| 266I. Esoteric Lessons 1904–1909: Daily Meditations for the Hierarchies
24 Oct 1905, Berlin |
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| The spirit of my being may be illumined with the light of Your messengers, the soul of my being may be kindled by the fire-flames of Your servants The will of my ego may grasp the power of Your creative word. You are. Your light shine in my spirit, Your life warm my soul, Your essence permeate my will, that my ego may grasp Your light's radiance, Your life's loving warmth, Your essence's words of creation. |
| 266I. Esoteric Lessons 1904–1909: Daily Meditations for the Hierarchies
24 Oct 1905, Berlin |
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Sayings to the respective spirit of the day, so-called sayings of the day, with which the esoteric hours were begun from a certain point in time.
Friday evening for Saturday — Saturn
Saturday evening for Sunday – Sun
Sunday evening to Monday — Moon
Monday to Tuesday – Mars
Tuesday for Wednesday – Mercury
Wednesday to Thursday – Jupiter
In another transcript, the third-last line reads: “Bliss becomes mine. Thursday to Friday – Venus
[Previous Every Day 1]
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| 31. Collected Essays on Cultural and Contemporary History 1887–1901: Ernst Ziel From Today
10 Mar 1900, |
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| So I am annoyed by the statement: "Nietzsche, with his separation from the natural community of human beings, with his 'revaluation of all values' and his subjectivist standpoint 'beyond good and evil', is a natural product of this era of decadence - the extreme (in and of itself something pathological) always gives birth to its extreme: 'in a time of collectivization in all areas of life, that is, the negation of the ego, Nietzsche is the potentiated and rabid ego; in a time of the levelling of individuals, he is the fanatic of unrighteous individualism, an overwrought ideal anarchist. " It would be hard to make a more superficial judgment of Nietzsche. |
| 31. Collected Essays on Cultural and Contemporary History 1887–1901: Ernst Ziel From Today
10 Mar 1900, |
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Thoughts on the Threshold of the Century Ernst Ziel presents us with a small booklet full of clever thoughts. When you let such a collection of aphorisms run through your mind, you realize once again what a complicated thing human thought is. We are placed in the most diverse relationships to a personality. Sometimes we agree with a thought, sometimes we reject it, sometimes we are delighted, sometimes we are annoyed. After reading, our minds are teeming with ifs and buts. When we read an essay, an article, a book, we gain a basic impression. However, we are placed in a one-sided relationship with the personality. Ernst Ziel expresses this or that opinion in his booklet, which, if I were to read it separately in a more detailed presentation, would cause me to angrily reject the intellectual product in question. In this collection of aphorisms I cannot get really angry, for as soon as it arises, I read on and am reconciled again. So I am annoyed by the statement: "Nietzsche, with his separation from the natural community of human beings, with his 'revaluation of all values' and his subjectivist standpoint 'beyond good and evil', is a natural product of this era of decadence - the extreme (in and of itself something pathological) always gives birth to its extreme: 'in a time of collectivization in all areas of life, that is, the negation of the ego, Nietzsche is the potentiated and rabid ego; in a time of the levelling of individuals, he is the fanatic of unrighteous individualism, an overwrought ideal anarchist. " It would be hard to make a more superficial judgment of Nietzsche. For one could just as well portray everything that Nietzsche rebels against as pathological, rabid, and call Nietzsche the only healthy one. One is compensated for the annoyance caused by such things when one reads thoughts such as these: "The unfortunate conditions in our school have been willed and dictated from above. For the clever ones up there -- who wouldn't know it! - know of no more zealous endeavor than to preserve the stupidity down here to the best of their ability; the philological method mixed with a little theology (vide Württemberg!) is just right for this: with the artfully twisted meshes of its classical philological net, it keeps the young minds ensnared and tied up and does not leave them any time at all to develop in a modern, i.e. natural, way because of all the antiquity. Those up there are often enough pedagogical fanatics of mediocrity. They don't want to educate people with their own lives, but rather conventionally drilled and willing organs of a selfish raison d'état. They would prefer to turn the whole of Germany from Metz to Memel into a large, not too meticulously ventilated schoolroom, with dynastic portraits and those of Luther (or the Pope) on the otherwise bare walls. Their system is tried and tested and subtly considered and elaborated down to the smallest detail." And how much fun is a sentence like this: "Even the mere names of our higher humanist schools are indicative of the spirit that dwells within them: we do not have Comenius, Pestalozzi or Diesterweg grammar schools. God forbid! We have Kaiser-Wilhelms-, König-Karls- and so-called Prinz-Heinrich-Gymnasien etc. I suggest we call the next barracks to be built the "Lessing Barracks". Doesn't such a phrase aptly illuminate the terrible cancers of our time? Does it not remind us that the Berlin Technical University felt compelled to be the first to confer the new title of doctor-engineer on a prince? Wouldn't one also like to suggest that an equestrian statue be erected to Helmholtz in full military armor with a sword in his right hand? Why are our university professors, who thus testify to their loyalty, surprised that their less loyal colleagues, such as Dr. Arons, are removed from their midst? At a Fichte University one could not object to Dr. Arons; at a Friedrich Wilhelm University a Social Democrat makes, shall we say, an aesthetically bad impression." "Germany was brought under the hood twice: under the theocratic sleeping hood and under the autocratic pickelhaube," is another sentence by Ernst Ziels.In view of all this, I have no doubt that Nietzsche would also have categorized Ernst Ziel as an "educational philosopher". For there are no shattering opinions in the booklet, no opinions that can be seen as a remedy on a grand scale against ingrained prejudices. But if one claims this, one must not overlook the fact that Nietzsche coined the term "Bildungsphilister" with regard to David Friedrich Strauss. If only we had so many "Bildungsphilister" of this kind! And if only those who are had the courage and seriousness of purpose under all circumstances. How many people today think: "The planks with which the reason of the upper classes in Germany is nailed up today are called national arrogance and royal Prussian subservience. And the nails? Bureaucratism, dogmatism, militarism and a few other '-isms'." How some people feel: "When the lieutenant speaks his proudest word, he says with emphasis: "I serve!" Can one think more servile? Even Byzantium would have spit him out with nausea. But today's Germany does not find him hard to stomach - not at all - quite the opposite!" But how many speak freely and openly. Here is one. How many will find themselves portrayed in the booklet? Knock on your chest, the ones it hits you. There are many of you. Listen: "A literary editor of the very latest caliber must have all literary chicanery, literary slogans and literary practices - God how many! - on a string - he doesn't need to know anything about literature." Or: "The number of German princes has become considerably smaller since 1866 - namely on the thrones. - In many an illustrated press organ, on the other hand, it has grown considerably. Today the young Prince of Reuss and his "high bride, the very young Princess of Meiningen, in the picture, tomorrow that of Lippe and that of Waldeck or even all four lovely Highnesses in one number - interesting! gelt? Our most submissive editors know exactly which way the wind is blowing in these imperialist times and how they have to bag the subscribers, especially their subscribers..." "Wind blows!" and "bagging" is well said! These gentlemen editors have become pure greyhounds. |
| 91. Inner and Outer Evolution: The Transition from the Atlantean Race to Our Own
10 Sep 1904, Berlin |
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| This is why the esoteric teaching says that man reverses the lower ego into his higher ego when 'I' becomes an 'it', when it takes the point of view not of desire but of sacrifice; not of satisfaction but of devotion. |
| 91. Inner and Outer Evolution: The Transition from the Atlantean Race to Our Own
10 Sep 1904, Berlin |
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Let us take concepts comparatively from the human being itself. When you say something to your sister, you can distinguish three successive stages in this communication. First, a dark feeling that you want to say something, for example something loving; the second is the thought of how you want to communicate this feeling, of which the other person is unaware; third, when you express the thought through the word. So three stages: feeling, thought, word. Feeling is something you live with inside. Thought gives your feeling a form that allows you to express it, and only the word is the actual expression of it. Something is happening within you. You say, when you characterize these three states: I feel, I think, I word. So what is inside lives from the I outwards: you feel, think, word. Once we have appropriated these three concepts, let us appropriate another concept. A human or animal sees an apple, it bites into the apple because it had desire for apple. What drives us to bite into it, we call Kama – the body of desire. If the animal had no kama, it would pass by. If an animal could express itself, it would say: I desire the apple. If we disregard the animal and look at the apple: it certainly has no desire to be consumed. You can therefore express what is going on in the animal from the animal's point of view by saying: I desire. You cannot say that about the apple. Let us reverse the case. If we think of an apple as the conscious being, looking at the animal and expressing all of its desires, the apple would say to the animal, “It desires.” This is one fact expressed from two points of view: “I desire” – the animal's point of view. “It desires” – the plant's point of view. Imagine that both entities – the animal and the apple – follow what we have said. If an animal follows, it satisfies itself; if what the apple says, 'It desires', is realized, the apple does not satisfy itself. On the contrary: it gives itself. That which says 'it' and behaves accordingly sacrifices itself; what says 'I' satisfies itself. This is why the esoteric teaching says that man reverses the lower ego into his higher ego when 'I' becomes an 'it', when it takes the point of view not of desire but of sacrifice; not of satisfaction but of devotion. So it is reversed. If we take the three 'I think', 'I feel', 'I speak' and reverse them, we have to start from the last one: 'It speaks', - which enters into man when we repent; 'It thinks', 'It feels'. Now, Christian esotericism expresses everything that can feel with 'the flesh'. A table and a plant cannot feel, so they are not flesh; humans and animals can. A thing that can feel is called 'flesh'. What is called 'flesh' in the Bible, we must associate with the concept: 'This is a sentient being'. If you now apply exactly the same to the 'it thinks': every being that thinks, the Bible calls an 'angel' - a being that thinks. Every being that writes is precisely the 'Word' or the 'Logos'. Let us take the important point in time in the middle of the Lemurian race. Something happened there that the Bible expresses in a very specific sentence. It says: “Our Earth period was preceded by a Moon period.” In the Moon period, 'flesh' was a sentient substance; it did not go any further. In the middle of the Lemurian period, it went further, because the substance became thinking; this is what the Bible expresses: 'And the thought became flesh.' And what will be the next great event? That not only feeling, but the Word will become flesh. This fact, which humanity is heading towards, is that all of humanity will have become Word. Thought as essence is angel. Therefore, the Bible regards every human being as an angel; then later man will not only become an angel, but Logos, a word. And the forerunner who first determined the goal is the Christ. The first in whom the Word became flesh. The Christ is therefore the revelation of the Word made flesh. When your sister is sitting in the dark, you cannot see her; light helps you to see her. So you are dealing with light, which illuminates her and which she reflects. If she were to shine by herself, you would always see her. In the middle of the Lemurian period, she would not be a spiritual being, because she would not be able to reflect a spirit. These sentient beings first had to absorb spirit in order to reflect it back. That is why spirit is called 'the light of man'. Man became spiritually visible. Imagine that your sister, in spite of the light and the form, was not really there, but a finely made wax doll. Everything would look the same. How would you distinguish it? By her feeling, by her calling out to you. Then we come from the external to the internal. The spirit could not be there if it did not originally come from the word. The word must be there so that the light or the spirit may radiate back from the feeling being. In the beginning was the word. That was completely before, lies in the very beginning; then came the middle of the Lemurian time: it turned out that the word is the light of men. The second and third stages are that the word becomes flesh in man. These are the three great stages in which the Divine, revealing Itself to the earthly, opens up as Word, as the light of thought and as the Word made flesh. If we know how to read the Gospel of John, we have just discussed this. The Gospel of John summarizes the three great epochs in which the Word has revealed Itself: the Word, the Light and the Flesh. The Old Testament describes the macrocosm, that is, the evolution of the world up to man; and the sanctification of man is described by the microcosmic Gospel of John. Therefore, to explain the parallelism between macrocosm and microcosm, the same words are at the beginning: En arché. |
| Foundations of Esotericism: Glossary of Indian-Theosophical Terms
Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
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| Buddhi-ManasHigher Manas in contradistinction to Lower Manas (Kama Manas). Higher Ego. ChelaOccult pupil.Causal bodyAccording to Rudolf Steiner, the extract of the etheric and astral bodies which man bears from Earth-life to Earth-life and continually enriches. |
| Rudolf Steiner, Lecture, Berlin, 25 October 1909 in The Christ Impulse and the Development of the Ego-Consciousness. See also The Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, The East in the Light of the West, Macrocosm and Microcosm, >Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy. |
| Foundations of Esotericism: Glossary of Indian-Theosophical Terms
Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
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| 54. Esoterics I: Lucifer
22 Feb 1906, Berlin |
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| At first we have the physical body of the human being, then the principle of the etheric body, the stimulating one, the formative one, then his desires and passions, the animal in him; this has awoken to independence due to the fourth principle, to the real ego of the human being with which he has outgrown the animal. This human ego is that which develops, actually. This ego lives in three lower principles. It is the fourth. Within this fourth principle, the divine powers work which have already passed the fourth principle in their development and control it from above. |
| On the other side, that power opposes it leading the human being, while it takes possession of this fourth principle, of the ego, it wakes him for own choice, gives him light to own knowledge, so that he walks to perfection in the light. |
| 54. Esoterics I: Lucifer
22 Feb 1906, Berlin |
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The Persian legend speaks of two contrary divinities, of Ormuzd, the good god, and of Ahriman, the bad god. Both divinities battle for the human being, generally for everything that develops here on earth as life. One holds out in prospect that once the good divinity wins the victory over the bad divinity. Whatever one thinks about this legend, everybody sees a portrayal of this idea in nature, in the surrounding world. To get an example, look at the fire on one side. We owe our culture to it, our comfort and our advancement here within our life, and on the other side look at the destroying power of the forces related to the fire in any respect as for example the earthquakes and the volcano eruptions. So, on one side, beneficent, preserving, life-sustaining, and life-giving powers prevail, and, on the other side, life-destroying and hostile powers. The scene on which the fights of these both powers take place is not only the external human being but also the internal one. The human soul is torn between hostile powers: between pain, evil, grief, and the beneficent powers of existence, fulfilling us with joy, raising our hearts and pointing us to the spiritual spheres of heaven. Deeper natures have always seen the unity, basically, the harmony between these two contrary powers. I need only to remind of something completely known and you imagine how a choice spirit of our own German culture expressed the unity and uniformity of these contrary powers. Schiller's Song of the Bell contains the nice words just in this regard: Benevolent is the fire's might, The same under two different points of view! If we look at the external and internal human being in such a way, we see reluctant powers in him everywhere. One of these powers of which since ancient times prudent and not prudent people have spoken shall be an object of our today's consideration: that power which one always called Lucifer.—Not only from the scientific, historical point of view, but also from the internal, the so-called esoteric point of view we want to deal with this subject. The word Lucifer means light bearer (Latin: lux—the light, fer, ferre—bear). If we keep this word in mind, we must already say to ourselves, those who named this power could impossibly mean only that which various positive religious convictions summarise as the destroying, grief, and downfall bringing power that they see in the symbol of the snake and the evil dragon.—However, the religious system best known in Europe, the Christian one, complies with what in the vernacular one calls devil or Satan, whom one regards as the life-destroying power and as that power which draws us down. You all know the snake as the seducer of humanity. You can read it at the beginning of the Genesis, the Bible, and it lives in the consciousness of many people that way. Not always and not in all confessions the snake was regarded as the symbol of the evil, as the ruining power, as power that draws us down. If we look at the Christian-Jewish myth, it cannot appear to us completely that way. For who would today count that power which brought the knowledge of good and evil to the human beings, of which one says that it opened men's eyes, absolutely to the hostile powers? A big change has taken place just in the last century. We only need to remind of the name of the great genius Goethe to say which changes have taken place in the course of the last centuries. You all know that Goethe transformed the medieval Faust legend, not only covered it anew. If you pursue this medieval Faust legend, Faust stands there as the representative and type of the human striving, of the striving that is built on freedom and independence and on science, not of that which should be built on revelation, on faith. Even in the 16th century, the folk spirit represented this Faust, this genius of the liberal striving for human knowledge so that he must absolutely become a slave of the evil, life-hostile powers. Faust must go to ruin because he turned away from the faith, from the tradition of the millennia, from revelation. One tells of him that he did no longer want to be a theologian; one says of him that he laid the Bible behind a bank and became a worldly person. A worldly person was such a person who wanted to found his existence on own knowledge and on own insight of the forces. Such a person had necessarily to become a slave of the evil forces, according to the point of view at that time. Goethe shows us this fight in a new way. How does he close Faust's destiny? He lets the choir of angels sing: “For him whose striving never ceases we can provide redemption.” In addition, here, Faust makes the pact with the powers that are connected with Mephistopheles, but he is redeemed, although he founds himself on freedom and self-determination. Faust reaches to the pacification of his existence. This soul change took place there. Lucifer is no longer recognised in the old way as fateful. If we look around in the old religions, Lucifer was not always fateful. In the old Indian religions. One called the sages, the leaders, those who illuminated the human beings with spirit “snakes.” It is similar in many religions. Why? What does Lucifer represent in these old religions? What does he represent, finally? This and the like shall occupy us today. What does he represent to the occultists, the explorers of the forces slumbering in nature, of the deeper forces of nature who speak about Lucifer in the sense of this knowledge as that who shall bring the light to the human being who builds on himself and does not build on revelation and faith, but on knowledge and science? If we want to penetrate into this matter, we must touch something that leads us to bygone times of human existence, so to speak, to the starting point of human evolution. This object, which can only be touched here at the beginning, occupies us completely when we speak about the evolution of the planets. Nevertheless, we have to start already today from this time of human evolution. Evolution is that which appears to us today as a magic word and wants to make the human existence comprehensible, what faces us today in certain perfection and completion and from which we hope that it advances to higher and higher levels of perfection. We attribute everything that lives round us to a development from imperfect to the perfect. That applies to the human being also, to the human being who enters existence according a deeper teaching of development before ancient times in which our earth still did not look like today and in which its natural forces worked quite differently. In the sense of the theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview, we also speak about this starting point of human evolution, but we speak of an evolution that leads us back to times that are even more distant and to a starting point, which are before our earth evolution. I can only indicate this. When the human being entered into existence, he was alone, so to speak, with and among the physical realms in the world. If we look at the human being in such a way, he appears to us as the highest member, as the last link in a developmental chain compared with the remaining physical realms, compared with the mineral, plant and animal realms. However, as foolish as it would be if a plant, a stone, or an animal spoke: with me the development ends—, as foolish and senseless it would be if the human being spoke of himself: with me the development ends, I am the highest of the beings, which are possible here on earth.—We must look up at other beings, which we cannot reach with the sensuous eyes, which we reach, however, if the slumbering deeper, spiritual forces are woken if the spiritual eyes are opened. The theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview has to bring a consciousness of these advanced beings again who are related to the human beings as the human being to the lower realms of nature. When the human being entered into existence, he was not created from nothing, but he originated from former developmental links. In addition, other beings went through such developments. They outranked the human being. The religion, also the Bible speaks of these beings. It speaks of beings who could feel as perfect at that time as the human being feels once when he has finished his present development on earth. We say in the spiritual-scientific worldview, in the human being, in his deepest inside a god is originating. With the Christian mysteries of the Middle Ages we speak that the human being can rise to realms which stand above those in which he lives today. The Christian mystic Angelus Silesius says this: “If you rise above yourself and let God prevail, your spirit experiences Ascension.” Then he does not merely receive from the creative powers like today, but he is then a creative, a spiritualised and deified being. At the starting point where the forces, which have reached certain levels of perfection today, were still in their childhood, there were beings beside him who had already gone through such stages which he has to finish today. They were that—if we understand the Bible rather internally—from which the gods descended. The gods have also developed, even in the sense of the Bible. The Elohim are not something that simply stands there, but they are something that has become and has developed to that height. They stood on that level in the past to which the human being develops once. These gods have reached a certain completion. However, as well as on the stages of our present existence beside more developed human individuals also those are who have only reached a lower degree of perfection, at that time still beings also stood between human beings and gods who were higher than the human beings, but lower than the creative gods. I know how ambiguous such things are, even if one takes them seriously. I know that the materialistic worldview almost forbids, because it regards it as superstition, to speak of developmental stages of such beings. However, this cannot prevent us from facing the truth and from speaking of developmental stages of the human being. The gods were in lofty heights above the human beings, and immediately about these were beings who stood in their development between the gods and human beings, but did not complete it at that time. They went through their development among the human beings, because they were closer to them. These beings made up as it were on our earth within their development for that which they had omitted earlier. The secret doctrine, occultism complies with the old religions and the deeper profundities of our time. They subsume these powers as Lucifer. The theosophical worldview shows that a god lives in the human being who expresses himself in the slumbering dispositions that are, however, divine dispositions one day, that the human being has developed at the end of the evolution, but also the luciferic principle lives in the human being and belongs to his soul. After we have made this clear to ourselves, we are free to speak of gods and luciferic powers, of the divine and of the luciferic principles in us as the physicist speaks of electricity and magnetism. The gods stood there as elated beings. Now we must realise both—gods and luciferic powers—as the big principle which lives in any development and work. Look once at nature round yourselves. As the lowest of a sequence the lifeless world of the mineral, then the plants, then the animal and finally the human realms face us; and then even further up the realms of the higher beings. If the plant could open the eyes and look with bright, clear knowledge around it, then it would say to itself, I owe my existence to this mineral realm, which lives round me; if it were not, I could never be. From it, I get my vitality. This realm forms the ground, from which my roots grow. Without this realm, I could never be there.—Again, if the animal could look at the lower physical realms in the same way, it would be the same. It would have to look down at the lower plant realm and say: I have grown out of it, I owe my food to it; if the plant realm did not exist, I would not be.— It is the same with the human being. He also has to say to himself: I have grown out of these lower realms of nature, I owe my existence to them; if they were not, then I would not be. There the higher realm faces the lower one again and helps, so to speak, to further its existence. Imagine only once that the mineral realm would only have developed on earth! What would the earth have become? A rigid, lifeless body that hurried through the space. Life would have remained in the mineral realm like slumbering in a grave. Now this life has escaped, so to speak, to a higher realm, to the plant realm, and the mineral realm on earth is made again a living one by the plant realm. The mineral holds and carries the plant realm; the plant realm transforms the mineral perpetually in the living circulation. Consider what the plant makes with the mineral forces on earth! If there were no plants on earth, the substances of the mineral realm rested in the dead rock. However, because there is a plant realm, it soaks up the substances, revives itself with them, and returns them. The lower realm offers the basis and forces to the higher one, and the higher realm helps again to preserve the existence of the lower one. Thus, it is with any next higher realm. The animal realm lives together peacefully with the plant realm, it inhales oxygen and exhales carbonic acid; the plant builds up its body from the carbon and delivers oxygen for it. What is about the human being? He also lives by means of the lower realms of nature. There we gradually come up to the human being who approaches the spirit, subsists on the spirit. If we go over to the spiritual powers, there is exactly the same relation between the gods and the human beings as between the lower realms of the universe, a relation, similar to that between the plants and the minerals or between the other higher realms of the universe. We know what the plant contributes to the formation and stimulation of the mineral realm, what do the spiritual realms contribute, what do the gods do with the human being at the starting point of development and in its progress? What did they do with the human realm? The gods have completed their development. They have no immediate interest in the human realm—if we want to speak here evidently, even if not quite appropriately. However, they have an indirect interest; they give it the forces, which bring the slumbering and solidified life in the human being back to existence, as well as the plant gives the dead stone life. Have a look at the mineral, the plant, and the animal realms. How are they opposing each other? The esoteric who investigates the deeper forces of nature says, the mineral, the plant, and the animal realms face each other like wisdom, life, and love.—Try to understand that! If you look at the mineral realm as it faces us in nature: everywhere you try to understand it with your intellect and wisdom. You investigate the stars and their orbits, the physical principles of the mineral world. The plant pulls wisdom and the world regularity out of the mineral world. We say without thinking, wisdom, regularity rests in the mineral realm; it is the embodied wisdom. However, poor, sober, and dead would this mineral realm be with its wisdom unless the plant world had come along and its stimulating principle had woken the sprouting life in this slumbering wisdom. Love and wisdom exchange the forces with each other, while the plants and minerals interact with each other. In a similar way, it is also between the gods and the human beings. When the human being began his development on earth, life rested in him at first; the gods stoked it up again for a new earthly development. What is associated with this earthly development? Again, the human realm and the divine realm are related to each other like wisdom and love. Hence, esotericism, all deeper confessions—also Christianity—speak of the fact that God or the gods are love, the stimulating principle. This principle causes the sensual love at first. That is why Jehovah is shown in the Jewish religion of the Old Testament as the bringer of the sensual desire, as the giver of growth and reproductivity. In the sensual desire lies the principle of the further development that drives from the imperfect to the perfect that is the development from the animal realm up to where love founds states. In this love, which appeals, so to speak, the human beings for communities, which penetrates what is solidified in the human being with sprouting life, as the plant appeals the stone for life, we have the revealing, original divinity in it at first. This is the case in all religions and in the esoteric science too. Now we must take stock of the fact that we have here to see the divine driving forces in the human evolution. The human being had forever to regard that which propels him, which furthers him, as a gift, as a revelation of a divine principle. The luciferic principle enters among him and the gods. Thereby he is enabled to take charge of that which lives unconsciously as a divine principle in him, in his unaware desire of reproduction and development. Thereby he ascends to independence and freedom in his development. Why this? Because that which lives in Lucifer is closer to him, so to speak, is a younger brother of the divine principle. When the development was still in an older phase, the gods were on the level of humanity; there they looked for their own development independently within the human level. However, after they have developed, the human being is a creature among them; they control the human being and work in him. Now the luciferic principle comes along. This still has a more familiar and more intimate relation to the human being; it has not yet completely outgrown the level of humanity. It is something that rises above the present point of view of humanity, but is associated intimately with it, so that it melts more together with the human being and works as own desire in the human being to further himself. These are three levels, which work in the human being as his developmental forces: his humanity, the luciferic principle, and divinity. If we want to understand the human being, as he faces us on the present level of development, then we must see in the sense of the spiritual-scientific worldview that he has developed the so-called four lower principles. At the same time, I assume something that the theosophical worldview teaches. I want only to give a short explanation of it. At first we have the physical body of the human being, then the principle of the etheric body, the stimulating one, the formative one, then his desires and passions, the animal in him; this has awoken to independence due to the fourth principle, to the real ego of the human being with which he has outgrown the animal. This human ego is that which develops, actually. This ego lives in three lower principles. It is the fourth. Within this fourth principle, the divine powers work which have already passed the fourth principle in their development and control it from above. We have the luciferic powers still associated with the fourth principle. The gods have ascended from the level of egoity to unselfishness, to devotion and to the overcoming of any special existence. The luciferic in the human being is enclosed with the bigger part of its being still within the ego; it is still within the human interests. With it, we see that everything that lives as unselfishness and willingness to make sacrifices in the human being is the divine principle in the human being, and that beside this divine principle another driving force is in him. Who practices true introspection learns to recognise the other principle. It is the luciferic one. It strives for divinity, not only in complete devotion sacrificing its self, but it strives for the high stages of perfection, with enthusiasm, indeed, but just from the deepest interest of the self: not only because I love it, but because the higher perfection coincides with that which I must love. I want to strive for it as a human being in divine freedom. The divine powers do not strive for this perfection. By the luciferic striving, however, I make the divine perfection my very nature. That is why we can say, if this luciferic principle were not in the human being, the gods would him leave in a certain passiveness, in a certain idleness, and they would lead him to. He would be in the state of being a child of the gods. Indeed, his being would strive to perfection, but not he would be that who strives in such a way but the God in him.—Besides, the other, the luciferic strength is added. It makes this striving its own issue. It sets itself the goal of perfection. The biblical myth also shows this also wonderfully. The gods created Adam and Eva, fated to be led by the divine powers to divine perfection without any own activity. However, because the snake comes that gives knowledge and freedom and thereby the possibility of perfection, it brings the possibility of the bad too. Because the decision between good and bad is now laid in the man's own hand and knowledge, the desire, the love is made the bearer of an unaware, but divine striving for perfection. Everything that should live in this striving for perfection should be aglow with this love, with that which reveals itself to the human being in this love. On the other side, that power opposes it leading the human being, while it takes possession of this fourth principle, of the ego, it wakes him for own choice, gives him light to own knowledge, so that he walks to perfection in the light. Thus, we have the bearer of love and the bearer of light as two real forces prevailing in the human being. I have expressed in modern form what you can find in all confessions, in all occult worldviews as the divine principle and the luciferic principle. Only those confessions which have gone over more and more to founding themselves only upon revelation, only on faith have felt what works in the human being and lives as own principle of perfection as the bearer of the bad. Therefore, Lucifer, the light bearer, became the seducer from that who invokes the human being for freedom, for independence, for the bright, clear knowledge. This is one side. All those religions which have left their starting point—for they all have the right view of God and Lucifer at their starting point—which only search for the God who leads the human beings in unconsciousness to bliss, at the same time they all feel that in which the God himself works also as something causing ruin. They feel nature as sin; they feel the mind, the bright, clear knowledge as the perverting Lucifer. Goethe pronounced this, “Nature is sin and Intellect the devil, hermaphroditic Doubt their child, which they together foster” (Faust). Yes, it is true, very true that the doubt is between divine revelation and striving for freedom. However, it is also true that this doubt is necessary to the human being if he really wants to strive for godliness from his own ego by his own merit. We have to go through the doubt, and not before we can doubt all truth, we are able to take possession of truth really. Who has never doubted does not know how the human being is connected with truth. However, who overcomes the doubt gains higher knowledge than if it has become his possession out of blind revelation. This is the pedagogic value of doubt. Therefore, it stands rightly between the divine that cannot be separated from nature and is regarded as sin, between that which is diabolical, is luciferic and the level of perfection. Considered this way, the human development seems to be put in a certain perspective. The whole development of the Old Testament appears to us in such a way that the God prevails as love in the progress of the human race, in the sensuous love and in everything that it founds: blood relationship, family, clan et cetera. We have perfect with the Jewish people in Jehovah. He is nothing else than the personified power of nature, if one notes how he prevails in the mineral realm, in the sprouting plant realm, in the animal realm feeling joy and sorrow, and in the human being himself. The human God, the Christ impact allows the mineral to form the crystal, it makes the plant sprout and the animals go through the instinctual life, and it leads the human being from the imperfect to the perfect. Ascended the human being to the higher realms, he would remain a mere nature being unless the other spirit, but the spirit beneficent to the human being, Lucifer, prevailed in him who evokes selfishness, indeed, but also independence and freedom. He makes the human being his own being, a special being and raises him above the mere power of nature that way. As true, as it is for the feeling of the servant of Jehovah that Jehovah himself is the basis of the human world that he is the godhead, as it is true that Lucifer rebels against this power of nature and leads the human being to knowledge, calls on him for a clear consciousness. Thus, the human being raises himself to independence. He releases himself from the ties of the blood relationship, of the clan and the people. He becomes gradually a personality, indeed, an egoistic personality. There Jehovah approaches him out of the same spirit, the governor of the higher life, who regulates the development by law, by commandment. If we have the god working in nature by the sensuous love with necessity, we have him as legislator now, as the god of the Ten Commandments. We have him as Jehovah, who gives the human beings the law, which they have to obey, which shall arrange the awaking personality, which shall harmonise and balance it. What is sensuous love below is a commandment of morality above. That should also be raised which works not only as a physical power, as a commandment which strives not only out of divinity to perfection, but it should also be raised to the human ego. Thus, the general physical lawfulness gives that the mere power of love changes into the principle of spiritual love that Christ originates from the sensuous Jehovah. This spiritualised love does no longer work only in the physical instinct but spiritualises life, which once law could only control. Thus, Christ becomes the founder of the law that does not approach the human being from without like the usual law, but becomes a soul force like the innermost desire of morality. If Jehovah gives the commandment, Christ gives the power of working. If the god Jehovah determines what is good, Christ prevailing in the human being gives birth to the good out of the strength in the human being himself. The forces of nature are raised to the soul; what was sensuous love becomes spiritual love due to Christ. The law itself is warmed up by the divine, it works in the world as divine grace—using a Christian term. Thus, we see with the big progress in the turn of the eras the sensuous love, the principle of the natural force only imagined as divine, being refined and spiritualised to the mental love, to the power which does no longer work on the physical plane but on the moral plane. At first the Christian caritas, the Christian love is the refined power, which produces a moral coherence among the human beings. This coherence considers the human beings strictly as human beings and makes them all equal compared to the highest perfection. It immerses morality in love, as instincts were once immersed in love. This is the first time of Christianity. Hence, the Christian virtue became the virtues of community, the virtues of the harmony of the human souls. The god who brings together the human beings wanted to work in mental love, and this is the principle of the Christian religion. As once, body found body in the natural principle, now in Christianity soul meets soul in the higher love due to the Christ principle. As the Jehovah principle created human communities based on blood, based on family, clan, and people, Christ was called to cause that souls find souls without mediation of the blood. The sensuous love is refined to the self-sacrificing devotion; the physical power is refined to the moral action of the god. As well as in the course of the Old Testament the other principle worked, the luciferic principle, as a divine natural force penetrating the human beings bringing them independence and freedom, in the newer times this principle penetrates the human development as a bearer of light, as bearer of freedom. It is not the opponent; it is the necessary supplement of the Christ principle. It is connected with this Christ principle in a unity, as well as all reluctant forces of nature are imagined as connected by those who have understood nature and universe. As well as Schiller speaks of it: Benevolent is the fire's might, It is the same here. On one side, the Christian caritas, the Christian love, the divine that leads soul to soul and, on the other side, the bearer of light, the bearer of independence and freedom. By the soul love, humanity would also live only in an unconscious perfection. However, because the soul is impregnated and warmed up, is illumined with the bright, clear knowledge, warmed up by the light of the spirit, because in the human being the bearer of light lives and works, the Christian love thereby works on the free development of the human being also in future. Thus, both powers—revealed wisdom and science gained by the human being—face each other. Soul and consciousness face each other in such a way: the soul glows in spiritual love, and the consciousness penetrates and illumines this spiritual love with the principle of clearness and freedom. Thus, the human being lives between these poles of his being; he works and lives between these powers. To somebody, who looks deeper at the things, Lucifer, the bearer of light, is no hostile power. Lucifer—even if he himself casts off his shackles and strides along his own track, as a free will of the universal power—, always creates the good—to speak with Goethe's words—even if he wants the bad. Lucifer opposes us inevitably as that which must complement another principle in the human being. He proves to be the close friend of the human being who faces him as a brother, whereas on the other side the human being looks up at the elated gods to whom he obeys in quiet devotion, who bear him in their love. Thus, life appears really as a fight between light and love. It is that way in the present stage of development. As well as the physicists put positive and negative electricity, positive and negative magnetism as two poles, which belong together inevitably, light and love in the higher area of human life belong together like two poles of human existence. Never there originates only one kind of electricity; if you rub a glass rod with a cloth, it becomes positively electric; however, the cloth becomes negatively electric. That applies everywhere. Never can work only one force in the development of life, always the other force must be added as necessary complement. In the human life, the two poles are love and light. The one is not possible without the other. As well as the old law, the commandments of Jehovah, which he gave symbolically on Sinai, changed because of the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, love also changes. Love is something mental that appeared as a higher stage of the physical power in the sensuous love. That is why it is also possible that on the higher stage something clearer appears, namely knowledge. What was knowledge? It was, if you look back, something that is similar to Jehovah's law, the Ten Commandments, and it has to be remelted. As by Christ's death the love of the sensuous stage was remelted to the mental stage, the principle of mere knowledge, the luciferic knowledge, has to be transformed into a higher one. We are included in this change today. In certain respects, we experience such a renewal of that which took place in Christianity. As the law changed into grace, science has to change into wisdom. As grace must be borne by our own soul, wisdom has to be borne by the human soul. As Christ is the god who can also prevail in the human being and enables him to become his own legislator in grace, wisdom is born out of the human science. As our science is built on external experience which is given from the outside like the Jews got the commandments on Sinai, this science will be born in wisdom as the law has been born anew by and in Christ. This is the spiritual-scientific striving. We have science given from without, given by the senses, up to now and this has reached the highest level in our cultural life in certain respects. The future must bring that the human being produces this science from his inside as his very own possession, that he changes Lucifer into that who lives and works from the human being. Spiritual science wants nothing else than such a deepening of knowledge. Just as the law or commandment became internal in the Christian virtue and as in the Christ virtue the human development advances in love in the soul life, our material science will progress emotionally if it is reborn from the soul. Spiritual science should aim at this rebirth. There is a quite analogous event of the human development: Christianity has put up moral virtue instead of the mere physical power in love. The future development brings inner virtue by evoking inner, concealed forces in the human being. As we look back to a development that brought internalisation, law, we see back in the external academic life to a scientific striving, which brings internalisation. As the law was deepened to grace, science will be deepened to wisdom. That means, however, to look for inner development. The law was transformed into the soul by Christian grace. Our science is transformed out of the strength of the own soul into human skill and achievement. Spiritual science wants to rouse the inner, slumbering abilities. If the Christian works out of the love of his soul compared to the servant of Jehovah, somebody who recognises works out of the wisdom of his heart in the future and attains an even greater deepening of the human development with it. Christianity also promises development of the external soul life. Christianity promises a citizen of the spirit, who connects human being with human being externally without distinction of race and gender. This striving will make the human being such a citizen in the higher spiritual worlds by inner esoteric development. This is the relation between spiritual science and the external Christianity: the external Christianity looks for external virtue to gain the spiritual with it; the occultist rouses inner virtues slumbering in the human being to gain the even deeper sense of the higher spiritual worlds. What we are talking about is only a deepening of Christianity itself. The Christian principle deepened the law; the spiritual-scientific principle will deepen science. We have the luciferic principle in the entire human development not as an enemy, but as a pole belonging inevitably to the other pole. We have put it to Christianity, as it was up to now. However, just there we have recognised that the principle of the light bearer associates with the principle of love to a higher unity. If inner spiritual abilities are added by the development of the only external Christian virtues, we have an even deeper Christianity, a Christianity that cannot be dictated by the church but that everybody develops by the abilities still slumbering in himself today. Everybody develops the god by own strength, and all souls co-operate in free striving. Lucifer adds freedom, science, and independence to love and goodness. Only that who wants to stop at an epoch of human development can bring himself to turn away the look from that auspicious future perspective. Any past would be infertile unless it contained a new higher future within itself. The understood spiritual science makes hearts leap for joy and fulfils them with another enthusiasm. What could be achieved by the external institutions up to now could be forced upon the human being in noble, but external kind. The human being once produces that out of the strength of his own soul. An inner church, an inner temple will be there that transfigures and spiritualises the external one. Everybody will be a Christian because Christ shall awake in him, because the inner Christ lives in him and comes along to the Christ who released humanity as a whole. Christ redeemed this humanity as a whole; the human being will understand this if he is internally free and redeemed, if he believes not only in the redemption, but relives this redemption. Those remind us always who want to point us to Christianity: you aim at self-redemption, but you misunderstand what Christ did. That is not right with which spiritual science is confronted. Spiritual science is not an adversary, but a friend and co-worker of Christianity; not of the Christianity of the last time, but of that Christianity, which knows what Jesus said, “I will be with you, to the end of time” (Matthew 28:20), of that Christianity, which develops to higher and higher perfection. Spiritual science is not hostile to the redemption principle of Christ, because it does not stand on the one-sided point of view that every human being should do something only for himself. This would be the most destructive egoism, even if the human being wanted to strive only in himself for the noblest forces. Humanity is a whole, and if a single—Christ—accomplishes the death of redemption, this death of redemption is for the whole humanity. However, one has to penetrate it with consciousness; any single human being has to relive it. The redemption itself must be reborn in freedom. The principle of St. John's Gospel of the new birth of the human being also applies to it. Anybody is no real human being who is not reborn in spirit and in truth. Christ Jesus said this. He still lives according to his sentence today, he says in no uncertain manner about his own death of redemption, indeed, I died once for the whole humanity to bring humanity the certainty that death can be defeated by life, but this death must be reborn in the soul of the single human being. The redeemed human being is really redeemed only if he has also reborn the redemption in himself. This is the living Christ principle, deepened by spiritual science. Thus, the soul is in every single human being that develops love with the noblest ideals of humanity. This love is added to the mere sensuousness as spiritual love and leads the human being to divine perfection. On the other side, the Lucifer principle is illumined by science, freedom, and independence. Love in bright clearness, the consciousness is added to the soul. The soul brings the strength of love, and consciousness penetrates and illumines this strength of love with bright clearness. The human being walks through the soul and consciousness to perfection. He would progress to divinity by a trial not clear to him if he were only a feeling soul; he would rise to the cold, only reasonable perfection if he were only consciousness. Nevertheless, soul and consciousness have always to penetrate each other. Therefore, someone who strives for spiritual science looks back and forth. He looks at the soul with its feeling and its sensation, and he looks at the consciousness with its light and wisdom and says to himself, I want to be not the human being living in dullness, but the human being prospering in bright clearness.—Those virtues have to be added to all other virtues that are founded on science, freedom, and independence. However, freedom has to be deepened by love; otherwise, it becomes arbitrary and brings the human being only nearer to his instincts. On the other side, love must deepen science: then it becomes wisdom, true spirituality carried by action. Otherwise, it gets cold, desolate, and abstract. Independence must also combine with love, otherwise, it becomes blind egoism, and otherwise, it becomes rigid. This is the deeper truth of life of the spiritual scientific worldview and lifestyle that again three virtues must completely develop as the necessary principles of the human soul: science, freedom, and independence, which must be deepened, however, by the strength of love. Then love transforms science into wisdom, freedom into willingness to sacrifice, into the devotion and admiration of the divine, and independence into unselfishness, into that principle in the human being that overcomes the special being and is merged in the universe and gains divinity in freedom this way. |
| 169. Toward Imagination: The Human Organism Through the Incarnations
27 Jun 1916, Berlin Translated by Sabine H. Seiler |
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| Everything you do while you are awake on the physical plane is ego activity. The ego is present in all activity. How does ego activity express itself in relation to our other parts? |
| Activity when we sleep means building up of physical matter, especially its constitution; activity when we are awake, that is, ego activity, means a breaking down. Thus you have a continual, cyclical alternation: building up and breaking down, building up and breaking down. |
| We know that exerting ourselves with too much ego activity harms us. This is easy to understand because ego activity is after all a breaking-down process. |
| 169. Toward Imagination: The Human Organism Through the Incarnations
27 Jun 1916, Berlin Translated by Sabine H. Seiler |
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I will begin today by adding a few things to what we have said over the years about spiritual science. One of the most elementary facts we know is that human beings as they have developed through what we have called Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth phases of evolution are composed of four principal parts, namely physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I. We have often emphasized that merely naming the four parts of human beings and listing them is saying and doing very little. What is important is that we connect increasingly definite and concrete ideas and concepts with what arises in our soul when we speak of these four parts of the human being. Let us first look at the physical body. We think we know it really well, or at least the physical sciences must know this body very well since they study it so much. Well, we know our physical body has to be a highly complicated creation for the simple reason that its first rudimentary form can be found as far back as the Saturn phase of evolution. That early physical form was then transformed during the Sun phase of evolution and changed further during the Moon phase of evolution, and by now it has undergone long ages of earth evolution, which have also left their imprint on our physical body. Thus, our physical body has been shaped in the course of four very long periods of time. We have to assume then a fourfold structure for this physical body. When we ask what has come into our physical body during Earth evolution, we will only get a false idea if we rely on what ordinary life and conventional science tell us. For during earth evolution our physical body has only been remodeled, transformed, and metamorphosed. Much of it already existed, not merely in rudimentary form, but in a process of development, of unfolding, during the old Moon phase of evolution. We cannot really see much of what has been added during earth evolution if we take “see” in the true sense of the word. Actually, it is only our posture that has been changed during earth evolution; we have become upright beings, walking around with our spine perpendicular to the earth's surface. Our posture and everything connected with it has changed. Our upright physiognomy on the surface of the earth has been imprinted upon us during our evolution on earth. When we think of a centaur, a very well-known mythological figure, we can say, based on spiritual science, that this figure of human being and horse, or generally of a human being and any animal form, is actually an imaginative representation of our physical body as it would be if we envisioned our present upright position combined with what human beings had been during the Moon phase of evolution before they became upright. Such figures or imaginations, which are preserved in mythology, conceal infinitely profound wisdom. I wanted to mention this only as an example of the profound wisdom in such imaginations. Let us recapitulate briefly: If we really want to do justice to our physical body, we have to think of it as much more complicated than any of the physical sciences nowadays finds it convenient to do. We must realize that really only the position of the individual organs and the posture of our whole organism have been impressed upon us in the long course of earth evolution. Essentially, human development reaches very far back into the past to a time long before the earth existed. Naturally, we must think in similar terms of the development of our higher, spiritual elements, namely, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. Now we have to contemplate the interrelations, the interconnections, between these parts. At first glance, the physical body seems to be built out of physical substances, and as we grow, we see it constantly becoming bigger, adding on matter or inserting matter in the spaces between its limbs and its cells. Later, when we become fat—if we do—we see how more substance or matter is added on to our physical body. When we now study the etheric body in the same way, we find something similar going on. Only in this case it is not substances but movements that are added. These movements get more complicated in the course of life. In the etheric body of a newborn child we find comparatively simple and primitive movements. But gradually they become more complicated. Clearly, there is a process of multiplying, of growth an development, at work in both the physical and the etheric bodies. Things are different in the astral body and I. In our life in the physical world, we are at first active only in our I, for it alone possesses full consciousness. When you look at a colored surface, your I is active; when you think, your I is active; when you feel, your I is active. In all your activities, even when you walk or move your hands, the I is active. Everything you do while you are awake on the physical plane is ego activity. The ego is present in all activity. How does ego activity express itself in relation to our other parts? How do all the things we do between waking up and falling asleep, that is, in full consciousness, manifest themselves? They manifest not in building up and growth, but in breaking down, in a depletion of the substances of the physical body and of the movements and forces of the etheric body. For example, when you look at something red, or at anything colored, you are in a process of breakdown or depletion through the mere fact that you received an impression of the colored object. What takes place in your physical body, albeit in a very subtle sense, is a kind of killing or destruction of living substance, of living matter. To use a rather crude example, suppose you had a crystal that could still be changed and undergo transformations and imagine you exposed it to some kind of influence, for instance, the influence of light, so that the crystal would change and turn cloudy. In the same way something in your physical body becomes cloudy, and matter is being destroyed in your constitution, every time light reaches your eyes. From the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, we are destroying, albeit only in a very subtle way, our physical substance with our ego activity. Therefore, we must compensate for this by sleeping. During sleep, physical matter is restored for our use. There is a perpetual building up and breaking down going on in us. Activity when we sleep means building up of physical matter, especially its constitution; activity when we are awake, that is, ego activity, means a breaking down. Thus you have a continual, cyclical alternation: building up and breaking down, building up and breaking down. We are actually constantly being depleted, being consumed, by the activity of our I, and when we sleep, we have to regenerate ourselves. That is why we often notice that something ascends, as it were, from our physical organism when we wake up. These are the regenerating forces, the restoring forces. When we have something pathological or diseased in our organism, even if only very slightly so, that also ascends. As long as our organism is healthy, it regenerates itself in a healthy way by the time we wake up. However, if it is sick, it works to expel the sickness upward. That is why many people and even children are in a bad mood and not cheerful when they wake up. The aftereffect of what is coming up out of the organism is still there. What spiritual science tells us about the human being and human life agrees with the phenomena of life in a wonderful way. It is only about an hour and a half after waking up that we are completely free of the forces of sickness that can rise up. This is how our I and physical body interact. This interaction plays itself out in the rhythm of sleeping and waking: building up, breaking down, building up, breaking down. There is still another relationship that is very important although we don't notice it much in our everyday life. Our I and physical body interact in building up and depletion, and a similar relationship exists between our astral body and etheric body. The only difference is that the building up, insofar as it comes from the astral body, is completed earlier in life, and the breaking down thus begins earlier. What our astral body breaks down in our etheric body is connected essentially with the fact that we become weaker in the course of life and die when we have become totally decrepit. The relationship between our astral body and etheric body is fundamentally connected with our death. It is only because our astral body gradually consumes the forces of our etheric body; which in turn depletes, consumes, our physical body, that we can die. In a sense, then, we can observe a building up and breaking down in the interaction between our etheric and our astral body in the course of life—although this is not as rapid a succession as the alternation between sleeping and waking, it nevertheless has a certain rhythm. We know that exerting ourselves with too much ego activity harms us. This is easy to understand because ego activity is after all a breaking-down process. If there is too much breaking down, we clearly and visibly weaken our organism. We can notice this visible weakening at first glance. But there can also be a weakening of our etheric body through the astral body since the latter can, so to speak, deplete our etheric body excessively. The most common symptom of this kind occurs when we live in a way that demands too much of our astral body, the vehicle of our passions and emotions. As you know, such a life-style can lead to permanent weakening. This impairment results from the astral body depleting the etheric body. However, things may happen quite differently. How we gradually build up our astral body in the course of our life—beginning at birth or, let's say, at conception—is connected with our karma. Whether we have a tendency to develop strong emotions and passions in our astral body is of course connected with our karma. These passions, however, can in a way be humanly significant and meaningful. For example, let's take a quality that plays a role throughout human life and that is nevertheless a passion, albeit the noblest passion, the one that in its noblest form can develop into freedom from selfishness: love. Love is a passion, but it can become entirely free of egoism. It is the only passion that can become free of egoism. It is located in the astral body; the astral body is its vehicle. Let us assume an artist with a true feeling for reality had been given the task to create a human form suffused and permeated through and through with the passion of love, the noble passion of love. Clearly, this artist could not be a naturalist, for naturalists have no feeling for realities but see only abstract, “naturalist” matter, so-called actuality. Every time artists had the task to create a Venus or an Aphrodite, they had to feel that the figure had to be completely suffused by this passion of love. Love has to be abundant; it has to pour itself out. What is the only thing that could happen in such a case? Obviously, not every ordinary female figure can represent Aphrodite or Venus. Consequently, then, the astral body of Aphrodite or Venus cannot be like any other female astral body, for otherwise every woman, every girl; would be an Aphrodite or a Venus—and that is not the case, is it? Thus, it is a matter of a special development of the astral body. The artist does not have to know anything about spiritual science, but he must feel as he creates a Venus that her astral body must be more developed, more strongly developed than that of a non-Aphrodite, a non-Venus. However, as we have said, the astral body has a depleting, consuming nature. That has to be expressed in the work of art. How will the artist who really feels this, who really has a sense for the depleting astral body, set about creating a Venus? He will have to make it visible that there is something about the physical body that gradually consumes it. And here the spiritual scientist is in a different situation than a modern physician, for example. Suppose an artist had created a Venus. As he was creating her, he felt correctly that she had a more strongly consuming and depleting astral body than any other woman. We will see this in the slender neck and the shape of the chest. We will also see in other parts of the body that her astral body basically has a depleting nature. If the artist gives the matter physical expression, perhaps we will see in her overall shape that she will not live to a very old age. When an artist achieves such a creation, spiritual scientists will say he has a sense for the underlying reality. From this standpoint, we will say that artists, while they are creating, often feel a true spiritual reality. However, what will a physician say, especially one who is not a spiritual scientist, when he sees such a figure created by an artist? He will say, “This is a representation of a person suffering from consumption.” For indeed people who suffer from consumption also have a more strongly consuming and depleting astral body—due to their karma in an earlier incarnation—than do other people. Now, Botticelli has painted a most beautiful and wonderful Venus, which most of you will know.1 In this picture of Venus standing on a shell, we see a physical body painted in such a way that we cannot help thinking it is based on a depleting astral body. That is why art historians disagree about this painting. Some of them admire the figure of this Venus precisely for its deviation from the so-called normal human form; they admire her slender neck and the unusual shape of her upper chest, and so forth. Others say these features are the result of Botticelli having painted a model who suffered from consumption. Well, it is certainly possible to explain everything in a materialistic way. Probably Botticelli really did paint a consumptive model, namely, Simonetta, who died at the age of twenty-three. But that is not the point. What is important is that he knew he wanted precisely this woman to sit for his Venus, a woman who made it possible for him to paint a person whose physical body was being depleted by the astral body more quickly than is usually the case. I will pass around this reproduction of the painting although it is not good, but I don't have a better one at the moment. In this picture, you will see it is really clearly noticeable that we are dealing here with an astral body of a different constitution, namely, with an astral body depleting the physical body by means of the etheric body. You see, spiritual science can guide us and show us the way to an understanding of such things. You will find that observation not sharpened by spiritual science is never enough to elucidate life. However, all things are illuminated when we approach them with the help of spiritual science, in everyday life as well as in art. We need to become patient and realize the human being is far more complicated than conventional science cares to acknowledge. The human being is a complicated creature, and one of the most irresponsible pronouncements frequently uttered in connection with world views is that the best explanation is always the one that is simplest. Well, it is not the simplest explanation that is the best; the best explanation is the one that correctly explains the matter. That's what we have to realize. Now let me give you another example to show that the conventional sciences cannot get very far without using the approach of spiritual science. Remember the public lecture I gave in the Architektenhaus this winter where I said we have to distinguish first of all between two parts of our physical body: our head and the rest of our body. When you look at the human skeleton, you'll see the head standing out clearly, distinct from the rest of the body. In that lecture I said that, roughly speaking, everything “hanging” from the head basically developed on earth. The condition of the human being at the end of the Moon phase of evolution, at the transition to the earth is retained only in the shape of the head. The head is a considerably older organ than the rest of our organism. The head is our oldest, most venerable part. The earth added all the rest to the head—that is, not quite all, but roughly speaking all the rest; we have to approximate these things. When we consider that the I continues from incarnation to incarnation, we have to differentiate between the forces underlying the head and those underlying the rest of the organism. Remember, as I said, the form and shape of our head are essentially the result of our previous incarnation. How we conducted our life, how we acted in our previous incarnation, has left its mark on our organism and manifests in the following incarnation in our physiognomy, particularly in the shape of our skull. As you may remember, I once said that the existence of reincarnation, repeated earth lives, is plainly visible in your skull, for the shape of your skull is determined by what kind of person you were in your previous incarnation. The formation of the rest of our physiognomy, our posture, whether we are fidgety or not and whether we gesture much or little—all this has a bearing on the next incarnation, when it is expressed in the shape of our face and particularly in that of the skull. You can see how disputes about quite important things can arise. There are people who, especially according to their own opinion, are very learned in craniology. They feel a person's skull with their hands and read his or her character from it. What they say may be more or less true and can sometimes even be quite correct, but it can never be the whole truth or be exhaustive, because it is a fact that every one of us has indeed a head of his or her own. No skull is exactly like any other, for our skull is the result of our previous incarnation. The rest of our organism prepares the skull we will have in the next incarnation. Craniologists and phrenologists quarrel among themselves because they insist on generalizing where they ought to individualize. Well, every one has a head of his or her own! It is only through intuition that we can find anything about a person's deeper nature revealed in the structure of the skull. Not only phrenologists, but science as a whole does not know what to make of the shape of the human skull. I would like to point out here that this is another area where the conventional natural sciences need to be supplemented by spiritual science. In 1887, the famous anatomist Karl Langer gave a lecture on three truly important human heads, namely, the skulls of Schubert, Haydn, and Beethoven.2 Karl Langer examined the anatomy of these three skulls. He emphasized that in none of them had he been able to find any indication of special musical talents, least of all in the skull of Beethoven. He underscored that from the standpoint of anatomy and physiology, Beethoven's skull was so ugly one would have expected anything else but not that the soul of Beethoven could have been active in it. Now Karl Langer is an anatomist who observed carefully in this particular case and proceeded on the basis of realities, not fantastic theories. He had to admit there is nothing to be found in these skulls that would indicate musical talents. We know that Haydn, Schubert, and Beethoven were indeed musicians in the incarnation where the anatomist found these skulls. However, they may not have been musicians in their preceding incarnation. And we can well understand that particularly in the case of Beethoven everything that was purified in the time between death and rebirth could have come from a strong, powerful fighter. What is retained from the preceding incarnation manifests in the shape of the skull. Langer was particularly struck by the fact that all three men had been musicians, and yet their skulls had nothing in common. There were no characteristics common to all three men precisely because they probably had completely different experiences in their previous incarnations and became musicians only in the incarnation where they had the skulls Langer examined. Their musical disposition expressed itself in their soul, while the shape of their skull was an expression of their experiences during the previous incarnation. Eventually, arguments about these three skulls resulted. Another anatomist tried to prove Langer wrong. But the argument wasn't leading anywhere; after all, on what does a physical anatomist depend to study such matters? Of course, he will not want to hear of a previous incarnation and will therefore seize upon heredity. And Schaaffhausen, the anatomist who wanted to refute Karl Langer, observed that the shape of our skull is inherited.3 In connection with such pronouncements, people never study what really happens in the hereditary transmission of the shape of the skull. If they did and did not proceed with the usual logic people so love to use in this area, they would soon see how unfounded it is to talk of heredity in this connection. In reality, we create the form of our skull based on the result of our previous incarnation. Granted, other elements can overlap or clash with what has come about in accordance with the preceding incarnation. We grow up in a certain environment, and especially if our feelings, our heart and soul, are attached to personalities in a particular environment, a good deal will still be impressed into the finer organization of our body. However, in essence, the skull is shaped according to the preceding incarnation. You know, of course, how brilliantly people are trying to apply the so-called theory of genetics. There is now an erudite book, diligently researched—I really don't want to say anything against erudition in such a case; on the whole, the author really worked like a beaver to present his points. This book traces Goethe's ancestors as far back as possible. And what is the purpose of all this busy work? The objective is to show that traits that have appeared in several of a person's ancestors also emerge when the line of ancestors culminates in a genius. People think this is highly logical. However, as I have often said, it proves no more than saying if a man falls into water and is pulled out again, he will be wet. Obviously, anyone coming from a certain line of ancestors still bears traits of this ancestry, which, after all, he or she has sought out. In order to prove that the theory of genetics really applies the way natural science assumes, one would have to start with certain traits and then show they are present in the following generations. Thus, we would have to start with the genius and then show that his or her extraordinary capacities were passed on to the offspring. But, of course, people will do nothing of the kind. After all, they could not prove that Goethe's genius was transmitted to his son or to his grandchildren, for we know all about them, don't we! Among the descendants of other people of genius this can also generally not be proved. When hereditary transmission could be proved, it was due to something quite different from physical heredity, namely to an inclination of the soul to incarnate in a particular family and to look for certain traits. Well, we have often talked about this. You see, this is another example showing that conventional science must be complemented by spiritual science. What conventional science and everyday life have to offer us must at every turn be illuminated by the insights of spiritual science. Nowadays people have no idea how wonderfully the mysteries of cosmic evolution work on the soul when they are seen in the light of spiritual science. I have often spoken of the fourth post-Atlantean or Greco-Latin epoch, and of our present epoch, the fifth one, and indicated how we differ from the people of the fourth post- Atlantean epoch. People of our epoch look at the art of Greek antiquity and admire the artists' keen perception, particularly in the sculptures, revealing things people in our time cannot easily perceive anymore. The crass, materialist explanation for this difference is that the ancient Greeks simply had a keener sense of sight. Besides, they could observe the human body in their games, which some people have half a mind to reinstate in this day and age. Well, those who nowadays imitate ancient Greek games certainly won't turn into Greeks, you can take my word for it; but people just love to imitate mere outer appearances. As I have emphasized before, the ancient Greeks represented what they saw differently than we do now. This was because the Greeks still had something within them. We know the Greeks had developed their intellectual or mind soul. Our I is directed to the outside while our intellectual or mind soul is oriented to the inside and perceives our inner balance and the inner mobility of our body. The ancient Greeks lived more within themselves than we do. Consequently, the artists in ancient Greece did not work with their models as modern artists do. Instead, when the artist wanted to represent an arm, he felt within himself the shape and form of the muscle. And when he wanted to represent a movement, he felt what it is like to perform the movement himself. Yes, indeed, the ancient Greeks could do more than we because they were more within themselves. As you know, the sentient soul developed during the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, and the intellectual or mind soul in the Greco-Latin epoch. Yet, the intellectual soul is still focused on what is inside us. It is only the I that emerges from our inner life and perceives the outer world. When the ancient Greeks watched a bird and imitated its flight with their own arms, they could feel in their arm movements how they had to sculpt the wings. In contrast, we need a model; we need to look at a real bird, and then we reproduce it in a painting or a sculpture. It is with good reason that modern humanity has lost this faculty of inner experiencing. But we have to know and acknowledge the inner understanding of sculpture the ancient Greeks still had and we no longer have. We have to understand that when a Greek artist sculpted a person in movement, he knew out of inner knowledge, and not from looking at a model, how he had to position the legs, the toes, and the fingers. Strictly speaking, people nowadays are unable to draw a bird in flight. In modern pictures, birds hover; they do not fly, and that is perfectly all right, but we have to understand it. We must not expect of our contemporaries what was expected of the ancient Greeks. This inner life of feeling had to be subdued so human beings could direct their I to the outside. We must not think of human evolution the way modern, materialistic Darwinists do and begin with imperfect human beings that develop into more perfect ones. Instead, we must see a parallel spiritual development that descends from the perfect state in the spiritual world down to human beings adapting themselves more and more to their physical organism. There are two streams of evolution, not just one. Thus, we can say our way of seeing things allows us to take in something that could not be perceived in earlier times. This earlier way of looking at things should not be carried over into later times, but, of course, it is occasionally carried over. At this point, I would like to draw your attention to snapshots of people walking on the street you can find in any illustrated magazine. Snapshots reproduce the immediate outer reality; they show the person as he or she is—most of the time, that isn't very pretty. A snapshot of a bird will look very different from a painting. Now the strange thing is, when you look at a Japanese drawing of birds, you'll see it resembles a snapshot. That is a fact. There is a certain resemblance between Japanese drawings of birds in flight and a snapshot of birds. This resemblance applies even to Japanese drawings of people, because Japanese artists, more so than others, paint what a snapshot reveals—of course, we have to limit our observation to the representation of people walking. This is because the Japanese have retained their way of seeing things from the fourth post-Atlantean epoch into the present. We, however, can no longer see things the way the Japanese do. Modern Japanese still see more correctly in the Greek sense—albeit not with the ancient Greeks' sense for beauty—than we Europeans do, for we have advanced to the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. We can comprehend these things only when we consider them from the point of view of spiritual science. And when you compare Asian and European painting and sculpture, you will find the difference between the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, which has been preserved there, and our fifth post-Atlantean epoch. You can see everywhere the necessity to bring spiritual science into things. However, in our culture today we are very far from understanding this need to bring spiritual science into outer knowledge. For the most part this is not because it is especially difficult to attain a spiritual scientific outlook; rather it is simply due to the fact that people resist it. What is described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment is relatively easy to understand.4 People could quite easily learn this, but they resist it. Of course, I am not speaking about you, my dear friends, but our outer culture resists spiritual science. The main reason for this resistance is that our culture does not want to establish the basic prerequisites for the development of conscience in thinking, conscientiousness in thinking, or logical conscience. Here we come upon an actual sickness in the culture of our age, and spiritual scientists have to take it into account because it confronts them everywhere. This sickness is the lack of a logical conscience, of a conscience in thinking. You can make the most peculiar discoveries in this connection. We have already looked at examples of this, but let's look at one more example today. There was a man—and he is still alive—who wanted to prove philosophically that ideals are nothing real, nothing vital. He simply wanted to make allowances for the modern view that will let ideals stand at a pinch but considers them as not really existing in the way physically perceptible things do. By the same token, this man was a philosopher and thus would have had very little to do if he did not let ideals stand. After all, the physical realm is already taken care of by the other sciences, and there must be something left for the philosopher to do. Now, then, ideals have no intrinsic existence, but he still wants to let them stand. Thus, he says they are just fictions, we must accept them as necessary fictions, as necessary assumptions. And this man then developed this idea into a whole philosophy, the philosophy of the As if, we have already talked about it earlier.5 According to this philosophy we don't need to assume atoms exist, but we can look at the world as if atoms existed. We don't need to assume the soul exists, but we can look at the world as if it did. You see, it's a complete philosophy of the As if. Now this man used an analogy to help his readers understand that we can hold on to ideals while at the same time denying them an intrinsic existence, and this analogy is typical of this philosopher's logical conscience. His analogy was of a child playing with a doll, which the child knows has no life of its own. In other words, why should we reject ideals when children do not reject dolls? Even though dolls are not alive, children treat them as though they were. Why shouldn't we do the same with ideals even though we know they have no intrinsic being? Here we have the view that ideals have no real existence but can nevertheless be useful to us in life when we use them as little children use their dolls, which are not alive either and yet are treated like living beings. We are dealing here with a philosopher who compares ideals to dolls! Now, let us try to understand this analogy, this image. First, we have a little child playing with a doll, but this is based on the premise that the doll is at least a reproduction of a living being. The child would hardly play with the doll at all if it did not in some way resemble or represent a living being. This is the precondition. Clearly, then, we can hardly compare the doll to an ideal unless we also assume the ideal is after all a representation of something real and alive. This philosopher's first nonsense is to use this analogy. The second lies in saying we should base our life on ideals as if they existed. And what will come of all this? Naturally about as much as usually comes of children playing with dolls—on which he bases his recommendation—in other words, only a mere imitation of life. We are not only dealing here with a foolish analogy but also with a second error, a second foolishness. The analogy does not hold water because the comparison to a doll does not work: dolls are at least representations of living beings; ideals, on the other hand, are not supposed to represent anything. But even if they did, they would only lead to an imitation of life, not life itself. We are dealing here with double nonsense. Here is a philosopher who perpetrates not just one but two absurdities. We could find many more such double absurdities in the sciences as well as in modern life in general. They are particularly numerous in the so-called wisdom of the world, in philosophy. When such thinking exists, when thinking has gone so far off the track, it cannot discipline itself to develop only valid analogies or at least a feeling for valid analogies—indeed, then we have no foundation for a spiritual view at all. For a spiritual view can develop only if our thinking is sound. Therefore I would like to ask you to pay attention to what I say about the concept of reality in my new book, Vom Menschenrätsel.6 We must develop a concept of reality, and not just a concept of the logical. A crystal is a self-contained reality, complete in itself. When I examine the crystal for what it is, it tells me the truth about itself. But look at a tree trunk without its roots and branches, does it also tell us the truth about itself? No, certainly not; it is telling lies as it is lying there, for it cannot exist as a tree trunk by itself. It could never exist if it did not grow in connection with roots, branches, and leaves; all these belong to the tree trunk. I find the truth about it only if I picture the tree as a whole. With the trunk by itself I have a piece cut out of the world of the senses, but this fragment is not a reality. If our thinking is to be true to reality, we must develop a sense for what has to be included in our concepts. Only when we have a feeling that a leaf is not a reality because it cannot be thought of apart from a plant—you see, a crystal and a leaf are very different—only when we develop this sense for reality, are we ready to ascend in the right way to spiritual realities. Many things can be logical, but whether they are true to reality is another matter. It is very easy to make mistakes in regard to this sense for reality. When I look at a painting of a figure taken out of the whole context, then I am not looking at reality, for I have to see the whole picture. If someone now objected that this painting is the result of earlier paintings by the same and other painters, and we would therefore have to look at the whole history of art, that would again be nonsense. We have to develop a sense for reality that tells us there are self-contained realities. Otherwise the only thing that would be “real” would be the whole universe. Now that I have more or less covered the topic of today's talk and am not subtracting anything from its essence, I would like to add the following—not to say anything derogatory or disparaging, but only to throw light on the way our whole movement should be taken. We can introduce spiritual science into modern culture only if there are many people with the good will to stand by this spiritual science with the right feeling and sensitivity. I do not like to say such things, but they have to be said. You see, I try in every way possible to show that there is in our time a tendency, an impulse, toward spiritual science. That is why I quoted from Hermann Bahr's two books Expressionismus and Himmelfahrt. Here we have a man who is over fifty years old and is now beginning, after having written many plays and novels, to develop a longing for spiritual science and also for Goethe, who is so closely connected with its impulses. I tried to show that at the age of fifty Hermann Bahr had the good will to finally begin—according to his own admission—to read Goethe's works and that he slowly began to find his way—“groping” as I put it—into spiritual science and so has reached the very first elementary stages of it. Books such as Hermann Bahr's Expressionismus and Himmelfahrt are really extraordinarily revealing because they show us that spiritual science is also—pardon the trivial expression—a matter of time. We will advance in this area only if we take things really seriously, if we have the right kind of reverence for spiritual science, and know that spiritual science is a basic impulse people seek in the current stage of our cultural development. It will always be detrimental to our cause if things are taken only superficially. It will be harmful if what we are trying to do here, and—it may be said in all modesty—what we are trying to do thoroughly, is mistaken for charlatanism, foolishness, fantasy, or other things like that. Nothing is as damaging to our cause as being mistaken for some sort of fantastic nonsense. Now we have been working together for a long time, and gradually a seriousness toward our cause has developed as well as the ability to distinguish between it and other things that resemble it to some extent. After all, even a mongrel dog has some resemblance to a lion: they both have four legs! Ultimately, everything resembles everything else! What has to be taken into consideration above all is the seriousness of our striving, the seriousness of our work. Now, let me put it this way: in the case I'm talking about, I certainly appreciate the underlying good will and am grateful for it; yet I must discuss the symptomatic features of this case. In my last two lectures, I explained that Hermann Bahr in a sense presented a self-portrait in the character of his protagonist Franz, who went through various experiences in life, and then came to a kind of mysticism. In other words, this is a serious book that portrays a person's whole life. Well, someone who had heard all this sent me a book, the book Apostel Dodenscheidt by Margarethe Böhme. It arrived with a note saying Apostel Dodenscheidt, like Hermann Bahr's Franz, had gone through all kinds of developments and had finally found his way to accepting reincarnation and karma. Well, that book by Böhme is a roman à clef of the worst kind. You only need to remember certain events that happened here in and around Berlin at one time and names such as Josua Klein and others. In this novel there is a man named Gottfried Gross, and so on. There is nothing worse than for the things I meant here to be mentioned in one breath with the events behind that roman à clef, a novel that in terms of literature and art is a very poor and inferior one to boot. Indeed, there is a tendency to name things in the same breath whenever there is any chance to connect and confuse them. Granted, it was no sin that this has happened in this particular case—after all, the book was sent to me. Nevertheless, this shows what kinds of associations between ideas are formed and what kinds of things people will mistake for what we are seeking here out of the wellsprings of life. I do not want to reprimand but only to discuss a symptomatic occurrence. The things discussed here are not meant as those people understand them who take the absurdities in the book Apostel Dodenscheidt seriously. It is precisely this connecting of our cause with one or another striving that does it the most damage, and it is important that this truth stirs our souls; for those who find any resemblance here to the Apostel Dodenscheidt do not really understand what we are saying here. I do not intend to deliver a philippic here, but I want to point out again that I certainly recognize and appreciate the good will in this case. Nevertheless, I have to talk about symptomatic occurrences, for what came to light here is the same thing that comes up in the world outside again and again: what is discussed and represented here is not really taken with the necessary seriousness and insight.
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| 184. Three Streams in Human Evolution: Lecture I
04 Oct 1918, Dornach Translated by Charles Davy |
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| All these aspects of consciousness belong to the part of man's being we call the “I,” or ego. At the present time it is only in this last member of the human organism, in the ego itself, that man can find his bearings. The ego is mirrored for him in his consciousness. It is in this ego that are really enacted all the thinking, feeling and willing of the soul. |
| It is only forces of this kind that penetrate into our ego. But there are also the forces of cosmic movement, cosmic wisdom, cosmic will—Dynamis, Kyriotetes and Thrones, if we use their ancient names while approaching them in a modern spirit. |
| 184. Three Streams in Human Evolution: Lecture I
04 Oct 1918, Dornach Translated by Charles Davy |
|---|
To-day and in the next few days I should like to draw from our recent studies some conclusions about human life itself. I will first mention certain thoughts which are brought against Anthroposophy from outside, and will then show how with regard to these ideas we should lay hold of and emphasise certain conceptions. Now in the life of nature, in the natural order, everyone to-day recognises—in terms of the natural order, certainly—the same kind of thing that we want to establish through Spiritual Science for the spiritual life, the spiritual order. The anthroposophical outlook would be wrongly interpreted if it were to infuse modern Spiritual Science with any kind of old errors or mystical ideas, bordering on superstition. We must accustom ourselves to use such terms as Ahrimanic, Luciferic—now familiar to us—for the spiritual order, in the same way, though certainly on a higher level, that a natural scientist speaks of positive and negative electricity, positive and negative magnetism, and so on. In contradistinction to the prejudices of present-day natural science, however, we must be clear that directly we rise to consideration of the spiritual order of the world, those concepts which in natural science have a fixed and highly abstract content, must be grasped in a more concrete and spiritual sense. Now we know that during the life between birth and death man has what we are accustomed to call his physical body; beyond this is the etheric body or—to use the more workable expression I am trying to introduce—the body of formative forces; then comes the astral body which has a conscious character, but not yet that of our present-day consciousness. What many people to-day call the subconscious appertains to the astral body. Then comes what is called our ordinary consciousness, which alternates between the states of sleeping and waking. In the sleeping state it is represented only by chaotic dreams. In the waking state, not content with perceptions only, it has recourse to abstract judgments and concepts. All these aspects of consciousness belong to the part of man's being we call the “I,” or ego. At the present time it is only in this last member of the human organism, in the ego itself, that man can find his bearings. The ego is mirrored for him in his consciousness. It is in this ego that are really enacted all the thinking, feeling and willing of the soul. Everything else—astral body, etheric body, and the physical body in its true form—lies outside his consciousness and also outside the ego. For all that is stated about the physical body in ordinary science, in anatomy, physiology and so forth, refers only to its outer aspect—to as much of it as enters our consciousness in the same way as other external objects are perceived. What we consciously perceive is an external picture of the physical body, not the physical body itself. Thus the three members of man's being which, in accordance with their evolution, we call pre-earthly—you know about this evolution from my Occult Science—these three members are outside the field of normal human consciousness. Now you know that with regard to the spiritual order we speak of Beings who, as members of the various Hierarchies, are ranged above man, just as below him are ranged the three kingdoms of nature—the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. As soon as we consider man in a spiritual sense, we can no longer speak only of those contents of the astral, etheric and physical bodies of which ordinary science or even Anthroposophy speak when they are concerned only with human life in the sense-perceptible world. Therefore in our earlier studies this autumn I mentioned that if we look at these lower members of man's nature (let us call them that) as they truly are, we find that Spirits of the individual Hierarchies are essentially connected with them. In the sense of my recent remarks on Goethe's world-conception, we may say: In so far as through these three members man develops himself in the course of time, in so far as he goes through the evolution open to him between birth and death, he is connected with certain spiritual forces which lie behind his evolution. I tried to make this clear to you by saying: If we look upon this as man's present-day being [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] (diagram), we have to think of it as connected from its evolutionary past with the spiritual Powers whom we have recognised as belonging to the higher Hierarchies. As you know, in a normal man these spiritual Powers, with the exception of the Spirits of Form, the Exusiai, do not work directly within the ego. Thus, except for the Spirits of Form, the Powers who endow man with his original form, the remaining spiritual Powers do not work into his present consciousness. We can get some idea of the Spirits of Form—a very meagre idea but in some degree relevant—if we look at one aspect of the human bodily form which is acquired during the earliest period of physical life. We are all born as more or less crawling beings, with no power to stand vertically. Now a great deal in the whole being of man is connected with his upright posture, or rather with the force which makes this posture the true one for him. And when we consider the merely outward features which distinguish man from the animals, we should not look at the things usually seen, the bones, muscles, and so on, which in essentials are common to both man and animal; we should focus our attention on this force of uprightness which gives the growing human being his form. It is only part of the difference, but it is an essential part. This force of uprightness that intervenes in our physical development is of the same nature as all the forces that bestow on earthly man his form. It is only forces of this kind that penetrate into our ego. But there are also the forces of cosmic movement, cosmic wisdom, cosmic will—Dynamis, Kyriotetes and Thrones, if we use their ancient names while approaching them in a modern spirit. These forces intervene in the unconscious parts of man's being—those therefore that appertain to his astral body, his body of formative forces or etheric body, and his physical body. And so, when these members of man's nature are observed without the spiritual content to which I have referred, we are concerned with mere illusions, mere phantoms. In truth, we are not to be found in our outward appearance; our real being is in the aforesaid spiritual forces. Now—as I said recently in connection with Goethe's world-conception—there are forces which work upon man for a time, without being directly involved in his evolution. These two forces we call the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, the Luciferic working more spiritually (see red in diagram), the Ahrimanic more in the subconscious (lilac in diagram). Hence we have a threefold cosmic intervention in human life. We can say: In man's nature there are certain spiritual [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] forces connected directly with the course of his evolution. And there are two other kinds of forces, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, not directly connected with his evolution; they work upon him for a time and are thus an addition to his inherent constitution. Let us now consider life. When we consider life, we do not see only the stream of forces that actually belongs to us; we always see something flowing together out of the three streams. Whatever we survey, the outer world of the senses, or the historical life of man taking its course between pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, action and inaction, we see it in such a way that the three streams are flowing into one another. In ordinary life we do not go in for what the chemist does when, instead of leaving water as the simple liquid it appears to be, he analyses it into hydrogen and oxygen. Spiritual science must undertake this analysis. Spiritual science must go in for spiritual chemistry; otherwise it will never be possible thoroughly to understand human life. From various points of view we have described the special characteristics of the type of being we call Luciferic, and those of the type of being we call Ahrimanic. Our task now is to go into these things from yet another point of view, so as to relate them directly to human life. Where in man's life is the point at which Luciferic forces acquire particular influence, and where the point at which particular influence is acquired by the Ahrimanic forces? Now if man could give himself up to the quiet development proper to his original being (you know from earlier studies that he would then be able to acquire self-knowledge only in the second half of life) he would not have been exposed to the periodic ingress of Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers. But in real life, as we have to live it, man is exposed to the periodic ingress of these powers—yes, he must indeed reckon with the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. Now in all that belongs more to the sphere of the conscious in man, but in such a way that he does not strive after this consciousness through nature but by going beyond nature (we go beyond nature when, for example, we acquire self-knowledge during the first half of life)—in everything he strives for through consciousness there lies something we can describe only as super-consciousness. But for this element of super-consciousness, our consciousness would appear quite different. It is super-consciousness that enables man to introduce into historical life more than he could do if he had to depend solely on his physical development. At the present juncture in man's earthly evolution we should have a very different form of culture if this super-consciousness had not flowed in. With this super-consciousness, however, the possibility of ingress is quite definitely given to Luciferic powers. We must recognise in the right way how these powers work into human consciousness. Without them, man would never be induced to develop a form of thinking different from that which I recently described to you as the ideal of the Goethean world-conception. With the aid of Luciferic powers, he forms hypotheses, builds imaginative pictures that transcend reality. He does not simply seize upon reality; with his consciousness he unites super-consciousness. He forms all manner of ideas about reality—ideas that enable him to come to closer grips with reality than he otherwise would do. And if we turn our gaze to the whole sphere of art, where the super-conscious plays so large a part, we must emphasise that if art is not to degenerate into mere naturalism, the highest possible degree of Luciferic activity must come in. It is no use saying—I have emphasised this again and again—that man should keep the Luciferic away from his life. If he could do so, he would be unable to lead a real life; he would have to become an arch-philistine. It is the Luciferic activity which like a leaven saves him over and over again—spurs him on to struggle out of Philistinism. This Luciferic activity, however, is at the same time the cause of man's tendency to look at the world from the airy viewpoint of a bird, as it were. All that arises in the course of history as wonderful programmes, marvellously beautiful ideas, by which it is always believed that in some way or other a return can be made to the Golden Age—all this has its origin in the Luciferic tendencies which flow into man. Everything by which he tries to loosen his connection with reality, to soar above his actual circumstances—all this points to the Luciferic. So, too, does the impulse that is always tending to diminish the interest we take in our fellow-men. Were we to follow our original nature, in accordance with the evolutionary forces that truly belong to us, we should feel an interest in our fellow-men far beyond the usual measure. The Luciferic element in our nature produces a certain lack of interest in other people. And if we study the real being of man, we ought to lay great emphasis on the following point—that a great deal in the world would be different if we were to recognise in its reality this urge of ours towards an excessive interest in our own concoctions and a much too meagre interest in what other people think and feel and will. Knowledge of man in the right sense is acquired only if we permeate our approach with the question: What is it that impels me to lose interest in other people? It must be a future task of human culture to develop this knowledge of man. To-day, knowledge of man is often said to consist in what anyone may say about people in accordance with his own idea of what they are or what they should be. Taking people as they are and being quite clear that everyone is as he is, even the criminal—we must go as far as that—tells us more important things about the world than any personal fancies we may have about the being of man, however beautiful they may be. To say this to ourselves is to set up a counterpoise to the Luciferic element within us. An endeavour to gain a knowledge of man in this way would reveal an endless amount. And a genuine interest in the real nature of man has never been further off than it is to-day. But what is meant here is not to be confused with a lack of critical attitude towards human beings. Anyone who starts out with the idea that all men must be looked upon as good and have to be given equal affection is dealing with the matter in a most comfortably Luciferic way, for all that is pure fantasy. This notion of regarding all men as equal is sheer Luciferic fantasy; the point is not to cherish a general idea but to penetrate to the actual character of every individual man and to develop for it a loving—or, perhaps better, an interested—undemanding. Now you may ask: What is the object of the presence of this Luciferic force in us, if it prevents us from being tolerant towards human nature in a wise sense and from developing interest in it? What is this Luciferic force in us meant for? In the household of the spirit it is thoroughly justified. The Luciferic force has to be there because if we were only in the progressive stream of cosmic influence and were to develop a tendency to know each individual man in accordance with his nature and spirit, then we should be drowned in ail our knowledge about man. We should go under and never be able to find ourselves properly. A fact connected with many of the secrets of existence is that there is truly nothing in life which, if carried to an extreme conclusion, does not turn into something bad or unfortunate. That which rightly draws us to other people, and enables us to find the other man in ourselves, would have the effect of drowning us in our knowledge of man if the Luciferic goad were not always there, ready again and again to save us from drowning, to raise us to the surface, bringing us back to ourselves and kindling interest in our own being. It is just in our human relations that we live in a continuous fluctuation between our own original force and the Luciferic force. And anyone who says: Would it not show more intelligence if man were to follow his own original force without being touched by the Luciferic force?—anyone who maintains this ought also to maintain that if he had scales with two pans he would prefer to dispense with one pan and weigh simply with the other. Life runs its course in states of balance, not in absolutely fixed conditions. This is what can first of all be said of the Luciferic grip upon human life. It lays hold of human consciousness, but in such a way that super-consciousness intermingles with consciousness. The Ahrimanic element, on the other hand, exerts its influence chiefly in the subconscious. In all the subconscious impulses in man's nature, often subtle impulses, the Ahrimanic fortes mingle. If we want to characterise Ahriman and Lucifer we might say: Lucifer is a proud Spirit who likes to soar away into the heights where lofty visions open out. Ahriman is a morally lonely Spirit who does not readily make his presence known; he sets his nature to work in man's subconscious, works upon man's subconscious, conjures judgments out of it. People then believe that they judge out of their own consciousness, whereas they often derive an opinion from subconscious instincts, out of subtle subconscious impulses, or they even allow it to be conjured forth by the Ahrimanic forces themselves. Religious descriptions have, as we know, often sprung from old conceptions which have now been taken over by Spiritual Science. And Peter was not far wrong in calling Ahriman a “prowling lion seeking whom he might devour.” For Ahriman really does prowl in the hidden parts of man's nature, in his subconscious; he strives to reach his earthly goal by diverting man's subconscious force to himself, so as spiritually to attain different ends in world-evolution from those lying in the direct human stream. Where historical life is concerned it is always Luciferic forces that lead us to hatch out far-reaching world-dreams which fail to reckon with the nature of man. In the course of human thought what a vast number of ideas have been devised for making the world happy! And in the firm opinion of those who devise them, the world can become happy only through these particular ideas. This is because such Luciferic thinking is of an airy kind, soaring aloft and taking no account of all that is swarming around below, and believing that the world can be organised on the lines of these airy notions. Such ideas of how to make the world happy, resting always upon a defective knowledge of man, are of a Luciferic nature; dreams of world power derived from particular realms of human activity are of an Ahrimanic kind. For these dreams are developed out of the subconscious. It is Ahrimanic to take a certain realm of human activity and to wish to bring the whole world under its aegis. All that is connected with man's lust for ruling over his fellows, all that is in opposition to healthy social impulses, is of an Ahrimanic nature. The man of whom it could be said—not in a superstitious way but in our own sense—that he is possessed by Lucifer, loses interest in his fellow-men. The man possessed by Ahriman would like to have as many men as possible in his power and then to proceed—if he is clever—to make use of human frailty in order to rule over men. It is Ahrimanic to seek in the sub-earthly, in the subconscious, for human weaknesses as a means of ruling men. Now we must ask: Where does all this come from? That above all is the question which must interest us: Where does it all come from? We have to ask: Of what nature are such forces as the Ahrimanic and Luciferic in their true being? Now we know that our Earth is—to use a Goethean expression—a metamorphosis of previous cosmic world-bodies, the fourth metamorphosis. And in order to have names for them, we have said: The Earth was first incorporated as Saturn, then as Sun, then as Moon, and is now incorporated as Earth.1 Thus we know that this Earth is the fourth incorporation of its cosmic being, the fourth metamorphosis; and it will go through further metamorphoses. We must take this into consideration if we now go on to ask: In the whole cosmic framework which embraces man, what significance have the forces of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Beings? We know that with the formation assumed by that part of the cosmos most nearly concerning us—our Earth—the Spirits of Form are connected. And if we examine a particularly characteristic feature of this Earth-formation, we find it—as I said before—to be identical, though only in a limited respect, with the way in which we overcome gravity through our own power of standing upright. These Spirits of Form are in a certain sense the ruling forces in earthly existence—that is, in the present metamorphosis of our planet. As we know, however, these Spirits of Form work through other Spirits whom we call Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi, using old names in a modern connotation. Now, with regard to these Beings, we are interested above all in the Archai, the Primal Forces, Primal Beginnings. We know that in the ranks of spiritual Beings, the Spirits of Form come immediately above the Archai. Hence we find that in the course of man's original evolution the forces of the Archai are to a certain extent in the service of the Spirits of Form. Into the being of man there work Archai and Exusiai—the Spirits we also call Primal Forces and those we call Spirits of Form. Besides this, however, there are also certain Spirits of Form who are disguised as Archai. They can be Exusiai, but they act only as Archai; they take on that rôle. This is an essential fact we discover—how spiritual Beings can take on a certain rôle which differs from the actual stage of their own evolution. This has a quite definite consequence. Earthly form can be just as dependent on those Primal Forces who are really Spirits of Form, as it is upon the ordinary Spirits of Form. But the important thing is that everything in our earthly existence which is connected with space through taking shape in space is shaped out of the non-spatial. We comprehend the spatial only if we trace it back in its picture-nature to primal pictures that are outside space. Naturally, one of the difficulties for Western thinking is to form a conception of the spaceless. Yet it is true that everything connected with our primeval manhood, everything proceeding from the Spirits of Form, when it takes shape in space, is an effect of the spaceless. To speak concretely, when as individual human beings, who first crawl on all-fours, we learn to stand upright and thus overcome gravity in our upright posture, we place ourselves into space. But the force that is fundamentally responsible for this makes its way into space out of the spaceless. If therefore as men we were subject only to the Spirits of Form proper to us, we should in every way place ourselves into space, bring the spaceless to realisation in space, for the Spirits of Form do not live in space. Anyone who seeks the Divine in space will not find it ... that goes without saying. Anything which arises as form in space is a realisation of the spaceless. Those Beings who are Spirits of Form but act as Archai, as Primal Forces, should really, according to their essential nature, belong to the spaceless. But they enter space, they work in space. And this is characteristic of the Ahrimanic—that spiritual Beings who in their true nature are intended to be spaceless have preferred to work in space. This enables forms to arise in space that do not ray in directly out of the spaceless. Thus the spatial is portrayed in the spatial, so that one spatial form reflects another. Perhaps I may take a concrete case. We men are all different from one another because we are placed here out of the spaceless. Our archetypes are in the spaceless. Everything is different from everything else. You have heard the famous story of how, at the instigation of Leibniz, certain princesses—for sometimes princesses have nothing better to do—searched the garden for two leaves absolutely alike and did not find them, for there are no two identical leaves. We also are forms created out of the spaceless, in so far as we do not resemble each other. But from another aspect we are alike—especially when we are blood relations. We resemble one another because there are spiritual Beings who form the spatial according to the spatial, not merely the spatial according to the spaceless. We resemble each other because we are permeated by Ahrimanic forces. This must be recognised, or we shall merely inveigh against Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces without any wish to understand them. This example illustrates very clearly how Ahriman plays into our life. In so far as you can venture to say to yourself, “According to my form I am individual man, different from any other,” you are in the direct line of evolution. And were this the only fact valid in the world, and if there were no Ahrimanic side-streams to it, a mother would not be able to rejoice that her little daughter resembles her so wonderfully, for it would strike her that each individual human being is a spatial image of something outside space, that nothing spatial is a replica of anything in space. The entry into space of certain Spirits of Form gives the Ahrimanic its opportunity. Naturally this Ahrimanic element is not confined to similarity among human beings—it extends to many other things; we have simply taken one example of it. Now I will ask you to call to mind what I added—not for your comfort but as arising out of our subject—after having told you that man really becomes apt for self-knowledge only in the second half of life. I said: In so far as our life takes this course in time, and if nothing else worked upon us, we could, in fact, arrive at self-knowledge only in the second half of life. But—so I said at the time—in the first half of life Luciferic forces work on us and produce a self-knowledge that is not the result of our own original human nature. In contrast to human life as it would be if it followed its original pattern, I set what I have called the realm of duration. In regard to everything that belongs to our original human nature we are different persons at fifty from what we were at twenty; we develop. In regard to everything in us that we do not develop, we belong not to our bodily nature but to the realm of soul and spirit and are connected with the realm of duration, with that realm in which time plays no part. Just as the spaceless lies at the basis of everything spatial, so at the basis of everything temporal there is duration. We should be quite different human beings if we were not connected with the realm of duration. As I said a short while ago, we should wake out of a certain life of dreams only at twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old. We live, however, in the realm of duration, and this gives balance to our dozing through the first half of life and the terrible intellectual brightness of the second half. Now to this realm of duration belong, as we know, all the spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies, with the single exception of the Spirits of Form. They play into the kingdom of evolution in time. But because they live both spatially and spacelessly, because they pass their life between space and the spaceless, they call spatial forms into existence out of the spaceless. This admits of a time-process; their life plays into time. The other Beings, however, of a higher rank than the Spirits of Form among the Hierarchies, belong entirely to duration. It is only by way of comparison that they can be spoken of as Beings of time; if this is meant to correspond to reality, it is nonsense. It is most difficult to talk about these things for the simple reason that, at the present stage of evolution, so very few men have any lively sense of concepts and ideas developed outside space and outside time. Most people would explain away the spaceless as sheer fantasy; and it is the same with the timeless, the enduring, the imperishable, and even the immutable. Beings above the rank of the Exusiai, accordingly, belong only to the realm of duration. But there are those among them who take on the role of Beings in time, who enter time. Just as those other Beings, the Ahrimanic Beings I have described, enter space, so there are Beings who enter time. These are Luciferic Beings, who really belong to the ranks of Spirits of Wisdom, but because they work in time they do so in the character of Spirits of Form. And that which would otherwise work timelessly in man's soul during life is brought into time by these Spirits. Hence it comes about that certain things which could always be in existence for us were we allowed to take our course according only to the realm of duration, succumb to time. For instance, we may forget them, or remember them either more or less well, and so on, and this remembrance depends only upon our bodily-soul nature, not upon our soul-spiritual nature. Spirits of Duration, therefore, who act as Spirits of Time—they are Luciferic powers; in the cosmic order they are really of a much higher rank than those Powers of whom many clergymen, however highly educated in theology they may think themselves, speak when they talk of the divine. ... In reality they are referring to much less exalted Powers, as I have indeed said before. These Luciferic Beings are able to transfer into time what would otherwise appear to our human perception as purely spiritual and timeless—they give it the semblance of running its course in time. And this temporal semblance, imparted to certain phenomena in ourselves, is the sole reason why people maintain that their spiritual activity has a material origin. Were we not permeated in our souls by Luciferic Beings, our spiritual activity would appear to us as coming directly from the spiritual. We should never imagine that spiritual activity could depend on the material. We should see that the image I often use is the only right one—that whoever believes his spiritual activity arises from the material is like a man who goes up to a mirror and thinks that the reflection arises from a being behind it. Certainly the image depends upon how the mirror is constructed, and so is our thinking dependent upon our bodily nature. The body, however, does nothing more than the mirror does; if the Luciferic semblance were absent, the mirror would directly reveal to human perception that spiritual activity is merely given its form by the material. In so far as Lucifer is implicated in our super-consciousness, he calls forth the semblance that leads us by the nose in the same way as if we were to go up to a mirror and break it in order to find out how whoever was behind it had managed to get a hold there. This illusion that the spiritual can originate in the material is essentially Luciferic. And anyone who maintains that the spiritual is a product of the material is in fact declaring—though he may not say so—that Lucifer is his God. The assertion that the spiritual comes forth from the material, which is exactly the same as saying that a mirror produces a reflection, as if there were beings behind the mirror ... this assertion that the material produces the spiritual, the spiritual in man, is identical with declaring, even if not in words: Lucifer is God. Now we can also seek knowledge about the opposite pole. A Luciferic misrepresentation is that the mirror, the material, drives out the spiritual from itself. The opposite pole is this—the illusion also exists among men that the content of the physical world of the senses has power to work upon the inner being of man. If the Ahrimanic illusion, which arises through forces entering space out of the spaceless were not present, man would perceive how no influence could ever be exercised upon his inner being by forces anchored in the material. The assertion that in the material there are forces, energies, which are able to work on further in man, is an entirely Ahrimanic assertion; whoever makes it, even without words, is declaring Ahriman to be his God. Nevertheless man sways between these two illusions. First, the illusion that repeatedly deceives him—that the mirror itself produces pictures of real beings, as if the material were able to bring forth spiritual activities. And the other illusion—that in the external existence of the senses energies are contained which are somehow transformed so as to bring about human activities. The first is the Luciferic illusion; the other, the Ahrimanic. What is so characteristic of our present time is that it has no inclination to go into the spiritual in the same way that it goes into the natural order. It is certainly easier to speak about the spirit from the standpoint of a nebulous mysticism, or in terms of abstract ideas, than to enter concretely into spiritual processes and spiritual impulses in a truly scientific way, as is done in the case of nature itself. We live now in an age when man must consciously begin to make clear to himself what is working in his soul. We know why the time is past when man could draw from an unconscious source the impulses he needed to guide him further. To-day he must begin consciously to enter the realm in which lives his soul-nature, and this soul-nature is generated by consciousness. Thus we are able to say that if man were to follow in his evolution only his original nature and the good spiritual forces in the world, he would be a very different being from what he now is, when he pursues this age-old development in conjunction with the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forces working upon him in time. The question now is this: How is a balance set up between these three forces? In order to set up this balance, or at least to recognise how it can be done, we must look at the following. External natural science is quite content to judge in certain realms according to this principle: a knife has to do with eating, so one goes to the razor-case for a razor and cuts up the food. That is how many judgments in natural science are formed nowadays—for example, about death. Modern natural science does not go much further with its ready-made ideas about the phenomenon of death than to call it the cessation of an organism. That is easy, for then—as is done in a grotesque way to-day by many so-called scientists—we can speak of plant death, animal death, human death, all in the same sense. That, however, is really no different from speaking of a knife and putting a table-knife and a razor in the same category. In truth, what can be called death is different in plants, different in the animal, different in the case of human beings. But because in all three a cessation of organic functions is seen, people generalise. When we study human death—and we have very often talked of it—then we find that it can be looked upon in a certain sense as the counterpoise for the Luciferic forces. Death, as you know, is not just a once-only phenomenon, for a man actually begins to die the moment he is born. The impulses of death are already laid in him and death itself comes about at a certain point of time. Everything in the way of impulses leading to death is at the same time a force which sets up a counterpoise to the Luciferic forces. For through death man is led out beyond the temporal into the realm of duration. Now we know that the Luciferic forces really belong by nature to the realm of duration, and that what they are meant to do in the realm of duration they carry into the temporal. This would not be balanced if death, which leads man out of the temporal into the realm of duration, were not introduced into the kingdom of the temporal. Death balances the Luciferic. The Luciferic force carries duration into time; death carries time out into duration. There we have it in abstract words—but in this abstraction there is a very great amount of the concrete. And what have we had to say of Ahriman? He is responsible for similarity. I have given you a concrete case of human similarity which is connected with Ahriman. And here, too, a counterpoise must be set up. But strangely enough, similarity is often related to this counterpoise through one of those confused concepts that arise when one does not enter into the deeper connections. The counterpoise to human similarity is the force of heredity; we are not alike merely in the shaping of our outward form, but we bear inner forces of heredity within us. Through these forces we actually work against similarity of form. It is only a confused science that identifies similarity with heredity. We look like our parents, but at the same time in our inner man we have certain forces inherited from them which strive to recapture the original image of the human being. These inherited forces do actually fight against similarity. A more subtle observation of man's life can show us this, without any supersensible powers, but solely through external observation. Just try to ask the question of life in the right way; try to observe men who in some outward characteristic particularly resemble their parents, grandparents and so on; and then look at the inherited moral impulses. You will soon see that these inherited moral impulses are, as a rule, working against similarity of outward appearance. If in the case of distinguished personalities mentioned in history you are impressed by how much their pictures make them look like their forefathers, you will always notice that their biographies bring out attributes of soul—and these are precisely the inherited attributes—which are opposed to those from which the similarities of form have come. This is essentially one of the mysteries of life. Forebears would understand their descendants far better, and parents their children, if they were able to look this fact in the face completely without prejudice. If, for example, a mother has a little son who is very much like her, she can be pleased; but when it comes to education it might be useful for her to say: “What will happen if my son develops those qualities which are like the qualities that make for quarrels between my husband and me?” These concrete impulses have a tremendous importance in life and should be noticed. To know of them will be particularly necessary for the task of education, for the evolution of human beings in the future. For it will not be possible in the future to derive our education from abstract principles; we shall have to educate on an empirical, concrete basis. And we do not discover these empirical, concrete bases if we have no power to read life. We must be able to read life; but for that we must learn its alphabet. As you know, there is much more to it than that, but the most necessary alphabet that will suffice for the immediate future is to know three letters—normal evolution, Ahrimanic evolution, Luciferic evolution. Just as no-one can read a book without knowing his ABC, so anyone who is ignorant of these three letters cannot read—they are simply the letters through which one learns how to read life. Only by our learning to read life will the Utopian spirit so widespread among men be overcome. And people will then have to embark on a study of those forces which play into life. Now naturally someone may say: “You have been talking here about the original being of man, but it is nowhere to be found.” That goes without saying; but as an objection it is no different from this: “You have been telling me here of how in the flowing water of a river there is hydrogen and oxygen, but I see nothing of all that.” It is indeed necessary to go into these things, above all to have a correct concept of what form is. I have previously used a comparison which I should now like to repeat. One can arrive at Coblenz, or some other place, even at Basle, and admire the Rhine, perhaps feeling impelled to say: “This Rhine, it flows on, we don't know for how long it has done so but certainly for centuries, perhaps for an incalculable time. How old this Rhine is!”—What part of it is actually old? The water you look at will be at a quite different place in a few days; it will be far away; so it is certainly not old, for a few days ago it was not yet there, but somewhere quite else. What you see there is definitely not old; you have no right to call it centuries old. And when you speak of the Rhine, you probably do not mean its bed, the channel where its waters flow. In reality you are speaking of something not present before you. When you speak of reality, you cannot indeed refer to what you have before your eyes, for that is a confluence of forces working through the world and is merely a state of equilibrium. In whatever direction you may look, there is merely a state of equilibrium. You have to work through to the realities. And only by working through to the realities is it possible to learn the alphabet of life. To-morrow I shall be speaking of the connection of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic impulses with the Christ-Jahve impulse, so that you may see how, in reality, the Christ-Jahve impulse flows into these streams.
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| 70b. Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul: The Forgotten Pursuit of Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought
13 Mar 1916, Stuttgart |
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| And if, in the case of Fichte, one must admire above all how he conceives of the influence of the will on the ego and how he permeates himself with the awareness of this influence of the will on the ego, then in the case of Schelling it is that he establishes a science of nature and a science of the spirit in such a way that one can truly say: Wherever he wants to understand and recognize natural phenomena in an abstract way, the German soul is at work in him. |
| The striving for the spiritual world in pre-Christian times was as follows: it occurs in Asia, in which the human being is paralyzed, the ego is paralyzed, so that the human being can merge into the spiritual world with a subdued and dulled ego. |
| This essence of modern times has emerged most profoundly in what the faded tone of German intellectual life so beautifully indicates to us today: not the paralysis of the ego, but the invigoration, the revitalization of the ego, the right standing within the ego. The opposite of what was once oriental nature, which finds, by strengthening itself inwardly, in man also the way into the spiritual worlds. |
| 70b. Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul: The Forgotten Pursuit of Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought
13 Mar 1916, Stuttgart |
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Dear Attendees! Once again, as in my previous attendances during this fateful time, it seems appropriate to me to begin with a consideration that is related to the development of German intellectual life, and then tomorrow to come to a subject that more strictly belongs to spiritual science. And if today's reflection is to be linked to the development of German thought, then I would like to emphasize, first and foremost, that this reflection should not fall into the trap of establishing an external connection between all kinds of intellectual changes and the fateful historical facts of our time, a trap into which so many reflections today fall. At a time when the fate of nations is decided by the force of arms, the word cannot possibly intervene, meaningfully intervene, for example, in that which is to be decided by the force of arms. But this is the age in which self-reflection - including national self-reflection - seems to be entirely appropriate. Now, when it is said, from the point of view of science, including spiritual science, that certain developmental forces of such a spiritual science are rooted in popular forces, as is to happen today, one will immediately encounter, dear attendees, all kinds of objections, objections that are extremely reasonable because they are so self-evident, from a certain point of view, that they seem extraordinarily plausible precisely because of their self-evidence to those who do not want to rise to certain higher points of view. In such a consideration, one will repeatedly encounter the objection that science as such, and everything that somehow wants to claim that it is so, is said to be “international,” and that one is not entitled to claim any rootedness in popular culture. This objection can be appropriately countered only by means of a comparison. “International”, dear attendees, is also the moon, for example. It is the same for everyone; but what different things the various peoples have to say about the moon! Of course someone may object: Yes, that is in the realm of poetry. Yes, of course; but anyone who delves a little deeper into the spiritual life of humanity will notice that – even if the observations and insights relating to the external, actual things are all the same in the science of the moon – that which comes from the innermost drives of the human soul, on the basis of what man can recognize, that this is different for each individual people, and that each people penetrates more or less deeply into the secrets of existence, depending on their different dispositions and drives. And the overall progress of humanity does not depend on what is the same everywhere, but on what is incorporated from the driving forces of the overall development of humanity, which are peculiar to the innermost individual nature of each people. From this point of view, it should be pointed out today how German nationality is intimately connected with the endeavour not only to found an external science of the senses, but also to penetrate deeply into the spiritual secrets of existence – how the very search for a way to arrive at the spiritual secrets of existence is peculiar to much of what can be called German nationality. And there is another reason, esteemed attendees, for such a consideration here, because it is my conviction – not arising from a narrow-minded, parochial sentiment, but from what I believe is the appropriate consideration of the German essence that what has been advocated here for years as spiritual science is strongly rooted in the general spiritual life of the German people, that all the seeds of a genuine spiritual science are present in the spiritual development of the German people. Dear attendees, I will take as my starting point three personalities about whom I had the honor of speaking here in this city a few months ago, when I tried to sketch out the world view of German idealism. Even at the risk of repeating certain details, I will take as my starting point the three great figures who appear within the development of thought and spirit of the German people and who create a world view that provides the foundation, the background, one might say, for what was then artistically and poetically achieved by Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Lessing and so on within German intellectual life, as a flowering of the newer intellectual life in general, which can only be compared with the tremendous flowering of human intellectual life in ancient Greece: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel were the starting point once again. Fichte stands before us – and I already remarked this in the lecture a few months ago – as he has something like the feeling that he has given his people everything that he has to give as the best, in terms of a world view and insights into the nature of his people, and that he has gained this through a dialogue with the German national spirit itself. Carried inwardly by the consciousness that the most German essence speaks out of his soul, Johann Gottlieb Fichte is. It is also he who, not only in one of the most difficult times of German intellectual development, found tones that were highly suited to inspiring the entire nation to rise up from oppression, but he was also [the one] who, in the way he wants to receive a world view for his knowledge, so clearly shows that he seeks this world view from the qualities of the human soul, from the powers of the human soul, which are essentially German qualities of spiritual life, German powers. He emphasized that. And that is certainly the truth with regard to Johann Gottlieb Fichte. And what is it that is so distinctly German about Johann Gottlieb Fichte's endeavors? It consists in the fact that, out of his Germanness, as he himself calls it, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was led to seek in a living way to deepen and at the same time strengthen his own soul-being, his own ego, and was convinced from the living inner that what permeates the world as divine-spiritual, illuminates and warms, can flow into this I, if it experiences itself in the right way, if it becomes fully aware of itself. So that, in Fichte's view, what speaks outside in all natural phenomena, what speaks in the course of history, but also what speaks behind natural phenomena and behind history as spiritual forces, flows into human will. The human will that asserts itself in the self is only the innermost, secret expression of the soul for that which permeates and warms all beings in the world, from the most materialistic to the most spiritual. This intimate interconnection of the experiences of the soul with the great mystery of the universe, as far as man can fathom it, that is the very German in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's striving. And if you observe Fichte as he presents himself, you can see how this is to be judged, how it is not something invented, something acquired, but how it arises from the most secret depths of his soul as his natural disposition. To substantiate this, a few details from Johann Gottlieb Fichte's life will be given. As I said, even at the risk of repeating details that I have already taken the liberty of mentioning. For example, we see this Johann Gottlieb as a small, seven-year-old boy in front of his father's house, who was a poor master weaver. We see Johann Gottlieb Fichte, seven years old, standing in front of the small stream that flows past his father's house; and he has thrown a book into this stream. His father comes along and is amazed at what has happened. What had happened? Well, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a six- to seven-year-old boy and a diligent student. That which is called a sense of duty lived in his soul with the greatest strength; and because he was so diligent, his father gave him a book for the last Christmas: “Gehörnte Siegfried” (Siegfried Horned). The seven-year-old boy, who could already read fluently, was so extremely interested in the book of the “Horned Siegfried” and he was always absorbed in the great figure of the horned Siegfried; so that one could have noticed that he had become a little less diligent at school, and it was held against him. Now, within the life of the will, even in the seven-year-old boy, the soul's duty stirred: he no longer wanted to read on, nor be tempted to read on in the book of horned Siegfried. And to be quite sure, he throws the book into the stream, crying! Such was the nature of the one who, according to his own consciousness, was to create the German worldview for his time! And again, let us look at nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. One Sunday morning, the estate neighbor had come to hear the sermon. But he had arrived too late, and so was unable to hear the sermon. Some of the squire's acquaintances had hit on the expedient of sending for little Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was so good at listening to sermons that he could repeat them word for word. So they fetched nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. After he had appeared awkwardly at first in his blue peasant's coat, he then stood and repeated the sermon, but now not in a way that was only an external adherence to the words, but with the most inner participation, not only in terms of memory, but with the most inner participation, so that one saw: everything that had been spoken lived a very own life in his soul. These are the small traits that show how intimately entwined Johann Gottlieb Fichte's soul was with what he called duty on the one hand, and on the other hand with what was in him the urge to elevate his own human ego so powerfully that what willfully permeates and warms the world as primal laws could live and reveal itself in him. And how he later aimed to work when he was appointed professor in Jena is told to us by people who heard him speak and who assure us that when he spoke, his words were serious and strict, but at the same time forceful, as if interwoven with the language that spoke the secrets of the world from the nature of things themselves. His language was like the rolling of thunder, and the words discharged themselves – so someone who heard him speak and was friends with him tells us – the words discharged themselves like lightning. His imagination was not lavish – we are told – but it was majestic and grand. And so we are told that he lived in the realm of supersensible ideas, not like one who merely dwells within it, but like one who essentially mastered this realm of ideas. And it was also peculiar, for example, how he perceived his teaching profession: there was not much of what one is accustomed to from a speaker or teacher. He was in constant inner work. His preparation for any lecture or speech consisted not so much in working out the content as in trying to place himself, with his soul, in that spiritual inwardness that he wanted to infuse not only through the content of the words, but through the way in which he , he strove to work in such a way that it was not so much the content of his words that mattered as the fact that the souls of his listeners were moved by the whole way in which the spiritual was expressed in the flow of his speech. Thus, again, someone who knew him well could say: He strove not only to educate good people, but great souls. We should like to draw attention to a little-known trait that must be mentioned again and again if we want to bring to life the direct and lively way in which Fichte related to his audience. For example, the deep thinker Steffens told us that in Jena Fichte said to his listeners: “Think the wall!” – The people found that easy, of course: they thought the wall. After he had let them think the wall for a while, he said: So, and now think the one who has just thought the wall! – Some were amazed! This was an indication of one's own soul, in which that which flows through and warms the world at its deepest core should be ignited. However much he may have amazed people with this, at the same time it is also a testimony to how Fichte actually did not just want to convey spiritual ideas to his listeners with clever words. He wanted to work through words, not just in words. That is why it could happen that this man also sought to actively grasp the historical aspect of the creative national spirit. And in that he wanted to connect vividly, as with the workings of the world in general, he also wanted to connect vividly with that which is part of this world-working and lives close to him as a member of his nationality; he wanted to connect with the essence of the German national spirit. And no one can understand the meaning and the significance of the wonderful words which Johann Gottlieb Fichte addressed to the German people in his 'Discourses to the German Nation' during such a difficult period in the history of the German nation. No one can understand this unless he sees the connection between the way in which Fichte wanted to grasp the world-will in himself in his own ego, and then to carry the power that arose in his soul into action, into events, into the social and other forms of human coexistence, and into the conception of life. There he stands before us – albeit in our way – this Johann Gottlieb Fichte! And – as I said – it is not out of narrow-minded patriotism, but rather out of actual observation that these things are to be said, which must now be discussed. We need not fall into the error that the enemies of the German spirit are now falling into, who not only accuse this German spirit, but even slander it in the truest sense of the word; we can take an objective point of view within the considerations of the German spirit and will be able, precisely through this objective point of view, to recognize in the right way what the essence of German nationality is. Fichte wanted to grasp the will of the world in itself. And this will of the world was for him the bearer of what he called the duty of the world, which in turn separates into individual human duties. Thus, that which lives outside becomes for him a living being everywhere. But this also puts him in opposition to everything, as he himself emphasized in his “Discourses to the German Nation.” You can read about this in my essay in my little booklet “Thoughts During the Time of War,” which is now out of print , but will soon be reissued, [how] he, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, seeks the living everywhere and is aware that he is thus in opposition to much of what he calls a dead science. And this dead science, Fichte also finds it among the Western European peoples, among the French and the British. Only, as I said, for the sake of actual characterization, not to impose anything on any people, may that be said; but it must be recognized in which relation the German spirit stands to the other national spirits in this fateful time! In my earlier essay on the world picture of German Idealism, I pointed out that Descartes, Cartesius, is a typical example of the development of the French world-view at the beginning of the seventeenth century. I pointed out how he characteristically expresses that which lives in his worldview from his nationality, in that not only the mineral and plant world, but even the animal world is nothing more to him than a sum of living — not souled, but only moving — machines! That is the peculiarity of this Western mind, that it can only grasp a dead science at bottom. In this respect, Fichte, with his living approach in all his works, stands in essential contrast to the path of knowledge and the striving of the West, [where] animals are like machines. This has continued. And not long before Johann Gottlieb Fichte worked in Germany to show life in all the facts and beings of the world from the living grasp of the secrets of the world, a descendant, I might say, of that Descartes - Cartesius - worked in France: de La Mettrie. And while Cartesius at least conceded to man a special soul from inner experience, from inner experience, de La Mettrie, in an exaggeration of this western dead science, expressed himself in his book “Man a Machine” that even that which stands before us as a human being is itself part of the world in the same way as a mere machine; that we can understand the whole person by regarding him as the result of purely material processes and forces. According to de La Mettrie, everything about a person, including all soul qualities and activities, should be understood in such a way that the person is only recognized as a machine. Of course, to a certain extent, man is a machine. This is not the essence of spiritual science, that it contradicts what such assertions have right about it; but that it can show other ways - we will talk about this tomorrow - that it can show other [supplementary] ways to this, that it knows other ways that also lead beyond the justified claims of materialism. De La Mettrie is basically, from the French folklore, one of the most significant minds of this view that the whole world of man is only a kind of mechanism. And it is interesting to consider the contrast between the Frenchman de La Mettrie and the German Johann Gottlieb Fichte. For de La Mettrie, everything about man is mechanism; for Fichte, everything is spirit. He received into his soul what he calls the will of the world, and for him, the external material world is only an internalized field for the performance of duties arising from the spirit. Hence that beautiful, that wonderful striving of Fichte to derive everything that appears to man in the world of the senses from the spirit; whereas, in de La Mettrie, everything is imbued with the goal of regarding the external physical as an immediately decisive impulse for the spiritual as well. De La Mettrie is sometimes quite witty in such matters, for he is just as deeply immersed in his mechanistic worldview as Johann Gottlieb Fichte is in his spiritual worldview. For example, when de La Mettrie says in his book The Machine Stops Here: Can't you see how the body shapes the soul? Take a famous poet, for example, whose soul can be seen to consist of one half rascal and the other half Promethean fire. de La Mettrie was a little clever in not saying which poet he meant, but Voltaire flew into a rage at this remark. When he was told this, de La Mettrie said: Well, okay, I withdraw the one half of the claim – he meant half of Prometheus! – but I maintain the “filou.” He just expressed it in his own way; there's no need to press it. But if you take the individual statements, that man is a machine – and in this he is tireless in showing how the machine-like, the heating-up [gap in the transcript] in man, as it were, how that characterizes the whole man, causes satisfaction – that is where he sometimes becomes quite remarkable. And I don't know, and I don't know with what feelings a passage from 'Man a Machine' will be read in France today! I certainly don't want to quote it as something that a German, for example, needs to share; but I would like to quote it because it is quite characteristic and because – you will see in a moment why I would like to quote it – one could perhaps ask precisely from the point of view of spiritual science: how such a soul – he did deny that this was possible – but how such a soul, more than a hundred years after its death, looks down on the praise that has been exchanged between France and England, when he, de La Mettrie, the Frenchman, in his book “Man a Machine” proves how people's characters are dependent on the way the materialistic affects them, when he says the following:
He cites this as proof that material things also condition the spiritual.
says de La Mettrie, the Frenchman,
As I said, there is no need to adopt this characterization of the French materialist; but it could not be uninteresting to recall it today, from the point of view of how perceptions change over time. If we, dearest ones present, picture the second of the spirits who created a worldview background for that which German art and German poetry created in the age of Goethe, then it is Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. And if, in the case of Fichte, one must admire above all how he conceives of the influence of the will on the ego and how he permeates himself with the awareness of this influence of the will on the ego, then in the case of Schelling it is that he establishes a science of nature and a science of the spirit in such a way that one can truly say: Wherever he wants to understand and recognize natural phenomena in an abstract way, the German soul is at work in him. This makes Schelling, in a very special way, not the opposite of idealism, but rather its successor and enhancer. In Schelling there stands, alive, created out of the German soul, a world-picture which in the best sense of the word lifts to a higher level of spirituality that which, for example, a Giordano Bruno could only inspire. In this soul of Schelling's, which was so completely aglow with the German soul, also artistically aglow, nature and spirit grew together in a unity. He could go so far as to claim that nature and spirit grew together in unity. Of course, such a thing is one-sided, but today it really does not matter that one must be a childish supporter or opponent of a worldview, but that one knows that it is not a matter of being a supporter or opponent, but of considering the striving that lives in such a person, the striving for truth, the striving for the knowledge of the deeper secrets of human existence. From a one-sided but vigorously powerful point of view, Schelling came to the assertion, to which I have already referred here in one of the last lectures: To know nature is to create nature. - Certainly a one-sided assertion, but an assertion from which one can say: It arises from a soul that knows itself to be one with what lives and weaves in nature. Again, out of the essence of the Germanic spirit, a creator of a world view who knows that the human ego can be so exalted, so invigorated, so ensouled that it expresses that which mysteriously pervades and warms the world in a spiritual way. And again, one could say, precisely because of the effect that Schelling had on his contemporaries, Schelling is also clearly recognizable. We are told – by the deeply spiritual Schubert, himself a student and friend of Schelling, – how people knew when there was a special buzz in the streets of Jena in the afternoons. Schelling was a professor in Jena, and it wasn't a student event, but Schelling speaking about what he wanted to gain as a world view. Schubert, who heard him in Jena, expressed it as Schelling appeared to him. I would like to read this passage verbatim from Schubert so that you can see how a contemporary spoke about Schelling, about this Schelling, who really, as can be seen in Fichte, grew together in his whole way, in his whole human way – with his spiritual striving – with the secrets of the world. This immediate – I would say – deeply sincere merging of the soul with the mystery of the world is the very essence of the striving of the time of which we are now speaking. [Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert describes Schelling as a young man. And] I knew, dear honored attendees, people who heard Schelling in his old age, and it was still the case that what lived in him spoke directly and personally out of Schelling's entire personality, lived as if it had flowed in from what spiritually reigns and weaves in the world. Therefore, he appeared to those who listened to him as the seer who was surrounded by a kind of spiritual aura and spoke as a kind of seer by coining words not out of human arbitrariness, but because he looked into the spiritual driving forces that underlay the world. That is why Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert, a lovable and brilliant thinker, says:
It was not only that.
indeed
Schubert writes down in 1854 what he had experienced with Schelling in the 1790s
as Schubert said,
Schelling's speaking of such a world of the spirit out of such a direct intuition is what Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert wants to express. And as if the German spirit wanted to reveal itself in all directions, we see in Hegel - who, like Schelling, is a native of Württemberg; he is even from Stuttgart - we see in Hegel how he is endeavoring to experience in what the soul can experience in itself, at the same time, what, as divine-spiritual, flows through the world and can live into one's own soul, only in a third way. As if the German spirit wanted to reveal itself on all sides: Hegel tries to do this in the third way. For him, what permeates and illuminates the world is divine-spiritual thought. And as man thinks, as man illuminates thought within himself – thought that does not depend on memory, but thought that is free of sensuality – this thinking in the soul grows together with what, as thought in the laws of the world themselves, floods the world. And here Hegel establishes something — as I said, one need be neither an adherent nor an opponent, but [one may] turn one's gaze to the contemplation of the striving — here Hegel establishes something that is so very characteristic of the German national soul. The way in which Hegel strives, one could say, is the nature of mystical striving grown together within oneself with what fundamentally fills the world as divine-spiritual. But this growing together does not take place in dark, nebulous conceptions, in chaotic feelings, as many who aspire to be mystics love to do. Rather, it is a striving that is mystical in its way, but in its own way, in its very own way, it is a striving that is filled with thoughts and clear thoughts. The characteristic feature of the fundamental quality of the German striving for a world view is that one does not want a dark world view that arises from mere feelings or mere trivial clairvoyance, but one that is on the way to the divine-spiritual of the world, but which is illuminated and illuminated by clarity and light of thought. And now that is the peculiar thing about Hegel! And when one lets these three momentous figures step before one's soul – Fichte, Schelling, Hegel – one always has the feeling that three sides of the development of German thought are expressed in these three minds – sides of the development of German thought that are already becoming popular. Last time, when I spoke from a different point of view, I pointed out that a way can be found - even if the dull-witted still say, “Oh, that's all abstract thinking!” Despite the objections of these dullwitted people, a way will be found to express these great forces, these great driving forces that seek to connect the human soul with the world secret, in the simplest language, so that - one would like to say - every child can understand and every child will be able to listen. That they could be expressed in this way will be the result of the spiritual self-contemplation of the German people. But one always has the feeling that within what is expressed in these three revelations of German intellectual life, there is something deeper, a higher spirit, as it were, speaking through the three. And then one gets the impression that this is the German national spirit itself. It expresses itself in three different ways, forming a worldview with Fichte, Schelling and Hegel! And one gets this feeling in particular when one considers what I would like to call in today's reflection: a forgotten striving, a forgotten, a faded tone of German intellectual life. For the peculiar thing, honored attendees, is that the aforementioned minds, which are minds of the very first rank in development, have followers, smaller minds, minds that appear to be less significant than these three great minds, but that these smaller minds are able to produce more significant things than the great ones. There is no need to be surprised at this; every schoolboy can grasp the Pythagorean theorem. The stimulus to grasp it naturally had to come from Pythagoras! But, as I said, I wanted to express what is at issue here only in a somewhat paradoxical way; it does not apply in such a paradoxical way. But it is true that these three spirits have successors who, to be sure, cannot hold a candle to them in terms of developmental power, resilience of soul, and talent, but who, in terms of the path that the human soul must take to enter the spiritual world, the living spiritual world, can achieve even more than these three great, inspiring ancestors. And there we see the son of Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Hermann Immanuel Fichte. He is not as great a mind as his father, but he was certainly under his father's influence as long as his father lived. And Immanuel Hermann Fichte - who also taught at the University of Tübingen - Immanuel Hermann Fichte, he comes from the newer thinking, from the newer development of thought, to speak of how man, as he appears to us in the world, not only has the outer physical body, but Immanuel Hermann Fichte speaks of an ethereal body that underlies the outer physical body. And just as the outer physical body is bound by its forces and laws to the outer material of physical existence, so the etheric body is bound by its forces and laws to the element that pervades and interweaves the world. And starting from the physical, Immanuel Hermann Fichte sees at the bottom of man, as it were, a higher man in man, the etheric man; and he looks at this etheric man. And then we see how, as a successor to the greats mentioned, a spirit emerges that is truly rooted in the faded, forgotten tone of the development of German thought. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Troxler, Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler. Who knows Troxler? But that is quite characteristic of the smaller ones, who now follow and create greater things than the great ones, because the German nation pulsates through them and expresses itself in them. A remarkable personality - this Troxler! He begins to write early under the influence of Fichte and Schelling in particular: “Glimpses into [the essence of man],” he writes. In his “Lectures,” which were published in 1835, he writes in a wonderful way about how man can develop from the recognition of the sensory world to a supersensory recognition of it; how man can come - and I am now using the characteristic expressions that Troxler used - to two soul powers that lie dormant in the soul in ordinary life. Troxler says that man is not only dependent - in terms of knowing the world, not only dependent - on the ordinary sense and on the ordinary mind that is tied to the brain, but Troxler says that although man does not use these higher powers that lie dormant in him for the external world, they can be developed. Troxler speaks of two forces in the human soul, of the “supersensible spirit” and of the “super-spiritual sense”. These are Troxler's own words. But I would like to characterize the essence of what he believes with a few words that resonate with what I have already developed here in spiritual scientific terms. Troxler says that when we look out into the world here, we do not speak in such abstract terms of “nature, nature, nature” and mean plants in general, but we speak of the tulip, the lily, the clover, and so on, don't we. But the philosophers, the abstract thinkers, that is what they talk about: the spirit in general, this spirit that as a spirit - but not actually in the gray general - permeates and permeates everything. And one feels exalted when one can be a pantheist, but for the external life of nature. Troxler sees this clearly: If you go into the concrete, into the individual things through the sense, then there is a “supersensory sense” that does not merely, in general - forgive the expression - sulfur from what, as spirit, is pantheistically at the basis of all phenomena and facts and at the basis of all entities, but which engages with the concrete, with the individual reality of the individual spiritual beings: “supersensory sense”. And again: “supersensible spirit” - [meaning a spirit that is by no means bound to the brain, but] that it stands directly in the spiritual world, without the mediation of the senses and the nervous system, just as physical cognition of man stands in the bodily being: “super-spiritual sense” - “supersensible spirit”. And not in a generally vague way, but in a genuinely scientific way, Troxler talks about the fact that feelings can become intelligent, can be elevated – we will have to talk about this tomorrow, not in relation to Troxler, but in relation to the subject that will be discussed tomorrow – can be elevated and themselves provide cognitive powers. In 1835, Troxler speaks of intelligent feeling and sentient thoughts, of thoughts that touch spiritual being. This is a tone that has faded away, striving for spiritual science out of a primal German essence within the development of German thought. But Troxler goes even deeper into the human soul by saying the following: Now, certainly, here in the physical world, the soul is embodied in a body and works through the body. And the most beautiful, the greatest thing that this soul can embody here in the physical body, can express in this embodiment, is faith, that is love – the crown and blossom of the physical existence of man – and that is hope. But when these three eternal powers – faith, love, hope – express themselves through the human being's soul working through the body, then higher powers are experienced in the eternal powers of the human soul that pass through death and enter the spiritual world. Because they are inherent to the soul, which is purely spiritual and exists beyond the physical, what stands behind the power of faith - which is supreme as the power of faith but in the body - stands for Troxler in what he calls “spiritual hearing”. What a wonderful, magnificent view of spiritual knowledge, the details of which we will discuss tomorrow. What the human being does here in the body in the face of certain phenomena is this: he develops his power of faith. But this power of faith is the outer shell for what the soul has freed from the body, with which it can enter the spiritual world through the gate of death: spiritual hearing, spiritual listening. And this spiritual hearing in the body expresses itself in the power of faith. And love, this crown and blossom of life, of the soul in the body – what is that for the soul, insofar as it, this soul, carries the eternal powers within itself? Love is the outer shell for spiritual sensing. Troxler speaks of it: Just as one reaches out one's hand and touches physical things, so one can extend the feelers, but the spiritual feelers of the soul, and touch spiritual things. And that which manifests itself as love here in the body is the outer material for the spiritual power of feeling. And hope is the outer shell of spiritual vision. We see that this development of thought in Germany is absolutely on the right path, the path that has always been sought in these lectures here as the spiritual path, which we will speak about again tomorrow. Troxler feels that there is a faded tone within German intellectual life, he feels so at home in it that he talks about how one can seek spiritual reality in and outside of the human being, just as the senses and the mind bound to the senses seek physical reality. I would like to read a passage from Troxler that is characteristic in this regard. He says:
of man
continue to
And now, as I said, Troxler has before his mind what I am communicating here, contained in other writings of Troxler's, in particular in his “Lectures,” published in 1835, in which he seeks to present a world picture in his own way. Anthropology is the science that arises when man observes man with the senses, that which he combines with reason. Anthropology: the observation of the outer human being by the outer human being. Troxler presents the image of a science in which the inner human being, the human being with the awakened faculties of the supersensible spirit and the super-spiritual sense, in which the invisible, supersensible human being also observes the invisible, supersensible human being. And how does Troxler speak of this science, which is supposed to be a higher spiritual one in contrast to anthropology, which is directed towards the sensual? Let me read this to you literally from Troxler's book. There he says:
Troxler has an anthroposophy in which the spiritual person contemplates the spiritual person, as in anthropology the sensual person contemplates the sensual person. When anthroposophy is spoken of today, one speaks of the continuation of what lies in the germs in the faded tone of German intellectual life, of which I speak. And is it not wonderful, esteemed attendees, truly wonderful, when we see – and not only where one strives for a worldview in a professional sense, albeit in a higher sense, as with Hermann Immanuel Fichte, as with Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler – that not only do such things emerge there, but that they can emerge within German intellectual life from the simplest of circumstances! Is it not wonderful when we see a book published in 1856, a small booklet by a simple pastor – Rudolf Rocholl, who was a pastor in Sachsenberg in the Principality of Waldeck – who, as a simple pastor, is trying to develop out of German spiritual life into a spiritually appropriate worldview? And anyone who reads this little book, which is called 'Contributions to the History of German Theosophy', and which was written by this simple pastor as early as 1856, gets the impression that a human being is speaking here! From today's point of view, much of it may seem fanciful, but that is not the point. What is important is the impression of striving that one gets, the impression that here we are dealing with a person who is not merely able to speak in philosophically abstract sentences, but of a concrete spiritual world through which one can see. And in a wonderful way, this simple pastor in 1856 points in his little book “Contributions to a History of German Theosophy” to a lively, spiritual worldview! These are just a few isolated points in German intellectual life. One could take issue with them all, and hundreds and hundreds of examples could be given that belong to the fading sound of German intellectual life. But right now I want to talk to you about another spirit, a spirit - I would like to say - in whose local aura we actually live here. Although he is so important for German intellectual life that I – and I mention this explicitly, otherwise someone might think that I just wanted to flatter the Württembergers – I have emphasized this spirit in recent times in Hamburg, Bremen, Leipzig, everywhere that it was possible to talk about this topic: “A forgotten pursuit of spiritual science within the development of German thought.” The person I mean is Karl Christian Planck, who was born here in Stuttgart in 1819, a — I would like to say — genuine son of the German national spirit and a conscious son of the German national spirit, Christian Karl Planck, a son of the German national spirit who only wanted to create what he created as a spiritual worldview out of the most original essence of this German national spirit! Christian Karl Planck is a wonderful spirit. He strove against what seemed to him to be far too idealistic and thus selfish – for even idealism can be completely selfish – he strove against the idealism of the Germans, which he considered to be one-sided and merely a realism, but a spiritual-scientific realism, a realism that should produce precisely the power of thought development in a spiritual way, in order to penetrate reality; but not only into the outer, material reality, but into the whole, full reality, to which matter and spirit belong. This is quite characteristic - one can only emphasize individual, so to speak symptomatic aspects of his world view. How does Christian Karl Planck see the Earth from his point of view? Dear attendees, one can only grasp the magnitude of the thought that Christian Karl Planck has conceived when one sees how geologists - ordinary scientific geologists - view the Earth. There is this Earth, caked together, isn't it, made of mere mineral substance. To look at the earth in this way seemed to Christian Karl Planck as if one wanted to look at a tree only in relation to the trunk and its bark, and did not want to accept that blossoms and fruit belong to the whole of the tree; and that one only looks at the tree one-sidedly and half-heartedly if one does not look at that which belongs to its innermost being. Thus, the Earth appears to Planck not only as a living being, but as a spiritual-soul being, which is not merely material, but which drives forth from itself the flowers and fruits of its own being, just as a tree drives forth the blossoms and fruits of its own being. Karl Christian Planck strives for the wholeness of an earthly conception. And he strives for this in all fields, and not only in such a way that this is a theory, as I said, but he wants a foundation that is equally aware of the soul, so that one can grasp that which permeates and lives through the world in terms of strength, but which can also have an effect on external human conditions, on human coexistence. This Christian Karl Planck – of course, there are all kinds of people like the ones I just called dullards, and they can come and say: yes, if you look at the later writings, namely the work left behind after Christian Karl Planck's death , the work he left behind, 'Testament of a German', you can see an increased self-confidence; and then they will talk about the fact - and these dullards are right on hand with that - that he was half crazy, right! But now, it was a sad life! Planck was aware that the German essence is not only surrounded – we will talk about this in a moment – in a political sense, but that it is surrounded by a foreign essence, that it must be saved from this above all. You encounter this at every turn, which is extremely important to consider in this area. So, dear attendees, it must be said again and again: Goethe created his theory of colors out of the depths of the German essence; and out of the depths of the German essence, in this “theory of colors,” he became the opponent of an color-egg that has encircled the world in the English way: Newton's theory of colors! Today, all physicists will naturally tell you what I was told years ago: the only objection a physicist can make to such amateurishness in relation to Goethe's theory of colors is that he cannot conceive of it at all! Certainly; but the time will come when this chapter “Goethe in the Right against Newton” will be understood in a different way than it is today. In the field of the theory of colors, too, there may come that self-contemplation of the German spirit, which is so necessary and for which the present time may be an extraordinary sign, when we shall no longer forget such spirits as Karl Christian Planck, who consciously wanted to create out of German national character. Only the Viennese, the noble Viennese, has taken care of him; it has been of little use, just as I characterized Karl Christian Planck in the first edition of my “Welt- und Lebensanschauungen” as early as 1901. These things are still not being addressed today. But when the German spirit becomes conscious of its full world-historical position, and this will happen, then people will understand such things and appreciate how Karl Christian Planck was conscious of creating out of the depths of the German spirit. The following words, which he wrote down in Ulm in 1864 in his “Foundations of a Science of Nature”, show this:
the author's
- 1864, written before Wagner's Parsifal! —
Thus spoke Karl Christian Planck, who then summarized what he had to say. He died in 1881; in his last year he wrote his book Testament of a German, which was published by Karl Köstlin, his fellow countryman, in a first edition, and in a new edition in 1912. As already mentioned, Karl Christian Planck was not given much attention, even after the second edition of “The Last Will of a German” was published in 1912. They had other things to do. Those who at that time were much concerned with questions of world-view were occupied, for example, with other books from the same publishing house as Karl Christian Planck's Testament of a German. At that time people were preoccupied with the great spirit of Henri - yes, he is still called Bergson today -, of Henri Bergson, the spirit that now, in such an unintelligent and foolish way, not only defames but really slanders the German essence, the German knowledge, everywhere. Until now he has done so in Paris, telling the French all kinds of nonsense about German intellectual life so that the French and their allies could see what terrible things live in Central Europe, what wolfish and tigerish spirits dwell there. He is now to do the same in Sweden. One had, if I may use this trivial expression, fallen for him. If you look at what can at least be shown in Bergson – I pointed this out in my “Riddles of Philosophy”, and the passage in question was written before the war, as you can see from the preface itself – if you look at what can be shown to some extent in Bergson's world view, then it is that in Bergson's view it turns out that one must not start from the different beings in the consideration of the world, but that one must put man first, that man would be, so to speak, the first work, and that man, as he develops, then repels the other realms, the animal, the vegetable, the mineral. I cannot go into the justification for this world view today, although it may seem as incorrect as possible to the contemporary world view, it is nevertheless true that there is something in this world view that hits the mark in terms of reality. But I also pointed this out in my book “Riddles of Philosophy”, as I said, not prompted by the war, but long before the war, that this thought, before it took root in Bergson's mind, in a deeper more penetrating and comprehensive manner, because it arose from the depths of German intellectual life, in the German philosopher Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss, who in turn is mentioned in my book “The Riddles of Philosophy”. The idea was expressed much earlier than Bergson put it forward – as early as 1882 and even earlier – forcefully expressed by Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss in his book on “Geist und Stoff”! We cannot know whether Bergson knew it from Preuss – which, in the case of a philosopher, is just as culpable as if he knew something and did not quote Preuss. Based on what has now been revealed, we can also assume and believe the latter about Bergson. For if one investigates the matter, one can show that in Bergson's books entire pages are copied from Schopenhauer and Schelling, in part quite literally! It is certainly a strange process: you ascribe to German intellectual life, and then you stand there and explain to people how this German intellectual life has degenerated since this great period, how this German intellectual life is mechanistically conducted – I have already said this once before last year. When one looks across to Germany, one has the impression of being confronted only with the mechanical. Bergson thought, as I have already said, that if the French shoot with cannons and rifles, the Germans will step forward and recite Goethe or Novalis! What Bergson has to say today is about as logical as that! As I said, I can only highlight in a few isolated examples what is really there as a forgotten tone of German intellectual life, but which is nevertheless present within this German intellectual life. It will only depend on the length of time, ladies and gentlemen, to suppress what creative minds like Troxler or a Karl Christian Planck, for example – those with limited knowledge of him may say of him: he just became somewhat twisted at the end of his life – at the end of their lives, because they had to counter the world, which today is also spiritually encircled, with words from the German consciousness, as Planck writes in the preface to his Testament of a German. He says:
The time will come when everything alien will be seen for what it is, how it has crept into German, into the original German intellectual life, and then people will reflect on what this German intellectual life is capable of! Then we shall see much more clearly the relations that exist between this Central European intellectual life and that – which is not to be reviled, only characterized – [and] that which is all around, and which is currently trying so hard to fight this German intellectual life, as I said: they not only fight the German character with weapons, but also revile and even slander German intellectual life! History will one day be able to express something with large numbers, albeit sober numbers, dear attendees, which in view of today's facts may be brought to mind; history will have to record something strange after all. One may ask: how does the area on which German intellectual life develops relate to the area - and how does the population of Central European intellectual life relate to the population of those who today not only not only use arms against Central Europe, but even, through the better part of valor, want to starve the Central Europeans – which is how it had to come about that this Central Europe is being starved! It is, after all, the better part of bravery – especially when you consider the circumstances that history will one day speak of! History will have to ask: What percentage of the entire dry land, mainland earth, do these Central European people own? It is four percent! What percentage do the small nations own today, even without the Japanese – those who face them as the so-called antipodes: 46 percent! That means that today, 6 million square kilometers are owned by those who encircled Central Europe, compared to 69 million square kilometers for Central Europe. They really had no need to be envious of what Central Europe was taking away from them. And without counting the Italians: 741 million people on the side of the Entente are opposed by 150 million people in Central Europe. That means: with nine percent of humanity, Central Europe is facing almost half of humanity on earth: 45 to 47 percent. History will one day record this as the situation in which people lived in this present time. And what forces have led to this can also be seen in the spiritual realm. In my booklet 'Thoughts During the Time of War' - which is now being reissued after being out of print for some time, as I said - you can read about how the forces have been moving in recent decades. Not only is there in the West an opposing force that expresses itself in the same way, as has been characterized, at least in very general terms, by means of a few strokes of the pen, but in the East there are opposing forces that perhaps need to be taken into account even more than those of the West. There is no need to stoop to the level of our opponents! There is no need to vilify the Russian people. If we are to exercise German self-restraint, we need not stoop to the level of our opponents. But attention can still be drawn to certain characteristic aspects that are truly indicative of the Russian character. They must be emphasized, especially in a people that, with a certain versatility and adaptability, and even, when you look at the people, with a certain peace-loving character, want to elevate themselves to intellectuals within the Russian East of Europe, there emerge, for example, the views – I have already emphasized them here in earlier lectures – the views that this Central European, this Western European intellectual life is basically decrepit and has fallen into death and that Russian intellectual life must replace this Central European intellectual life. This view took root deeply, first in those who appeared as Slavophiles; and then it took root deeply in those who replaced the Slavophiles as Pan-Slavists. And I do not want to mention anything uncharacteristic, but only to present what has really been expressed in a spiritual way - one after the other from different sides - but is the same as what has been expressed in the political sphere. For example, as early as 1829, Ivan Vasilyevich Kireyevsky, speaking from what he believed to be knowledge, said that European essence and life had become decrepit, was dying, and that Russian essence should gradually replace and supersede this Central European and also Western European essence. And then Ivan Vassilyevich Kireyevsky says:
That means that they aspire to Russia belonging to all of Europe; and then, once they have it, they would be inclined to divide it, of course, under the care of all of Russia. This is what lives on in Russian intellectual life from the 19th into the 20th century; it lives everywhere. These people, who are the intelligentsia in the East, could not really understand much of German intellectual life – as I said, let me just emphasize these things at the end! They did try to understand something like Goethe's 'Faust'. And it is interesting to read the mind of the Russian people - [Michajlovskij] - when he says something like: Yes, these Germans, they see something in 'Faust' where the human soul strives for world secrets, for a kind of redemption. But this “Faust”, he is before a deeper realization, says Michajlovskij, he is before a deeper realization, but he is nothing more than the purest expression of Central and Western European egoism, of capitalist striving. This Faust is a real capitalist metaphysician. And when he comes to speak of metaphysicians, of those people who go beyond the immediately sensual, then Michajlovskij becomes quite strange. There he says, for example, metaphysicians are people who have gone mad with fat. — I don't know whether one can find particularly much of this view in Central Europe of all places, of this sort of people “who have gone mad with fat”. But now he also counts Faust among these metaphysicians who have gone mad with fat! In short, we see that there is not much understanding among those who want to conquer first and then divide. Much could be said about this, but, as I said, I would like to emphasize this at the end, as one of the most characteristic minds of Russian intellectual life, Yushakov, in a book at the end of the nineteenth century, makes observations about Russia's relationship on the one hand to Asia and on the other to the European West - not just to the German European West, but to the European West - in the broader sense. In 1885, he – I mean this Yushakov – wrote the book, [it is a remarkable book]. There he turns his gaze across to Asia, and he sees: over there in Asia, there live peoples; they are indeed somewhat run down today, but they show the last traces of a great, spiritual worldview that once lived with them. They have tried to lift themselves up to the spiritual side of existence, but they could only do so, they only succeeded in doing so, says Jushakow, by mentioning a myth of the Orient, by uniting with the good God Ormuzd against the evil spirit Ahriman. From Turan, from the Turan peoples, there emanated that which Ahriman, as an opponent, had done against the good Iranians, to whom he also counts the Hindus and the Persians, according to Yushakov. They sighed under the deeds of Ahriman, these Asians who had joined forces with the good Ormuzd, and thus created their culture. Then the Europeans came - in 1885 he can't speak much about the Germans yet, can he. But he does speak about Europe - we will see in a moment which Europe he is talking about in particular - and then he says: These Europeans, what have they done to these Asians who had taken up the fight, who had joined forces with the good Ormuzd against the evil Ahriman? They have taken from the Asians, the goods they have acquired by fighting alongside Ormuzd against Ahriman, and have even more handed them over to the clutches of Ahriman. And with whom does Jushakow see this evil? The book is called “The Anglo-Russian Conflict” - dispute, war - and there he says, in particular with regard to the English - in 1885, this Yushakov - the following, showing how the English treat these Asian peoples. There Yushakov says: They - the English - treat these Asian peoples as if they believe: These Asian peoples are only there to
And pointing out once more what he finds so terrible about these Englishmen, Yushakov says: This will only oppress the Asians; Russia must intervene and liberate these Asians by empathizing with them. And – it is not me saying this, it is Yushakov himself: a great force will arise from Russia, a wonderful alliance will arise from Russia, an alliance between the peasant, who knows the value of the earth, and the bearer of the noblest spiritual life, the Cossack. And from this alliance between the peasant and the Cossack – and it is not I who say this, but Yushakov – will emerge, and will move towards Asia, that which will in turn bring the Asians to the pleasures of Ormuzd and free them from the clutches of Ahriman. Then he says in summary:
1885 spoken by a Russian intellectual. Perhaps this is where we have to look for the reason why Russia allied itself with England? I do not want to say that the Asians have been liberated from the clutches of Ahriman and that it has somehow come back from glorifying this wonderful alliance of the peasantry and the Cossacks. But a change has also occurred in the relationship. It is important to consider such changes and to understand the circumstances, dear attendees! I have not undertaken these considerations in order to speak fruitlessly about a faded tone of German intellectual life, but because I believe that what could be said about German intellectual life does indeed contain living seeds. They can live for a time – I would say – below the surface of progressive conscious education; but they will emerge. And we can be aware that a spiritual life that carries such seeds [...] has a future, that it cannot be crushed, not even by the kind of union that it is currently facing. Perhaps it is precisely in our fateful time that the German spirit will find self-reflection on the great aspects of its nature. And that is more important to us than the present hostile attitude towards us, and more important than the vilification of other nations. Above all, it is more important to us to realize that when the German nation turns to spiritual matters, it does not need to become unfree, but that, like the power of real thinking allied with spiritual life, it can also be free. I could cite to you a great deal of evidence that this is the most trivial of objections, that the statement that spiritual life makes one unfree and that a complicated idealist must be the one who lives in the spirit is the most unjustified thing that - if the expression is used again - dullards can object to the spiritual life. Karl Christian Planck, the Württemberger, is an example of what could and would be shown in hundreds of cases, if something like this is seen, it is characterized precisely by Karl Christian Planck. Dear attendees, “practical people” have always spoken about European politics, about what is rooted in and present in the political forces of Europe, and about what can come of it – “practical politicians” who certainly look down on people like Karl Christian Planck, people of the intellectual life, as on the impractical idealists who know nothing of reality. These “practitioners”, whether they are diplomats or politicians who think they are great, look down on them because they are the practitioners, because they, who believe they have mastered the practical side of life, look down on such “impractical idealists” as Karl Christian Planck is! But from Planck's Testament of a German, I want to read you a sentence that was written in 1880, in which Karl Christian Planck speaks of the present war. This is what he, the “impractical” idealist, says about the present war:
Written in 1880! Where have we ever had a “practitioner” describe the current situation so accurately based on such knowledge of the facts! A time will come, most honored attendees, when people will realize that it is precisely the reflection on the best forces of the German people that will lead to the fact that no more un-German entities can exist in Central Europe and [that that what the justified striving – or at least much justified striving – wants to suppress, remains in the power of the incompetent], so that Germanic nature, as Germanic nature is in its own root, would not be eradicated in the world. It is only right to speak serious words in serious times, if these serious words are based on facts and not on all kinds of crazy idealism that any amateur can find without taking the trouble to look into the facts. If you look at it, this Central European essence: you will indeed find it in contrast, in a meaningful contrast to the Oriental essence, which today stands so threateningly behind Oriental Russia; you will find it in a characteristic contrast. What lives in Asia today is the remnant of a search for the spiritual world, but a search as it was and as it had to be at a time when the greatest impulse had not yet impacted development, the development of humanity: the Christ impulse. The striving for the spiritual world in pre-Christian times was as follows: it occurs in Asia, in which the human being is paralyzed, the ego is paralyzed, so that the human being can merge into the spiritual world with a subdued and dulled ego. This was a merging as it occurred in Hinduism, Brahmanism, Buddhism and so on, but as it is never appropriate for a newer time, in which the Christ impulse has struck. This essence of modern times has emerged most profoundly in what the faded tone of German intellectual life so beautifully indicates to us today: not the paralysis of the ego, but the invigoration, the revitalization of the ego, the right standing within the ego. The opposite of what was once oriental nature, which finds, by strengthening itself inwardly, in man also the way into the spiritual worlds. The fact that the German nature has this task puts it, with its mission, into the overall development of humanity – it stands on the ground of 6 million square kilometers against 68 million square kilometers of the peoples who threaten the German nature all around it today. Let me conclude by quoting you the words of an Austrian poet, which show how deeply rooted in all of Central Europe is what I have dared to mention today, the “German essence”, and which I have tried to characterize in its world-historical sense. Let me characterize it by referring you, as I said, to a poet of Central Europe who belongs to Austria. I myself have spent almost thirty-one years in Austria and have been associated with all the struggles that the German character has also had to fight in recent times. I must be allowed to refer to Robert Hamerling; to that Robert Hamerling who, in view of the circumstances, the welding together of Central Europe, from Germany and Austria, in terms of intellectual life as well; but since he was not immune to external circumstances, how deeply such minds feel rooted in the overall Central European, German essence is shown by such statements as the one just made by Robert Hamerling, who says, “Austria is my fatherland; but Germany is my motherland”. This is felt precisely by someone who is connected to Central European culture as a German from Austria. But he is also connected, such a German Austrian, to all things German. Just – I would like to say – I would like to point out a small, insignificant [poem] that Robert Hamerling wrote in 1880, at the time when the French were burning the German flag in front of the Alsatian statue, in front of the statue of Strasbourg and performed a dance during which they burned the German flag in [Paris] at that time, then Robert Hamerling wrote – I do not want to point this out as a poetic meaning – but to something special; then he wrote the words:
Thus cried out the Austrian German Robert Hamerling from the Waldviertel. But the great mission of the German people also appeared to him; in 1862 he, Robert Hamerling, wrote his “Germanenzug”. It is wonderfully described how the ancestors of the later Germans moved from Asia to Europe with the Germanic peoples - how they camp in the evening sun, still on the border from Asia to Europe; the setting sun and the rising moon are wonderfully described. And wonderfully, Robert Hamerling expresses how one person watches over the sleeping Germanic people as they move from Asia to Europe. Hamerling expresses it wonderfully by letting Teut, the fair-haired youth, watch alone; and the genius – the genius of the future German people – now speaks words of the German future to the fair-haired Teut. There he speaks, the genius of the German people, to the blond Teut, while the other Teutons sleep all around:
And this essence of the German spirit, which is a post-Christian renewal, but a deepening of the spirit out of the self, which, among others, was so beautifully expressed by the one called the philosopher of Germanness, Jakob Böhme, this essence of the German spirit, which always wants to connect knowledge and recognition with a religious trait, this essence of the German spirit in Jakob Böhme we find it expressed thus:
, he means the depths of the blue sky
This mood of the German spirit is beautifully expressed in Robert Hamerling's 1862 poem “Germanenzug” (German March), in which the blond Teut speaks words that are intended to express how the best aspirations of Asia are to be developed in Europe by the German people with heightened vibrancy. The genius says to the blond Teut:
Thus, in all of Central Europe, the German is aware of his identity as a German. And if we consider the pure facts, as we have tried to do today, esteemed attendees, one can find that one may believe, as I have said here before in earlier lectures, that one may have the confidence and the belief in the nature of the German people, that because it contains germs in the spiritual realm, as characterized, it will one day, in distant times, bear the blossoms and fruits. And those who are the enemies of the German people will not be able to remove these blossoms and these fruits from world development. As I said, the fate of outer world history is decided by the power of arms. This power of arms, as it lives today in our fateful time, is only one side of the power of the German character. The other side is the power of the German spirit, which I wanted to reflect on this evening. I would like to have achieved this with words, which could only be fragmentary in the face of the task you set yourself, I would like to have achieved this from an actual, purely objective consideration of German intellectual life: the fruitful, indestructible nature of the German is that which, in the face of the most severe oppression, enables people who are surrounded by 6 million square kilometers to say, just as people in Central Europe are able to do, from the depths of German soul and the essence of the German heart, and in so far as it is connected with German intellectual life, to express what Robert Hamerling, summarizing the indestructibility of the German spirit, expressed in the beautiful words with which I would like to conclude this reflection today:
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| 117. Deeper Secrets of Human Development in the Light of the Gospels: Buddha and the Two Child Jesuses
11 Oct 1909, Berlin |
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| This Zarathustra had, as is well known, given his astral body to Hermes and his etheric body to Moses. Six hundred years before Christ, his ego was reborn in Chaldea as Nazarathos or Zarathos and finally again as Jesus. This child Jesus had to be taken to Egypt to live there for a time in an environment suitable to him and to revive in himself the impressions of it. |
| The Bethelehemitic Child died soon after that I had left him. Luke describes this transfer of the Zarathustra ego to the Nazarene Jesus in the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. His parents could not explain why their child suddenly spoke so wisely. |
| He died soon after, and the mother moved with her children to Nazareth to the other family. So Buddha, in his Nirmanakaya with the ego of Zarathustra, worked through Jesus of Nazareth. Buddha and Zarathustra worked together in this child. |
| 117. Deeper Secrets of Human Development in the Light of the Gospels: Buddha and the Two Child Jesuses
11 Oct 1909, Berlin |
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The last course in Basel made it possible for the first time to speak about a theme that had not yet been touched upon in the German Section. The Christ event itself has, of course, been spoken about often enough, especially in connection with the Gospel of John. By linking it to the Gospel of Luke, as has been done in Basel, it was possible to touch especially on what can be called the prehistory of Christ. In doing so, one is dealing with very complicated relationships. As is well known, a high being of the sun entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth and lived in it for three years, from the baptism in the Jordan to the mystery of Golgotha. This high Christ Being has often been spoken about. But what lives before our soul as the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, which took in this Being, can only be described in detail by referring to a Gospel that encompasses the story of Jesus from his childhood. The development of Jesus from his birth to his baptism in the Jordan was the main topic of the Basel lectures. Even in this prehistory we have very complicated circumstances before us. One must always bear in mind that the greatest thing is precisely that which cannot be grasped easily and presented simply. The world building cannot be drawn with a few strokes or comprehended with a few convenient concepts. The personality that took in the Christ-being in its thirties is composed in a very complicated way. Only from the Akasha Chronicle can the correct clues be gained as to why the prehistory of Jesus is presented differently in the various gospels. Today, a brief outline of some of the facts about Jesus of Nazareth will be given in order to have an overview of what will be discussed in more detail in the Basel lectures. It is also intended to speak about the Gospel of Matthew or possibly the Gospel of Mark in the lectures for members this winter. The Christ event then comes to us in a completely different light in such a new presentation. This event is not yet sufficiently known in the mere connection with the Gospel of John. But for the time being, these things can only be spoken of in sketchy terms. The seer's chronicle, the Akasha Chronicle, reveals to us in living characters what has happened in the course of time. The course of spiritual communication is usually such that facts from the Akasha Chronicle are first announced without reference to a specific document. Only afterwards is it shown that all these things can be found in certain documents, especially in the Gospels, which can only be properly understood with the help of the facts of the Akasha Chronicle. In Palestine, the spiritual currents that had previously been separate in the world converged. Referring to the Gospel of Luke, one could speak of three spiritual currents that met in the Christ event. One is linked to Buddha, the other to Zarathustra, and the third was embodied in ancient Hebrew culture. These three currents merged in a concrete event, namely in that Christ event. One usually talks about such spiritual currents in far too abstract a manner. In fact, however, they materialize in special beings who must be formed in such a way that the currents can flow together in them. It is therefore necessary to examine such entities in their inner composition. The Buddhist current reached its zenith in Gautama Buddha. He had undergone previous embodiments. However, that embodiment in the sixth century BC was a significant high point in his existence. It was then that Gautama first became what is called a Buddha. Before that, he was merely a Bodhisattva, that is, a great teacher of humanity. This latter gradually takes on different abilities over time. We ourselves probably once lived in ancient Egypt, but we had very different abilities then than we have today; some of our old abilities have diminished, while new ones have been added. If you do not take such a development into account, you are not looking at the world with an open mind. Today, for example, people can recognize certain logical and moral laws out of themselves, can apply their judgment, recognize this or that out of themselves. But in primeval times it was not so. In those days, for example, man would not have found anything moral in himself. He would not have understood such laws if they had been taught to him in today's words. An entirely different ability had to be appealed to. Thus there are certain truths for man today that could not have been found three thousand years ago, for example the doctrine of compassion and love. Today an inner voice teaches us about the laws of compassion and love. In those days, man would have searched in vain for such a voice. Then, to use an ugly word, compassion and love had to be suggested to man. The entity whose task it was for thousands of years to allow compassion and love to flow into people from higher, spiritual regions was the same Bodhisattva who then incarnated in India as Buddha. As a human being in the physical world, he would not have found anything of compassion and love within himself. But through their initiation, the bodhisattvas rose to the spiritual regions, where they could bring down teachings such as those of compassion and love. But there comes a moment when humanity has matured to find for itself what had previously been instilled in it. So it was for compassion and love. When that Bodhisattva became Buddha, that is, in the incarnation in question in the sixth century BC - the Bodhisattva sat under the bodhi tree -, not only was important progress taking place in his own being, but also throughout the whole world. At that time, the Buddha, who had become man, absorbed that teaching of compassion and love, or rather a paraphrase of it, namely that of the eightfold path, the more precise expression of that teaching of compassion and love. The fact that the Buddha was able to recognize this teaching as living in himself created the possibility for humanity to experience the same in the future. Since then certain people have been able to recognize this and, following the example of the great Buddha, lead a corresponding life, in which the teaching of the eight-limbed path is crystallized out of themselves in a living way. But only when a larger number of people have matured to the point of experiencing what Buddha experienced at that time has this become humanity's own and actual affair. Thus, from higher spheres, mission after mission is transmitted to our world. After about three thousand years, counting from now, enough people will have matured to walk the eight-limbed path, and then compassion and love will have become humanity's own. Then a new event will come and bring a new mission down from the spiritual to the physical world. So once upon a time, the Buddha let the teaching of compassion and love flow into humanity. But now it continues to live on in it, ever since the Buddha gave it the impetus. When a Bodhisattva has fulfilled his office after about three thousand years of activity, he becomes a Buddha who then fulfills a certain mission for humanity. What became of that Buddha, whose mission was to bring compassion and love to humanity after he had left his physical body? Buddha always means one last incarnation. He only needed the Gautama incarnation to fulfill one mission. Since that time, it has no longer been possible for that bodhisattva individuality to descend into a physical body because it became a Buddha. It can only incarnate down to the etheric body. That Buddha can therefore only be seen by clairvoyants today. A form that takes on an individuality without containing a physical body is called a Nirmanakaya. In it, the entity continues the mission that was assigned to it as a Bodhisattva. The great Christ event was also prepared by the Buddha reigning in the Nirmanakaya. A couple, Joseph and Mary of Nazareth, had a child named Jesus. This child was so peculiarly endowed that the Nirmanakaya Buddha could tell himself that this child, in its physical body, had the potential to help humanity take a great step forward if the Buddha were to make his contribution. He therefore descended into that child in his Nirmanakaya. The Nirmanakaya is not to be imagined as a closed body as we have it, but what would otherwise be mere forces have become special entities here. This system of entities is held together in the higher worlds by the I of the underlying individuality, similar to the way the abilities of thinking, feeling and willing are held together in us. The clairvoyant perceives this host of related entities of the Nirmanakaya Buddha. Analogies to this also exist in nature: for example, in the gall wasp, the front body is connected to the rear body only by a thin stalk. If we imagine this invisibly, we have two unconnected but nevertheless related parts. Similar relationships prevail in the beehive and anthill. Such conditions were well known to the writer of the Gospel of Luke. He also knew that the Nirmanakaya Buddha descended into the baby Jesus. He expresses it in such a way that he says: When the child was born in Bethlehem, a host of angels descended from the spiritual worlds and proclaimed to the shepherds what had happened. These same shepherds, for certain reasons, became clairvoyant at that moment. At first, the child Jesus developed only slowly. Outwardly, he showed no particularly outstanding qualities that would have indicated a giant spirit. But soon a deep inwardness and soulfulness became apparent, an active emotional life. The clairvoyant would have seen the Nirmanakaya Buddha hovering over this child. In the Indian legend we are told that an old sage came to the child Buddha and recognized in him that here a Bodhisattva was maturing to become a Buddha. The old man burst into tears because he was no longer allowed to experience the great Buddha himself. Asita, as the sage was called, was reborn and was an old man again when Jesus was young, namely the Simeon of the Gospel of Luke. When the child Jesus was presented at the temple, he now saw the Bodhisattva as the real Buddha before him and was therefore able to say: Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your savior. — Thus the wise man saw after five hundred years what he had not been able to see before. If one studies the origin of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke and compares it with that presented in the Gospel of Matthew, a certain difference becomes apparent, which has not been ignored by science. From the Akasha Chronicle, of course, one can get the right information as to why the two family trees are and must be different. At about the same time that Jesus was born, another child was born in Palestine to another couple, also named Joseph and Mary, and also given the name Jesus. So at that time there were two children of Jesus from two sets of parents with the same name. The one Jesus is the Bethlehem Jesus. He lived with his parents in Bethlehem; the other had his parents living in Nazareth. The former Jesus comes from the line of the Davidic house that went through Solomon. The Jesus of Nazareth, on the other hand, comes from the Nathanic line of the Davidic house. Luke tells more about the one, Matthew about the other child. The Bethtlehemitic child showed very different abilities in his early youth than the Nazarene child. The former showed well-developed in all the qualities that can emerge externally. Thus, for example, this child could speak immediately after birth, even if at first more or less incomprehensible to those around him. The other child Jesus showed a more inward-looking disposition. In the Betlehemite child was now incarnated the great Zarathustra of prehistoric times. This Zarathustra had, as is well known, given his astral body to Hermes and his etheric body to Moses. Six hundred years before Christ, his ego was reborn in Chaldea as Nazarathos or Zarathos and finally again as Jesus. This child Jesus had to be taken to Egypt to live there for a time in an environment suitable to him and to revive in himself the impressions of it. So one must not believe that it is the same Jesus of whom Luke speaks as the one of whom Matthew tells. By order of Herod, all children up to two years of age were killed. John the Baptist would also have been affected by this if enough time had not passed between his birth and that of Jesus. In the twelfth year of his life, the I-ness of the Bethelehemitic Child Jesus, that is, the Zarathustra I, passes into the other Jesus child. From the twelfth year on, it was no longer the earlier I that lived in the Nazarene Jesus, but now the Zarathustra I. The Bethelehemitic Child died soon after that I had left him. Luke describes this transfer of the Zarathustra ego to the Nazarene Jesus in the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. His parents could not explain why their child suddenly spoke so wisely. These parents had no other children except this one. The other couple, on the other hand, had more children, four boys and two girls. Both families later became neighbors in Nazareth, and eventually merged into a single family. The father of Jesus of Bethlehem was already an old man when Jesus was born. He died soon after, and the mother moved with her children to Nazareth to the other family. So Buddha, in his Nirmanakaya with the ego of Zarathustra, worked through Jesus of Nazareth. Buddha and Zarathustra worked together in this child. In the Gospel of Matthew, there is initially more talk of the Jesus of Bethlehem. At the birth, the wise magicians of the Orient appeared, who were led by the star to where Zarathustra was reborn. |
| 111. The Principle of Spiritual Economy: Results of Spiritual Scientific Investigations of the Evolution of Humanity II
31 Mar 1909, Rome Translated by Peter Mollenhauer |
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| But because he had received only the etheric body of Christ, his ego was subjected to error, and it was possible for him to succumb to his passions. And this is how Augustine developed his ego, but also committed errors and went through all stages of doubt in regard to Christ's teaching. |
| In speaking of the “sense,” he refers to the astral body, and he says of the ego that it can rise in him through purification. The transformation of the astral body he calls “laying hold of the truth,” and that of the etheric body he delineates as “being joyful and enjoying spiritual things.” |
| 111. The Principle of Spiritual Economy: Results of Spiritual Scientific Investigations of the Evolution of Humanity II
31 Mar 1909, Rome Translated by Peter Mollenhauer |
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What happened at Golgotha as a germinal event has undergone a slow and gradual development. This mystery built the bridge from the past to the future because the soul life of humanity underwent a profound metamorphosis. This becomes especially clear when one looks at two great individuals who prepared the way for Christianity: St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. To understand these two men properly, it will be necessary to look at the old mystery centers where the highest knowledge was taught. Not to do this would make it impossible to gain a thorough understanding of these personalities. As we know, all nations or peoples in the past had the so-called mystery centers. Here we shall point out only their most basic features and refer to them henceforth as “Mysteries.” First of all, these were institutions in which the church and school were subsumed. They taught first of all the origin of creation and its continuation, but their teaching was not a dull doctrine like the modern doctrine of creation, but rather a body of knowledge that culminated in clairvoyant perception. In the true Mysteries there was no separation between belief and knowledge. They were divided into higher and lower Mysteries, with the latter describing the evolution of the earth in magnificent images, so that everything was permeated by art and beauty. Art, religion, and knowledge all derived from the same source. The individual who wanted to advance further was given elementary and general exercises. What today we call theosophical knowledge was then only a preparation. This was followed by exercises similar to the ones we have described in recent lectures, although they were conducted in a different manner and were not Christian or Rosicrucian in nature. This is how the astral body was organized for many years. Then the following happened, something that is no longer necessary today because of changed conditions: When the hierophant saw that the astral body of the person to be initiated had matured sufficiently, a death-like state was induced in the subject for a period of three and a half days so that the body was similar to that of Lazarus. This was also the occasion when the etheric body, together with the other two higher bodies, was almost completely removed from the physical body. The disciple during these three and a half days had a vision of the spiritual world and experienced a state of illumination that enabled him to reach into the highest regions and perceive everything that is related to past and future. After the three and a half days, the disciple was awakened and was then able to relate what was happening in the higher spheres. He had been able to see that Christ, the leading Spirit in our evolution, would be lying in the grave for three and a half days. It is this fact that makes the Mysteries historical reality. The Mystery of Golgotha was the culmination of what was happening in the lower Mysteries because earlier presentiments became fact in it. Whereas the “I” of the disciple had earlier been successful in changing the astral body through exercises of the imagination, the Mystery of Golgotha brought about a metamorphosis of the etheric body. Whatever was changed in the astral body became manas, or spirit self—the actual spirit, the higher “I.” On the other hand, whatever part of the etheric body was changed constituted buddhi, or life spirit. Then the disciple could also try to change his physical body, and this resulted in atma: Atmung,32 so called because in reality the transformation of the physical body was attained through special breathing exercises. Only through the formation of buddhi can the human being recognize and perceive Christ as spiritual essence. Why was it necessary to remove the astral body first? Had the astral body continued to be tied to the physical body, it would not have had the strength to imprint certain impressions onto the ether body. The Christ has liberated us from this three and a half day test, and it is through Him that the exercises mentioned above have become possible without intercession by the hierophant. We see the first example of this in Saul when he became Paul. What happened to him on his way to Damascus must be interpreted as something similar to an initiation. The reason that he needed only a few minutes for it was that he had attained a certain maturity in the preceding life. The line between the connecting point in the present life and the one in the previous incarnation, in which a certain learning experience took place, may be interrupted by several intermediate incarnations, and it is also possible for such a previous learning experience not to surface until late in the present life. This explains why the conversion of Saul, that is his connecting himself with his previous development, took place at a relatively mature age. In addition, Paul did not have to project himself into higher worlds in order to perceive the Christ, as would have been necessary for other initiates of the pre-Christian era. After all, Christ did remain on earth as He was intimately united with its astral body. Had a clairvoyant observer perceived the events from another star, he would have been able to see the tremendous transformation that the Mystery of Golgotha had brought about. To gain knowledge in ancient times, everything had to be learned and understood in the Mysteries, but things are different in more modern times, as the lives of St. Augustine and Thomas of Aquinas prove. Before these men lived, it would have been futile to talk about the spiritual hierarchies because one who was not initiated was not able to perceive them. We can attribute this inability to gaze into the spiritual world to the fact that the Mysteries had ceased to exist six hundred years before Christ, and initiations no longer took place after that. The schools of philosophy took the place of the genuine Mysteries, and philosophy itself took the place of the initiation. However, philosophy was not always as abstract a system as it is today; on the contrary, especially in the beginning it was more or less completely reminiscent of the Mysteries. Aristotle33 was the last from whom we have such a philosophy, but the resonance of the Mysteries was already reduced to a bare minimum in his philosophy. After Aristotle, things went so far as to make people forget that every philosophy must be traced back to the wisdom of the Mysteries. What came later is only an infiltration of abstract terms, similar to the construction of a thatched roof. The first step forward is characterized by the Mystery of Golgotha. Up to this time the human faculties, for example reason, were little developed. Human beings could not make any progress because their minds were bound to their sense organs, and the time when the mind could develop independently was not yet at hand. What happened at Golgotha could not be grasped just by using one's mind. However, when Christ left the material world, innumerable copies of His etheric and astral body came into being; these were destined to be woven into the bodies of human beings suited to disseminate Christianity. One of them was Augustine, who descended to the physical plane for a new incarnation and wanted to form a new etheric body for himself. It was then that one of the copies of the etheric body of Christ was woven into his own etheric body, and this is how it became possible for him to find in himself the sources of his doctrine about the true form of Christian mysticism. But because he had received only the etheric body of Christ, his ego was subjected to error, and it was possible for him to succumb to his passions. And this is how Augustine developed his ego, but also committed errors and went through all stages of doubt in regard to Christ's teaching. What we see in him is a sort of higher materialism because even in those days people fell into the mistake of wanting to materialize everything. Only the person who frees himself or herself from this tendency will understand spiritual things. When Augustine finally found the spirit of Christianity in the words of John and Paul, the etheric body of Christ began to work in him, for he speaks not of the physical body but of the etheric body, which is the same as what he calls “soma.” In speaking of the “sense,” he refers to the astral body, and he says of the ego that it can rise in him through purification. The transformation of the astral body he calls “laying hold of the truth,” and that of the etheric body he delineates as “being joyful and enjoying spiritual things.” Finally, his term for the highest degree of spiritualization is “the vision.” The writings of Augustine are a good preparation for us because they present the inner development of a mystic. One can clearly recognize the moment in which he enters the spiritual world. Augustine is the best interpreter of Paul's letters. Now let us look at another great representative of Christianity: Thomas Aquinas. Comparing him with Augustine, we see that he was not caught up in the errors of Augustine and that, beginning with his childhood years, he did not experience doubt or lack of faith. This is not surprising because judgment and conviction reside in the astral body, and Christ's astral body was woven into his own. The implantation of any principle into the human body can take place only when an external event changes the natural course of things. When Thomas was still a child, lightning struck nearby and killed his little sister. This seemingly purely physical event made him suitable to receive into his own astral body that of Christ. Thomism coincides with the time when the human mind as we know it began to develop. The strongest impulse of this formative process came from Arabism, a truly intellectual science. Whereas before the old sages knew why they were able to gaze directly into the spiritual world, the new philosophy could make good use of Aristotle because he was one of the first great thinkers who preferred intellectual work to the wisdom of the Mysteries. The latter disappeared completely with the purely intellectual speculation of Arabism. Such speculation could at best culminate in a pantheism of rational concepts, but it could not conceive of more than this idea of a unified whole. Now, Thomas adopted the intellectual science accessible to him, but he left revealed knowledge intact and made use of dialectics in order to understand it. The New Testament contains everything of revealed knowledge, so that Thomas had only to add the finely polished science to the explanations. Scholasticism, which is not much appreciated these days, made this intellectual science possible; but by using progressive dialectics, Thomas also made it possible for human beings to elevate themselves again to the divine idea. Scholasticism comes from the Greek scole and therefore means “paying attention,” but was erroneously translated as scuola, school. The scholastic system was the most perfect web of logic, and it enabled Thomas to think anew the pre-creational divine thoughts, freed from error and delusion as they can be conceived of only in monastic seclusion far away from the noise of the world. Human beings are eager to comprehend quickly, to adopt an idea and make it their own, and to simplify everything. But the divine is not that simple! With Thomas Aquinas, human thought rises to new heights. Being no less a mystic than a scholastic, Thomas was able to give us such vivid descriptions, similar to those of the seer Dionysius the Areopagite34 because he saw the spiritual hierarchies and thus he was able to solve the most difficult problems during his long nightly meditations in front of the altar. Therefore, we find combined in him the qualities of the mystic and of a brilliant thinker who is not influenced by the senses. No important concepts were added after him, not even the term “evolution,” which, by the way, can already be found in Aristotle's writings and is perhaps even better described there. We have already stated before that the New Testament contains everything. Specifically, it also contains the seed of mysticism, and we have seen how this seed has ripened and how an infinite number of treasures have been unearthed from the Gospels. Nowadays, we have theosophy; later there will be other spiritual waves, and new treasures will be found in the Gospels. The revelation of John concludes the future of the earth. Today I have tried to show you how the liberation of the intellect was the first stage of Christianity. This is only one leaf, but others will grow on the mighty plant of Christianity, one after the other. The blossom will be the total beauty of the earth, renewed through Christianity, and the fruit will be the new world for which today's earth is the preparation. As Christ taught, is still teaching, and will be teaching to the end, He can be found by those who seek Him.
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