on the physical plane. But we are now living at a time when certain beings must inevitably become known to us, on the one side beings who are behind the veil of nature, and on the other, behind the veil of the world of soul. If these beings are not made known, the further evolution of mankind will be endangered. If the connection of Ahriman and Lucifer with human evolution is not perceived, danger lies ahead. For it is just when they are not perceived that they can operate most effectively. As an example of the way in which Ahriman works, I will relate an anecdote which presents the unqualified truth.— To a village there once came a stranger who was an acquaintance of the burgomaster. He arrived on horseback and rode into the village. This was an interesting event for the villagers and they ran out into the street to watch him. He put his horse in the burgomaster's stable and stayed in his house from the Saturday evening over the Sunday. On the Monday he wanted to take his departure, and asked for his horse. The burgomaster said: “You came here on foot; you had no horse.”—To every protest the burgomaster replied: “You had no horse.” Finally he said: “Very well, then, we will ask the people in the village; they must have seen you when you arrived.” Thereupon he called the people together and asked them whether they had not seen the man arrive on foot, and they all said, “Yes”. When everyone had affirmed this, the burgomaster said: “Now swear to me, all of you, that this man came on foot.” And everyone swore that it was so. The man was therefore obliged to leave the village on foot, without his horse. After a short time the burgomaster rode after him, bringing his horse. At this, the man exclaimed: “What was the purpose of this comedy?” To which the burgomaster replied: “I only wanted to present my community to you!” Naturally, Ahriman was at the bottom of this and he acted effectively as an objective power. The anecdote is “truer than true”, for the same thing is happening among us continually. The whole of human life tends to increase the number of people who swear to the non-existence of the horse. We must therefore see to it that we have the greatest possible exactitude of consciousness, for that alone is fitting for our present earthly life. If you take all that can be found in my books, Occult Science, The Threshold of the Spiritual World, A Road to Self-Knowledge, in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it achieved? as well as in many Lecture-Courses, you will find that the paths have been indicated whereby men may penetrate behind nature and behind the world of soul in the proper way and with the requisite preparation. The paths are described by which men can penetrate behind the scenes of existence in the right way. But the subjective strivings of very many persons do not, in reality, aim at reaching the goal to be desired. In those books it is clearly indicated that one who wishes to penetrate into the other world must transcend the normal form of consciousness. If the indications given are faithfully followed, it will be clear that one must emerge from the normal consciousness into a different form of consciousness. It is important to know this, for there is a tendency among most people, indeed among many of our friends too, not to leave the normal form of consciousness at any price but to remain in it and to bring the spiritual world into the ordinary consciousness: that is to say, not to let the Ego emerge but to bring the spiritual world into the Ego. It is knowledge of the spiritual world that should be brought into the ordinary consciousness, not the spiritual world itself. If you faithfully practise what is contained in the books mentioned, you will bring yourself into conditions through which you will experience the spiritual world, conditions through which experiences deriving from that world can be brought into the sphere of the normal consciousness. But there are many who do not want this; they want the experience to be actually in the normal consciousness; whereas it ought to originate from consciousness that is different from the normal and passes into the normal. Many of our friends, however, try to have visions in the normal consciousness, not something that is a reminiscence of a different kind of consciousness. If, however, you have visions in the normal consciousness, that is to say, if you do not really wish to develop a different kind of consciousness, but to keep consciousness in its ordinary form and yet look into the spiritual world, this means that you do not seriously wish to go beyond but to remain in the ordinary consciousness, expecting to see forms and figures there which look like those of the physical world. Many people try hard to see spirits or the activities of spirits, but they want to see them just as they see physical things. They want to see a spirit, but this spirit is expected to have the form of a man or a woman or perhaps a poodle, as these are seen in the physical world. In the other world, however, it is not like this. The process itself lies outside the ordinary consciousness and what enters into the consciousness is at most a picture, an image which appears afterwards. In short, we must not expect the spiritual world to be merely a kind of finer sense-world, nor that it will speak in human words, the only difference being that the words come from the spiritual world. Our friends are often only willing to listen in this way to voices which seem to speak to them; these voices are expected to be similar to those of the physical world, merely giving a different, subtler version of things of the physical world. These people would like to enter the spiritual world with the ordinary consciousness which belongs to the physical world only. Actually, most of the visions or voices of which one is told are of the character just described. At all events, this much is certain: when we have such visions or hear such voices it is always easy for Lucifer and Ahriman to have an easy game with us; they lay hold of these experiences for themselves, for men are always prone to interpret them incorrectly. If such experiences are rightly interpreted, Lucifer and Ahriman gain nothing from them. As you see, there are distinctions here which must be kept strictly in mind. We must be fully alive to the possibility that as soon as we bring something else into the ordinary consciousness which is in truth suitable only for the physical world, we come to Scylla and Charybdis—to Lucifer and Ahriman. We must learn to recognise Lucifer and Ahriman as real Powers in this connection. It is for this reason that such emphasis has been laid on the relationship between Ahriman and Lucifer, and the statue in the Goetheanum will be a true representation of this. Now you might ask: If this is how things are, might it not after all be more sensible to act like the scientists who, although Ahriman is within what they say, are nevertheless unwilling to acknowledge his reality? Or might it perhaps be better to act like the Pastors of various religious communities?—for they present things in such a way that Lucifer is everywhere, but they will not admit it. They would regard it as sinful were anyone to realise that the door there is open for Lucifer. But a person who speaks to this effect today is not being very clever. To say that it is more sensible to act like the scientists and the Pastors of various religious communities would be the same as deliberately refraining from warning someone who has to cross a chasm for some distance on a narrow plank, that he is facing danger. It is obvious that he should be warned. Otherwise it would amount to saying: certainly the man may be in danger, but it is more sensible to say nothing to him about it.—Through knowing how things are—and they will have to be known—the danger becomes no greater and no less. A time is coming when Ahriman will try to take possession of the intelligence and Lucifer of the will of men. This can be thwarted only if these things are recognised; and recognition can be brought about only by a spiritual-scientific Movement. It is remarkable to see what Ahriman and Lucifer do and yet are not observed. From this point of view it is interesting to study modern psychiatry. Modern psychiatry has actually recognised many things that are facts, but that it cannot interpret correctly because it takes no account of the approach of these spiritual Powers behind the veil. Modern psychiatry regards anything that is not absolutely normal in man, anything that deviates in the slightest degree from a certain average norm, as tending towards insanity. In numerous treatises the Maid of Orleans is held to have been merely an hysteric. Indeed, writings are accumulating in which Christ Jesus Himself is regarded as a not quite normal man. There are also writings which ascribe craziness to Goethe, and so on. Here we have an unmistakable, but false, Ahrimanic science, a science which is at pains to show that although Goethe was in certain respects a moral genius, this was entirely due to the fact that he had an element of madness in his nature. Socrates, however, knew better; he spoke of his “daimon”, being well aware that his soul bordered on objective spiritual Powers. This was quite clear to him. But the modern psychiatrist sees fit to make out that there was an element of madness or something of the kind in Socrates too. Ahriman must be hidden at all costs—which is exactly what suits him! And the same applies to Lucifer. The fact of the matter is that if one were simply to cultivate today what purports in certain occult Orders to be secret knowledge, with its accompanying symbolism, it would be very easy to deliver into the hands of Ahriman everything that has been pursued hitherto as occultism. And if the mysticism hitherto pursued were to be encouraged and cultivated in human beings, it would easily be delivered into the hands of Lucifer. The ship of Spiritual Science must be steered between these two dangers. This is extremely important. Spiritual Science must therefore be so constituted that neither mystical nor occult aberrations can take root. I said yesterday that when man breaks through the veil of nature, he comes into a region where he encounters beings who have a will for destruction, and that this will for destruction is related to the human intellect. I have described what may become of a man who falls prey to these beings. This must not happen. I have also spoken of the fevered, ecstatic condition into which a person may fall in his spiritual life if he indulges in false mystical experiences. This too must be avoided. I said in an earlier lecture that the esotericists among the occultists tried hard to compel men to apply their intellect to the deciphering of symbols, in order that they should not break through the veil in a wrongful way and become the victim of the Powers encountered in so terrible a form in these border regions. These beings can be held at bay if the intellect is employed in the way it is employed, for example, in deciphering the symbols. This was formerly the practice but it no longer meets the needs of the present time, nor is it a practicable method. You will find that by the very manner in which Spiritual Science is presented, the aberration leading into the region of Ahriman is avoided in a different way. You must think here about something that is apt to crop up in the life of our own society. When one person or another is beginning to study Spiritual Science, the remark is very frequently to be heard: “I cannot grasp these things until I have seen them myself clairvoyantly, so I take them on trust.” I have emphasised over and over again that, rightly understood, this is not the case. At the present time human beings have sufficient intellectual capacity to understand everything that has been given out. The whole of Spiritual Science in the form it has been presented is within the grasp of the intellectual capacities existing in men at the present time. Spiritual Science cannot, it is true, be discovered by these capacities, but it can be understood. The intellectual capacities are there and can be roused into activity, and those who refuse to admit that it is so are in error. When what has been given in Spiritual Science is really worked upon by the intellect, the intellect is being employed in the right way and it is then impossible to enter into the Ahrimanic realm by an unlawful path. There are two eventualities only.—Either men make strenuous efforts to understand, in which case they are employing the intellect—which could well be misused by the Ahrimanic beings—in order to understand Spiritual Science, and then this intellect cannot be wrung from them. Whatever Ahriman may elect to do, he will never get hold of the intellect which men apply, either in the present age or in the future, to the study of Spiritual Science. Of that you may rest assured. If men make no attempt to understand Spiritual Science, they are not applying their intellect to it—but Spiritual Science cannot be blamed for that! Laziness alone is responsible. The region of destructive spirits into which a man may come, is disclosed most clearly of all if a soul is observed at the moment of passing through the gate of death. Then these spiritual beings swirl forward in their hosts; nor is this surprising, for they are the spirits of destruction. To work at the destruction of the physical organism is their regular function. It is part of their handiwork—only they must not remain too long. Men who have attained spiritual understanding keep these beings at bay. But these beings have a great deal of power over souls whose thinking is materialistic, who acquire no understanding of the spiritual world. Souls who disdain any attempt to acquire knowledge of the spiritual world have a great deal to suffer from Ahriman. The Greek myth has depicted this very graphically in the figure of Tantalus. The Gods placed food in front of him but out of his reach and then watched the torments he had to endure. Many such figures can be seen in the world today. All of them are materialistic souls who have no desire to understand the spiritual world. They are like Tantalus, in the sense that after death, during the period of Kamaloka when they live through their life—for a third of its duration—in backward order, everything is snatched away from them. Again and again they have the feeling: to what purpose did I do this or that? For they see one of the spirits of destruction snatching it away, and then they realise that they really did it to no purpose! That, of course, is an illusion; but such souls suffer the torments of Tantalus because the spirits of destruction are all around them. They do not realise that the whole of earthly life from birth until death would be without purpose or meaning if it were not pervaded by the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies. But these souls cannot see the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies and so everything must seem to them to have been purposeless. Spiritual Science avoids false occultism in that it applies the ever-increasing intellectual capacity now developing in humanity to the establishment of a science for which more intellect is required than hitherto. The nature of Spiritual Science inevitably demands greater intellectual effort than people have been accustomed to apply. Men like to delude themselves in this respect. Were they really to apply the intellectual capacity at their command today, they would understand Spiritual Science. Through the strong intellectual efforts that are necessary in Spiritual Science, Scylla is avoided and mastered on the one side. The spiritual scientist is well aware why people are disinclined to embark on the study of Spiritual Science. It is because they are too lazy to apply enough intellectual effort. That is why I spoke just now of laziness. On the other side, the pitfall of false mysticism must be avoided by ceasing to grovel within the purely inner life. This tendency to live and brood continually within one's own soul must be eliminated. The soul must come out of itself and look with eyes of love at the deeper connections manifesting in life outside. The Mystery Plays were written in order to help people to perceive such connections—which can also be observed externally. Inner processes of the life of soul are portrayed in the Plays. If you learn to understand and perceive what is happening, for example to Capesius, how he passes on from one event to another, the weaving, creative activity there in evidence will help you to release your own inner life, to free it. This is also the essential function of our art. The purpose of our whole Building is that souls shall be set free from themselves and shall not lapse into false mysticism. It is necessary to keep this in mind for we shall thus also avoid the Charybdis of false mysticism. Every effort we make to explain to ourselves the mysterious connections in the lives of human beings in the world outside protects us from false mysticism. If in this way we follow what happens to Capesius, we live in a weaving life of soul—but we are not huddled up within our own. We attain everything that the mystic attains, but in a different way. So you see, the ship of Spiritual Science must be steered with clear-sighted purpose between the two pitfalls. The teachings given must be of a nature whereby false occultism and false mysticism are both avoided. It may truly be said that our Spiritual Science is in keeping with the needs and demands of the age. For this reason I have often been obliged to oppose any false simplification or popularisation of Spiritual Science which would do away with the need for strenuous thinking. Equally I have been obliged to oppose everything that tends towards ecstatic, egoistic mysticism, which is always an element of such precepts as: “in your own inmost being you find the reality, the Divine”—and so forth. For in this there is no desire to seek the Divine in outer life by following its phenomena with love and understanding. I recently said to someone that Spiritual Science may be regarded as of eminently practical usefulness. I did not say this in order to boast about the merits of our Movement but merely in order to show that in it the positive can always be found. I said: even if people accept only what they can recognise, leaving aside what does not interest them, Spiritual Science can nevertheless be of the greatest usefulness. If you think of the way in which we have been working for fifteen years, you will realise that a host of truths belonging to the domains of natural science, art, the history of art and so forth, have been included in the purely spiritual-scientific teachings. Indeed, assuming for a moment that nothing at all of pure Spiritual Science had been given but only truths relating to natural science and art—even this by itself could be of practical use. But whatever is given in this way is given with purpose and deliberation, for thereby the human mind is induced to abandon fanciful speculation. And so in every way we have endeavoured so to form our Movement that it may go forward in the right and healthy way. From the very beginning it was conceived as a kind of organism. And thinking of it as such we may also say that it must grow and develop like an organism, like a human organism which about the seventh year gets its second teeth—and the organism must make use of these second teeth, of the individual teeth it then has at its disposal. In earlier lectures I have shown why we had to link up with the Theosophical Movement, as we did in the year 1902 by founding the German Section. At the beginning, progress was possible because we developed entirely independently, as I have told you. But then, in the year 1909 (1902 + 7 = 19o9) it was also necessary to get second teeth. You will remember that those were the years when the Leadbeater affair threw everything into the melting-pot. The year 1916 is not far off. We shall then have the second seven years behind us. If with this second period of seven years behind us we think of our Movement as an organism, this organism will then have reached maturity; it must steer its own course and be able to achieve something by itself. After all that has been given, it ought to be possible for the work to go on effectively even without the teacher. I have spoken to this effect on many occasions. Some time ago in Berlin I said that the “Gesellschaft für Theosophische Art and Kunst”2 ought to be an organisation that leads a life of its own, apart from me. This trend will become more and more necessary. The danger that things go well only as long as something comes from me week after week, must be surmounted. We have now reached the years when the Society ought to be able to show that it can quietly continue to cultivate what has been given, to cultivate it as if I were no longer there. This is an absolutely necessary thought. The teachings which have been given are of such a nature that if they now work in souls, a great deal can be done for which I am no longer needed. I am not saying that I will not remain, but the test will consist in my becoming more and more superfluous. It is absolutely essential to obviate the possibility—which actually exists—of our members not appreciating one another! For you can realise what ill service would be done to our cause if it were always being said: “He is the Director, and he must be followed”, or “He is the Director and he will see that such-and-such is done”.—That simply will not do. What would happen if one day I were no longer there? The Society would at once fall to pieces! We shall only attain what we ought to attain if, after fourteen years, we have really come to the point of having a life of our own which can in turn bring forth new life. This is not an impossibility if only we are mindful of our real aims. Certainly, there are some difficult years now, but we must surmount such difficulties. And a different value can be placed upon much that I myself have to contribute, if what I have now indicated is fulfilled. Difficulties of many kinds exist at the present time. There are certain things which cannot be said indiscriminately and during the last four days I should have liked to call together a small, restricted group of people in order to speak of matters of which I cannot speak before a whole audience. But I was obliged to abandon the idea because we are living in days when such an arrangement is not feasible. In order to see clearly, what I have been trying to present in these lectures must be kept well in mind. We must also try to understand the inner character of Spiritual Science and then it will be clear to us why on the one side we shall inevitably have opponents in the learned scientists who would like to base a view of the world upon their erudition and, on the other side, in those pastors who desire that what lies behind the everyday life of soul shall remain completely hidden. We must hold faithfully to our teaching and also steep ourselves deeply in its contents. Let us remember, for example, how the Mystery of Golgotha has constituted the very core of our strivings, how it has been stressed that Christ entered into Jesus of Nazareth in the way so often described, coming from other spheres of consciousness into the sphere of consciousness proper for man's physical life on Earth. Christ-Jesus is a Power on Earth, living on in the earthly consciousness of men and in earthly happenings. For this reason the New Testament can be no natural science, for natural science—the science of what lies behind nature—must, if it makes for reality, go beyond our normal consciousness. Neither can the New Testament be Spiritual Science, for there, too, normal consciousness must have been transcended in the other direction. The marvellous greatness and significance of the New Testament lies precisely in the fact that it aspires neither to be Natural Science nor yet Spiritual Science—but for all that it must not be used to support polemics against Spiritual Science. Here, however, we perceive the reasons why the representatives of one or another religious body will always rise up in arms against Spiritual Science! It is because they will never be willing to allow man to enter the world they so greatly fear. They are afraid that one day human beings will discover the eternal nature of the soul within them. They want people to realise that only what they already know lives eternally within them. I said yesterday that if a materialistic view of the world were to take root, if such a view alone prevailed and no Spiritual Science were to come into being, things would reach the point where men would be engulfed in scepticism and doubt, for something like an ocean would be created in which souls would inevitably drown. But if it is desired to hold men back lest they penetrate behind the veil of the world of soul, then the only thing to do is to keep them in a state of ignorance. Ignorance which would eventually suffocate men must inevitably spread if those who are often the representatives of religious communities today were to gain their ends. If the scientists were to win the day, human souls would be engulfed in an ocean of doubt; if the pastors of religion who think in the way described were to win the day, human souls would suffocate in an atmosphere of ignorance. The task devolving upon Spiritual Science is serious and grave and we must realise its gravity. We must regard ourselves as individuals who through their karma can be led to Spiritual Science in order that what they possess in the way of intellect and intuitive discernment may be placed at the disposal not actually of Spiritual Science, but of the general progress of humanity. And such progress is a dire necessity for the world. We see, on the one side, how a materialistic view of the world is trying to get a firm foothold, and how nothing that offers resistance is of any avail! And on the other side we see how efforts are made to spread ignorance, how more and more is done to efface the truths relating to the spiritual world! Just think how every communication from the spiritual world is regarded with downright hatred by the representatives of certain religious communities! I have given these lectures in order to indicate the direction of the path which must be taken by Spiritual Science, and to help you to realise the following. We must oppose the materialistic scientists, although they really cannot help acting as they do, for Ahriman has them in his power and wishes to hide from them the real motives underlying their activity. And we must oppose the othcrs too—although they again cannot act differently, because they are in the hands of Lucifer. The right way to work is to come to grips with what Spiritual Science can give us. Oh, if only there were a number of people who realised the uniqueness of Spiritual Science, that it must not be confused with other things! That in itself would be a great step forward. One can also learn a great deal from mistakes, and pay attention to them from this point of view. That is more important than merely to criticise them, although criticism is also sometimes necessary. I said that—to put it in plain words—Ahriman is out to destroy man's intellect in the future; but he combines this with something else as well—because the beings who serve him are related, with their higher forces, to the lower forces in man and because he wants to establish an alliance between the higher and the lower forces. In the normal course, Ahriman has under his direction those things in the world which give rise to illnesses; we know that they too are unavoidable for they bring about death in the physical world. All destruction in the physical world is allotted to him. But the connection must be known and understood. If what is in the lower sphere is taken up into the higher, it is united with these beings of destruction and then man himself gives many opportunities to Ahriman and his hosts. And when he does so he will not fail to notice that certain lower parts of his organism begin to function as higher parts of the organism otherwise function. If a man has a dread of really exact thinking and yet wishes to enter the spiritual world, well, he may succeed in doing so—he crosses the Threshold and lives in the realm of the powers of destruction. When he comes back again into his body, he has entered into an alliance with these destructive beings and knows nothing about it because he has not developed his own intellect in the right way. He will then feel these beings within him—and instead of thinking, instead of his ears hearing and his eyes seeing, all kinds of hidden powers in the lower organism begin to hear and to see. The body is no longer his own in the sense it was before. On coming back again into the body he finds it filled with all sorts of ingredients. It is something new to him. This entry into one's own body as into something unfamiliar and containing unknown elements is an experience that may befall those who do not keep faithfully to the right path. For Ahriman strives to establish himself in the human body and to transform certain organs into organs of knowledge. Lucifer, however, incites his fiery spirits of will to take certain forces out of us in order to make these forces independent. And so if we cross the Threshold in the direction of Lucifer's realm and then come back into the body, we feel as if certain parts are hollow, as if something has been taken out of us. Ahriman adds something, because as he enters into us he fills the organs. Lucifer takes away organs, makes what was otherwise part of our own organism, independent of us. This is one of the aims of Lucifer—to make independent what belongs to us. And that is why in the pursuit of unjustifiable mystical experiences it may so easily happen that mystics, by consolidating and brooding over their own inner life, prepare it for Lucifer who can then draw it out of them. It is really so: Lucifer approaches the human being and draws out something from his brain, namely, the intellect. The intellect is drawn out as part of the etheric brain or of the etheric heart, made independent, and then a man feels that part of him has become hollow and empty. This is actually an experience associated with intensely egotistic individuals who have reached a certain high level of development. It can be seen that certain parts of their forces have been detached and are then, as it were, outside them. Lucifer robs man of certain forces with which he then proceeds to work. This state of things must naturally be prevented and it is prevented by faithful adherence to the right path. It is, however, a Luciferic conception to imagine that something can be taken away from man and then utilised as though he has no longer any part in it—for example, if a man's teaching is stolen from him and then utilised in the world. There you have a hint of the domain where such things actually happen. A great deal can be learnt from an error—above all from the error that teaching can be separated from the teacher. By observing these facts one can learn more than by merely criticising them—justifiable though this may well be. It is not difficult to realise what danger there would be were this kind of thing to become more general in the future. And the danger actually exists! On the other side man is approaching the danger that in the process of the independent development of the Spirit-Self, Ahriman may take possession of it. Already ncw, those who have an eye for such things perceive how men lose their independence and how Ahriman is actually guiding their hand when they write. That is the one side, and the other is that things are taken and utilised, and it is believed possible to separate them from their originator. But the legitimate and only right way will be for men to accept the guiding principles of Spiritual Science, whereby on the one side the illumination that is shed upon nature safeguards them when they break through its veil. A zoology, a botany, a science of agriculture based on the principles of Spiritual Science must be brought into being; everything, medicine too, must be enriched by these principles. But medicine can be rightly enriched only by those who are not afraid to pierce the veil of nature, to enter right into the Ahrimanic world where they must battle against the spirits of destruction. To discover what is health-bringing for man, one must enter the region of those spirits who destroy all human life, who bring about illness and death; for only in the realm where lie the deeper causes of illness and death can the remedies be found. Similarly, one who wishes to learn what will be fruitful for the human soul, must not be afraid to battle with the Luciferic beings; he must preserve unshakable moral courage if he wishes to cross the Threshold, he must realise that he is entering a region of spiritual beings where his every thought will tend to produce in him a slight touch of vertigo because it is on the point of being wrested from him, because it is about to flit away and he must swiftly take hold of it lest it escape him. Nobody can penetrate into this region without calmly battling against everything which, when it is out of balance, leads the human being to unhealthy, subjective mysticism. But Spiritual Science steers us in such a way that, if we understand it, we actually find the strength to combat the Ahrimanic forces of destruction wherever they may be at work. And when, as in the Mystery plays, we apply Spiritual Science to the onflowing development of human life, and to the unfolding life of nature when we portray the forces of nature in the forms of our pillars and architraves, and when we portray the higher secrets of existence by placing Christ over against Lucifer and Ahriman as in our statue, when we approach these things in such a way that the spiritual powers become objective realities to us, then, my dear friends, we find the strength which the mystic does not, as a rule, possess—the strength to battle against the Luciferic powers. From this you will realise that Spiritual Science was from the outset obliged to take the form in which it has actually been presented, and that what it creates, in addition to its theoretical teachings, is also essentially part of it. Let us try more and more to make our thinking conform with the thinking proper to Spiritual Science, for not until we free ourselves from the prejudices current in the outside world can we have a rightful place in Spiritual Science.
|
| 251. The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922: On the Character of the Present Day
21 May 1922, Berlin |
|---|
| We finally have a fourth kind of elemental being, the warmth or fire beings, which have developed that which we carry within us as the power of our self-awareness, as the power of our ego; at the same time, they are the beings that live in all that has a destructive effect within nature. |
| If, however, people not only find the same ego, the same self-awareness that they have carried up into the spiritual world through the centuries and millennia, but if they are able to gain a stronger hold within themselves through which they can absorb the Christ impulse, and if this stronger self were to develop only as such, it would degenerate into boundless egoism. |
| 251. The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922: On the Character of the Present Day
21 May 1922, Berlin |
|---|
My dear friends! Before I begin my lecture, I have to report that our dear friend Nelly Lichtenberg has left the physical plane. The younger friends may know her from her participation in our events, but the older participants know her very well and have certainly taken her deep into their hearts – as has her mother, who is left in mourning. Nelly Lichtenberg, who had recently sought recovery in Stuttgart, left the physical plane there a few days ago. She and her mother, who was there for her care, have been part of our anthroposophical movement since its inception. And if I want to express in a few words what, in my opinion, best characterizes the deceased, who has left the physical plane, and her mother, I would say: their souls were made of pure loyalty and pure, deep devotion to the cause of anthroposophy. We all appreciated, when our movement here in Berlin was still extremely small, the heartfelt loyalty and deep understanding with which they both clung to the movement and participated in its development. Baroness Nelly Lichtenberg carried this loyal soul in a body that caused extraordinary difficulties for her outer life. But this soul actually came to terms with everything in a wonderful spirit of endurance, a spirit of endurance that combined with a certain inner, inspired joy in absorbing the spiritual. And this spirit of endurance, combined with this inner joyfulness, warmed by a confidence in the life of the soul, on whatever plane in the future this soul life may unfold, all this was also found in the now deceased at her last sickbed in Stuttgart, where I found her in this state of mind and soul during my last visits. It is clear to you all that anyone who can in any way contribute to a person's recovery must do everything in their power to bring about that recovery; but you also all know how karma works and how it is sometimes simply impossible to achieve such a recovery. It was indeed painful to see only the future when one had the suffering woman before one in the last weeks. But her soul, which was also extraordinarily hopeful for the spiritual world, led her and those who had to do with her even in the last days beyond all that. And so we may say that in this soul, which left the physical plane with her, there lived here on earth one who had taken up anthroposophy in the true sense of the word – had taken it up in such a way that this anthroposophy was not just a theoretical world view, a satisfaction of the intellect or even a light satisfaction of the feelings, but was the whole content of her life, the certainty of her existence. And it was with this content of her life and with this certainty of her soul's existence that she left this physical plane. It is for us, especially for those of us who have gone through so many of the hours here in physical existence with her in the same spiritual striving, to turn our thoughts to her soul's existence. And that is what we want to do faithfully! She shall often find our thoughts united with her thoughts in the continuation of her existence in another realm, and she will always be a faithful companion of our spiritual striving, even in her further soul existence. We can be certain of that. And that we promise her this, that we want to powerfully direct our thoughts to her, as a sign of honor, we want to rise from our seats. My dear friends! In the first part of my lecture today, which I am very pleased to be able to give to you again during my journey, I would like to raise some points that may perhaps need to be discussed at some point. These points concern the change within our anthroposophical movement that is felt by many of you – and indeed more or less approvingly, but also negatively by some. I am talking about such a change and I think that most of us feel this change. I will only briefly characterize some of this change, because I do not want to talk about it at length. The older of our dear members look back to the times when Anthroposophy was cultivated in small groups — at least in smaller groups than it is now — merely, I would like to say, in the way that is appropriate for small groups that combine a certain need for knowledge with a religious need to strive for certain views about the spiritual world today. We have, and it is now a good two decades since in Berlin, repeatedly and repeatedly tried to esoterically deepen that which can be gained from today's conditions of the higher worlds of knowledge of spiritual life, based on the initial foundations that could be given years ago. And it is in the direction of this esoteric deepening that very many of our dear older members have found their deep satisfaction. It is fair to say that a kind of esotericism has gradually come to permeate everything, even the more public lectures. Regarding this esotericism that we have brought about, we can say, when we look at our branch life, that it has not been lost on us. This esotericism forms the basis of all branch life and has been cultivated in the branches as best as possible. It seems to me that it would be unjustified for older members to feel dissatisfied with the progress and transformation of the anthroposophical movement because something else has been added to the original esoteric movement of the past – to what was distinctly esoteric in character. It has only been added, it has not been replaced. We may say that esotericism has not died out, but a further, different element has naturally entered into anthroposophical life. In order to gain a correct attitude towards this further, different element - regardless of whether we see in it something that we more or less accept or reject - we must say: we did not seek it, it more or less sought us. We must be clear about that. And just as we look with heartfelt, self-evident love at our esoteric element in the anthroposophical movement, so when it comes to relating this other element to our esotericism, we must not close our minds to the clear insight into what has very much entered the anthroposophical movement in recent times and taken its place alongside the esoteric. Do you not remember, I am addressing the older members among us, the small circles from which we started everywhere. At the beginning, the spread of our anthroposophical movement was also characterized by an esoteric element. It can be said that when anthroposophy was spread through the paths that were initially there for the wider public through the magazine “Lucifer - Gnosis”, this spread was also tainted with an esoteric character. Esoteric truths reached those who wanted to take note of them. Of course, one has to feel what was in the esoteric will of the time. But something gradually broke away from esotericism, which at first was basically not within our own control. At first, one might say, the matter went its own way, and within our ranks esotericism was further developed, which then took shape in the public lectures that were given. What was then there in a more or less - we may say - “finished state” developed and wanted something from us. It was not yet there in the time that preceded the war catastrophe; at that time it was only present in the very first traces in the very first beginnings. But it was already very strongly present when the catastrophe of the war entered into that stage which was present in about 1918. There was, so to speak, something present that had arisen without our direct participation, and it confronted us as something finished. And even if I can only characterize it with the degree of precision that is appropriate for a brief, sketchy description, I have to say that anthroposophy had penetrated into the most diverse circles of the world, especially into scientific circles. It had become known and had been judged, and people demanded “scientific justification” from anthroposophy. With this phenomenon, that something was simply there through the anthroposophical literature, which made demands that had to be met, something else was there at the same time: there were a number of younger scientists, and some older ones, who seriously examined anthroposophy from their scientific point of view and, from a wide variety of angles, gave certain parts of their world knowledge an anthroposophical character. Therefore, one can say: One is not at all in a position to answer the question: Is it now sympathetic or unsympathetic that the older, esoteric kind was joined by the newer one, which some perceive as perhaps “too” scientific, and that precisely this current, especially through the challenge of its opponents, has assumed an ever broader, public character. We cannot look at what has really come to us from outside with sympathies and antipathies, because it did not depend on us at all that it once stood there more or less ready. We can only say: the necessity arose to simply place anthroposophy in the scientific life of the present, which can be placed there without reservation, and which can fertilize and lead forward the highest scientific life of the present everywhere – leading it forward to those goals to which it must be led further. It is from such a background that some older members, who were accustomed to attending the branch every week, may have heard something more or less esoteric there, as it then passed into our cycles, and they heard it in a language that is not yet permeated by science everywhere – even though it is a more durable language than the scientific language, I want to add this here in parenthesis -, some of the older members, who were accustomed to hearing in public lectures something different from what they heard in the branches, but still in a language that was extraordinarily familiar to their hearts and souls, because what was given there was only was only a kind of more exoteric continuation of what was done in the branches, it seemed to some of these older members when they came here or there, even if lectures on anthroposophy and perhaps even congresses or courses were held there, that anthroposophy no longer sounded the way it did years ago. For whereas in the past the spiritual substance lived more in what was expressed through the word, that spiritual substance that sinks directly into the soul through its spiritual power, something has now emerged that seeks to scientifically 'prove' and , which at every step maintains the thread of a strictly organized logic, which at every step also presents what the scientific achievements of the present give us as indications of what is sought through anthroposophy in the scientific sense. But all this was of no interest to those who in earlier years had expressed their longing for words shaped more substantially in a spiritual sense. So it came about that some of the older members had the feeling: Yes, what we are hearing now is not really what we are looking for. What we heard often in the past went straight to our souls. Now everything is being given a thousand different reasons, now everything is being presented in a way that suits the learned, the academic people – and not us! In a sense, this is unjustified, because the branch life continued, and the esoteric lived alongside what appeared in such scientific aprons. And not everyone saw that it is simply a matter of time, that we simply cannot do otherwise than to anchor anthroposophy scientifically, that it has now been taken up by scientists and is also demanded by scientists. This is how the situation we are in today arose, which is actually more in the soul feelings of our dear membership than in the fact that it is always clearly presented to the soul from the outside. But anyone who takes a good look at the anthroposophical movement, which has grown considerably in recent times, will find that what I have just said is expressed everywhere in the moods, feelings and perceptions: many people think that we do not need all this evidence at all. I do not want to talk today about the rather unpleasant character that the opposition has taken on in the present, but I do want to say that we are obliged to place anthroposophy on a firm basis in relation to those opponents who at least mean it to some extent honestly. This is also far too little considered within the anthroposophical movement. But let us take a somewhat objective view of the situation. Then, however, we are confronted with something today that we must be mindful of, and that can already be taken up as an impulse in our work. And that is actually why I am having this whole discussion today. On the one hand, we have today what is available as our anthroposophical esoteric stream, as it is laid down in the cycles, as most of you carry it in your hearts, having absorbed it over the years. We have this anthroposophical spiritual movement with its inner life, with its inner strength, with its inner warmth – with everything that makes it a source of soul and life. And on the other hand, when we step out of the narrower circle of our branch of life, we have the representation of our anthroposophical movement, which, as I said, gives anthroposophy a scientific character everywhere, which does present anthroposophy to the world, but uses the thought forms and thought connections that are common in scientific life today. Thought forms and thought connections that are not right for a large number of our members because these members are of the opinion that they do not need all of this. I am not talking about the practical forms of anthroposophy, such as the medical-therapeutic efforts, but rather about what appears more or less as a teaching within the anthroposophical movement. If we look at the matter objectively, on the one hand we have today everything that is more or less permeated by esotericism, and we find this expressed in the cycles; but it can also be found if those lectures that I am still allowed to give within smaller circles – since I also have to devote myself to the external life of the anthroposophical movement, as is my duty – are examined in this regard. We find it, for example, in the discussions of the Swiss assemblies, and those of our dear friends who have been to Dornach on one occasion or another will find that, in terms of inner esoteric development, what is usually presented there is not something that would not be the right continuation of the old branch and cycle life. This on the one hand. On the other hand, something quite different, and it must be admitted that it is something quite different: you see how anthroposophy is formed from the concepts of modern physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, psychology, as they are science, or as they have emerged from history, pedagogy and so on, anthroposophy is formed in such a way that it can, as it were, present itself as a science alongside the other sciences that are taught at universities. In terms of the nature of the investiture, however, these two currents are very different from one another. Of course, what is spoken out of the spirit, which has been the sole ruling spirit until the last four to five years, is very different from what has now been placed alongside it, not instead of it. And only because — one would like to say, thank God! — our dear members also feel the duty to take part in everything anthroposophical — while, on the other hand, many are quite indifferent to chemistry and physics and all the other beautiful things that present-day science has — only because these other friends also go to these achievements, which are based on this ground, do those members then find that a character is emerging in the anthroposophical movement of which they believe they have no need, and which they believe is something that scholars can work out among themselves, but which does not belong in the whole breadth of the anthroposophical movement. One could say that it might have been better – but this is not said in a conclusive sense – if one could have found a way out of the old esotericism into a wider dissemination in the same kind of language; for it is simply the case that anthroposophy must be accepted by today's world, by today's people, if the world is not to descend into decline. And so one could say: Oh, if only Anthroposophy had spread in a straight line from its esoteric beginnings! Well, it was not like that. It was the case that in the course of this spread, one came up against what was brought to it scientifically and what was formed “underhand”, so to speak. So today we have these two currents side by side, they have them so side by side that one could say - even if this is a little radically expressed -: If someone who simply wanted to find out about anthroposophy was present at the [last] course here in Berlin, informed themselves there and perhaps observed some of what was presented quite critically within themselves, they might have the objection: What is being said may not be correct in their view, but it is said 'scientifically'. But if someone who was just listening from the outside to what was being said in the scientific sense could somehow come to a branch meeting where what is said in the cycles is presented, they would find a different world, a world that is quite different from what is found in the courses and congresses designed for the public. He could say: Out there, it seemed to me as if people might be going astray, but in there they have already gone completely mad! If we want to look at the matter seriously, we must realize that there is still a deep gulf between what our esoteric work is in the branches and what we have to present to the world externally in many respects. It is the same inwardly, but there is a gulf between the two; and the fact that this gulf is really gaping is due to the fact that the matter was as I have described it: We initiated the spiritual anthroposophical movement out of the most heartfelt and sincere needs, and developed it in this way, but then something came from outside that now stands as a second current and has a scientific character. The latter is not a direct continuation of the former, not even in the case of those who have come from their scientific studies to work on anthroposophy scientifically. For many of them, it has been the case that they have simply undergone scientific studies and, out of certain needs of the heart, have felt towards their other studies: There is something wrong in science. Then they came to anthroposophy and through it they changed their science. These are completely different paths from those that originally formed the anthroposophical branch. But these things are developing today in such a way that, when they go side by side and there are only a few really active co-workers, it is very easy for such a gulf to form. We simply have not yet had the opportunity to bridge this gulf. My dear friends, there is a direct path from what is presented externally in a scientific form to the deepest esoteric! And if time and opportunity were given, it could, so to speak, begin with the external, even more scientific character of the one movement, and it could be continued down to the deepest depths of the esoteric life. But so far we have not been offered the time or opportunity to do so. Therefore, those who often approach our movement with the utmost seriousness find this inconsistent character: on the one hand, what is more set down in public literature; then they desire the cycles – and find something quite different. And as much as this bridge exists between the two in essence, it has not yet been created in fact today. Our active co-workers have simply had an enormous amount to do and work on in one movement or another, and so what should have been in between could not be put in the necessary way. This will have to be something that our work will have to take up again one day: This link between what no longer sounds like anthroposophy to many older members and what is outwardly alive in the congresses and courses today, and between what was there in the old branch work and the cycles. And then there is this, which, in line with a pressing demand of the present, must be brought into the public sphere with the cycle work, so that – I would say – the two things can be placed directly next to each other. You have them standing side by side in the journal 'Die Drei', with which you are familiar, where one of my esoteric cycles has been printed over the course of many issues, sometimes alongside very scientifically written treatises; so that, for those who looked more deeply, the connection was there everywhere, but for those who looked at the different ways of speaking, things were juxtaposed that were fundamentally and deeply different from each other. To some extent, this does appear as something disharmonious in our anthroposophical movement today. We have no reason to relate to this disharmony other than to simply present it clearly to our souls — as clarity in all areas must be what is specifically intended for anthroposophical life. But one of the difficulties we face when we want to present anthroposophy to the world today — and it must be presented to the world because the world demands it — is that we have to present a kind of Janus face, so to speak. We encounter these difficulties everywhere. On the one hand, people read our philosophical and scientific treatises, on the other hand they read the more esoteric works, and thirdly they often read a more or less good combination of the two, and we simply have to be clear about the fact that much of what makes the work in the anthroposophical movement difficult comes from this. And it must also be part of our work to provide those with information when we believe that such information is appropriate: that it is connected with the historical development, that it is as I have characterized it. And in this regard, I would also appeal to the older members not to make things too difficult by acting in opposition to what they may not care about but which cannot be dispensed with in view of the demands that are being made on the anthroposophical movement today. One could even say: if one has gained an inner vision from the laws of the soul's development, which are quite justified and present, for example, from some historical phenomenon, and if one then hears how today our dear younger members – not on the paths by which some older members have gained an inner vision, I might say, as if 'flying' to the point of convincing power, but start with things that are of little interest to many older members: with the elements of physics or even with the elements of mathematics, and then move from these elements through strictly drawn logical conclusions to things that are again of little interest to those who already have the matter, and then do it again and again - and in this way, to a more or less expressed form of what the other person already knows through his quick intuitive way, then many feel as if they are where the deepest secrets of existence have been grasped at a certain level, and now someone comes along, climbs a ladder, then past the things and then back down. Many older members certainly feel these logical climbing skills. But the fact is that these older members should show understanding for the demands of the times and know that this cannot be otherwise, and that we are simply faced with an ironclad necessity. That, my dear friends, is what I wanted to put before you today, to express to you that there is no will — not in the slightest — to leave the old esoteric paths in the old anthroposophical movement. There is no question of that. The only thing that can be said is that we have been confronted with demands of our time, and so, as much as possible, the esoteric foundations of our anthroposophical movement must of course continue to be cultivated, for there must be a number of personalities today who are so strongly connected with spiritual life that they can achieve what otherwise could only be achieved by mental crocheting — not Haeckel, the naturalist, is meant by this — with a simple beating of the thread. Of course, it can be quite uncomfortable to do this mental crocheting, but it has to be done because, according to their general view, our time has arrived at this mental crocheting. But some people, who have been directly involved in weaving threads from their hearts and their innermost spiritual understanding, must know that the time has come when a wave of spiritual life is breaking into this earthly life from the spiritual world and must be grasped by people as a wave of spiritual life. I have mentioned before that the period up to the last third of the nineteenth century was actually the time when the intellect of civilized humanity grew stronger. Great intellectual achievements based on the results of natural science were built up in the last few centuries. But with the twentieth century, only the legacy of this intellectual civilization remains, and there is no prospect at all that humanity will progress from the twentieth century into the following centuries by intellectual means, just as it progressed from the preceding centuries into the twentieth century. The intellect continues as it was, but it can no longer be the continuing force in the overall development of human thought. The continuing force is the spiritual life, which has broken into our earthly life as if through special gates. Now perhaps some will say: Yes, you are talking about the intellect only continuing to live at the level at which it was already, and that the spiritual has broken into earthly existence; but we do not see this spiritual life, the intellect is certainly cultivated, but one sees nothing of the spiritual. I would like to say: So much the worse! The spiritual is there nevertheless, although people do not see it; it can be found everywhere if one wants to find it. And that is the bad thing: that people do not want to find it, that they close their eyes to it, that they do not open their hearts to it! That is the terrible thing, that must be overcome: that today is already the time when the spiritual life can be grasped just as the intellectual was grasped from the Copernican-Galilean time on, but that people turn away from this spiritual life! But anyone who can turn their spiritual gaze to the spiritual life will see it flowing into our human life everywhere. However, this spiritual life is not yet being taken up, and so we have a desolate, merely inherited intellect. For in reality, the intellect has not advanced further; it is only being carried on in its old form. While this is the outward appearance of the case, an event of the greatest importance is actually taking place within. I have described some aspects of this event again and again in our branch lectures. Today, I would like to summarize and present some additional information. If we now consider ourselves as physical human beings, we live here on earth within the forms of existence that older people called “elements”: earth, water, air, fire. Today we speak of the solid material, the liquid material, the gaseous material and the warm etheric. Our organism is woven from this fourfold materiality, as is everything that our organism moves towards between birth and death. Today's man looks at this materiality, forms his world view through his lawful perception of this materiality, which is essentially an external scientific one, even if ancient religious traditions play into today's concepts. But this materiality is based on spiritual beings. The earthly solid is based on spiritual entities from the sphere of the elementary spirits, older intuitive clairvoyance called them “gnomes” and the like. Today's intellectualism regards this as fantasy. What we call them is unimportant, but underlying all that is solid on earth lies a world of spiritual elemental beings who, I might say, in their physicality, invisible to human senses, have a greater degree of intellect, of pure rationality, than we humans have ourselves and who are extremely clever compared to us humans, clever to the point of cunning, clever to the point of speculation, clever to the point of the shrewd foreknowledge of that which always gets in the way of man in the work he does based on his lesser intellectuality. Underlying all earthly solid matter is a world of elemental beings that are truly extraordinarily clever, and whose cleverness is the fundamental character of their being. And underlying everything that is liquid, watery, is a world of elemental beings that have developed to a particularly strong degree what we humans – on the one hand somewhat more robustly, on the other hand somewhat more neutrally – spiritual elementary beings, which have a sensitive feeling, a feeling that lives into the finest nuances of sensation, that everywhere relives that which people only feel externally. For example, we look at the trees in the forest with our eyes; at most, we feel when we approach the forest or are inside it, how the wind, shaking something, rushes through us, but otherwise we only see the trees moved by the wind; on the other hand, we see, for example, the sun's rays shining. Our perception is relatively coarse compared to that of all beings that belong to the watery liquid element and permeate and flow through it, that go along with all the movements that the tree branches perform in the wind, that move with the clouds, that experience the condensation of water droplets in the clouds, experience the dissolution of water droplets as they evaporate, solidify in the solidifying ice, lose themselves in the vastness as the evaporating water does – and emotionally participate in all of this. This is a second kind of elemental being that populates our earth just as we ourselves and plants and animals populate the earth. We then have a third kind of elemental being in the airy element, these are the beings that have developed to an intense degree that which lives in our will, which have developed this will to such a strength that this will lives in them as 'will', then becomes outwardly visible as a natural force. We finally have a fourth kind of elemental being, the warmth or fire beings, which have developed that which we carry within us as the power of our self-awareness, as the power of our ego; at the same time, they are the beings that live in all that has a destructive effect within nature. And when we see, for example, how in spring the elemental beings mentioned first look out of the natural phenomena everywhere, with a real clairvoyance based on exact foundations, we see how the fire beings are active in all the destruction of autumn, yes, are most active when what they accomplish is expressed outwardly in cold snow and ice, as in its opposite. The elemental spirits live in the elements, we are surrounded by them, they are just as present in earthly existence as we ourselves are. These elemental spirits want something. These elemental spirits are not as unfeeling, as stubborn, as closed to the incoming spiritual wave in our age as people often are. People only want to persist in observing the sensual and in thinking about the intellectual aspects of this spiritual world, which underlies the natural elements. These elemental spirits do not close their eyes to the spiritual waves breaking into the earthly, which are everywhere today, to the spirituality that wants to come in. And when I said, for example, that the elemental spirits of the earthly firmament are preferably shrewd and even intellectual, it is only natural that they have no sympathy for a spiritual wave entering the present day. But even if they have no particular sympathy, they do pay attention! They notice that this spirituality is breaking in today and that it carries on its waves a truly deepened knowledge of Christ, a truly deepened knowledge of the mystery of Golgotha. Even the clever beings of the earthly kingdom can see that. But they decide: if people remain stubborn towards the incoming spiritual world, then we will do our part, which would have been futile so far. For in the period from the fifteenth to the end of the nineteenth century, when people mainly developed their intellect, the gnome-like intellectual spirits of the solid, earthly realm could not do anything special, so to speak! They could use their cunning to peek into the earthly world here and there; and those who have perceptions of this peeking know this. But now that humanity is to meet the spirituality that wants to enter, the time has come when the intellect, having fallen into corruption, is only passed down as an inheritance and no longer has any fruitful suggestions - for the intellect decays over time, and if you look at it impartially, you can see it everywhere; if you compare today's scientific work with that of forty years ago in terms of the intellect that prevails in science, one can already speak of the decline of the intellect. Now the time has come when the other beings, who are there just as we humans are, by becoming aware of the incoming spiritual wave, say to themselves: Now is our time, now we will do something! And they will decide, if people do not do their part, to put all their cleverness and intellectuality at the disposal of the Ahrimanic powers, so that Ahriman will become powerful over an enormous host of elemental beings that inhabit the earth. And these beings, who thus have intellect at their disposal, will be joined by other elemental beings, because man, in turn, will be influenced by the elemental beings, so that the danger of humanity becoming ahrimanized is present. This is a somewhat radical statement, but it is nevertheless a truth. Forty years ago, if you looked at a person in terms of how they used their intellect intellectually, the person who made the training of the intellect his profession was active in his intellectual training. The human being was there. There were really great minds there, minds that were active; in the schools, minds were there that one could rejoice at the activity of the intellect. Today it is not so, and people seem as if the mind had moved a little deeper, and as if they were producing the mind as a mechanism. One feels how people speak in intellectual terms, but as if the mind were not even involved. There are some very simple phrases that you come across. The further west you go, the worse it is, but it is already taking hold in Germany. If someone writes a sentence and doesn't put the predicate where it is supposed to be for whatever reason, it is stylistically incorrect; and if you go to France, everything is already stylistically incorrect because the language has already become stereotyped. In Germany, you can still turn your sentences around to get different possibilities of expression, but in France people are gradually getting out of the habit of doing that. In the East – Bolshevism wanted to get rid of it, but it will make itself felt again – there is still a certain flexibility in the language. But in general, this flexibility decreases with civilization. It is especially the case with younger people that they talk like mechanisms. They start – forty years ago it would have been interesting to pay attention to how they would continue to talk – but today we already know it, we are no longer interested; they talk like clockwork. There has been – we can see it today, but we want to close our eyes to it – a certain calcification of people, even literally, so that the intellect has indeed slipped down. But Ahriman takes him in. He cannot work through the nervous-sensory system as humans do, but he works through the elemental spirits. What the brains and etheric bodies are for us, the elemental spirits are for Ahriman; he waits until they place themselves at his disposal. But he has them as his brain and as his heart, which has become a leather bag. It is the case that the elemental spirits place themselves at the disposal of the Ahrimanic powers. That is one side of it. But if we look at the world externally, spatially and temporally, then we have, in addition to these elemental spirits, another world: the etheric world. We must preferably look down at the solid earth, at what surrounds and storms around this solid earth, flows around and flows around it as the water sphere, as the air sphere, which permeates and permeates it as warmth. We must preferably look down and straight ahead if we want to look at these kinds of elemental beings. But we must preferably look into the distance, that is, upwards. After all, warmth still belongs to the earthly, but above the warmth ether lie the light ether and the chemical ether. We must look into the distance if we want to look at the etheric. And when we look at the liquid and the elemental spirits on which it is based, we find a teeming population of individuals that clearly appear to us as single beings; there the number dominates. It is, so to speak, the world of the elemental realms populated by immeasurable elemental beings. But when we look at the ethereal world, there is more than one unit of spirituality living there. In the light ether, we can no longer distinguish the individual elemental spirits from one another, as we can in the air or water element or even in the earthly element. In the earthly element, it is the case that you go out into certain forests, track down some gnome's nest, and - you might say - thousands and thousands of elemental beings can be enclosed in a small globe, and then you are standing in front of a multitude. You have only a small ball in your hand and it is teeming with what it counts. There is the number, there is the teeming, that which forces us to count and which makes us admit that we cannot count at all because it is immeasurable and because every number is immediately exceeded. And of the one who has a spiritual vision, you can not say that he “miscalculates”. You can not distinguish what is there sooner or later; You think you have counted five, and see that you actually had to count eleven. But the six were not added, they were already there. The teeming of the number prevails. But in the etheric everything converges to a unity. Even in the light ether, the elementary beings form a unity. This is even more the case in the chemical ether, and it is completely the case in the life ether. And it was from this feeling that the idea contained in the idea of Yahweh was once formed, the idea of the one God Jehovah. This is the being that is unspokenly connected and composed of the many individual beings and that animates the ether, just as the many elementary beings animate the ether. But just as when man disregards the irruption of spirituality into our time, then the world of the lower elementary beings connects with the Ahrimanic beings that are hostile to human development, so the luciferic If the forces of Lucifer, which can take hold of everything that is human will and feeling, combine with the ahrimanic beings that are hostile to human development, then these forces of Lucifer will snatch this element from the air and water beings and, as beings of Lucifer, will carry it into the ether. Only with the help of human beings can the power of the unified God-being, which once designated a past time with the name Jehovah, be preserved in the ether. If people do not pick up the spiritual wave, then the being that appeared as Jehovah as the cohesive spiritual being will have to retreat from the onslaught of Lucifer, who rips the light beings, the chemical beings and the life beings out of the power of Jehovah. And from what I have described, a combined rule over the earthly of Ahriman and Lucifer would arise. The only way to escape this is for people to gain a new understanding of Christ, a new understanding of the mystery of Golgotha, through the incoming spiritual wave. For the intellect would not die as a result; it would not develop further as intellect, but it would be enlivened by spirituality. It would come out of dead abstraction to a certain inner life. On the other hand, that which lives in human emotions and human instincts would not be taken up by an abstract unity in the etheric realm; it could not become Luciferic. We need a new understanding of Christ, a new understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And we will also come to the right realization of how we need this if we properly consider what is threatening to occur as another grouping in the universe, as another grouping of elemental and etheric beings. Yes, one can really already perceive how, on the one hand, the intellect wants to descend to the Ahrimanic, to the lower elemental beings. On the other hand, it is clearly perceptible how today there is a certain tendency to move away from the actual Christ-being and to immerse oneself in that etheric unity, so that through this immersion, precisely through the denial of the Christ principle, something Luciferic is absorbed. This, my dear friends, can be clearly seen, and I have actually spoken of this perception here several times. We see how an actual conception of Christ is fading, especially in newer theology. We see how, according to the view of the modern theologian - one need only recall Harnack's 'Essence of Christianity', for example - for many modern theologians Christ is actually denied. “The Son does not belong in the Gospel,” says Harnack, ‘only the Father.’ It could therefore be said that there is no longer any real concept of Christ, only of the one God. There is no longer any awareness of how the Son differs from the Father. It is like a return to the Old Testament and an obliteration of the New Testament. But this is the way to penetrate to the ethereal unity without warming it with the Christ impulse. In short, one sees everywhere how people often unsuspectingly expose themselves to the forces that draw their powers from the ethereal spirits on the one hand and from the elemental spirits on the other. If, however, people not only find the same ego, the same self-awareness that they have carried up into the spiritual world through the centuries and millennia, but if they are able to gain a stronger hold within themselves through which they can absorb the Christ impulse, and if this stronger self were to develop only as such, it would degenerate into boundless egoism. It is precisely this self, as it grows stronger, that must develop the sense of what Paul meant by the words, “Not I, but the Christ in me!” When the Christ is in this self that has become strong, then humanity will find ways to prevent this regrouping and allow the earth to develop in the right way. Today, if I may express myself so, one must look behind the scenes of existence, where that takes place that remains unconscious to man, if one wants to see how man depends on holding on to the spiritual wave that brings him what he needs to can continue the God- and Christ-intended earthly nature; while if he does not accept this spiritual wave, something else would be formed out of the earth through the intervention of the ahrimanic and elemental beings together with the etheric beings, other than what should come of it. And man would be diverted from his path, for his cosmic destiny and the cosmic destiny of the earth are necessarily connected with each other. Today, outer scientific life, outer science, is not enough. It can certainly be translated into the anthroposophical, indeed, it will only attain its true thoughts by being translated into the anthroposophical. And much can be achieved by speaking anthroposophically, and not in the external, hypothetical, materializing sense, for example, of the composition of hydrogen and oxygen to form water and of the other physical and other phenomena. But however necessary this may be to correct our increasingly false and erroneous views of the external world, it is all the more necessary, on the other hand, not only to talk about “solid quartz” on earth , of the “solid calcite” and other solids or of various watery substances and of the airy substances, but that we talk about the spiritual beings that we have with the substances and in the substances everywhere. We need not only a physics or a chemistry, but we need a doctrine of the social life of the elemental spirits, of the social life of the ethereal spirits; we need a view of the spiritual life of the world, which is indeed concrete. But as long as there is a doctrine that only wants to prove that there is no spiritual world at all, an insurmountable barrier has been erected between the world where man is on one side and the Luciferic and Ahrimanic on the other, and that world where man can only form the real tasks of humanity today out of knowledge, including elementary and etheric beings. We must look beyond the exoteric for esoteric wisdom. We must not only ask ourselves about the attractions and repulsions of matter, we must ask ourselves about the cleverness of the elementary spirits of the earthy, about the fine sensitivity of the elementary spirits of the watery, about the will impulses of the elementary spirits of the airy, about the elementary spirits of fire or warmth that permeate everything with egoity; we must penetrate ourselves with the peculiar qualities of the spirits of light and warmth, which in their turn relate partly helpfully and partly antagonistically to the elemental spirits of air, and thus create a balance between them, where we can see an interaction between the spirits of light that have become more air-like and the air spirits that have become more light-like. Here we have the possibility of looking into the evolution of a cosmic body, which I was able to describe in my 'Occult Science' as 'Jupiter'. We must look into the spiritual evolution of the world, in a way quite different from the way in which physical science looks into the evolution of the world today. Here we enter, indeed, a sphere in which the conceptions that men have today about the spiritual must be essentially broadened. This view of the spirit must become familiar to people, as familiar as what they know today of the physical-sensual world. Humanity must learn to think about the relationship of the elemental and etheric spirits to humanity and about the coming of the spiritual wave, which can bring the relationship of the two into the right and necessary relationship for people. We can only speak correctly about the relationship of these beings, about the part they have in an earth that is suitable for people, as well as about the part they would have if the earth were to perish with humanity, if we show understanding for the spiritual wave that is about to break into human civilization and cultural development. To have ears for what is bursting in, to have eyes, eyes of the soul, to see what is shining in and streaming in and radiating in from supersensible worlds into the sensory worlds for the perception of those beings who, in the world of sense, can see the supersensible if they want to – like human beings – to have an appreciation of these facts, that is what esoteric anthroposophy would like to inspire in those who come together for it. That, my dear friends, is what I was allowed to present to your souls today, and in doing so I wanted to encourage you again in your souls to study the spiritual world as it may be proclaimed today. Depending on your karma, when the time is right, you will also find a living connection to this spiritual world more and more. and more, if you do not shy away from taking on board, with confidence – but with a confidence that is based on knowledge, not on authority – what can be extracted from the spiritual world in terms of the highest truths, This is what I would like to see in the work of all our branches. To express this wish in an explicit way through what I presented today was particularly incumbent on me today, in relation to this branch, which was one of the first to be active at the birth of our anthroposophical life and which, therefore, anyone who is truly devoted to this anthroposophical life Anthroposophical life with all his soul must truly always wish a healthy prosperity, a hearty cooperation of those united in it, a joyful reception of what can come from the spiritual world. May this eager cooperation and joyful reception be present, and may the strength of the work of this branch lie precisely in it! |
| 157. The Destinies of Individuals and of Nations: Lecture V
19 Jan 1915, Berlin Translated by Anna R. Meuss |
|---|
| Between going to sleep and waking up we are in a soul state where that which we really are is outside our physical and our ether bodies. Asleep, we live in our astral body and our ego. We need to have a very clear picture of this. That which we really are is then outside our physical and our ether bodies. Asleep, we live in our astral body and our ego. We need to have a very clear picture of this. That which we really are is then outside the body. |
| 157. The Destinies of Individuals and of Nations: Lecture V
19 Jan 1915, Berlin Translated by Anna R. Meuss |
|---|
Once again, let us first of all direct our thoughts to those who are out there at the front, in the arena of present-day events, where they have to stand for what the time demands of them:
And for those who have already gone through the gate of death:
May the spirit we have been seeking for so many gears in our movement, the spirit who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha, be present above you, may it stream through you and strengthen you for your difficult task. It seems that not everyone is quite clear about the verse I have just spoken, so I am told. Let me stress that the proper version reads: Spirit of your souls. The verse has been phrased in such a way that it can be used when many people want to speak for one person or one for many or, indeed, many for many—as in the present case. If it refers to just one person, the only change which has to be made is to say ‘Spirit of your soul’ and so forth. It appears that I made a slip of the tongue when I said the verse for the first time here some weeks ago, so that the view has arisen that the words ‘Spirits of your souls’ may not be quite correct. But they are correct as they stand. The first line is addressed to the spirits of the souls requiring protection, as it were and the ‘your’ refers to those to whom our thoughts are directed. In the second line on the other hand, the 'your' relates to the 'guardians'. Let me remark that such verses are always such by nature that there can be problems with the purely grammatical construction. But they are given from the spiritual world for the specific Purpose, and it is true that there are occasional problems with putting the words together for such verses. Dear friends, it was for good reason and, spiritually, also very much in accord with the work that has to be done in the present time, that two days ago we turned our attention to events in the evolution of man that show how spiritual impulses—and particularly the spiritual Impulses linked with the Mystery of Golgotha, with the Christ impulse—are living impulses within the evolution of man. We have seen how they were active in the evolution of man even though men were unable to grasp the nature of the Christ impulse with their reason, with their intellect. It was with this intention that reference was made among other historical events to Joan of Arc through whom this Christ impulse resolved a major issue in the 15th century through its servant, the Michaelic spirit, and for the good and advancement of mankind. The reason why it was particularly important to refer to this event was that in our day, too, it does hold true that everything destined to regulate events on the historical scale is ordered and regulated from the spiritual worlds. We need to be aware that the forces, the impulses, for what is to happen come to us from the spiritual worlds. In this respect the same holds true today as in the days of Joan of Arc. But the times are different. What would happen in a particular way in the days of Joan or Arc has to happen in a different way in our time and in times to come; it has to take a different course. For our time is one that is entirely different. Since the 15th and 16th century—and the Joan of Arc event did, of course, come in that period—mankind had been guided in quite a different way. It is this difference, and consequently the basic nature of our time, that we shall consider to some extent today. Between going to sleep and waking up we are in a soul state where that which we really are is outside our physical and our ether bodies. Asleep, we live in our astral body and our ego. We need to have a very clear picture of this. That which we really are is then outside our physical and our ether bodies. Asleep, we live in our astral body and our ego. We need to have a very clear picture of this. That which we really are is then outside the body. We are, of course, bound to our body to an extraordinary degree between birth and death so that in terms of space we are not far away from our body when asleep. Our soul element is spread out in our surroundings, as it were; that is in everything that specifically makes up our environment. Yet it is not only on such less usual occasions that we live among the hustle and bustle of the present age, and we can certainly say that the mechanized life has also spread to the countryside today. Fundamentally speaking, we are always within the mechanized life of the present age. When asleep, the soul merges into everything that is mechanism. Those are mechanisms, however, which we have constructed ourselves. A mechanism we have built is something quite different from nature outside us, for this has been constructed by the elemental spirits. When we are out in the woods, for instance, where everything has been built up by the spirits of nature, we are in an environment that is totally different from the environment of mechanical contrivances created by ourselves. What are we doing when we take things from nature and put them together to make the machines and appliances we use in our lives? We are in that case not merely putting together physical components, for in putting together physical components we always provide opportunity for a demonic Ahrimanic servant to unite with the machine. We do this with every machine, every mechanism, in everything of this kind that is part of modern civilization, providing a point of attachment for demonic elemental spirits of Ahrimanic nature. And living surrounded by machines we live together with these demonic Ahrimanic elementals. We allow them to enter into us; we allow not only the squealing and groaning of machines to enter into us but also an element that is eminently destructive for our spirit and our soul. Please note—and I have often made a similar comment on similar occasions—what I am saying is not intended to be a criticism of our Ahrimanic age. It has to be like this, that we allow demons to stream into everything and allow ourselves to the surrounded by them. It is part of the evolution of mankind. We have to acknowledge the simple necessity for this and understand the real impulse of spiritual science. And so we shall not sing the praises of people who say it is necessary, as far as possible, to protect oneself from the demons and to shun civilization and that we should set up a colony as far away as possible in the wilderness to save us from having anything to do with these demonic Ahrimanic elementals. That has never been the tenor of my words. I have always said that we must entirely accept what comes to us out of the necessity of evolution, that we must not let ourselves be induced to flee from the world. We need to take heed, however, we need to understand, that conditions are such in our age that we are filling our environment more and more with beings of a demonic nature, that we are more and more involved with the principle that is mechanizing our civilization. An age such as this cans for something quite different than the age out of which Joan of Arc was called to do her work. In the time of Joan of Arc it was necessary for the impulse out of which she was to act to be born out of the gentlest, the most subtle powers of the human soul. Just consider: she was a shepherd girl living a very simple, natural life, with nature at her most idyllic. She was very young when her visions came to her, and through the Imaginations given to her she had a direct link with the spiritual world. Out of her inner being she was to bring forth everything that was to be the foundation from which she acted, she was to let it grow forth from her inner being. And not only this, but it was necessary for very special circumstances to be brought about so that through the most subtle powers inherent in the human soul her mission could be imprinted in her soul, in her very heart of hearts. We know that everything in the world goes in cycles, that things happen in such a way that important events come up in definite cycles. If we take the year of Joan's birth, 1412, we can ask a specific question relating to this. We are able to say that the year this Maid of Orleans was born the sun would of course have been in a particular position, astronomical position, coinciding with one of the constellations in the zodiac. The progress of the sun from one sign of the zodiac to the next marks a major time interval. Passing right through the zodiac the sun will go through all twelve constellations; the time interval needed for the sun to progress from one constellation in the zodiac to the next is approximately 2,160 years, and this is important. Going back approximately 2,160 years from the birth of Joan of Arc we come to the founding of Rome. In the days when Rome was founded anyone needing information on major issues concerning the city which was then coming into being would go to see the nymph Egeria. There it was possible to get information, from a seeress. But, as I said, that was one solar cycle earlier. And so the times are renewed and everything goes in cycles. Let us visualize it like this: at the time when Rome was founded the sun was at a certain point in the constellation of the Ram, Aries. It then progressed to the Fishes, Pisces, so that it had moved through one-twelfth of the zodiac. And thus the cycle which inevitably has to be there In the evolution of mankind takes us from the nymph Egeria to the inspired deed of Joan of Arc. In ancient Rome, however, it was a matter of pagan Inspiration, of pagan deeds. If we try to think of the same visionary element that operated at the time when Rome was founded also having to operate in a Christian age, acting from within, through the most tender powers inherent in man, what did have to come about? You can imagine that something had to come about which again, in some way or other, had to do with the subtlest powers of the Christian faith. Most of you will remember my telling you of the variation we get in the course of the year in the forces that link us with the spiritual world. In summer, at St John's tide when the sun's rays are most Powerful externally, one might perhaps achieve an external ecstasy and, as in the old Celtic mysteries, lift oneself up into the spiritual world in some way, but certainly in ecstasy. Yet when the days are shortest, when the sun's rays are least powerful and the winter night the darkest, around Christmas therefore, the opportunity exists also to win through to the spiritual worlds in our innermost soul life. All who have known of the cycle of the year have always maintained, quite rightly, that those who have the gift for it are able to enter into the most intimate aspect of our connection with the spiritual worlds during the time from the 21st, the 23rd of December to about the 6th of January—during those days and particularly the nights. There are legends—the Legend of Olaf Asteson has been read to you here—which tell of people having their most profound Inspirations during those days.26 This, again, is connected with the celebration of Christmas at that time, of the birth of the spirit who went through the Mystery of Golgotha and is connected with the innermost powers in human soul development. So, if the Inspiration of pagan Rome of old was to be resurrected one sun cycle later, 2,160 years later, it had to come in through the aspect of man that is most utterly childlike. This means that the soul of Joan of Arc had to be taken hold of at the point where souls are taken hold of most profoundly, where they are weakest in relation to earthly things, and where the Christ impulse is not yet hampered by worldly impressions—the souls not yet having taken up the earthly element, so that the Christ impulse can be the only one to enter into the soul sphere. The most favourable timing for this would have been for the Maid of Orleans to have gone through the time of the Thirteen Nights in her mother's womb immediately before her birth, before she took her first breath. And, indeed, she did—for she was born on the 6th of January. Here we perceive the more profound forces at work which enter into the physical world from the spiritual worlds. We see how they find the channels they need, deeply mysterious channels. There can be nothing more marvellous for someone with insight into such things, nothing more open to explanation through spiritual science, than this fact that the Maid of Orleans took her first breath on earth in the time around Christmas, on the 6th of January, with the days of Christmas immediately preceding her entry on to the physical plane. We see how the girl who was to go through death at the age of 19 was taken hold of at the point where the most subtle of human powers lie, and we are therefore looking into a time when it was necessary for the divine spiritual powers to find a channel through the inmost inwardness of the human soul. That, however, was the last time when such a thing was to be. It was the time when a particular order was brought into Europe through the Christ impulse, as I indicated to you the last time, and this happened in the wonderful way in which it did happen through Joan of Arc. Since then, however, times have changed. Today is not the time when divine spiritual powers approach the human soul in such intimate fashion. What was the mission of Joan of Arc, really, if we consider something that was present throughout her whole life? She was taken hold of from within by the forces of the divine spiritual world. In her soul these forces encountered the Luciferic forces. These Luciferic forces were mighty and powerful at that time. Joan of Arc bore something within her that made her vanquish the Luciferic forces. She vanquished the Luciferic forces, that is entirely obvious to anyone who wants to see. We have briefly considered the miracle of her birth and seen that she went through an unconscious initiation, in a way, up to Epiphany, the day known as that of the manifestation of Christ. But we can also point to her death which occurred because all the Luciferic forces of her enemies joined together to bring about her death. Her misadventure in a battle was brought about through the jealousy of the men who were the official leaders, appointed to guide the battle. All the jealousy then came to the fore over the manifestations of spiritual forces and spiritual powers that were made through her. She was put on trial. The records of the trial still exist and anyone studying them can see—unless of course his mind is as closed as that of Anatole France—that this Maid of Orleans, having come into the physical world in a very special way, through the thirteen nights, also left it in such a way. For it says in the records, so that there is historical proof, that she said that she would indeed die but that after her death the English would meet with a much greater reverse than any they had known before, and that this would happen within the next seven years. If we take this rightly, in its spiritual sense, it means nothing less than that the soul of Joan of Arc on going through the gate of death was prepared to continue contributing to the work of shaping events after her death, to share in the work whatever her form of existence. And she did so. What the spiritual powers have to bring about will be brought about whatever the external conditions may be. Joan's adversaries were able to bring about her death, to mount the strongest possible attack against her, as it were. They were not able to prevent her mission. However, the forces of Joan of Arc were only able to work in the subtle way they did during her time. In everything she did the Luciferic forces were ranged against her. We are also having to deal with hostile forces in our time, but these are predominantly Ahrimanic forces, the Ahrimanic forces that have come up with the materialistic age. These are in evidence even in the outer form and fashion of the whole of our age if we turn our attention to the mechanisms, the mechanical element of the age; if we are aware that, fundamentally speaking, we are offering an abode to demons when we produce our mechanical contrivances, surrounding ourselves with a whole world of Ahrimanic demons. It is evident also from other things that Ahrimanic powers are at work everywhere in our age. We need only look back a few years and pay a little attention to the occult substrate to our life on earth and we can see Ahrimanic forces influencing all aspects of our physical life on earth. Not only the kind of demons we create in our machines influence our earth life but also other kinds of Ahrimanic forces. The occultist has to put into words something I have often put into words for one group of friends or another: that, fundamentally speaking, the sad and painful events now happening all over Europe and a large part of the globe have long been in preparation. War has been present for a long time, as it were, in the astral world but was held back by something that was also astral: by the fear everybody was feeling. Fear is an astral element; it was able to hold the war back, to prevent it; fear was able to stop war from breaking out for all that time. For fear was abroad everywhere. Fear is altogether something that is most dreadfully widespread in the depths of our souls in the present age. A time came, however, when there was an external indication in time of something often referred to when the starting points of this war are discussed. This outer aspect is not the one that matters, however, it is merely a symbol. As I said on a previous occasion, the assassination of the Austrian Archduke occurred and there emerged the event, so terrible to the soul, that I have already referred to. I had never before known anything like this, not from personal experience nor through other occultists. We know what the soul goes through when it has undergone death. In the case of the soul that went through death at that time something very specific showed itself. All the elements of fear began to gather around it, as though around a focal point, and something of a cosmic power could now be perceived in it. We know already that anything that has a specific character on the physical plane will have the opposite character in the spiritual world. This also held true in the present case. An element that first had had a dispersive effect where war was concerned was now acting in the opposite way, as a spur, an incitement, to war. So we see that a metamorphosis, as it were, of the elements of fear, of the Ahrimanic elements, became mixed up with all the things that finally led to the sad and painful events of the present time. Ahrimanic elements are indeed at work everywhere in our time. We must not rebel against this, nor should we aim to protect ourselves against it. We have to see it as something that is necessary in our time, something that has to be present in our time. The question is: How do we find the right attitude to this? How do we find the one thing that will show us what should be our attitude now, in the present age, if we want to make it possible for divine spiritual forces and powers to enter into our actions? Here I must refer to an event in the spiritual world that happened a few decades ago. I have mentioned this on a number of occasions, in all kinds of different contexts. It is an event that occurred behind the scenes of our existence, in the spiritual world, in or about November 1879.27 We know that there is a different regent of earth life for every epoch, as it were; one regent follows another. Until 1879 the spirit acting out of the spiritual world was the one we call the spirit Gabriel, if a name is to be used. From 1879 onwards it was the spirit we call Michael. It is Michael who directs events in our time. Anyone able to see into the spiritual worlds in conscious awareness will feel the spirit Michael to be the spirit who truly is the one to lead and govern in our time. Michael is in a way the most Powerful of the leading spirits of the age that follow one another. In a way, I said, he is the most powerful of these spirits. The others have been predominantly active in the spirit sphere. Michael had the strength to push the spirit right through into the physical world. He was the spirit who descended to earth ahead of the Christ, as it were, before the Mystery of Golgotha approached, and governed world affairs for four or five centuries at that time. Now in our time he is again the leading spirit on earth. We may make a comparison by saying that Michael is among the spirits belonging to the hierarchy of the Archangeloi as gold is among the metals. Whilst all other metals act predominantly on the ether body, gold also acts as a medicine for the physical body. In the same way all the other leading spirits act on the soul whilst it is Michael who at the same time is able to act on the physical intellect, on physical reason. Now that his age has come it is possible to act out of the spirit on the physical intellect, on physical reason. In the 15th century he was not the actual leader and therefore had to find a way in the case of Joan without making use of the human intellect, human understanding, human ability to form ideas; a way that was wholly an inner one, as it were, through the innermost powers of the human soul. The Christ influenced Joan of Arc through his Michaelic spirit, but he achieved what had to be done by any other means rather than the forces of the intellect and of reason. Luciferic spirits are also present today. and these prefer to attack man from within. They want to generate all kinds of passions, but not the error of the intellect, the error of common reason that we have to struggle with in our present age. We therefore have to say that anything we wish to achieve in the spiritual sphere must be achieved in such a way that it is in accord with the forces that Michael, the leading spirit of the age, commands. We are in close alliance with Michael when we try to grasp what we have been attempting to grasp these last few days, when we try and grasp things as phenomena, to grasp what we call the German folk spirit. Two powers: Michael and the German folk spirit. These two are entirely in harmony, and it is their mission to bring the Christ impulse to expression specifically in our time, in accord with the character of our time. For it would be wrong for the people of our time to think that the same inward way of working that was appropriate to the 15th century could still be appropriate now that we are in the fifth post-Atlantean era. In the present age it is a matter above all of understanding that it is necessary to be chained to Ahriman, to Ahrimanic elements we ourselves create in our machines, and that it is necessary to recognize clearly how these things are connected. Otherwise we live in fear of many of the things that exist in the present age. The question therefore arises: How do we offer resistance to this Ahrimanic element in our age, the way resistance was offered to the Luciferic element at the time of Joan of Arc? We offer resistance to the Ahrimanic element by taking exactly the path that has been so emphatically pointed out over and over again within our stream of spiritual science—the path towards a spiritualization of human culture, of man's ability to form ideas and concepts. This is why it has been stressed again and again that there is a way in which everything spiritual science can give us, even if to begin with it is largely presented to us from the spiritual world, can truly and wholly and utterly be grasped with the intellect, the reason man has been gifted with from the 16th century to this day. And if we say we do not understand, then that is only because we listen to the prejudices current in the materialism of our age. We must stop listening ever and again to the voice of present-day materialism, a voice that speaks loudly at times and then again in the faintest of whispers. Instead we must try and firmly focus our mind on such powers of understanding as we have. Then the things spiritual science produces for us will one day appear to be perfectly understandable, as something that can be understood just as well as some event or other in the outside world can be understood. We generate the great strength we need to offer resistance to the Ahrimanic forces by approaching the spirit not merely through the inmost powers of revelation and of faith, as in the case of Joan of Arc, but by trying to concentrate our powers of understanding most intensely on what spiritual science has to give. If we do this, the hour, the moment, will come when we have to say to ourselves: What comes to us out of spiritual science is the only thing that is rational and at the same time makes the world around us understandable, filling it with light. And when we are taken hold of in this way we are taken hold of by what the spirit has to give in our time so that we shall indeed be strong enough to face the Ahrimanic forces. Someone with a disposition like that of Joan of Arc would not be able to achieve anything in our day and age. She would be an interesting personality and would be able to reveal many marvellous things through prophesy and in other ways. Such a person capable of making intimate revelations is capable of effectively countering Luciferic forces. Today, however, man has to resist Ahrimanic forces, has to make himself strong to cope with these forces, developing the strength required in the Michaelic age. Sun-like qualities are called for in the age of Michael, qualities we take into ourselves by spiritualizing the powers we have at our command between waking up and going to sleep: the powers of the intellect, of understanding, of insight. For these powers of understanding we possess will undergo a transformation in the soul if only we have sufficient patience. They are transformed to such effect that out of what emerges for us in spiritual science there arises the certainty that what we are grasping there is the direct expression of the thoughts of the spiritual world. So there can be no question today of withdrawing from the outside world which has Ahrimanic forces in it everywhere. No, it is necessary for us to stand in this world but at the same time also make ourselves strong to meet those Ahrimanic forces. It is a matter therefore of finding the way towards understanding the spiritual world with the very same powers we also use to understand the outside world. That, of course, is the way—as we have said on these few occasions—that is inwardly bound up with the whole mission of the German people, and specifically with this mission as it has been from the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. This mission was in preparation during the preceding centuries. This is what is so remarkable—what has been going on in the intellectual life of Germany, through its poets, its artists and philosophers, is intimately bound up with the spiritual life. Here it really is a matter of boldly looking the facts in the face, without sympathy or antipathy, and seeing how they were first in preparation and gradually took shape. We have ourselves had the experience of simply having to stress one day that there is this necessity to be active in the life of the intellect and spirit as it continues to progress. Why should that be so? Let us try and take a look at the theosophical movement we had external links with for a time, the theosophical movement in England. Try and build a bridge for yourselves between the general intellectual life in England, including the field of philosophy, and English theosophy. Externally they stand side by side, are two streams running side by side, and a bridge between the two is something we can only make in a very external way. Try on the other hand and consider the life of the mind and spirit that had its preparatory stages in the German mystics Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler, and then evolved further through Jakob Boehme and Angelus Silesius.28 In Lessing21 it brought acceptance of the idea of repeated earth lives, and in Goethe's Faust an out-and-out glorification of the ascent to the spiritual worlds. There you have the straight route from the outer worlds to the spiritual world. If you then also include the stream that led from Goethe's Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Fair Lily29 to the dramatization of the basic forces of initiation30 and take the two streams together, you will have the inner connection. There is an inner connection between that which finally makes its appearance as spiritual science and that which is striven for quite exoterically in the intellectual life of the physical world. The life of the mind and spirit which unfolds outside of spiritual science is of course striven for with the powers of the intellect, but it is compelled to move in the direction of what is found outside the body. I should like to put it like this: It is the mission of the German people that they cannot do anything else but let the river of all their endeavours finally enter into spiritual life. In spiritual terms that really means that the German people are called to unite inwardly with the element that comes into the world because Michael is the leader. Such a union is not achieved by passively, fatalistically, allowing oneself to be governed by the powers of destiny. It is achieved by recognizing the challenge of the time. What I am trying to show has been revealed not only inwardly, in the evolution of German mysticism, but also outwardly in the whole way German life has developed within the context of European life. In the first of the last two public lectures I have given, ‘The Germanic Soul and the German Intellect’, I discussed the way the soul quality of the Germanic tribes flowed into the peoples of the West and the South, as it were, through those who became the outposts of those tribes, the Goths, Lombards, Vandals. The Germanic soul element was sacrificed on the altar of mankind. Later this was to repeat itself, though less obviously so. Consider first of all the most eastern part of Austria31 and the people known as the Transylvanian Saxons. They had emigrated from the Rhine, from the Siebengebirge (Seven Mountains), and there is external evidence to prove this. As time went on they lost their special characteristics. The soul substance gave itself up, to merge into that of the other nation, and little will be left of them one day except for some elements from their language; it was as folk substance that they flowed into the other nation. Now let us move on south to the Banat.32 Swabian immigrants settled there and the Magyar element overgrew the Swabian element. The same thing has happened in the Carpathian mountains in Hungary. To all appearances these immigrant elements have disappeared today. Yet they are still alive everywhere among the present-day population, sometimes emerging in tiny rivulets, like in the fascinating linguistic enclave of the people of Gottschee in Krain [Carniola]. And elsewhere as well. We see—and it would be possible to purse this a great deal further—how the Germanic soul-element has been sent out into the world, how it has an effect there. This happens out of an inner necessity. It happened like this in earlier ages and particularly also during the age of Gabriel. It happened throughout the age of Gabriel in that the blood—I would say the blood and the mixing of blood—was active, everything which, whilst connected with external circumstances in life, yet cannot be grasped externally, but again takes place at a more inward level. Now the Michael age has come,the age when we must grasp how, through the whole past development of the life of the mind and intellect, the German spirit is able to take its place within the Sun force of Michael. That we simply have to realize. And it can be realized by giving recognition to spiritual science, by gradually—on the basis of what spiritual science is considering—getting an idea and an awareness of the spiritual powers that are at work, of the reality of spiritual powers. Then we shall gradually come to understand how senseless it is for people to say: ‘There are no spiritual forces, I cannot acknowledge them. And if I have a bar of iron in horseshoe form here, then it is just that, a bar of iron, and I see nothing but iron.’ But there may be magnetic forces within it. And in the same way something else, something quite different from magnetic forces, lies within the whole of the outside world. We come to recognize it if we really consider all that is presented to us as the characteristic form of things. That is the way to achieve the powers of mind needed in the age of Michael to resist the Ahrimanic powers, at a time when it is indeed our duty to withstand the Ahrimanic powers. Fundamentally speaking, everything the study of spiritual science has to offer is merely preparatory. One day an awakening of the soul will spring forth from the study of spiritual science, and the soul will know: Within you lives the spiritual world, from the Christ impulse down through Michael to the folk spirit which puts into effect what has to be put into effect. I have said that the time of Joan of Arc was one when it was possible to act on the weakest, physically the weakest, powers of man. Our age is one where it is necessary to act on the strongest powers of man, to take hold of the will at a point where it is least inclined truly to unfold its powers. We can see it again and again: the thing people find most difficult to do is to unfold the will at the point where our earthly powers, the powers by which we form concepts, are made inwardly active. To bring ‘will-power’ to bear externally is something people still find relatively easy. But a different kind of ‘will-power’ is needed to guide our thoughts in such a way that they encompass the spiritual world. Spiritual science as such has to appeal to that strong will-power, for this must be there if spiritual science is truly to lead where it ought to lead in our Michaelic age. For we are not called to discuss the mechanical element in our age; we are not called to point out that this mechanical element in our age has laid hold of mankind; we are called to do something else. Of course, if we squeeze the facts a little it will be possible for us to become a philosopher, to some degree even a great philosopher—this we admit without reserve. It is possible to look at the machines in our age and start to consider this very mechanistic aspect as the most pernicious of all things, ascribing it specifically to our enemies. And one then has the inclination, even if one may be considered a great philosopher, to hurl abuse like a market woman. One can then do the same as the philosopher Bergson33 who only recently again managed to point out rather one sidedly—and many things tend to be perfectly correct if a one sided view is presented—how the mechanistic effect of the forces relates to the essential nature of the German people. But that is not the only thing we can point to—that German brainpower has achieved things in certain areas by applying mechanical principles—for something else may be pointed out as well. Nor is it necessary to hurl abuse like a market woman when discussing such matters, and instead we may say: Perhaps the very place where the intellect has the greatest powers to give form to the mechanistic and demonic element is also the place where these mechanistic and demonic powers can be overcome on the basis of our particular spiritual mission. Then however, a German may easily get himself misunderstood as he comes to see, in conjunction with the way the intellectual life has developed, that it is not his function to stop at the purely mechanical element that is of such great service to him also in the present day, with the challenges presented by the war. He must not stop at what is merely mechanism, for then he would merely create demons. No, he must develop powerful forces within him that can boldly face these demons. This means that we have to stand in the spiritual world, not blindly but in a way that arises from, and is guided by, conviction. If we set out to acknowledge that we are surrounding ourselves with a world of demons, a veritable hell, as we design and build machine after machine, we can of course understand why people speaking out of the materialistic spirit of the present age are saying over and over again that this scientific and materialistic age has taken us to the greatest height ever achieved by man. Of course we can understand this for it is in line with the materialistic thought of the present time, but we must know that with those machines we are introducing nothing but demons for mankind and we must know how to develop the right powers to resist these demons. We only gain the right attitude to the spiritual world by recognizing these demonic Ahrimanic forces, by knowing full well that they are present. For the harmful powers are harmful only when we remain unconscious of them, when we know nothing about them. Let me illustrate this by means of a comparison. As you know, we hope after some time to have a building at Dornach near Basle where we can nurture our spiritual stream in suitable surroundings. It is not a question of erecting this building to escape the pressures of our time in some way or other, but rather of building it entirely out of the pressures of our time. It was necessary for instance to design a lighting system out of the most Ahrimanic forces of the present age, electric lighting, electric heating and so on. It is a matter of using the architectural form as such to render such potentially harmful things harmless. It could have been the case that anyone entering the building in the future would have been surrounded with everything the Ahrimanic culture of the present age leads to. The point, however, is not that it is present, but that people do not notice it. We are not suppose to notice it. To achieve this, a number of friends got together and they are erecting a separate building for this, giving it a special form, so that the demonic Ahrimanic forces are banished to this place. Anyone approaching the building, and also anyone entering it, will have it brought to their notice that the Ahrimanic forces are at work there. For as soon as we know this they are no longer harmful. The point is that the powers that have a bad effect on man cease to do so when we take a good look at the places where they are active, when we do not look at a machine thoughtlessly and say ‘a machine is simply a machine’ , but rather acknowledge that a machine is a place where a demonic Ahrimanic entity may be found. If we take our stand in the world with knowledge in our souls we take the right stand in the Michaelic age. It means that we relate to the spiritual world in such a way that Michael, too, can be active within us; Michael with his present mission, as we have described it. The Point is that in every case we can either enter without thought into what exists in the mechanical contrivances men are producing at an unconscious level or we can see through life. If we see through it, if we become aware of the demonic elemental powers at work in the machines we produce, we shall find the way to the rightful givers of Inspiration who are true to the spirit. They are connected with the spirit who is to the other spirits concerned with guidance of man as gold is to the other metals—with Michael. My aim today has been to show that the mission of our age is to seek the divine spiritual powers that will work for the good of mankind. It is different from the mission given to the human souls who lived at the time of Joan of Arc. At that time it was much more a question of holding back anything intellectual, holding back the Power of reasoning. Today, however, it is a question of cultivating everything to do with reason and intellect to attain to clairvoyance, for it is possible to cultivate it and attain to clairvoyance. Once there are people who cultivate the human soul in this way, the twilight period we are now living through will evolve into what it destined to evolve. Everything that evolves on the physical plane can only be the outer garment for the spiritual life that is to arise for mankind out of the Present time. And it is true that those who are now sacrificing their powers in the years of their youth are prepared to send these powers down into our earthly existence. For these powers are never lost, they are indestructible- Now, however, they are destined to continue to act spiritually as they would have continued to act physically if the people concerned had not gone through the gate of death on the field of battle. They will continue to send their powers down to earth and into our time, so that we shall know what to do with these powers. These powers need to stream down into a human race that shall use them in such a way, during the time of peace that will follow the war, that spiritual life spreads more and more on earth. As the light of day always arises from the night, so a future filled with light will have to arise out of our present which so often seems like a dark night to us. This future will have to be filled not only with light but with everything the Michaelic age, which started in 1871, has to bring for mankind. Once there are souls capable of establishing as intimate a bond with the spiritual world as has been indicated today, we shall be able to hope that where the events of the present time are concerned, the thought expressed in the seven lines of the mantram will come to fruition. We may hope that it will all be fulfilled—if the first five lines are really and truly connected with the last two:
|
| 157. The Destinies of Individuals and of Nations: Lecture VIII
02 Mar 1915, Berlin Translated by Anna R. Meuss |
|---|
| One thought approached another; they illumined one another; one thought moved away from another—and what we usually do ourselves when thinking has there been doing itself. We know that whilst we are normally an ego that attaches one thought to another, we float first to the one thought and then to another, when in this other state we are united with them; then we are off and within a third thought and afterwards Come floating back again. |
| Here we are alive and active within thought itself. We know that the ego has not died. It is active within the life of thought, but we are not immediately masters of the thoughts within which we now live. |
| 157. The Destinies of Individuals and of Nations: Lecture VIII
02 Mar 1915, Berlin Translated by Anna R. Meuss |
|---|
Dear friends, once again let us first of all remember those are out there at the front, in the great arena of present-day events:
And for those who because of those events have already gone through the gate of death:
May the spirit we are seeking as we work towards spiritual knowledge, the spirit who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha for the good of the earth, for the freedom and progress of man, be with you and the hard duties you have to perform! Last week we gave some detailed consideration to souls who, if we want to look for them now, have to be looked for in the spiritual worlds. And we considered souls who are close to us, letting them tell us one thing or another that can illumine for us the time a soul entity spends in the spiritual world. Today I want to consider more the path the human soul may take to enter into the spiritual worlds While dwelling in a body here on earth, there to find the spiritual realms we spoke of last week, where what are called ‘dead’ souls may be found. It has to be stressed over and over again that the path into the spiritual worlds appropriate to the soul of modern man in the light of the whole evolution of mankind is a path with many preparatory stages, some of them difficult indeed, stages that have to be won through. Today I intend to speak of some aspects of the path to insight and I shall do so from a point of view that may be called imaginative perception. Dear friends, you know very well already that in the spiritual world the human soul is really and truly able to learn and observe only in a Way that does not make use of the body as an instrument. Everything We are able to gain by using the body as our instrument can only provide knowledge and experience relating to the physical world. To experience the spiritual worlds we must find a way of doing so outside the physical body. That way is indeed open to modern man, though it is not easy to achieve observation of the spiritual world by going outside the body. Another point is that anyone not able to make such observations himself will be able to evaluate observations achieved in the spiritual world, once they have been achieved, on the basis of a genuinely sound common sense, that is not just the common sense generally called sound, but a genuinely sound common sense. Today, however, our subject will be the path as such, the way the human soul on the one hand comes out of the physical body, as we might put it, and on the other enters into the spiritual world. As I said, I want to use the approach of imaginative perception today. Last week we took another approach. Many things will have to be presented in the form of images and it will be up to you to pursue these further In meditation. In doing so you will find that this path is one of very special significance. It is possible to enter into the spiritual world through three doors, as it were. The first may be called the Door of Death, the second the Door of the Elements and the third the Door of the Sun. Anyone Wishing to follow the path to knowledge in its entirety will have to take the road to knowledge through all three doors. The Door of Death has always been very fully considered wherever the mysteries were taught. This Door of Death cannot be reached unless we seek to reach it through meditation, a term by now thoroughly familiar, which means by giving ourselves up to certain thoughts or feelings that are exactly the right ones at the time for our individual personality. We make them the absolute centre of our conscious minds, identifying with them completely. It is very easy for human effort to flag when this path is taken, for lack of ease and the overcoming of obstacles are part of this and are essential. So it will be necessary again and again to make those quiet, deeply personal efforts, endeavouring to give ourselves up to those thought contents, those feelings, in such a way that we forget the whole world and live only in those thoughts, those feelings. When we learn to achieve this over and over again we shall finally be in a position where we perceive something that is like a kind of independent life within the thought on which our conscious mind is focused. We shall get the feeling that until then we had merely been thinking that thought, making it the focus of our conscious mind; now, however, this thought will be felt to be developing a life of its own, an inner activity of its own. It is as though we found ourselves in a position where we are truly able to produce a distinct entity within us. The thought begins to take shape as an inner structure. That is an important moment, for we realize that this thought, this feeling, has a life of its own and we feel ourselves to be the enveloping form holding this thought, this feeling. We are then able to say to ourselves that our efforts have made us the arena where something has been able to develop that is now achieving a life of its own through us. It is an important moment in the life of a person practising meditation when he awakens to himself and the thought held in meditation comes to life. He will then realize that spiritual objectivity has come to him, that the spiritual world is paying attention to him, that it has drawn close. Of course, it is not easy to reach this level of experience, for before it is reached we have to live through feelings and sensations for which the human being has a natural aversion. A certain feeling of isolation has to be experienced for example; a feeling of loneliness, an experience of being abandoned by the physical world as it were, the feeling that this physical world does many things that wear us down, threatening to crush us. It is through this feeling of isolation that we finally reach the point where we are able to bear the strong inner life to which our thought awakens, into which it is born, as I should like to put it. There is much indeed that goes against the grain. There is much in man that goes against him and this can lead to a real experience of thought coming to life within him. There is One particular feeling that comes up, an inner experience that comes up, which is one we really do not want to have. At the same time we will not admit to ourselves that we do not want to have it, saying instead: ‘Oh, I'll never do it! I'll go to sleep in the process. My ability to think will go, for this goes beyond my inner strength.’ In short, We will automatically come up with all kinds of excuses, for the experience to be gone through is that thought, in thus becoming enlivened, really becomes a distinct entity. It assumes reality, taking on a form of identity. Then the vision arises, and not merely the feeling, that the thought is like a small seed to begin with, a round seed one might say, and that it then grows and develops into something that has definite form, extending into the head from outside. Then a challenge is presented: ‘You have identified with the thought and now you are inside the thought and growing into your own head with the thought. Essentially, however, you are still outside.’ The thought assumes the form of a winged human head that continues into indefiniteness and then extends into one's own body through the head. The thought thus develops into something like a winged angel's head. That is what we must actually achieve. It is difficult to have this experience, and you will really believe you are losing all ability to think at the moment when the thought grows to assume that form. One feels one will be taken from oneself at that moment. And what so far has been the body we have known, into which the thought is now reaching, will feel like an automaton that has been left behind. There are also a great many obstacles in the objective spiritual world to prevent this becoming visible to us. The winged angel's head truly becomes an inner vision but there are all kinds of obstacles against it becoming visible. Above all, the point reached is the actual threshold of the spiritual world. If we succeed in standing firm within ourselves the way I have described, we are then on the threshold of the spiritual world, truly on the threshold of the spiritual world. There, however, You see, speaking of the physical world people speak of monist philosophy, of there being only one ultimate substance or principle, frequently saying to themselves: ‘I can only understand the world if I see the whole of it as a unity.’ We have had some strange experiences particularly in this respect. When we started our spiritual movement here in Berlin with just a few members—that is quite a few years ago now—people found their way to us who then discovered that after all they could not feel they belonged to us in every fibre of their being. There was a lady, for instance, who after a few months came and told us that what spiritual science had to offer was not really the right thing for her, for it meant one had to do a great deal of thinking and thinking wiped out exactly the things that were important to her. She said she always sort of went to sleep when thinking. She also felt that really there was only thing that counted, and that was unity! It became evident that in her case the unity of the world which monists look for in all kinds of spheres—and not only the materialists among monists—had become a fixed idea: Unity, unity, unity! She wanted to look only for unity. In the intellectual life of Germany, one particular philosopher, Leibniz, was very much a monadologist. He sought not unity, but the many monads45 which for him were ensouled entities. He therefore knew quite clearly that as soon as one enters into the spiritual world it can be a matter only of plurality, not of unity. And so there are monists and pluralists. These views are considered philosophies. The monists fight the pluralists who are speaking in terms of plurality; they themselves only speak of unity. For you see, it is like this: Unity and plurality are concepts that only apply to the physical world. And now people are thinking these things must also apply to the spiritual world. But there they do not apply. There we have to be prepared to see a unity at one moment and then having to overcome this unity the next moment, and that it will show itself to to be a plurality. It is unity and plurality at one and the same time. Nor is it possible to transfer ordinary arithmetic, physical mathematics, to the spiritual world. It is one of the most powerful, and at the same time also most profound, Ahrimanic Prejudices—wanting to apply concepts we have acquired in the physical world just as they are to the spiritual world. We really must arrive on its threshold without bag and baggage, unencumbered with all we have learned in the physical world. We have to be prepared to leave things behind on the threshold. All concepts and ideas, and, indeed, especially the concepts we have made great effort to achieve, have to be left behind. We have to be prepared to accept that in the spiritual world something quite new is given. Man has an enormous tendency to cling to what is given in the physical world. He wants to take his achievements from the physical world into the spiritual world. Yet it must be possible for him to face a clean slate, face utter emptiness, where his only guide will be the thought that is beginning to assume life. This entry into the spiritual world has been called the Door of Death because it is really much more of a death even than Physical death. In physical death people are convinced they put aside their physical body. On entry into the spiritual world we must resolve really to put aside our concepts and ideas and to allow our essential nature to be rebuilt. Now we come to stand before the winged thought entity that I have spoken of. We shall come to stand before it if we really make every effort to live within a thought. All we need to know then is that when the moment that lies ahead makes-different demands on us from those we have envisaged we must truly stand fast, we must not turn back as it were. The turning back tends to be an unconscious reaction. We flag, but our flagging merely indicates that we are not willing to leave behind bag and baggage. We are not prepared to do this because it means that the soul has to die in a way, with all it has acquired on the physical plane, before it can enter into the spiritual world. This door therefore has to be called the Door of Death, such being its nature. Then we shall be able to use the winged thought as a spiritual eye we have acquired, or also a spiritual ear, for it is exactly through this thought entity that we hear, sense, perceive what is there in the spiritual world. Dear friends, it is possible to speak of specific experiences we may gain that allow us the enter into the spiritual world. Nothing else is required if we wish to gain these experiences but to persist in meditation using the prescribed method. Above all, it must be clearly understood that certain feelings with which we approach the threshold of the spiritual world will have to be put aside beforehand. These feelings arise because we usually want the spiritual world to be different from the way it presents itself to us. This, then, is the first door, the Door of Death. The second door is the Door of the Elements. It is the second door to be gone through by all who practise meditation with true devotion. It is, of course, also possible for people to have the benefit of a constitution that lets them reach the second door without having gone through the first. This is not a good thing from the point of view of true insight, but it is possible to get to that point without having gone through the first door. Full and proper insight will be gained only by going through the first door and then approaching the second in conscious awareness. This second door comes about in the following way. You see, having gone through the Door of Death one first of all finds oneself in specific conditions which one can see are really similar to sleep if looked at externally, considering their effect en man and the way they are apparent in the life of man. Inwardly, however, they are quite different. Externally, man is as though in a sleep state when in these conditions. It is exactly at the point when his thought has begun to live, when it begins to stir, to grow, that external man is in a sleep-like state. He need not be lying down—he may be sitting on a chair—but he is in a kind of sleep state. Outwardly this state cannot really be distinguished from the ordinary sleep state; inwardly, however, it is very different. Returning to the normal state we have in life we then realize that we were not asleep but within the life of thought, just as we are now in a condition where we have woken to the physical world, as usual, and are looking through our own eyes at things which are luminous. Yet we also know that now when we are awake we are thinking, producing thoughts, putting them together. Just before, however, when we were in that other state, the thoughts were producing themselves out of themselves. One thought approached another; they illumined one another; one thought moved away from another—and what we usually do ourselves when thinking has there been doing itself. We know that whilst we are normally an ego that attaches one thought to another, we float first to the one thought and then to another, when in this other state we are united with them; then we are off and within a third thought and afterwards Come floating back again. We get the feeling that space has ceased to exist. I think you will agree that in physical space the position is that if we feel drawn to a point and look back on it, then move away from it and finally want to approach it again, we would first have to make our way back again; we would have to make our way there and back. This does not apply in the other state. Space is not like the space we know then, and we jump through space, as it were. One moment we are at one point, the next we have gone. We do not pass through space. The laws of space have ceased to exist. Here we are alive and active within thought itself. We know that the ego has not died. It is active within the life of thought, but we are not immediately masters of the thoughts within which we now live. The thoughts produce themselves—we are drawn along. We are not actively swimming in the currents of thoughts; instead the thoughts are taking us on their shoulders as it were, carrying us along. This state has to come to an end. It does so when we go through the Door of the Elements. Then We gain control of it all and are able to create a particular line of thought quite deliberately. Then our will is alive within the whole of thought life. This again is a tremendously important moment. I have even spoken of it exoterically in my public lectures.46 The second goal is reached by identifying with our own destiny. This will enable us to bring the will into the world of living thought. When we have first gone through the Door of Death we come to a point where various things are done with us in the spiritual world. We come to do things ourselves in the spiritual world by identifYing with our destiny. This is only achieved gradually. Then our thoughts assume a character identical with our own essential character- The deeds of our essential nature enter into the spiritual world. To do this properly it will be necessary to go through the second door. when we begin to use the power we derive from identifying with our destiny to take active control in our thoughts—not merely going along With a thought as though it were a dream picture but able to erase one thought or another as occasion arises and call up another—when we come to a point where we begin to be able to use our will in handling things, then we shall indeed have to go through an experience that may be referred to as going through the second door. It will be found that the will-power we shall now require presents itself to us as a fearsome beast. In the mystical tradition this has for many thousands of years been known as 'meeting the lion' . This encounter with the lion has to be gone through. It consists in a feeling of abject terror concerning what has to be done in the thought world, great fear of entering into a living union with the thought world. This terror must be overcome, just as the sense of isolation has to be overcome at the gate of death. We feel terror. This terror may present itself in all kinds i of ways, as a sensation that is not at all like fear or terror, yet it s essentially fear of what one is getting into there. It is important that we genuinely find a way of controlling the lion. The Imagination paints a very vivid picture of the beast opening its huge jaws ready to devour us. The will-power we want to use in the spiritual world is threatening to devour us. All the time the overriding sensation is that we must use our will, we must do something, we need to take hold of one thing or another, and at the same time another feeling arises in connection with all these elements of will activity into which we are entering. It is the feeling that they will devour us if we take hold of them, extinguish us in the world. That is the lion devouring us. What we literally must do—if we are to stay with the metaphor—is not to give in to fears that the will elements may take hold of us there in the spiritual world, devour us and strangle us; no, we must mount the lion and take hold of those will elements, using them to effect our deeds. That is the crux of the matter. Your can see, of course, what this is all about. Having first of all gone through the gate of death we are then outside the body, and out there we can only use the forces of the wilt. We must fit into the cosmic harmonies. The forces to be used out there are also within us, it is only that they function at an unconscious level—the forces that make the blood move, make our hearts beat, derive from spiritual entities. And we become immersed in these when we immerse ourselves in the element of will. These forces are within us. If someone is taken hold of by the element of will without having followed the regular esoteric path, without having gone through the gate of death, he is taken hold of by the forces that normally circulate in his blood, beat to his heart. He is then not using the forces that exist outside his body but the forces present within his body. This would be ‘grey magic’. It would induce a person to intervene in the spiritual world of his Own accord with forces we should not use to intervene in the spiritual world. So it is important that we see the lion at this point, that we truly have this beast before us and know: That is what it looks like, that is how the forces of will want to take hold of us, and we must lay hold of it out there outside the body. If we do not go up to the second door we shall not see the lion and shall then be in permanent danger of wanting to rule the world out of human egotism. The right Path to knowledge is the one that leads first of all out of the physical body and existence as a human being, after which we approach the relationship we will need to form with the entities of the spiritual world. Now, of course, most people are inclined to look for an easier way to the spiritual world than through genuine meditation. It is possible, for instance, to avoid the Door of Death and approach the second door if one's inner constitution permits this. This is achieved by giving oneself up to specific mental pictures, particularly of the fervent type, that are supposed to suggest general surrender to the whole universe. Mental pictures suggested by some mystic or other with only partial knowledge, suggested in good faith. But they mean we pass over thought effort as though in a dream, with feelings being stimulated directly. Feeling are whipped up, the emotions are enthusiastified. It will indeed be possible to reach the second door by this method, and one will also be given over to the will forces, but instead of controlling the lion the person is devoured by it and the lion will do as it likes with him. This means that things will occur that fundamentally speaking are occult, but in the main are egotistical. Despite a certain inherent risk it is therefore necessary from the point of view of the true esoteric teaching of today again and again not to draw attention to any kind of mysticism that merely whips up feelings and emotions. Such an appeal to elements that whip up the inner life of man, cracking the whip to drive him out of his physical body whilst keeping him in the context of his blood and heart forces, the physical forces active in the blood and the heart, will lead him to perceive the spiritual world iii a way; this cannot be denied and may indeed have much to be said for it that is good. But it makes man feel his way about in uncertainty in the spiritual world, so that he is not the least able to differentiate between egotism and altruism. One finds oneself in a difficult situation having to stress this, for present-day minds are still very apt to got to sleep during proper meditation and anything relating to it. They prefer not to tighten uP their thinking to the point where it is possible to identify oneself with the thinking process. They much prefer to be told: Give yourself up to all-loving devotion, to the universal spirit, or something like that. The result is that thinking is avoided and the emotions are whipped up. People are indeed guided to spiritual perception in that way; but they are not in full conscious awareness and are unable to tell if the things they experience there, things they experience for themselves, arise from egotism or do not arise from egotism. Yes, parallel to selfless meditation there has to be enthusiasm brought into all our feelings, but the point is that this must run parallel to thought. Thought must not be excluded. Certain mystics are, however, seeking to achieve something exactly by the method of suppressing thought and giving themselves up entirely to the glow of whipped-up emotions. This is a difficult point, for it does work and people who whip UP their feelings like that do progress much faster. They do enter the spiritual world and they have all kinds of experiences there, and that is what most people want. For most people it is not a question of entering the spiritual world in the right way but rather of getting there altogether. The uncertainty arises because if we do not first go through the Door of Death and instead approach the Door of the Elements directly, Lucifer will prevent us from actually perceiving the lion. We are then devoured by it before we see it, as it were. The problem is that we are no longer able to tell what relates to us and what is Part of the world out there. We come to know spiritual entities, elemental spirits. It is possible to get to know quite an extensive spiritual world without going through the Door of Death, but on the whole these are spiritual entities whose function it is to maintain the human circulation and human heart action. Such entities are of course always present in the spiritual, the elemental, world around us. These are spirits whose sphere of life is the air, the warmth flowing around us, and also light. Their sphere of life also lies in the music of the spheres our physical organs are unable to hear. They are spiritual entities active and present in all that lives. That is the world we would then enter. It all gets very seductive because it really is possible to make the most marvellous spiritual discoveries in this world. You know, when someone who has not gone through the Door of Death but has marched straight up to the lion gate, failing to see the lion, perceives an elemental spirit whose function it is to maintain heart activity, such an elemental spirit—which also has to maintain the hearts of other people—may on occasion give news of other people, even of people from the past; or it may offer prophetic tidings relating to the future. So the business may bring great successes but it still is not the right path, for it does not give us free mobility in the spiritual world. The third door to be passed is the Door of Sun. Again there will be a specific experience as we approach this door. At the Door of Death we must perceive a winged angel's head, at the Door of the Elements a lion. At the Door of the Sun we must perceive a dragon, a wild dragon. And we must take a proper look at this wild dragon. But now Lucifer and Ahriman will together make every effort to make the dragon invisible, to hide it from our spiritual vision. If we do perceive it we shall find that, fundamentally speaking, this wild dragon has above all to do with ourselves. It is the tissue of the instincts and feelings fundamentally relating to what in ordinary life we call our lowest nature. The dragon has within it all the forces we need for the process of digestion and many other things—if you'll forgive my reference to such base functions. The principle within us that enables us to digest food and perform a number of other functions linked to what strictly speaking is our lowest nature appears to us in the t-07. of a dragon. We must look at it as it emerges from us coil upon coil. It is far from beautiful, that dragon, and this makes it easy for Lucifer and Ahriman to influence our unconscious soul life and get us to a point where unconsciously we do not want to know about seeing the dragon. It is a tissue also of all our idiocies, all our vanities, our pride and self-seeking and also of our basest instincts. The Door of the Sun is given that name because it is the forces dwelling in the sun that also weave the very tissue of which the dragon is composed. Sun forces make it possible for us to digest our food and perform those other organic functions. This truly comes about through living with the sun. If we do not perceive the dragon at the Door of the Sun the dragon will devour us and we shall become one with it in the spiritual world. We shall then no longer be different from the dragon; we shall actually be the dragon going through experiences in the spiritual world. And the dragon can experience things of great significance, it can learn magnificent things as it were. Those are experiences more enticing, I'd say, then those made at the Door of Death or after passing the Door of Death. The experiences made at the Door of Death are colourless to begin with, shadowy and subtle, so slight and subtle that they easily escape us and we are not much inclined to develop the degree of attention needed to take hold of them. And again a certain pitch must be reached in order that something so delicately coming to life in our thought may be able to expand. In the end it will expand into a world. But it calls for long term active effort and endeavour to reach the point where it shows itself as a reality full of colour, sound and life. We must let those forms that are without sound or colour take on life from all corners of infinity, as it were. If for example we want to use what may be called ‘head clairvoyance’—meaning the type of clairvoyance that arises when thought is enlivened—to detect the simplest spirit of the air or of water, this spirit of the air or the water will initially be something so slight and shadowy as it flits across the horizon that it will not catch our interest. If it is to assume colour or to sound forth, colour has to come to it from the whole periphery of the cosmos. That however will only happen after a long period of inner effort. It will only happen if we watt for this to be given to us. Just think, if you have such a small spirit of the air, metaphorically speaking. and it is to come out in colour, to appear in colour, then the colour has to radiate in from a mighty part of the cosmos. It will be necessary to have the strength to make it radiate in. Such strength however can only be achieved through devotion. The radiant forces have to come in from out there through devotion. If we are all of a kind with the dragon, if we are One with it, and we see a spirit of the air or the water, the inclination will be to let the powers radiate out that are within us, specifically in the organs which in ordinary life are called lower organs. That Is much more easily done. The head is in itself a perfect organ, but the astral body and the ether body of the head do not have much colour to them. The colours have been used to form the brain, for instance, and particularly the cranium, the bony skull cap. If therefore you used head clairvoyance on the threshold of the spiritual world to lift your astral body and ether body out of the physical body, there would not be much colour to it. Colours are used to form the perfect organ, the brain. If on the other hand you use, shall we say belly clairvoyance, to lift the astral body and ether body out of the stomach. the liver, the gallbladder and other organs, the colours have not been used in the same way to form perfect organs. These organs are only on the way to perfection. What comes from the astral body and ether body of the belly is beautifully coloured; it glitters and glistens in all kinds of sun colours. Lifting your astral body and ether body out of that region you will bestow the most marvellous colours and hues upon the forms you are seeing. It is therefore possible for someone to see marvellous colours and paint pictures in gorgeous colours. It is of course interesting to study the spleen, the liver and the gut. Anatomists find this interesting and for science it is indeed necessary. Yet if someone with knowledge goes into this, the beautiful and colourful pictures which appear represent what lies at the back of the digestive process two hours after a meal. There can be no objection to this being investigated. Today anatomists find it necessary to study these organs; one day science will gain a great deal from investigating them and knowing what the ether body is doing when the stomach is digesting food. One thing has to be clearly understood however—if we do not have conscious awareness as we go through the Door of the Sun, we will not know that we are offloading everything mere is in the ether and astral bodies of our bellies onto the dragon, separating it out. Letting this radiate out into the forms seen clairvoyantly we do indeed perceive a marvellous world. The beautiful result is also the one most easily achieved, but it does not in the first place arise through higher powers, out of head clairvoyance' but through belly clairvoyance. It is very important that we know this. For the cosmos nothing is low in the absolute sense, only relatively speaking. The cosmos needs to work with tremendously significant forces to bring about what is needed for the digestive system. The point, however, is that we must not fall into error, not deceive ourselves, but know things as they are. To know that something presenting itself from a truly marvellous aspect is nothing but the digestive process, that is something really important. If on the other hand we believe, say, that a special angelic sphere is revealing itself to us in such a picture, then we are indeed in error. A reasonable man will therefore not be against a science being nurtured on the basis of such knowledge but merely against such things being put in a false light. That is the real point. It may happen, for instance, that some process in the course of digestion results in someone always lifting out a specific part of his ether body at a specific stage in the digestive process; he may then be a natural clairvoyant. It is however important to know what is going on there. Man will find it difficult therefore to use head clairvoyance—i.e. a sphere where all colour present in the ether and astral bodies has been used to bring about the marvellous structure of the brain—and make forms that are without colour or sound assume full colour and to resound. With ‘belly clairvoyance’ on the other hand he will find it relatively easy to see the most marvellous things in the world. This belly clairvoyance does of course also involve powers which man must learn to use. The powers used there for the digestive process are after all merely transformed power. We will experience them in their right form if we get better and better at identifying with our destiny. In this field, too, it will teach us to draw up not just the winged angel s head that came up first but the other part that follows, and it is important to draw up not just the powers that serve digestion but also those of a higher kind. Those are the powers that lie in our karma, in our destiny. Identifying ourselves with these we shall be able to send forth the spiritual entities we see around us, entities whose tendency is such that sounds and colours flow inward from the universe. Then, of course, the spiritual world will have its full content, it will be concrete, so real and concrete that we find ourselves within it the same way we find ourselves in the physical world. A particular problem arises at the Door of Death. We really have the feeling—and this, too, has to be overcome—that we will lose ourselves there. Having made a real effort, however, to identify with the thought element we can also be aware that we may have lost ourselves but will find ourselves again. That is an experience one has there. We lose ourselves on entering into the spiritual world, but we also know that we shall find ourselves again. The step has to taken of reaching the abyss, losing ourselves in the abyss, but trust that we shall find ourselves again over there. That is an experience to be gone through. Everything I have described refers to inner experiences that have to be gone through. It is important to know what really happens to the soul there. It is just the same when we are supposed to see something; it is easier if a friend points it out than if we try and work it out for ourselves. But everything I have described can be achieved if you practise true devotion in giving yourself up again and again to your inner work and to inner overcoming through meditation. This has been described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and in the second part of Occult Science. This is especially important—that such different kinds of experience are met with beyond the threshold of the spiritual world. If we desire—and this is only natural—to see a continuation of the physical world in the spiritual world, a duplicate of it; if we think everything is bound to look the same in the spiritual world as it does here in the physical world, we cannot enter that world. It will indeed be necessary to go through something that feels like a reversal of everything we have known here in the physical world. Here in the Physical world we are used to open our eyes, for example, and see light, to gain the impression of light. If we expect to be able to open a spiritual eye in the spiritual world and gain an impression of light, we cannot enter that world for we will have the wrong expectations. Something like a mist will be woven which veils the spiritual senses, hiding the spiritual world from us the way a sea of mist hides the mountains from view. It is not possible, for instance, to see objects illumined by light in the spiritual world. It must be understood that in the spiritual world we ourselves shine forth with the light. When light falls on an object in the physical world the object becomes visible to us. In the spiritual world we ourselves are inside the ray of light, touching the object with the light. One therefore knows one is swimming with the ray of light in the spiritual world; one knows oneself to be within the radiant light. This serves to indicate how we can acquire ideas that can help us get on in the spiritual world. It is extremely useful, for instance, to visualize the following: What would it be like if you were inside the sun now? Not being inside the sun you are seeing objects when they are illumined by the sun s rays, because they reflect the light. Imagine now you are inside the sun's rays and touching the objects with them. This contact is an experience we have in the spiritual world; in fact, experience in the spiritual world consists of our knowing ourselves to be alive within it. We know ourselves to be alive within the weaving of thoughts. It is just when this state begins, where we consciously know ourselves to be within the weaving of the thoughts, that there is an immediate transition to the state of knowing oneself to be within the bright radiance of light. For thought arises from light. Thought weaves in the light. But it will only be at that point that we experience ourselves as becoming immersed in light when we are within the weaving of thoughts. Mankind is now at a stage where such concepts have to be acquired. Otherwise men will find themselves in completely unfamiliar worlds when they go through the gate of death and enter the spiritual world. The capital resources men were given by the gods at the very beginning of earth evolution have gradually been used up. Men now no longer take with them through the gate of death the remnants of past inheritance. They now need to acquire ideas bit by bit here in the physical world that will enable them to pass through the gate of death and see the entities that come to meet them there offering the dangers of temptation and seduction. It is because of these great cosmic schemes that spiritual science has to be made known to man now, that spiritual science must come among men. And today in particular, in these fateful days, we can observe transitions really being made. People are presently going through the gate of death at a young age, as the great destiny of the age demands. They may be said to have consciously allowed death to approach them whilst still young. I am not so much speaking of the moment just before death occurs, say on the battlefield. In that situation many elements of enthusiasm and so on may be present and these make the moment of death far less elevated or far less a moment of utter concentration than we are Inclined to think. But when death has occurred it leaves an ether body that has not yet been used up, leaves an unspent ether body in our time. The dead individual can look at this and he will perceive this Phenomenon, this fact of death, with much greater clarity than he would see it when death has ensued due to illness or old age. Death on the field of battle is an event of much greater intensity and has much powerful effects than death occurring in another way. It therefore has an effect on the soul that has gone through the gate of death, for it is instructive. Death is terrible—or at least can be terrible—to man whilst he is within his body! However, once he has gone through the gate of death and looks back to his death, death will be the most wonderful experience ever possible in the human cosmos. Looking back to his entry into the spiritual world through death is the most marvellous, the most glorious, magnificent and beautiful event on which the dead individual can ever look back during the time between death and rebirth. Birth has left little real trace in our physical awareness, for no one equipped with ordinary, undeveloped faculties will recall his physical birth. But death is certainly always there for a soul which has gone through the gate of death, from the moment consciousness develops. Death will always be present and present as the most beautiful, the one who brings resurrection into the spiritual world.47 And death is the most marvellous kind of teacher, a teacher truly able to prove to a receptive soul that there is a spiritual world, because by its very own nature death destroys the physical and only lets the spiritual come forth. This resurrection of the spiritual element, with the physical completely cast aside, is an event that is always present between death and new birth. It lends strength, a marvellous, great event, and the soul gradually grows into understanding of this. It grows into this in a completely unique way if the event is to some degree one we have chosen, one might say; not a death we lave sought, of course, but nevertheless found of one's own free will by joining the ranks of one's own free will. This again brings greater clarity to that moment. Someone who otherwise has not thought much about death, who has concerned himself little or only to some extent with the spiritual world, can now find death a marvellous teacher once he has died, particularly in our time. This particular war can reveal something of tremendous significance for the relationship between the physical and the spiritual world. I have already drawn attention to this in a number of lectures given in these difficult times: what we are able to do by teaching merely by the word is not enough; but in future people will receive tremendous instructions because so many deaths have occurred. These deaths have an effect on the dead, and the dead in turn intervene in the process of the future civilization of mankind. I am able to give you the words of one who has gone through the gate of death as a young man now in the present time. His words have come through to me and they really come as a surprise, one might say, because they show how this dead individual who is experiencing death with great clarity as something he went through on the field of battle is now finding his way into the different kind of experience one has after death. They show him working his way out of earthly ideas and into spiritual ideas. Let me communicate these words to you. They were picked up, if I may call it this, when one of those who died on the field of battle tried to let them reach those he left behind.
That, as it were, is what the dead individual learned by looking on the death he went through, as if his essential nature was taking In all it must learn to live after death; and it also wants to make this known, wants to reveal it.
He feels that he is more alive now where his comprehension of the spiritual world is concerned than he was before his death. He experiences death as one who awakens us, as a teacher:
And he feels that he will be one who does things in the spiritual world. But he feels the it is the radiant powers within him that do the doing, he feels light coming to life within him:
It really is possible to see everywhere, and to see rightly, that anything perceived in the spiritual world will again and again provide absolute confirmation of the things that can also become generally known out of the spiritual world through what is called imaginative perception. And it is this one so much wants to see come to life through our spiritual movement: that we do not merely have knowledge of the spiritual world but that this knowledge really comes to life in us so strongly that we learn new ways of feeling with the world, share In the experience of the world as the ideas of spiritual science come to life within us. As I have said so often, fundamentally we are asked to bring inward life into the thoughts of spiritual science; this is the contribution we are asked to make to the further development of the world, that the spiritual thoughts born out of spiritual science may stream together and soar up into the spiritual world as powers of Illumination that are given back to the radiant universe; that the universe may unite with the element which those who have gone through the gate of death in these fateful times are making part of the movement of spiritual culture for mankind. Then the words will come true which again shall conclude our talk today:
|
| 57. Tolstoy and Carnegie in the Light of Spiritual Science
28 Jan 1909, Berlin |
|---|
| Something is there that was there before birth and is there after birth, my particular ego. This my particular ego has not begun with birth. It is not the point that anybody positions himself with the west-European habits to such a remark, but it matters that one has the sensation: one can do such a remark. |
| 57. Tolstoy and Carnegie in the Light of Spiritual Science
28 Jan 1909, Berlin |
|---|
The basis of our consideration today may seem a weird arrangement to somebody: on one side Tolstoy, on the other side Carnegie, two personalities about whom probably some say, more different, more opposite persons one can hardly find. On one side, the solver of riddles of the highest social and spiritual problems searching from the depths of spiritual life—Tolstoy; and on the other side the steel tycoon, the rich man, the man about whom one knows literally hardly more than that he thought about how the accumulated wealth is to be used best of all—Carnegie. Then again the arrangement of both persons with spiritual science or anthroposophy. Indeed, with Tolstoy nobody probably doubts that one can illumine the depths of his soul with the light of spiritual science. However, with Carnegie some probably say, what has this man to do generally with spiritual science, this man of the only practical, business work?—Spiritual science would be the grey theory, the unrealistic and life-hostile worldview as one regards it is so often, if it does not care a little about the issues of practical life, as one believes sometimes. Therefore, it could appear weird that just such a man of practical life is adduced to illustrate certain issues. If one has understood that this spiritual science is something that can flow into all single fields, yes, into the most mundane fields of practical life, then one does not consider it as something surprising that also this personality is adduced to illustrate something that should be just illustrated within spiritual science. Secondly—to speak in the sense of Emerson—we have two representative personalities of our time before ourselves. The one like the other expresses the whole striving on the one side, the work on the other side typically, as they prevail in our time. Just the opposite of the whole development of personality and soul is so characteristic with these both men on one side for the variety of life and work in our time, on the other side, nevertheless, again for the basic nerve, the real goals of our present. We have, on one side, Tolstoy who has grown out of a distinguished class, of wealth and abundance, of a life sphere in which everything is included that external life can offer as comfort and convenience. He is a human being whom his soul development has brought almost to proclaim the worthlessness of all he got with birth, not only to himself, but also to the whole humankind like a Gospel. We have the American steel tycoon on the other side, a personality that has grown out of hardship and misery, grown out of a life sphere where nothing at all exists of that which external life can offer as convenience and comfort. A person who had to earn dollar by dollar and who ascended to the biggest wealth, who got around in the course of his soul development to regarding this accumulation of wealth as something absolutely normal for the present and to thinking only about it how this accumulated wealth is to be used to the welfare and happiness of humankind. What Tolstoy never desired when he had reached the summit of his soul development he had it abundantly in the beginning of his life. The external goods of life that Carnegie had abundantly acquired last were refused to him in the beginning of his life. This is the expression of their natures, even if in exterior way, however, the characteristic of both personalities to a certain extent at the same time. What can take action with a person in our time, what one can reflect of these external processes in and around the personality shows us with both what prevails in our present in the undergrounds of the social and mental existence generally. We see Tolstoy, as said, born out of a sphere of life in which everything existed that one can call comfort, wealth, and refinement of life. Of course, we can deal only quite cursorily with his life, because today it concerns of characterising our time in these representative personalities and of recognising their needs in a certain way. In 1828, Leo Tolstoy is born in a family of Russian counts about which he himself says that the family immigrated originally from Germany. Then we see Tolstoy losing certain higher goods of life. Hardly he is one and a half years old, he loses the mother, the father in the ninth year. Then he grows up under the care of a relative who is, so to speak, the embodied love, and from her spiritual condition, the marvellous soul condition had to flow in his soul like by itself. However, on the other side, another relative who wants to build up him out of the viewpoints of her circles, out of the conditions of time as they formed in certain circles influences him. She is a person who is completely merged in the outward world activity which later became very odious to Tolstoy and against which he fought so hard. We see this personality striving from the outset to make Tolstoy a person “comme il faut,” a person who could treat his farmers in such a way, as it was necessary in those days, who should receive title, rank, dignity, and medals and should play a suitable role in the society. Then we see Tolstoy coming to the university; he is a bad student as he absolutely thinks that everything that the professors say at the University of Kazan is nothing worth knowing. Only oriental languages can occupy him. In all other matters, he was not interested. Against it the comparison of a certain chapter of the code of Catherine the Great (1729–1796) with The Spirit of the Laws (1748) by Montesquieu (Charles de Secondat, Baron de M., 1689–1755) attracted him. Then he tries repeatedly to manage his estate, and we see him almost getting around to diving head first into the life of luxury of a man of his circles, diving head first into all possible vices and vanities of life. We see him becoming a gambler, gambling big sums away. However, he has hours within this life over and over again when his own activities disgust him, actually. We see him meeting peers as well as men of letters and leading a life, which he calls a worthless, even perishable one at moments of reflection. However, we also see—and this is important to him who looks with pleasure at the development of the soul where this development manifests in especially typical signs—particular peculiarities appearing with him in the development of his soul which can disclose us already in the earliest youth what is, actually, in this soul. Thus, it is of immense significance, what a deep impression a certain event makes on Tolstoy at the age of eleven years. A friendly boy once told him that one has made an important discovery, a new invention. One has found—and a teacher has spoken in particular of the fact—that there is no God that this God is only an empty invention of many human beings, an empty picture of thought. Everything that one can know about the impression that this boy's experience made on Tolstoy shows already how he absorbed it that in him a soul struggled striving for the highest summits of human existence. However, this soul was weird in other ways as well. Those people who like to state outer appearances and do not pay attention to that in the soul, which emerges from the centre as the actual individual through all outer obstacles, they ignore and do not pay attention to anything in such youth experiences that has different effects on the one soul and on the other one. In particular, one has to pay attention if a soul shows a disposition in the earliest youth that one could pronounce with the nice sentence of Goethe in the second part of his Faust: “I love the man who wants what cannot be.” This sentence says a lot. A soul, which desires, so to speak, something that is obvious foolishness to the philistine view, such a soul, if it appears in its first youth as such, shows the width of the scope of view just by such peculiarities. Thus, one must not ignore it, if Tolstoy tells such things in one of his first writings, in which he gives reflections of his own development. We are not allowed to ignore when he says there things, which were absolutely valid for him, for example, when he shaved off his eyebrows and defaced his not very extensive beauty in such a way for a while. This is something that one can regard as a big outlandishness. However, if one thinks about it, it becomes an indication. Another example is that the boy imagines that the human being can fly if he presses the arms against the knees rather stiffly. If he did this, he would be able to fly, he thinks. He goes up once in the second floor and jumps out of the window, retaining the heels. He is saved like by a miracle and carries off nothing but a little concussion, which compensates one another by an 18-hour sleep again. He proved for his surroundings with it to be a strange boy. However, someone who wants to observe the soul and knows what it means to go out in his soul in the earliest youth from the track, which is predetermined on the left and on the right, does not disregard features in the life of a young person. Thus, this soul seems to be great and to have many talents from the start. Hence, we can understand that he was fulfilled with a certain disgust of himself when he was tired of the debaucheries of life, which were due to his social rank, in particular after a gamble affair. When he goes then to the Caucasus, we can understand that there his soul becomes fond of the simple Cossacks, of those people whom he gets to know and recognises that they have, actually, quite different souls than all those people whom he had got to know up to now basically. All the principles of his peers appeared to him so unnatural. Everything that he had believed up to now seemed to him so strange, so separated from the original source of existence. However, the human beings, whom he got to know now, were people whose souls had grown together with the sources of nature like the tree by the roots with the sources of nature, like the flower with the liquid of the ground. It impressed him enormously that they were grown together with nature, that they had not become foreign to the sources of existence, that they were beyond good and evil in their circles. In 1854, when he became a soldier, full of zest for action, to take part in the Crimean War, we see him with the most intensive devotion studying the whole soul life of the simple soldier. However, we see now a more specified feeling taking place in Tolstoy's soul, we see him being deeply moved by the naturalness of the simple human being on the one side, on the other side, also by the misery, poverty, the tortures, and depression of the simple human being. We see how he is fulfilled with love and desire to help, and that the highest ideals of human happiness, human welfare, and progress flash as shades in his mind, how he realises completely on the other side that the natural human beings cannot understand his ideals. This causes a conflict in his soul, something that does not allow him to penetrate to the basic core of his being. Thus, he is thrown back repeatedly from that life he leads and in which he is thrown just with the Danube army from one extreme to the other. A superior says, he is a golden human being whom one can never forget again. He works like a soul that pours out goodness only and, on the other hand, has the ability to amuse the others in the most difficult situations. Everything is different if he is there. If he is not there, everybody hangs his head. If he has plunged into life, he comes back with a terrible remorse, with awful regret to the camp. Between such moods, this great soul was thrown back and forth. From these moods and experiences those views and pictorial descriptions of his literary career come, which caused, for example, the most accepting review even from Turgenev (Ivan T., 1818–1883, Russian author), and which have found recognition everywhere. However, we see at the same time how in a certain way beside the real centre, the centre of his soul, always he looks at the big strength, at the basic spring of life, how he struggles for the concepts of truth and human progress. However, he cannot help saying at a being together with Turgenev: you all do not have, actually, what one calls conviction. You talk, actually, only to hide your conviction. One can say, life made his soul feel low, bringing it into heavy, bitter conflicts. Indeed, something most serious should yet come. At the end of the fifties, one of his brothers fell ill and died. Tolstoy had often seen death in war, had often looked at dying human beings, but he had not yet realised the problem of life to such extent as at the sight of the beloved dying brother. Tolstoy was not so fulfilled at that time with philosophical or religious contents that these contents could have supported him. He was in such a basic mood that expressed itself towards death possibly in such a way that he said, I am incapable to give life a goal. I see life decreasing, I see it running in my peers worthlessly; they do things which are not worth to be done. If one strings up an event to the other and forms ever so long rows, nothing valuable results.—At that time, he could also not see any contents and life goal in the fact that the lower social classes were in distress and misery. He said to himself at that time, such a life whose sense one searches in vain is finished by the futility of death and if the life of everybody and any animal ends in the futility of death, who is generally able to speak about the meaning of life? Sometimes, Tolstoy had already set himself the goal to strive for perfection of his soul, to search contents for the soul. He had not advanced so far that any contents of life could be roused in the soul even from the spirit. Therefore, the sight of death had put the riddle of life in such horrible figure before his spiritual eye. We see him travelling in Europe just in the same time. We see him visiting the most interesting cities of Europe—in France, Italy, Germany. We see him getting to know some valuable persons. He gets to know Schopenhauer (Arthur Sch., 1788–1860, German philosopher) personally shortly before his death, he gets to know Liszt (1811–1882, Austrian-Hungarian composer) and still some others, some luminaries of science and art. He gets to know something of the social life, gets to know the court life at Weimar. Everything was accessible to him; however, he looks at everything with eyes from which the attitude looks that has just been characterised. From all that he had gained only one: as well as it is at home, in the circles, which he has grown out of, it is also in Western Europe. Now a goal faces him in particular. He wanted to found a kind of model school, and he founded it in his hometown where every pupil should learn after his talents where it should not be a stencil. We cannot get involved with the description of the pedagogic principles, which one used there. However, this must be stressed that he had an ideal of education in mind, which should meet the individuality of the child. We see a kind of interregnum taking place, where in certain way the stormy soul experiences a kind of standstill, that soul in which the problems and the questions followed in rapid succession, into which the sensations and emotions have flowed in contradicting way. A calmer life prevails in it. This time begins with the marriage in the sixties. It was the time from which the great novels come in which he gave the comprising tremendous pictures of the social life of the present and the previous time: War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1873–1877). So much has flowed in from that which he had learnt onto these works. Thus, he lived until the seventies of the last century. Then comes a time of his life where he faces a crucial decision where all qualms, doubts, and problems come to life again which prevailed once like from dark spiritual depths. A comparison, a picture that he forms is rather typical of what his soul experienced. One needs to visualise this picture only and to know that it means quite another matter to a soul like Tolstoy's soul, as for another soul that is much more superficial. You need to visualise this picture only, and you can deeply look into the mind of Tolstoy. He compares his own life to an Eastern fable, which he tells possibly in such a way: There is a man, pursued by a beast. He flees, finds a dried out well and plunges into it to escape from the beast. He holds fast onto the branches, which have grown out on the sides of the well wall. In this way, he thinks he is protected against the pursuing monster. However, in the depth, he sees a dragon, and he has the feeling, he must be devoured by it if he gets tired only a little or if the branch breaks, onto which he holds fast. There he also sees on the leaves of the shrub some drops of honey from which he could feed himself. Nevertheless, at the same time he also sees mice gnawing away at the roots of the shrub onto which he holds fast. Two things to which Tolstoy adhered were family love and art. For the rest, he considered life in such a way that all tantalising worries of life pursue him. He escapes one and is welcomed by the other monster. Then one sees mice gnawing away the few things that one still.—One must take the picture deeply enough to see what goes forward in such a soul, what is shown there and what Tolstoy experienced in all thinking, feeling and willing in the most extensive way. The branches still pleased him. However, he also found various things, which had to gnaw away at the delight in them. If the whole life is in such a way, that one cannot find sense in it, that one looks for the meaning of life in vain, what does it mean to have a family, to build up descendants to whom one transfers the same futility? This was also something he had in mind. And art? If life is worthless, what about art, the mirror of life? Can art be valuable if it only is able to reflect that in which one looks for sense in vain? That just stood before his soul and burnt in him after an interregnum again. Where he looked around with all those who tried to fathom the meaning of life in great philosophies and in the most various worldviews, he nowhere found anything that could satisfy his searching. Recently it was in such a way that he turned his look to those people who were originally connected with the springs of life according to his opinion. These human beings had preserved a natural sense, a natural piety. He said to himself, the scholar who lives like me, who overestimates his reason finds nothing in all researching that could interpret the meaning of life to him. If I look at the usual human being who unites there in sects: he knows, why he lives, he knows the meaning of life. How does he know this, and how does he know the meaning of life? Because he experiences the sensation in himself, there is a will, the everlasting divine will as I call it. What lives in me devotes itself to the divine will. What I do from morning to evening is a part of the divine will. If I move the hands, I move them in the will of the divine. Without being brought by reason to abstractions, the hands move.—That faced him so peculiarly, that grasped him so intensely: if the human is deeply grasped in the soul. He said to himself, there are human beings who can answer the question of the meaning of life to themselves that they can use. It is even magnificent how he contrasts these simple human beings with those who he got to know in his surroundings. Everything is thought out of the monumental of the paradigms. He says, I got to know people who did not understand to give life any meaning. They lived by force of habit, although they could gain no meaning of life, but I got to know those who committed suicide, because they could not find any meaning of life.—Tolstoy himself was before it. Thus, he studied that category of human beings about whom he had to say to himself, it could not be talk of a meaning of life and of a life with a meaning. However, the human being, who is still connected with the sources of nature, whose soul is connected with the divine forces as the plant with the forces of life, can answer to the question: why do I live?—Therefore, Tolstoy came so far to search for a community with those simple human beings in the religious life. He became religious in certain way, although the outer forms made a repellent impression on him. He went to the Communion again. Now it was something in him that one can explain in such a way: he strove with all fibers of his soul to find and to feel a goal. Nevertheless, again his thinking and feeling impeded him everywhere in certain way. He was able to pray together with these human beings, who were believers in the naive sense and answered to the question of the meaning of life to themselves. He could pray—and this is tremendously typical—up to the point of a uniform way of feeling. However, he was not able to go further when they prayed: we confess ourselves to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.—This made no sense to him. It is generally typical that he was able to come up to a certain point, looking for a religious life, which was based on brotherly feelings. This life in devoutness should produce a unity of feelings, unity of thoughts. However, he could not rise to the positive contents, the knowledge of the spirit, to the spiritual view, which gives reality. The traditional dogmatics meant nothing to him. He could not connect any sense with the words, which are given in the Trinity. Thus, he came, while all these things flocked together, to the mature period of his life, to the period in which he tried to delve completely into that which he could call true, real Christianity. He strove in such a way, as if he had wanted to comprise, to penetrate the liveliness of Christ's soul with his own soul. With this spirit of Christ's soul, he wanted to penetrate himself. A worldview should arise from it, and from this something like a transformation of all present life should result which he subjected to harsh criticism. Because he believes now to feel in his soul, what Christ had thought and felt, he feels strong enough to issue a challenge to all ways of life, to all ways of feeling and thinking of the present. He criticised harshly that out of which he has grown and which he could see in the farther environment of his time. He feels strong enough to put up the demand, on the other side, to let the spirit of Christ prevail and to get out a renewal of all human life out of the spirit of Christ. With it, we have characterised, so to speak, his maturing soul and have seen this soul having grown out of that which many of our contemporaries call the summits of life. We have seen this soul getting around to harshly criticise the summits of life, and to putting as its next goal the renewal of the spirit of Christ which it finds strange to everything that lives presently, in the renewal of Christ's life which it nowhere finds in reality. Therefore, in certain sense, Tolstoy says no to the present and affirms what he calls the spirit of Christ, which he could not find in the present but only in the first times of Christianity. He had to go back to the historical sources, which came up to him. There we have a representative of our present who has grown out of the present, saying no to this present. Now we have a look at the other man, who affirms most intensely, what Tolstoy denies most intensely, who reaches the same formula but applies it quite differently. There we see Carnegie, the Scotsman, growing out of that dividing line of modern times which we can characterise by the fact that trade, large-scale industry and the like sweep away the small trade from the social order. We really see Carnegie growing out of that dividing line of modern life, which a newer poet so nicely characterised with the words (poem by Heinrich von Reder, 1824–1909, Bavarian officer, poet, and painter):
One needs to wake only such a mood, and one illuminates brightly that dividing line in the cultural development of modern times, which has become so important to life. Carnegie's father was a weaver who had a good living at first. He worked for a factory. This went well up to the time when the large-scale industry flooded everything. Now we see the last day approaching, when Carnegie's father can still deliver the produced to the trader. Then poverty and misery enter in the weaver's family. The father does no longer see any possibility to make a living in Scotland. He decides to emigrate to America, so that both sons do not live in misery and die. The father finds work in a cotton factory, and the boy is employed as a bobbin boy in his twelfth year. He has to perform hard work. However, there is after one week of hard, heavy work a happy day for the 12-year-old boy. He gets his first wage: 1 dollar and 20 cents. Never again—so says Carnegie—he has taken up any income with such delighted soul as this dollar and twenty cents. Nothing made more joy to him later, although many millions went through his fingers. We see the representative of practical pursuit in our present that grows out of distress and misery that is natured in such a way to immerse himself in the present, as it is, and to become the self-made man in it. He struggles. He gains his dollar every week. Then somebody employs him in another factory with a better wage. Here he has to work even more, he must stand in the basement and has to heat and maintain a small steam engine with big heat. He feels that as a responsible post. The fear to turn the tap of the engine wrongly what could lead to an accident for the whole factory is dreadful to him. He often catches himself sitting in his bed at night and dreaming of the tap the whole night which he turned taking care of turning it in the right direction. Then we see him employed as a telegraph messenger in Pittsburgh after some time. There he is already highly happy with the small wage of the telegraph messenger. He has to work at a place where also books are which he had hardly seen before. Sometimes he also has newspapers to read. He has now only one worry: telegraph messengers are not to be needed in the city if they are not able to know all addresses of the companies by heart, which receive telegrams. He really manages to know the names and addresses of the Pittsburgh companies. He also already develops a certain independence. His consciousness is paired exceptionally with cleverness. He goes now a little earlier to the telegraph office, and there he learns to telegraph by own practicing. Thus, he can aim at the ideal that any telegraph messenger is allowed to have in a young, ambitious community: to become a telegraph operator once. He even succeeds in a special trick. When one morning the telegraph operator was not there, a death message comes in. He takes up the telegram and carries it to the newspaper to which it was determined. There are connections where one regards such an action, even if it succeeds, not as favourable. However, Carnegie thereby climbed up to the telegraph operator. Now something else presented itself to him. A man who dealt with railways recognises the talents of the young man and one day he makes the following proposal to him. He said to him, he should take over railway stocks of 500 dollars that had just become available. He can win a lot if he pursues these matters. Carnegie tells now—it is delightful how he tells this—how he raised 500 dollars really by the care and love of his mother, and how he bought his stocks. When he got the first revenue, the first payment of more than five dollars, he went with his fellows out to the wood. They looked at the payment and thought and learnt to recognise that there is something else than to be paid for work, something that makes money from money. That aroused big viewpoints in Carnegie's life. With it, he grew into the characteristic of our time. Thus, we see him immediately understanding when another proposal is made. It is typical how he grasps with complete presence of mind what appears before his soul for the first time. An inventive head shows him the model of the first sleeping car. Straight away, he recognises that there is something tremendously fertile in it, so that he takes part in it. He emphasises now again by what this consciousness, actually, grew. He did not have enough money to take part in suitable way in the enterprise of the first sleeping car society of the world. However, his ingenious head caused that he got money already from a bank: he issued his first bill of exchange. This is nothing particular, he says, but this is something particular that he finds a banker who accepts this bill of exchange. This was the case. Now he needed to develop this only to become completely the man of the present. Hence, we have not to be surprised that he became a steel tycoon when he got the idea to replace the many wooden bridges with iron and steel bridges, that he became the man who set the tone in the steel industry and acquired the countless riches. Thus, we really see the type of the human being in him who grows into the present, the present, which unfolds the most exterior life. He grows into the most outward of appearance. However, he grows into it by his own strength, by his abilities. He becomes the extensively rich person out of distress and misery, while he himself really acquired everything from the first dollar on. He is a pensive person who associates this whole impulse of his life with the progress and life of whole humanity. Thus, we see another strange Gospel growing out of his way of thinking, a Gospel that follows Christ. However, Carnegie immediately says at the beginning of his Gospel, it is a Gospel of wealth (essay Wealth or Gospel of Wealth, 1889). That is why his book shows how wealth is applied best of all to the welfare and to the progress of humanity. He opposes Tolstoy immediately about whom he says: he is a person who takes Christ in such a way as it is not suitable at all to our time, who regards him as a strange being of old past. One must understand Christ in such a way that one transfers Him to the present life.—Carnegie is a person who affirms the whole life of the present completely. He says: if we look back at the times when the human being were more alike than today, they were still less divided into those who had to assign a job and those who have to take a job, and if we compare the times, we see how primitive the single cultures were in those days. The king was not able in that old time to satisfy his needs in such a way as today the poorest person can satisfy them now. What happened had to happen. That is why it is right that one distributes the goods in such a way. Carnegie establishes a strange doctrine of the distribution or application of wealth. Above all, we find with him that ideas of the purely personal efficiency, of the nature of the efficiency of the human being originate in his soul who has worked his way in life up to that which he becomes in the end. At first Carnegie sees outward goods only, then also that the human being must be efficient, externally efficient. Someone has to apply his efficiency not only to acquire wealth but also to manage it in the service of humanity. Carnegie intensely draws the attention to the fact that quite new principles would have to enter, so to speak, in the social construction of humanity if welfare and progress should originate from the new progress and the distribution of goods. He says, we have institutions of former time that make it possible that by inheritance from the father to the son and the grandchildren goods, rank, title and dignities go over. In the life of the old time, this was possible.—He regards it as right that one can substitute with routine what the personal efficiency does not give: rank, title, dignities. Nevertheless, he is convinced by that life he has experienced that it requires personal, individual efficiency. He points to the fact that one had ascertained that five of seven insolvent houses became insolvent, because they demised to the sons. Rank, title, and dignities devolved from the fathers upon the sons, however, never business acumen. In those parts of modern life, where commercial principles prevail, they should not be transmitted simply from the testator to the descendants. It is much more important that someone builds up a personally efficient man, than to bequeath his wealth to his children. That is why Carnegie concludes in the absurd sentence: someone has to make sure that he applies the accumulated wealth to such institutions and foundations by which the human beings are promoted to the largest extent.—The sentence with which he formulates this, which can appear grotesque, which originates, however, from Carnegie's whole way of thinking is this: “Who dies rich dies dishonourably.” One could say in certain sense, this sentence of the steel tycoon sounds even more revolutionary than many a sentence of Tolstoy. ”He who dies rich dies dishonourably” means: someone dies dishonourably who does not apply the accumulated goods to endowments by which the human beings can learn something, can get the possibility to do further studies. If he makes many human beings efficient with his wealth during his life and does not hand it down to descendants, who can use it their way lacking any talent and only to their personal well-being, he dies not dishonourably. Thus, we see with Carnegie a very strange principle appearing. We see that he affirms the present social life and activity, that he gains, however, a new principle from it: the fact that the human being has to advocate not only the use of wealth, but also its management, as a manager of the goods in the service of humanity. This man does not at all believe that anything can devolve from the parents upon their descendants. Even if he knows the outward life only, he realises, nevertheless, that inside of the human being the forces have to originate which make the human being efficient to do his work in life. We see these two representatives of our present: that who harshly criticizes what has developed bit by bit and who wants to lead the soul to higher fields out of the spirit. On the other side, we see a man who takes the material life as it comes, and who is pointed to the fact that within the human being the spring of work and of the health of life is to be found. Nevertheless, one may find something just in this teaching of Carnegie that allows me to remark the following. If anybody does not look thoughtlessly and pointlessly at this soul life, but looks at the forces pouring out of the souls bit by bit, does look at the individual, and is clear in his mind absolutely that it is not handed down,—what has one then to look at? One has to look at the real origin, at that which comes from other sources. One finds if one comes to the sources of the present talents and abilities that these are caused in former lives. By the principle of reincarnation and of spiritual causing, karma, one finds the possibility to process such a principle meditatively that it has forced the practical life upon a practical person. Nobody can hope that from a mere externalisation of life anything could come that the soul satisfies, can bring the civilisation to the highest summits. Never can one hope that on those roads anything else would come than a distribution of wealth salutary in the external sense. The soul would become deserted, it would overexert its forces, but it would find nothing in itself if it could not penetrate to the sources of the spirit, which are beyond the external material life. While the soul is rejected by a material approach to life, it must find the spring, which can flow only from a spiritual approach to life. With such a life praxis, as Carnegie has it, that deepening and spiritualisation coming from spiritual science have to combine, so that the souls do not become deserted. On the one side, Carnegie demands that from the single soul, which makes it fit for the external life, on the other side, Tolstoy wants to give the single soul what it can find from the deep well of the spiritual being. As well as Carnegie grasps the being of the present with sure look from the material life, we find Tolstoy on the other side with sure look grasping the characteristic of the soul. Up to a certain limiting point, we see Tolstoy coming who affects us, indeed, strangely if we compare everything that lives in Tolstoy's worldview to that which faces us in particular in the West-European civilisation. One can examine work by work of Tolstoy and one sees one fact emerging above all. The matters, which one has gathered here in the West with an immense expenditure of philosophical reflection, academic pondering, and moving conclusions from pillars to post, appear to Tolstoy in such a way that they occur in five to six lines like flashes of thought and become conviction to that who can understand such a thing. Tolstoy shows, for example, how we have to find something in the human soul that is of divine nature that can visualise the divine in the world if it lights up in us. Tolstoy says there, around me, the academic naturalists live; they investigate what is real outdoors in the material, in the so-called objective existence. They search the divine primal ground of existence. Then such people try to compose the human being from all principles, substances, atoms et cetera that they search spread out outdoors in the space. Then in the end, they try to understand what the human being is, while they believe to have to combine all external science to find the primal ground of life. Such human beings, he says, appear to me like human beings who have trees and plants of the living nature round themselves. They say, this does not interest me. But there is a wood far away, I hardly see it; I want to investigate and describe this wood, then I also understand the trees and the plants which are around me, and I am able to describe them.—People appear to me that way who investigate the being of the animals with their instruments to get to know the nature of the human being. They have it in themselves; they only need to see what is in close proximity. However, they do not do this. They search the faraway trees, and they try to understand what they cannot see, the atoms. However, they do not see the human being. This way of thinking is so monumental that it is more valuable than dozens of insights and theories that are written out of old cultures. This is typical for the whole thinking of Tolstoy. To such things, he came, and in such things, one must look. To the West European this is extremely unsatisfactory; only by a devious route via Kant he gets around to it. With the assurance of his soul, Tolstoy is driven to pronounce what is not proved, but is true, what is recognised by immediate view and of which one knows if it is pronounced that it is true. His work On Life (1887) shows this monumental original springing of the deepest truth like from the spring of life, which he searched. His last writings just show this and what is in such a way that it can shine like an aurora to a rising future. Therefore, we have to say, the less we are inclined to take Tolstoy dogmatically, the more we are inclined to take up the gold nuggets of a primitive paradigmatic thinking, the more he becomes fertile. Of course, those who accept a personality only in such a way that they swear on their dogmas, who cannot allow to be fertilised by it, they do not have a lot from him. Something does not agree with them. However, someone who can allow to be fertilised by a great personality may receive a lot from Tolstoy. We see truth working in him, paradigmatically, and that this truth flows with strong forces onto his personal life. How does it flow in there? It is rather interesting to see that different views live in his family and tolerate each other. How was he able, however, to introduce his principles in the everyday life? By working, and not only with principles. Thereby he becomes a true pioneer of something that only must sprout in future. On the other side, Tolstoy is also a child of his time, even though he is a pioneer of the future. Perhaps, one can nowhere feel more impressively how he puts himself in the present than in that strange picture of the year 1848, when he was twenty years old. One looks only at the face of the 20-year-old, which expresses energy and willpower, also reticence at the same time. However, the spirited twinkle in the eyes reveals something that faces the riddles of life quizzically. He is volcanic inside but not able to cause the volcano to erupt. Indeed, we see mysterious depths of the soul expressing themselves in his physiognomy, and we get the expression of the fact that something tremendous lives in him but that he cannot yet express it completely in this hereditary organism. It is also that way with the variety of the forces which live in Tolstoy, and which could not be expressed so really. It is in such a way, as if they are expressed as caricatures, distorted in certain respect. One has also to recognise the character in him that is sometimes distorted grotesquely. Hence, it is quite wonderful if he is able to point to that which one calls something transient with the human beings normally: look at the human body. How often its substances have been exchanged! Nothing material is there that was there in the ten-year-old boy. Compare the usual consciousness to the image life of the fifty years old man: it has become completely different, until the soul structure. We cannot call it permanent, but everywhere we find the centre in it, which we may imagine possibly in the following way. The objects of the outside world are there. There is this, there is that, there a third one. Two human beings face the objects. The eyes see the same things, but they are to the one this way, to the other that way. The one says, I like this; the other says: I do not like this.—If in the outside world everything is the same, and if the one soul says, I like it, and the other says, I do not like it, if the way of life is different, a centre is there that is different from all appearance that remains constant, in spite of all change of consciousness and body. Something is there that was there before birth and is there after birth, my particular ego. This my particular ego has not begun with birth. It is not the point that anybody positions himself with the west-European habits to such a remark, but it matters that one has the sensation: one can do such a remark. Therein the greatness of the soul appears. It becomes apparent that the soul lives and how it lives. Immortality is guaranteed therein. Tolstoy just approaches the border of that which we get to know as the innermost being of the soul by spiritual-scientific deepening. He is wedged by the world against which he himself fights so much and cannot penetrate to true cognition of that which is there before birth, and of that which comes after death. He does not come to the teaching of reincarnation and karma. Just as little, he gets to the inner impulse of the soul like Carnegie who almost demands it. Therefore, we see whether now a human being is in contradiction to everything that lives and works in the present or whether someone complies with all life forms of the present: he is led to the gates of the anthroposophic approach to life. Tolstoy would be able to find the way to Carnegie, Carnegie never to Tolstoy. With this talk, I wanted to show that a worldview and an approach to life could be given which introduces into the immediate life praxis, which can transfer the newfound to the known, to the performed. Moreover, we see if we familiarise ourselves deeper and deeper with spiritual science that it brings that to the human beings of the one and the other view which, in the end, Tolstoy has found his way and Carnegie has found his way: a satisfying life. However, it does not depend on it that the immediate viewfinder finds the satisfactory life, and that those who search with him can find it. What Tolstoy and Carnegie have found for themselves as adequate, this can be found for all human beings only impersonally and spiritually if true spiritual knowledge of that is found which goes from life to life, which carries the guaranty of eternity in itself. |
| 54. Inner Development
07 Dec 1905, Berlin |
|---|
| We can never profit anything from our own selfish ego for our higher self. Where anybody is who has farther advanced than I have, there I am in the future. |
| There the human being has no consciousness of his ego, and the fourth state is that in which the human being lives in his memory. This is different from perception; this is something abstract, spiritual. |
| 54. Inner Development
07 Dec 1905, Berlin |
|---|
In a series of talks, I have spoken of the ideas about the supersensible world and its connection with the sensuous world. It is only a matter of course that the question appears repeatedly, where from does the knowledge of the supersensible world come? Today we want to deal with this question, or with other words, with the question of the inner development of the human being. Inner development of the human being is meant here in the sense that the human being advances to such abilities that he must acquire to himself if he wants to make that supersensible knowledge his own. Do not misunderstand the intention of this talk. This talk is remote from establishing rules or principles that have something to do with general human morality or with the demands, which belong to the general zeitgeist. I must note this expressly because over and over again in our time of equalisation where one does not accept any difference between human being and human being the misunderstanding appears, as if anybody who speaks of occultism establishes any general human demands, moral principles or the like which apply to everybody without distinction. This is not the case. This talk must not at all be confused with a talk on general principles of the theosophical movement. Occultism is unlike theosophy. The Theosophical Society has not only and indeed not exclusively the task to maintain occultism. It could be even possible that anybody who joins this Theosophical Society considers occultism as something completely unacceptable. Among those matters that are maintained in the Theosophical Society to which also a general ethics belongs is also occultism, which encompasses the knowledge of those principles of our existence that escape from the usual sensory observation in the everyday human area of experience. However, by no means the principles are those, which have nothing to do with this everyday experience. “Occult” means: concealed, mysterious. However, I emphasise again and again that occultism is something that needs certain preconditions. As incomprehensible as higher mathematics is for the usual farmer who has never heard of it, it is occultism for many people of our time. However, occultism stops being occult if one has taken possession of it. With it, I have strictly limited the field of this talk. Thus, nobody can object—and this must expressly be emphasised after the millenniums-old experiences and often performed experiments—that the demands which occultism puts up could not be fulfilled, they would contradict a general human culture. The fulfilment of it is required from nobody. If, however, anybody comes to me and wants to get the convictions which occultism conveys, but refuses to deal with occultism, he is in the very same situation as the schoolchild who wants to make a glass rod electric, but refuses to rub it. It will not become electric without friction. Somebody who behaves like that who has to make any objection to the methods of occultism. Nobody is asked to become occultist; everybody must come voluntarily to occultism. Someone who objects that we do not need occultism does not need to deal with it. Occultism does not appeal to the general humanity today. Moreover, in our present civilisation, it is exceptionally difficult to fulfil the demands of a life, which makes the supersensible world accessible. Two preconditions are completely absent in our civilisation. The first demand is the isolation, that which esoteric science calls the higher human loneliness. The second one is the overcoming of an egoism that has risen high concerning the innermost soul qualities, in large part unaware to humanity. The lack of these preconditions makes the developmental way of the inner life almost impossible today, because life is dispersed more and more, demands external sensuousness. In no other culture, the human beings lived in the exterior in this way as just in ours. Now I ask you again not to take anything that I say as criticism but only as a characteristic. Of course, someone speaking that way as I do today knows exactly that this cannot be different, that just the great advantages and significant achievements of our time are based on these qualities. However, that is why our time is without any supersensible knowledge and without any influence of supersensible knowledge on our culture. In other cultures—and there are some—the human being is able to maintain his inner life more and to withdraw from the effects of the outer life. Then, within such cultures, that prospers which one calls inner life in the higher sense. In the Eastern cultures, there is something that one calls yoga and those who live according to the rules of yoga yogis. Therefore, a yogi is someone who aims at the higher spiritual science, but only, after he has looked for a master of the supersensible for himself. Nobody looks for yoga in another way than under the tutelage of a master, a guru. If he has found him, he must use a big part of the day regularly, not irregularly, to live completely in his soul. All forces that the yogi has to develop are already in his soul, they are there as certain as it is true that the electricity in the glass rod appears by friction. It is true that no one knows on his own how to cause these forces as also no one knows on his own that he can make the glass rod electric by friction. One has to use the observations made in millenniums and the esoteric methods developed thereby to evoke the soul forces. This is very difficult in our time, which demands from every human being because of the struggle for existence that he splits himself. He does not come to the big inner contemplation, not even to a concept of contemplation, which one had in yoga. No consciousness is there of the deep loneliness which the yogi must search for. He has to repeat the same thing rhythmically, even if only for a short time, with tremendous regularity every day, with complete seclusion of anything that lives in him otherwise. It is necessary and essential that all life, which surrounds us, dies down before the yogi that his senses become unreceptive to any impression of the outside world. The yogi has to make himself blind and deaf to the environment for the time, which he dictates to himself. He must be so composed—and he has to acquire the practise in this contemplation—that one may shoot a gun beside him, and he is not disturbed directing his attention upon his inner life. In addition, he has to become free from any memory of the everyday life. Consider now how exceptionally hard these preconditions are to be produced in our civilisation, how little one has an idea of such isolation, of such spiritual loneliness. You have to achieve all that on one condition, namely on that never to lose the harmony, the complete balance compared with the outside world in any way. This is exceptionally easy with such a deep sinking in your inside. What settles down deeper and deeper in your inside has to produce the harmony with the outside world even more distinctly at the same time. Nothing that is reminiscent of estrangement, of distance from the outer practical life is allowed to appear with you, otherwise you go astray, and otherwise, perhaps, you are not able to distinguish your higher life from insanity to a certain degree. It is really a kind of insanity if the inner life loses its relations to the outer one. Imagine once—to give you an example—you are clever concerning our earthly conditions; you have all experience and wisdom that can be collected on earth. You fall asleep in the evening, but you wake in the morning not on the earth, but on Mars. However, on Mars are conditions quite different from those on the earth. Any science, which you have collected on earth, benefits you by no means. There is no longer any harmony between your inner life and that, which takes action outside you. Hence, you would be probably put into a Mars lunatic asylum already after an hour because you cannot find the way in the new conditions. To such a road, anybody can be easily directed who loses the connection with the outside world developing his inner life. One strictly has to pay attention to it that this does not happen. All that causes big difficulties in our civilisation. The other obstacle is a kind of egoism concerning inner soul qualities, an account of which the present humanity normally gives to itself. This is tightly connected with the spiritual development of the human being. For it belongs to the preconditions that one does not strive for it from egoism. Who strives for it from egoism cannot come far. However, our time is selfish until the inside of the human soul. You can hear repeatedly: on the other hand, how useful are these teachings to me which occultism propagates if I myself cannot experience them? Who starts from this condition and also does not desist from it, can hardly get a really higher development, because the most intimate consciousness of human community belongs to the higher development, so that it is irrelevant whether I myself or another experience this or that. Hence, I must meet somebody whose development is higher than mine is with boundless love and full trust. First, I have to bring myself to this consciousness, to the consciousness of infinite trust towards my fellow man if he says I have experienced this and this. Such trust must be a condition of the community life, and wherever such occult abilities are used more extensively, there it is unlimited trust; there one has the consciousness that the human being is a personality in which a higher individuality lives. The basis is trust and confidence at first because we are searching not always only in ourselves for our higher selves, but also in our fellow men. Everybody who lives round us is according to his inner nature in undivided unity with us. As long as it depends on my lower self, I am separated from other human beings. However, if it concerns my higher self—and only this can ascend to the supersensible world—, then I am no longer separated from the fellow men, I am a uniform being with my fellow men, then is that who speaks to me of the higher truth: I myself. I must drop this difference between him and me completely, I must overcome the feeling completely that he has something over me. Try to settle down in this feeling completely, so that it penetrates till the thinnest little fibres of the human soul and any egoism disappears, and the other who is farther than you stands like your own self before you, then you have understood one of the preconditions that are necessary to wake the higher spiritual life. You can hear just where the instructions of the occult life are given—often very incorrectly and erroneously—: the higher self lives in the human being, he only needs to let his inside speak and the highest truth is revealed.—Nothing is more correct on the one hand and, on the other hand, more infertile than this assertion. If the human being tries once to let his inner human being speak, he will see that as a rule his lower self speaks, even if he imagines ever so much that his higher self appears. We do not find the higher self in ourselves at first. We have to look for it outside ourselves first. From anybody who is farther advanced we can learn a piece, because we keep it in sight as it were. We can never profit anything from our own selfish ego for our higher self. Where anybody is who has farther advanced than I have, there I am in the future. According to my disposition, I really bear the seed in myself of that which he is. However, first the ways to Mount Olympus must be illumined, so that I can pursue them. A feeling is the basic condition of any esoteric development, you may believe it or not—every practical occultist who has experience confirms it to you—, a feeling which is mentioned in the different religions. The Christian religion calls it with the known sentence that one must understand as an occultist completely: “Whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it” (Mark 10:15, Matthew 18:3). Only that understands the sentence who has learnt reverence in the highest sense of the word. Assume once that you would have heard of an adorable person in your earliest youth, a personality by which in you the highest idea has been woken in a direction, and the opportunity is offered to you to get to know this personality closer. A holy shyness of this personality lives in you during the day, which should bring you the moment where you see him in person for the first time. Standing before the door of this person, you can have the feeling to be afraid to touch the handle and to open the door. If you look to such an adorable personality this way, you have understood the feeling approximately which also Christianity means if it says that one should become like the little children to participate in the kingdom of God. It depends not so much on whether that to whom the feeling is directed deserves it in full measure, but it depends on the fact that we have the ability to look up reverentially at something from our inside. This is the important aspect of admiration that you yourselves are drawn up to that at whom you look up. The feeling of admiration is the raising force, the magnetic force that pulls us up to the higher spheres of the supersensible life. This is the principle of the occult world that everybody who looks for higher life has to write into his soul as with golden letters. From this basic mood of the soul, the development has to begin. Without this feeling, one can generally attain nothing. Then that who looks for inner development must be clear in his mind that he does something tremendous concerning the human being. What he looks for is nothing more and nothing less than a new birth, namely in the proper sense. The higher soul of the human being should be born. As well as the human being was born with his first birth from deep inner reasons of existence as he came to the sunlight, somebody who looks for inner development steps out of the sunlight, out of that which he can experience in the sensory world, to a higher spiritual light. Something is born in him that rests in the usual human being, who represents the mother, as deeply as the child in the mother before it is born. Who is not aware of the far-reaching consequences of this fact does not know what is called occult or esoteric development. The higher soul that is deep in the whole human nature at first and is interwoven with it is got out. If the human being stands in the everyday life before us, his lower and higher natures are closely related, and this is a piece of luck in the everyday life. Somebody, who lives among us, would perhaps bring evil, bad qualities to light if he followed his lower nature, but within him, mixed with the lower nature, the higher one lives which keeps it in check. You can compare this mixture with a mixture of a yellow liquid and a blue one in a glass, resulting in a green liquid in which we can no longer distinguish yellow and blue. The lower nature is mixed with the higher one in the human being that way and both are not to be distinguished. As you can extract the blue liquid from the green liquid by chemical means, so that only the yellow fluid remains, and the uniform green is separated into a duality, in blue and yellow, you separate the lower nature from the higher one by means of the esoteric development. You pull the lower nature out of the body like the sword from the scabbard, which remains alone then for itself. This lower nature comes out in such a way that it appears almost nightmarish. When it was still mixed with the higher nature, nothing of it was to be noticed. Now, however, when it is separated, all evil, bad qualities come out. Human beings who had seemed benevolent before often become quarrelsome and envious. These qualities sat already in their lower nature, however, were controlled by the higher one. You can observe this with many people who are led on anomalous ways. The human being becomes a liar very easily when he enters the supersensible world. He easily loses the ability to distinguish true from wrong. It belongs inevitably to the esoteric training that the strictest training of the character is paralleled by it. What history tells of the saints as their temptations is not a legend but literal truth. Someone who wants to develop in any way to the higher world is easily exposed to this temptation if he has not developed the strength of character and the highest morality in himself to be able to hold down everything that approaches him. Not only that desire and passions grow, this is not even so much the case, but—and this seems miraculous at first—also the opportunities increase. Like by a miracle, opportunities of the evil, which were concealed to him before, lie in wait of someone who ascends to the higher world. In every fact of life, a demon lies in wait for him which tries to lead him astray. What he has not seen once, he sees now. The splitting of his nature conjures up such opportunities as it were everywhere from the secret sites of life. Therefore, the so-called white magic—that school of esoteric development which leads the human being to the higher worlds in good, real and true way—demands a particular development of character as essential. Every practical esoteric says to you that nobody should dare to pass that narrow gate—one calls the entrance to the esoteric development that way—without practicing these qualities repeatedly. They are a necessary pre-school of the esoteric life. The first ability that the human being must develop is to separate the unimportant from the significant, the transient from the imperishable on all his ways through life. One can demand this easily, but it is often difficult to carry it out. It is, as Goethe says, indeed, easy, however, the easy is difficult. Have a look, for example, at a plant or at a thing. You learn to recognise that everything has an important and an unimportant side and the human being mostly is interested in the unimportant, in the relation of the thing to him or in a subordinated quality. Someone who wants to become an esoteric has to get into the habit of seeing and looking for a being in everything. Seeing a watch, for example, he has to be interested in its principles. He must be able to disassemble it in the minutest detail and develop a feeling of its principles. Suppose further that a mineralogist looks at a rock crystal. He gets already by an external view to a significant knowledge of the crystal. However, the esoteric must take a stone in hand and can vividly feel what is indicated in the following monologue: in certain respect, you are below humanity, but in certain respect, you outrank humanity by far. You are below humanity because you cannot conceive ideas of human beings because you do not feel. You cannot imagine, you cannot think and you do not live, but you have something over humanity, you are chaste in yourself, you do not have any wish and desire. Every human being, every living being has wishes, cravings, desires; you do not have them. You are perfect and contented with that which was bestowed on you, a model for the human being with which he has still to connect his other qualities. If the esoteric can feel this rather deeply, he has grasped the significant that the stone can say to him. Thus, the human being can take something important from everything. If this has become a habit that he separates the significant from the unimportant, then he has appropriated another of the feelings, which the esoteric must have. Then he must connect his own life with the significant. The human beings are deceived in that in particular very easily in our time. The human beings believe very easily that the place on which they stand is not commensurate with them. How often are people inclined to say, my destiny has put me in a place in which I do not fit. I am, we say, for example, postal clerk. If I were put to another place, I could provide high ideas to the people; I could give great teachings and so on. The mistake of these human beings is that they do not connect their lives with the significant of their occupations. If you see anything significant in me because I can talk to the people here, you do not see the significant in your own life and occupation. If the postmen did not carry away the letters, the whole exchange of letters would come to a standstill, a lot of work, which has already been performed by others, would be in vain. Hence, everybody is of extraordinary importance for the whole on his post, and nobody is higher than the other is. Christ tried to indicate this the nicest in the downright marvellous way in the thirteenth chapter of the St. John's Gospel with the words: “a servant is not greater than his master, nor a messenger than the one who sent him” (13:16). These words were spoken, after the master had washed the disciples' feet. With it, he wanted to say, what would I be without my disciples? They must be there, so that I can be there in the world, and I have to pay tribute to them degrading myself before them and washing their feet.—This is one of the most significant hints to the feeling, which the esoteric must have towards the significant. One is not allowed to confuse the externally significant with the internally significant. One has to pay strict attention to that. Then we must develop a number of qualities. First, we have to become masters of our thoughts, of the chains of our thoughts in particular. One calls that the control of thoughts. Consider once how in the human soul the thoughts are bustling about, how they are wandering around aimlessly: here appears an impression, there another, and every single one changes the thought. It is not true that we control the thoughts; rather the thoughts control us completely. However, we must advance so far that we are engrossed in a certain thought during a certain time of the day and say to ourselves, no other thought is allowed to enter my soul and to control me.—With it, we ourselves lead the reins of the thought life for some time. The second quality is that we behave in a similar way to our actions, that is that we control our actions. It is necessary that we reach so far at least to commit such actions now and again to which we are caused by nothing that comes from outside. Nothing that is induced by our state, our occupation, and our position leads us deeper into the higher life. The higher life depends on such intimacies, for example that we make the decision to do something for the first time, something that arises from our very own initiative, and even if it is a quite unimportant fact. All other actions contribute nothing to the higher life. The following, the third quality is endurance. The human beings alternate between joy and grief, once they are on top of the sky, then they are down in the dumps. Thus, the human beings drift on the waves of life, of joy and grief. However, they have to attain equanimity, calmness. The biggest grief, the biggest joys must not confuse them, they must stand firm, get endurance. The fourth quality is the understanding of any being. What it means to understand any being is nowhere better expressed than in a legend about Christ Jesus, which has been preserved to us not in the Gospels, but in a Persian story. Jesus walked with his disciples overland, and they found a rotting dog on the way. The animal looked awkward. Jesus stopped and glanced admiring at it, saying, “However, what nice teeth has this animal.” Jesus spotted the beautiful of the awkward. Strive for approaching the marvellous everywhere in such a way, and then you see something in everything outdoors to which you can say yes. Make it like Christ who admired the beautiful teeth of the dead dog. This direction leads to great tolerance and to the understanding of anything and any being. The fifth quality is the complete impartiality towards everything new that faces us. Most people judge something new according to something old that they know already. If anybody comes to say anything to you, you immediately answer: I am of another opinion about that.—However, we are not allowed to confront a communication, which we get with our opinion immediately, we must be on the lookout for something new that we can learn. We can still learn something from a little child. Even if one is the wisest human being, he must be inclined to restrain his judgment and to listen to others. We must develop this ability of listening to anybody, because it enables us to face the things with maximal impartiality. In esotericism, one calls this “confidence,” and this is the strength to maintain the impressions, which the new makes on us, by that which we hold against it. The sixth quality is that which everybody receives by itself after he has developed the cited qualities. This is the inner harmony. The human being who has the other qualities has the inner harmony. Then it is also necessary that the human being who looks for the esoteric development has developed the feeling of freedom to the highest degree. This feeling of freedom which enables him to look for the centre of his being in himself and to stand firm on own feet so that he does not need to ask anybody what to do, but that he stands straight and acts freely. This is also something that one has to acquire. If the human being has developed these qualities in himself, he is above any danger that could cause the splitting of his nature in him. Then the qualities of his lower nature can no longer work on him, and then he can no longer lose his way. Hence, these qualities must develop very exactly. The esoteric life comes then whose expression causes a certain rhythmisation of life. The term rhythmisation of life expresses the corresponding ability. If you look at nature, you find a certain rhythm in it. You will consider it as a matter of course that the violet blossoms annually at the same time in the spring that the grain on the field, the grapes on the grapevine become ripe at the same time. This rhythmical succession of the phenomena is found everywhere outside in nature. Everywhere is rhythm; everywhere is repetition in regular sequence. If you go up to the higher beings which, you see this rhythmical sequence more and more decreasing. You also see with the animal, still in a higher degree, all qualities rhythmically arranged. At certain time of the year, the animal gets particular functions and abilities. The higher the being is developed, the more life is given in own hands of the being, the more this rhythm ceases. You must know that the human body is only one of the members of his being. Then the etheric body comes, the astral body, and finally, the higher members, which form the basis of those. The physical body is highly subject to the rhythm to which the entire external nature is subjected. As the plant life and animal life proceed in their external form rhythmically, the life of the physical body proceeds. The heart beats rhythmically, the lung breathes rhythmically and so on. Everything proceeds so rhythmically because it is ordered by higher powers, by the wisdom of the world, by that which the scriptures call the Holy Spirit. The higher bodies, and in particular the astral body, are left, I would like to say, by these higher spiritual powers in a certain way and have lost their rhythm. Can you deny that your activity is irregular concerning wishes, desires, and passions that it cannot be compared with the regularity that prevails in the physical body? Who learns the rhythm of the physical nature finds the model of spirituality in it. If you look at the heart, this marvellous organ with the regular beat and its implanted wisdom, and compare it to the desires and passions of the astral body that release all possible actions against the heart, then you recognise how disadvantageously the passion works on its regular way. However, the functions of the astral body must become as rhythmical as the performances of the physical body are. I want to state something that will seem absurd to most people, namely concerning the fasting. We have completely lost the consciousness of the importance of fasting. However, from the point of view of the rhythmisation of our astral body, fasting is something exceptionally meaningful. What is fasting? It means to control the desire of eating and to eliminate the astral body concerning the desire of eating. He who fasts eliminates the astral body and has no appetite. This is in such a way, as if you switch off a force in a machine. Then the astral body sleeps, and the rhythms of the physical body and its implanted wisdom work on the astral body and make it rhythmic. As well as the seal is imprinted by a signet, the harmony of the physical body is imprinted in the astral body and it would be transmitted much more permanently if it were not always made irregular by the desires, passions and wishes, also by spiritual desires and wishes. The modern human being needs more than in former times to bring in rhythm to his entire higher life. Just as God planted rhythm into the physical body, the human being must make his astral body rhythmic. The human being must dictate the course of the day to himself; arrange it for the astral body in such a way as the spirit of nature arranges it for the lower realms. Early in the morning, at a particular time, one must do a spiritual exercise, at another time, which must be again observed strictly, another exercise, in the evening another exercise again. These spiritual exercises must not be chosen arbitrarily, but must be suitable to the continuing development of the higher life. This is a kind to take charge of life and to control it. Determine an hour in the morning where you concentrate. You must observe this hour. There you have to produce a kind of calm, so that the great esoteric master can wake in you. There you have to meditate on big contents of thought, which have nothing to do with the outside world, and to liven these contents of thought up in you. A short time is enough, maybe a quarter of an hour, even five minutes if one does not have more time. However, it is worthless and useless if one exercises irregularly. If one exercises regularly, so that the activity of the astral body becomes regular like a clock, then these exercises have value. The astral body gets another appearance if you exercise regularly. Sit down in the morning and exercise; the forces develop which I described to you. However, it must happen regularly because the astral body expects that the same is carried out with it at the same time, and it gets into a mess if it does not happen. One must have a mind to exercise regularly at least. If you make your life rhythmic in such a way, you perceive the results in not too long a time, namely the spiritual life, which is hidden to the human being at first, becomes apparent to some extent. As a rule, the human life changes between four states. The first state is the perception of the outside world. You look with the senses and perceive the outside world. The second state is that which we can call imagination which is somewhat related to the dream life, even belongs to it. There the human being is rooted not in the surroundings, but is detached from them, there he has no realities before him, memories at the most. The third state is the dreamless sleep. There the human being has no consciousness of his ego, and the fourth state is that in which the human being lives in his memory. This is different from perception; this is something abstract, spiritual. Had the human being no memory, he could not get any spiritual development generally. Inner life starts developing by means of tranquillity and meditation. The human being notices then eventually that he is no longer dreaming chaotically, but that he dreams in extremely significant way and that to him strange things manifest, which he recognises gradually as manifestations of spiritual truths. Of course, one can easily raise the trivial objection: all that is just dreamt, what does this concern to us?—However, if anybody invented the dirigible airship in his dreams and carried out it, this dream would just have revealed the truth. Thus, an idea can be grasped still in a way different from the usual, and then the truth of it must be found in the realisation. We have to be convinced of its inner truth from the outside. The next stage of the spiritual life is that where we grasp truth using our own qualities and direct our dreams consciously. If we start directing the dreams regularly, we are on that level where truth becomes transparent to us. One calls the first stage the material knowledge where the object must be there. The other stage is the imaginative knowledge. One develops this by meditating, organising life rhythmically. It is laborious to gain it. If it is obtained, the time also comes when there is no longer any difference between the perception in the usual life and the perception in the supersensible. If we live among the things of the everyday life, in the sensuous world, and change our spiritual state, we experience the spiritual supersensible world perpetually if we have exercised enough in this way. This is the case, as soon as we are able to become blind and deaf compared with the sensory world, to remember nothing of the everyday life and still to have a spiritual life in us. Then our dream life starts becoming conscious. If we are able to pour something of it in our everyday life, then also that quality appears which makes the spiritual qualities of the beings round us perceptible. Then we do no longer see the outside of the things only, but then we also see the inside, the concealed essence of the things, the plants, the animals, and the human beings. I know that most people say: these are other things.—This is quite right; these are always things quite unlike those, which the human being sees, who do not have such senses. The third state is usually completely empty, but starts to be animated if the continuity of consciousness occurs. The continuity comes completely by itself, and then the human being does no longer sleep unconsciously. He experiences the supersensible world during the time when he sleeps otherwise. What does sleep consist of, otherwise? The physical body lies in the bed and the astral body lives in the supersensible world. In this supersensible world, you are strolling. As a rule, the human being of the present disposition cannot go far away from his body. If anyone has now developed organs of the astral body, strolling during sleep, by the rules which spiritual science gives, he starts realising during sleep. The physical body would be blind and deaf if it had no eyes and ears, and the astral body that strolls at night is blind and deaf because it still has no eyes and ears. However, these develop by meditation; it is the means of forming its organs. This meditation must then be performed regularly. It is performed in such a way that the body of the human being is the mother and the spirit of the human being is the father. The body of the human being, as it stands physically before us, is in every member, which it shows to us, a mystery, namely in such a way that any member belongs in certain but concealed way to a part of the astral body. The esoteric knows these matters. He knows, for example, where to the point between the eyebrows belongs in the physical body. It belongs to a certain organ in the astral organism. While the spiritual scientist indicates how to direct your thoughts, feelings and sensations to the point between the eyebrows, you connect something that develops in the physical body with the corresponding part of the astral body and you get a certain sensation in your astral body. However, it must happen regularly, and one must know how. Then the astral body starts being structured. It develops from a lump to the organism in which the organs form. I have described the astral senses in the magazine Lucifer-Gnosis. One also calls them lotus flowers. These lotus flowers develop using certain formulae. If they have developed, the human being is able to perceive the spiritual world. This is the same world, which he enters when he walks through the gate of death. The saying by Hamlet is then wrecked that from that unknown land no traveller has come back. You can go or, better said, you can slip from the sensuous world into the supersensible world, and live here and there. This is no life in a cloud-cuckoo-land, but a life in that area which only makes the life in our area explicable and clear. As well as a usual human being who has not studied the principles of electricity goes into an electrically powered factory, sees the miraculous activities and does not understand them, he also does not understand the activities in the spiritual world. The ignorance of the visitor of this factory exists as long as he does not know the principles of electricity. Thus, the human being is also ignorant in the fields of the spiritual, as long as he does not know the principles of the spiritual. There is nothing in our world that does not depend on the spiritual world wherever one goes. Everything that surrounds us here is an external expression of the spiritual world. There is no material. Every material is compressed spirit. To somebody who looks into the spiritual world, the whole material, sensuous world, the world generally spiritualises itself. As the ice melts before the sun to water, everything sensuous melts to something spiritual before the soul, which looks into the spiritual world. The primal ground of the world reveals itself bit by bit before the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear. In reality, this life, which the human being gets to know in this way, is the spiritual life that the human being has already led inside perpetually about which he knows nothing because he does not know himself until he has developed the organs for the higher world. Imagine once that you would be a human being with the qualities, which you have now, however, you would have no senses. You would know nothing about the world round you, you would have no understanding of the physical body, and, nevertheless, you would belong to the physical world Thus, the human soul belongs to the spiritual world, however, it does not know it because it does not hear and see. As our body is taken from the forces and materials of the physical world, our soul is taken from the forces and materials of the spiritual world. We do not recognise ourselves in ourselves, but only in our surroundings. As true as you cannot see the heart and brain, without perceiving them with your fellow men by your senses—even with the help of the X-rays your eyes can only see the heart—, it is true that you cannot see or hear your own soul, without recognising them by the spiritual senses in the environment. You can recognise yourselves only by your environment. There is no inside knowledge in reality, no introspection, there is only a knowledge, a revelation by organs of the physical as well as of the spiritual life around us. We belong to the worlds around us, to the physical, astral, and spiritual worlds. We learn from the physical world, if we have physical organs and from the spiritual world, from all souls if we have soul organs, spiritual organs. There is no other knowledge than world knowledge. It is idle and empty tranquillity if the human being is brooding in himself and believes to be able to reach anything by mere introspection. The human being finds God in himself if he wakes the divine organs in himself and then finds his higher divine self in his environment, as he can only find his lower self in the surroundings using his eyes and ears. We understand ourselves as physical beings by the contact with the sensory world, and we understand ourselves in a spiritual respect while we develop spiritual senses in ourselves. Developing the inside means opening ourselves to the divine life in the outside world round us. You understand now why it is necessary that someone who ascends to the higher world experiences an infinite consolidation of his character first. The human being can get to know by himself at first how the world is because his senses are already opened. For a benevolent divine spirit that had seen and heard in the physical world stood beside the human being aeons ago, before he could see and hear, and opened his eyes and ears. Just from such beings, the human being has to learn to see spiritually, from the beings, which are already able to what he has to learn. We must have a guru who says to us how to develop our organs who says to us what he did to develop the organs. Who wants to instruct has to acquire a basic quality: absolute veracity, and this is also a main demand, which must be made on the student. Nobody is allowed to be trained as an esoteric, unless he has acquired this basic quality of absolute veracity before. Concerning the sensuous experiences, one can examine what is said. However, if I tell you anything of the spiritual world, you must have confidence because you are not yet so far that you can check it. Who wants to be a guru must have become so true that it is impossible for him to take such statements slightly with regard to the spiritual world and the spiritual life. The sensuous world immediately corrects the mistakes, which we do concerning this world, however, in the spiritual world, we must have that guideline in ourselves, we must be rigorously trained, so that we are not forced to control by the outside world, but have the control in ourselves. We can only acquire this control, while we appropriate the most rigorous veracity already here in the world. Therefore, the Theosophical Society also had to accept the principle: no law above truth, when it began revealing some elementary teachings of esotericism to the world. A few understand this principle. Most people are content with it if they can say to themselves, I am aware that it is true, and if it is wrong, they say, I have erred. The esoteric is not allowed to insist on his subjective honesty. There he is on the wrong track. He must always comply with the facts in the outside world and he must regard an experience, which speaks against it as a mistake, as an error. The esoteric is no longer responsible or not. He must absolutely harmonise with the facts of life. He must start feeling responsible in the strictest sense of any statement, which he makes. Then one educates himself to the unconditional assurance that that must have for himself and others who wants to be a spiritual guide. Thus, you see that I had to indicate—we have to speak about this subject once again to add the higher parts—a number of qualities and procedures. They seem to you too intimate to speak about them with others, every soul has to sort them for itself and they may seem to you inappropriate to attain the great aim, which should be attained, namely the entrance of the supersensible world. That will absolutely arrive at the entrance who walks on the way, which I have characterised. When? About that, one of the most superior members of the theosophical movement, our long since deceased member Subba Rao (Tallapragada S. R., 1856-1890), appropriately expressed himself. He answered to the question, how long it lasts: seven years, maybe also seven times seven years, maybe also seven incarnations, maybe also only seven hours.—It completely depends on that which the person brings into life along with him. A person may face us, who is apparently quite silly who has brought a higher life along with him, which is concealed now and must only be got out. Today, most human beings are farther advanced in esoteric relation than it seems, and this would become known to many people if our material conditions and our material time did not strike back so much into the inner soul life. A big percentage of modern humanity advanced rather far in earlier times. It depends on different matters whether that which is in the human being comes out. However, one can give some help. Imagine that a human being faces me. In his former incarnation he was a far advanced individuality, however, he has an undeveloped brain now. An undeveloped brain may sometimes conceal great spiritual talents. However, if one teaches him the usual profane abilities, it is possible that also the inner spiritual ones come out. However, it does not depend only on this, but also on the surroundings in which the person lives. In quite significant way, the human being is a reflection of his surroundings. Assume that a human being is a highly developed personality, but lives in surroundings, which only wake and form certain prejudices in him that work so vigorously that the higher disposition cannot come out. If such a human being does not find anybody who gets out it, then it just remains concealed in him. I could only give you a few indications about that; however, we speak again about the other and deeper matters after Christmas. The one idea I wanted to wake is that the higher life develops not tumultuously but quite intimately, in the deepest soul, and that the great day when the soul awakes and enters the higher life really comes like the thief at night. The development of the higher life leads the human being into a new world, and after he has entered this new world, he sees the other side of existence, so to speak, then that presents itself to him, which was hidden to him before. Everybody should say that to himself, perhaps, not everybody is able to do this, maybe only a few are able. However, this should not discourage him from entering that way which at least is open to everybody to hear something of the higher worlds. The human being is destined to live in community, and who separates himself cannot get to spiritual life. However, it is a seclusion in the higher sense if I say, I do not believe this, this is not related to me, this may have validity for the other life; this does not apply to the esoteric. The esoteric has the principle to regard the other human beings as a revelation of his own higher self because he knows then that he has to find the others in himself. A subtle difference exists between both sentences “find the others in yourself” and “find yourself in the others.” That is in the higher sense: you are that. In the highest sense, it means, you recognise yourself in the world and understand the word of the poet, which I quoted some weeks ago in another connection: “Somebody was successful to lift the veil of the goddess of Sais.—But what did he see? He saw—miracle of miracles—his self!” You do not find true self-knowledge in your selfish inside but unselfishly in the world. |
| 157. Esoteric Development: The Three Decisions on the Path of Imaginative Cognition
02 Mar 1915, Berlin Translated by Gertrude Teutsch, Olin D. Wannamaker, Diane Tatum, Alice Wuslin |
|---|
| But one knows: whereas in physical life one is an Ego, adding one thought to another, in that other state one swims, as it were, in one thought and then over to another; one is united with the thoughts; then one is within a third and then swims away from it. |
| We now actually live and weave within the thoughts themselves. We know that the Ego is not dead, it is weaving in the web of thoughts, but although we are living within the thoughts, we cannot immediately be their master; the thoughts form themselves and we are drawn along with them. |
| 157. Esoteric Development: The Three Decisions on the Path of Imaginative Cognition
02 Mar 1915, Berlin Translated by Gertrude Teutsch, Olin D. Wannamaker, Diane Tatum, Alice Wuslin |
|---|
Translator Unknown, revised We will think first of those who are standing on the arena of present-day events (World War I)
And for those who as a consequence of these events have already passed through the Gate of Death:
And may the Spirit for whom we seek through spiritual knowledge, the Spirit who for the salvation of the earth and for the freedom and progress of humanity passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, may He be with you and your hard tasks. A week ago we considered souls nearly related to us who, if they are to be located now, must be sought in spiritual worlds. Certain things were said about these souls which can throw light upon the whereabouts of beings in the spiritual world. Today I propose to direct our study more to that path to the spiritual world which the human soul can take while it is still in the body, in order to find those spiritual realms referred to last time as the dwelling place of the souls of the so-called dead. It must be emphasized over and over that the way into the spiritual worlds that is suitable for souls of the present day requires manifold preparation. Some of this preparation is difficult, but it is necessary. Today I wish to point to certain matters connected with the path of knowledge from the point of view of what may be called “Imaginative Cognition.” It is very familiar to you, my dear friends, that the human soul can have experiences in the spiritual world only when it is not using the instrument of the body. Everything we can gain through the instrument of the body can yield only experiences of what is present in the physical world. If we wish to have experience of the spiritual worlds, we must find the possibility of working with the soul outside the physical body. Now although it is difficult, it is possible for the human being today to experience the spiritual world while outside the body. Moreover it is always possible, once observations of the spiritual world have been made, for another who is not himself capable of this to judge them with really sound human reason—not with the kind of reason that is called sound, but with reason that is genuinely sound. But today we are going to speak of the actual way in which the human soul on the one hand emerges from the physical body, and on the other hand how it enters the spiritual world. A week ago we spoke of this from another point of view and as today I want to consider it from the standpoint of Imaginative Cognition, many pictures will be discussed that will remain to be pursued in your meditations. If you do this, you will see that this path of knowledge is of great significance. The spiritual world can be entered, as it were, through three portals. The first may be called the Portal of Death, the second the Portal of the Elements, and the third the Portal of the Sun. Those who wish to tread the entire path of knowledge must pass through all three portals. The Portal of Death has from time immemorial been described by all mystery teachings. This Portal of Death can only be attained if we strive to reach it through what has long been known to us as meditation, that is to say, complete surrender and devotion to certain thoughts or perceptions which are suited to our individuality and which we place so entirely in the center of our consciousness that we identify ourselves wholly with them. Human effort, of course, weakens very easily along this particular path, because there truly are and must be inner hindrances and obstacles to be overcome. It is a matter of repeating, again and again, the silent inner efforts to devote oneself so completely to the given thoughts and perceptions that one forgets the whole world and lives wholly in these thoughts and perceptions. After constant repetition, however, one gradually begins to perceive that the thoughts that have been made the center of the consciousness are taking on a kind of independent life. One receives the feeling that, “Hitherto I have only ‘thought' this thought; I have placed it at the center of my consciousness; but now it is beginning to unfold a particular life and inner agility of its own.” It is as if one were in the position of being able to produce a real being within oneself. The thought begins to become an inner structure. It is an important moment when one notices that this thought or perception has a life of its own, so that one feels oneself to be the sheath of this thought, of this perception. One can then say to oneself: “My efforts have enabled me to provide a stage on which something is developing which now, through me, is coming to a particular life of its own.” This awakening, this enlivening of the thought, is a moment of great significance in the life of the meditator. He is then deeply stirred by the objective reality of the spiritual world; he realizes that the spiritual world, so to speak, is concerning itself with him, that it has approached him. Naturally, it is not a simple matter to reach this experience, for before doing so, one must go through various sensations that one would not, from one's own inclination, gladly go through. There is a certain feeling of isolation, for example, a feeling of loneliness to be undergone—a feeling of being forsaken. One cannot grasp the spiritual world without previously feeling forsaken by the physical world, without feeling that this physical world does many things which crush one, which wear one down. But we must come through this feeling of isolation to be able to bear the inner animation to which the thought awakens, to which it is born. Much resistance now confronts the human being; from within himself there is much resistance to what leads to true perception of this inner awakening of the thought to life. One feeling in particular comes—an inner feeling that we simply do not wish to have. We do not admit this, however, but say instead: “Oh, I can never attain that; it sends me to sleep; my thinking and inner elasticity forsake me, they will not continue.” In short, one chooses involuntarily all sorts of evasions of what one must experience: that the thought which thus becomes enlivened becomes substantial. It becomes substantial and forms itself into a kind of being. And then one has not merely the feeling but the vision that the thought is, at first, like a little rounded seed which germinates into a being with definite form, which from outside our head continues inside so that the thought seems to tell us: “You have identified yourself with it, you are within the thought, and now, you extend with the thought into your own head; but you are essentially still outside.” The thought takes on the form of a winged human head, flowing out into infinity and then extending into one's own body through the head. The thought, therefore, grows into a winged angel's head. One must actually achieve this. It is difficult to have this experience and we therefore like to believe that in this moment when the thought grows in this way, we lose all possibility of thinking. We believe we shall be taken at this moment. The body we have known hitherto and into which the thought extends is felt to be like an abandoned automaton. Besides, there are present in the spiritual world all kinds of hindrances which prevent this from becoming visible to us. This winged angel's head really becomes inwardly visible, but there are all conceivable hindrances preventing its becoming visible. The point thus reached is the real threshold of the spiritual world. When one reaches the point I have just described, one is actually on the threshold of the spiritual world. But there, at first quite invisible to one, stands the power whom we have always called Ahriman. One does not see him. And it is Ahriman who hinders us from seeing that which I have described as the germinating thought-being. Ahriman does not wish one to see it. He wants to hinder this. And because it is primarily on the path of meditation that one reaches this point, it always becomes easy for Ahriman to erase what one must come to, if one clings to the prejudices of the physical world. And truly, one must say: The human being does not believe how very much he clings to the prejudices of the physical world; neither can he imagine that there is another world whose laws are different from those of the physical world. I cannot mention today all the prejudices which people bring with them to the threshold of the spiritual world, but I will allude to one of the principal and more intimate prejudices. You see, people speak of the physical world from a monistic world view, from unity; they repeatedly say that they can only grasp the world by contemplating the whole world as a unity. We have sometimes had to go through curious experiences in this respect. When the spiritual scientific movement began in Berlin a good many years ago, with only a few members, there were several who felt they were not wholly in sympathy with it. One lady, for instance, came to us after a few months and said that spiritual science was not for her because it required too much thinking, and she found that thinking wiped out everything precious for her, making her fall into a kind of sleep; besides which, she said, there is only one thing of real value, and that is unity! The unity of the world which the monist seeks in so many areas—and not the materialistic monist alone—had become a fixed idea with her. Unity, unity, and again unity! That was her quest. In German culture we have the philosopher Leibnitz, an emphatically monadological thinker who did not seek for unity but for the many “Monads” who to him were essences of soul. It was clear to him that in the spiritual world there can be no question of unity but only of multiplicity. There are monists and pluralists. The monists speak only of unity and oppose the pluralists who speak of multiplicity. You see, however, the fact is that both unity and multiplicity are concepts which are of value only in the physical world, so people believe that they must be of value in the spiritual world as well. But that is not so. People must realize that although unity can be glimpsed, it must immediately be superseded for it reveals itself as multiplicity. It is unity and multiplicity at the same time. Nor can ordinary calculation, physical mathematics, be carried into the spiritual world. One of the very strongest and at the same time most subtle of Ahrimanic temptations is the desire to carry into the spiritual world, just as they are, concepts acquired in the physical world. We must approach the threshold without “bag or baggage,” without being weighed down with what we have learned in the physical world; we must be ready to leave all this at the threshold. All concepts—precisely those we have taken the most trouble to acquire—must be left behind and we must be prepared for the fact that in the spiritual world new concepts will be given; we will become aware of something entirely new. This clinging to what the physical world gives is extremely strong in the human being. He would like to take with him into the spiritual world what he has conquered in the physical. He must have the possibility, however, of standing before a completely clean slate, of standing before complete emptiness and of allowing himself to be guided only by the thoughts which then begin to come to life. This entrance into the spiritual world has been called fundamentally the Gate of Death, because it really is a greater death than even physical death. In physical death we are persuaded to lay aside the physical body; but on entering the spiritual world we must resolve to lay aside our concepts, our notions, and our ideas and allow our being to be built up anew. Now we confront the winged thought-being of which I have spoken. We already confront it if we really give all our effort to living in a thought. All we need to know then is that when the moment comes which makes claims upon us that are different from those we have imagined, we must really stand firm, we must not, as it were, retreat. This retreat is in most cases unconscious. We weaken, but the weakening is only the sign that we do not wish to lay bag and baggage aside. The whole soul, with everything it has acquired on the physical plane, must perish if it is to enter the spiritual world. That is why it is quite correct to call this portal the Portal of Death. And then we look through this winged thought-being as through a new spiritual eye that one acquires, or through a spiritual ear—for we also hear, we also feel—and by these means we become aware of what is present in the spiritual world. It is even possible, my dear friends, to speak of particular experiences which one can have upon entering the spiritual world. For one to be able to have these experiences, nothing else is necessary than perseverance in the meditation I have previously described. It is particularly important to be very clear that certain experiences that one brings to the threshold of the spiritual world must be laid aside before entering. Experiences have hence really shown that the spiritual world that confronts one is usually different from that which one would like to have. This then is the first portal: the Portal of Death. The second portal now is the Portal of the Elements. This Portal of the Elements will be the second one to be passed through by those who give themselves up to zealous meditation. But it is also possible for a man to encourage his own organization in such a way that he can actually reach the second portal without having passed through the first. This is not good for a real knowledge, but it may happen that one reaches this point without first going through the first portal. A real appropriate knowledge will only yield itself if one has passed through the first portal and then approached the second portal consciously. This second portal shows itself in the following way: You see, if a man has passed through the Portal of Death he feels himself at first to be in certain conditions which in their outward impression upon him resemble sleep, although inwardly they are quite different. Outwardly man is as though asleep while these conditions last. As soon as the thought begins to live, when it begins to stir and grow, the outer man is really as though he were asleep. He need not be lying down, he may be sitting, but he is as though asleep. Outwardly it is impossible to distinguish this state from sleep, but inwardly it is absolutely different. Not until one passes back into the normal condition of life does one realize: “I have not been asleep but I have been within the life of thought in just the same way as I am now awake in the physical world and looking with my eyes at what is around me.” But one also knows: “Now that I am awake, I think, I form thoughts, I connect them; but shortly before, when I was in that other state, the thoughts formed themselves. The one approached the other, explained the other, separated from the other; and what one usually does oneself in thinking was there done by itself.” But one knows: whereas in physical life one is an Ego, adding one thought to another, in that other state one swims, as it were, in one thought and then over to another; one is united with the thoughts; then one is within a third and then swims away from it. One has the feeling that space simply no longer exists. No longer is it the way it is in physical space, where if one had gone to a certain point and looked back and then went on further, and if one wished to return to the first point, then one would have to travel along the road again; one would have to make the journey both ways. That is not the case in that other state. Space is different there; one springs through space, so to speak. At one moment we are in one place, the next we are far away. We do not pass through space. The laws of space have ceased. We now actually live and weave within the thoughts themselves. We know that the Ego is not dead, it is weaving in the web of thoughts, but although we are living within the thoughts, we cannot immediately be their master; the thoughts form themselves and we are drawn along with them. We do not ourselves swim in the stream of thoughts but the thoughts take us on their shoulders, as it were, and carry us along. This state must also cease. And it ceases when we pass through the Portal of the Elements. Then the whole process becomes subject to our will, then we can follow a definite line of thought with intention. We then live in the whole life of thought with our will. This is again a moment of tremendous significance. For this reason I have even referred to it exoterically in public lectures by saying that the second stage is reached by identifying ourselves with our destiny. Thereby we acquire the power to be within the weaving thoughts with our own will. At first, when one has passed through the Portal of Death, one is in the spiritual world which does as it likes with one. One learns to act for oneself in the spiritual world by identifying oneself with one's destiny. This can only be achieved by degrees. Thoughts then acquire being which is identical with our own. The deeds of our being enter the spiritual world. But in order to achieve this in the right way one must pass through the second portal. When, with the power acquired from identifying oneself with destiny, one begins to weave in the thoughts in such a way that they do not carry one along as in a dream-picture but one is able to eliminate a thought and call up another—to manipulate them at will—when this begins one experiences what may be called the “passing through the portal.” And then the power of will we are now using shows itself as a simply fearful monster. This has been known for thousands of years in mysticism as the encounter with the “lion.” One must go through this encounter with the lion. In the life of feelings this gives rise to a dreadful fear, a fear of what is taking place in the world of thought, of this living union with it, and this fear must be overcome, just as the loneliness of the Portal of Death must be overcome. This fear can in the most manifold ways simulate other feelings that are not fear; but it is, in reality, fear of what one approaches. And what now occurs is that one finds the possibility of mastering this wild beast, this “lion” who meets us. In Imagination it actually appears as if it were opening wide its enormous jaws, wishing to devour us. The power of will which we want to use in the spiritual world threatens to devour us. One is incessantly overcome by the feeling; “You are obliged to will, but you must do something, you must seize something.” Yet concerning all these elements of will which one contains, one has the feeling: “If you seize it, it devours you, eradicates you from the world.” This is the experience of being devoured by the lion. So—and one can speak of this in pictures—rather than surrendering to the fear that the elements of will in the spiritual world will seize, devour, and strangle us, one must swing oneself to the back of the lion, grasp these elements of will, and make use of them for action. That is what must be done when this happens. You can now understand the essentials. If one has first passed through the Gates of Death, one is outside the body, and can only use the forces of will outside. One must insert oneself into the cosmic harmony. The forces that must be used outside the body are also within us, only they rule unconsciously. The forces that circulate our blood and make our hearts beat come from the spirituality into which we plunge when we immerse ourselves in the element of will. We have these forces within us. If, therefore, a man is taken possession of by the element of will without having gone through the prescribed esoteric path, without having passed through the Gate of Death, those forces seize him which otherwise circulate in his blood and beat in his heart; and then he does not use the forces that are outside his body but those that are within him. This would be “grey magic.” It would cause a man to seize the spiritual world with the forces with which one is not permitted to seize the spiritual world. What matters is that one sees the lion, that this monster is actually before one, and that one knows: This is what it looks like, this is how the forces of will desire to lay hold of one; they must be mastered from outside the body. If one does not approach the second portal or actually behold the lion, one remains always in danger of wanting to rule the world out of human egotism. That is why the true path of knowledge leads us first of all from within the physical body and physical existence and only then to approach the conditions that are to be arrived at with the essences which are outside. Opposing this there is the inclination of most people to enter the spiritual world by a more comfortable way than through true meditation. Thus it is possible, for example, to avoid the Gate of Death, and, if the inner predisposition is favorable, to approach the second portal. One can reach this through giving oneself up to a particular image, an especially fervent image which speaks about dissolving oneself in the Universal All and the like, recommended in good faith by certain pseudo-mystics. By this means the exertions of thinking are stupefied and the emotions are stimulated. The emotions are whipped into fiery enthusiasm. By this means one can, to begin with, certainly be admitted to the second portal and be given over to the forces of will, but one does not master the lion; one is devoured by the lion and the lion does with one what it likes. This means that fundamentally occult things are taking place, but in essence, they are egoistic. That is why it is constantly necessary—although one might say there is also a risk of this from the point of view of true esotericism today—not to censure that which one might say is only a mystical feeling and experience that is lashed into a fury. This appeal to what stimulates a man inwardly, whipping him out of his physical body but leaving him still connected with the forces of the blood and the heart, the physical forces of the blood and the heart, does undoubtedly bring about a kind of perception of the spiritual world which may also have much good in it; but it causes him to grope about insecurely in the spiritual world, and renders him incapable of distinguishing between egotism and altruism. This brings one directly, if one must stress this, to a difficult point, for with respect to real meditation and everything related to it, modern minds have for the most part fallen asleep. They do not like to exert their thinking as strongly as is necessary, if they are to identify themselves with the thinking. They far prefer to be told to give themselves in loving surrender to the Cosmic Spirit, or the like, where the emotions are whipped up and thinking is evaded. People are led in this way to spiritual perceptions, but without full consciousness of them, and then they are not able to distinguish whether the things they experience spring from egotism or not. Certainly enthusiasm in feeling and perception must run parallel to selfless meditation, but thought must also run parallel to it. Thinking must not be eliminated. Certain mystics, however, try to suppress thought altogether, and to surrender themselves wholly to the glow of frenzied emotion. Here too there is a difficult point, for this method is useful; those who stimulate their emotions go forward much more quickly. They enter the spiritual world and have all kinds of experiences—and that is what most people desire. The question with most people is not whether they are entering the spiritual world in the right way but only whether they are entering it at all. The uncertainty that arises here is that if we have not first passed through the Gate of Death but go directly to the Gate of the Elements, we are there prevented by Lucifer from really perceiving the lion, so that before we become aware of it, it devours us. The difficulty is that we are no longer able to distinguish between what is related to us and what is outside in the world. We learn to know spiritual beings, elemental spirits. One can learn to recognize a rich and extensive spiritual world, without having passed through the Gate of Death, but these are spiritual beings who for the most part have the task of maintaining the human blood circulation and the work of the human heart. Such beings are always around us in the spiritual, in the elemental world. They are spirits whose life-element is in the air, in the encircling warmth and also in the light; they also have their life-element in the music of the spheres, which is no longer physically perceptible; these spiritual beings weave and lace through everything that is living. Of course, then, we enter this world. And the thing becomes alluring because the most wonderful spiritual discoveries can be made in this world. If a man—who has not passed through the Gate of Death but has gone directly to the Portal of the Lion without seeing the lion—perceives an elementary spirit whose task is to maintain the activity of the heart, this elementary spirit, who also maintains the heart-activity of other people, may under certain circumstances bring information about other human beings, even about people of the past, or indeed prophetic tidings of the future. The experience may be accompanied with great success, yet it is not the right path because it does not make us free in our mobility in the spiritual world. The third portal that one must pass through is the Portal of the Sun. And there we must, when we reach this portal, undergo yet another experience. While we are at the Portal of Death, we perceive a winged angel's head; while we are at the Portal of the Elements, we perceive a lion; at the Portal of the Sun, we must perceive a dragon, a fierce dragon. And this fierce dragon we must truly perceive. But now Lucifer and Ahriman together try to make it imperceptible to our spiritual vision. If we do perceive it, however, we realize that in reality this fierce dragon has most fundamentally to do with ourselves, for he is woven out of those instincts and sensations which are related to what in ordinary life we call our “lowest nature.” This dragon comprises all the forces, for instance, that we use—if you will forgive the prosaic expression—for digestion and many other things. What provides us with the forces of digestion, and many other functions bound up with the lowest part of our nature, appears to us in the form of a dragon. We must contemplate him when he coils out of us. He is far from beautiful and it is therefore easy for Lucifer and Ahriman so to influence our subconscious life of soul that unconsciously we do not want to see this dragon. Into the dragon are also woven all our absurdities, all our vanities, our pride and self-seeking, as well as our basest instincts. If we do not contemplate the dragon at the Portal of the Sun—and it is called the Portal of the Sun because in the sun-forces live those forces from which the dragon is woven, and it is the sun-forces that enable us to digest and to carry out other organic processes (this occurs really through living together with the sun)—if we do not contemplate the dragon at the Portal of the Sun, he devours us and we become one with him in the spiritual world. We are then no longer distinct from the dragon, we actually are the dragon, who experiences in the spiritual world. This dragon may have very significant and, in a sense, grand experiences, experiences more fascinating than those which come at the Portal of Death or beyond it. The experiences one has at the Portal of Death are, to begin with, colorless, shadowlike, and intimate—so light and intimate that they may easily escape us, and we are not in the least inclined to be attentive enough to hold them fast. We must always exert ourselves to allow what easily comes to life in the thoughts to expand. It expands ultimately into a world, but long and energetic striving and work is necessary before this world appears as reality, permeated with color, sound, and life. For we must let these colorless and soundless forms take on life from infinity. If one discovers, for example, the simplest air or water spirit through what we may now call “head clairvoyance” (by which is meant the clairvoyance that arises from animation of thinking), this air or water spirit is at first something that flits away so lightly and fleetingly over the horizon of the spiritual world that it does not interest us at all. And if it is to have color or sound this must draw near it from the whole sphere of the cosmos. This happens, however, only after long inner effort. This occurs only through waiting until one is blessed. For just suppose—speaking pictorially—that you have one of these air spirits: if it is to approach in color, the color must stream into it from a mighty part of the cosmos. One must have the power to make the colors shine in. This power, however, can only be acquired, can only be won, by devotion. The radiating forces must pour in from without through devotion. But if we are one with the dragon we shall be inclined, when we see an air or water spirit, to ray out the forces which are within us, and precisely those which are in the organs usually called the “lower” organs. This is much easier. The head is in itself a perfect organ but in the astral body and etheric body of the head there is not much color because the colors are expended in forming, for example, the brain and especially the skull. When we approach the threshold of the spiritual world and in “head clairvoyance” draw the astral and etheric bodies out of the physical body, there is not much color in them. The colors have been expended to shape the perfected organ, the brain. When, however, in “belly clairvoyance” [“Bauchellsehen”] we draw the astral body and etheric body out of the organs of stomach, liver, gall-bladder, and so forth, the colors have not yet been as expended in building up perfected organs. These organs are only on the way to perfection. What comes from the astral body and etheric body of the stomach is beautifully colored; it gleams and glitters in all possible radiant colors; and if the etheric and astral bodies are drawn out of these organs, the forms seen are imbued with the most wonderful colors and sounds. So it could happen that someone may see wonderful things and sketch a picture with gorgeous coloring. This is certainly interesting, as it is also interesting for the anatomist to examine the spleen, liver, or intestines, and from the standpoint of science this is also indispensable. But when it is examined by someone very experienced, what appears in these beautifully colored pictures is that which underlies the process of digestion two hours after eating. There is certainly no objection to investigating these things. The anatomist must necessarily do so and the time will come when science will gain a great deal by knowing what the etheric body does when the stomach digests food. But we must be totally clear about this: if we do not connect this with our dragon, if we do not consciously approach the Portal of the Sun, if we are not aware that we summon into the dragon what is contained in the etheric and astral body of the belly, we then radiate it forth into picture-clairvoyance, and then we receive a truly wonderful world. The most beautiful and easiest of attainments does not at first come from the higher forces, from “head clairvoyance,” but from “belly clairvoyance.” It is most important to know this. From the point of view of the cosmos there is nothing vulgar in an absolute sense, but only in a relative sense. In order to produce what is necessary for the process of digestion in man the cosmos has to work with forces of colossal significance. What matters is that we not succumb to errors or illusions but know what the things are. When we know that something which looks very wonderful is nothing other than the process of digestion, this is extremely important. But if we believe that some celestial world is being revealed by such a picture, then we are falling into error. An intelligent person will have no objection to the cultivation of science based on such knowledge, but only to things being put in a false light. This is what we are concerned with. Thus it can happen, for instance, that someone will always at a certain moment draw out the etheric and astral bodies directly through an occurrence within the digestive processes, at a certain stage of digestion. Such a man may be a natural clairvoyant. One must only know what we are concerned with. Through “head clairvoyance,” where all the colors of the etheric and astral bodies are used for the production of the wonderful structure of the brain, it will be difficult for a man to fill what is colorless and soundless with colors and sounds. But with “belly clairvoyance” it will be comparatively easy to see the most wonderful things in the world. In this kind of clairvoyance, of course, also lie forces which a man must learn to use. The forces used in digestion are involved in a process of transformation and we experience them in the right way when we learn more and more to cultivate the identification with destiny. And this is also the ground from which we learn: that which at first appeared as a flying angel's head we must trace again to the other element that we have dealt with, so that we do not trace only the forces which serve digestion, but also those of a higher kind, those which lie within the sphere of our karma, our destiny. If we identify ourselves with it, we succeed in bearing forth the spiritual entities we see around us, which now have the inclination towards colors and sounds flowing in from cosmic space. The spiritual world then naturally becomes concrete and full of stability, truly so concrete that we fare there as well as we fare in the physical world. One great difficulty at the Portal of Death is that we really have the feeling—and we must overcome it—I am essentially losing myself. But if one has stretched oneself and has identified oneself with the life of thought, one may at the same time have the consciousness, “I lose myself but I find myself again.” That is an experience that one has. One loses oneself on entering the spiritual world, but one knows that one will find oneself again. One must make the transition: to reach the abyss, to lose oneself in it, but with trust that one shall find oneself again there. This is an experience that one must go through; all that I have described are inner experiences that one must go through. And one must come to know that what takes place in the soul is important. It is just as if we were obliged to see something; if one is shown the way by a friend, it is easier than if one thinks it out for oneself. But one can attain all that has been described if one submits oneself to constant inner work and inner self-control through meditation, as you will find described in the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment and in the second part of Occult Science, an Outline. It is of very great importance that we should learn to pass through these alien experiences beyond the threshold of the spiritual world. If, as is natural to the human being in his naked need, one is prone to imagine the spiritual world merely as a continuation, a duplication of the physical world, if one expects everything in the spiritual world to look just the same as in the physical world, then one cannot enter. One must really go through what one experiences as a reversal of everything experienced in the physical world. Here in the physical world one is accustomed, for example, to open one's eyes and see light, to receive impressions through the light. If one were to expect, in the spiritual world, that one could open a spiritual eye to receive impressions through the light, then one could not enter, for one's expectations would be false. Something like a fog would be woven around the spiritual senses, concealing the spiritual world as a mass of fog conceals a mountain. In the spiritual world, for instance, one cannot see objects illuminated by light; on the contrary, one must be very clear that one streams with the light oneself into the spiritual world. In the physical world, if a ray of light falls upon an object, one sees it; but in the spiritual world one is oneself within the ray of light and it is in this way that one touches the object. One knows oneself to be shimmering with the ray of light, in the spiritual world; one knows oneself to be within the streaming light. This knowledge can give an indication towards acquiring concepts capable of helping us onward in the spiritual world. It is, for instance, extremely useful to picture to ourselves: How would it be, if we were now within the sun? Because we are not within the sun we see objects illuminated by the sun's rays, by the refracted rays of the sun. But one must imagine oneself to be within the sun's rays and thus touching the objects. This “touching” is an experience in‘ the spiritual world; indeed, experience there consists in knowing that one is alive within that world. One knows that one is alive in the weaving of thoughts. As soon as this condition begins, that one knows one is conscious in the weaving of thoughts, then comes an immediate awareness of self-knowledge in the luminous streaming light. For thought is of the light. Thought weaves in the light. But one can experience this only when one is really immersed in the light, if one is within this weaving of thoughts. The human being has now reached a stage where he must acquire such concepts as these, so that he may not pass through the Gate of Death into the spiritual world and find himself in completely strange worlds. The “capital” given to man by the Gods at the primal beginning of the Earth has gradually been consumed. Human beings no longer bear with them through the Gate of Death the remains of an ancient heritage. They must now gradually acquire concepts in the physical world which, when they proceed through the Gate of Death, will serve after crossing to make visible to them the tempting, seductive, dangerous beings confronting one there. The fact that spiritual science must be communicated to humanity, must take shelter in humanity at the present time, is connected with these great cosmic relations. And one can observe already in our time, in our destiny-laden time, that crossings are really being created. Human beings are now passing through the Gate of Death in the prime of youth; in obedience to the great demands of destiny, they have, in a sense, consciously allowed death to approach them in the days of their youth. I do not mean now so much the moment before death on the battlefield, for instance. In those cases there may be a great deal of enthusiasm and so forth, so that the experience of death is not so saturated with as clear an attention as one would like to believe. But when the death has actually occurred, it leaves behind a still unspent etheric body, in our time it leaves behind a still unspent etheric body upon which the dead one can look, so that he now beholds this phenomenon, this fact of death, with much greater clarity than would be possible for him if it occurred as the result of illness or old age. Death on the battlefield is more intense, an event which works more powerfully in our time than a death occurring in other ways. It therefore works upon the soul which has passed through the Gate of Death as an enlightenment. Death is terrible, or at least may be terrible for the human being so long as he remains in the body. But when he has passed through the Gate of Death and looks back at death, death is then the most beautiful of all experiences possible in the human cosmos. For between death and a new birth this looking back to the entrance to the spiritual world through death is the most wonderful, the most beautiful, the most glorious event possible. While directly from our birth so little before our physical experience ever really remains—no man remembers his physical birth with the ordinary, undeveloped faculties—nevertheless the phenomenon of death is ever-present to the soul which has passed through the Gate of Death, from the moment of the sudden emergence of consciousness onwards. It is always present, yet it stands there as the most beautiful presence, as the “awakener.” Within the spiritual world, death is the most wonderful instructor, an instructor who can prove to the receptive soul that there is a spiritual world, because through its very being it destroys the physical, and from this destruction allows the spiritual to emerge. This resurrection of the spiritual, with the complete stripping off of the physical, is an event ever-present between death and a new birth. It is a sustaining, wonderful event, and the soul gradually grows in his understanding of it, grows in a totally unique way if it is to a certain extent “self-selected”—not, of course, in the sense of a man seeking his own death but by having voluntarily considered it. If he has of his own free will allowed death to come to him, this moment gains immensely in lucidity. And a man who has not hitherto thought much about death or has concerned himself little with the spiritual world, may in our time receive in his death a wonderful instructor. This is a fact of great significance, precisely in this war, regarding the connection of the physical with the spiritual world. I have already stressed this in many lectures about this difficult time; but what can be done through mere teaching, through words, does not suffice. Yet great enlightenment is in store for mankind of the future because there have been so many deaths. They work upon the dead, and the dead, in their turn, set to work on the future development of culture in humanity. I am able to communicate to you directly certain words which came from one who in our day passed through the Gate of Death in his early years, who has, I would like to say, come through. These words are, precisely for that reason, rather startling, because they testify to the fact that the dead one—who experienced death with the particular clarity one feels on the battlefield—is finding now in these alien experiences after death how he works himself away from earthly conceptions into spiritual conceptions. I will communicate these words here. They are, if I may so characterize them, intercepted by someone who wanted to bring that which the dying soldier would if he were allowed to return.
This was to a certain extent what the suffering soul had learned from looking back to his death, the learning he had experienced. It was as though his being were filled with what must be learned from the sight of death, and he wished to give this information, to reveal it.
Therefore he feels that he is more alive to grasping the spiritual world than he was before death. He feels death as an awakener, an instructor:
And now he feels that he will be a doer in the spiritual world:
but he feels that this action is that of the forces of light within him, and he feels the light working within him:
One can see everywhere, can rightly see, that what one can come to perceive in the spiritual world can again and again deliver the most pure confirmation of what can become universally familiar through the form of knowledge called Imagination. This is what we should so like to see resuscitated, rightly resuscitated, through our spiritual scientific movement; that we have not to do with just a naked knowledge of the spiritual world, but that this knowledge becomes so alive in us that we adopt another way of feeling with the world, of experiencing with the world, so that the idea of spiritual science begins to live in us. It is this inward enlivening of the thoughts of spiritual science which, as I have repeatedly said, will be fundamentally demanded of us, so that it can be our contribution to the evolution of the world. This must be done in order that the thoughts born of spiritual science, which soar into the spiritual world as light forces, may unite with the radiant cosmos, in order that the cosmos may unite with that which those who have passed through the Gate of Death in our fateful times wish to incorporate into the spiritual movement of culture. Then will begin what is implied in these words with which we will again today conclude our lecture: From the courage of the fighters, |
| 74. The Redemption of Thinking (1956): Lecture III
24 May 1920, Dornach Translated by Alan P. Shepherd, Mildred Robertson Nicoll |
|---|
| Thus, Fichte wanted to get everything that Kant had determined as an illusory world or as a world of appearances from the real creative ego that he imagined, however, to be rooted in the being of the world. Fichte was urged to strive for a more intensive, to a more and more mystic experience of the soul to get beyond Kantianism. |
| You elated name, you do not have anything of flattery with yourself but strict submission” -, with the transformed ego which develops up into the sphere of spirituality and starts there loving virtue, and, therefore, practises virtue because it loves it out of individuality. |
| 74. The Redemption of Thinking (1956): Lecture III
24 May 1920, Dornach Translated by Alan P. Shepherd, Mildred Robertson Nicoll |
|---|
Yesterday at the end of the considerations about High Scholasticism, I attempted to point out that the most essential of a current of thought are problems that made themselves known in a particular way in the human being. They culminated in a certain yearning to understand: how does the human being attain that knowledge which is necessary for life, and how does this knowledge fit into that which controlled the minds in those days in social respect, how the knowledge does fit into the religious contents of the western church? The scholastics were concerned with the human individuality at first who was no longer able to carry up the intellectual life to concrete spiritual contents, as it still shone from that which had remained from Neo-Platonism, from the Areopagite and Scotus Eriugena. I have also already pointed to the fact that the impulses of High Scholasticism lived on in a way. However, they lived on in such a way that one may say, the problems themselves are big and immense, and the way in which one put them had a lasting effect. These should be just the contents of the today's consideration—the biggest problem, the relationship of the human being to the sensory and the spiritual realities, still continues to have an effect even if in quite changed methodical form and even if one does not note it, even if it has apparently taken on a quite different form. All that is still in the intellectual activities of the present, but substantially transformed by that which significant personalities have contributed to the European development in the philosophical area in the meantime. We also realise if we consider the Franciscan Monk Duns Scotus (~1266-1308) who taught in the beginning of the fourteenth century in Paris, later in Cologne, that as it were the problem becomes too big even for the excellent intellectual technique of scholasticism. Duns Scotus feels confronted with the question: how does the human soul live in the human-body? Thomas Aquinas still imagined that the soul worked on the totality of the bodily. So that the human being is only equipped indeed, if he enters into the physical-sensory existence, by the physical-bodily heredity with the vegetative forces, with the mineral forces and with the forces of sensory perceptivity that, however, without pre-existence the real intellect integrates into the human being which Aristotle called nous poietikos. This nous poietikos now soaks up as it were the whole mental—the vegetative mental, the animal mental—and intersperses the corporeality only to transform it in its sense in order to live on then immortal with that which it has obtained—after it had entered into the human body from eternal heights but without pre-existence—from this human body. Duns Scotus cannot imagine that the active intellect soaks up the entire human system of forces. He can only imagine that the human corporeality is something finished that in a certain independent way the vegetative and animal principles remain the entire life through, then it is taken off at death and that only the actually spiritual principle, the intellectus agens, goes over to immortality. Scotus cannot imagine like Thomas Aquinas that the whole body is interspersed with soul and spirit because to him the human mind had become something abstract, something that did no longer represent the spiritual world to him but that seemed to him to be gained only from consideration, from sense perception. He could no longer imagine that only in the universals, in the ideas that would be given which would prove reality. He became addicted to nominalism—as later his follower Ockham (William of O., ~1288-1347) did—to the view that ideas, as general concepts in the human being are only conceived from the sensory environment that it is, actually, only something that lives as names, as words in the human mind, I would like to say, for the sake of comfortable subsumption of existence. Briefly, he returned to nominalism. This is a significant fact, because one realises that nominalism, as it appeared, for example, with Roscelin of Compiègne—to whom even the Trinity disintegrated because of his nominalism-, is only interrupted by the intensive work of thought of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas and some others. Then the European humanity falls again back into nominalism which is incapable to grasp that which it has as ideas as spiritual reality, as something that lives in the human being and in a way in the things. The ideas become from realities straight away again names, mere empty abstractions. One realises which difficulties the European thinking had more and more if it put the question of knowledge. Since we human beings have to get knowledge from ideas—at least in the beginning of cognition. The big question has to arise repeatedly: how do the ideas provide reality? However, there is no possibility of an answer if the ideas appear only as names without reality. The ideas that were the last manifestations of a real spiritual world coming down from above to the ancient initiated Greeks became more and more abstract. We realise this process of abstracting, of equating the ideas with words increasing more and more if we pursue the development of western thinking. Single personalities outstand later, as for example Leibniz (Gottfried Wilhelm L., 1646-1716) who does not get involved in the question, how does one recognise by ideas, because he is quite traditionally still in the possession of a certain spiritual view and leads everything back to individual monads which are actually spiritual. Leibniz towers above the others, while he still has the courage to imagine the world as spiritual. Yes, the world is spiritual to him; it consists of nothing but spiritual beings. However, I would like to say what was to former times differentiated spiritual individualities are to Leibniz more or less gradually differentiated spiritual points, monads. The spiritual individuality is confirmed, but it is confirmed only in the form of the monad, in the form of a spiritual punctiform being. If we disregard Leibniz, we see, indeed, a strong struggle for certainty of the primal grounds of existence, but the incapacity everywhere at the same time to solve the nominalism problem. This becomes obvious with the thinker who is put rightly at the starting point of modern philosophy, Descartes (1596-1650) who lived in the beginning or in the first half of the seventeenth century. Everywhere in the history of philosophy one gets to know the real cornerstone of his philosophy with the proposition: cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore, I am.—One can note something of Augustine's pursuit in this proposition. Since Augustine struggles from that doubt of which I have spoken in the first talk, while he says to himself, I can doubt everything, but, the fact of doubting exists, and, nevertheless, I live, while I doubt. I can doubt that sensory things are round me, I can doubt that God exists that clouds are there that stars are there, but if I doubt, the doubt is there. I cannot doubt that which goes forward in my own soul. One can grasp a sure starting point there.—Descartes resumes this thought, I think, therefore, I am. Of course, with such things you expose yourself to serious misunderstandings if you are compelled to put something simple against something historically respected. It is still necessary. Descartes and many of his successors have in mind: if I have mental contents in my consciousness if I think, then one cannot deny the fact that I think; therefore, I am, therefore, my being is confirmed with my thinking. I am rooted as it were in the world being, while I have confirmed my being with my thinking. The modern philosophy begins with it as intellectualism, as rationalism that completely wants to work from the thinking and is in this respect only the echo of scholasticism. One realises two things with Descartes. First, one has to make a simple objection to him: do I understand my being because I think? Every night sleep proves the opposite.—This is just that simple objection which one has to make: we know every morning when we wake, we have existed from the evening up to the morning, but we have not thought. Thus, the proposition, I think, therefore, I am, is simply disproved. One has to make this simple objection, which is like the egg of Columbus, to a respected proposition that has found many supporters. However, the second question is, at which does Descartes aim philosophically? He aims no longer at vision, he aims no longer at receiving a world secret for the consciousness, and he is oriented in intellectualistic way. He asks, how do I attain certainty? How do I come out of doubt? How do I find out that things exist and that I myself exist?—It is no longer a material question, a question of the content-related result of world observation; it is a question of confirming knowledge. This question arises from the nominalism of the scholastics, which only Albert and Thomas had overcome for some time, which reappears after them straight away. Thus, that presents itself to the people which they have in their souls and to which they can attribute a name only to find a point somewhere in the soul from which they can get no worldview but the certainty that not everything is illusion, that they look at the world and look at something real, that they look into the soul and look at reality. In all that one can clearly perceive that to which I have pointed yesterday at the end, namely that the human individuality got to intellectualism, but did not yet feel the Christ problem in intellectualism. The Christ problem possibly appears to Augustine, while he still looks at the whole humanity. Christ dawns, I would like to say, in the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages; but He does not dawn with those who wanted to find Him with thinking only which is so necessary to the developing individuality, or with that which would arise to this thinking. This thinking appears in its original state in such a way that it emerges from the human soul that it rejects that which should just be the Christian or the core of the human being. It rejects the inner metamorphosis; it refuses to position itself to the cognitive life so that one would say to himself, yes, I think, I think about the world and myself at first. However, this thinking is not yet developed. This is the thinking after the Fall of Man. It has to tower above itself. It has to change; it has to raise itself into a higher sphere. Actually, this necessity appeared only once clearly in a thinker, in Spinoza (Benedictus Baruch S., 1632-1677), the successor of Descartes. With good reason, Spinoza made a deep impression on persons like Herder and Goethe. Since Spinoza understands this intellectualism in such a way that the human being gets finally to truth—which exists for Spinoza in a kind of intuition, while he changes the intellectual, does not stop at that which is there in the everyday life and in the usual scientific life. Spinoza just says to himself, by the development of thinking this thinking fills up again with spiritual contents.—We got to know in Plotinism, the spiritual world arises again to the thinking as it were if this thinking strives for the spirit. The spirit fulfils as intuition our thinking again. It is very interesting that just Spinoza says, we survey the world existence as it advances in spirit in its highest substance while we take up this spirit in the soul, while we rise with our thinking to intuition, while we are so intellectualistic on one side that we prove as one proves mathematically, but develop in proving at the same time and rise, so that the spirit can meet us.— If we rise in such a way, we also understand from this viewpoint the historical development of that what is contained in the development of humanity. It is strange to find the following sentence with a Jew, Spinoza, the highest revelation of the divine substance is given in Christ.—In Christ the intuition has become theophany, the incarnation of God, hence, Christ's voice is God's voice and the way of salvation.—The Jew Spinoza thinks that the human being can develop from his intellectualism in such a way that the spirit is coming up to meet him. If he can then turn to the Mystery of Golgotha, the fulfilment with spirit becomes not only intuition, that is appearance of the spirit by thinking, but it changes intuition into theophany, into the appearance of God himself. The human being faces God spiritually. One would like to say, Spinoza did not withhold that what he had suddenly realised, because this quotation proves that. It fulfils like a mood what he found out from the development of humanity this way; it fulfils his Ethics. Again, it devolves upon a receptive person. Therefore, one can realise that for somebody like Goethe who could read most certainly between the lines of the Ethics this book became principal. Nevertheless, these things do not want to be considered only in the abstract as one does normally in the history of philosophy; they want to be considered from the human viewpoint, and one must already look at that which shines from Spinozism into Goethe's soul. However, that which shines there only between the lines of Spinoza is something that did not become time dominating in the end but the incapacity to get beyond nominalism. Nominalism develops at first in such a way that one would like to say, the human being becomes more and more entangled in the thought: I live in something that cannot grasp the outside world, in something that is not able to go out from me to delve into the outside world and to take up something of the nature of the outside world.—That is why this mood that one is so alone in himself that one cannot get beyond himself and does not receive anything from the outside world appears already with Locke (John L., 1612-1704) in the seventeenth century. He says, what we perceive as colours, as tones in the outside world is no longer anything that leads us to the reality of the outside world; it is only the effect of the outside world on our senses, it is something with which we are entangled also in our own subjectivity.—This is one side of the matter. The other side of the matter is that with such spirits like Francis Bacon (1561-1626) nominalism becomes a quite pervasive worldview in the sixteenth, seventeenth centuries. For he says, one has to do away with the superstition that one considers that as reality which is only a name. There is reality only if we look out at the sensory world. The senses only deliver realities in the empiric knowledge.—Beside these realities, those realities do no longer play a scientific role for whose sake Albert and Thomas had designed their epistemology. The spiritual world had vanished to Bacon and changed into something that cannot emerge with scientific certainty from the inside of the human being. Only religious contents become that what is a spiritual world, which one should not touch with knowledge. Against it, one should attain knowledge only from outer observation and experiments. That continues this way up to Hume (David H., 1711-1776) in the eighteenth century to whom even the coherence of cause and effect is something that exists only in the human subjectivity that the human being adds only to the things habitually. One realises that nominalism, the heritage of scholasticism, presses like a nightmare on the human beings. The most important sign of this development is that scholasticism with its astuteness stands there that it originates in a time when that which is accessible to the intellect should be separated from the truths of a spiritual world. The scholastic had the task on one side to look at the truths of a spiritual world, which the religious contents deliver of course, the revelation contents of the church. On the other side, he had to look at that which can arise by own strength from human knowledge. The viewpoint of the scholastics missed changing that border which the time evolution would simply have necessitated. When Thomas and Albert had to develop their philosophy, there was still no scientific worldview. Galilei, Giordano Bruno, Copernicus, and Kepler had not yet worked; the intellectual view of the human being at the outer nature did not yet exist. There one did not have to deal with that which the human intellect can find from the depths of his soul, and which one gains from the outer sensory world. There one had to deal with that only which one has to find with the intellect from the depths of the soul in relation to the spiritual truths that the church had delivered, as they faced the human beings who could no longer rise by inner spiritual development to the real wisdoms who, however, realised them in the figure that the church had delivered, just simply as tradition, as contents of the scriptures and so on. Does there not arise the question: how do the intellectual contents relate—that which Albert and Thomas had developed as epistemology—to the contents of the scientific worldview? One would like to say, this is an unconscious struggle up to the nineteenth century. There we realise something very strange. We look back at the thirteenth century and see Albert and Thomas teaching humanity about the borders of intellectual knowledge compared with faith, with the contents of revelation. They show one by one: the contents of revelation are there, but they arise only up to a certain part of the human intellectual knowledge, they remain beyond this intellectual knowledge, there remains a world riddle to this knowledge.—We can enumerate these world riddles: the incarnation, the existence of the spirit in the sacrament of the altar and so on—they are beyond the border of human cognition. For Albert and Thomas it is in such a way that the human being is on the one side, the border of knowledge surrounds him as it were and he cannot behold into the spiritual world. This arises to the thirteenth century. Now we look at the nineteenth century. There we see a strange fact, too: during the seventies, at a famous meeting of naturalists in Leipzig, Emil Du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896) holds his impressive speech On the Borders of the Knowledge of Nature and shortly after about the Seven World Riddles. What has become there the question? (Steiner draws.) There is the human being, there is the border of knowledge; however, the material world is beyond this border, there are the atoms, there is that about which Du Bois-Reymond says, one does not know that which haunts as matter in space.—On this side of the border is that which develops in the human soul. Even if—compared to the imposing work of scholasticism—it is a trifle which faces us there, nevertheless, it is the true counterpart: there the question of the riddles of the spiritual world, here the question of the riddles of the material world; here the border between the human being and the atoms, there the border between the human being and the angels and God. We have to look into this period if we want to recognise what scholasticism entailed. There Kant's philosophy emerges, influenced by Hume, which influences the philosophers even today. After Kant's philosophy had taken a backseat, the German philosophers took the slogan in the sixties, back to Kant! Since that time an incalculable Kant literature was published, also numerous independent Kantian thinkers like Johannes Volkelt (1848-1930) and Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) appeared. Of course, we can characterise Kant only sketchily today. We want only to point to the essentials. I believe that someone who studies Kant really can understand him in such a way, as I tried to understand him in my booklet Truth and Science. Kant faces no question of the contents of the worldview with might and main in the end of the sixties and in the beginning of the seventies years of the eighteenth century, not anything that would have appeared in certain figures, pictures, concepts, ideas of the things with him, but he faces the formal question of knowledge: how do we get certainty of something in the outside world, of any existence in the outside world?—The question of certainty of knowledge torments Kant more than any contents of knowledge. I mean, one should even feel this if one deals with Kant's Critique that these are not the contents of knowledge, but that Kant strives for a principle of the certainty of knowledge. Nevertheless, read the Critique of Pure Reason, the Critique of Practical Reason, and realise—after the classical chapter about space and time—how he deals with the categories, one would like to say how he enumerates them purely pedantically in order to get a certain completeness. Really, the Critique of Pure Reason does not proceed in such a way, as with somebody who writes from sentence to sentence with lifeblood. To Kant the question is more important how the concepts relate to an outer reality than the contents of knowledge themselves. He pieces the contents together, so to speak, from everything that is delivered to him philosophically. He schematises, he systematises. However, everywhere the question appears, how does one get to such certainty, as it exists in mathematics? He gets to such certainty in a way which is strictly speaking nothing but a transformed and on top of that exceptionally concealed and disguised nominalism, which he expands also to the sensory forms, to space and time except the ideas, the universals. He says, that which we develop in our soul as contents of knowledge does not deal at all with something that we get out of the things. We put it on the things. We get out the whole form of our knowledge from ourselves. If we say, A is connected with B after the principle of causation, this principle of causation is only in us. We put it on A and B, on both contents of experience. We bring the causality into the things. With other words, as paradox this sounds, nevertheless, one has to say of these paradoxes, Kant searches a principle of certainty while he generally denies that we take the contents of our knowledge from the things, and states that we take them from ourselves and put them into the things. That is in other words, and this is just the paradox: we have truth because we ourselves make it; we have truth in the subject because we ourselves produce it. We bring truth only into the things. There you have the last consequence of nominalism. Scholasticism struggled with the universals, with the question: how does that live outdoors in the world what we take up in the ideas? It could not really solve the problem that would have become provisionally completely satisfactory. Kant says, well, the ideas are mere names, nomina. We form them only in ourselves, but we put them as names on the things; thereby they become reality. They may not be reality for long, but while I confront the things, I put the nomina into experience and make them realities, because experience must be in such a way as I dictate it with the nomina. Kantianism is in a way the extreme point of nominalism, in a way the extreme decline of western philosophy, the complete bankruptcy of the human being concerning his pursuit of truth, the desperation of getting truth anyhow from the things. Hence, the dictates: truth can only exist if we bring it into the things. Kant destroyed any objectivity, any possibility of the human being to submerge in the reality of the things. Kant destroyed any possible knowledge, any possible pursuit of truth, because truth cannot exist if it is created only in the subject. This is a consequence of scholasticism because it could not come into the other side where the other border arose which it had to overcome. Because the scientific age emerged and scholasticism did not carry out the volte-face to natural sciences, Kantianism appeared which took subjectivity as starting point and gave rise to the so-called postulates freedom, immortality, and the idea of God. We shall do the good, fulfil the categorical imperative, and then we must be able to do it. That is we must be free, but we are not able to do it, while we live here in the physical body. We reach perfection only, so that we can completely carry out the categorical imperative if we are beyond the body. That is why immortality must exist. However, we cannot yet realise that as human beings. A deity has to integrate that which is the contents of our action in the world—if we take pains of that what we have to do. That is why a deity must exist. Three religious postulates about which one cannot know how they are rooted in reality are that which Kant saved after his own remark: I had to remove knowledge to get place for faith.—Kant does not get place for religious contents in the sense of Thomas Aquinas, for traditional religious contents, but for abstract religious contents that just originate in the individual human being who dictates truth, that is appearance. With it, Kant becomes the executor of nominalism. He becomes the philosopher who denies the human being everything that this human being could have to submerge in any reality. Hence, Fichte, Schelling, and then Hegel immediately reacted against Kant. Thus, Fichte wanted to get everything that Kant had determined as an illusory world or as a world of appearances from the real creative ego that he imagined, however, to be rooted in the being of the world. Fichte was urged to strive for a more intensive, to a more and more mystic experience of the soul to get beyond Kantianism. He could not believe at all that Kant meant that which is included in his Critiques. In the beginning, with a certain philosophical naivety he believed that he drew the last consequence of Kant's philosophy. If one did not draw these last consequences, Fichte thought, one would have to believe that the strangest chance would have pieced this philosophy together but not a humanely thinking head. All that is beyond that which approaches with the emerging natural sciences that appear like a reaction just in the middle of the nineteenth century that strictly speaking understand nothing of philosophy, which degenerated, hence, with many thinkers into crass materialism. Thus, we realise how philosophy develops in the last third of the nineteenth century. We see this philosophical pursuit completely arriving at nullity, and then we realise how—from everything possible that one attaches to Kantianism and the like—one attempts to understand the essentials of the world. The Goethean worldview which would have been so significant if one had grasped it, got completely lost, actually, as a worldview of the nineteenth century, with the exception of those spirits who followed Schelling, Hegel and Fichte. Since in this Goethean worldview the beginning of that is contained which must originate from Thomism, only with the volte-face to natural sciences. Thomas could state only in the abstract that the mental-spiritual really works into the last activities of the human organs. In abstract form, Thomas Aquinas expressed that everything that lives in the human body is directed by the mental and must be recognised by the mental. Goethe started with the volte-face and made the first ground with his Theory of Colours, which people do not at all understand, and with his “morphology.” However, the complete fulfilment of Goetheanism is given only if one has spiritual science that clarifies the scientific facts by its own efforts. Some weeks ago, I tried here to explain how our spiritual science could be a corrective of natural sciences, we say, concerning the function of the heart. The mechanical-materialist view considers the heart as a pump that pushes the blood through the human body. However, it is quite the contrary. The blood circulation is something living—embryology can prove that precisely -, and it is set in motion by the internally moved blood. The heart takes the blood activity into the entire human individuality. The activity of the heart is a result of the blood activity, not vice versa. Thus, one can show concerning the single organs of the body how the comprehension of the human being as a spiritual being only explains his material existence. One can do something real in a way that Thomism had in mind in abstract form that said there, the spiritual-mental penetrates everything bodily. This becomes concrete knowledge. The Thomistic philosophy lives on as spiritual science in our present. I would like to insert a personal experience here. When I spoke in the Viennese Goethe Association about the topic Goethe as Father of a New Aesthetics, there was a very sophisticated Cistercian among the listeners. I explained how one has to imagine Goethe's idea of art, and this Cistercian, Father Wilhelm Neumann (1837-1919), professor at the theological faculty of the Vienna University, said something strange, you can find the origins of your talk already with Thomas Aquinas.—Nevertheless, it was interesting to me to hear from him who was well versed in Thomism that he felt that in Thomism is a kind of origin of that which I had said about the consequence of the Goethean worldview concerning aesthetics. One has already to say, the things, considered according to truth, appear absolutely different than they present themselves to the history of philosophy under the influence of an unconscious nominalistic worldview which goes back largely to Kant and the modern physiology. Thus, you would find many a thing if you referred to spiritual science. Read in my book The Riddles of the Soul which appeared some years ago how I tried there to divide the human being on the basis of thirty-year studies into three systems; how one system of the human physical body is associated with sense-perception and thinking, how the rhythmical system, breathing and heart activity, is associated with feeling, how metabolism is associated with the will. Everywhere I attempted to find the spiritual-mental in its creating in the physical. That is, I took the volte-face to natural sciences seriously. One tries to penetrate into the area of natural existence after the age of natural sciences, as before the age of scholasticism—we have realised it with the Areopagite and with Plotinus—one penetrated from the human knowledge into the spiritual area. One takes the Christ principle seriously as one would have taken the Christ principle seriously if one had said, the human thinking can change, so that it can penetrate if it casts off the original sin of the limits of knowledge and if it rises up by thinking free of sensuousness to the spiritual world—after the volte-face. What manifests as nature can be penetrated as the veil of physical existence. One penetrates beyond the limits of knowledge which a dualism assumed, as well as the scholastics drew the line at the other side. One penetrates into this material world and discovers that it is, actually, the spiritual one that behind the veil of nature no material atoms are in truth but spiritual beings. This shows how one thinks progressively about a further development of Thomism. Look for the most important psychological thoughts of Albert and Thomas in their abstractness. However, they did not penetrate into the human-bodily, so that they said how the mind or the soul work on the organs, but they already pointed to the fact that one has to imagine the whole human body as the result of the spiritual-mental. The continuation of this thought is the work to pursue the spiritual-mental down to the details of the bodily. Neither philosophy nor natural sciences do this, only spiritual science will do it, which does not shy away from applying the great thoughts like those of High Scholasticism to the views of nature of our time. However, for that an engagement with Kantianism was inevitable if the thing should scientifically persist. I tried this engagement with Kantianism first in my writings Truth and Science and Epistemology of Goethe's Worldview and, in the end, in my Philosophy of Freedom. Only quite briefly, I would like to defer to the basic idea of these books. These writings take their starting point from the fact that one cannot directly find truth in the world of sense perception. One realises in a way in which nominalism takes hold in the human soul how it can accept the wrong consequence of Kantianism, but how Kant did not realise that which was taken seriously in these books. This is that a consideration of the world of perception leads—if one does it quite objectively and thoroughly—to the conclusion: the world of perception is not a whole, it is something that we make a reality. In what way did the difficulty of nominalism originate? Where did the whole Kantianism originate? Because one takes the world of perception, and then the soul life puts the world of ideas upon it. Now one has the view, as if this world of ideas should depict the outer perception. However, the world of ideas is inside. What does this inner world of ideas deal with that which is there outdoors? Kant could answer this question only, while he said, so we just put the world of perception on the world of ideas, so we get truth. The thing is not in such a way. The thing is that—if we look at perception impartially—it is not complete, everywhere it is not concluded. I tried to prove this strictly at first in my book Truth and Science, then in my book Philosophy of Freedom. The perception is everywhere in such a way that it appears as something incomplete. While we are born in the world, we split the world. The thing is that we have the world contents here (Steiner draws). While we place ourselves as human beings in the world, we separate the world contents into a world of perception that appears to us from the outside and into the world of ideas that appears to us inside of our soul. Someone who regards this separation as an absolute one who simply says, there is the world, there I am cannot get over with his world of ideas to the world of perception. However, the case is this: I look at the world of perception; everywhere it is not complete in itself, something is absent everywhere. However, I myself have come with my whole being from the world to which also the world of perception belongs. There I look into myself: what I see by myself is just that which the world of perception does not have. I have to unite that which separated in two parts by my own existence. I create reality. Because I am born, appearance comes into being while that which is one separates into perception and the world of ideas. Because I live, I bring together two currents of reality. In my cognitive experience, I work the way up into reality. I would never have got to a consciousness if I had not split off the world of ideas from the world of perception while entering into the world. However, I would never find the bridge to the world if I did not combine the world of ideas that I have split off again with that which is not reality without the world of ideas. Kant searches reality only in the outer perception and does not guess that the other half of reality is just in that which we carry in ourselves. We have taken that which we carry as world of ideas in ourselves only from the outer reality. Now we have solved the problem of nominalism, because we do not put space, time, and ideas, which would be mere names, upon the outer perception, but now we give back the perception what we had taken from it when we entered into the sensory existence. Thus, we have the relationship of the human being to the spiritual world at first in a purely philosophical form. Someone is just overcoming Kantianism who takes up this basic idea of my Philosophy of Freedom, which the title of the writing Truth and Science already expresses: the fact that real science combines perception and the world of ideas and regards this combining as a real process. However, he is just coping with the problem which nominalism had produced which faced the separation into perception and the world of ideas powerlessly. One approaches this problem of individuality in the ethical area. Therefore, my Philosophy of Freedom became a philosophy of reality. While cognition is not only a formal act but also a process of reality, the moral action presents itself as an outflow of that which the individual experiences as intuition by moral imagination. The ethical individualism originates this way as I have shown in the second part of my Philosophy of Freedom. This individualism is based on the Christ impulse, even if I have not explicitly said that in my Philosophy of Freedom. It is based on that which the human being gains to himself as freedom while he changes the usual thinking into that which I have called pure thinking in my Philosophy of Freedom which rises to the spiritual world and gets out the impulses of moral actions while something that is bound, otherwise, to the human physical body, the impulse of love, is spiritualised. While the moral ideals are borrowed from the spiritual world by moral imagination, they become the force of spiritual love. Hence, the Philosophy of Freedom had to counter Kant's philistine principle—“Duty! You elated name, you do not have anything of flattery with yourself but strict submission” -, with the transformed ego which develops up into the sphere of spirituality and starts there loving virtue, and, therefore, practises virtue because it loves it out of individuality. Thus, that which remained mere religious contents to Kant made itself out to be real world contents. Since to Kant knowledge is something formal, something real to the Philosophy of Freedom. A real process goes forward. Hence, the higher morality is also tied together with it to a reality, which philosophers of values like Windelband (Wilhelm, 1845-1915) and Rickert (Heinrich R., 1863-1936) do not at all reach. Since they do not find out for themselves how that which is morally valuable is rooted in the world. Of course, those people who do not regard the process of cognition as a real process do not get to rooting morality in the world of reality; they generally get to no philosophy of reality. From the philosophical development of western philosophy, spiritual science was got out, actually. Today I attempted to show that that Cistercian father heard not quite inaccurately that really the attempt is taken to put the realistic elements of High Scholasticism with spiritual science in our scientific age, how one was serious about the change of the human soul, about the fulfilment of the human soul with the Christ impulse also in the intellectual life. Knowledge is made a real factor in world evolution that takes place only on the scene of the human consciousness as I have explained in my book Goethe's Worldview. However, these events in the world further the world and us within the world at the same time. There the problem of knowledge takes on another form. That which we experience changes spiritual-mentally in ourselves into a real development factor. There we are that which arises from knowledge. As magnetism works on the arrangement of filings of iron, that works in us what is reflected in us as knowledge. At the same time, it works as our design principle, then we recognise the immortal, the everlasting in ourselves, and we do no longer raise the issue of knowledge in only formal way. The issue of knowledge was always raised referring to Kant in such a way that one said to himself, how does the human being get around to regarding the inner world as an image of the outer world?—However, cognition is not at all there at first to create images of the outer world but to develop us, and it is an ancillary process that we depict the outside world. We let that flow together in the outside world in an ancillary process, which we have split off at our birth. It is exactly the same way with the modern issue of knowledge, as if anybody has wheat and investigates its nutritional effect if he wants to investigate the growth principle of wheat. Indeed, one may become a food chemist, but food chemistry does not recognise that which is working from the ear through the root, the stalk, and the leaves to the blossom and fruit. It explains something only that is added to the normal development of the wheat plant. Thus, there is a developmental current of spiritual life in us, which is concerned with our being to some extent as the plant develops from the root through the stalk and leaves to the blossom and the fruit, and from there again to the seed and the root. As that which we eat should not play any role with the explanation of the plant growth, the question of the epistemological value of that which lives in us as a developmental impulse must also not be the basis of a theory of knowledge, but it has to be clear that knowledge is a side effect of the work of the ideal in our human nature. There we get to the real of that which is ideal. It works in us. The wrong nominalism, Kantianism, originated only because one put the question of knowledge in such a way as food chemistry would put the question of the nature of wheat. Hence, one may say, not before we find out for ourselves what Thomism can be for the present, we see it originating in spiritual science in its figure for the twentieth century, and then it is back again as spiritual science. Then light is thrown on the question: how does this appear if now one comes and says, compared with the present philosophy one has to go back to Thomas Aquinas, and to study him, at most with some critical explanations and something else that he wrote in the thirteenth century?—There we realise, what it means, to project our thoughts in honest and frank way in the development current that takes High Scholasticism as starting point, and what it means to carry back our mind to this thirteenth century surveying the entire European development since the thirteenth century. This resulted from the encyclical Aeterni patris of 1879 that asks the Catholic clerics to regard the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas as the official philosophy of the Catholic Church. I do not want to discuss the question here: where is Thomism? Since one would have to discuss the question: do I look best at the rose that I face there if I disregard the blossom and dig into the earth to look at the roots and check as to whether something has already originated from the root. Now, you yourselves can imagine all that. We experience what asserts itself among us as a renewal of that Thomism, as it existed in the thirteenth century, beside that which wants to take part honestly in the development of the European West. We may ask on the other hand, where does Thomism live in the present? You need only to put the question: how did Thomas Aquinas himself behave to the revelation contents? He tried to get a relationship to them. We have the necessity to get a relationship to the contents of physical manifestation. We cannot stop at dogmatics. One has to overcome the “dogma of experience” as on the other side one has to overcome the dogma of revelation. There we have really to make recourse to the world of ideas that receives the transforming Christ principle to find again our world of ideas, the spiritual world with Christ in us. Should the world of ideas remain separated? Should the world of ideas not participate in redemption? In the thirteenth century, one could not yet find the Christian principle of redemption in the world of ideas; therefore, one set it against the world of revelation. This must become the progress of humanity for the future that not only for the outer world the redemption principle is found, but also for the human intellect. The unreleased human reason only could not rise in the spiritual world. The released human intellect that has the real relationship to Christ penetrates into the spiritual world. From this viewpoint, Christianity of the twentieth century is penetrating into the spiritual world, so that it deeply penetrates into the thinking, into the soul life. This is no pantheism, this is Christianity taken seriously. Perhaps one may learn just from this consideration of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas—even if it got lost in abstract areas—that spiritual science takes the problems of the West seriously that it always wants to stand on the ground of the present. I know how many false things arise now. I could also imagine that now again one says, yes, he has often changed his skin; he turns to Thomism now because the things become risky.—Indeed, one called the priests of certain confessions snakes in ancient times. Snakes slough their skins. As well as the opponents understand skinning today, it is indeed a lie. Since I have shown today how you can find the philosophically conscientious groundwork of spiritual science in my first writings. Now I may point to two facts. In 1908, I held a talk about the philosophical development of the West in Stuttgart. In this talk, I did not feel compelled to point to the fact that possibly my discussion of Thomism displeased the Catholic clerics, because I did justice to Thomism, I emphasised its merits even with much clearer words than the Neo-Thomists, Kleutgen or others did. Hence, I did not find out for myself in those days that my praise of Thomism could be taken amiss by the Catholic clergy, and I said, if one speaks of scholasticism disparagingly, one is not branded heretical by the so-called free spirits. However, if one speaks, objectively about that, one is easily misunderstood because one often rests philosophically upon a misunderstood Thomism within the positive and just the most intolerant church movement. I did not fear at all to be attacked because of my praise of Thomism by the Catholic clergy, but by the so-called free spirits. It happened different, and people will say, we are the first whom he did a mischief. During these days, I have also pointed to my books that I wrote around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, among them also to a book that I dedicated to Ernst Haeckel, Worldviews and Approaches to Life in the Nineteenth Century. There I pointed to the fact that the modern thinking is not astute and logical; and that Neo-Scholasticism tried to rest upon the strictly logical of Thomism. I wrote: “These thinkers could really move in the world of ideas without imagining this world in unsubtle sensory-bodily form.” I spoke about the scholastics this way, and then I still spoke about the Catholic thinkers who had taken the study of scholasticism again: “The Catholic thinkers who try today to renew this art of thinking are absolutely worth to be considered in this respect. It will always have validity what one of them, the Jesuit father Joseph Kleutgen (1811-1889), says in his book An Apology of the Philosophy of the Past: “Two sentences form the basis of the different epistemologies which we have just repeated: the first one, that our reason ...” and so on. You realise, if the Jesuit Joseph Kleutgen did something meritorious, I acknowledged it in my book. However, this had the result that one said in those days that I myself was a disguised Jesuit. At that time, I was a disguised Jesuit; now you read in numerous writings, I am a Jew. I only wanted to mention this at the end. In any case, I do not believe that anybody can draw the conclusion from this consideration, that I have belittled Thomism. These considerations should show that the High Scholasticism of the thirteenth century was a climax of European intellectual development, and that the present time has reason to go into it. We can learn very much for deepening our thought life to overcome any nominalism, so that we find Christianity again by Christianising the ideas that penetrate into the spiritual being from which the human being must have originated, because only the consciousness of his spiritual origin can give him satisfaction. |
| 69e. The Humanities and the Future of Humanity: Spiritual Science and the Spiritual World: Outlook on the Goals of Our Time
03 Jan 1914, Leipzig |
|---|
| And anyone who has taken a little look at the inner life of humanity will often notice at least echoes of that unhealthiness of the inner life, or have heard of it, which consists in the human soul not being able to remember what it has experienced as if the experiences were its own experiences. We then speak of a split in the ego in the face of such an unhealthy inner life. It may happen to such a soul that things it has experienced itself, so to speak, belong to another self. This radical case is less common, but it does occur. However, the ego's full context, its continuity, is disturbed with regard to a clear insight into one's own past, and this happens more often. |
| 69e. The Humanities and the Future of Humanity: Spiritual Science and the Spiritual World: Outlook on the Goals of Our Time
03 Jan 1914, Leipzig |
|---|
Dear attendees! After having repeatedly spoken about various individual areas of spiritual science in this city over the past few years, allow me this evening to present some fundamental principles from the field of spiritual science to you, and then, in tomorrow's lecture, to present some of the consequences and benefits of spiritual science for practical and spiritual life. Spiritual science, as it is meant here, is by no means something that can be said to be popular or even recognized in wider circles in our present time. On the contrary, from the most diverse sides and points of view, one will have to hear again and again the most diverse objections of the opposition to this spiritual science. Wherever one wishes to advocate it, one must be prepared for the most diverse misunderstandings that are brought against it. As on previous occasions, I would like to take this opportunity to emphasize right at the outset that anyone who is grounded in this spiritual science will not be surprised, but will consider it quite natural, that the points of view from which we are starting here will meet with opponents and be misunderstood. Indeed, anyone who is familiar with this subject will be quite clear about the fact that, according to the habits of thought and imagination of the present time, according to the general, one might say generally recognized or believed, aims of our present time, this spiritual science must still find opponents for the time being. In this respect, it is no different from the one whose continuation for our time it seeks to be. However strange it may seem to some, it must be said that this spiritual science is the continuation of, or at least seeks to be, what has emerged with regard to nature through the newer natural science at the dawn of modern spiritual life. Just as in those days, by elevating and rising above traditional views and received ideas, one went directly to nature itself, so in our time spiritual science wants to go directly to the world of the spiritual, to the processes of the spiritual. And one can say: Nothing is more unfounded than when it is asserted from any quarter that spiritual science, as it is meant here, wants to be opposed to natural science. On the contrary, anyone who has a clear insight into spiritual science will fully recognize and correctly assess the significant advances and the great blessings that the scientific view and way of thinking have brought. Spiritual science cannot, as it were, follow the example of natural science in the realm of the spiritual, and apply the methods and way of thinking that are common in natural science, for the reason that a correct adherence to the natural scientific attitude requires something different for the study of the spiritual. But before I proceed to our actual consideration, I would like to explain how this spiritual science is the continuation of scientific thinking by means of a kind of parable. This parable is not intended to say anything in particular, but only to express the relationship between scientific progress and what spiritual science seeks to be. If we cast our soul's eye on the activity of the farmer who sows his grain at the appropriate time of year, we find that this grain rises, that by far the largest part of this grain is used for human nutrition. Only a small part of the sown seed is used to be returned to the element of the earth and to become grain again. So let me look at what scientific thinking has brought us over the centuries in the light of the demands of spiritual research. Science has brought us, one might say, a complete transformation of the face of our earth. It has intervened in all of human life, right down to our everyday lives. For all around us we can see the fruits of modern science. But in addition to all this, we also owe it an insight into the connections between world phenomena, into the realm of the senses, which mankind would hardly have dreamed of before. But we also owe it something else: a sum of ideas, concepts and perceptions has emerged; they have become established over the last three, especially the last century. People's minds had to come to terms with these ideas. They had to answer the often puzzling question: How can the soul come to a state of harmony within itself when it has to come to terms with the ideas and concepts that scientific thinking has brought forth, and with the feelings that follow from this scientific thinking? I would compare the new ideas, concepts and notions that have been instilled into our souls in just a few centuries with the relatively few seeds that are sown to bear fruit the following year; compared to what is used from the harvested fruits for human food. In the realm of scientific thinking, we can compare what is used for human nutrition with what is spread into our external cultural life, what is used for human benefit and for the knowledge of the connections in the sensory world. But what has been raised in new ideas, concepts and perceptions sinks into our soul, and is entrusted again to the element from which it emerged. We should live with this, and try to bring our innermost soul powers and soul harmony into connection with it. In contrast to this, we should ask: How is it possible to have security, hope and joy in our work in life? Not only what is given to us theoretically through scientific ideas and concepts should be considered, but also what the soul experiences through them. For it is precisely these scientific ideas, when used as indicated in the following consideration, that give the soul the most beautiful direction to the spirit through themselves. They lead the life of the soul directly into the realm of the spirit. Although this is a result of life for all those who have studied spiritual science as it is meant here, it must seem strange to those who have not done so when it is said that this spiritual science wants to be a true successor to natural science. For precisely because it enters the spiritual realm, the scientific method must take on a different form in order to remain true to the scientific spirit. And to bring this form to mind, I would like to compare spiritual science with spiritual chemistry, to make myself understood, with reference to the way it gains its results. Not that I want to say anything special with this comparison, but the comparison can lead us to understand what will be meant by the following remarks. If we have water in front of us, we cannot see what components it has in the sense of today's chemistry; that it consists of hydrogen and oxygen cannot be seen from the outside. With the means of chemistry, we can come to know: water has a completely different property, a completely different characteristic; it is liquid, it extinguishes fire. The hydrogen can burn itself, is gaseous. That this water contains something like hydrogen can only be known by separating this hydrogen from the water. In a very similar way, but with the help of spiritual methods, something must be done with the human being himself for the purpose of spiritual science. Just as he appears to us in the outer world, he cannot be recognized in his components, just as water cannot be recognized in its components. What the human being is in spirit and soul, what every soul longs to know, is bound to the body in ordinary life as hydrogen is bound to water, and cannot be recognized in its very nature within the body, just as hydrogen cannot be recognized in water. Now the methods by which we separate the spiritual and mental from the physical are not as robust, not directed towards handling in the sensory world as the chemical method by which hydrogen is separated from water. But that does not make them any less to be taken in a strictly scientific sense. These are methods that take place entirely within the life of the soul itself. They are delicate, subtle processes of the soul's life. It is not by external manipulations that one can arrive at the riddles of the spiritual life. The only instrument available to man to penetrate into the spiritual world is man himself, and that is his spiritual-soul life. How is it that we, hypothetically speaking, separate this spiritual-soul life from the physical life with which it is connected in everyday life? The methods used are not ones that resort to anything particularly miraculous; they are extensions of mental activities that every person is familiar with in their daily life; only these mental activities have to be extended into the realm of unlimited strength. But this requires a resignation, a devotion in the soul life, for which one must first prepare oneself. You can find a more detailed description of the method by which the soul can penetrate into the spiritual world in my books “The Secret Science in Outline” and “How to Know Higher Worlds?” To begin with, there is an activity of the soul that is familiar to everyone, that is needed in everyday life, that is needed for the health of the soul, and that is therefore applied by the soul in ordinary life. For the purposes of spiritual science, however, it must be intensified to an unlimited degree. It is what can be called: turning one's attention, one's interest, to something. We all know that in order to get along in life, in order to find our way in the world, we cannot just go along indifferently, but we have to turn our attention to the most diverse things. And the more we do this, the more it becomes, in our minds, our own, the more we carry a sign of it through our further life and have connected with it. And attention is intimately connected with another soul ability, the significance of which for life everyone must recognize, namely with what we call memory. And one can even say: in a sense, the question of a good memory in the human soul is the same question as that of the activity of attention. An object to which we only fleetingly turn our attention fades from our memory. An object to which we turn our attention, and repeatedly at that – repetition is often important – becomes our mental property. Everyone can see for themselves the importance of attention for memory in the most mundane of everyday life. Let me give you a trivial example: Who hasn't woken up in the morning and not found things that they put down the night before? If you practice it, let's say, not just putting your cufflinks down, but paying attention to the act of putting them down, linking the thought to it: Now I'm putting this object down - then tomorrow you will go straight to the place where you put the object down. That is, the power that inscribes in our memory what is to be inscribed, that is attention. And anyone who has taken a little look at the inner life of humanity will often notice at least echoes of that unhealthiness of the inner life, or have heard of it, which consists in the human soul not being able to remember what it has experienced as if the experiences were its own experiences. We then speak of a split in the ego in the face of such an unhealthy inner life. It may happen to such a soul that things it has experienced itself, so to speak, belong to another self. This radical case is less common, but it does occur. However, the ego's full context, its continuity, is disturbed with regard to a clear insight into one's own past, and this happens more often. This could be prevented if the good pedagogical principle were more introduced into life, to awaken attention, interest in what is going on as important in our environment, as in general the connection between attention and a healthy spiritual life should play the very greatest role in pedagogy. Thus we see that attention is something we need for our ordinary lives. The spiritual researcher must develop this attention, that is, the activity that is exercised by directing the soul power to a specific object, by drawing it away from other objects at that moment and concentrating it on a specific object. The soul researcher must develop this activity of the soul life, which and slight in everyday attention, to an unlimited strength; that is, he must take it upon himself to do such soul exercises again and again, which are an unlimited intensification of what would otherwise be active in the soul life as attention and interest. This is called, in a technical expression of spiritual science, the concentration of thinking or feeling. All soul forces can be concentrated again and again, drawn together to one point. This must be repeated again and again, because it often takes many, many years to make the soul a true instrument of spiritual research. To achieve this, one must repeatedly and repeatedly concentrate the soul forces on an idea or a feeling that one has moved into the center of one's soul life only through one's own will. It is best to draw into the soul life an image that one has really put together, for example, a symbolic image, a symbol; what one has borrowed from the outer life, to that one is too accustomed used to; a greater effort is required if one contracts one's mental life, all the forces that one otherwise disperses, to the mental processes, to an arbitrary compilation that one always returns to the center of one's mental life. In this way, a state gradually becomes possible for the human being, which allows his spiritual-soul, which is otherwise poured out into the physical-bodily, to be grasped by the same power that is concentrated there, and finally set free from the physical-bodily. There is no other way to be convinced in practice that there is really a second person in us, a spiritual-soul person, just as hydrogen is in water, if you do not grasp this soul-spiritual person by he is permeated by what is the unlimited amplification of the activity of ordinary attention, and in doing so, he is so strengthened in himself, this soul-spiritual human being, that he stands out from the physical-bodily. He is lifted out of the physical-bodily in this way, as hydrogen is lifted out of water through chemical processes. If everything that has now been discussed in principle is undertaken by the soul, as indicated in the books mentioned earlier, we can extract the spiritual-soul from the physical-bodily through purely soul-related activities. If this is really successful, then a great change occurs in the inner life of the person. One receives completely new inner concepts of life. One is seized, so to speak, by something within oneself, of which one had not even had a correct idea before. Above all, in this way one is brought to a certain concept, to an idea, with which one can now connect a sense of what it means to be outside one's body and yet still lead a fully conscious life; to be able to grasp oneself inwardly, to take hold of oneself inwardly, without doing so through the tools of the senses, through the physical tools of the brain. The next thing to happen to the spiritual researcher on the indicated path, when he has come far enough, is that a state comes over him that can only be compared in ordinary life to something that occurs involuntarily. The human being reaches a state in which, just as the external sensory world fades away when falling asleep, so too does this sensory world now, as it were, lift itself away from the human being, as it does when falling asleep. But the human being also experiences this: he feels his physical body passing over in complete calm, in complete inner serenity, and now fully consciously, as it otherwise happens unconsciously in sleep. Nothing of what can otherwise stir in the body through everyday activity then stirs. The human being, with his soul-spiritual, has emerged from the physical-bodily. For the first time, the human being now has an idea of what it means to face my body as I would otherwise face an external object. In ordinary life, one only has an idea of what it means to experience oneself when one is, as it were, inside one's body; in this way the body is connected to oneself; one relates to it quite differently than to other things. But now one's own body becomes an external object, which one faces as one used to face other external objects. But one does not face it as it appears to us physically as long as we use the tools of the physical world. How it appears to us, how we face this body, turns out to be a harrowing event that man can undergo on the way to spiritual research. What I am about to describe can be experienced in many different forms and in many different ways. In a small book, 'A Path to Self-Knowledge of Man', I have attempted to describe a typical form in which it can occur. From this description, one can get an idea of what the spiritual researcher has to experience at a certain stage. But, as I said, it is only a typical form, it can always be different. Let us say that a person is directly involved in their outer life, or even asleep during sleep. This event can occur during sleep or during wakefulness; it will never disturb the healthy life of the soul in any way if it happens correctly. In the midst of waking, in the midst of sleep while sleeping, in such a way that it is more than even the most vivid dream – it can overtake us, this event, so that we feel something like what [I] would like to express in the following words – one can only stammer what is experienced by the soul: What is happening to me? It is as if lightning, as if fire, were flashing through the air; as if the room in which I am were illuminated by lightning; as if my own body were being struck by lightning and destroyed by the elements. It is not just a matter of what I can describe in words, but of what kind of inner experience one has at this point in one's soul development. What matters is that one knows from now on: one has experienced in one's mind what it means to live in one's soul and spirit in such a way that one is lifted out of the physical body; that the image of the physical body presents itself to one. But it is an image that cannot help but represent the physical body in a state of destruction. And then you realize what you are actually experiencing when you can really immerse yourself in what you have felt. You come to realize: yes, when you are in the midst of life, your spiritual and soul self is indeed an independent being. But the way you experience everyday life is bound to your physical body. Throughout life - even science admits this - the spiritual and soul destroys the physical and bodily. From the moment we wake up in the morning until we fall asleep at night, we use our physical body as a tool for what arises in our soul, in our ideas and feelings. Fatigue expresses the destruction of the soul life. Sleep is the compensation. The fact that we experience the soul life depends on the fact that, basically, we carry out a continuous work of destruction on our body, which ends with death. This is evident from the image that shows us: the moment you become aware that your soul and spirit are independent and can emancipate themselves from the body, you experience your body as if it were destroying itself before you. Spiritual science – not as it should be considered in our time according to the scientific education that humanity has enjoyed for centuries, but as it has gone through the various epochs – spiritual science has always existed, only very few people have known about it. But those who knew about it also knew the harrowing moment in the spiritual researcher's life that I have just described, and they called it by saying the words: I have come to the gates of death. — That is, one has come to know in the image what death is; one has come to know how, in death, the spiritual-soul triumphs in its independence from the physical-bodily. From the point where one has experienced this, one knows what it means to live independently in one's spiritual-soul. One knows that this spiritual-soul life, in its separation from the bodily, is something that has completely different qualities from the bodily. But it is true in a certain way that what gives progress towards the spirit is linked to difficulties of the inner life; it can even become a kind of inner martyrdom. Above all, patience is needed to concentrate the soul's power in such a way that the soul-spiritual, emancipated from the physical, can grasp itself in its independence. I wanted to describe this to you as it happened because I do not want to speak in general terms, but because I want to tell of the living experiences of the spiritual researcher himself. From that moment on, you know what it means to live outside your body, especially in terms of thinking. You now associate a certain sense, a sense full of reality, with it when you say: I now know that I think, that I can form ideas not as in everyday life; I now know that I can form ideas with the soul that has left the brain, purely in a spiritual and mental way. And because I don't want to speak in general terms, I don't want to shy away from something that, when viewed superficially, can appear very vulnerable: in the moment when you have the described experience, you experience yourself in your thinking, which, for the moments when you leave your own body, is no longer tied to the brain; you feel as if you are living outside the brain, in the environment of the brain. And you know: if you want to think again as you do in everyday life, you have to submerge yourself in your brain again. You begin to see it as something external that you have to submerge into. One thing is necessary if you have progressed to this point. And what I will mention here as necessary can also refute the objections of those who do not know spiritual science and, from the point of view of today's science, would like to push what the spiritual researcher experiences into the category of hallucinations. They are talking about something they have no idea about. For it is precisely the spiritual researcher who knows how to distinguish at every moment what the difference is between a hallucination, an illusion and what he really experiences as something spiritual. In ordinary everyday life, too, it is no different than learning to distinguish reality from mere imagination through life itself. In ordinary life, one can easily distinguish the idea of a hot iron and the actual perception of a hot iron when one touches it. It is the same when you really immerse yourself in the spiritual world in the way described. But what is necessary is that you feel what you are experiencing now so inwardly, imbued with this inner strength, that you are immersed in it with your will. For let us not mistake: what one experiences as a world of ideas that is outside of the body must arise as an experience in such a way that one does not feel it at first as an external being, but one must feel it as one feels one's hand, one's foot, one's eye; one must feel it as a spiritual sense organ. You must first know exactly: what you have developed within you is a part of your spiritual-soul being; it is something within you that you must use in the same way as you would use your hand to grasp something or your eye to see by looking into it. In this way, one first develops the organs. One does something within oneself that is as subtle as a web of dreams in relation to external reality, but whose reality one experiences. One does something with one's spiritual-soul being; one is involved with one's will. One must experience something in the new being that one has drawn out of one's body, which one can describe as an inner play of facial expressions. Just as one is able to express one's thinking and feeling with the muscles of one's face, and to express one's soul experiences in one's gaze, so one must now develop the ability to have a clearly conscious inner handling of the spiritual-soul being that has been raised out of the body. One must be able to express oneself through this being. In short, one must have the feeling: In what you have made out of yourself, you are involved with the will. Not like in dreams; the dream presents images to us, but these images occur without our will. It is different when we bring ourselves, through genuine spiritual development, to experience something outside of our body. There we ourselves are the actors who make an image, which arises to the highest intensity, disappear, and bring it from one place to another. We are so immersed in this world of images that we can control it, that we can whirl it around. In the same way that we have become familiar with this through the exercises we have performed, which, after all, are basically only the training of our external attention to an unlimited degree of mental and spiritual concentration, we initially only manage to make ourselves mentally and spiritually independent beings. We do not yet perceive other spiritual processes and spiritual entities that are around us. In order to do that, we have to add other categories of exercises to those that fall under attention, so to speak, that are completely opposed to attention. But spiritual progress depends on not just practicing one-sidedly, but on alternately exerting our soul in practicing in one direction or the other. We have to do the most intense exercises in increasing our attention. But at the same time, we have to do inner exercises that are exactly the opposite. We must also do the opposite of what happens in ordinary life. For example, when a being loves another so devotedly that he feels absorbed in that being, or when any being is completely devoted to something that concerns him in prayer or in other religious sentiments. Devotion, which we also have in ordinary life, as we have attention, but again increased to infinity. We must really, quite arbitrarily, through a strong volition, bring about the suppression of all external sensory perception, as it otherwise only happens in sleep. One gradually acquires the ability to suppress, so to speak, everything that is necessary for everyday sensory life, right down to the involuntary muscles and other organic tools; completely, with the exclusion of what is ordinary sensory life, to devote himself with his soul to that which is most immediately presented by us as the Divine-Spiritual, which stands beyond all concepts, permeating and flowing through the world. In particular, we must try to suppress everything that otherwise occupies us in our judgment. We must accept the arbitrary faculty of everyday activity and, in the innermost serenity and devotion, live consciously of nothing but the expectation: What comes to you when you suppress everything arbitrary that otherwise made an impression on you, and when you are devoted to what you will come to know? This devotion must be increased to the point of infinity, then the moment will come when we can use what we have developed in terms of spiritual and mental being, emancipated from our self. Then the images that we have placed within us will become us in such a way that we connect spiritually with a spiritual world; but in such a way that we now connect with this world not passively, as in everyday life, but actively. In the everyday world, we are outside of an object that we look at. If we want to penetrate the spiritual world, we have to immerse ourselves in the object and merge with it, become one with it, as one as we were before only with our own soul. And just as we express through our facial expressions what lives in our soul, so it is when, after sufficient devotion, we immerse ourselves in a real, a spiritual world, that we recognize in it, that we live in the activity of our spiritual soul, that we express states of the spiritual world within us. We experience them through inner facial expressions, by immersing ourselves in the spiritual world, which we can only grasp by actively immersing ourselves in it. We have to acquire a spiritual facial expression in the spiritual world; we have to acquire the ability to express ourselves. Then we know that a spiritual world is always around us, just as, for example, the world of a language is also around a deaf-mute child, but he knows nothing about it; he does not get to this world of language, even though his speech organs are quite healthy. He is unable to imitate in speech what he does not hear, to express it in facial expressions. Just as the world of words is also around the deaf-mute child, so the world of spiritual entities and spiritual processes is always around every human being. And just as the human being only has to open up to the outside world and imitate the words in language, so the human being, as a spiritual and soul being, has to open up to the spiritual world through devotion in order to express through mimicry what he experiences, through the means he has cultivated within himself. For the spiritual world is only received through active engagement and not passively. What we do not experience in ourselves through the spiritual world, as if through an inner mimicry, cannot reveal itself to us. We must become one with the spiritual world so that we can develop the spiritual mimicry in what we are revealed, by immersing ourselves in the spiritual world. This mimicry then brings us to the awareness through our own experience: You are now experiencing conditions of the spiritual world. What I have described can be experienced by detaching the power of thought from the physical tool, from the brain. But there is another power in us that can be released from the physical tool, namely what is called the human power of speech, and, related to this, the power of memory. Both belong to the same kind of soul activity. Just as we have drawn our thinking out of the bodily tool, so we arrive, by continuing our exercises, at being able to grasp the spiritual-soul power by which we otherwise speak. When you think about me as I speak to you now, my spiritual-soul life is active. But this activity is first transmitted to the brain, then to the speech organs, and then to the air. First, it is a spiritual-soul force that then flows outwards. If, by continuing our intensified devotion, we succeed in excluding everything that is connected with speech in the body, but in developing in the soul and spirit that which is otherwise poured out into speech, if we succeed in doing so without speaking, even without making that inner, fine vibration, which even in ordinary thinking sounds like a soft, inaudible speaking, and which is also admitted by modern science, if we succeed in doing so, we exclude everything that is connected with speech in the body, but in the soul and spirit we develop that which is otherwise poured out into speech, if we thus leave the power of speech inwardly, if we inwardly leave that which is expressed in speech, then we can, through the power of our soul and spirit, make ourselves heard in the air. body is bound to speech, but in the spiritual and soul life, develop that which is otherwise poured into speech, so if one leaves the power of speech inwardly, if one is silent with regard to what is expressed in speech, but still applies the power inwardly, then one reaches a further stage in spiritual research. One reaches the point where one experiences not only that as something external, which one can call one's body; one now comes to recognize: You are an independent entity that can lift itself out of its inner soul life of everyday life. One separates oneself, just as one used to separate from the body, from what is ordinary thinking, feeling and imagining. And the same thing that you develop in speech, you also develop in memory, as you accumulate external stimuli and impressions in the course of your life. The soul power that inspires speech is active in memory. But now, when you experience yourself outside of your everyday mental life, you have another harrowing event. For now one experiences, as in a review, the whole past life up to the point where one can normally remember back, a point in childhood. What one has lived through comes to mind in distinct images, in ever clearer and clearer images, but not as one's ordinary memory is, but quite differently. I would like to explain this with an example. Let's assume we have done something morally objectionable. You look back on it. It appears in the picture and it shows you: By doing this, you have strayed from the true image of a human being that you are supposed to represent. That is how far you have fallen in becoming human. — It stands before you as a warning, so that you cannot say otherwise than: Until I have overcome, through a further life, through corresponding good actions, what I am overlooking here, I must always look at it when I experience myself outside of my own soul life. This is the case with good and bad, with all experiences that one has gone through. One's past life trails behind one like a comet's tail; but now so changed that it shows one what one has to do in order to balance out what should not have been done, and so that one can make appropriate use of what one has done in the world. The experiences of one's own life are grouped together in such a way that they become an externally complicated overall experience. It is permeated, as it were, by an inner power that one perceives, of which one is now aware: it was always in you, you just did not perceive it, the power to extinguish a deficiency; a real power, something that you have achieved as an ability to apply fruitfully. Now you get a full idea with inner reality: a plant develops from the soil. It unfolds leaf by leaf, draws its life together in a narrow germ. But in this germ, life is so concentrated that it contains the possibility of a new plant developing. Just as there is physical force in this seed, so we realize that, owing to what we have lived through and which we only recognize in its true form when we survey it, we have within us a force like a germinating power that must continue to work on the basis of what we have experienced. From now on you know: When death comes upon you, there is a spiritual-soul germ in you that passes through the gate of death and lives on, as surely as the germ of the plant lives on. An ever-victorious spiritual germ springs from your inner being. From that moment on you know: When your body falls away, your soul and spirit will pass through death into the spiritual world. When one studies a life that enters the world, a child's life, which basically represents the greatest mystery for the spiritual researcher, when one studies a child's life with this knowledge, or one's own childhood – because from now on one can look back further into one's life – or when one child, then it becomes clear to you how ability after ability unfolds in development, how the child's features become more and more defined, more and more certain, how talents emerge. It becomes clear to you: just as the plant grows from the germ, so what sprouts from the spiritual world comes out of it. It is the same thing that we recognized earlier as conquering death. It comes back into the world, and our spiritual and soul life develops out of what we have carried through death. Now we know what it means to repeat life on earth. We know that we live alternately; that we live between birth and death in a physical body, that we then pass through death and live in a spiritual world. We know that every birth means: something from the spiritual world descends and connects with what comes from the father and mother. It works through the fruits of a previous life, which project into this life in one's destiny. By emancipating the power of speech within us, by developing that which we waste in life, so to speak, in language, in special moments of practice within, so that it remains in the soul, we thus become immersed in the spiritual world in which we find ourselves, going from life to life, because we now experience not states but processes of the spiritual world. In this way we ascend from conditions to processes. In practice, the spiritual researcher first reaches out like a spiritual tentacle to grasp what is outside of him, where he had previously only perceived conditions. But now the spiritual researcher experiences that he, with his emancipated soul life, which has also taken in the power of speech, emerges completely from himself and immerses himself in the other beings in such a way that he knows: you are now moving from being to being in the spiritual world; you are immersing yourself in the spiritual world. Most of the time it will be like this: Until one has a complete skill in coming to an experience of conditions, one must try to give oneself so far; then one feels as if awakened to another state. In this way, one experiences events by really living them inwardly, by emerging and submerging with them. One could say that one now experiences events in the spiritual world not through inner facial expressions but through inner gestures. Just as one experiences events in the outer world through movement, so in the spiritual world one must take part in the movement; one must go along with the events. So you move up from inner facial expressions to inner gestures, and gradually you perceive not only conditions but also processes in the spiritual world. And finally, if you practice this more and more, if you really develop it systematically, as described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, if you continue with the two categories of inner practice, what falls under the category of attention and what falls under the category of devotion, we also call it concentration and meditation, then, my dear audience, then one finally arrives at a third, at a third, which I must hint at in the following way. Something is reserved for man – I know that this is open to criticism from the point of view of superficial external science, but it is nevertheless true; I just lack the time to prove it now, but it can be proved – man has an advantage over the other creatures on earth in that he actually only becomes himself in the course of life, compared to the beings that stand in the world as he does. For when we come into the world, we have to crawl on all fours. Other creatures, the animals, are not dependent on the outset, but they are different from the human being, they have incorporated forces that give them the position they should take in life. Man must rise in the course of life to that of which one can say: it actually makes him a human being in the physical sense. Again and again, great thinkers have pointed out what man is by rising from the ground and directing his face outwards. But man only makes himself into that by directing his willpower. He has an inner directing power through which he brings himself into alignment with the cosmos, through which he is human in the physical sense. This is what inner spiritual-soul forces are for. But in ordinary life they are poured entirely into the physical. Now, dear attendees, just as one can emancipate the power of thought from the physical body, so too can one emancipate the powers through which we first make ourselves human in the world in the physical sense. And just as one can allow what would otherwise pour out through speech to remain in the inner life of the soul, and thus arrive at an inner gesture, so one can inwardly emancipate the powers of uprightness through practice. Then, through the use of these inner forces, one comes to understand beings in the spiritual world that are different from human beings. The fact that we only know human beings in the physical world comes from the fact that we have used the forces that are the directing forces to make human beings what they are. If we practice emancipating these forces inwardly, we get to know beings that are somewhat different from human beings. This leads to an inner study of physiognomy. One imitates the forms of the other beings with which one then comes into contact. In short, one now enters into a living relationship with the spiritual world. One takes on the physiognomy of the beings with which one comes into contact. I would like to repeat what has been said: through inner mimicry one comes to states; through inner gesture one comes to processes; through inner physiognomy one comes to really get to know the spiritual world as such. I have tried to show you in real terms how true spiritual research becomes immersed in the spiritual world, how man really comes to grasp a spiritual world. Spiritual science is just as much a science as chemistry, physics and so on. What can be presented to humanity through this spiritual science needs to be accepted just as little on authority as the results of other sciences. Tomorrow I will describe how this spiritual science can become part of a person's life. When we consider the aims of our time, we may say to ourselves: precisely the great, the admirable progress of natural science has accustomed people to accepting what is to be accepted as true only when the truth is presented to them in such a way that they can remain passive. Every step in spiritual research, however, shows us that we have to actively familiarize ourselves with the spiritual world; that we first have to create the expression for what we want to perceive. Spiritual science is to natural science as activity is to passivity. One need only glance around at our contemporary circumstances to see that people are inclined to say: “That's fantasy!” if something does not confront them in such a way that they can remain passive. In this way, spiritual science is fundamentally opposed to the currents of the time. But on the other hand, it happens in life that where something has soared to the highest power, its opposite is done. For anyone who can search the souls of the present, it is quite clear that in the depths of the souls of people today there lives a longing to experience something of that activity through which man can also cognitively grasp his eternal, his immortal, his connection with the divine. It is only natural that on the one hand opposition after opposition is directed against spiritual science, because education in natural science has led to passivity. But in the depths of the soul there is a yearning, a yearning that awaits fulfillment. Many souls live in the present, unaware that their insecurity, their not knowing what to do with themselves, simply comes from the fact that they have the longing to come together with the spiritual, and that they cannot do so. They long for spiritual science. Therefore, one can say: No matter how much what appears on the surface to be approaching the souls is opposed to the aims of our time, in truth the souls long for the aims that spiritual science sets itself. One could show from many things that confront us in the present how man at the present time wants to be completely passively devoted to the outside world; how he wants to receive everything that he is to accept as true from outside. People are happy to go to a lecture that is advertised as including “slides”. No claim is made other than to surrender passively, to look, to receive sensations that are at most supported by words. It is different where a lecture without slides demands that one work in one's soul. And so it is basically in the broadest scope of our lives. After all, one thing has been able to take hold in our time: A very popular magazine recently published an essay that contains the following: the author has a respected name as a philosopher; he is also rightly admired for many things. I would also like to take this opportunity to mention that I always make it a point to only quote opponents that I can also respect; and I would like to mention a respected man to you now. But this man has come to a strange idea. He says: When you read Kant or Spinoza, it is difficult to read; the concepts are all over the place. But couldn't it be made easier? Today we have slides, film, and the cinema. You could show people Spinoza sitting there grinding lenses. That would be the first image. It transforms itself. The thought “substance” appears in his mind. The thought of substance appears. In the next image, “Thought and Expansion” and so on. Spinoza's “Ethics” - that is the name of the work I have just mentioned - it will be a nice future prospect to be able to walk past a movie theater and read on the posters: “Spinoza's Ethics” or “Kant's Critique of Pure Reason”. Dear attendees! I only mention such things because they grotesquely show you where the goals of our time are heading and how they are opposed to the goals of spiritual science, in which everything is activity in order to strengthen activity in the human being, to make the human being more and more independent and independent. The person who reprinted the aforementioned essay in his newspaper said that one would have to have great hopes if something like this could be realized; it would fulfill the metaphysical yearning of human beings. The spiritual researcher, however, cannot hope for this fulfillment. He must therefore accept being scolded for being “superficial” because he cannot hope for much from Spinoza's “Ethics” and Kant's “Critique of Pure Reason” in film. I need not go into the individual goals of our time any further; I need only present the general character of passivity that was bound to arise from it, because through the wonderful deepening of external life, man has become accustomed to being active in that to which he can add nothing. But the more people of the present time wrap themselves in such passivity, the more the longing will awaken for that activity of the soul through which man can feel himself as an eternal, as an independent, as a being independent of the body beings that conquers death because it has powers within itself that have nothing to do with birth and death, but that point back to earlier lives on earth and point forward to a later and eternal existence. I only wanted to characterize; I did not want to hint at the details of what I would like to call a glimpse into the future of human development. What is the purpose of this activity? We will look at tomorrow at what spiritual science is intended to be as a way of life. But what can it lead to? Now, let us take a look at the basic character of our time, at the world view that seeks to create a world picture only from materialistic-sensory facts. This is not very consistent, otherwise one would have to say: according to this world view, as it is beginning to emerge in the sense of a misunderstood Darwinism, the human being is said to have arisen purely, without any spiritual-soul element connecting to his physical body, which has arisen out of animality, man is supposed to have arisen out of animality; and the qualities of thinking, feeling and willing, the quality of religious deepening and so on, are supposed to be only an intensification of what appears at a lower level in animals. It is superficial to speak of living in a transitional period with regard to certain things. Every time is a transitional period. But one may say, and that is what matters: with regard to such things, this time is a transitional period. And I would like to ask your permission to suggest, perhaps somewhat grotesquely, but thereby particularly clearly, how spiritual science wants to relate to the goals of our time. We have only not been consistent enough, otherwise we could say the following, precisely from the materialistic way of thinking: Whatever is meant by what is stated in the Bible at the beginning of human development with the appearance of the spirit, which is symbolized by the serpent; what word resounds from this symbol?
However you may feel about this symbol, it is a significant saying, a saying that is connected with everything we call “freedom” in human beings. A great saying that goes deep into human nature: “You will be like the gods, knowing good and evil.” If one were as consistent as the snake was consistent, if one is a materialist or a monist, then one would not, inconsistently, veil what one would actually have to say with this composition: everything that man can immerse himself in is an intensification of what comes to light in the animal's instinctual life. It is as if the tempter were standing before us and calling out to us: “You will be like the animals, no longer distinguishing good from evil.” For when everything is harnessed to the objective-physical law of nature, then everything proceeds as animal life proceeds. Thus, the tempter's words stand before us as the goal of our time: “You will be like the animals, no longer distinguishing good from evil.” Between these two extremes lies the true progress of the human being. Spiritual science is intended to lift humanity above what it can only gain from the contemplation of sensual reality, to which it may only passively surrender. Instead, spiritual science is intended to intervene in the cultural world and give it goals that lie in the activity of the soul, which places man in the world in such a way that he can better find his progress in the development of freedom and all that is human in the right middle between divinity and animality. With these true goals of spiritual science, one is certainly in harmony with all those personalities who, in the course of human development, have tried to gain a feeling and a sense of the true essence of man through deep soul contemplation. Even in ancient times, spiritual science was able to express clearly what it can express today, although it could not be expressed as clearly as it is possible in our time because we have the model of natural science before us. It was felt and sensed by all those spirits, all those personalities who took genuine human progress seriously. They were far, far from allowing the direction of their thinking to be confined to a goal that must be characterized as follows: You will be like animals and no longer distinguish good from evil; your thoughts will be no more than the highest activity of your brain, just as magnetism is the highest activity of that which can take place in the material processes of iron. How many great minds from centuries past could resound in our poetry and thought! Let us mention just one, in whose words I would like to summarize what I wanted to present here today. Let me quote a saying of Schiller, who also wanted to realize how it is with the relationship of man to the developing animal world; how it was in the formation of the earth, when man appeared, in addition to the other beings. Truly, even deeper than he could feel, we would like to express Schiller's words from a spiritual scientific point of view, as a feeling summary of their most important result, knowing that the correct position of man in the universe is expressed in such a word:
|