| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Third Recapitulation Lesson
11 Sep 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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| Feel how from world’s expanse The powers of gods their spirit clarity Sets your inner soul aglow. Find yourself in them with love, And they’ll make, wisdom weaving, You as someone in their midst, Strong in virtuous spirit works. |
| Ex Deo Nascimur In Christo Morimur Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus I honor the Father I love the Son I unite with the Spirit 1. |
| 14. Literally from God I am born, but put in the modern form Ich bewundere den Vater. The prefix be- makes it an inner wondering, an honoring. |
| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Third Recapitulation Lesson
11 Sep 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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My dear brothers and sisters! It is not possible to repeat once again the introduction and the obligations of membership for those who have just joined the class. Therefore, I enjoin those class members who will give the newly accepted members the verses, in accordance with the procedures that I shall review at the close of this session, I enjoin them to also communicate the conditions of membership to those who have only just become members of the class. Now, my dear brothers and sisters, we shall begin as previously by letting the specific words meander through our souls, words that a person who can sense them can hear from all actuality of the encompassing world, words that could be heard in the past, that can be heard in the present, that will be heard in the future, that presently call out to him, that urge him insistently from the whole world-all to self-awareness, to self-knowledge, that truly bridge to what a person needs for his thinking, for his feeling, for his work in the world, if a person wishes to become a human being in the full sense of the word.
My dear brothers and sisters, the description of the path of awareness has led us to the Guardian of the Threshold. After the Guardian of the Threshold, hard at the abyss of existence, has shown us the specific forces, the forces of our inner being of willing, feeling, and thinking, how they appear eviscerated to the eyes of the beings of the spiritual world, after he has shown us, how in truth a person of the present time’s awareness, not having awakened into full humanity, in regard to these forces observed inwardly, instead before the spiritual godly powers appear as the three beasts, that presently will be placed before the person and indicated by the Guardian of the Threshold, after the Guardian of the Threshold has placed this shattering appearance before our souls, he then shows us the further path that through lifting oneself up leads in turn to true self-awareness, the path that must be walked, if the demand O Man know yourself1 is to be fulfilled. After showing us how initially we should regard our thinking, feeling and willing, he shows us, in the specific mantric verses that were presented here in this Michael School at the end of the last session, how we first of all have to immerse ourselves, have to steep ourselves in our thinking and come to recognize that our thinking is illusory appearance, that cannot be carried by our true individuality, and how by diving down below mere appearance we become interwoven into the world ether and come somewhat to honor the guiding beings who lead us from earthly life to earthly life. Then he shows us how we can clamber down into our feelings, where appearance mingles with reality, how there with half strength emerges our being, our self-nature (our selfhood in the best sense of the word), how there we should consider well what already streams inwardly, for within the powers of life lies not merely our transient apparent existence, but rather the powers of life of the world, of the cosmos. Just when we descend into willing do we feel existence streaming into our autonomous existence.2 Apparent-being transforms itself in existence. Our being descends into willing and we feel world-maker-might streaming through our willing. These were the words of the Guardian of the Threshold hard on the abyss of being, where there before us stands the yawning darkness, the night-bedecked darkness, which should lighten, in order that we find the light that can illuminate our intrinsic self. Behind us lies the shining sunlit-gleaming physical reality, that now becomes dark, as we cannot find within it our own intrinsic being. There the Guardian of the Threshold speaks the mantric words:
[The mantra was now written on the board:]
The Guardian of the Threshold has spoken a mantric verse for us, regarding which it not merely matters to arrive at the content, but with our entire strength of feeling to transpose ourselves into the movement and life6 of the spiritual world. It is for this reason that this verse is formed just so, in the first part appearing rhythmically as a downward movement out of the spiritual world. Each line begins with a stressed, higher syllable, followed by an unstressed, lower one. In the first verse we have: [The reading emphasized the trochaic meter, which was indicated with a macron and a breve above the first two syllables of each line.]
The downward movement toward us on the part of the spiritual world is to be felt in this trochaic rhythm. We only take this verse rightly into our soul when we speak it with the inner feeling that this descent of the spiritual world, the speaking downward to us by spirit-beings, is at work in this rhythmic cadence:
The next verse is just the opposite. Here we are supposed to ascend in feeling to real existence. Here [in the first syllable] we are below; here [in the second syllable] we strive upward toward reality. The lower, unstressed syllable precedes the higher, stressed one: [The reading emphasized the iambic meter, which was indicated with a breve and a macron above the first two syllables of each line.]
We must live in these words that are united in this mantric rhythm. We must feel them like this:
That we are entering more fully into reality is expressed in the progression, that initially we honor [the word was underlined on the blackboard], an activity that is an inner soul-activity, that we then ascend to consider well [the word was underlined on the blackboard]. We gradually approach the matter beginning with guiding beings [the word was underlined], who guide us, who are busy with us, then with powers of life [the words were underlined], which dwell, move, and live throughout the world. In a mantric verse everything is placed in the right place, and all is joined together in the right way in the organization of the entirety. The third verse tells us how we take up existence directly in willing. We stand right beside existence. Two stressed syllables begin the line: [The reading emphasized the spondaic meter, which is indicated with two macrons above the first two syllables of each line:]
Here we have progressed. It’s no longer a matter for us to consider, but rather to grasp [the words were underlined], which is an action. World-maker-might [the words were underlined] comes at the beginning of the line, whereas powers of life is at the end of the corresponding line, in order to indicate the complete turn-about that we undergo when we rise from appearance through semblance to existence. The third verse must therefore be experienced in such a way that the beginning of each line is felt in this spondaic meter. In the first verse we have the trochaic meter [“trochaic” was written beside the first verse], in the second the iambic meter [“iambic” was written beside the second verse], in the third the spondaic meter [“spondaic” was written beside the third verse].
After the Guardian of the Threshold has placed this before our soul, he makes us aware of how we must be incorporated, if we want to progress in spiritual knowledge, into the cosmos, into the world, into the cosmos, into the world with all their forces. Their place in us is not initially delineated, but in the cosmos, it is visibly arrayed. In the cosmos we can point out the places. In us all is interwoven. But we do not proceed to a real inner acquaintanceship if we do not go out into world-forces and world-powers, if we remain within ourselves subjectively, if we remain enclosed within our skin, if we do not go out and beyond, our body becoming the whole world. Then our soul of our narrow human nature will feel itself as a member of the world. Spirit will incorporate our narrow human nature into the whole cosmos, into the whole world. This we must fully consummate, as the Guardian of the Threshold advises. He points out to us how massive forces from the depths of the earth pull on all beings. Forces go out that draw us down, that bind our willing to the earth, if we do not make it free through inner striving. Our gaze goes toward earth, our gaze reaches down, if we want to localize our willing. We must feel ourselves at one with the mass of the earth, we must feel pulled on by the earth, we must have the impulse within us to free ourselves from the mass of the earth, if we would allow our willing to become one with the cosmos, which we must do.
So speaks the Guardian of the Threshold to our willing at the yawning abyss of existence, in service to Michael. And he instructs us, for he would integrate our feeling into the cosmos, now not to the depths, he instructs us about the horizontal reaches of the world, where from West to East, from East to West, forces swing like a pendulum and permeate us. These are the forces that seize our feeling. Godlike powers we must feel, which send their spirit clarity7 into this horizontal wash of waves,8 if we would integrate our feeling correctly into the world’s expanse. Just as we would integrate our willing into the vertical, feeling it bound below and wanting to free it above, just so must we be able to place our feeling into the world’s expanse. Then will our feeling be light, bright, clear.9 Then something goes through and through our feeling, just as the Sun with its light passes through us as it shines through the Earth’s air on its path from east to west. But in all that streams through us we must find the loving. The force of love alone, which moves and lives in a person, love alone can do what there will be demanded of us. Then wisdom will be woven into us, and we will feel ourselves within the expanse of the circling movement of the Sun, as a feeling human being, an individual strong in virtuous spirit works. That is said to us at the yawning abyss of existence as feeling human beings, that is said to us by the Guardian of the Threshold.
And when the Guardian of the Threshold presently would speak to our thinking, that it should be integrated into the cosmos, then he instructs not as he does in willing directed under, that should get into motion above, then he instructs not as he does with feeling in the wide circling, in which a person moves with the sun, then he instructs in the heights, in the heights of heaven, where alone the self can live selflessly, if it would catch hold of the powers of thought in what comes from overhead in grace. We must inwardly be stalwart10 in order to take up the word, for only if we hold ourselves in fortitude in striving for wisdom and inner knowing, only then the Word of Worlds resounds from on high in grace, only then it speaks of mankind’s true enduring being.11 Just that the Guardian of the Threshold states to us at the yawning abyss of existence.
[The mantra was now written on the blackboard.]
There above is the place we must look to if our thinking would be in unity with the forces of the cosmos. In the world’s circling expanse is the region that we must feel into, if our feeling would be in unity with cosmic forces. We must look down to the region of our earth-bound willing, which we should free toward the heights, to incorporate it properly into cosmic activity. Everywhere, above, in the periphery, and below, everywhere there is particular existence. We must feel it inwardly. The Guardian of the Threshold also instructs us there, in service to Michael and speaks to us about what we find above, in the middle, and below. He teaches us additionally about the heights, the widths, and the depths, as he teaches us about thinking, feeling and willing. So he speaks:
We are placed in the world between light and darkness. Light wants to seize our essential conscious existence,12 our self; darkness wants to seize our essential conscious existence. We have to find the path between light and darkness in order to retain the self. This lies in the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold. And the Guardian speaks concerning our feeling:
In turn we stand with feeling between polar opposites, between loving warmth, between warm love and cold hardness, hardening coldness. We must find our way between these two if our essential conscious self is to find itself. And the Guardian of the Threshold instructs us admonishingly about the third realm, where the will primordially emerges and stands:13
Life and death, we can lose our willing to life, we can lose it to death. We feel it vanishing in life, or feel it confined in death. We must seek the path. The Guardian demands this of us. It is from this point that the work will begin in the next lesson. The Guardian draws our attention once more to the way we must seek our path in order to come to our human self. There he speaks earnest words, for it is not easy to find the inner strength that holds and carries and guides the self, strength the self should itself find, which it does not have in ordinary life on earth. How the Guardian gives us the means we will delve into more deeply. Next Saturday, these mantric verses will be written on the board, and we will hear the Guardian speak further, as he teaches about straying in error, which we must know about to find the correct path. He would direct us along the right path by showing us where we might get lost. Now however, let us think once again, looking back on life on earth, which we must do every time we enter into the esoteric, now let us think again of the admonition that has been spoken to man in the past by all beings and processes, that speaks to man in the present, that will speak to man always in the future.
When all that streams through the Guardian in Michael's name through this Michael School, when here instruction permeates our soul in this rightful Michael School, then we may be certain, if we are honest and open-minded, that the power of Michael streams through this room, which may be brought to witness by the Sign of Michael [The Michael sign was drawn on the blackboard.] and by the seal-gestures, by means of which Michael allows the Rosicrucian Stream, the Rosicrucian Temple, to stream in the force that the man of today needs for his esoteric life, that takes effect out of the three-sided wellspring of the world, out of the godlike Father principle, out of the Christ principle, out of the Spirit principle, so that the Rosicrucian Maxim, the Rosicrucian Proverb combines with the Michael-Gesture-Sign.
which must be felt in such a way that the gesture is understood as:
Once again: [The Michael sign was made, and then the three seal gestures, accompanied by the spoken words:]
It has to be added that the mantric verses given here in this school may only be possessed by those who are legitimate members of the school. If any member of this school was prevented from being present at a session at which he might have been present, but does not have the mantras of the hour, he may receive them from another member who was able to have them. For this it is necessary to ask either Frau Dr Wegman or myself. So if somebody wishes to receive the mantras because he could not receive them here, there must be a request to Frau Dr Wegman or myself, but not by the one who would receive the mantras, only by the one who would pass them on. This must be stated at the very outset. Furthermore, it has to be emphasized that this is not an administrative measure, it has to take place in every single case for every individual to whom one wishes to give the mantras, for it is the beginning of that occult act through which one receives the mantras. Those members who have only joined recently and have advanced to today's lesson may only receive those mantras which have been offered up to their participation in today's lesson. Only in particular cases, which must be judged individually, may the request be made as to whether the later mantras may be given. The mantras may be transmitted from one member to another only by word of mouth, in no other way. They may not be sent by mail. If somebody has made notes, other than the mantras, it is his duty to keep these notes only for a week, and thereafter to burn them. What is communicated here in the rightfully existing School of Michael has significance only in verbal communication, which is an inner occult law, with the exception of the mantric verses. To forestall the assumption that these things are being handled in a childish, secretive manner, it has to be stated that if these occult mantras were to be passed on illegitimately to others, they would lose their effectiveness, for the act of transmitting is part of the efficacy of the school. It is for the sake of this occult fact that the handling of the mantras is required to be so strict. In the program for tomorrow the course on pastoral medicine will take place at 9:30 and the course for theologians at 3:30. Tomorrow evening there will be a lecture for members, and at 5 o'clock in the afternoon a performance of eurythmy. The speech formation course will be at 12 noon as usual. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]
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| 125. Paths and Goals of Spiritual Man: Novalis and Spiritual Science
23 Jan 1910, Strasburg |
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| But that which the gods have thought is spiritual light. And anyone who does not want to think what the gods have thought, even if he does not know it, does not give himself the direction towards the light, but towards darkness. |
| Those who heard these voices had to recognize the God who descended into the physical and carnal. They understood that the Kingdoms of Heaven had come close to the ego. |
| That was the time when people could only see with the physical eye when a God descended to them. Today, we are once again living in a transitional age, in a crisis. The Kali Yuga expired around the year 1899. |
| 125. Paths and Goals of Spiritual Man: Novalis and Spiritual Science
23 Jan 1910, Strasburg |
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for the inauguration of the Novalis branch Due to the circumstances, a number of our friends here in Strasbourg have founded a second branch in addition to the already existing one, which is to bear the significant name “Novalis Branch”. Our friends from other places, who have lovingly gathered in Strasbourg today, have shown through their visit how they understand that branches can also exist side by side in one city and that the diversity of work in different fields need not preclude what we must call harmony and concord, which must prevail among all those who consider themselves members of our society spread across the globe. And so this branch should also be part of the great current that we call spiritual science. You, my dear friends of the Novalis branch, have chosen a significant name for your signature, a sign of your work. The name Novalis belongs to a personality who last, that is, in her last incarnation, was active only in the 18th century; a personality whose whole being is permeated, spiritualized, by what we regard as a spirit-knowing sense, as spirituality. And so you showed from the very beginning that you want spiritual science to be something directly alive, that you seek it wherever it can be found, not just in this or that time, but as it lives through all times, and how it can pour out into the world through one or the other personality in many different ways. In Novalis, we can see how the striving for spiritual knowledge is something that can permeate and interweave our ordinary everyday lives. Of course, if we wanted to point to the sources of the theosophical spirit in Novalis, we would have to look into earlier incarnations of this lofty spirit, and from these earlier incarnations it would become clear to us how what can only be the most profound form of theosophical spiritual life was lived in the incarnations that preceded Novalis's own. But even if we consider only that Novalis, who was barely thirty years old and lived at the end of the 18th century, if we consider only that one incarnation, then we can already see in him how spiritual knowledge is not something that takes people up into a dreamy, fantastic world, something that draws him away from immediate reality. On the contrary, in the most diverse ways, we can see in Novalis how the spirit of reality, how real life acquires its value and true content by permeating it with spiritual science. Novalis came from a noble family in central Germany in which there was a certain, I might say materialistic piety – for such a thing also exists – but not really that which one can describe as the yearning of the heart for a real, living spirit. In order to fulfill the karma of Novalis in the right way, it happened that the father of Novalis, the old Hardenberg, even in his later age - although he was not imbued with spiritual life, but because he came into the Herrnhut sect, a pietistic sect - was interspersed with pious impulses from a certain side. And from this middle-class, German-speaking environment – which, as I said, had enough of the spirit in it to enable even old Hardenberg, in his later life, to achieve a certain spirituality, even if it was sectarian – our Novalis emerged. He grew into – not into what was destined for him according to the will of his family, for that would have been some military or diplomatic position – he grew into a great time; into that time in which great, powerful minds worked at the chair of the Central German University of Thuringia. So he could still hear Schiller's history being presented in Jena at that time. Contemporary history teachers may say that Schiller was not an erudite historian. But what history should be in life, a permeation of the whole of human development with spiritual life, that is what came from Schiller to those souls who were able to hear him in Jena as a history teacher. Schiller spoke as a great personality above all. Spirit spoke from this personality; it awakened the spirit. And there was yet another teacher when Novalis was young, a teacher who, through the great energy of his spiritual life, not only created things in the field of philosophy that belong to the whole human race but are still little understood today. Fichte was working at the time when Novalis was living his life. He worked in such a way that his whole demeanour, Fichte's demeanour, had something spiritual about it. One can look at it as an externality. Those who have a sense for it will not look at it as an externality, that Fichte, when he lectured in the dark hall in the evening and the candle was burning on his lectern, first extinguished the candle by saying: So, my dear listeners, now the physical light has been extinguished, now only the spiritual light should shine in this room. When the relationship between the spiritual and the physical is conjured up not only before the soul but also before the eyes at the right moment, this means something tremendous for receptive souls like Novalis. Such a soul can thereby become capable of maintaining an unshakable belief in spiritual life. It imbues the soul with a noble sentiment that remains for life when a Novalis comes into such an environment. One cannot say that Novalis was prone to enthusiasm. Those who believe that he was a dreamer do not understand Novalis. No, the spirit that lived in Novalis said – we can read it today in his unpublished writings –: the state of sleep is different from the state of wakefulness. When a person is awake, the inner soul – as it was called in those days, what we would call today the astral body – is united with the outer body. The body enjoys the soul. A beautiful word that Novalis used to express the relationship between the physical and astral bodies. And in sleep, the soul is released from the body, as Novalis said, and the body digests the soul when the person is asleep. This is another beautiful, short, concise expression for a relationship that we also encountered in spiritual science. It is beautiful when Novalis writes the saying in his notes: We are always surrounded by a spiritual world. Wherever we are, spiritual beings are around us. It is only up to the human being to project his or her self in such a way that he or she becomes aware of the spiritual beings that surround us wherever we are. It is wonderful how he shows a deep understanding of the course of esoteric human development and writes: In ancient times, attempts were made to lead the soul to a higher development by mortifying the body, through self-chastisement and so on. In more recent times, the strengthening of the soul must take its place: strengthening the soul. Through this strengthening, the soul must gain power over the body, must not become weaker as a result, and must then exercise a certain mastery. We could talk about Novalis for hours. We would not find a spirit that expresses itself in words and teachings like the ones we can give in spiritual science today, but we would find a spirit that expresses exactly the same thing with its words. He was no dreamer, no fantasist. Although his lyric poetry took on the highest momentum we can imagine, leading us up to the highest warmth of feeling, Novalis – and this applies to him, who did not live to be thirty – was a practical mind, who studied at the Mining Academy, was a practical man, through and through a mathematician, who felt that mathematics was a great poem, according to whose lines the divine spirit had woven the world, but who proved himself to be practical in everything a mining engineer needs. Novalis was a spirit who, despite this practicality, knew how to implement in his emotional life, in his heart, what was for him a theosophical attitude, directly into his life. Truly, what we know of his relationship with Sophie von Kühn should not be understood as something related to sensuality. He loved a girl who died at the age of fourteen. He actually only began to love her so ardently when she was already dead. He felt that he now lives in the realm in which she has been since her “death.” He decided to die after her. His further life was a living with a physically dead personality. All this shows us what Novalis grew into through the strong pull of his spiritual being. We can see from Novalis that, as a human being, you basically only need to have one quality in order to have a sense of this spirituality that spiritual science is supposed to bring us. You only need one quality, and this one quality becomes so difficult for people. Because it becomes so difficult for people, people do not come to spiritual science easily. When this one quality is mentioned, it seems to people as if they all have it. Nevertheless, it is this quality, the lack of which prevents people from coming to spiritual science: truthfulness, honestly confessing what really is in the deepest soul. Seemingly, they have so many people — in their own opinion. Nevertheless, Novalis in particular gives us an example of how just a moment of real honesty is needed, and how through this one moment of honesty a person should confess what spirituality can be for the human heart. Novalis' father had a certain inclination towards spirituality; otherwise he would not have joined the Moravian Church. But his soul was not as free and honest as is meant here. What lived in his soul from the external physical world prevented him from doing so. The physical world, with all its prejudices, did not allow him to ascend into the spiritual world. But his son had this truthfulness. What was more obvious than that the father could have no inkling of what lived in this son? The physical world, with its separateness, disharmony, and lack of truthfulness, erected a barrier here between what the young Novalis really was and what the old Hardenberg wanted to be , but which he could not be because of a lack of real inner truthfulness, the physical world with all that it makes of a person did not allow him to realize his son's importance as long as Novalis lived. The son had been dead for a few weeks when old Hardenberg was in his Herrnhut community. They sang a hymn in the community: “What would I have been without you, what would I not be without you.” And this hymn that was sung – old Hardenberg had not yet heard it, but in that moment everything that was spiritual in his soul ignited. He was so overwhelmed by the great impression of what flowed from this song that in that moment his soul, which had become honest, was filled with the spirit of the world, with spiritual life. And when the meeting was over, the old Hardenberg asked someone the name of the song that had so deeply moved him. Then they told him: It is your son's song. It was only necessary that for a moment everything that the physical plane brought could be forgotten, and then, without knowing it, pure truthfulness, pure objectivity, not the prejudices of the physical plane, lived in him for a moment, brought into him by him who had brought it. This is how spirit would find spirit if we, without what are the obstacles of the physical plane, were to face soul to soul. In that moment when man, given over purely to the truth, can find the soul of the other and the soul of the world, in each such moment he must be imbued with what might be called theosophical spirituality. What could be called theosophical spirituality does not lie only in some theory, in some doctrine, although we must never forget that for us humans, who are born to think, a doctrine is indispensable. But the essence of theosophy does not lie in the doctrine. Anyone who might want to emphasize that the doctrine is superfluous and that it is only important to cultivate what is called universal brotherly love must be repeatedly and repeatedly reminded that universal brotherly love cannot be achieved anywhere in the world by preaching universal brotherly love. If we preach only of love, then for the connoisseur of life it is as if we were saying to a stove: Dear stove, it behoves you, for your stove-love, to warm the room. But the room remains cold, no matter how often we preach of love. If, however, we give it fuel, wood and fire, then the wood and fire in it are transformed into warmth, and it warms the room. The fuel for the human soul is the great ideals, the great thoughts that we can absorb, through which we recognize the context of the world, through which we can learn the secrets of human destiny and human life. These are not thoughts that only fill us with theory, but those that warm us inwardly, and the result of theosophical wisdom is love. And just as surely as the stove warms the room by heating and not by preaching, so surely the right teaching of the great thoughts that permeate the world will make the soul loving. For that is the secret of real wisdom: that it transforms itself into love in the soul through its own power. Those who have not yet found the way from wisdom to love only show that they have not yet come far enough in wisdom. But anyone who wants to believe that the thoughts we absorb about the evolution of the world, the evolution of man, about karma and so on, are unimportant for man should realize again and again in his soul that these are not just human thoughts, that they are not just thoughts that we think first, but that these thoughts, which penetrate our soul, are the thoughts according to which the divine spirits have built the world. In spiritual science, it is not our thoughts that arise in our mind's eye, but the thoughts of the divine architects, the divine spirits of the world. What the gods of the world thought among themselves before the creation of the physical world is what we reflect on in spiritual science, and in so doing we explore that which flowed from the divine beings into the activity and becoming of the world to which we belong. But that which the gods have thought is spiritual light. And anyone who does not want to think what the gods have thought, even if he does not know it, does not give himself the direction towards the light, but towards darkness. The only possible foundation for a real development of the human soul is the one in which we start from what the divine thoughts of the world are. The abilities of the spirits of the world have not been given to us as potentialities to be left fallow. They have been given to us to develop. And since thinking is our most important and outstanding ability in this cycle of human development, we must start from thinking. But we must not stop at thinking. This gradually leads us to implement spiritual science in our attitudes, so that we learn to understand the secrets of how knowledge leads to character traits, to emotional qualities. Correctly understood knowledge leads to character traits, to real emotional qualities. We can make this clear to ourselves by means of a single example, by realizing that we humans undergo successive, ever new embodiments, incarnations. What would be the point of these incarnations, these repeated lives on earth, if they were not meant to make man more and more perfect? We must look back from our present incarnation to earlier incarnations and say to ourselves: What we have become at the present time, we have become through the fact that, incarnation after incarnation, these or those qualities of our soul have been added, that our soul has always absorbed new and ever new forces, had new and ever new experiences, had new and ever new experiences. What is built into this soul in one incarnation then comes out in the following incarnation. We have now become what we have been prepared to become in previous incarnations. But then we can stop for a moment and say: we are not only looking back into the past, but we are also looking up into the future, to later, more perfect lives. What would this human life be through all these many embodiments if we could not say to ourselves: The further we develop into the future, the higher the stages will have been attained by what sits within us today as our ego. We can only guess at what we are still capable of becoming, for otherwise we would already be it. We must ascribe to ourselves the ability to rise ever higher. — But so we must look shyly and reverently into the future; we must say to ourselves, even if we can already recognize this or that today, are able to experience this or that in the world already today: with the greater abilities that we can attain, we will be able to experience and recognize many more things. How impossible it is for someone who writes such a thought as has now been expressed in his soul, how impossible it is for him to say to himself: I can decide today what is true or false, I can ultimately judge between true and false. — It behoves him only to say: If I could decide today, then it would be impossible for even higher abilities to arise in me in the future. But when we internalize this, it gives us the great modesty, the true, dignified humility that we need to truly be human in every moment of our development. Thus, the realization of reincarnation transforms into a feeling, a character trait: into dignified humility, into true modesty. You could put it this way: Anyone who today realizes that he is going through successive incarnations and is constantly rising higher in his development would have to be a fool if he said to himself, “I am perfect.” Or he would say, “There is no need for me to learn today, because tomorrow I will experience it quite differently.” Knowledge is transformed into a real character trait. And when viewed correctly, every spiritual-scientific insight is transformed into a character trait. But we can see that if we are unable to apply our powers at any stage of our existence, then these powers from spiritual worlds would not have been given to us. If we want to wait until the world has reached its final stage, in the belief that we must first be so perfect that we can finally recognize and experience, then we would not have to go through various incarnations. That means, we must be clear that we have to apply our powers of knowledge in every incarnation. We must not say: we want to recognize only in the following incarnation, or at the end of our existence. — We should apply the power that we have despite humility and modesty. Thus, alongside humility and modesty, there arises a justified human sense of self, which flows directly from our being imbued with the Divine-Spiritual and which tells us: although our knowledge will only be complete when we have reached a high level, we can make it complete precisely by becoming aware of our human dignity today and applying our strength today. In this way our character will acquire something that can be compared to a pair of scales. We can put humility and modesty on one side of the scales and justified self-esteem, boldness in judgment on the other, and say: We have attained a level in knowledge and self-awareness. In short, we will find that whenever you try to introduce into your feelings what spiritual science teaches, the teachings or theories of spiritual science are transformed in our soul, because they contain thoughts of the divine spirits, are transformed in our soul into our character, our will, our feelings. This can show us that in spiritual science the teaching, the theory, is not the main thing, but that it is, so to speak, the kindling for the development of the human soul; that it is that which is to bring forth higher qualities precisely in our soul. And anyone who demands these qualities without realization lives in the worst of illusions, in self-deception, that self-deception which has entered into human evolution in that, in the course of earthly development, other beings have also entered into it, have participated in our evolution, beings who were not only harmful, but also useful. But however useful they were to us, in that they brought us freedom and self-awareness, we must nevertheless be clear about the fact that precisely these gifts of the so-called luciferic entities: freedom and self-awareness, must not be allowed to degenerate into extremes, into radicalism, for then they become pride and arrogance. And pride and arrogance in the face of knowledge lead this knowledge into darkness. Knowledge is the acceptance of divine light, of divine thoughts. Rejection of knowledge is something that leads into darkness and that cannot lead to higher qualities of the soul either. If we look at spiritual science in this way, we will recognize it as one of the most important matters for humanity. We will recognize it as something that we do not do just for our own sake, but because we are aware of our duty to humanity and to development. We are not living in a completely unimportant time today; we are living in an important time. It is often said by people living in this or that time that they live in a transitional time. All times of human development have been called transitional times, but not all are such significant transitional times. But today we can truly say that our time is a transitional time. To what extent is this the case? Let us first realize the character of another transition period. For example, it was a transition period for human development when the predecessor of our Christ Jesus, John the Baptist, appeared. When John the Baptist appeared, he told the people what was later repeated in significant words by Christ Jesus: “Change your minds, the Kingdoms of Heaven are near.” What does this mean? We can understand what it means if we remember that as people have developed from incarnation to incarnation, they have passed through various qualities of soul. In the distant past, people did not yet have the qualities and soul abilities that they have today. It was possible for all people in ancient times to develop a dim, twilight, dream-like clairvoyance, to look into the spiritual world. There was the possibility for all people not only to see the physical, but to look into the spiritual world. But in those days when clairvoyance was common, people did not yet have what they have today: clearly developed self-awareness. At that time, people could not yet say “I am” to themselves in a clear way. Stability in the center of the inner being could only be achieved by the old clairvoyance disappearing for a while. They had to accept, as it were, their isolation from the spiritual world in order to develop a clear self-awareness here on the physical plane. Later, this clairvoyance will develop again together with self-awareness, so that the two qualities will arise together again and people will have them once more. We can therefore look back into the distant past. At least for certain periods of time, when people were inattentive to the physical, when they closed their eyes and turned away from the physical, and left their ears inattentive to sounds, they were able to see into the spiritual world and gain direct conviction of the existence of the spiritual world. These qualities faded, but in their place came more and more the ability to think, the ability to be self-aware, to draw conclusions, to make independent judgments, which is what makes up our present-day consciousness. The time can be roughly estimated when it gradually occurred that the old clairvoyant abilities completely disappeared from the abilities of mankind. Before the year 3101, almost all people on our planet were still endowed with dim clairvoyance. Then, from that year on, it diminished more and more, became weaker and weaker. But with this, self-awareness, self-consciousness, judgment, reasoning, and self-confident thinking grew. So, as it were, the light of spirituality grew dim, and that which is the human ego dawned, became brighter and brighter. It grew brighter within, but it grew darker in spirituality. In this year begins what Oriental philosophy calls the Kali Yuga, the dark, black age. Something had come to a crisis, so to speak, at the time when John the Baptist and then Jesus the Christ appeared as forerunners. They had to say to mankind: You must now learn that spirituality exists, even though you do not see spirituality with any spiritual eye. You must learn that the Kingdoms of Heaven are there. You must grasp it from your own self. — Therefore, the Christ had to embody himself in a physical body, because only on the physical plane could self-awareness perceive spirituality during the Kali Yuga. At that time there was a transition period. The old abilities had faded away. If the people of that time had not heard the call of the Baptist, of Christ Jesus, then they would have fallen into decline at this stage, would not have progressed. Those who heard these voices had to recognize the God who descended into the physical and carnal. They understood that the Kingdoms of Heaven had come close to the ego. Christ was on Earth in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth for three years. That was the time when people could only see with the physical eye when a God descended to them. Today, we are once again living in a transitional age, in a crisis. The Kali Yuga expired around the year 1899. And now, although people are unaware of it, new qualities are developing in them. New qualities are developing in the human soul in a natural way. The fact that so many people are unaware of this is no proof to the contrary. A hundred years after Christ, Tacitus was still writing about an unknown sect of Christians; and in Rome, after Christ Jesus had accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha seventy to eighty years earlier, people still talked about a sect that was said to live in a back alley and was led by a certain Jesus. But the most important events had taken place in front of countless people. If people do not perceive something, that is no proof that this most important, most decisive and most incomparable thing is not there. Since about 1899, abilities have been developing unnoticed in people that will emerge in the mid-thirties of the twentieth century, roughly between 1933 and 1937. Then, because the time has come, these soul abilities will arise in a whole series of people; abilities of etheric clairvoyance will arise. They will be there. Just as there were people with an ego consciousness carried to the highest peak when Christ Jesus was here, so in our century there will be people who will not only see with the physical eye, but who, as a natural development, will experience what strives down from spiritual levels, so that spiritual-soul abilities emerge from their soul, and they enter into the etheric existence. And the happiness of these people will be to understand the new world that they will see. One thing is true and important for our soul to know that Christ Jesus said, “I am with you until the end of our Earth cycle.” He is here. He has been within our Earth orbit since that time. And when their spiritual eyes are opened, they will see him as Paul saw him at the event outside Damascus. That is what will happen around 1933, that he will be seen as an ethereal being, as a being that does not descend to the physical plane, but can be seen in the etheric body, because a certain number of people will then ascend to etheric vision. But people will be ignorant if they are not prepared for what they will see through spiritual science. That is why we are living in a time of transition, because we are growing into a new way of seeing. Spiritual science has the responsible task of preparing people for the great moment when the Christ will not appear in the fleshly body – for He was only once in the fleshly body – but He is there and He will come again in a form that those whose eyes are open will see Him in the world, which is only visible to clairvoyant eyes. People will grow up to Him. That will be the return of Christ: a growing up of people into the sphere in which the Christ is. But they would stand there foolishly if they were not prepared for this great moment through spiritual science. This preparation must be a serious one, for it is a responsible one. Humanity is to be prepared for the fact that more will be seen than what has been seen so far, if people do not lead this ability into darkness and cause it to wither. Because it could also happen that the whole of the twentieth century would pass without bringing the fulfillment of this goal. We have the responsible task of preparing people for the great moment through spiritual science. But we have to prepare people spiritually, to make them understand that only the spirit will meet the Christ with the spiritual eye open. A materialistic mind might believe that the Christ would appear in a carnal body again. But that would not be spiritualistic, it would be materialistic. If we humans believed that, we would not have the will to work our way up to his spirit. That is why certain prophecies from the Apocalypse will be fulfilled at that time. Relying on and building on the materialistic spirit, individuals will appear in physical bodies who will then say that they are the embodied Christ. And those who are not led to the right knowledge through spiritual science will fall prey to them, for Maya will be great and the possibility of self-deception will be enormous. Temptations will grow to gigantic proportions. Only spiritual knowledge that is aware of its responsibility will bring people to an understanding of what is to happen. These were reflections intended to show how spirituality through spiritual science should work in the individual human soul, and that spiritual knowledge is a task for the times, because we can also say of today's times: We are facing the most important things. But because even the most important things could be completely overlooked by humanity in the darkness, because the great moment could pass without people seeing it, that is why spiritual science must work in the right way. Penetrating with our spirit what is transmitted to us by the study of the spirit will give us the spirituality we need in every branch to develop our own soul ever higher, to perform ever higher and higher services for humanity. Let us try to remember more often that the words spoken at the time of Christ also apply to our time: “Change your minds, for the time is at hand.” At that time it was said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Today, prophetically looking into the near future, we must say: “For the human ego is close to the Kingdoms of Heaven”. Let us prepare ourselves through correct spiritual science so that we may enter worthily into the kingdom that demands something of us. And we ourselves can only flourish if we find the way to the Kingdoms of Heaven. When we process the experiences we have on earth and allow what we experience in the higher spiritual existence to arise, offering it as a great sacrifice at the altar of divine existence, then we fulfill our destiny as human beings to the fullest. Let what you are working on here be imbued with both the spirit of Novalis and the spirit of spiritual science itself, which has come before our soul, and you will see that your work will proceed in the good sense. For when our work is imbued with such an attitude, then, while we are gathered in our branches, there flows in that which we call the light of the Masters of Wisdom and the harmony of the intuitions. We are never without the help of these advanced individuals when we are united in the right attitude in one of our branches. May such spirit unite you! Such spirit, which is at the same time the spirit of the Masters of Wisdom, inspire you! Work in this spirit and your work will be a part of the great spiritual scientific work, your work will be a part of the spirit that shall go throughout the whole world. |
| 113. The East in the Light of the West: The Luciferic Influence in History
29 Aug 1909, Munich Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Shirley M. K. Gandell |
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| Only thus could mankind have at that time understood a God appearing in a body because it had become accustomed to consider true only what could be observed by means of the instrument of the human physical body. |
| Whereas by an inner experience man formerly saw Lucifer appear through the veil of his soul-life, he must now prepare himself to be able to experience Lucifer as a cosmic being in the world around him. From having been a sub-terrestrial god, Lucifer becomes a cosmic god. Man must prepare himself in such a way that his etheric body is provided with such forces as make Lucifer a fructifying and a beneficent element, instead of a destructive one. |
| Through an oracle (that is to say, from a place in which secret connections, hidden from the human gaze, were clairvoyantly perceived), the father was told that if a son were born to him, disaster would result, that this son would murder his father and marry his mother. |
| 113. The East in the Light of the West: The Luciferic Influence in History
29 Aug 1909, Munich Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Shirley M. K. Gandell |
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There are certain facts in the evolution of mankind which are hardly noticed in outer life. As a result there is misunderstanding of much that is being fulfilled in the spiritual depths underlying human evolution. It has been shown that the mystical Christ-experience—such an experience as a man may have when by profound, inner life he permeates his soul experiences with what we have called the Christ substance—was not always possible, but became so in the course of time. The historical descent into incarnation of the Christ was a necessary in preparation for the presence of the mystical Christ in the soul. It is not correct to say that in pre-Christian times the mystical Christ experience had always been possible; individuals such as Meister Eckhart and other similar personalities with their inner mystical experiences are only possible in the Christian epoch; such experiences would not have been possible at an earlier time. Abstract thinking will be fundamentally unable to understand this; only concrete and spiritually realistic thinking dealing with facts would find its way to these things. Again, the description of the Luciferic beings and the Christ can only be comprehensible if we assume that a change took place in the whole human organisation. A change, it is true, not to be realised by the external senses or the outer reason, but none the less a radical change. This was accomplished during the last thousand years before the appearance of Christ and during the centuries following His appearance. Since the Atlantean catastrophe man has essentially changed. And although in the present cycle of humanity the important thing is that man, on incarnation depends for his perception of the world, so far as his outer experiences are concerned, upon the instruments which are at his disposal in the envelopes of the physical, etheric and astral bodies, yet the nature of his perception and realisation through subsequent epochs depends upon the changes which this organisation undergoes. There is no such thing as a conception of the world which holds good for all times. Men's perception of the—world is conditioned by his organisation. Now let us call up before our minds the most radical change in the nature of man, which has occurred since the Atlantean catastrophe. Before this the different members of our human nature were connected otherwise than they grew to be later on. The etheric body did not co-operate with the physical body during the Atlantean era in the way it has done since. Formerly the etheric body of the head, for instance, extended further above the physical head, and the progress of evolution is expressed by the very fact that the etheric and physical bodies grew more alike and their connection closer and closer. Now it is in the etheric body that all the forces necessary for the organisation of the physical body reside, all those forces which unite the members of the physical body and produce harmony between them. In the humanity of Atlantis the forces of the etheric body and especially of the head worked at the building of the physical body from outside. Later these forces drew within the space filled by the physical body and at the present day they work more in man's inner being, animating and stimulating it. But this was only a matter of development. And if we wish to understand the old Indian culture we must clearly realise that the conditions were quite different from what they became during the Chaldean-Egyptian epoch. But in humanity of the Graeco-Latin epoch, there was such a complete permeation of the physical body by the etheric body, that in no part of the human Organisation would clairvoyant consciousness have perceived the etheric body extending far beyond the physical body. This had not been the case with the old Indians. Their clairvoyant vision perceived the etheric body still extending, especially as regards the head, out beyond the physical body. Hence a native of Old India saw the world quite otherwise than did a native of Old Egypt. A man belonging to the Graeco-Latin people saw the world much as it is to be seen today, i.e. as a sense-tapestry of colours, shades, etc. But the whole of this world which lies spread out before the present day sense-perceptions, was to the Indian spirit of the olden times finely permeated by what we might today call the misty cloud characteristic of etheric nature. It arose from all things, for they all looked as if they were burning, and a fine misty smoke arose out of each form. The manner of perceiving then was what might be called a seeing of the etheric element, which was spread out over everything like dew or hoar frost. That peculiar kind of sight was then natural. At the present day the human soul can only attain to it by means of special exercises given by spiritual science. The object of the progressive evolution of mankind through the different periods of civilisation is to cause the etheric body to descend deeper and deeper into the physical body. Thus the whole manner of human perception alters, for all human perception depends upon the way in which the etheric body is organised. And this in its turn is connected with the fact that the Luciferic beings manifesting within the earth and within the soul have risen to the state of cosmic beings, and that the Christ-Being Who was formerly a cosmic being descended into incarnation in a human body and has now become an inner being. This permeation of the Apollonian with the Dionysian principle—this transposition, as it were—only became possible because of a corresponding change in the human Organisation. It was a change that not only affected the past, but was also a preparation for the future. We live in a time when the most complete inner permeation of the physical by the etheric body is already a thing of the past; a time when the tendency of evolution is in the opposite direction. We live in an era in which the etheric body is slowly emerging from the physical body. The normal development of humanity will in the future consist in the gradual emergence of the etheric body from the physical body; the time will come when the human Organisation will once again wear the appearance which it wore in grey primeval ages, and we shall again see the etheric body spreading out beyond the human physical body. We are in the middle of this transition, and many of the more subtle diseases characteristic of the present time would be understood if this were known. But all this has a meaning and corresponds with great cosmic laws, for man could not attain the goal of his evolution unless he thus underwent a transposition of the constituent parts of his Organisation. Now everything within us is permeated by our whole surroundings; and by the divine spiritual beings in the spiritual world sending their currents down into us, just as the physical elements of the earth send their currents into our physical organisation. At the time when the etheric body was outside the physical body, currents were perpetually pouring into this etheric body man experienced this consciously as a cosmic revelation, as something revealed to him inwardly. These currents descending into his etheric body from the spiritual world also worked at the perfecting of his physical body. Now that which descended into the etheric body of man and was experienced as the most inward element of his being, was the influence of the Luciferic world, a great and powerful inheritance brought over from the old ages of the pre-Atlantean evolution. The fact that these Luciferic influences had become so much darkened that man, at the very time when Christ appeared, could perceive nothing of them unless he had reached a high grade of initiation, is explained by the fact that the etheric body drew more and more inside the physical body and became one with it; and man learned to make increasing use of the physical organs as instruments. It was therefore necessary that the divine spiritual being shortly to appear on earth, should be manifest on the physical plane as a figure able to be perceived physically, incarnate like other physical beings upon the earth. Only thus could mankind have at that time understood a God appearing in a body because it had become accustomed to consider true only what could be observed by means of the instrument of the human physical body. This had to come to pass before those who surrounded the Christ could say by way of emphasising an event, ‘We have placed our hands in His wounds, and our fingers in the prints of the nails.’ This certainty yielded by the senses had to live as a feeling in those men, a feeling which gave the stamp of truth to the event. To that sort of testimony a man of the old Indian age would have attached no importance; he would have said: ‘The spiritual perceived by means of the senses means nothing much to me; in order to realise the spiritual there must be ascent to a certain grade of clairvoyant cognition.’ Understanding of Christ therefore had gradually to be developed like everything else in the world. The Luciferic impulse, however, which man formerly had in his etheric body gradually became exhausted. That which he had brought with him out of primeval ages when his etheric body did not as yet dwell entirely in the physical body, but was still outside and received the Luciferic influence through the portion that still was outside, was gradually used up. In order that the etheric body might slip into the physical body it had to lose the capacity of realising the higher worlds through its etheric organs. Therefore at a certain epoch it is true to say of our human ancestors that they were still able to see into the spiritual worlds, and what they saw is preserved in their literature. There was, as it were, a primeval wisdom. The reason why later this was not more directly attainable was, that as the etheric body was taken up into the physical body, man could only make use of his physical senses and of his physical reason. Clairvoyant power was paralysed. The faculty of seeing into the spiritual world was therefore only possible in the initiates who ascended to the super-sensible worlds by means of systematic training. The reverse process is now being enacted. Mankind is entering a condition in which the etheric body is to a certain extent drawing itself out of the physical body again; but it must not be thought that it now receives spontaneously everything which in earlier times it possessed as an ancient heritage. If nothing else happened but its withdrawal, the etheric body of man would just leave the physical body and would retain in itself none of the forces which it formerly possessed. In the future it will be born from out of the human physical body. If the human physical body did not add something to it, this etheric body would be empty, barren. The future of human evolution will be that men will, as it were, allow their etheric body to leave their physical bodily nature, and they will eventually have the possibility of being able to send it out empty. What does that mean? The etheric body is the force-bearer, the energiser of all that takes place in the physical body. It must not only provide forces for the physical body when it is entirely concealed within it, but at all times; it must provide forces for the physical body even when it is again partly outside it. If the etheric body is left empty it cannot react upon the physical body, for it would then have no strength with which to react. The etheric body must, after it has passed through the physical body, have obtained its forces from within the physical body. The forces with which the etheric body can react again upon the physical body, must have been drawn from within the latter. The task of present-day humanity is to absorb into itself that which can only be acquired through activity in a physical body. That which is gained within the physical body accompanies evolution, and when man in future incarnations lives in organisms wherein the etheric body is to a certain extent released from the physical body, he will experience in his consciousness a kind of memory through the partially liberated physical body. Now let us ask ourselves, what enables the physical body to hand something on like an heirloom to the etheric body? What enables a man to send such forces into his etheric body that some day he will be in a position to bear an etheric body itself and able to send back certain forces into the physical body from outside? Suppose man's life, let us say, from 3000 BC to our own era, and on to 3000 AD had been such that nothing more was added to him than what would have been his without the coming of Christ; he would then have experienced in his physical body nothing that might bestow a power on the etheric body when it is released from the physical body. That which a man can hand on is what he can gain within the physical world through the Christ event. All association with the Christ principle and the experiences we may have in connection with the appearance of Christ, sink down into the life of the soul in the physical world and the soul as well as all that is physical are prepared in such a way that there can flow into the etheric body that which it will need in the future. Therefore the Christ event had to take place; to permeate the human soul in order that men should be able to understand their future evolution. That which is in the physical body today sends out forces into the etheric body; and the etheric body, nourished by the physical experiences of the Christ, will take up these forces, in order again to become clairvoyant and possess the life-forces which will sustain the physical body in the future. Hence what man experiences of Christ through the reversal of the principles has its proper bearing upon the future of human evolution. But this alone would not suffice. By passing through the Christ experience in our own souls, by becoming more and more familiar with the Christ, and by letting Him grow more and more into our soul experiences, we do indeed thus influence the etheric body, and pour streams of force into it. Now if this etheric body withdraws and enters into a wrong element it will undoubtedly have the Christ force, but if it does not meet there the forces which are able to work in a sustaining and enlivening way upon the Christ principle which has entered it, it will find itself in a sphere in which it cannot live. The outer forces would destroy it. It would, being permeated with the Christ, and having entered an unsuitable element, be faced with its own destruction, and would react destructively upon the physical body. Furthermore the etheric body must make itself fit once more to receive the light out of which it originally sprang forth, the light from the realm of Lucifer. Whereas by an inner experience man formerly saw Lucifer appear through the veil of his soul-life, he must now prepare himself to be able to experience Lucifer as a cosmic being in the world around him. From having been a sub-terrestrial god, Lucifer becomes a cosmic god. Man must prepare himself in such a way that his etheric body is provided with such forces as make Lucifer a fructifying and a beneficent element, instead of a destructive one. Man has to pass through the Christ experience, but in such a way that he becomes capable of recognising in this world the spiritual fabric of which the world was created. Training such as spiritual science offers, is fully empowered to prepare the whole nature of man again to understand the light of Lucifer's realm, because only thus can the human etheric body receive life forces adequate to it. Christ was influencing man even before He appeared upon the earth. As long ago as the age when Zarathustra was pointing up to Ahura Mazdao, the force of Christ was radiating down. And from the other direction there shone the power of Lucifer, That is reversed as we have seen; in the future the forces of Lucifer will stream in from outside, while the Christ will dwell within. The human Organisation must again be influenced from two sides. The old Indian realised on the one side ‘That thou art,’ and on the other side ‘I am the all’ and knew that the world which he saw outside was the same as that within. In ancient Indian times this was realised as an abstract truth; it will be realised on earth as a concrete experience of the soul when the time is accomplished, when by means of suitable preparation, that which was manifest prophetically, among the ancient Indians, shall come to life again in a new form. Thus does human evolution proceed in the post-Atlantean epoch. Hence it is clear that the evolution of humanity does not move in a straight line, but runs its course, as does everything in nature. I have given the example of a plant, which grows but cannot develop its fruit unless a new factor comes into its development. Here is a picture which shows that other influences must come in from another side. There is no such thing as an evolution which proceeds along a straight line. The Luciferic and the Christ principles had to overlap one another. Those who seek to find an undeviating evolution can never understand the world evolution; only those who notice the divided streams and how they mutually fructify each other can really understand evolution. During the old Indian civilisation, when man was in a certain sense differently organised, his outlook was different. What man's outlook then was can only be definitely experienced by means of that kind of clairvoyant research which is suitable for the present age. And clairvoyance is a power which today has to be acquired by effort, although it was at one age a natural faculty. It is very difficult indeed, even for those who have a thorough knowledge of spiritual science to understand how much the soul-experiences in the old Indian age different from those of later times, and one can only try to clothe this difference in words which approximate to the real sense. When man looks out into the world today he perceives it through his various senses. We cannot here go into all that modern science has to say about sense-perception; it will suffice to hold in our mind the usual conception that man perceives the outer world by means of his various senses, and gathers the different impressions together by means of the spiritual faculty that is bound up with the physical brain. Think this over a little, and it will become evident that there is a great difference in the character of the different sense-perceptions; compare, for instance, the sense of hearing with that of sight. It is evident that as regards hearing, if we look in the outer world for the facts corresponding to it, we find matter in movement, air in regular motion. If our instrument of hearing is brought into contact with this air which is in motion we experience what is called hearing. But the inner experience of hearing and the air in motion without, are two very different things. Now sight is not such a simple thing as hearing, though physicists have made it appear to be so. Their postulate, built up by analogy runs somewhat as follows: Let us take, they say, one of the finer substances which moves just as does the air outside. But the realistic thinker sees a great difference, viz. that as regards the ear, one can very easily detect what moves outside. It can easily be proved that something really does move outside—as far as the ear is concerned—by putting little paper riders on a violin string and striking it. But nobody can see for himself the existence of vibrations in the ether. It is a hypothesis; it exists only as a theory of physics and is non-existent for the realistic thinker. Sense perception by means of sight is a very different thing. What is perceived through light is much more objective than what is sense through hearing. We perceive light as colour, we perceive it spread out in space; but we cannot, as in the case of sound, go into the outer world in search of external processes. Such distinctions as these are readily overlooked by man of modern times. The old Indian, possessing a finer consciousness of the whole outer world, could not have overlooked this. He perceived all these delicate external distinctions. I only want to point out that there are characteristic and essential differences between the realms of the various senses. If we consider the German language it may strike us that with the same word we express an inner soul experience and an impression that comes, in a sense, from outside (I admit that this happens in incorrect speaking). That word is the word ‘feeling.’ We speak of the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. When speaking of feeling in a superficial way we mean the sense of touch, but call it feeling and add that which is experienced by this sense to the outer sense experiences. Again, inspired by the genius of speech, we define in a much more spiritual sense than is generally realised, an inner soul experience by the wood ‘feeling.’ Experiences of joy or pain are defined as feelings. This particular feeling of which we are here speaking is an intimate soul experience; the other feelings, produced by the sense of touch, are always caused by some external object. The other feeling may be associated with an external object, but it can be seen that an external object is not the only cause, because the effect upon one person is different from the effect upon another. We have two experiences, one connected with the external sense the other bound to the inner. These two at the present day appear to be widely divided, but this was not always the case. Here we come to another view of what has previously been described in an external sense. We have described how the etheric body slips in and out again. This is connected with the fact that something takes place in the inner being of man. Today these two experiences, the experience of ‘feeling’ within one and the experience caused by personal contact with an external object which we also describe by the word ‘feeling’ are widely divided. The further we go back in the evolution of humanity, that is to say, the further the etheric body is outside the physical body, so much the nearer are these two experiences to one another. They are only widely divided in mankind today. In the Indian epoch this difference did not exist to the same extent. At that time the inner experience of feeling and the outer were more like each other. Why was that? If you meet a man today who has an evil thought about you (let us say you dislike him and he has the same sort of feeling towards you), you will, as a general rule, if you are only provided with the external senses and the physical brain, not be deeply aware of his feelings, of his sympathies and antipathies. If he should strike you, you would be aware of it, because your sense of feeling would notice it. In the old Indian times there was a different state of things. Man then was so organised, that be was not only aware of that which is felt by the present crude sense of touch, but also of that which today has withdrawn into his inner being; he was still able to sense what someone else felt about him. Through sympathetic comprehension of another individual's feelings he awakened in his soul just such an experience as we have through the sense of touch. He felt the physical-psychical process. On the other hand that which we call our inner feeling was not so far developed in those days; it was still more closely connected with the outer world. Man had his sorrows and joys which in many respects corresponded more to outer happenings; but he could not retire so deeply into his inner being as he can today. At the present time, inner soul experience is to a far greater extent severed from the whole surroundings than formerly was the case. At the present time a man may find himself in a position in which he is surrounded by circumstances which could be better; but because of his inner soul life being severed from his surroundings he may perhaps feel inward pain without any real cause on account of his way of looking at the world. This would have been impossible at the time of the old Indian epoch of civilisation. At that time the inner impressions were a much truer reflection of what went on in the outer environment, for man's feeling was then to a greater extent bound up with the external world. The reason for this was that in those olden times, for example, man, in his whole make up, stood in a very different relation to light. The light surrounding us has not only its external physical aspect, but, like everything physical, is also permeated by soul and spirit. The course of human evolution was such that the soul and spirit of the outer world withdrew more and more from man and gradually the physical part came to be all that was perceptible. Man came to perceive light as a fluid pouring into his Organisation from all sides, and within this light streaming through him, he felt its soul. Today the soul of the light is stopped by the human skin. The Indian organisation was permeated by what lives as soul within the light, and man realised the soul of the light. That light was the bearer of what could be perceived as sympathy and antipathy in other beings, which has now withdrawn with the soul of the light away from men. This was connected with other experiences. Today when men inhale and exhale they can, at the most, know of the existence of breath through the mechanical working. If it is at all chilled they see it becoming watery. This is a mechanical way of seeing the breath. Improbable as it may appear to the man of today, it is nevertheless true that by means of occult research we can substantiate the fact that most of the old Indians had quite a different conception of what their breath signified. The soul of light had not as yet withdrawn from what went on around men of that time; so that they perceived the air as it was breathed in and breathed out in different light and dark shades of colour. They saw the air pouring in and out again like flames of fire. We may therefore say that even the air itself has become something quite different, by reason of the change that has taken place in man's conceptual life. Air today is something that is only perceived mechanically by men through the resistance it offers, because they are no longer directly aware of the soul of the light which permeates the air. Man has parted even from this last remnant of instinctive perception. The old Indian would not have called that which is breathed in and out merely ‘air’; he would have called it ‘fire air,’ because he saw it in varying degrees of fiery radiations. There again we have an example of how even in external experiences the transformation in the constitution of man in the course of evolution is manifest. These are intimate, hidden processes in human evolution, and we can never understand the Vedas, if we do not understand how and in what sense the words are used. If we read the words contained in them without knowing that they described what could then be seen, the words would lose all sense, and our interpretation would be completely wrong. We must always take the realities into consideration when we approach the study of ancient documents. That which lives in the human soul alters in character with the course of time. And now a certain fact will be comprehensible which could not have been so without these statements, statements which are quite independent I of any proofs to be established by physical research. Look into the eastern writings and see how the Elements are there enumerated. They are placed in the following order: earth, water, fire, air, and ether. Only in Greek times do we find a different order which to us today is the obvious one and upon which we base all our understanding, viz. earth, water, air, fire and the other ethers. Why is this so? The old Indian consciousness saw, just as man sees today what is manifested through the solid (that which we call the earth), through the fluidic, or water, to speak in the spiritual sense. But what we today call air, to the old Indians was fire, for they still saw the fire in the air—they described what they saw as fire. We no longer see this fire in the air; we only feel it as heat. Everything has changed since the fourth post Atlantean epoch. So it was that only when they went a little higher in the series of the elements the Indians came to an element in which at that time there appeared to mankind what we today call air—the air to us being penetrated by light, but not revealing the light. In respect to fire and air, man's vision has been entirely reversed. What we have said about Christ and Lucifer crossing each other—that Christ the cosmic being has entered within the human soul, while Lucifer who at first was within man has become a cosmic being—holds good in all departments of life. That which in the first post-Atlantean epoch was what we call fire, is at the present day perceivable as air, and that which we today see as fire, was then seen as air. That which underlies human evolution is expressed not only in great things but also in small ones. These things must not be put down to chance; we can see into the profundities of what happens in the course of the evolution of mankind, if we look at things from the only real point of view—that of spiritual science. The Indian consciousness was one which felt the unity of that which lies deep down in the soul with that which is outside it; hence the Indian lived to a greater degree in his environment. The last echoes of what existed in the ancient Indian as instinctive sight are to be found in the rudimentary ‘clairvoyance’ possessed today by those men who have what we call second sight. Suppose when walking along the street anywhere, there enters the mind the thought of a certain man whom at the moment we cannot physically see, and we meet him a little further on. Why was the thought of him in the consciousness before he was seen? It is because his influence has entered into the sub-consciousness, whence it ascended into the consciousness as a complete thought. Today man possesses in rudimentary form what was once of great significance in his life. In earlier times there existed a much closer connection between inner and outer feeling. These are some more detailed instances of my oft-repeated statements that humanity has evolved out of the old dim clairvoyance into the full consciousness of the senses we now possess, and humanity in the future will once again evolve a fully conscious clairvoyance. This will be attained in such a way that man will consciously experience it; he will know that his etheric body goes forth out of him and that he can use the organs of the etheric body just as he can the physical body. In earlier, more spiritual ages, when men had more wisdom than has modern abstract materialistic science, they were always conscious that there was an old clairvoyance to the possessors of which the world became transparent. They felt that man had lost this old sight and had entered into his present state. Formerly, men did not express their knowledge in abstract formulae and theories, but in mighty, vivid pictures. The Myths are not ‘thought out’ or invented, but are the expressions of a profound primeval wisdom acquired by spiritual vision. In ancient times there was consciousness of the fact that at a still earlier epoch man had embraced the whole world in his feeling, and this is expressed in the Myths. The ‘clair-sentience’ of the old Indian was the last remnant of an original, dim clairvoyance. This was known; but what was not known, was that this clairvoyance—let us summarise it so—withdraws little by little, giving way to the external life which is confined to the world of the senses. The more important Myths express this very fact. It was known, for instance, that there were mystery places, leading the way to the sub-terrestrial spirits and that there were others leading up to the cosmic spirits. There was a sharp distinction between them. Men who were not initiated knew nothing of this, just as today men who do not seek along the right paths have no idea that there is such a thing as Mystery Wisdom. A certain amount of information filtered out. With regard to the mysteries it is true to say that the further we go back into olden times, the more significant does their age of splendour appear. Even the Greek Mysteries do not belong to the most brilliant period. The mysteries themselves had fallen into decadence. Nevertheless the people knew that that which came from those places where clairvoyant consciousness was still active was connected with the spiritual substance which streams through the world and animates it; they knew that where clairvoyant consciousness still prevailed, something could be experienced about the world which was possible in no other way. And even in the period of their decadence clairvoyant consciousness was cultivated in these oracle-places, and from them information was conveyed to mankind such as cannot be experienced by ordinary sense-methods, and intellectual conceptions bound up with them. Yet it was also known that man is developing, that that which could be attained by the old clairvoyance, useful and practicable in ancient days, was no longer adequate for later times. The Greeks had a deep consciousness of the fact that that which came from the oracles certainly aroused curiosity, that men would fain know something about the hidden connections of the world, but that they had departed from the right method of using such clairvoyant information; that man's relation to the world was different from what it had formerly been and that therefore no good could originate from clinging to the results of the old clairvoyance. This is what the Greeks wanted to express and they did so in magnificent pictures. One such picture is the Oedipus legend. Through an oracle (that is to say, from a place in which secret connections, hidden from the human gaze, were clairvoyantly perceived), the father was told that if a son were born to him, disaster would result, that this son would murder his father and marry his mother. This son was born. The father tried to prevent what had been seen clairvoyantly from coming to pass. The son was sent away, and brought up in another place, but he came to know the oracle that is to say, something entered his soul which could only be known by means of clairvoyance. The Greek consciousness would say: Something still continues to enter into man from olden times, but the human organisation has already progressed so far that it is no longer adapted to this sort of clairvoyance, and cannot make use of it. Oedipus listens to the oracle, but acts in such a way that it is all the more certainly fulfilled. Men can no longer handle the results of clairvoyance; the spiritual world has withdrawn and the old clairvoyance is no longer of service to them. But there has always existed a consciousness that things will one day entirely change and that what comes from spiritual worlds will once again mean something to humanity; men have felt that what comes from these spiritual worlds will be covered over by sense life only for a time. Of these facts consciousness has existed; and has been expressed in the Myths by the forces of human evolution which created them. We have seen that the Christ event, when the two forces, the Lucifer principle and the Christ principle, crossed each other, was the decisive one in human evolution. The Christ event was the turning point, when that which comes from out of the Cosmos, from the fountain of the spirit, was to be poured as a ferment into human evolution. It had been lost, but it had to be poured in again as a ferment. That which was harmful to mankind, that which made it into something evil, is poured in as a ferment and transformed into good. The evil has to drop into the fructifying spiritual power inherent in human evolution and work with it for the good. That too has been expressed in the Myths. There is another legend which runs somewhat as follows: A certain man and wife were told by an Oracle that they would have a son, who would bring disaster upon his whole people. This son was to murder his father and marry his mother. This son was born to the mother. On account of the warning, this son was sent away too; he was put upon the island of Kariot and was found by the Queen of that island. And because she and her husband had no son, she adopted him. But later on a son was born to her. Then the foundling thought he was wrongly treated and he killed the real son. He was obliged to flee from the island of Kariot, and he went to the court of Pilate in Palestine, where he obtained employment as overseer of Pilate's household. He quarreled with his neighbour, of whom he knew nothing beyond the fact that he was his neighbour. In the course of this quarrel he killed him and later married the widow. Only then did he learn that it was his real father whom he had killed and that it was therefore his mother whom he had married. The story tells us that he saw his entire existence ruined but did not behave like Oedipus; for he was overcome by remorse and went to the Christ and the Christ received him; this was Judas Iscariot, Judas from Kariot. And the evil which dwelt in Judas became a leaven in the whole of evolution. For the deed of Palestine is connected with the betrayal by Judas; Judas is bound up with the whole event; he belongs to the twelve that are not thinkable without him. Here we see that the sayings of the oracle were indeed fulfilled, and further that they are embodied in universal evolution in the form of evil which is transformed and lives on as good. The story (which is in reality wiser than external science) indicates in the most significant way that there is such a transformation in human nature in the course of time, and that the same thing has to be regarded differently at different epochs. In speaking of the fulfillment of an oracular saying we must not relate it in the same way when speaking of the time of Oedipus as when speaking of the time of Christ. The same fact is at the one period the story of Oedipus at another, in the time of Christ; it becomes the story of Judas. Only when we know the spiritual facts lying at the foundation of the evolution of the world and of humanity do we understand the results of those spiritual facts which are manifest to external historical conceptions. All phenomena of the sense-world, all external sense impressions or manifestations of the human soul can be comprehended by us when we understand their spiritual basis. That which the investigator of spiritual worlds discovers he gladly hands on as a stimulus to those who are willing to take it from him and who will then examine the external facts which confirm it. If what is discovered in the spiritual world be true, it is confirmed in the physical world. But every true explorer of the spiritual life will say that in communicating his knowledge of the higher world he facilitates and desires the testing of all external facts in the light of his assertions. If what I have said about the re-incarnation of Zarathustra for instance be compared with external history, it will be found that what has been said stands every test, if sufficiently careful search is made in external history. External life becomes comprehensible only when there is knowledge of the inner, the spiritual. |
| 29. Collected Essays on Drama 1889–1900: “The Homeless”
26 Feb 1898, Translated by Steiner Online Library |
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| Should Halbe, after giving his best, have said to himself: they haven't digested it - well: here I am; I can do otherwise. God help me? - The matter is most easily explained from this point of view. A poet who tries it once, what luck he has when he gives the very worst he can give! |
| It is also too uncomfortable for poor Lotte in this house. Her father has committed suicide. The poor thing has been miserably beaten by her mother. She is also supposed to marry a bourgeois tax assessor. |
| 29. Collected Essays on Drama 1889–1900: “The Homeless”
26 Feb 1898, Translated by Steiner Online Library |
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Drama in five acts by Max Halbe It is a psychological puzzle that the bold "Conqueror" tragedy and this drama about the "homeless" can emerge from the same mind. On the one hand, a deep problem of the human soul, on the other, dull theatricality; on the one hand, entirely the language of the poet's own mind, on the other, a servant to the theater audience in every sentence. Should Halbe, after giving his best, have said to himself: they haven't digested it - well: here I am; I can do otherwise. God help me? - The matter is most easily explained from this point of view. A poet who tries it once, what luck he has when he gives the very worst he can give! As I let the play pass me by, the words of Merck came to mind, who said to Goethe after he had written "Clavigo": "You don't have to write such rubbish any more, others can do it too. I don't want to be so rude as to call Halbe the "others" just in case. A Berlin boarding house is teeming with "homeless" people. We are all indifferent to them. Halbe makes not the slightest attempt to bring them closer to us. They are wandering human bellies without souls. Even with Regine Frank, who is characterized somewhat more precisely, we don't know how to find our way around. She is a pianist, a female self-made woman. She is proud of her independence. But there are twelve of her kind to a dozen. - Lotte Burwig is a provincial goose, Reginen's cousin. She can't like it in her parents' house in Gdansk. It is also too uncomfortable for poor Lotte in this house. Her father has committed suicide. The poor thing has been miserably beaten by her mother. She is also supposed to marry a bourgeois tax assessor. The good girl thinks eloping is best. She also has a role model in her cousin. So she stands on her own two feet. She wants to become a singer. First she goes to the boarding house where Regine is also staying. Her mother wants to take her home, but Lottchen has no desire to marry her tax assessor or to continue to submit to her mother's educational rules. So she stays. She falls in love with a manor owner who spends the winter in Berlin to recover from the stresses and strains of his job as an agrarian. Part of his relaxation involves turning the heads of young girls. On Christmas Eve, poor Lottchen throws herself at the seducer, kissing him fervently, kissing him endlessly. She wants to belong to the "only one". By carnival time, it's already over. Evil Eugene goes back to his estate; he shakes off his winter love affair. During a fantastic masquerade, Lottchen discovers how little the "only one" cares about her. She even threatens the unfaithful man with a dagger. She has really lost it. Even Regine finds out. She sends a telegram to her mother. Lottchen should go home after all. Better to die, she says. And the moment her mother enters, she has already said goodbye to life. Halbe has not made any attempt to deepen the characters psychologically. The story of "evil Eugene and poor Lottchen" comes from the realms where the invention of psychology had not yet penetrated. The depiction of the milieu is also weaker than in Halbe's earlier dramas. Sometimes we are drawn in by one mood; immediately afterwards, however, another one intrudes; and we can't get out of the histrionic all-sorts. |
| 74. The Redemption of Thinking (1956): Lecture III
24 May 1920, Dornach Translated by Alan P. Shepherd, Mildred Robertson Nicoll |
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| I can doubt that sensory things are round me, I can doubt that God exists that clouds are there that stars are there, but if I doubt, the doubt is there. I cannot doubt that which goes forward in my own soul. |
| —In Christ the intuition has become theophany, the incarnation of God, hence, Christ's voice is God's voice and the way of salvation.—The Jew Spinoza thinks that the human being can develop from his intellectualism in such a way that the spirit is coming up to meet him. If he can then turn to the Mystery of Golgotha, the fulfilment with spirit becomes not only intuition, that is appearance of the spirit by thinking, but it changes intuition into theophany, into the appearance of God himself. The human being faces God spiritually. One would like to say, Spinoza did not withhold that what he had suddenly realised, because this quotation proves that. |
| 74. The Redemption of Thinking (1956): Lecture III
24 May 1920, Dornach Translated by Alan P. Shepherd, Mildred Robertson Nicoll |
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Yesterday at the end of the considerations about High Scholasticism, I attempted to point out that the most essential of a current of thought are problems that made themselves known in a particular way in the human being. They culminated in a certain yearning to understand: how does the human being attain that knowledge which is necessary for life, and how does this knowledge fit into that which controlled the minds in those days in social respect, how the knowledge does fit into the religious contents of the western church? The scholastics were concerned with the human individuality at first who was no longer able to carry up the intellectual life to concrete spiritual contents, as it still shone from that which had remained from Neo-Platonism, from the Areopagite and Scotus Eriugena. I have also already pointed to the fact that the impulses of High Scholasticism lived on in a way. However, they lived on in such a way that one may say, the problems themselves are big and immense, and the way in which one put them had a lasting effect. These should be just the contents of the today's consideration—the biggest problem, the relationship of the human being to the sensory and the spiritual realities, still continues to have an effect even if in quite changed methodical form and even if one does not note it, even if it has apparently taken on a quite different form. All that is still in the intellectual activities of the present, but substantially transformed by that which significant personalities have contributed to the European development in the philosophical area in the meantime. We also realise if we consider the Franciscan Monk Duns Scotus (~1266-1308) who taught in the beginning of the fourteenth century in Paris, later in Cologne, that as it were the problem becomes too big even for the excellent intellectual technique of scholasticism. Duns Scotus feels confronted with the question: how does the human soul live in the human-body? Thomas Aquinas still imagined that the soul worked on the totality of the bodily. So that the human being is only equipped indeed, if he enters into the physical-sensory existence, by the physical-bodily heredity with the vegetative forces, with the mineral forces and with the forces of sensory perceptivity that, however, without pre-existence the real intellect integrates into the human being which Aristotle called nous poietikos. This nous poietikos now soaks up as it were the whole mental—the vegetative mental, the animal mental—and intersperses the corporeality only to transform it in its sense in order to live on then immortal with that which it has obtained—after it had entered into the human body from eternal heights but without pre-existence—from this human body. Duns Scotus cannot imagine that the active intellect soaks up the entire human system of forces. He can only imagine that the human corporeality is something finished that in a certain independent way the vegetative and animal principles remain the entire life through, then it is taken off at death and that only the actually spiritual principle, the intellectus agens, goes over to immortality. Scotus cannot imagine like Thomas Aquinas that the whole body is interspersed with soul and spirit because to him the human mind had become something abstract, something that did no longer represent the spiritual world to him but that seemed to him to be gained only from consideration, from sense perception. He could no longer imagine that only in the universals, in the ideas that would be given which would prove reality. He became addicted to nominalism—as later his follower Ockham (William of O., ~1288-1347) did—to the view that ideas, as general concepts in the human being are only conceived from the sensory environment that it is, actually, only something that lives as names, as words in the human mind, I would like to say, for the sake of comfortable subsumption of existence. Briefly, he returned to nominalism. This is a significant fact, because one realises that nominalism, as it appeared, for example, with Roscelin of Compiègne—to whom even the Trinity disintegrated because of his nominalism-, is only interrupted by the intensive work of thought of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas and some others. Then the European humanity falls again back into nominalism which is incapable to grasp that which it has as ideas as spiritual reality, as something that lives in the human being and in a way in the things. The ideas become from realities straight away again names, mere empty abstractions. One realises which difficulties the European thinking had more and more if it put the question of knowledge. Since we human beings have to get knowledge from ideas—at least in the beginning of cognition. The big question has to arise repeatedly: how do the ideas provide reality? However, there is no possibility of an answer if the ideas appear only as names without reality. The ideas that were the last manifestations of a real spiritual world coming down from above to the ancient initiated Greeks became more and more abstract. We realise this process of abstracting, of equating the ideas with words increasing more and more if we pursue the development of western thinking. Single personalities outstand later, as for example Leibniz (Gottfried Wilhelm L., 1646-1716) who does not get involved in the question, how does one recognise by ideas, because he is quite traditionally still in the possession of a certain spiritual view and leads everything back to individual monads which are actually spiritual. Leibniz towers above the others, while he still has the courage to imagine the world as spiritual. Yes, the world is spiritual to him; it consists of nothing but spiritual beings. However, I would like to say what was to former times differentiated spiritual individualities are to Leibniz more or less gradually differentiated spiritual points, monads. The spiritual individuality is confirmed, but it is confirmed only in the form of the monad, in the form of a spiritual punctiform being. If we disregard Leibniz, we see, indeed, a strong struggle for certainty of the primal grounds of existence, but the incapacity everywhere at the same time to solve the nominalism problem. This becomes obvious with the thinker who is put rightly at the starting point of modern philosophy, Descartes (1596-1650) who lived in the beginning or in the first half of the seventeenth century. Everywhere in the history of philosophy one gets to know the real cornerstone of his philosophy with the proposition: cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore, I am.—One can note something of Augustine's pursuit in this proposition. Since Augustine struggles from that doubt of which I have spoken in the first talk, while he says to himself, I can doubt everything, but, the fact of doubting exists, and, nevertheless, I live, while I doubt. I can doubt that sensory things are round me, I can doubt that God exists that clouds are there that stars are there, but if I doubt, the doubt is there. I cannot doubt that which goes forward in my own soul. One can grasp a sure starting point there.—Descartes resumes this thought, I think, therefore, I am. Of course, with such things you expose yourself to serious misunderstandings if you are compelled to put something simple against something historically respected. It is still necessary. Descartes and many of his successors have in mind: if I have mental contents in my consciousness if I think, then one cannot deny the fact that I think; therefore, I am, therefore, my being is confirmed with my thinking. I am rooted as it were in the world being, while I have confirmed my being with my thinking. The modern philosophy begins with it as intellectualism, as rationalism that completely wants to work from the thinking and is in this respect only the echo of scholasticism. One realises two things with Descartes. First, one has to make a simple objection to him: do I understand my being because I think? Every night sleep proves the opposite.—This is just that simple objection which one has to make: we know every morning when we wake, we have existed from the evening up to the morning, but we have not thought. Thus, the proposition, I think, therefore, I am, is simply disproved. One has to make this simple objection, which is like the egg of Columbus, to a respected proposition that has found many supporters. However, the second question is, at which does Descartes aim philosophically? He aims no longer at vision, he aims no longer at receiving a world secret for the consciousness, and he is oriented in intellectualistic way. He asks, how do I attain certainty? How do I come out of doubt? How do I find out that things exist and that I myself exist?—It is no longer a material question, a question of the content-related result of world observation; it is a question of confirming knowledge. This question arises from the nominalism of the scholastics, which only Albert and Thomas had overcome for some time, which reappears after them straight away. Thus, that presents itself to the people which they have in their souls and to which they can attribute a name only to find a point somewhere in the soul from which they can get no worldview but the certainty that not everything is illusion, that they look at the world and look at something real, that they look into the soul and look at reality. In all that one can clearly perceive that to which I have pointed yesterday at the end, namely that the human individuality got to intellectualism, but did not yet feel the Christ problem in intellectualism. The Christ problem possibly appears to Augustine, while he still looks at the whole humanity. Christ dawns, I would like to say, in the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages; but He does not dawn with those who wanted to find Him with thinking only which is so necessary to the developing individuality, or with that which would arise to this thinking. This thinking appears in its original state in such a way that it emerges from the human soul that it rejects that which should just be the Christian or the core of the human being. It rejects the inner metamorphosis; it refuses to position itself to the cognitive life so that one would say to himself, yes, I think, I think about the world and myself at first. However, this thinking is not yet developed. This is the thinking after the Fall of Man. It has to tower above itself. It has to change; it has to raise itself into a higher sphere. Actually, this necessity appeared only once clearly in a thinker, in Spinoza (Benedictus Baruch S., 1632-1677), the successor of Descartes. With good reason, Spinoza made a deep impression on persons like Herder and Goethe. Since Spinoza understands this intellectualism in such a way that the human being gets finally to truth—which exists for Spinoza in a kind of intuition, while he changes the intellectual, does not stop at that which is there in the everyday life and in the usual scientific life. Spinoza just says to himself, by the development of thinking this thinking fills up again with spiritual contents.—We got to know in Plotinism, the spiritual world arises again to the thinking as it were if this thinking strives for the spirit. The spirit fulfils as intuition our thinking again. It is very interesting that just Spinoza says, we survey the world existence as it advances in spirit in its highest substance while we take up this spirit in the soul, while we rise with our thinking to intuition, while we are so intellectualistic on one side that we prove as one proves mathematically, but develop in proving at the same time and rise, so that the spirit can meet us.— If we rise in such a way, we also understand from this viewpoint the historical development of that what is contained in the development of humanity. It is strange to find the following sentence with a Jew, Spinoza, the highest revelation of the divine substance is given in Christ.—In Christ the intuition has become theophany, the incarnation of God, hence, Christ's voice is God's voice and the way of salvation.—The Jew Spinoza thinks that the human being can develop from his intellectualism in such a way that the spirit is coming up to meet him. If he can then turn to the Mystery of Golgotha, the fulfilment with spirit becomes not only intuition, that is appearance of the spirit by thinking, but it changes intuition into theophany, into the appearance of God himself. The human being faces God spiritually. One would like to say, Spinoza did not withhold that what he had suddenly realised, because this quotation proves that. It fulfils like a mood what he found out from the development of humanity this way; it fulfils his Ethics. Again, it devolves upon a receptive person. Therefore, one can realise that for somebody like Goethe who could read most certainly between the lines of the Ethics this book became principal. Nevertheless, these things do not want to be considered only in the abstract as one does normally in the history of philosophy; they want to be considered from the human viewpoint, and one must already look at that which shines from Spinozism into Goethe's soul. However, that which shines there only between the lines of Spinoza is something that did not become time dominating in the end but the incapacity to get beyond nominalism. Nominalism develops at first in such a way that one would like to say, the human being becomes more and more entangled in the thought: I live in something that cannot grasp the outside world, in something that is not able to go out from me to delve into the outside world and to take up something of the nature of the outside world.—That is why this mood that one is so alone in himself that one cannot get beyond himself and does not receive anything from the outside world appears already with Locke (John L., 1612-1704) in the seventeenth century. He says, what we perceive as colours, as tones in the outside world is no longer anything that leads us to the reality of the outside world; it is only the effect of the outside world on our senses, it is something with which we are entangled also in our own subjectivity.—This is one side of the matter. The other side of the matter is that with such spirits like Francis Bacon (1561-1626) nominalism becomes a quite pervasive worldview in the sixteenth, seventeenth centuries. For he says, one has to do away with the superstition that one considers that as reality which is only a name. There is reality only if we look out at the sensory world. The senses only deliver realities in the empiric knowledge.—Beside these realities, those realities do no longer play a scientific role for whose sake Albert and Thomas had designed their epistemology. The spiritual world had vanished to Bacon and changed into something that cannot emerge with scientific certainty from the inside of the human being. Only religious contents become that what is a spiritual world, which one should not touch with knowledge. Against it, one should attain knowledge only from outer observation and experiments. That continues this way up to Hume (David H., 1711-1776) in the eighteenth century to whom even the coherence of cause and effect is something that exists only in the human subjectivity that the human being adds only to the things habitually. One realises that nominalism, the heritage of scholasticism, presses like a nightmare on the human beings. The most important sign of this development is that scholasticism with its astuteness stands there that it originates in a time when that which is accessible to the intellect should be separated from the truths of a spiritual world. The scholastic had the task on one side to look at the truths of a spiritual world, which the religious contents deliver of course, the revelation contents of the church. On the other side, he had to look at that which can arise by own strength from human knowledge. The viewpoint of the scholastics missed changing that border which the time evolution would simply have necessitated. When Thomas and Albert had to develop their philosophy, there was still no scientific worldview. Galilei, Giordano Bruno, Copernicus, and Kepler had not yet worked; the intellectual view of the human being at the outer nature did not yet exist. There one did not have to deal with that which the human intellect can find from the depths of his soul, and which one gains from the outer sensory world. There one had to deal with that only which one has to find with the intellect from the depths of the soul in relation to the spiritual truths that the church had delivered, as they faced the human beings who could no longer rise by inner spiritual development to the real wisdoms who, however, realised them in the figure that the church had delivered, just simply as tradition, as contents of the scriptures and so on. Does there not arise the question: how do the intellectual contents relate—that which Albert and Thomas had developed as epistemology—to the contents of the scientific worldview? One would like to say, this is an unconscious struggle up to the nineteenth century. There we realise something very strange. We look back at the thirteenth century and see Albert and Thomas teaching humanity about the borders of intellectual knowledge compared with faith, with the contents of revelation. They show one by one: the contents of revelation are there, but they arise only up to a certain part of the human intellectual knowledge, they remain beyond this intellectual knowledge, there remains a world riddle to this knowledge.—We can enumerate these world riddles: the incarnation, the existence of the spirit in the sacrament of the altar and so on—they are beyond the border of human cognition. For Albert and Thomas it is in such a way that the human being is on the one side, the border of knowledge surrounds him as it were and he cannot behold into the spiritual world. This arises to the thirteenth century. Now we look at the nineteenth century. There we see a strange fact, too: during the seventies, at a famous meeting of naturalists in Leipzig, Emil Du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896) holds his impressive speech On the Borders of the Knowledge of Nature and shortly after about the Seven World Riddles. What has become there the question? (Steiner draws.) There is the human being, there is the border of knowledge; however, the material world is beyond this border, there are the atoms, there is that about which Du Bois-Reymond says, one does not know that which haunts as matter in space.—On this side of the border is that which develops in the human soul. Even if—compared to the imposing work of scholasticism—it is a trifle which faces us there, nevertheless, it is the true counterpart: there the question of the riddles of the spiritual world, here the question of the riddles of the material world; here the border between the human being and the atoms, there the border between the human being and the angels and God. We have to look into this period if we want to recognise what scholasticism entailed. There Kant's philosophy emerges, influenced by Hume, which influences the philosophers even today. After Kant's philosophy had taken a backseat, the German philosophers took the slogan in the sixties, back to Kant! Since that time an incalculable Kant literature was published, also numerous independent Kantian thinkers like Johannes Volkelt (1848-1930) and Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) appeared. Of course, we can characterise Kant only sketchily today. We want only to point to the essentials. I believe that someone who studies Kant really can understand him in such a way, as I tried to understand him in my booklet Truth and Science. Kant faces no question of the contents of the worldview with might and main in the end of the sixties and in the beginning of the seventies years of the eighteenth century, not anything that would have appeared in certain figures, pictures, concepts, ideas of the things with him, but he faces the formal question of knowledge: how do we get certainty of something in the outside world, of any existence in the outside world?—The question of certainty of knowledge torments Kant more than any contents of knowledge. I mean, one should even feel this if one deals with Kant's Critique that these are not the contents of knowledge, but that Kant strives for a principle of the certainty of knowledge. Nevertheless, read the Critique of Pure Reason, the Critique of Practical Reason, and realise—after the classical chapter about space and time—how he deals with the categories, one would like to say how he enumerates them purely pedantically in order to get a certain completeness. Really, the Critique of Pure Reason does not proceed in such a way, as with somebody who writes from sentence to sentence with lifeblood. To Kant the question is more important how the concepts relate to an outer reality than the contents of knowledge themselves. He pieces the contents together, so to speak, from everything that is delivered to him philosophically. He schematises, he systematises. However, everywhere the question appears, how does one get to such certainty, as it exists in mathematics? He gets to such certainty in a way which is strictly speaking nothing but a transformed and on top of that exceptionally concealed and disguised nominalism, which he expands also to the sensory forms, to space and time except the ideas, the universals. He says, that which we develop in our soul as contents of knowledge does not deal at all with something that we get out of the things. We put it on the things. We get out the whole form of our knowledge from ourselves. If we say, A is connected with B after the principle of causation, this principle of causation is only in us. We put it on A and B, on both contents of experience. We bring the causality into the things. With other words, as paradox this sounds, nevertheless, one has to say of these paradoxes, Kant searches a principle of certainty while he generally denies that we take the contents of our knowledge from the things, and states that we take them from ourselves and put them into the things. That is in other words, and this is just the paradox: we have truth because we ourselves make it; we have truth in the subject because we ourselves produce it. We bring truth only into the things. There you have the last consequence of nominalism. Scholasticism struggled with the universals, with the question: how does that live outdoors in the world what we take up in the ideas? It could not really solve the problem that would have become provisionally completely satisfactory. Kant says, well, the ideas are mere names, nomina. We form them only in ourselves, but we put them as names on the things; thereby they become reality. They may not be reality for long, but while I confront the things, I put the nomina into experience and make them realities, because experience must be in such a way as I dictate it with the nomina. Kantianism is in a way the extreme point of nominalism, in a way the extreme decline of western philosophy, the complete bankruptcy of the human being concerning his pursuit of truth, the desperation of getting truth anyhow from the things. Hence, the dictates: truth can only exist if we bring it into the things. Kant destroyed any objectivity, any possibility of the human being to submerge in the reality of the things. Kant destroyed any possible knowledge, any possible pursuit of truth, because truth cannot exist if it is created only in the subject. This is a consequence of scholasticism because it could not come into the other side where the other border arose which it had to overcome. Because the scientific age emerged and scholasticism did not carry out the volte-face to natural sciences, Kantianism appeared which took subjectivity as starting point and gave rise to the so-called postulates freedom, immortality, and the idea of God. We shall do the good, fulfil the categorical imperative, and then we must be able to do it. That is we must be free, but we are not able to do it, while we live here in the physical body. We reach perfection only, so that we can completely carry out the categorical imperative if we are beyond the body. That is why immortality must exist. However, we cannot yet realise that as human beings. A deity has to integrate that which is the contents of our action in the world—if we take pains of that what we have to do. That is why a deity must exist. Three religious postulates about which one cannot know how they are rooted in reality are that which Kant saved after his own remark: I had to remove knowledge to get place for faith.—Kant does not get place for religious contents in the sense of Thomas Aquinas, for traditional religious contents, but for abstract religious contents that just originate in the individual human being who dictates truth, that is appearance. With it, Kant becomes the executor of nominalism. He becomes the philosopher who denies the human being everything that this human being could have to submerge in any reality. Hence, Fichte, Schelling, and then Hegel immediately reacted against Kant. Thus, Fichte wanted to get everything that Kant had determined as an illusory world or as a world of appearances from the real creative ego that he imagined, however, to be rooted in the being of the world. Fichte was urged to strive for a more intensive, to a more and more mystic experience of the soul to get beyond Kantianism. He could not believe at all that Kant meant that which is included in his Critiques. In the beginning, with a certain philosophical naivety he believed that he drew the last consequence of Kant's philosophy. If one did not draw these last consequences, Fichte thought, one would have to believe that the strangest chance would have pieced this philosophy together but not a humanely thinking head. All that is beyond that which approaches with the emerging natural sciences that appear like a reaction just in the middle of the nineteenth century that strictly speaking understand nothing of philosophy, which degenerated, hence, with many thinkers into crass materialism. Thus, we realise how philosophy develops in the last third of the nineteenth century. We see this philosophical pursuit completely arriving at nullity, and then we realise how—from everything possible that one attaches to Kantianism and the like—one attempts to understand the essentials of the world. The Goethean worldview which would have been so significant if one had grasped it, got completely lost, actually, as a worldview of the nineteenth century, with the exception of those spirits who followed Schelling, Hegel and Fichte. Since in this Goethean worldview the beginning of that is contained which must originate from Thomism, only with the volte-face to natural sciences. Thomas could state only in the abstract that the mental-spiritual really works into the last activities of the human organs. In abstract form, Thomas Aquinas expressed that everything that lives in the human body is directed by the mental and must be recognised by the mental. Goethe started with the volte-face and made the first ground with his Theory of Colours, which people do not at all understand, and with his “morphology.” However, the complete fulfilment of Goetheanism is given only if one has spiritual science that clarifies the scientific facts by its own efforts. Some weeks ago, I tried here to explain how our spiritual science could be a corrective of natural sciences, we say, concerning the function of the heart. The mechanical-materialist view considers the heart as a pump that pushes the blood through the human body. However, it is quite the contrary. The blood circulation is something living—embryology can prove that precisely -, and it is set in motion by the internally moved blood. The heart takes the blood activity into the entire human individuality. The activity of the heart is a result of the blood activity, not vice versa. Thus, one can show concerning the single organs of the body how the comprehension of the human being as a spiritual being only explains his material existence. One can do something real in a way that Thomism had in mind in abstract form that said there, the spiritual-mental penetrates everything bodily. This becomes concrete knowledge. The Thomistic philosophy lives on as spiritual science in our present. I would like to insert a personal experience here. When I spoke in the Viennese Goethe Association about the topic Goethe as Father of a New Aesthetics, there was a very sophisticated Cistercian among the listeners. I explained how one has to imagine Goethe's idea of art, and this Cistercian, Father Wilhelm Neumann (1837-1919), professor at the theological faculty of the Vienna University, said something strange, you can find the origins of your talk already with Thomas Aquinas.—Nevertheless, it was interesting to me to hear from him who was well versed in Thomism that he felt that in Thomism is a kind of origin of that which I had said about the consequence of the Goethean worldview concerning aesthetics. One has already to say, the things, considered according to truth, appear absolutely different than they present themselves to the history of philosophy under the influence of an unconscious nominalistic worldview which goes back largely to Kant and the modern physiology. Thus, you would find many a thing if you referred to spiritual science. Read in my book The Riddles of the Soul which appeared some years ago how I tried there to divide the human being on the basis of thirty-year studies into three systems; how one system of the human physical body is associated with sense-perception and thinking, how the rhythmical system, breathing and heart activity, is associated with feeling, how metabolism is associated with the will. Everywhere I attempted to find the spiritual-mental in its creating in the physical. That is, I took the volte-face to natural sciences seriously. One tries to penetrate into the area of natural existence after the age of natural sciences, as before the age of scholasticism—we have realised it with the Areopagite and with Plotinus—one penetrated from the human knowledge into the spiritual area. One takes the Christ principle seriously as one would have taken the Christ principle seriously if one had said, the human thinking can change, so that it can penetrate if it casts off the original sin of the limits of knowledge and if it rises up by thinking free of sensuousness to the spiritual world—after the volte-face. What manifests as nature can be penetrated as the veil of physical existence. One penetrates beyond the limits of knowledge which a dualism assumed, as well as the scholastics drew the line at the other side. One penetrates into this material world and discovers that it is, actually, the spiritual one that behind the veil of nature no material atoms are in truth but spiritual beings. This shows how one thinks progressively about a further development of Thomism. Look for the most important psychological thoughts of Albert and Thomas in their abstractness. However, they did not penetrate into the human-bodily, so that they said how the mind or the soul work on the organs, but they already pointed to the fact that one has to imagine the whole human body as the result of the spiritual-mental. The continuation of this thought is the work to pursue the spiritual-mental down to the details of the bodily. Neither philosophy nor natural sciences do this, only spiritual science will do it, which does not shy away from applying the great thoughts like those of High Scholasticism to the views of nature of our time. However, for that an engagement with Kantianism was inevitable if the thing should scientifically persist. I tried this engagement with Kantianism first in my writings Truth and Science and Epistemology of Goethe's Worldview and, in the end, in my Philosophy of Freedom. Only quite briefly, I would like to defer to the basic idea of these books. These writings take their starting point from the fact that one cannot directly find truth in the world of sense perception. One realises in a way in which nominalism takes hold in the human soul how it can accept the wrong consequence of Kantianism, but how Kant did not realise that which was taken seriously in these books. This is that a consideration of the world of perception leads—if one does it quite objectively and thoroughly—to the conclusion: the world of perception is not a whole, it is something that we make a reality. In what way did the difficulty of nominalism originate? Where did the whole Kantianism originate? Because one takes the world of perception, and then the soul life puts the world of ideas upon it. Now one has the view, as if this world of ideas should depict the outer perception. However, the world of ideas is inside. What does this inner world of ideas deal with that which is there outdoors? Kant could answer this question only, while he said, so we just put the world of perception on the world of ideas, so we get truth. The thing is not in such a way. The thing is that—if we look at perception impartially—it is not complete, everywhere it is not concluded. I tried to prove this strictly at first in my book Truth and Science, then in my book Philosophy of Freedom. The perception is everywhere in such a way that it appears as something incomplete. While we are born in the world, we split the world. The thing is that we have the world contents here (Steiner draws). While we place ourselves as human beings in the world, we separate the world contents into a world of perception that appears to us from the outside and into the world of ideas that appears to us inside of our soul. Someone who regards this separation as an absolute one who simply says, there is the world, there I am cannot get over with his world of ideas to the world of perception. However, the case is this: I look at the world of perception; everywhere it is not complete in itself, something is absent everywhere. However, I myself have come with my whole being from the world to which also the world of perception belongs. There I look into myself: what I see by myself is just that which the world of perception does not have. I have to unite that which separated in two parts by my own existence. I create reality. Because I am born, appearance comes into being while that which is one separates into perception and the world of ideas. Because I live, I bring together two currents of reality. In my cognitive experience, I work the way up into reality. I would never have got to a consciousness if I had not split off the world of ideas from the world of perception while entering into the world. However, I would never find the bridge to the world if I did not combine the world of ideas that I have split off again with that which is not reality without the world of ideas. Kant searches reality only in the outer perception and does not guess that the other half of reality is just in that which we carry in ourselves. We have taken that which we carry as world of ideas in ourselves only from the outer reality. Now we have solved the problem of nominalism, because we do not put space, time, and ideas, which would be mere names, upon the outer perception, but now we give back the perception what we had taken from it when we entered into the sensory existence. Thus, we have the relationship of the human being to the spiritual world at first in a purely philosophical form. Someone is just overcoming Kantianism who takes up this basic idea of my Philosophy of Freedom, which the title of the writing Truth and Science already expresses: the fact that real science combines perception and the world of ideas and regards this combining as a real process. However, he is just coping with the problem which nominalism had produced which faced the separation into perception and the world of ideas powerlessly. One approaches this problem of individuality in the ethical area. Therefore, my Philosophy of Freedom became a philosophy of reality. While cognition is not only a formal act but also a process of reality, the moral action presents itself as an outflow of that which the individual experiences as intuition by moral imagination. The ethical individualism originates this way as I have shown in the second part of my Philosophy of Freedom. This individualism is based on the Christ impulse, even if I have not explicitly said that in my Philosophy of Freedom. It is based on that which the human being gains to himself as freedom while he changes the usual thinking into that which I have called pure thinking in my Philosophy of Freedom which rises to the spiritual world and gets out the impulses of moral actions while something that is bound, otherwise, to the human physical body, the impulse of love, is spiritualised. While the moral ideals are borrowed from the spiritual world by moral imagination, they become the force of spiritual love. Hence, the Philosophy of Freedom had to counter Kant's philistine principle—“Duty! You elated name, you do not have anything of flattery with yourself but strict submission” -, with the transformed ego which develops up into the sphere of spirituality and starts there loving virtue, and, therefore, practises virtue because it loves it out of individuality. Thus, that which remained mere religious contents to Kant made itself out to be real world contents. Since to Kant knowledge is something formal, something real to the Philosophy of Freedom. A real process goes forward. Hence, the higher morality is also tied together with it to a reality, which philosophers of values like Windelband (Wilhelm, 1845-1915) and Rickert (Heinrich R., 1863-1936) do not at all reach. Since they do not find out for themselves how that which is morally valuable is rooted in the world. Of course, those people who do not regard the process of cognition as a real process do not get to rooting morality in the world of reality; they generally get to no philosophy of reality. From the philosophical development of western philosophy, spiritual science was got out, actually. Today I attempted to show that that Cistercian father heard not quite inaccurately that really the attempt is taken to put the realistic elements of High Scholasticism with spiritual science in our scientific age, how one was serious about the change of the human soul, about the fulfilment of the human soul with the Christ impulse also in the intellectual life. Knowledge is made a real factor in world evolution that takes place only on the scene of the human consciousness as I have explained in my book Goethe's Worldview. However, these events in the world further the world and us within the world at the same time. There the problem of knowledge takes on another form. That which we experience changes spiritual-mentally in ourselves into a real development factor. There we are that which arises from knowledge. As magnetism works on the arrangement of filings of iron, that works in us what is reflected in us as knowledge. At the same time, it works as our design principle, then we recognise the immortal, the everlasting in ourselves, and we do no longer raise the issue of knowledge in only formal way. The issue of knowledge was always raised referring to Kant in such a way that one said to himself, how does the human being get around to regarding the inner world as an image of the outer world?—However, cognition is not at all there at first to create images of the outer world but to develop us, and it is an ancillary process that we depict the outside world. We let that flow together in the outside world in an ancillary process, which we have split off at our birth. It is exactly the same way with the modern issue of knowledge, as if anybody has wheat and investigates its nutritional effect if he wants to investigate the growth principle of wheat. Indeed, one may become a food chemist, but food chemistry does not recognise that which is working from the ear through the root, the stalk, and the leaves to the blossom and fruit. It explains something only that is added to the normal development of the wheat plant. Thus, there is a developmental current of spiritual life in us, which is concerned with our being to some extent as the plant develops from the root through the stalk and leaves to the blossom and the fruit, and from there again to the seed and the root. As that which we eat should not play any role with the explanation of the plant growth, the question of the epistemological value of that which lives in us as a developmental impulse must also not be the basis of a theory of knowledge, but it has to be clear that knowledge is a side effect of the work of the ideal in our human nature. There we get to the real of that which is ideal. It works in us. The wrong nominalism, Kantianism, originated only because one put the question of knowledge in such a way as food chemistry would put the question of the nature of wheat. Hence, one may say, not before we find out for ourselves what Thomism can be for the present, we see it originating in spiritual science in its figure for the twentieth century, and then it is back again as spiritual science. Then light is thrown on the question: how does this appear if now one comes and says, compared with the present philosophy one has to go back to Thomas Aquinas, and to study him, at most with some critical explanations and something else that he wrote in the thirteenth century?—There we realise, what it means, to project our thoughts in honest and frank way in the development current that takes High Scholasticism as starting point, and what it means to carry back our mind to this thirteenth century surveying the entire European development since the thirteenth century. This resulted from the encyclical Aeterni patris of 1879 that asks the Catholic clerics to regard the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas as the official philosophy of the Catholic Church. I do not want to discuss the question here: where is Thomism? Since one would have to discuss the question: do I look best at the rose that I face there if I disregard the blossom and dig into the earth to look at the roots and check as to whether something has already originated from the root. Now, you yourselves can imagine all that. We experience what asserts itself among us as a renewal of that Thomism, as it existed in the thirteenth century, beside that which wants to take part honestly in the development of the European West. We may ask on the other hand, where does Thomism live in the present? You need only to put the question: how did Thomas Aquinas himself behave to the revelation contents? He tried to get a relationship to them. We have the necessity to get a relationship to the contents of physical manifestation. We cannot stop at dogmatics. One has to overcome the “dogma of experience” as on the other side one has to overcome the dogma of revelation. There we have really to make recourse to the world of ideas that receives the transforming Christ principle to find again our world of ideas, the spiritual world with Christ in us. Should the world of ideas remain separated? Should the world of ideas not participate in redemption? In the thirteenth century, one could not yet find the Christian principle of redemption in the world of ideas; therefore, one set it against the world of revelation. This must become the progress of humanity for the future that not only for the outer world the redemption principle is found, but also for the human intellect. The unreleased human reason only could not rise in the spiritual world. The released human intellect that has the real relationship to Christ penetrates into the spiritual world. From this viewpoint, Christianity of the twentieth century is penetrating into the spiritual world, so that it deeply penetrates into the thinking, into the soul life. This is no pantheism, this is Christianity taken seriously. Perhaps one may learn just from this consideration of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas—even if it got lost in abstract areas—that spiritual science takes the problems of the West seriously that it always wants to stand on the ground of the present. I know how many false things arise now. I could also imagine that now again one says, yes, he has often changed his skin; he turns to Thomism now because the things become risky.—Indeed, one called the priests of certain confessions snakes in ancient times. Snakes slough their skins. As well as the opponents understand skinning today, it is indeed a lie. Since I have shown today how you can find the philosophically conscientious groundwork of spiritual science in my first writings. Now I may point to two facts. In 1908, I held a talk about the philosophical development of the West in Stuttgart. In this talk, I did not feel compelled to point to the fact that possibly my discussion of Thomism displeased the Catholic clerics, because I did justice to Thomism, I emphasised its merits even with much clearer words than the Neo-Thomists, Kleutgen or others did. Hence, I did not find out for myself in those days that my praise of Thomism could be taken amiss by the Catholic clergy, and I said, if one speaks of scholasticism disparagingly, one is not branded heretical by the so-called free spirits. However, if one speaks, objectively about that, one is easily misunderstood because one often rests philosophically upon a misunderstood Thomism within the positive and just the most intolerant church movement. I did not fear at all to be attacked because of my praise of Thomism by the Catholic clergy, but by the so-called free spirits. It happened different, and people will say, we are the first whom he did a mischief. During these days, I have also pointed to my books that I wrote around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, among them also to a book that I dedicated to Ernst Haeckel, Worldviews and Approaches to Life in the Nineteenth Century. There I pointed to the fact that the modern thinking is not astute and logical; and that Neo-Scholasticism tried to rest upon the strictly logical of Thomism. I wrote: “These thinkers could really move in the world of ideas without imagining this world in unsubtle sensory-bodily form.” I spoke about the scholastics this way, and then I still spoke about the Catholic thinkers who had taken the study of scholasticism again: “The Catholic thinkers who try today to renew this art of thinking are absolutely worth to be considered in this respect. It will always have validity what one of them, the Jesuit father Joseph Kleutgen (1811-1889), says in his book An Apology of the Philosophy of the Past: “Two sentences form the basis of the different epistemologies which we have just repeated: the first one, that our reason ...” and so on. You realise, if the Jesuit Joseph Kleutgen did something meritorious, I acknowledged it in my book. However, this had the result that one said in those days that I myself was a disguised Jesuit. At that time, I was a disguised Jesuit; now you read in numerous writings, I am a Jew. I only wanted to mention this at the end. In any case, I do not believe that anybody can draw the conclusion from this consideration, that I have belittled Thomism. These considerations should show that the High Scholasticism of the thirteenth century was a climax of European intellectual development, and that the present time has reason to go into it. We can learn very much for deepening our thought life to overcome any nominalism, so that we find Christianity again by Christianising the ideas that penetrate into the spiritual being from which the human being must have originated, because only the consciousness of his spiritual origin can give him satisfaction. |
| 231. Supersensible Man: Lecture IV
17 Nov 1923, The Hague Translated by Mary Adams |
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| Just as in the Mars sphere man learns the speech of the Gods, and in the Jupiter sphere the thoughts of the Gods, so in his first passage through the Saturn existence he learns to know all that lives in the memory of the Gods of our planetary system. |
| And in the Jupiter sphere, all that man acquired through having perceived the thoughts of the Gods, is transformed on the path of return into the faculty to conceive human thoughts which can then be reflected in ordinary consciousness when the germ of the head unites with the physical embryo. |
| The connection with the line of generations is, as you see, made relatively soon. We are born of father and mother, our parents again have each of them father and mother, and these too have their father and mother. |
| 231. Supersensible Man: Lecture IV
17 Nov 1923, The Hague Translated by Mary Adams |
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My dear Friends, In the lecture this afternoon the life between death and a new birth was pictured as a journey, and we considered the sense in which the positions of certain stars in the heavens can be taken as viewpoints whence we may behold this journey of man through certain spiritual regions. Before proceeding further, we will study in a little more detail how we must picture this journey through regions indicated for us by certain heavenly bodies. It might seem that the super-sensible existence of man between two earthly lives has been adequately presented in such a book as Theosophy. For the early stages of study, that is quite true, but you will surely agree that knowledge must also progress and expand. As we go further in our study we have constantly to bear in mind the oneness of the Universe, we have to remember that there is an unbroken, harmonious interplay between the super-sensible and the sensible worlds. The conditions of existence in the different regions through which man passes between death and a new birth express themselves outwardly in the relationships of space and of time that exist between the heavenly bodies concerned. When, therefore, we speak of these spiritual regions in terms of heavenly bodies, we are using a correct picture. There is a connection between the place of a visible star in the heavens and some particular region of super-sensible life. As an objection to this it could be said that the life which stretches between death and a new birth cannot be conceived in terms of space or at most only to a very limited degree. That is perfectly true, but super-sensible existence is nevertheless reflected into space. The world that is beyond space and beyond time, plays into space and into time; and as man's thinking and ideation have necessarily to be in terms of space and time, the imagery of the stars in the heavens is an excellent one for giving a picture of the super-sensible. One thing, however, we must not omit to make clear. We are taught in physics that the processes we have in the physical world—processes that are subject to the force of gravity—undergo a change, when we go out into space. Physical science tells us the exact proportion in which the force of gravity decreases. We are taught that the force of gravity (and also the intensity of light) decreases in proportion to the square of the distance. Science will not, however, admit that the same is true in relation to all knowledge of material things which has been acquired here on Earth. Science has derived this knowledge from the Earth; and if the figures which apply to gravity and light in the immediate environment of the Earth have to be modified as we go out into space, it is not unreasonable to suppose that only so long as we remain in the actual environment of the Earth are we justified in applying the scientific knowledge of to-day. Just as the power of gravity decreases in proportion to the square of the distance, so does the truth of our conclusions decrease, the further we are away from the Earth. When the astronomer or astro-physicist tries with ordinary thinking to determine, for instance, what is happening in some nebula out in cosmic space, it is just the same as if one set out to calculate, according to the conditions prevailing on the Earth, the weight of a stone in that nebula far away in the heavens. It ought not therefore to surprise us when Spiritual Science says: Here on Earth things present such and such an aspect, but out in the cosmos they are in reality quite different. On Earth we see the Moon as it appears in the sky. In reality the Moon is a cosmic colony of many Beings—I described it to you in the last lecture. It is the same with all the stars and constellations. This fact must be borne in mind throughout our present study. The lectures so far have brought us to the point where, during his life between death and a new birth, man passes into the Sun sphere. In this region the spirit-form of the lower part of the human being is transformed into the head of the next earthly life. It must of course be remembered that man's path between death and new birth is such that he passes through all these planetary spheres twice. After death he passes, first of all, into the Moon sphere, then he goes on into the Mercury sphere, the Venus sphere and the Sun sphere. That is as far as we came in our description. In the Sun sphere the lower man begins to be transformed into the upper man. The limb structures are transformed—spiritually, of course, at this stage—into the future head-system. This work of metamorphosis is a work of infinite grandeur and sublimity. Those who study the human head merely as a physical structure have no notion of all the manifold work that has to be performed in the Cosmos in order to bring into being the spirit-germ of the human head,—which later on will unite with the physical embryo. After this work has been begun in the Sun sphere, man passes into the Mars sphere, then into the Jupiter sphere and into the Saturn sphere. The Saturn sphere is really the last, for Uranus and Neptune do not come into consideration here. During all this time, work is proceeding upon the spirit-germ of the head. Man's path then leads him still further out into the cosmic expanse, out into the wide ocean of the cosmos, where the work of metamorphosis continues, until the time comes for him to take the path of return. Then, going back through the regions of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars to the region of the Sun, he comes again at length to the sphere of the Moon. Of the path of return we shall hear later on; at this point we will consider the experiences through which the human being passes, after his time in the region of the Sun is over. Before he reaches the Sun sphere, man's experiences are for the most part closely connected with himself. In the last lecture I told you how man wears a physiognomy which expresses his good and bad qualities and how this enables him to see other beings similar in nature to himself. I told you how he gradually changes his spirit-form and comes to resemble the beings who belong to the super-sensible world, and how then he is able to behold the Beings of the Third Hierarchy and the Beings also of the second Hierarchy. If we want to describe the human being up to the stage of the Sun existence we must fix our attention on his spirit-form or figure, and describe that. But having entered the Sun region man undergoes an experience which I called living his way into the Cosmic Music, the Music of the Spheres. He hears, in cosmic harmony and cosmic melody, the meaning, as it were, of all the interworking of the starry worlds. For this working together of the stars, which is at the same time an expression of the working together of the Spiritual Beings that are in these regions—this it is, ultimately, that comes to revelation in cosmic harmony and cosmic melody. It is chiefly the life of feeling in its spiritual metamorphosis that is quickened and stimulated in the Sun existence. Every experience man has is like cosmic melody and cosmic harmony vibrating through his entire being. What we need at this stage of life between death and a new birth is not anything of the nature of theory, nor indeed anything that lends itself at all to expression in words. What we need is to feel—with a universal feeling that fills our being through and through—the harmonies and melodies born from the inter-workings of the different orders of Beings in the Cosmos. Then a further experience comes to us, an experience which reveals unmistakably the connection between the physical world of sense and the super-sensible, superphysical world. When we pass into the Sun existence where the melodies and harmonies of the spheres—the whole Music of the Spheres—sound to us from every direction of the Cosmos, we are still aware of the last remnants of one of the spiritual faculties we possessed during earthly existence, we can still feel the last remnants of speech. At this stage of existence between death and a new birth, our spirit-form has already fallen away and we have come to resemble in form the cosmic sphere itself; our form has undergone metamorphosis into what will become head in the next incarnation. Everything about it that was still reminiscent of the form we bore in earthly existence has by this time fallen right away. But the faculty of soul that enabled us to speak, to make our thought articulate in words, follows us, and being present with us in memory brings a kind of discord into the Music of the Spheres. Yes, discord is introduced into the Music of the Spheres, by reason of the fact that man carries right up into Sun existence the remnants of his faculty of speech. And this discordant element that is brought by man into the Sun existence becomes the basis for the work of certain higher Spirits whose task it is to help forward Earth existence from the Cosmos. For it is when they see what comes to expression in human speech and language as it is to-day, that they take knowledge of how things have degenerated on the Earth and grown corrupt. In none of its European or American forms to-day is speech a faculty that emerges from the being of man with elemental power. It may be that what speech once was will be able to come again on Earth in the following way. Some of us are learning Eurythmy. What happens when one learns Eurythmy? To-day we lightly utter words without the faintest inkling of how the configuration of the words is connected with the inner life and experience of the soul. To speak words to-day is really nothing but an acquiescence in convention. It never occurs to people that when they say “a” (ah)—as a sound, by itself—they are expressing something which as pure sound springs from astonishment or wonder in the soul. When we utter the sound “b,” we mean that we are covering something, enveloping it, wrapping it round. Consonantal sounds invariably signify forms; vowel sounds express feelings, the inner life and being of the soul. The “b” sound is primordially connected with an act of covering. “B” is really the “house.” If I say “a” (ah), this is an expression of a wonder that is felt in the very depths of the soul. The consonantal sound of “t” expresses a settling oneself down, making a halt, staying there. “D” is the same, but has a gentler shade of meaning, less abrupt. Suppose I utter the (German) word “Bad.”* [* English “bath.”] If I were to go back to the origin of the word, to the time when it was still felt and seen, I would have to say: The water is around me like an enveloping sheath: “b.” It is comfortably warm: ah! (Now I am at the sound “a.”) I shall stay in it: “d.” The whole experience is contained in the word itself. To speak in such a way seems to us almost absurd, for nowadays no actual experience is any longer connected with words. If we wanted to experience the word “B-a-d” we should have to say: “The house in which I feel wonder, in which I sit.” In reality speech is filled through and through with soul; man's inner experience of soul streams into and permeates it. In days of yore this was felt and known. In the original, primitive tongues, speech was born from perception of feeling and of form—feeling in the vowel, form in the consonant. To-day these elements are no longer associated with speech; it has become a mere matter of convention. In Eurythmy, however, the sounds—“b,” “a,” “d”—are changed back again into the gestures that correspond to them. In making the gestures, the Eurythmist begins again to experience speech. One may cherish the hope that if love for Eurythmy is born in ever widening circles, humanity will be able to find its way back to what was contained in primitive tongues,—to a speech that is felt and seen. So will Eurythmy in the future be something more than it is to-day; it will be man's guide and show him how the life of soul and spirit can be borne along on the surging waves of speech. To-day we have come to the point when speech is so little articulated—let alone, ensouled—that numbers of people cannot really be said to “speak” at all. They “spit” the words out! Speech as it is to-day is certainly not born from the life of soul! It is enough to make one despair, when one has to listen to words that have no longer any soul in them, any life,—nay, are not even articulated. So it comes about that in our day a shrill discord sounds up from Earth into the Cosmic Music when man enters the Sun existence after death. And this quality that has crept into speech makes manifest to certain Spiritual Beings the degeneration that earthly existence has suffered, showing them too at the same time how the right forces and impulses can be found that will lead once again to an ascent. Man continues his wandering and comes into the Mars existence. What do we mean when we say: Man conies into the Mars existence? It is now no longer possible, you must remember, to speak of man in his spirit-form, for by this time he is wholly changed; he has become a spiritual image of the great cosmic sphere. On and on leads the path, through the spheres of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, out into the surging waves of the Cosmos. In the Mars region the human being lives among the “population” of Mars—if I may so express myself. The inhabitants of Mars are discovered to be either discarnate human souls or Beings of the Hierarchies, but above all those of the Hierarchies from whose entire being Cosmic Speech sounds forth into universal space. For man is now in the region where Cosmic Music becomes Cosmic Speech. At first he hears it; then he is himself interwoven into the Cosmic Speech. Instead of the imitative speech of humanity, he hearkens to a speech that is creative, a speech out of which things are born and have their being. During man's passage through the sphere of Mars he acquires conscious knowledge of the Beings who people this region. The spiritual population of Mars consists of Beings who are the Knowers of the Cosmic Speech. There are other Beings too,—for example. Beings who are warlike in nature. But so far as man is concerned, the most important Beings in the Mars sphere are those who in their whole nature are Cosmic Word. They are the Guardians of the Cosmic Speech. Man's journey then leads him into the region of Jupiter where dwell the Beings who are the guardians of the Cosmic Thoughts. These Beings radiate thought-beings into our planetary system and its environment. Through this region also man must pass, and he is involved there in a process of metamorphosis which I can only describe in a rather prosaic way. Picture to yourselves that man becomes a kind of image of the cosmic sphere; that is to say, his whole being is really the spirit-germ of the head as it will be in his next life on Earth. In the Sun existence, having experienced the shrill discord set up by earthly speech, he learns to lay aside this earthly speech. During his passage through Mars he becomes part of the Cosmic Speech, he grows one with it, and begins also to lay the foundation for an understanding of Cosmic Speech. For it is like this. The metamorphosis of the lower man has begun—the legs into the lower jaw, the arms into the upper jaw, and so on. In community with the Beings of the Hierarchies the human being builds the spirit-germ of his future head. But, to begin with, this head is built for understanding the Cosmos—not the Earth! It learns first to understand Cosmic Speech, Cosmic Thoughts. Cosmic Thoughts and Cosmic Speech find a home in the human head; just as here on Earth man knows of minerals, plants and animals, so, during his journey through the spheres of Mars and Jupiter, he is made acquainted with the mysteries of the spiritual Universe. We shall never have a true feeling or perception of the nature of man until we realise in clear consciousness that between death and rebirth the human being has learned to know the names of the wonderful and majestic Beings of the higher Hierarchies, has learned to understand the work and creative activities of these Beings in the Cosmos, has learned to follow in his thought—not little everyday problems of personal life, such as, How am I to get back to Amsterdam?—but such a question as: How is one world-epoch born out of another through the workings of the higher Hierarchies? So much for man's experience in his passage through Jupiter. Now comes the passage through the Saturn existence. Saturn bestows upon the human being what I will call Cosmic Memory—for in the Saturn sphere dwell those Spiritual Beings who preserve the memory of everything that has ever come to pass in our planetary system. Saturn is the mighty bearer of the memory of all the happenings of our planetary system. Just as in the Mars sphere man learns the speech of the Gods, and in the Jupiter sphere the thoughts of the Gods, so in his first passage through the Saturn existence he learns to know all that lives in the memory of the Gods of our planetary system. Hence it comes about that man's head in the spiritual spheres—which is the spirit-germ of his future earthly head—receives incorporated into it everything that enables him to be a citizen of the Cosmos and to live in the Cosmos among the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, even as he lives on earth among the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. Then, having been so deeply enriched in his spirit-existence that he has learned to understand the speech of the great world, the speech of the Macrocosm in the widest sense of the word, man passes out of the spheres of planetary activity and enters the sphere of activity of the Fixed Stars. Here the work upon the primal germ of the human head, the pre-figuring and shaping of it, is brought to completion by influences pouring in from infinitudes of spiritual worlds. The time has now come for man to take the path of return. He comes again, first, into the Saturn sphere. The fact that during his earlier sojourn in the Saturn sphere he received into himself the planetary memories, enables the foundation to be laid now in his head for the faculty of memory that will be necessary in his life on Earth. The cosmic memory implanted into his being is, as it were, made “earthly.” Cosmic memory is transformed again into the germ of the faculty of human memory. And in the Jupiter sphere, all that man acquired through having perceived the thoughts of the Gods, is transformed on the path of return into the faculty to conceive human thoughts which can then be reflected in ordinary consciousness when the germ of the head unites with the physical embryo. On the return path through the Saturn sphere the detailed elaboration of the metamorphosis of the lower man into the various parts of the head-organisation can also begin. This is a wonderful work,—one human being working upon another, in accord too with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. Verily, the work that is wrought here for the forming of the human head is like the creation of a whole world. For in the sphere of existence between death and rebirth of which I am now speaking, each single human head is seen to be a wonderful world,—a world of infinite variety and detail; and the work upon it calls for the devotion of human beings who are linked together by destiny, with the co-operation also of Beings of the Hierarchies who, knowing the mysteries of the Cosmos, understand how such a human head must be built and formed. Wonderful it is beyond all telling, to come in this way to a knowledge of what is in man. Nor can such knowledge ever lead to pride or conceit. Yonder, between death and a new birth, the world in which we live sees to it that we do not succumb to pride! It would be, my dear friends, an absurdity to fall victim to human pride and arrogance among the Beings of the Hierarchies, among Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones! The human being must remain for ever little in comparison with the Beings among whom he works. And when in this earthly existence a man comes to learn of what he is in the great Macrocosm between death and a new birth, he has good reason to say to himself: “You have not brought very much with you into earthly existence! You have no great cause to pride yourself upon your present condition; nor have you any occasion to be particularly proud of what you were among the Gods!” What can grow within us as the result of looking upon the life of man between death and a new birth is a sense of responsibility which makes us say: “We must strive with all our might to be worthy even here on earth, of being ‘man.’” For this is indeed what we feel, when we measure the significance of being “man” by the work performed upon the human being by the Gods in the period that lies between death and a new birth. Going now further on his path of return, man comes again into the Mars existence, where the work upon his being continues. It is here that the spirit-germs for the new body are added—for the breast system and for the limb structures, as they will be in the next earthly life. For it is really so, that the foundations of the limbs of the previous earthly life come forth as the foundations of the head in the new incarnation, and so now during man's passage through the planetary world on the way to his next earthly life the germs for breast system and limb structures have to be laid anew. It must of course always be remembered that these germs are spiritual; the whole process is a spiritual process. As man passes again through Mars existence, the lofty spirituality with which he was imbued during his first passage through the Mars sphere, and which enabled him to experience the cosmic Word, is now transformed into spiritual substance of a somewhat lower order—into that spiritual substance from out of which, later on, the human Ego manifests itself. It is also during this return journey through the Mars sphere that the spirit-germ of the larynx and lung formations are added. Man comes then again to the Sun. The second passage through the Sun sphere is significant in the highest degree. Since he completed his first sojourn in the Sun existence, man has passed through the spheres of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, to the world of the Stars, and then made the return journey through Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. All this time his whole being has been given over to the Cosmos; he has become one with the Cosmos, one with the World-All. He has been living in the Cosmos; he has learned cosmic speech, he has learned to weave cosmic thoughts into his being, he has been living, not within his own life of memory—that only dawns for him later—but within the memory of the whole planetary system. He has felt himself one with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies in his memory of the cosmic thoughts and of the cosmic speech. Now however, when he returns once again to the Sun, he begins to shut himself off more as an individual being. Very faintly the feeling dawns that he is becoming separate from the Cosmos. This is connected with the fact that the first foundations of the heart are now being laid within him. The return journey continues. For the second time man passes through the Venus sphere and the Mercury sphere, where the spirit-germs of the other organs have to be implanted within him. At the moment of entrance for the second time into the Sun existence—all these happenings and processes take a very long time, and long before man enters upon earthly existence he experiences, as we shall see, what is for him a very significant turn of destiny—at the moment when, out in the Cosmos, the spirit-germ of the heart is laid within our being on the return journey to the earth, there is of course not yet a physical heart. True, there is already an indication of a physical heart form, but it is surrounded and inter-woven with all that constitutes the worth of the human being as the outcome of his previous earthly lives. The fact that we receive into ourselves in the Sun sphere the first germ of the physical heart is less important than the fact that in this germ of the heart is concentrated all that we are morally, all our qualities of soul and spirit. Before the spirit-germ of the heart unites with the embryonic germ of the future body, the heart in man is a spiritual being, a moral being of soul and spirit out in the Cosmos; only later does this moral being of spirit and soul—which man now feels living within him, which man has, as it were, acquired in the course of his return journey to Earth—unite with the embryo. This concentration, in the germ of the heart, of his whole soul-and-spirit being is experienced by man in communion with the sublime Sun Beings—those Sun Beings who rule over the creative forces of the planetary system and therewith of earthly existence. Let me try to describe it to you in a picture. The expressions may sound strange but they are really appropriate. At the time when this cosmic heart is bestowed upon man, he is living among those Spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies in whose hand lies the leadership of the whole planetary system in its connection with earthly existence. The experience is one of infinite grandeur and splendour. It is difficult to find words to describe what the human being experiences in this phase of existence. In a certain respect his feeling resembles a feeling he can have in physical existence. For just as in physical existence he feels that he is bound up with his heart-beat, with the whole activity of the heart, so, out in the Macrocosm, through his macrocosmic spiritual heart, he feels himself at one with his whole being of soul and spirit. The moral being of soul and spirit which he has become at this moment of his experience is, as it were, a spiritual heart-beat within him. His whole being seems now to be in the Cosmos, in the same way as his heartbeat is in him; he becomes aware also of a kind of circulation in connection with this heart-beat. Just as on Earth we feel in the heart-beat the blood circulation and breathing which give rise to it, so, when on the return journey through the Sun existence we begin to be aware of the beating of our spiritual, macrocosmic heart, it feels to us as though streams or currents were uniting this spiritual heart-beat with the Beings of the Second Hierarchy. Even as the blood flows to the heart from the veins in the physical organism, so into our being of spirit-and-soul pour the words of the Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis,—what they have to say concerning the World and the World's judgement upon man. The words and sounds of the spirit of the World-All are the circulation that now centres itself in this spiritual, macrocosmic heart, in this human being of soul and spirit. There, at the centre, beats the spiritual heart of man. And the beat of the spiritual heart of man is the heart-beat of the world in which he is living. The blood-stream of this world is the deeds of the creative Beings of the Second Hierarchy, the forces which stream out from them. And just as the blood-stream on Earth centres itself in the heart where it is unconsciously experienced by man, so at this point of time between death and a new birth it is given to man, as a grace bestowed, to hold and cherish within him a cosmic heart—one of the organs of perception, one of the cosmic hearts, created out of the pulse-beat of the Macrocosm, even the deeds of the Beings of the Second Hierarchy. For let it be remembered that the physical heart is a sense organ, which perceives the movement of the blood, not a “pump” as the physiologists imagine. The spirituality and vitality of the human being—these it is that cause the movement of the blood. The return journey continues—through the Mercury and the Venus spheres. But before this, indeed in that cosmic moment when the human being feels himself living in very truth within the spiritual heart of the Cosmos, his gaze has already fallen upon the hue of generations, at the end of which stand the parents who will give him birth. The connection with the line of generations is, as you see, made relatively soon. We are born of father and mother, our parents again have each of them father and mother, and these too have their father and mother. This takes us back about a hundred years. But we must go further back, through many centuries; for long before a human being is born on Earth, he has united himself with the line of generations which culminates in the family into which he is born. It is quite early that the connection with the line of generations is determined, namely, when man is passing through the Sun existence for the second time. And in his passage through the cosmic colonies of Venus and Mercury he can, so to speak, arrange for his destiny to be brought as closely as possible into line with the outer experiences that must come to him through being born into a particular family and a particular nation. After this, man comes again into the sphere of the Moon. Let me remind you how during his first passage through the Moon sphere man's thoughts were directed, for good and also for ill, to the primeval Teachers of the human race, to the starting-point of earthly existence, when superhuman Teachers imparted superhuman wisdom to the men of Earth. When he comes down into the Moon existence for the second time, there is less inducement for him to turn his attention to what was on Earth long ago. For now the period of time that man spends—above, in the Cosmos—in this Moon existence, is the same period of time as takes its course on Earth below between conception and birth. Man's embryonic life runs hand in hand with a particular cosmic development. Up there in the Moon sphere he is passing through a definite phase of evolution while below, stage by stage, the physical embryo is being prepared—the physical embryo with which he then gradually unites. How does this macrocosmic life of the human being take its course during this second period of evolution in the Moon sphere? What does man accomplish there? In all the experiences I have been describing, man's consciousness is far clearer and more awake than the ordinary consciousness of his life on Earth. It is most important to distinguish the various degrees of human consciousness. Consciousness during dream-life is dull, consciousness during waking life is clear, consciousness after death still clearer. As a dream is to reality, so is all our life on Earth in comparison with the clarity of our consciousness in the life after death. Moreover, at each new stage in the life after death, consciousness becomes still clearer, still more alert. When we pass through the Moon existence on the upward journey, consciousness grows clearer owing to the fact that in the Moon sphere we come into the environment of the wise, primeval Teachers of humanity. Clearer and ever clearer grows our consciousness as we pass on through the spheres of Mercury and Venus; and its clarity continues to be intensified every time we enter a new sphere of the heavens. But when we are returning again and approaching a new life on Earth, consciousness is dimmed and darkened stage by stage. During the phase of Mercury existence on the return journey, we still have a consciousness that is clearer than any consciousness can be in ordinary earthly existence. But when we come to the Moon sphere, and are in an environment that reveals to us what man was at the beginning of earthly evolution, then our consciousness begins to be obliterated. In the same sphere where, on the upward journey, the super-sensible world first lit up for us in a clearer consciousness than was possible on Earth, consciousness is now dimmed. We are returning to the Earth and consciousness becomes ever dimmer and dimmer, until it remains in us only as growth-force—the power of growth that is present in the little child, the dreaming little child. Consciousness has dimmed into dream! This is the moment when the being of soul-and-spirit can unite with the physical embryo. In order that this momentous event may come to pass, in order that the human being at a certain point of his development make connection with the physical embryo, he must pass through a Moon evolution in communion with the primeval Teachers of humanity, while the physical embryo down below is passing through its ten lunar months in the body of the mother. And the Moon evolution that he has to undergo consists in this—that a whole host of the Teachers of mankind are engaged in the task of dimming down the cosmic consciousness which the human being still possessed during his Mercury existence, toning it down to the dream consciousness in which he lives at the beginning of his life on Earth. Physical man, with all that we can see of him here on Earth, is, in truth, only to be understood in the light of a knowledge of super-sensible man. And super-sensible man can never be explained by the facts of Earth, but only by the facts of the great World, the Macrocosm. My object in these lectures has been to show you how earthly man is born as Spirit-man out of the Spiritual Cosmos. It remains for us in the lecture tomorrow to study in this connection the significance of earthly life itself, in so far as the being who is spiritual and superhuman passes over into this earthly life. We shall come to understand the significance of the fact that when he passes through the gate of death the human being carries out again into the spiritual world what remains to him of all he has acquired and experienced in earthly life. Having, therefore, learned to understand, in some of its aspects, the spirit nature of man, his super-sensible being, we will return tomorrow to the study of the connection between super-sensible man and physical man. |
| 350. Rhythms in the Cosmos and in the Human Being: The Emergence of Conscience in The Course of Human Development; Unbornness and Immortality — The Teaching of Aristotle and the Catholic Church
25 Jul 1923, Dornach Translated by Steiner Online Library |
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| If you went back and asked these people, 'What do you call yourselves?' they would say, 'We are the sons of the gods!' because they described the land where they were before they were on earth. There they themselves were still gods, because men in those days, when they were spiritual, called themselves gods. They would also have said in answer to the question, what do you become when you fall asleep: When we are awake we are men, when we fall asleep we are gods. Being gods only meant being different from when we are awake, being more spiritual. These people had a particularly high culture, and for them it was not so important to talk about life after death, but about life before one was born, about this life among the gods, as they said. |
| Among those who had to distribute the notices everywhere that this important celebration was to take place was the church servant, old Smetana, the father. He had remained a devout Catholic. You can now imagine what it means that the whole of Prague has been summoned to condemn Smetana's son, to condemn him to be forever excluded from the church and so on, and that his father had to carry the leaflets himself! |
| 350. Rhythms in the Cosmos and in the Human Being: The Emergence of Conscience in The Course of Human Development; Unbornness and Immortality — The Teaching of Aristotle and the Catholic Church
25 Jul 1923, Dornach Translated by Steiner Online Library |
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Well, gentlemen, if you still have something on your minds today or want to ask something, I ask that you do so. Question: One of the wonderful things about being human is having a conscience. When you have done something, you think about it. And even if you no longer think about things that have happened, you still know that you have a conscience. It would be interesting to ask whether conscience can be killed in such a way that you can forget it. The way humanity is today, one would actually have to assume that conscience has been killed in a large part of humanity. Dr. Steiner: You see, gentlemen, that is actually a big question, but it is related to what we have just said in the previous lectures. I have tried to explain to you in turn how the human being, who consists of matter, also contains an etheric body – that is, a body of a completely different nature that cannot be perceived or seen with the ordinary senses – then an astral body and an ego organization, we could also say: an ego body. The human being has these four parts. Now we have to imagine what a person actually becomes when they die. As I have often told you, when a person sleeps, the physical body and the etheric body remain in bed. The astral body and the I go out and are then no longer in the physical body and etheric body. But when a person dies, then, of what the person has, the physical body is discarded. It is then a truly physical body; the other three parts, the etheric body, the astral body and the ego, then go out. I told you that the etheric body remains connected to the ego and the astral body for a few more days. Then it also separates, as I have described to you, and then the person lives in what is his ego and his astral body. As he now lives on and on, he lives in the spiritual world that we are actually exploring through spiritual science in this life on earth. So that we can say: Now we know something of a spiritual world here on earth; then we will be inside. But after some time we come back down to earth. We pass through a spiritual world, just as we pass from birth to death in earthly life, and then come back down again. We take on the physical body given to us by our parents and so on. That is where we come down from the spiritual world. So before we came here to earth, we were spiritual beings, let us say. We have descended from the spiritual world. You see, gentlemen, that is an extraordinarily important fact for man to know that he comes down from the spiritual world with his ego and with his astral body. Otherwise it cannot be explained at all how it is that man, when he grows up, somehow speaks of the spirit. If he had never been inside the spiritual world, he would not speak of the spirit at all. You know that once upon a time people on earth did not talk as much as certain people do today about life after death, but people talked a lot about life before they came down to earth. In ancient times, people talked much more about what happened to a person before he took on flesh and blood than about what happened afterwards. In ancient times it was much more important for people to remember that they were souls before they became human beings on earth. Now, I have spoken even less about the development of humanity on earth, but today we will talk a little about this development of human beings on earth. If we go back in time about eight to ten thousand years, we would find a rather desolate life here in Europe. There is still a rather desolate life in Europe. In contrast, about eight thousand years before our present time, there was an extraordinarily developed life in Asia. In Asia, we have (it is drawn) here a country, it is called India. There is the island of Ceylon, up above would be the mighty river, the Ganges, up there is a mountain range, the Himalayas. In this India, which is in Asia, and also a little above it, lived people who, as I said, had a very highly developed spiritual life eight thousand years ago. Today I call them Indians. At that time the word Indian did not yet exist. But today we call it India, and that is why I use this expression. If you went back and asked these people, 'What do you call yourselves?' they would say, 'We are the sons of the gods!' because they described the land where they were before they were on earth. There they themselves were still gods, because men in those days, when they were spiritual, called themselves gods. They would also have said in answer to the question, what do you become when you fall asleep: When we are awake we are men, when we fall asleep we are gods. Being gods only meant being different from when we are awake, being more spiritual. These people had a particularly high culture, and for them it was not so important to talk about life after death, but about life before one was born, about this life among the gods, as they said. You see, there are no external records of these people. But of course these people lived on – you know, there are still Indians today – and in much later times they wrote great poetic works that are called the Vedas. Veda is the singular, Vedas the plural. Veda actually means “word”. They said to themselves: the word is a spiritual gift, and what people wrote in their Vedas was what they still knew from the other world. In those older times they knew much more, but what can still be studied externally through books today is what is in the Vedas. That was written much later. But in what is written in the Vedas, which was written down much later, you can see that these people still knew firmly: Before man descended to earth, he was in a spiritual world. Now, if we go back about six thousand years to our time, we already have a less highly developed culture here. Culture is declining in India. What scholars today still describe as ancient Indian culture has already declined from its original height. But a culture is developing in the north (it is being drawn) – that is Arabia, of course – but in the north, up there, a culture is developing in the place that later became Persia. That is why I called it the ancient Persian culture. A completely different culture is developing there. It is quite remarkable. You see, if you go back to these ancient Indians, who lived two thousand years before these people, then you find everywhere among these ancient Indians that they actually value the earthly world very little. They always think that they came into the earthly world from the spiritual world. They knew this very well. They did not value the earthly world at all; they valued the spiritual world. They said they felt like outcasts, and what was on earth was not particularly important to them. And here, six thousand years before our time, in the land now called Persia, there came for the first time a certain appreciation of the earth. Earthly life was respected. This earthly life was respected to such an extent that people said to themselves: Yes, light is very, very precious, but the earth is also very precious with its darkness. And so the view gradually developed that the earth is just as precious and that it fights with heaven. And this battle between heaven and earth was developed over two or three thousand years as a concept that had particular significance for these people. Then, if we go back about three or four thousand years, we come to a land where Arabia extends into Africa, where the Nile flows: Egypt. The Egyptians and also those who were actually sitting over there in Asia, more towards the west, and more towards Europe, they received the Earth even more willingly. And so, if we go back three or four thousand years, we find that these Egyptians, who were the third type of people, so to speak – Indians, Persians, Egyptians – these people built these huge pyramids. But what they did above all was this: they harnessed the Nile. They canalized the Nile, which every year floods the land with its fertile soil, so that these floods could benefit them in all directions. To do this, they developed what is known as geometry. They needed it. Geometry and the art of surveying were now being developed. People grew to like the Earth more and more. And you see, to the same extent that people grew to like the Earth, they became less aware that they had come from a spiritual world. I would say that they forgot more and more about it because they grew to like the Earth more and more, and to the same extent it became more important to them to say to themselves: 'We live after death'. Of course, we have seen that life after death is assured to man, but people in the past, before the Egyptians came, did not think about immortality at all. Why? Because it was a matter of course for them. When they knew that they came from a spiritual world and had only accepted the physical body, then they had no doubt at all that they would arrive in a spiritual world after death. But in Egypt, where people thought less about their stay in the spiritual realm before their life on earth, the Egyptians were very afraid of dying. This huge fear of dying is actually not much older than three or four thousand years. The Indians and the Persians had no fear of death. So one can actually prove that the Egyptians had this terrible fear of dying. Because, you see, if they had not had this terrible fear of dying, then today these Englishmen and the others could not go to Egypt and then exhibit the mummies in their museums! Because in those days people were embalmed with all kinds of ointments and other substances. They placed and preserved them in the coffin as they looked during their lifetime. People were embalmed and made into mummies because it was thought that if the body is kept together, the soul will remain present for as long as the body has on earth. The body was preserved so that the soul would not suffer any harm. You see, that is the fear of dying. So with all their might, the Egyptians wanted to achieve immortality through earthly matter. But these Egyptians still knew an extraordinary amount, which was later completely lost. And the next people that particularly stand out to us are in the north of Egypt, in Greece, in present-day Greece. But ancient Greece was very different. You see, the Greeks had almost completely forgotten about life before birth. Only a few people in particularly high schools, which were called mysteries, still knew about it. But on the whole, in Greek civilization, the spiritual life before birth had already been completely forgotten, and the Greeks loved earthly life most of all. And that is why a philosopher emerged in Greece, his name was Aristotle, in the 4th century BC. You see, now we are getting close to the Christian era. Aristotle was the first to put forward a view that had not existed before. He put forward the view that not only is the body of a person born when a child is born, but also the soul of a person is born. So in Greece, the view first emerged that the soul of a person is born with the body, but that it is then immortal, so it goes through death and lives on in the spiritual world. Only Aristotle then put forward a peculiar view. Aristotle had actually forgotten everything that was wisdom in ancient times, and he then put forward the view: the soul is born at the same time as the body. But when a person dies, the soul remains in such a way that it has only had this one earthly life behind it. It must then look back forever only on what the one earthly life is. Imagine what a terrible view that is! So if someone on earth has done something bad, they will never be able to make amends for it, but will always have to look back and see the image of what they have done wrong. This is Aristotle's view. Then Christianity came. In the very first centuries, Christianity was understood a little. But when the Roman Empire adopted Christianity and Christianity took root in Rome, it was no longer understood there. It was not understood. Now there were always councils within Christianity. The high dignitaries of the church came together and determined what the great flock of believers should believe. The view was formed that there are shepherds and sheep, and the shepherds then determined at the councils what the sheep should believe. At the eighth of these councils, it was now determined by the shepherds for the sheep that it was heretical to believe that man had lived in the spiritual world before his birth. So the old views of Aristotle became Christian church dogma! And as a result, humanity was virtually forced to know nothing, not even to think about the fact that man came down from the spiritual world with a soul. They were forbidden. When materialists say today: The soul is born with the body and is nothing but physical – then that is nothing more than what people have learned from the church. That is precisely why people today believe that they go beyond the church when they are materialists. No, people would never have become materialists if the church had not abolished the knowledge of the spirit. For at this eighth general, ecumenical council in Constantinople, the spirit was abolished by the church, and that remained so throughout the Middle Ages. Only now, through spiritual science, do we have to realize again that the human being was also there as a soul before he was on earth. That is the important thing, that is the most important thing. Anyone who follows the development of humanity on Earth clearly sees that originally the knowledge existed that people, before descending to Earth, are in a spiritual existence. This was only gradually forgotten and later even abolished by a council decision. Now we must only realize what this means. Imagine, people who lived up to the Egyptians, so in ancient millennia, they knew: Before you walked around on this earth, you were in the spiritual world. Yes, they did not just bring down from the spiritual world some kind of general, vague knowledge, but they brought down from the spiritual world the awareness that they had lived with other beings. And from that they also brought down their moral impulses. What I should do on earth, I see from the way these earthly things are, these old people said; what else should I do, I just need to remember what was before birth. They brought down their moral impulses from the spiritual world. You see, if you asked people in those ancient times: What is good? What is evil? — then they said: Good is that which the beings among whom I was before I was on earth want; evil is that which they do not want. But each individual said that to himself. Now, gentlemen, that has been forgotten. In Greece, there was now something very strange. In Greece, they have forgotten so far that there is a life before birth, that Aristotle said: The soul is born with the physical body. - So people had no idea that they had already lived before birth. But they sensed something in themselves from this life. Whether you know something or not, that has no influence on reality. I can always say: there is no table behind me, I don't see any table [hitting the table on my way back], but the table is still there, even if I don't see it. Life before birth remained, and people felt it within themselves. And that is what they started to call conscience in Greece. In Greece, the word conscience first appeared around the 5th century BC. Before that, the word conscience did not exist. So the word conscience comes from the fact that people forgot about prenatal life, pre-earthly life, and what they still felt of it within themselves, they gave a word to it. And since that time it has remained so. People feel prenatal life in themselves, but they say: Well, that's just the way it is; it arises down there somewhere and then it shoots up - but they don't pay any further attention to it. You see, that was good for the church. Because what could happen now from the church? Yes, gentlemen, in the past, when everyone knew that they had lived as a soul before they descended to earth, people said: What we know of our previous life, of our life before birth, is moral. - Now the Greeks only felt conscience. And then later came the church, which now administered conscience. Isn't that right, it took over and said: You don't know what you should do. The sheep don't know, the shepherds do! And it made rules and administered conscience. You see, it was necessary that the spirit was abolished at a council, because then what was left of the human spirit as conscience could be administered. And then the church said: No, nothing existed in man before he was on earth. The soul is born with the body. Anyone who does not believe this is of the devil. But we, as the church, we know what it is like in the spiritual world and what man has to do on earth. — That is how the church took possession of conscience. This can still be proven in detail. Because, you see, that still played a role well into the 19th century, sometimes in a quite dreadful way. For example, in the 1830s and 1840s in Prague there was a man named Smetana. This person was the son of a Catholic church servant, who was of course a devout Catholic. He had the feeling that one has to believe what the church prescribes; one knows from the spiritual world what the church prescribes. Now he had a son. The people at that time were somewhat ambitious and sent their children to grammar school. But in the grammar schools that were in Prague in the last century, you didn't actually learn very much. Basically, you learned very little. So young Smetana was educated at grammar school. And that was just the way it was: the one who was supposed to learn anything at all then became a priest. So young Smetana also became a priest. In those days in Prague, and also in the rest of Austria, priests were employed as teachers in the higher schools as well. And so it happened that when he himself had to teach, he read somewhat different books than those prescribed for him by the church as a priest. Yes, through this he gradually came to doubt, namely about a dogma. He said to himself: What is it actually so terrible that a person should be born, spend his life on earth, then go through death and now, if he was a bad guy, should only look at it forever - the church even painted that with the necessary pictures - what he did as a bad guy on earth and should never have the opportunity to improve! Now, you see, this man, Smetana, lived in a religious house. But when he became a teacher, it became a little too cramped for him in the religious house; so he moved into a secular apartment and read more and more – there were no anthroposophical books available at the time – the books of Hegel, Schelling and so on, which at least gave something, a beginning of something reasonable. In this way he became more and more doubtful about the so-called eternity of punishment in hell, because according to Aristotle, a bad person goes through death and must live eternally in his wickedness. But the doctrine of the eternity of the punishment of hell arose from this, and was then established by the church in the form of a council. This doctrine is, of course, not a Christian one, but is that of Aristotle. It is not true at all that the doctrine of the punishment of hell is a Christian doctrine; it is from Aristotle. But that was not clear to people. But this Smetana realized it. So he started teaching something that was not quite in line with the teachings of the Church. It was in 1848 that he taught something that was not quite right. At first he received a terrible warning, a huge letter written in Latin, in which he was told that he should now return repentant to the fold of the church, because he had caused enormous offence to the shepherds by teaching the sheep something that was not prescribed by the shepherds. He replied to this first letter, written in Latin, saying that he thought it hypocritical to say anything other than what one is convinced of. Then a second letter in Latin arrived, which admonished him even more seriously. And when he no longer answered this, because it would have been useless, it was announced one day in all the churches in Prague that a very important celebration was to take place because one of the lost sheep, who had even become a shepherd, had to be excluded from the church. Among those who had to distribute the notices everywhere that this important celebration was to take place was the church servant, old Smetana, the father. He had remained a devout Catholic. You can now imagine what it means that the whole of Prague has been summoned to condemn Smetana's son, to condemn him to be forever excluded from the church and so on, and that his father had to carry the leaflets himself! Yes, the church was never as full in Prague as it was on that day. All the churches in Prague were full to bursting. And from all the pulpits it was proclaimed that the apostate Smetana was being excommunicated. The consequence of this was – of course, the germ of consumption lay in the Smetana family – that first the sister died of grief, then the old father died of grief, and after that Smetana himself died of grief, of suffering, after a short time. But that was not the point, was it, but the point was that Smetana no longer proclaimed the story of the eternity of hellish punishment, as he understood it. This is all connected with the development of the idea of conscience in humanity. For that which man retains of his pre-earthly life lives in him and speaks in him as conscience. And from the standpoint of conscience one can say: Conscience cannot come from the material substance of the earth. For just imagine, let us say, someone has a terrible craving. There have been cases of this. Then it is the substances in his body, the substances of the earth, that push and nudge him to have this craving. Then conscience tells him: But you must fight these cravings. Yes, gentlemen, that would be just as if conscience also came from the body as if someone were to walk backwards and forwards at the same time. It is nonsense to say that conscience comes from the body. Conscience is connected with what we bring down from the spiritual world from our pre-earthly life when we descend to earth. But as I have explained it to you, the awareness that conscience comes from the spiritual world has been lost for earthly people, and for people like Smetana, whom I told you about earlier, it only dawned on him again in the 19th century through this terrible thing of hellfire. Conscience belongs to the person themselves. A person carries their conscience within them. What use would all the conscience in the world be to you if you were to pass through death and then realize for all eternity what a bad fellow you were? You couldn't help yourself. Having a conscience wouldn't mean a thing! So that one can say: If that is the human being (he is drawn), then conscience lives in the human being. Conscience is that which he has brought with him into earthly life from the spiritual world. Conscience says within him: You should not have done that, and you should not have done that. The earthly person says: I will do that, I desire that. Conscience speaks differently because it comes from the eternal human being. And then, when the human being has discarded the physical body, only then does he realize: You yourself are what has always spoken in your conscience. You just didn't notice that during the time of earthly life. Now you have gone through death. Now you have become your own conscience. Your conscience is now your body. Before, you had no conscience. Now you have your conscience, with which you continue to live after death. But to the conscience one must also ascribe a will. You see, all the things I have told you have come true. The Greeks had forgotten the pre-earthly life. The church had raised to dogma that one may not believe that there is a pre-earthly life. The conscience has been completely misunderstood. All this had been fulfilled. And now, of course, there have also been great scholars. But these great scholars in the Middle Ages were, of course, under the impression that there can be no such thing as a pre-earthly life. The church forbids believing it. In this conflict stood, for example, a man like Thomas Aquinas, who lived from 1225 to 1274. As a Catholic priest, he had to comply with what the Catholic Church prescribed. But he was a great thinker. And with regard to what I have told you today, he had to say: When a person dies, he only has the contemplation of his earthly life, always and forever, never otherwise. He contemplates that. So what does Thomas Aquinas do? Thomas Aquinas attributes only reason to man for all eternity, but no will. Man must contemplate this after death, but he can no longer change it. Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest Aristotelians of the Middle Ages precisely because he said: If a person has done something bad on earth, he must look at it forever; if a person has done something good, he looks at the good forever. - So only the knowledge, not the will, was attributed to the soul. That is not true. It is true that after death you see what you were in terms of good and evil, but that you retain the will, the full strength of your soul, to change that. So, of course, when you look at your life, you see how it was, then you live in the spiritual world and see what should have been different. Then the urge comes by itself to go back down to make the necessary improvements. Of course, mistakes will be made again, but then the following lives will always follow, and the person will achieve the goal of complete human development. What Thomas Aquinas was still obliged to do in the Middle Ages, to believe only in knowledge and not in the will, still afflicted people in the 19th century as much as it did Smetana. It is to be attributed to this that other people came along in the 19th century who were furious about knowledge. This all originated in the dogma of the punishment of hell; only people did not see through it. Schopenhauer, for example, was filled with rage at the realization and now attributed everything to the will. Yes, but if you now ascribe everything to the will again, then this will is too stupid and foolish. Therefore, Schopenhauer attributed the whole creation of the world and everything to the foolish will. And those people who have thought about it have experienced terrible inner conflicts, just as Smetana experienced in Prague. There have been many such cases; this is just an excellent example of which the difficulties have been written down. There have been many such people. And so we must be clear about this: Man has his conscience as an inheritance from his pre-earthly life. It is the spirit that speaks in conscience. That which we already were before we were man on earth has entered the flesh and speaks in conscience. And when we have laid aside the body, then the soul will continue to speak in conscience after death, but not unconsciously, but having a will and having to make amends, having to be active. You see, that is the difference between anthroposophy and everything that is contained in Christian dogmatics today, for example. In Christian dogmatics, this inner power of the human soul, which can create, is not known. Rather, the human being dies and can only look at what he has created in one earthly life, because in that one earthly life the soul is born with the body. So if you want to present it schematically, you have to say: If this is a human being's one life on earth (upper drawing, circle), it also begins with the soul, and when the person now dies – there is birth, there is death – then his soul life expands into all eternity. I don't want to go to the second board with my drawing anymore, because that is too expensive, I would even have to have a third one! Only knowledge, only the intellect, is destined to do nothing but contemplate the evil of earthly life for all eternity, because the intellect is born with the physicality of earthly life. The first materialist was actually the one who established this dogma, was actually Aristotle. Now, anthroposophy finds that there is not only one earthly life, but also successive earthly lives. A person always has something left over from the previous life, which he does not know exactly, but which is within him: that is conscience. Now he lays down the body, in his conscience he lives on. There (lower drawing, red left) is now basically only conscience until the next birth. Now (middle circle) there is conscience again in the form of a voice that speaks; now (red right) it lives in the outside world, is there again. And the human being is actually the one who always creates his new lives on earth. Of course, this is something that particularly annoys the doctrine that does not want to grant anything to the human being at all, that wants to look at everything as if the human being were a creature. He is not a mere creature, but there are creative powers in him. And that is precisely the difference between anthroposophy and the other views: anthroposophy's research brings out that these creative powers are in man, man is also creative. He is not only created, but he is creative. And one of the most creative things in him is precisely his conscience, because that is what remains for us as a sacred inheritance from our pre-earthly life and what we carry out again when we pass through death. This is precisely what modern science still has from the Church, and it is precisely on this point that one should really see very clearly. Because the thing went like this: From over there in Rome, only that which was logical on one side and materialistic on the other came. Then the modern peoples adopted that. But in the German language, sometimes a remnant of the old has remained in a completely different way, only you don't recognize it again. That is very strange. In this you can see how man is connected with the great events. If you look at these countries up in Asia today – Siberia – they are actually areas that are very sparsely populated, but they were once heavily populated. The rivers were much, much mightier then. Siberia is a land that has gradually dried up and risen, and people then moved west, across to Europe. This is due to the elevation of Siberia. And in this way, many ideas that were present in Asia came to Europe by a different route, and these ideas live on in European languages. Therefore, one must say: The further west one goes, the less this notion of conscience is present. But the very word conscience shows that the people who formed the word conscience had a feeling that there is something in man. And what does the word conscience actually mean? We have just said what it means: It is the inheritance from what is pre-earthly life, what remains in humanity. But what does the word conscience mean? When you look at life on earth and say to yourself: the events that will happen in two or three years are uncertain, but that a person has a spirit within them that was there before their earthly existence and that remains after their earthly existence, that is certain. And the word conscience is also connected with certainty, and it is the most certain thing there can be. So that in the word conscience is already indicated that which is eternal in man. It is very significant that conscience contains something different than, for example, 'conscience' or something similar in Western languages. Conscience is that which is 'known together' on earth: con-science – that which is accumulated from earthly knowledge. But that which lives in man as conscience and is designated by the word conscience is the most certain thing there can be, something that is not vague but completely certain. And it is absolutely certain that man on earth not only believes in life after death – an opinion held by Aristotle and the church faithful – but also develops a will to shape it better and better, to shape the earth better and better again and again out of the spirit, that therefore the will also lives after death, as does knowledge. With Thomas Aquinas, only knowledge had life. Now we must realize that the will has life. You see, gentlemen, it is indeed so: one does not need to belittle someone who centuries ago in his time was a great 249 great scholar, such as Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, because he taught in his time what was taught in his time. But it is quite another thing if Thomas Aquinas taught what could only be taught in the 13th century than if, as is currently happening in Paris, a Thomas Society is founded to teach the same teach the same as was taught in those days, just as Leo XIII. commanded for all priests and scholars of the Catholic Church in the 19th century to say only what Thomas Aquinas taught in the 13th century. Today, Thomas would not say that either! And these two things confront each other in the world, something like the Thomas Society in Paris, which wants to lead people back again, and anthroposophy, which teaches the present, that which a present human being is. And above all, when you look at something like conscience, it is important that it leads you to the eternal in man. But the eternal cannot be properly understood if one does not also look at the pre-earthly life, if one only looks at that which actually arose only since the Egyptian period as the post-earthly life, as the so-called immortality. You see, gentlemen, it was only three or four millennia ago that people began to talk about being immortal, that they do not die with the soul as the body dies. But before that, people said that they were not born as a soul either, as the body is born. They had a word meaning that we would have to call 'unborn' today. That was one side. And immortality is the other side. Not even the languages today have a different word than immortality! The word unbornness must arise again. Then one will say: Conscience is that in man which is not born and does not die. Only then will one be able to truly appreciate conscience. For conscience has meaning for man only when one can truly appreciate it. Well, then, on Saturday at nine o'clock, gentlemen. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] |
| 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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| 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. |
| “You are created from this God and live in the same. All your knowledge also stands in this God, and when you die, you will be buried in this God.” |
| 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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| 87. Ancient Mysteries and Christianity: On the Book of the Dead
30 Nov 1901, Berlin |
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| We can describe even more precisely what is contained in the Book of the Dead. It contains chants, hymns to the sun god Ra, to Osiris, the son of the sun god, hymns which are preferably put into the mouths of the dead. |
| She had a daughter with Zeus, Persephone. She was stolen by Hades, the god of the underworld. Hades had asked to be allowed to take this daughter as his wife in the underworld. |
| It must be redeemed here by Jason, the Greek hero. The ram is sacrificed to the gods. Only the ram's skin, that which surrounds the human soul as a shell, is first hung up in the sacred grove of the gods and carefully guarded by the dragon. |
| 87. Ancient Mysteries and Christianity: On the Book of the Dead
30 Nov 1901, Berlin |
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[Dearly beloved!] It is not possible to determine exactly when the Book of the Dead was written. In any case, it is one of the most important documents, because it shows us that in such early times in Egypt a world view, a deepening, prevailed which aimed strictly at a unified world and which, on the other hand, already had the strange urge in itself to understand death as a symbol, to understand death in such a way that it does not appear as the terrible in itself, but that it appears as that which can be seen as a symbol, as a mere allegory, which still stands high above [life]. If death is to be overcome, it is certain that death can only be overcome spiritually. It essentially deals with the transition from physical life to life after death - and that means nothing other than life in general. We can describe even more precisely what is contained in the Book of the Dead. It contains chants, hymns to the sun god Ra, to Osiris, the son of the sun god, hymns which are preferably put into the mouths of the dead. These dead who have made their way to the afterlife, these dead are to experience something, they are to gain knowledge [of what they have seen and what they are aware of from those who are no longer bound to the body. That is the first part. The second part consists of the dead person being held up to account in a kind of judgment for the debts he has incurred. He is weighed, and depending on the findings, his value appears in the overall structure of the universe. Those who have reached a high level will not - as is often said - come to Osiris, but they will become "Osiris. It is curious that the book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the [sun] god Ra, the second part deals with human destiny, the third part then shows the path to reach Osiris, the path that leads to deification. This book thus represents the path to life, the path from the individual life to the total life, which is achieved through the realization and deification of man. The details of the Book of the Dead are important in the most diverse ways for the history of the development of world views. In the Book of the Dead, for example, we find the myth of Osiris' battle with Typhon, Osiris' enemy, hatred. Isis had to find Osiris again in the universe, and she then brings forth the younger Osiris, Horus, whom she describes as the deification of the universe. We find this in the Book of the Dead. But then we also find the doctrine of the seven-part man in it. The Egyptians thought of man as being made up of the body, the spiritual body and the mummy.
These are roughly the details of this Book of the Dead, which was in any case much better known in antiquity than in later times. In later times, the awareness of the teachings as they are expressed in the Book of the Dead has been lost. However, we often find the teachings of the Book of the Dead again in Greece, and the entire Greek spiritual life in the post-Pythagorean period can only be understood if one assumes that [its] views were the teachings of this Book of the Dead, the tripartite division of the human path of knowledge and the eventual merging into the Osiris nature. If one assumes that they were transplanted to Greece and that essentially the same views lived there. However, it must be noted that the Egyptians did not have an intermediate stage that played a greater role among the Greeks, namely the myth developed with [a certain sense of] beauty. The Greeks loved to embellish everything with beauty. We have therefore been compelled to regard the entire Greek religion, the entire Greek world view, which stands between Pythagoreanism and Platonism, as an aesthetic one. We can do this if we see it as born out of Greek myth, but in its spiritualized form. We know the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, the myth of the Argonauts and so on. However, we can always assume - and we have to hold on to this - that the myth exists in a threefold meaning:
And the third, the divine, was the concept that was taught only to a select few, only to a few who had prepared themselves for it. We can already prove this historically. We are told of Samothrace, an island, that the deities there were nothing other than names for other deities. However, it is not to be believed that they were the same as the names of Greek or Egyptian deities. For outsiders, they had the same names. But for the insiders, they were deeper understandings of the entire myths and stories of the gods. The best-known Greek myth is that of Demeter and her daughter Persephone and then the myth of Dionysus, which has already been mentioned several times. Demeter, one of the supreme female Greek deities, was first understood in a naturalistic sense. She had a daughter with Zeus, Persephone. She was stolen by Hades, the god of the underworld. Hades had asked to be allowed to take this daughter as his wife in the underworld. She was only to remain in the upper world temporarily. She was to remain two thirds in the upper world and one third in the underworld. This myth, which is alive everywhere in Greece in its naturalistic meaning, was also that which was to be found in certain mysteries, namely that on which the Eleusinian Mysteries were based. This myth also had a threefold meaning. The naturalistic meaning lies simply in the fact that one understands the actual as such, that one has a mythological history of the gods. The second conception would then be something that took place in [Greek] life, and that was the marriage of the Ionian spirit with the Doric. The Greek people were divided into tribes. Among the most important were the Dorians and the Ionians. The myth of Demeter had originated among the Dorians, and the Ionians had adopted it and mixed it with the myth of Dionysus. We are interested in the Dionysus myth because it leads to an esoteric view. Dionysus is also a son of Zeus and Demeter. He was torn to pieces and only managed to save his heart. From this, Zeus had formed the younger Dionysus. But he could no longer take the limbs. It is therefore the case that the world represents the scattered limbs. This therefore represents the marriage of the Dorian Persephone with the Ionian Dionysus. The fusion of these two views has thus taken place in this myth. But what remains to be noted is the third, the divine conception. We can only understand this historically if we stick to the sparse information we have. We are first referred to the temple in which the service of Demeter takes place. This Demeter service is a service in which we encounter the three deities mentioned. Demeter herself is one of the greatest deities of Greece, symbolically shaped, with the inscription: "I am the origin of the soul, I am the origin of the spirit." At her side, Persephone is presented to us with the inscription: "I am death and carry within me the secret of life." Her brother Dionysus is presented to us with an even stranger inscription: "I am death, I am life, I am rebirth and adorned with wings." - If we understand this, we come to the interpretation of one of the most important Greek myths. Demeter loses her daughter. She has to give her Persephone to Hades. She could return to her mother if she had not already partaken of the fruit of the pomegranate with Hades and was therefore unable to return completely. This Persephone is supposed to save her brother. Only this makes it possible - now in a deeper sense - for Persephone to return, for Dionysus to sacrifice himself. We have to look at these two in context again. We must recognize that sacrifice is what matters here. This is shown to us by the fact that Orpheus - who is originally credited with having communicated the deeper content of this to the Greek people - was also sacrificed, for he is also said to have been torn apart and to have lived on as a spirit by having flowed out into the world matter. The child of eternal life must be sacrificed to Hades, to Pluto. We can only understand this if we see the material world in Pluto. Thus, according to the esoteric view, we see in Demeter the universal spirituality, the primordial mother of intelligence, and in Hades the material world. In the whole Persephone myth we see the necessity of Persephone's falling away from her mother. The daughter must enter matter. She must partake of the pomegranate of the underworld. Now she can no longer save herself from matter and therefore a second sacrifice is necessary. Persephone's brother, Dionysus, must sacrifice himself again. He must allow his [own] spiritual nature to flow out into the gross nature, so that Persephone now enters into a spiritual marriage with her brother, but can flow back again to the original spirit of the primordial mother, Demeter. This mystery of the spirituality's necessary departure from itself, this immersion of the spirits in the material and this longing of the spirit to return to the spiritual is expressed in the Demeter myth. This was the vivid experience that was to be taught to those who were introduced to the Eleusinian Mysteries. They were to be given the urge to find their way back from matter to the spiritual primordial mother. This is what lived in Greece in the spirit of a few chosen ones and what carried the whole world view between Pythagoras and Plato. What lived as the deeper spirit in these personalities from Empedocles through Anaxagoras to Socrates and Plato sometimes appears to be merely a logical chain of thought, as presented to us by the philosophers. But it is an exposition of Greek myth, an exposition that was cultivated wherever a deeper foundation was sought. This is what appears to them as a mere logical chain of thought. I would like to point out another myth, which was cultivated even more frequently than the Demeter myth, which is perhaps easier to understand, and which was cultivated in order to gradually lead initiates into a deeper spiritual understanding of the world. I would like to refer to the myth of the Argonaut voyage. This shows in each of its individual sentences that it can only be understood as the symbolic clothing of a deeper wisdom. Phrixos and his sister Helle set off on the ram [...] to the barbarian king. On the way, Helle falls into the sea and Phrixos alone reaches the coast on the ram. When they reached the barbarian people, the ram was sacrificed to the king. But the ram's skin was hung up in the sacred grove of the gods and guarded by a great dragon. Jason, together with Orpheus, Heracles, Theseus, Castor and Pollux, Meleager, Peleus, Neleus, Admetus, Pirithoos and many others, undertakes to retrieve this ram's skin [- the golden fleece]. These are the great heroes of Greece. It is significant that Jason, with the representatives of the highest Greek spirituality, undertakes to retrieve the skin. He actually wins the skin and brings it back. The dragon guarding the skin is defeated by Jason. The dragon's teeth are then sown, and out of these grow fierce men who fight each other. Finally, in short, he gets the fleece with the help of the sorceress Medea. On the way back, however, Medea decides to dismember [her] little brother Apsyrtos. The father Aietes collects the pieces and therefore does not reach the fugitives. The fleece is brought back to Greece. We must also interpret this in a threefold sense. Firstly natural, secondly human and thirdly divine. [As a human event it is of no interest, but in its divine meaning this myth perhaps leads most deeply into the Greek intellectual world.] Phrixos is divine vision, that which points us to the abyss of divine being, to the premonition of an infinite depth. Nothing else is expressed in the personality of Phrixos. [Brightness is the personality, the representative of man before his fall into sin, for whom the struggle of the spirit with materiality has not yet existed] - the undivided humanity, which is connected with nothing other than the infinite vision of infinity. [Both set out on the path to the most sacred thing they have. And the representatives of the human soul first come to the sacred grove of the gods in order to sacrifice to it and to begin the path of life with this human soul]. We have only one other person in the Argonaut train. Phrixos begins his journey through life into the realm of the barbarians on the other side of the sea. This is to be understood as the realm of passions, the realm of sensuality. The human soul is to be sacrificed to the realm of materiality. It is to be sacrificed to the waves and bustle of the world. As a result, one thing is lost, the original innocence. It is initially submerged, lost. It is initially something that has flowed out into existence. [It is something that is initially completely lost, which is why it has sunk into the Hellespont. The soul is led into life, where we have nothing but a dark urge, where we must find our way back to the higher life]. But [the soul] must be redeemed anew, just as Persephone was redeemed by Dionysus. It must be redeemed. What had to be sacrificed to life must be redeemed. It must be redeemed here by Jason, the Greek hero. The ram is sacrificed to the gods. Only the ram's skin, that which surrounds the human soul as a shell, is first hung up in the sacred grove of the gods and carefully guarded by the dragon. This is initially nothing other than what is given in the Book of the Dead. [The ram's skin] is the representative of enlightenment, of knowledge. It must first be redeemed from the fury of the terrible powers that lurk before it. The king's son Jason must overcome these forces through knowledge in conjunction with spiritual and physical forces. He must lead this ram's skin back to Greece, supported by Medea, a female figure. I have already pointed out that the female figure signifies a state of consciousness in Greek. The soul must be redeemed with the help of Medea's magical power. From this immersion she can then be led back up to her deification, her divinization. That is the deeper meaning of the Argonaut saga. The fact that the young son of Aietes, Medea's brother, has to be killed so that Medea's father cannot reach [the fleeing Jason] also has its significance. The one who has achieved this must leave behind many things that have been in his life. He has to leave some things behind, for the reason that [he cannot be caught up] on the path to deeper knowledge. This is how the saga of the Argonauts concludes. Basically, it is nothing more than a different version, more tailored to the individuality of man, of the myth that we also encounter in the Demeter myth. This conception of the Greek myth then confronts us in a philosophically one-sided formation in a personality that represents a kind of fall from grace for the Greek world view: in Parmenides, the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. He first pointed out in an intellectual or rational way that sensual knowledge cannot satisfy man. He pointed out that man cannot get to the bottom of things and that the weighing up and weighing down of the world cannot be the truth, but that the truth must be something much deeper, that it can only be purely spiritual. He first put this into this form: true existence can only be achieved through pure thinking, through the deepest knowledge, while the senses only present us with a dream. - Parmenides thus divides the whole of existence into two parts, into sensual illusion on the one hand and intellectual, mental existence on the other. But there is still something that he could not find, and that is the ego. He could not find the figure of Dionysus in the figure of Persephone, in the urge to emerge from the sensual, the spirit. Parmenides did not take this [step]. He only saw that which is enchanted in the sensual world and on the other side Demeter [and Hades], the materiality. But he was unable to find the path that unites the two. In a slightly different form, we encounter the same thing in Empedocles, who said that the primordial being had dissolved into a series of elements, into fire, water, earth and air. In these four elements he saw nothing other than individual eternal manifestations of the primordial being, the eternal world spirit. And in every single thing he saw certain mixtures of the four elements, even in man. The fact that the human being also consists of a mixture of the same elements as the world means that the human being can understand the world. The same can be recognized by the same. This is the same thing that Goethe says:
This view was already held by Empedocles. He even had the view that the essence reigns in all being, [so that] he already [anticipated] the saying in Goethe's "Faust": "Exalted Spirit, you gave me, gave me everything ..." [anticipated]. Empedocles already recognized this totality of being. He believed that before it rises to the higher, it must pass through the lower stages. The spirit must pass through the stages of inorganic, elementary existence, the stages from plant to animal existence up to the form of man, and always follow them. This is why he sees love and hate as what brings the elements together. Empedocles thus describes life as a constant struggle between love and hate. In this way, the worldly sage also repeats the battle between [Osiris-Isis and Typhon] and the battle between Persephone and [Hades]. So we see in the Empedoclean doctrine nothing other than the elaboration of what [Empedocles] could get to know in the Greek mystery schools. We shall see that he does not consider anything incomprehensible that is described to the philosophers as incomprehensible. We are told that human existence is not completed in the single individuality, but that this human existence was already there before it entered the individual personality, and that it will also be there again in other forms and shapes after it leaves this personality. In short, [Empedocles] stands on the standpoint of the transmigration of souls, of metempsychosis. He was initiated into the teachings of the Pythagoreans. The philosophers could not understand how Empedocles arrived at this doctrine if he assumed that the soul is a mere mixture of the four elements, but still ascribes to it a special existence in that it can take on different forms. We will understand that Empedocles sees in these four elements nothing other than the one eternal primordial being that has poured itself into existence, and that we therefore have to see in them only a special form of existence that flows back again to the primordial being. Thus in the spiritual conception of Empedocles we have something higher than the merely sensual. Empedoclean philosophy is nothing more than a philosophical dissection of the Argonaut legend, the legend of Demeter and Persephone and so on. These teachings were then adopted by Socrates and Plato, and we are not to understand the historical Socrates in the figure of Socrates when we encounter him in the Platonic dialogues. Socrates appears to Plato as the master of the school, and he represents the school in his conversations. Socrates was regarded by Plato as such a leader. In the Platonic Discourses, it is not the historical Socrates who is the main subject, but the spiritual leader, the one who leads from the lowest levels of knowledge up to the highest. We cannot understand the meaning of the Platonic Conversations if we do not understand them as a mental image of mystical instruction, as instruction and guidance from the lowest to the highest levels of knowledge. The other day I mentioned the talk about the immortality of the soul. This is usually understood as if immortality were to be proven by a logical thread. But it is not a question of proving the immortality of the soul, and what has been written about whether the proof has succeeded or failed. If it is said that the proof is no longer congenial to us today, then the person concerned only shows that he has not grasped the whole spirit of the "Phaidon". It is not a question of proving whether the soul is immortal, but of something quite different. We can assume that Plato also went through the schools of [the] Sophists. Protagoras was the founder of the "phrase: he is portrayed [in the Platonic dialog "Protagoras"] as someone who led knowledge astray. But we must not forget that Socrates was a profound [ironist]. We must not forget that the Greeks had their own conception of irony, that they understood it as something that was necessary for the illumination of the whole world view. Socrates fought the sophists with irony. What are the sophists? The sentences uttered by Protagoras characterize them: ["Man is the measure of all things, of those that are, that they are - of those that are not, that they are not." And:] We cannot prove anything rigorously. One thing can be said of every thing, but the opposite can also be said of every thing. This seemed to be the destruction of all knowledge. Even today it seems as if the sophists were playing a vain game with ideas, as if they wanted nothing more than to talk about every thing. Vanity was their purpose, as the measure of all things was only purpose. The Sophists by no means took this absurd and downright frivolous standpoint. The Sophists are, if I may say so, the personalities within Greek intellectual life who wanted to reduce to absurdity the knowledge that flows purely from the intellect, but who also put into practice in a different way the old Apollonian sentence: "Man is the measure of all things", which means nothing other than that man has to rise and seek within himself. - Do not recognize yourself with random intellectual knowledge, but immerse yourself in your true self. - They adjusted themselves to pure logic on a trial basis in order to lead them all the more surely into error. You can prove the one, and you can prove the other. But the sophists only wanted to show the worthlessness of logic. It is worthless to stop at what we encounter externally, at purely intellectual knowledge. Man would have to be just as unsatisfied in this knowledge as he would have to be unsatisfied within a purely mindless sensory life. Plato had become acquainted with this sophism, and he apparently fought it, not because he regarded it as a worthless phenomenon, but as an irony. He took the standpoint of Protagoras, and Protagoras always falls short of Socrates, who does not want to grasp the world through reason, but through immediate life and through the mind. But this is not a different point of view from the one put forward by the Sophists. The sophists wanted to be opposed because they wanted to expose the absurdity of these propositions in order to show where each proposition leads. Thus Socrates, by leading beyond sophistry, led to deeper knowledge. He liberates his students from the belief in reason. This redemption is expressed to us in all those conversations [in which the sophists, Socrates' immediate predecessors, are combated]. The Discourses are written for the sole purpose of disabusing people of the belief in the provability of higher knowledge. That is the purpose of the Platonic Discourse. No one will believe that a flower can be proved. No one will seek proof that a flower exists. It is enough if we experience existence. You cannot prove a thing. You can prove the connection between things. You can prove that some fact must be there, from a context that you have already perceived. But you can never prove a thing that you have absolutely not perceived. So it is not a question of proving something logically, but of expanding the field of experience, of opening up the field of experience into a metaphysical realm. Something should be opened up that lies behind experience. [So it should not say: Here you have experience, and you should pay attention to something that lies behind it. It should not be deduced logically, but experienced spiritually. It should not be proven, but experienced. This is also the case in the "Phaidon". You have to experience what Socrates means by "soul". He does not want to prove that the soul is immortal, but he wants to lead his students to experience the soul in the same way as the body. The "Phaidon" is about the discovery of the soul. It is about experiencing the soul. When his students have really experienced "soul, then [its] characteristics will soon become clear to them. If you want to be shown a flower, you show him the flower and don't let him prove it. This is what is meant by the Socratic method. The Socratic method is usually understood in a much more trivial way. The Socratic method means nothing other than the opening of a completely new field of experience, the opening of new senses, the opening of a new field of experience, and the teaching of Socrates is such that every person can be led to such higher [cognitive] powers. And the leading to such powers in the Socratic method is the conversation. We will find in the conversations the most profound method and the truest mysticism, and we will see the form in which [Greek] mysticism has expressed itself in the most profound and experiential way. I am convinced that Plato's teaching can only be understood superficially, that the doctrine of ideas can only be seen as an emptiness of ideas, if one does not draw this doctrine of ideas from the depths of Greek spiritual life, if one does not take into account the tragedy of life that the myth of Demeter expresses by showing that the dearest thing Demeter has must first fall away in order to then seek the way back again. And in the Argonaut legend, it is depicted that man must lose himself on the path of life in order to be able to redeem himself again with the help of his new powers. That saga thus expresses to us the deep tragedy that lies in the fact that [knowledge] must first be lost, sunk into the depths of materiality, and that it can only be found again by way of complete self-denial - and only by giving up many a love. And this expresses that this rediscovery of the highest knowledge is linked with the true redemption of this knowledge, with the finding of the infinite in the finite, with the overcoming of individuality, that therefore this knowledge can only be achieved through one of the most original forces that rule in man; and this again expresses itself meaningfully through the emergence of human vision, that which Phrixos has to sacrifice first, the vision which leads us into the indeterminate and into the deepest depths, which leads us to the point that we can never be satisfied and that we can only find ourselves on the perpetual path back to Demeter. This realization means the infinite path to rediscover lost knowledge. This is expressed in the distinction between the lower and higher consecrations. When Schelling passed from his youth to a later age, he distinguished the teachings of his youth, which express the most spiritual and profound. He later expressed this philosophy of his youth as a lower consecration compared to his later one, because the height of that vision had dawned on him, in which he recognized that there are abyss-like depths that can never be reached [with the ordinary powers of thought]. The realization of certain spiritual powers to encompass this world is what he calls [higher] consecration. To lose this faith altogether in comparison to the lower consecration and to believe and experience the omnipotence of the infinite depth, which has been lost to us, is the infinite love into which the divine principle has flowed and can be found again through this infinite. This is what he calls the "higher consecration." Answer to the question: Question about the sacrifice of Abraham. These teachings of the Old Testament are a distortion. Jewish secret teachings then emerge, in which these things are then pulled together again. It is the same as in the legends of Demeter, Persephone and Dionysus. In them the doctrine of man is carried out in a tangible way. The Abraham sacrifice would correspond to the second stage of the human stages, the necessity of sacrificing one's loved one. It is undoubtedly taken from religious systems in which this school of thought lives. It must be assumed for a whole series of Christian myths that in the year 1 there was no awareness of the esoteric side at all. Paul was the founder of Christianity, which has lived in the church right up to our time. If I interpret the "Sistine Madonna" esoterically and someone tells me that Raphael knew nothing about it, I say: Yes, it doesn't need to be. If that is attempted, I have to be pleased and regard it as a perfectly justifiable thing. I am always pleased when people try to show this. The philosophers in the pulpits don't get involved in esotericism. The most important is Kühnemann. In Empedocles, there is something we cannot understand. We can only present [it] as something incomprehensible; all modern research deals only with the purely natural conception of the matter and finally only with the question of its origin, with the question: How could something like this have developed? |
| 88. On the Astral World and Devachan: Physical Illnesses and Cosmological Laws
27 Oct 1903, Berlin |
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| Is not karmic compensation also brought about by the thought of a benevolent human spirit? The thought of a forgiving God is surely closer at hand than that of a strict and just God. The following answer can be given to these questions: Our idea of God, [as it presents itself from the theosophical point of view], includes the notion that the individual entities will be led to their highest perfection in the course of time, and not in some indefinite way, but in such a way that they reach the divine final goal on a specific path of development. |
| The divine original spirit gives us the opportunity to learn as much as possible from life. A God who only forgives would prevent us from learning. Every action becomes the source of knowledge. |
| Jesus says, “Why do you call me perfect? Only the Father in heaven is perfect. —No single being is perfect; it is only imperfect — in the place and at the time where it is. |
| 88. On the Astral World and Devachan: Physical Illnesses and Cosmological Laws
27 Oct 1903, Berlin |
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The questions were asked: Why, in the context of karma, are there imperfect things, evil, pain and disease? Is not karmic compensation also brought about by the thought of a benevolent human spirit? The thought of a forgiving God is surely closer at hand than that of a strict and just God. The following answer can be given to these questions: Our idea of God, [as it presents itself from the theosophical point of view], includes the notion that the individual entities will be led to their highest perfection in the course of time, and not in some indefinite way, but in such a way that they reach the divine final goal on a specific path of development. In our cosmos, we are dealing with seven planetary developmental stages: Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, then comes the Earth, which will later pass into the next developmental stage, into the fifth, then into the sixth and finally into the seventh. We can gain a certain idea of three of these seven planetary stages, that is, of the Moon, of the Earth and of the future planet Jupiter. We call our planet, the Earth, the cosmos of love, and the next one, Jupiter, the cosmos of fire. In the preceding planetary state, the moon state, we see the cosmos of wisdom. We call the most highly developed beings of the present earth state the “masters of love and compassion”. The “Masters of Wisdom” were the most highly developed beings in the moon evolution; they guided the wise construction of the human organs from the cosmic karmic forces in such a way that hunger and thirst occur at the right time, for example. When these “Masters of Wisdom” appear in our time, they come across with too much wisdom. A piano maker, for instance, must carry out his work in his workshop; in the concert hall his work would only cause harm. So one and the same activity can be good in one place and bad in another. This also applies to these “Masters of Wisdom”; since they have too much wisdom, they would consequently cause harm here on earth, just as the piano maker would cause harm in the concert hall. If the “Masters of Love and Compassion” take too much of our earth with them into the next stage of planetary development, they would become a kind of “Brothers of the Shadow”, for this next epoch will have the task of purifying the Manas element to the level of Budhi. All these purified karmic feelings will then merge into a single power that will strive towards the original spirit that flows through our planet. Everything that the human being of today feels will, in the next state, converge in a purified form like flames, and these many individual flames will combine to form a single fire. And so this planet is called the Cosmos of Fire, which is formed from the purified feelings of human hearts as they resonate harmoniously with one another. This Cosmos of Fire relates to our earthly cosmos as it did to its predecessor. The spiritual essence must first pass through wisdom, then through love, and finally it must merge with fire. This is the goal that the original spirit, which flows through the cosmos, is striving for. It wants to let humanity experience all the intermediate stages. Man should not only simply reach perfection, but it is also important to let him go through all the individual stages in order to let him experience the richness of existence. These intermediate goals could not be achieved if there were no diversity in time and space. In space, different levels of existence coexist. But beings also live in succession in time and go through different epochs, different levels. Thus, the original spirit strives for diversity in time and space. It allows the beings to progress to perfection through themselves. It allows the beings to truly undergo the individual lessons. Karma can only work in such a way that the one, the perfect, corresponds to the other, the imperfect. Imagine that a child is supposed to develop in order to perfect itself in view of its later adulthood. It must first learn everything. It must learn to stand and walk, it must learn to keep itself in balance; in doing so, it will often fall over. If there were no pain associated with falling, falling would have no effect in the direction of perfecting abilities. In order to perfect itself, imperfection must be present in life. Each fact must be connected with another in such a way that this first fact becomes a lesson for us, that it teaches us something. This is what theosophy shows us. All intermediate stages of our planet are a learning through which we ascend to the highest degree. We must therefore see life as a learning. The divine original spirit gives us the opportunity to learn as much as possible from life. A God who only forgives would prevent us from learning. Every action becomes the source of knowledge. It would not be so if the swinging to one side were not linked to the swinging of the pendulum to the other side. It is necessary that the pendulum can swing in two directions so that we are not guided by the hand of a creator like puppets. Because at certain stages of our development not the whole variety of human life appears, at other stages something must appear that looks like the other side of the pendulum. Now there are physical illnesses. We cannot really understand the origin of physical illnesses. We can only understand that accidents happen to us; but that our body simply becomes ill out of itself, without an accident happening to it, is something we cannot readily comprehend. In occultism, the “brothers of the shadow” are also seen as the bearers of evil diseases that work from within; and we can look for the cosmic-karmic origin of physical illnesses that occur without external cause in the same direction. Too much wisdom in the wrong place causes the soul to stray into evil. In physical terms, this means that the masters of wisdom intervene too strongly in the organs. However, they should only occupy themselves with wisdom and not delve into the physical sphere of the organs in their present state on earth. In the same way, if the Masters of Wisdom do the same here that they rightly did in an earlier stage, they become the cause of physical illnesses. This self-perpetuating wisdom principle is the origin of physical evil. Our cosmos of love, compassion and benevolence was preceded by the cosmos of wisdom, in which beings devoted their activity to the development of the physical body. The fact that they still extend their activity into our cosmos is what causes disease. Diseases, physical and moral evils, can be traced back to this common origin. This is a fact that emerges from occult historical research. I have shown how our time has come through external research to the point where a spiritualization through theosophy is necessary. Western science comes to the gate of theosophy and knocks, because it cannot find satisfactory solutions on its own. Lombroso's research, for example, is justified in itself; in his work, the physical and the psychological appear to be closely related. How closely he relates disease and physical abnormality in the case of criminals. Lombroso found purely physical abnormalities and irregularities in the physique of criminals; he measures the skulls, looks for asymmetries and abnormalities and says that where there is moral wrongdoing, there is also physical disharmony. In this way, he brings moral and physical illness very close together. In this way, physical science arrives at convictions that occultism also leads to. But Theosophy knows that in the case of moral and physical illnesses, it is a karmic intrusion of the lunar epoch into our earthly one; it is cosmic-karmic effects that come to light in this too deep penetration into the physical. Now you will see why those who have the ability to see in the astral can be very different doctors than those who do not have this ability. During the lunar epoch, everything that happened was much closer to the astral than it is today; the astral forces were much more active, much more fluid, and much more powerful. The astral seer can therefore trace the connection between our world and the lunar one. He must look from the physical effects into the astral causes. One must try to imagine this in a picture. Let us imagine that the astral had been water and had now frozen, so that everything that was there before can be seen in the ice. A physician like Paracelsus, who had this ability to see, was able to discover a whole range of healing processes that are incomprehensible to the ordinary physician. He was able to determine the causes of physical illnesses through his ability to see, that is, to see the causes of illnesses in the preceding developmental epochs. He said that one must not only cure the earthly man, but also the sidereal man; that is, in our words: one must also cure the astral part of man. Paracelsus sees the relationship between the effect of the physical remedy used by him and the cause of the disease, and he also sees the effect of this remedy. The ordinary physician finds the effect only through the experiment. Thus you see how what appears on earth as imperfection is no longer imperfect for us if we understand it as having been caused by the influence of wisdom, which was justified in the past, into our epoch. What is perfect in our epoch may be imperfect in an earlier or later one. Jesus says, “Why do you call me perfect? Only the Father in heaven is perfect. —No single being is perfect; it is only imperfect — in the place and at the time where it is. |