140. Life Between Death and Rebirth: Recent Results of Occult Investigation Into Life
03 Nov 1912, Vienna Tr. René M. Querido Rudolf Steiner |
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These findings of occult investigation throw remarkable light on an utterance Kant made as though instinctively. He said that the two things that inspired the greatest wonder in him were the starry heavens above and the moral law within. |
140. Life Between Death and Rebirth: Recent Results of Occult Investigation Into Life
03 Nov 1912, Vienna Tr. René M. Querido Rudolf Steiner |
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We shall begin this study by considering what we call human consciousness. What is human consciousness? In the first place, we can say that in the sleeping state—from the time of going to sleep in the evening until waking next morning—we have no consciousness. Nobody in possession of his five senses, however, doubts that he exists when he goes to sleep, and loses consciousness. If he had any such doubt he would be holding the utterly senseless view that during sleep everything he experiences perishes and must come into being anew the next morning. Anyone who does not hold this senseless view is convinced that his existence continues during sleep. All the same, he has no consciousness. During sleep we have no mental pictures, ideas, desires, impulses, passions, no pain or suffering—for if pain becomes so intense that sleep is prevented, it stands to reason that consciousness is present. Anyone who can distinguish between sleeping and waking can also understand what consciousness is. Consciousness is what enters a man's soul again every morning when he wakes from sleep. Ideas, mental pictures, emotions, passions, sufferings, and so on—all this enters again into the soul in the morning. Now what is it that specially characterizes the consciousness of man? It is the fact that everything a man can have in his consciousness is accompanied by the experience of the “I.” No mental image of which you could not think, I picture this to myself; no feeling of which you could not say, I feel; no pain of which you could not say I suffer, would be a genuine experience of your soul. Everything you experience must be linked, and indeed it is, with the concept “I.” Yet you are aware that this link with the concept “I” only begins at a certain age in life. At about the age of three, when a child begins to have the experience, he no longer says, “Carl speaks,” or “Mary speaks,” but “I speak.” Knowledge of the “I” therefore is kindled for the first time during childhood. Now let us ask “How does knowledge of the ‘I’ gradually awaken in the child?” This question shows that apparently simple things are not so easily answered, although the answer may seem to lie very near at hand. How does the child pass out of the ego-filled ideas and mental pictures? Anyone who genuinely studies the life of childhood can understand how this happens. A simple observation can convince everyone how ego-consciousness develops and becomes strong in a child. Suppose he knocks his head against the corner of a table. If you observe closely you will find that the feeling of “I” is intensified after such a thing happens. In other words, the child becomes aware of himself, is brought nearer to a knowledge of self. Of course, it need not always amount to an actual injury or scratch. Even when the child puts his hand on something there is an impact on a small scale that makes him aware of himself. You will have to conclude that a child would never develop ego-consciousness if resistance from the world outside did not make him aware of himself. The fact that there is a world external to himself makes possible the unfolding of ego-consciousness, the consciousness of the “I.” At a certain point in his life this consciousness of the “I” dawns in the child, but what has been going on up to this point does not come to an end. It is simply that the process is reversed. The child has developed ego-consciousness by becoming aware that there are objects outside himself. In other words, he separates himself from them. Once this ego-consciousness has developed it continues to come in contact with things. Indeed it must do so perpetually. Where do the impacts take place? An entity that contacts nothing can have no knowledge of itself, not, at least, in the world in which we live! The fact is that from the moment ego-consciousness arises, the “I” impacts its own inner corporeality, begins to impact its own body inwardly. To picture this you need only think of a child waking up every morning. The ego and the astral body pass into the physical and etheric bodies and the ego impacts them. Now even if you only dip your hand in water and move it along, there is resistance wherever your hand is in contact with the water. It is the same when the ego dives down in the morning and finds its own inner life playing around it. During the whole of life the ego is within the physical and etheric bodies and impacts them on all sides, just as when you splash your hand in water you become aware of your hand on all sides. When the ego plunges down into the etheric body and the physical body is comes up against resistance everywhere, and this continues through the whole of life. Throughout his life the man must plunge down into his physical and etheric bodies every time he wakes. Because of this, continual impacts take place between the physical and etheric bodies on the one side and the ego and astral body on the other. The consequence is that the entities involved in the impact are worn away—ego and astral body on the one side, physical and etheric bodies on the other. Exactly the same thing happens as when there is continual pressure between two objects. They wear each other away. This is the process of aging, of becoming worn out, that sets in during the course of man's life, and it is also the reason why he dies as a physical being. Just think of it. If we had no physical body, no etheric body, we could not maintain our ego-consciousness. True, we might be able to unfold such consciousness, but we could not maintain it. To do this we must always be impacting our own inner constitution. The consequence of this is the extraordinarily important fact that the development of our ego is made possible by destroying our own being If there were no impact between the members of our being, we could have no ego-consciousness. When the question is asked, “What is the purpose of destruction, of aging, of death?” the answer must be that it is in order that man may evolve that ego-consciousness may develop to further stages. If we could not die, that is the radical form of the process, we could not be truly “man.” If we ponder deeply about the implications of this, occultism can give us the following answer. To live as men we need physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. In human life as it is at present, we need these four members. But if we are to attain ego-consciousness, we must destroy them. We must acquire these members time and time again and then destroy them. Hence many earthly lives are necessary in order to make it possible for human bodies to be destroyed again and again. Thereby we are enabled to develop to further stages as conscious human beings. Now in our life on earth there is only one member of our being whose development we can work at in the real sense, and that is our ego. What does it mean to work at the development of the “I?” To answer this question we must realize what it is that makes this work necessary. Suppose a man goes to another and says to him, “You are wicked.” If this is not the case the man has told an untruth. What is the consequence of the ego's having uttered an untruth such as this? The consequence is that from this moment the worth of the ego is less than it was before the utterance was made. That is the objective consequence of the immoral deed. Before uttering an untruth our worth is greater than it is afterwards. For all time to come and in all spheres, for all eternity the worth of our ego is less as the result of such a deed. But during the life between birth and death a certain means is at our disposal. We can always make amends for having lessened the worth of our ego; we can invalidate the untruth. To the one we have called wicked we can confess, “I erred; what I said is not true,” and so on. In doing this we restore worth to our ego and compensate for the harm done. In the case where our ego is involved it is still within our power during life to make the necessary adjustment. If, for example, we ought to have acquired knowledge of something but have forgotten all about it, our ego has lost worth, but if we make efforts we can recall it to memory and thus compensate for the harm done. To sum up, we can lessen the worth of our ego but we can also augment it. This faculty to correct a member of our being, to rectify its errors in such a way as to further its development, we possess in respect of the ego. Man's consciousness does not, however, extend directly to his astral and etheric nature, and it extends far less to his physical nature. Although perpetual destruction of these members is taking place through the whole course of life, we do not know how to rectify it. Man has the power to repair the harm done to the ego, to adjust a moral defect or defect of memory, but he has no power over what is continually being destroyed in his astral, etheric and physical bodies. These three bodies are being impaired all the time, and as we live on constant attacks are being made upon them. We work at the development of the ego, for if we did not do so during the whole of life between birth and death, no progress would be made. We cannot work as consciously at the development of our astral, etheric or physical body as we work at the development of our ego. Yet what is all the time being destroyed in those three bodies must be made good. In the time between death and a new birth we must again acquire in the right form—as astral body, etheric body and physical body—what we have destroyed. It must be possible during this time for what was previously destroyed to be repaired. This can only happen if something beyond our power works upon us. It is quite obvious that if we do not possess magical powers it will not be possible for us to procure an astral body when we are dead. The astral body must be created for us out of the Great World, the Macrocosm. We can now understand the question, “Where is the destruction we have caused in our astral body repaired?” We need a proper body when we are born again into the new bodily existence. Where are the forces that repair the astral body to be found in the universe? We might look for these forces on the earth with every kind of clairvoyance, yet we would never find them there. If it depended entirely on the earth, a man's astral body could never be repaired. The materialistic belief that all the conditions needed for human existence are to be found on the earth is utterly mistaken. Man's home is not only on the earth. True observation of the life between death and a new birth reveals that the forces man needs in order to repair the astral body lie in Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, that is, in the stars belonging to the planetary system. The forces emanating from these heavenly bodies must all work at the repair of our astral body, and if we do not get the forces from there, we cannot have an astral body. What does that mean? It means that after death, and it is also the case in the process of initiation, we must go out of the physical body together with the forces of our astral body. This astral body expands into the universe. Whereas we are otherwise contracted into a small point in the universe, after death our whole being expands into it. Our life between death and new birth is nothing but a process of drawing from the stars the forces we need in order that the member we have destroyed during life can be restored. So it is from the stars that we actually receive the forces which repair our astral body. In the domain of occultism—using the word in its true sense—investigation is difficult and full of complications. Suppose a man with good sight goes to some district in Switzerland, climbs a high mountain and then, when he has come down again, gives you an accurate description of what he has seen. You can well imagine that if he goes to the district again and climbs higher up the same mountain, he will describe what he has seen from a different vantage point. Through descriptions given from different vantage points it is obvious that an increasingly accurate and complete idea of the landscape will be obtained. Now people are apt to believe that if someone has become clairvoyant, he knows everything! It is by no means so. In the spiritual world, investigation always has to be gradual—”bit by bit,” as it were. Even in respect to things that have been investigated with great exactitude, new discoveries can be made all the time. During the last two years it has been my task to investigate even more closely than before the conditions of life between death and rebirth, and I want to tell you now about the findings of this recent research. You will of course realize that true understanding is possible only for those who can penetrate deeply into such a subject, those whose hearts and minds are ready for a study of this kind. In a single lecture it cannot be expected that everything will be proved and substantiated. If what has been said in the course of time is patiently compared and collated, it will be found that nowhere in the domain of the occultism studied here is there anything that does not fit in with the rest. In the recent investigations of the life between death and a new birth the conditions prevailing during that period came very clearly to light. To the eyes of the spirit it is disclosed that the human being on the earth between birth and death, contracted as he is into the smallest possible space, emerges from it when he lays aside his physical body and expands farther and farther out into the universe. Having passed through the gate of death he grows stage by stage out into the planetary spheres. First of all, he expands as far as the area marked by the orbit of the Moon; the sphere indicated by the position of the Moon then becomes his outermost boundary. When that point has been reached, kamaloca is at an end. Continuing to expand, he grows into the sphere formed by the orbit of Venus. Then as his magnitude increases, his outermost boundary is marked by the apparent course of the Sun. We need not here concern ourselves with the Copernican theory of the universe. We need only picture the surrounding spheres as they were described in the Düsseldorf lectures on the Spiritual Hierarchies. Thus as man ascends into the spiritual worlds he expands into the planetary system, first into the sphere of the Moon, and ultimately into the outermost sphere, that of Saturn. All this is necessary in order that he shall come into contact with those forces needed for his astral body, which can be received only from the planetary system. A difference becomes apparent when different individuals are observed. Suppose we observe a man after death whose bearing throughout life was morally good and who has therefore taken with him through the gate of death a moral disposition of soul. Such a man may be compared with another, for instance, who has taken with him through death a less moral tenor of soul. This makes a great difference, and it becomes evident when the men in question pass into the sphere of the forces of Mercury. What form does this difference take? With the means of perception at his disposal after the period of kamaloca is over, a man becomes aware of those who were near him in life and who predeceased him. Are these beings connected with him? True, he meets them all. He lives together with them after death, but there is a difference in how he lives together with those with whom he was connected on earth. The difference is determined by whether the man brought with him through death a greater or lesser moral disposition of soul. If he lacked a moral sense in life, he does come together with members of his family and with his friends, but his own nature creates a kind of barrier that prevents him from reaching the other beings. A man with an immoral disposition becomes a hermit after death, an isolated being who always has a kind of barrier around him and cannot get through it to the other beings into whose sphere he has passed. But a soul with a moral disposition, a soul whose ideas are the outcome of purified will, becomes a sociable spirit and invariably finds the bridges and connections with the beings in whose sphere he is living. Whether we are isolated or sociable spirits is determined by our moral or immoral disposition of soul. Now this has important consequences. A sociable spirit, one who is not enclosed in the shell of his own being, but can make contact with other beings in his sphere, is working fruitfully for the progress of evolution and of the whole world. An immoral man who after his death becomes a hermit, an isolated spirit, is working at the destruction of the world. He makes holes, as it were, in the texture of the universe commensurate with the degree of his immorality and consequent isolation. The effect of the immoral deeds of such a man is for him, torment; for the world, destruction. A moral disposition of soul is therefore already of great significance shortly after the period of kamaloca. It also determines destiny for the next, the Venus period. A different category of ideas also comes into consideration then, ideas a man has evolved during life and that concern him when he enters the spiritual world. The ideas and conceptions are of a religious character. If religion has been a link between the transitory and the eternal, the life of soul in the Venus sphere after death is different from what it is if there has been no such link. Again, whether we are sociable or isolated, hermit-like spirits depends upon whether we were or were not of a religious turn of mind during life on earth. After death an irreligious soul feels as though enclosed in a capsule, a prison. True, such a soul is aware that there are beings around him, but he feels as though he were in a prison and unable to reach them. Thus, for example, the members of the Monistic Union, inasmuch as with their barren, materialistic ideas they have excluded all religious feeling, will not be united in a new community or union after death, but each of them will be confined in his own prison. Naturally, this is not meant as an attack upon the Monistic Union. It is merely a question of making a certain fact intelligible. In the life on earth materialistic ideas are an error, a fallacy. In the realm of the spirit they are a reality. Ideas, which here in the physical world merely have the effect of making us shut ourselves off, incarcerate us in the realm of the spirit, make us prisoners of our own astrality. Through an immoral conception of life we deprive ourselves of forces of attraction in the Mercury sphere. Through an irreligious disposition of soul we deprive ourselves of forces of attraction in the Venus sphere. We cannot draw from this sphere the forces we need; which means that in the next incarnation we shall have an astral body that in a certain respect is imperfect. Here you see how karma takes shape, the technique of forming karma. These findings of occult investigation throw remarkable light on an utterance Kant made as though instinctively. He said that the two things that inspired the greatest wonder in him were the starry heavens above and the moral law within. These are apparently two things, but in fact they are one and the same. Why does a feeling of grandeur, of reverent awe, come over us when we look up into the starry heavens? It is because without our knowing it the feeling of our soul's home awakens in us. The feeling awakens: Before you came down to earth to a new incarnation you yourself were in those stars, and out of the stars have come the highest forces that are within you. Your moral law was imparted to you when you were dwelling in this world of stars. When you practice self-knowledge you can behold what the starry heaven bestowed upon you between death and a new birth—the best and finest powers of your soul. What we behold in the starry heavens is the moral law that is given us from the spiritual worlds, between death and a new birth—the best and finest powers of our soul. What we behold in the starry heavens is the moral law that is given us from the spiritual worlds, for between death and a new birth we live in these starry heavens. A man who longs to discover the source of the highest qualities he possesses should contemplate the starry heavens with feelings such as these. To one who has no desire to ask anything, but lives his life in a state of dull apathy—to him the stars will tell nothing. But if one asks oneself, “How does there enter into me that which is never connected with my bodily senses?” and then raises his eyes to the starry heaven, he will be filled with the feeling of reverence and will know that this is the memory of man's eternal home. Between death and rebirth we actually live in the starry heavens. We have asked how our astral body is built up anew in the spiritual world, and the same question can be asked about our etheric body. This body, too, we cannot help destroying during our life, and again we must obtain from elsewhere the forces enabling us to build it up again, to make it fit to perform its work for the whole man during life. There were long, long stretches of time in human evolution on earth when man was unable to contribute anything at all towards ensuring that his etheric body would be equipped with good forces in the next incarnation. Then man still had within him a heritage from times when his existence on earth began. As long as the ancient clairvoyance continued, there still remained in man forces that at death had not been used up, reserve forces, as it were, by means of which the etheric body could again be built up. But it lies in the very essence of human evolution that all forces eventually pass away and must be replaced by new ones. Today we have reached a point when man must do something himself in order that his etheric body may be built up again. Everything that we do as a result of our ordinary moral ideas, whatever response we make to a religion on the earth, limited as it may be to a particular people, with all this we pass into the planetary system and from there draw the forces for building up our astral body. There is only one sphere through which we pass without drawing from it these particular forces—the Sun sphere itself. For it is out of the Sun sphere that our etheric body must draw the forces enabling it to be built up again. Conditions in pre-Christian times were such that as a man rose by stages into the spiritual world he took with him part of the forces of the etheric body, and these reserve forces enabled him to draw from the Sun what he needed for building his etheric body in a new incarnation. Today this has changed. It now happens more and more frequently that man remains unaffected by the forces of the Sun. If he fails to do what is necessary for his etheric body by filling his soul with a content that can draw from the Sun the forces required for the rebuilding of this etheric body, he passes through the Sun sphere without being affected by it. Now the influence that can be felt to emanate from one particular religious denomination on earth can never impart to the soul what is necessary in order that existence may be possible in the Sun sphere. What we can instill into our etheric body, what we then need in order that the soul's sojourn in the Sun sphere may be fruitful—this can come only from the element that flows through all the religions of mankind in common. What is this? If you compare the different religions of the world—and it is one of the most important anthroposophical tasks to study the core of truth in the different religions—you will find that these religions were always right in their way, but right for a particular people, for a particular epoch. They imparted to this people, to this epoch, what it was essential for this people and epoch to receive. In point of fact we know most about those religions that were able to serve their particular time and people by clinging egoistically to the form in which they originally issued from the fount of religious life. For more than ten years now we have been studying the religions, but it must be realized that once there had to be given to humanity an impulse transcending that of the single religions and embracing everything to which they had pointed. How did this come to be possible? It became possible through a religion in which there was no single trace of egoism. The supremacy of this religion lies in the fact that it did not limit itself to one people and one epoch. Hinduism, for instance, is an eminently egoistic religion, for a man who is not a Hindu cannot be received into it. This religion is specially adapted for the Hindu people, and the same applies to other territorial religions; their original greatness lay in the fact that they were adapted to particular earthly conditions. Those who do not admit that the religions were adapted to particular conditions, but maintain that all religious systems have emanated from one undifferentiated source, can never acquire real knowledge. To speak only of unity amounts to saying that salt, pepper, paprika and sugar are on the table, but we are not concerned with each of them individually. What we are looking for is the unity that is expressed in these different substances. Of course, one can speak like this, but when it is a question of passing on to practical reality, of using each substance appropriately, the differences between them will certainly be apparent. Nobody who uses these substances will claim that there is no different, then just put salt or pepper instead of sugar into your coffee or tea, and you will soon find out the truth! Those who make no real distinction between the several religions, but say that they all come from the same source, are making the same kind of blunder. If we wish to know how a living thread runs through the different religions towards a great goal, we must seek to understand this thread, and study and value of each religion for its particular sphere. This is what we have been doing for the last ten years in our Middle-European Section of the TheosophicalSociety. A beginning has been made towards discovering the nature of a religion that has nothing to do with differences in humanity, but only with the essential human as such, without distinction of color, race, and so forth. What form has this taken? Can it really be said that we have a “national” religion such as is found among the Hindus or the Jews? If we were to worship Wotan we should be in the same position as the Hindus. But we do not worship Wotan. The West has acknowledged the Christ, and Christ was not a Westerner, but an alien with respect to His lineage. The attitude to Christ that the West has adopted is not an egoistic or nationalistic adherence to a creed. The domain touched upon here cannot, of course, be exhaustively dealt with in a single lecture. It is only possible to speak of particular aspects, and one aspect is that the attitude adopted by the West to its professed religion has been absolutely unegoistical. The supremacy of the Christ Principle is shown in another way, too. Think of a congress where learned representatives of the different religions have gathered with the aim of comparing the various systems of religion quite impartially. To such a congress I should like to put the question, “Is there any religion on earth in which one and the same saying means something different when made from two different sides?” This is actually what occurs in Christianity. Christ Jesus speaks profound words in the Gospel when He says to those around Him, “In all of you there is Divinity; are you then not Gods?” He says with all power and authority, “Ye are gods!” (John 10:34). Christ Jesus means by these words that in every human breast lies a spark that is Divine. This spark must be kindled in order that it may be possible to say, “Be as the gods.” A different and indeed exactly opposite effect is the aim of words spoken by Lucifer when he approaches man in order to drag him down from the realm of the Gods, “Ye shall be as God” (Genesis 3:5) The meaning here is entirely different. The same utterance is made at one time in order to corrupt humanity at the beginning of the descent into the abyss, and at another time as a pointer to the supreme goal! Look for the same thing in any other denominational creed, and the one utterance or the other may be found, but never both. Close examination will show what depth of meaning lies in the few words that have just been spoken. The fact that these significant utterances have become an integral part of Christianity shows clearly that what is really important is not the mere content of the words, but the Being who utters them. Why is it so? It is because Christianity is working to achieve the fulfillment of the principle that gives expression to its very core, namely, that there is not only kinship among those related by physical descent, but among all mankind. There is something that holds good without distinction of race, nationality or creed, and reaches beyond all racial traits and all epochs of time. Christianity is so intimately connected with the soul of man because what it can bestow need not remain alien to any man. This is not yet admitted all over the earth, but what is true must ultimately prevail. Men have not yet reached the stage of realizing that a Buddhist or a Hindu need not reject Christ. Just think what it would mean if some serious thinker were to say to us, “You who are followers of Christ ought not to maintain that all denominations and creeds can acknowledge Him as their supreme goal. In so doing you give preference to Christ, and you are not justified in making such a statement.” If this were said, we should have to answer, “Why are we not justified? Is it because a Hindu might also demand that veneration be paid only to his particular doctrines? We have no desire whatever to deprecate those doctrines; we honor them as highly as any Hindu. Would a Buddhist be justified in saying that he may not acknowledge Christ because nothing is said to this effect in His scriptures? Is anything essential at stake when a truth is not found in particular writings or scriptures? Would it be right for a Buddhist to say that it is against the principles of Buddhism to believe in the truth of the Copernican theory of the universe, for no mention of it is made in His books? What applied to the Copernican theory applies equally to the findings of modern spiritual-scientific research concerning the Christ-being, namely, that because He has nothing to do with any particular denomination, the Christ can be accepted by a Hindu or an adherent of any other religion. Those who reject what spiritual science has to say about the Christ impulse in relation to the religious denominations simply do not understand what the true attitude to religion should be.” Perhaps some day the time will come when it will be realized that what we have to say about the nature of the Christ impulse and its relation to all religious denominations and world-conceptions speaks directly to the heart and soul, as well as endeavoring to deal consistently with particular phases of the subject. It is not easy for everyone to realize what efforts are made to bring together things that can lead to the true understanding of the Christ impulse needed by man in the present cycle of his existence. Avowal of the belief in Christ has nothing fundamentally to do with any particular religion or religious system. A true Christian is simply one who is accustomed to regard every human being as bearing the Christ principle in himself, who looks for the Christ principle in a Chinese, a Hindu, or whoever he may be. In a man who avows his belief in Christ is founded the realization that the Christ impulse is not confined to one part of the earth. To imagine it as confined would be a complete fallacy. The reality is that since the Mystery of Golgotha, Paul's proclamation to the region with which he was connected has been true—Christ died also for the heathen. Humanity must learn to understand that Christ did not come for one particular people, and particular epoch, but for all the peoples of the earth, for all of them! Christ has sown His spirit-seed in every human soul, and progress consists in the souls of men becoming conscious of this. In pursuing spiritual science we are not merely elaborating theories or amassing a few more concepts for our intellects, but we meet together in order that our hearts and souls may be affected. If in this way the light of understanding can be brought to bear upon the Christ impulse, this impulse itself will eventually enable all men on earth to realize the deep meaning of Christ's words, “When two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” Those who work together in this spirit find the bridge that leads from soul to soul. This is what the Christ impulse will achieve over the whole earth. The Christ impulse itself must constitute the very life of our groups. Occultism reveals that if we feel something of the reality of the Christ impulse, a power has penetrated into our souls that enables them to find the path through the Sun sphere after death and makes it possible for us to receive a healthy etheric body in the next incarnation. We can only assimilate spiritual science in the right way by receiving the Christ impulse into ourselves with deep understanding. Only this will ensure that our etheric body will be strong and vigorous when we enter a new incarnation. Etheric bodies will deteriorate more and more if men remain in ignorance of Christ and His mission for the whole of earth revolution. Through understanding the Christ-being we shall prevent this deterioration of the etheric body and partake of the nature of the Sun. We shall become fit to receive forces from the sphere where Christ came to the earth. Since the coming of Christ we can take with us from the earth the forces that lead us into the Sun sphere. Then we can return to the earth with forces that in the next incarnation will make our etheric body strong. If we do not receive the Christ impulse, our etheric body will become less and less capable of drawing from the Sun sphere the forces that build and sustain it, enabling it to work in the right way here on the earth. Earthly life is really not dependent upon theoretical understanding, but upon our being permeated through and through with the effects of the Event of Golgotha. This is what is revealed by genuine occult research. Occult research also shows us how we can be prepared to receive the physical body. The physical body is bestowed upon us by the Father principle. It is through the Christ impulse that we are able to partake of the Father principle in the sense of the words, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). The Christ impulse leads us to the divine powers of the Father. What is the best result that can be achieved by spiritual deepening? One could imagine someone among you going out after the lecture and saying at the door, “I have forgotten every single word of it!” That would, of course, be an extreme case, but it would really not be the greatest calamity. For I could imagine that such a person does nevertheless take with him a feeling resulting from what he has heard here, even though he may have forgotten everything! It is this feeling in the soul that is important. When we are listening to the words we must surrender ourselves wholly in order that our souls shall be filled with the great impulse. When the spirit-knowledge we acquire contributes to the betterment of our souls, then we really have achieved something. Above all, when spiritual science helps us to understand our fellow men a little better, it has fulfilled its function, for spiritual science is life, immediate life. It is not refuted or confirmed by disputation or logic. It is put to the test and its value determined by life itself, and it will establish itself because it is able to find human beings into whose souls it is allowed to enter. What could be more uplifting than to know that we can discover the fount of our life between death and rebirth. We can discover our kinship with the whole universe! What could give us greater strength for our duties in life than the knowledge that we bear within us the forces pouring in from the universe and must so prepare ourselves in life that these forces can become active in us when, between death and rebirth, we pass into the spheres of the planets and of the Sun. One who truly grasps what occultism can reveal to him about man's relation to the world of the stars can say with sincerity and understanding the prayer that might be worded somewhat as follows, “The more conscious I become that I am born out of the universe, the more deeply I feel the responsibility to develop in myself the forces given to me by a whole universe, the better human being I can become.” One who knows how to say this prayer from the depths of the soul may also hope that it will become in him a fulfilled ideal. He may hope that through the power of such a prayer he will indeed become a better and more perfect man. Thus what we receive through true spiritual science works into the most intimate depths of our being. |
140. Life Between Death and Rebirth: Man's Journey Through the Planetary Spheres
18 Nov 1912, Hanover Tr. René M. Querido Rudolf Steiner |
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We rob the plant by our dissection, but not the starry world when we ascend beyond the plant and recognize how the spirit is related to it. Kant made the remarkable utterance of a man who understands morality in a one-sided way. Two things moved him deeply—the starry heavens above and the moral law within. |
140. Life Between Death and Rebirth: Man's Journey Through the Planetary Spheres
18 Nov 1912, Hanover Tr. René M. Querido Rudolf Steiner |
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It affords me great pleasure to be with you this evening on the occasion of my presence here in Vienna, which was necessitated by certain other circumstances. As this is a special meeting, I would like to speak about more intimate matters that can only be dealt with in smaller groups long acquainted with spiritual science. In occult research one cannot check often enough the facts one has repeatedly investigated, and about which one has spoken, for they are facts of the spiritual world that is not easily accessible and comprehensible to man. There is a constant danger of misinterpreting in one way or another, and events may be viewed incorrectly. This is the reason the results obtained must be checked again and again. The principal events of life in the spiritual world have, of course, been known for thousands of years, yet it is difficult to describe them. I am deeply grateful that recently I had the opportunity to concern myself more intimately again with an important aspect of occultism, namely, the realm of life between death and a new birth. It is not so much that new facts come to light, but that one has the possibility to present things in a more exact and accurate way. So today I would like to speak of the period that for super-sensible perception is of the utmost importance, that is, the period between death and rebirth. I will not deal so much with the period immediately following death, the kamaloca period, descriptions of which can be found in my writings, but with the succeeding period, the actual sojourn of man in the spiritual world between death and rebirth. This description will be prefaced briefly by the following remarks. One learns to know the period between death and rebirth either by initiation or by going through the portal of death. Mostly one does not take sufficiently seriously the difference that exists between knowledge acquired in the sense world by means of our senses and intellect and knowledge acquired of the spiritual world, either through initiation in a physical body in this life or without this body when we have gone through the gate of death. In a sense, everything is reversed in the spiritual world. I will refer to two characteristics to show how fundamentally different are the spiritual world and the normal sense world. Let us consider our existence in the sense world during waking consciousness from morning until night. The objects we perceive by means of our eyes and ears come to us. Only in the higher realms of life, so to speak, in the spheres of knowledge and art, do we have to exert ourselves to participate in drawing things towards us. Apart from this, in the rest of outer life everything from morning until night that impinges on our senses and our intellect is brought to us. Wherever we go, in the street, in the daily round of life, every moment is filled with impressions, and apart from the exceptions mentioned we make no effort to bring them about. They come about of their own accord. It is different as regards what happens through us in the physical world. Here we have to be active, move from place to place, be on the go. It is an important characteristic of daily life that what is presented to our perception comes to us without our activity. However grotesque it may appear, the opposite is true in the spiritual world. There one cannot be active, one cannot draw anything towards one by moving from one place to another. Nor can one bring anything to one simply by moving a limb—by the movement of a hand, for example. Above all, for something to happen in the spiritual world it is essential that there be absolute calmness of soul. The quieter we are, the more can happen through us in the spiritual world. We simply cannot say that anything happens in the spiritual world as a result of hurry and excitement. We need to develop loving participation in a mood of soul calmness for what is to happen, and then wait patiently to see how things come to pass. This calmness of soul, which in the spiritual world is creative, does not quite have its equal in ordinary physical life. It is similar on higher levels of earthly existence to the sphere of knowledge and of the arts. Here we have something analogous. The artist who cannot wait will not be able to create the highest he is capable of. For this, he needs patience and inner calmness of soul until the right moment dawns, until the intuition comes. One who seeks to create according to a schedule will produce only works of inferior quality. He who seeks to create, be it the smallest work, prompted by an outer stimulus will not succeed as well as if he had waited quietly with loving devotion for the moment of inspiration. We might say for the moment of grace. The same is true of the spiritual world. In it there is no rush and excitement but only calmness of soul. Fundamentally, this must also be the way with the growth of our movement. Propaganda campaigns and a desire to force spiritual science on our fellow men are useless. It is best if we can wait until we meet those who inwardly need to hear about the spirit, who are drawn to it. We should not nurture longings to bring everyone to spiritual science. We shall find that the calmer we are, the more people will come to us, whereas forceful propaganda merely puts people off. Public lectures are held only in order that what has to be said should be said and those who wish to receive what is communicated can do so. Our attitude within our spiritual scientific movement must be a reflection of the spiritual so that what has to happen can happen and is awaited with inner silence. Let us consider an initiate who knew that something was to happen at a particular time out of the spiritual world. I have often drawn attention to an important event that had its origin in the spiritual world but which does not yet reveal itself in a marked way. I refer to the year 1899, the end of the small Kali Yuga. That year brought a certain impulse that was to give mankind the possibility of an inner soul-awakening. In earlier times it was produced by external stimuli from the spiritual world, usually denoted as chance occurrences. I would like to relate a particular instance. In the twelfth century there lived a certain personality named Norbert, who founded an order. At first he led a worldly, dissolute life. Then one day he was struck by lightning. Such events are by no means rare in history. A flash of lightning can have the effect of shaking up the physical and ether bodies. His whole life was changed. Here we have an example of how an outer happening is used by the spiritual world to alter the course of a man's life. Such chance phenomena are not uncommon. They completely shake up the connection between the physical and ether bodies and radically transform the individual concerned. That was the case in this instance. It is not a question of coincidence. Such events are carefully prepared in the spiritual world so as to bring about a change in a person. Since the year 1899, however, such happenings have taken on a more intimate character. They are less outward and the human soul is deepened more and more inwardly. In fact, in order to produce such a universal revolution as that of 1899, not only all the powers and beings of the spiritual world had to cooperate, but also the initiates who lived on earth. They do not say, “Prepare yourselves.” They do not shout it in people's ears, but they act in such a way that the impulse comes from within so that people learn to understand it from within. Then people remain inwardly calm, concern themselves with such thoughts, allow them to work within the soul, and wait. The more quietly such thoughts are carried in the soul, the more strongly such spiritual events occur. The most important thing is to wait the moment of grace, to wait for what will happen to us in the spiritual world. It is different in regard to the acquisition of knowledge in everyday life. Here we have to gather things together to work and exert ourselves in order to obtain it. In the physical world the rose we find along the wayside gladdens us. This would not happen on the spiritual plane. There something similar to a rose would not appear unless we had exerted ourselves to enter a particular realm of the spirit in order to draw it towards us. In fact, what we have to do here to act, we do in the spiritual world in order to know, and what has to happen through us has to be awaited in stillness. Only the higher activities of man, where the spiritual world weaves into the physical, afford a reflection of the events in the spiritual world. That is why it is essential, if one wishes inwardly to understand what is imparted by spiritual science, to develop two qualities of soul. Firstly, love for the spiritual world, which leads to an active grasping of the spirit and is the surest way of enabling us to bring the things of the spirit towards us, and secondly, inner rest, a calmness of soul, a silence free from vanity or ambition anxious to attain results, but capable of receiving grace, able to await inspiration. In actual cases this patient expectation is not easy, but there is a thought that can help us to overcome obstacles. It is difficult to accept because it strikes so deeply against our vanity. This thought is that in the universal pattern it is of no importance whether something happens through us or through another person. This should not deter us from doing everything that has to be done. It should not prevent us from performing our duty, but it should keep us from hurrying to and fro. How glad every individual feels that he is capable, that he can do it. A certain resignation is necessary for us to feel equally glad when someone else can and does do something. One should not love something because one has done it oneself, but love it because it is in the world irrespective of whether he or someone else has done it. If we repeatedly ponder this thought it will lead most certainly to selflessness. Such moods of soul are essential to enter into the spiritual world, not only as an investigator but also to understand what has been discovered. These inner attitudes are far more important than visions, although they, too, have to be present. They are essential because they enable us to evaluate the visions rightly. Visions! One need only mention the word and everybody knows what is meant by it. Actually, the whole of our life after death once kamaloca is over consists of visions. When the human being has gone through the gate of death and kamaloca and then enters the actual spiritual world, he lives in a realm in which it is as if he were surrounded from all sides by mere visions, but visions that are mirror-images of reality. In fact we can say that just as we perceive the physical world by means of colors that the eye conjures forth for us, and sounds mediated by the ear, we experience the spiritual world after death by means of visions in which we are enveloped. Now, as I wish to speak more intimately of these things, I shall have to use a more descriptive form. Certain things may sound rather strange, but that is how they reveal themselves to genuine spiritual investigation. The kamaloca period unfolds as I have described it in my book, Theosophy, but it can be characterized also in a different way. One may for instance ask, “When a person has gone through the gate of death, where does he feel himself to be?” One can answer this question by asking, “Where is man during his kamaloca period?” This can be expressed spatially in words that express our physical world. Imagine the space between the earth and the moon, the spherical space described when the orbit of the moon is taken as the outermost path away from the earth. Then you have the realm in which man, loosened from the earth, dwells during the kamaloca period. It may sound strange, but when the kamaloca period has been completed, a human being leaves this sphere and enters the actual celestial world. Also in this connection, accurate and genuine investigation shows that things are reversed in relation to the physical plane. Here we are bound outwardly to the earth, surrounded by the physical world and separated from the heavenly spheres. After death the earth is separated from us and we are united with the heavenly spheres. As long as we dwell within the Moon sphere we are in kamaloca, which means that we are still longing to be connected with the earth. We proceed beyond it when we have learned through life in kamaloca to forego passions and longings. The sojourn in the spiritual world must be imagined quite differently from what is customary on earth. There we are spread out in space, we feel ourselves in the whole of space. That is why the experience, be it of an initiate or of a person after death, is one of feeling oneself spread out in space, expanding after death (or as an initiate) and being limited by the Moon orbit as by a skin. It is like this and it is of no avail to use words our contemporaries would more easily forgive because by doing so one would not express the facts more correctly. In public lectures such shocking things have to be left out, but for those who have concerned themselves with spiritual science for a longer time it is best to say things plainly. After the life in kamaloca we grow further out into space. This will depend on certain qualities that we have acquired previously on the earth. A long span of our evolution after death, and our ability to expand to the next sphere, is determined by the moral attitude, the ethical concepts and feelings we developed on earth. A person who has developed qualities of compassion and love—qualities that are usually termed moral—lives into the next sphere so that he becomes acquainted with the beings of that sphere. A man who brings a lack of morality into this realm dwells in it like a hermit. It may be best characterized by saying that morality prepared for us living socially together in the spiritual world. We are condemned to a fearful loneliness, filled with a continual longing to get to know others without being able to do so, as a result of a lack of morality in the physical world of the heart as well as of the mind and will. Either as a hermit or as a sociable being who is a blessing in the spiritual world, do we dwell in this second sphere known in occultism as that of Mercury. Today in ordinary astronomy this is known as the Venus sphere. As has often been mentioned, the names have been reversed. Now man's being expands up to the orbits of the morning and the evening stars, whereas previously it expanded only to the Moon. Something strange happens at this point. Until the Moon sphere we are still involved in earthly matters is not entirely severed. We still know what we have done on the earth, what we have thought. Just as here we can remember, so we know there. But recollection may be painful! On earth if we have done a person some injustice or have not loved him as much as we should, we can make up for these feelings. We can go to him and put things right. This is no longer possible from the Mercury sphere onward. We behold the relationships in recollection. They remain but we cannot alter them. Let us assume that a person has died before us. According to the earthly connection we should have loved him, but did not do so as much as we should have done. We meet him again since we were related to him previously because after death we do in fact encounter all the people with whom we were connected. To begin with, this cannot be altered. We reproach ourselves with not having loved him enough, but we are incapable of changing our soul-disposition so as to love him more. What has been established on the earth remains. We cannot alter it. These facts relating to the correct, unchangeable perception of love made a strong impression on me during my recent investigations this summer. Much comes to light that eludes most people. I wanted to convey this to you. One learns to know these strange facts by means of spiritual cognition. One lives in the Mercury sphere in former relationships with people, and they cannot be altered. One looks back and unfolds what one has already developed. Although I have concerned myself a great deal with Homer, yet a particular passage became fully clear only during recent occult investigations when the facts described came powerfully to me. It is the passage in which Homer calls the realm after death, “the land of the shades where nothing can change.” It can be understood by the intellect but what the poet seeks to convey about the spiritual world, how he speaks as a prophet, that one only learns to know when the corresponding discovery has been made by means of spiritual research. This is true of every genuine artist. He need not understand with his everyday consciousness what comes to him in inspiration. What humanity has received through its artists in the course of centuries will not fade because of the spreading of our spiritual movement. On the contrary, art will be deepened and mankind will value all the more its true artists when, as a result of occult investigation, the spiritual realm is reached—the realm out of which the artist has drawn his inspiration. Of course, those who at one time or another have been regarded as important artists but are not truly great will not be singled out. Passing greatness will be recognized for what it is. It contains no inspiration from the spiritual world. The next sphere is termed the Venus sphere in occultism. We now expand our being up to Mercury, which is known as the occult Venus. In this sphere the human being again is strongly influenced by what he brings. He who has something to bring becomes a social being, and he who has nothing to give is condemned to loneliness. A lack of religious inclination is dreadfully painful. The more religious the disposition of soul we have acquired, the more social we become in this sphere. People who lack religious inclination cut themselves off. They cannot move beyond a sheath or shell that surrounds them. Nevertheless, we get to know friends who are hermits, but we cannot reach them. We continually feel as if we have to break through a shell but are incapable of doing so. In the Venus sphere, if we have no religious inwardness, it is as if we were to freeze up. This is followed by a sphere in which, however strange it may appear, the human being, and this is so for everyone after death, expands up to the Sun. In the not too distant future different concepts will be held about the heavenly bodies from those adhered to by astronomy today. We are connected with the Sun. There is a period between death and rebirth when we become Sun beings. But now something further is necessary. In the first sphere we need moral inclination and in the Venus sphere, a religious life. In the Sun sphere it is essential that we truly know the nature and being of the Sun spirits and above all, the ruling Sun Spirit, the Christ, and that we made a connection with Him on earth. When mankind still possessed an ancient clairvoyance, this, with the Christ connection, was established by living into the divine grace of the past. This has vanished and the Mystery of Golgotha, prepared by the Old Testament, was there to bring an understanding of the Sun Being to man. Since the Mystery of Golgotha mankind has naively endeavored to draw towards the Christ. Today this no longer suffices. In our time spiritual science must bring an understanding of the Sun Being to the world. It was clearly understood for the first time during the Middle Ages when the Grail Saga found its deeper origin in Europe. Through the understanding given by means of spiritual science what was brought by the lofty Sun Spirit, by the Christ, the Christ Who came down and through the Mystery of Golgotha has become the Spirit of the earth will be retrieved. The impulse given by the Mystery of Golgotha is destined through spiritual science to unite all religious creeds in peace over the whole earth. It remains the basic challenge of spiritual science to treat all religions with equal attention without giving preference to any of them for outer reasons. Because we place the Mystery of Golgotha at the fulcrum of world evolution, our movement is accused of giving a preference to the Christian religion. Yet this accusation is quite unjustified. Let us understand how matters really stand with such accusations. If a Buddhist or Brahman were to accuse us of this we would say, “Is the only issue what is to be found in sacred writings? Providing one does not reject a religion, is what is not to be found in its books to the detriment of a religion? Cannot every Buddhist accept the Copernican system and yet remain a Buddhist?” To be able to do so is a sign of progress for humanity at large. So is the knowledge that the Mystery of Golgotha stands in the center of the evolution of the world, irrespective of whether it is mentioned in ancient writings or not. If we understand the Mystery of Golgotha, and realize what happened there, then in the Sun sphere we become sociable spirits. As soon as we have gone beyond the Moon sphere, we are spiritually surrounded by visions. On encountering a deceased friend after death we meet him in the form of a vision, but he dwells in this reality. They are visions, nevertheless, built up on the basis of recollections of what we have done on earth. Later, beyond the Moon sphere, this is still the case but now the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies illumine us. It is as if the Sun rose and irradiated the clouds in the Sun sphere. Just as we only learn to know the spiritual hierarchies in the Mercury sphere if we have a religious inclination, so in the Sun sphere we must be permeated by a Jehovah-Christian mood of soul. The outer spiritual beings approach us. Again something remarkable occurs, confirmed by objective occult research. Beyond the Moon the human being is like a cloud woven out of spirit, and when he enters the Mercury sphere, he is illumined by spiritual beings. That is why the Greeks called Mercury the messenger of the Gods. In this sphere lofty spiritual beings illumine man. We gather mighty impressions when we unfold out of the realm of occult investigation what has been given to humanity in the form of art and mythology. So, Christ-filled, we live into the Sun sphere. As we proceed we enter into a realm where the Sun is now below us, as previously was the earth. We look back towards the Sun, and this is the beginning of something strange. We become aware that we have to recognize yet another being, the spirit of Lucifer. The nature of Lucifer cannot be rightly evaluated after death unless we have previously done so by means of spiritual science or initiation. It is only when we arrive beyond the Sun sphere that we recognize him as he was before he became Lucifer, when he was still a brother of Christ. Lucifer changed only in the course of time because he remained behind and severed himself from the stream of cosmic progress. His harmful influence does not extend beyond the Sun sphere. Above this there is still another sphere where Lucifer can unfold his activity as it was before the severance. He does not unfold anything harmful there, and if we have united ourselves rightly with the Mystery of Golgotha, we journey onward led by Christ and are rightly received by Lucifer into yet further spheres of the universe. The name Lucifer was correctly chosen, as indeed names were wisely given in olden times. The Sun is below us and so is the light of the Sun. Now we need a new light-bearer who illumines our path into the universe. Thus, we arrive in the Mars sphere. As long as we dwelt below the Sun, we gazed towards the Sun. The Sun is now below us, and we look out into the widths of universal space. We experience the widths of universal space through what is often referred to but little understood as the harmony of the spheres, a kind of spiritual music. The visions in which we are enveloped hold less and less significance for us. Increasingly what we hear spiritually grows meaningful. The heavenly bodies do not appear as they do in earthly astronomy that measures their relative speeds. In fact, the faster or slower sounding together produces the tones of the music of the spheres. Inwardly the human being feels increasingly that only what he has received of the spirit on earth remains for him in this sphere. This enables him to make the acquaintance of the beings of this sphere and retain his sociability. People who cut themselves off from the spiritual nowadays cannot enter the spiritual world in spite of their moral inclination and religious disposition. Nothing can be done about it, although it is of course possible that such people draw near to the spirit in the next incarnation. Without exception all materialistically inclined people become hermits once they have gone beyond the Sun into the Mars sphere. It may sound foolish, yet it is true that the Monistic Union will not survive once its adherents have reached the Sun sphere because, as each of them is a hermit, they cannot possibly meet. A person who has acquired spiritual understanding on earth will have yet another experience on Mars. As we are speaking more intimately today, I shall relate it. The question can be put within our own world conception that we develop as spiritual science in the western world. What has happened to Buddha since his last earthly incarnation? I have mentioned this on previous occasions. Buddha lived as Gautama during his last incarnation six hundred years B.C. If you have studied my lectures carefully you will recall that he has worked since on another occasion when he did not incarnate as Buddha, but only worked spiritually at the birth of the Luke Christ-child. Spiritually he sent his influence from higher spheres unto the earth. But where is he? In Sweden at Norrköping I drew attention to yet another influence of the Buddha on the earth. During the eighth century at a Mystery Center in Europe on the Black Sea, Buddha lived spiritually in one of his disciples. This disciple was later to become Francis of Assisi. So Francis of Assisi was in his previous incarnation a pupil of Buddha and absorbed all the qualities necessary for him to work later in the extraordinary way he did. In many respects his followers cannot be distinguished from those of Buddha, except that the ones were disciples of Buddha and others were Christian. This was due to the fact that in his previous incarnation he was a pupil of Buddha, of the spiritual Buddha. But where is the actual Buddha, the one who lived as Gautama? He became for Mars what Christ has become for the earth. He accomplished a kind of Mystery of Golgotha for Mars and brought about the extraordinary redemption of the Mars inhabitants. He dwells there among them. His earthly life was the right preparation in order to redeem the Mars inhabitants, but his redeeming deed was not quite like the Mystery of Golgotha. It was somewhat different. Spiritually, man lives in the Mars sphere as indicated. Then he proceeds further and lives into the Jupiter sphere. His connection with the earth, which up until now still continued slightly, has become quite meaningless. The Sun still has a limited influence on him, but now the Cosmos begins to work powerfully upon him. Everything is now working from outside, and man receives cosmic influences. The entire Cosmos works through the harmony of the spheres, which assumes even other forms the further we investigate life between death and rebirth. It is not easy to characterize the change that occurs in the harmony of the spheres. As it cannot be expressed in words, we may use an analogy. The harmony of the spheres transforms itself in the passage from Mars to Jupiter as orchestral music would change into choral music. Jupiter as orchestral music would change into choral music. It becomes increasingly tone, filled with meaning, expressive of its actual being. The harmony of the spheres receives content as we ascend into the sphere of Jupiter, and in the Saturn sphere full content is bestowed upon it as the expression of the Cosmic Word out of which everything has been created and which is found in the Gospel of St. John, “In the beginning was the Word.” In this Word cosmic order and cosmic wisdom sound forth. Now the one who is prepared proceeds into other spheres—the spiritual person farther, the less spiritual not so far—but he comes into quite a different condition from the previous one. One might characterize it thus. Beyond Saturn a spiritual sleep begins, whereas during the previous stages one was spiritually awake. From now onward consciousness is dimmed, man dwells in a benumbed condition that makes it possible for him to undergo still other experiences. Just as in sleep we do away with tiredness and gather new forces, so as a result of the dimming of consciousness, when we have become a fully expanded spatial sphere, spiritual forces stream in from the cosmos. First we have sensed it, then we have heard it as a universal orchestra. Then it has sung forth and we have perceived it as the Word. Then we fall asleep and it penetrates us. During this period we again travel through all the spheres, but with a dimmed consciousness. Our consciousness becomes ever dimmer. We now contract, quickly or slowly according to our karma, and during this process of contraction we come once more under the influence of the forces emanating from the Sun system. We journey back from sphere to sphere through the cosmos. Now we are not sensitive to influence from the Moon sphere. We proceed, unaffected, unhampered, as it were, and continue to contract until we unite ourselves with the small human germ that goes through its development before birth. Unless physiology and embryology receive their facts from occult investigation, they cannot contain the truth, for the embryo is a reflection of the vast cosmos. The whole cosmos is carried within it. The human being carries as a potential power within him what happens physically between conception and birth, and also what he undergoes during the period of cosmic sleep. Here we touch upon a wonderful mystery. It actually only has been indicated or portrayed in our time by artists. In the future it will be understood better. We shall come to experience what really lives in the Tristan story, in the Tristan mood. We shall understand that the whole cosmos streams into the love of Tristan and Isolde, and we shall recognize it truly as the course of man's development between death and rebirth. What has been gathered from the cosmos, from Saturn, influences lovers who are brought together. Many things are turned into cosmic events. They should not be analyzed intellectually, but we should experience what connects man truly to the whole cosmos. That is why spiritual science will certainly succeed in developing a new sense of devotion, a true religion in people, because it will be understood that often the smallest things have their origin in the cosmos. We learn rightly and wisely to relate what lives in the human breast to its origin when we consider its connection with the cosmos. Thus, from spiritual science an impulse can pour out for the whole of life, for the whole of mankind, towards a really new attitude that has to come. Artists have prepared it, but a true understanding must be created first through a spiritual inclination. I wanted to convey these indications on the basis of renewed, intimate investigations of the life of man between death and rebirth. There is nothing in spiritual science that will not also move us in our deepest feelings. When rightly understood nothing remains a mere abstract representation. The flower we behold gives more joy to us than when the botanist tears it to shreds. The far distant starry world can evoke a vague sensing in us, but the reality only dawns when we are able to ascend into the heavenly spheres with our soul. We rob the plant by our dissection, but not the starry world when we ascend beyond the plant and recognize how the spirit is related to it. Kant made the remarkable utterance of a man who understands morality in a one-sided way. Two things moved him deeply—the starry heavens above and the moral law within. Both are really the same. We only gather them into us out of heavenly realms. If we are born with a moral inclination, it means that on the return journey during the condition of sleep the Mercury sphere was able to bestow much upon us. It was the Venus sphere, if we are endowed with religious feelings. As every morning on earth we awaken strengthened and refreshed with new forces, so we are strengthened by the forces given by the cosmos, and we receive them in accordance with our karma. The cosmos can bestow forces that are predispositions from birth inasmuch as karma will allow. Life between death and rebirth falls into two parts. To begin with it is unalterable. We ascend, the beings approach us. We enter into a condition of sleep and then change can occur. The forces now enter with which we are born. Considering the evolution of man in this way, we see that the human being after death first lives in a world of visions. He only learns to recognize later what he really is as a soul-spiritual being. Beings approach us from outside and they illumine us as the golden light of the morning illuminates the things of the outer world. Thus we ascend and the spiritual world penetrates into us. We do not live into the spiritual world from outside until we have become mature enough to experience what we are in our visionary world, until we encounter the beings of the spiritual world who approach us from all sides like rays. Transfer yourself into the spiritual world as if you could behold it. There a man emerges, in the form of a visionary cloud, as he truly is. Then the beings can approach and illumine him from outside. We cannot see the rose when it is dark. We switch on the light and because the light falls on the rose we can see it as it really is. So it is when the human being ascends into the spiritual world. The light of spiritual beings draws near to him. But there is one moment when he is clearly visible, illumined by the light of the Hierarchies so that he reflects back the whole of the outer world. The entire cosmos now appears as if reflected by man. You can imagine the process. First you live on as a cloud that is not sufficiently illumined, then you ray back the light of the cosmos and then you dissolve. There is a moment when man reflects back the cosmic light. Up to this point he can ascend. Dante says in his Divine Comedy that in a particular part of the spiritual world one beholds God as man. This is to be taken literally, otherwise it would not make any sense at all. One can of course accept it as a beautiful thought, as aesthetes do, and fail to understand its inner content. This is again an instance where we find the spiritual world mirrored in the works of great artists and poets. This is also the case with the great musicians of more recent times, in a Beethoven, a Wagner and Bruckner. It can happen with one as it did with me a few days ago, when I had to resist a certain piece of knowledge because it was too astonishing. In Florence we find the Medici Chapel where Michelangelo created two memorial statues to the Medici and four allegorical figures representing “Day” and “Night,” “Dawn” and “Dusk.” One easily speaks about a cold allegory, but when one looks at these four figures they appear anything but a cold allegory. One of the figures represents “Night.” Actually, research in this domain is not particularly enlightened, for you will find it mentioned everywhere that of the two Medici statues depicting Lorenzo and Giuliano, Lorenzo is the thinker. But occult investigation has confirmed that the opposite is true. The one said to be Lorenzo by art historians is Giuliano, and vice versa. This can be proved historically with reference to the natures of the two personalities. The statues rest on pedestals, and it is likely that in the course of time they have been interchanged. But this is not really what I wanted to say. I only draw your attention to this to show that in this respect outer research misses the mark! The figure “Night” can be made the object of a fine artistic study. The gesture, the position of the resting body with the head supported by the hand, the arm placed on the leg—in fact the whole arrangement of the figure can be studied artistically. We can sum it up by saying that if one wished to portray the human etheric body in its full activity, then one could only represent it in the form of this figure. That is the outer gesture expressing a human being at rest. When man sleeps, the etheric body is most active. In the figure of “Night” Michelangelo has created the corresponding position. This reclining figure represents the most expressive portrayal of the active etheric or life body. Now let us go over to “Day” which lies on the opposite side. This represents the most perfect expression of the ego; the figure “Dawn,” of the astral body; “Twilight,” of the physical body. These are not allegories, but truths taken from life, immortalized with remarkable artistic penetration. I kept away from this knowledge, but the more accurately I studied it, the clearer it became. I am no longer astonished at the legend that originated in Florence at the time. It tells that Michelangelo had power over “Night” and when he was alone with her in the Chapel she would stand up and walk about. As she represents the etheric body, it is not surprising. I only mention this in order to show how clear and intelligible everything becomes the more we view it from the aspect of occultism. The greatest contribution to the development of spiritual life and culture will be accomplished when human beings meet in such a way that each presupposes and then senses the occultly hidden in the other. Then will the right relationship be established from man to man, and love will permeate the soul in a truly human way. Man will meet man in such a way that one will sense the sacred mystery of the other. It is only in such a relationship that the right feelings of love can be cultivated. Spiritual science will not have to stress continually the outer cultivation of general human love, but it will receive by way of genuine knowledge the power of love in the soul of man. |
140. Life Between Death and Rebirth: The Working of Karma in Life After Death
15 Dec 1912, Bern Tr. René M. Querido Rudolf Steiner |
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One learns to understand the world of the senses only if one grasps how the spirit works into sensible reality. There is a beautiful saying by Kant. He says, “There are two things that have made a specially deep impression on me, the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” |
140. Life Between Death and Rebirth: The Working of Karma in Life After Death
15 Dec 1912, Bern Tr. René M. Querido Rudolf Steiner |
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We are celebrating today the fifth anniversary of the Bern Branch. It is also the first occasion on which we have gathered in this room. Let us hope it will offer a worthy frame for our spiritual work and striving in this city. The fact that we are able to hold our more intimate meetings surrounded by such architectural forms as these is of significance for our spiritual endeavors. We know that in a number of different places such rooms are striven for and already exist. In view of the twofold festive nature of this event, it is appropriate to say a few introductory words about the significance of such forms. In our strivings we repeatedly come to a threefoldness in one or the other direction that may be termed the sacred triad. We discover it expressed in the human soul as thinking, feeling and willing. If we consider thinking we shall find that in our thinking activity we have to direct ourselves according to objective necessities. If we fail to do so, whether in thinking about the things of the physical plan or about spiritual things, we shall commit the error of not reaching the truth. In relation of our will, also, we must orient ourselves according to certain external moral precepts. Here, too, we have to act according to necessities. In fact, with regard to both our thinking and our willing the necessities of higher realms play into the physical world. Man feels truly free only in the realm of his feelings. It is quite different from thinking and willing. We feel most at home in the sphere of feeling and sensation when we are compelled neither by thinking nor by willing, but can surrender to what is purely felt. Why is this so? We sense that our thinking is connected with something, is dependent. We likewise feel a dependency in our willing. In our feelings, however, we are completely ourselves and there we live completely within our own soul, as it were. Why is this so? It is because ultimately our feelings are a mirror picture of a power that lies far beyond our consciousness. Thoughts must be considered as images of what they represent. We must so develop our will that it expresses our duties and responsibilities. In the sphere of feeling we can freely experience what speaks to our soul because, occultly considered, feelings are a mirror image of a realm that does not enter our consciousness. It lies beyond our consciousness and is of a divine spiritual nature. We might say that the gods seek to educate mankind through thinking and willing. Through feeling the gods allow us to participate in their own creative working, though in a mysterious way. In feeling we have something immediately present in our own souls in which the gods themselves delight. Now by means of forms as they have been created here, our studies can be accompanied by feelings that draw us closer to the spiritual worlds. This intimacy with the spiritual world must be the result of all our considerations. That is why we can attach a certain importance to such surrounding forms and seek to penetrate what they can mean for us. We look in all directions and feel the power of light and color, which for us can become a revelation of what lives in the spiritual world. What we have to say certainly also can be understood in the barren, dreadful halls unfortunately so prevalent everywhere today. But a real warmth of soul can only come about in spiritual studies when we are surrounded by forms such as these. That this can be so after the first five years of our work here in Bern may be looked upon as the good karma that blesses and accompanies our activities. Therefore, we shall devote this occasion that is festive in a twofold way to considering the significance of spiritual science, of a spiritual knowledge, for modern man. Much that will be considered today has been spoken about previously but we shall discuss it from new aspects. The spiritual worlds can only become fully intelligible if we consider them from the more varied viewpoints. Life between death and a new birth has been described in many different ways. Today our considerations will deal with much that has concerned me recently in the sphere of spiritual investigation. We remember that as soon as we have gone through the gate of death we experience the kamaloca period during which we are still intimately connected with our feelings and emotions, with all the aspects of our soul life in the last earthly embodiment. We gradually free ourselves from this connection. Indeed, we no longer have a physical body after death. Yet, when the physical and etheric bodies have been laid aside, our astral body still possesses all the peculiarities it had on earth, and these peculiarities of the astral body, which is acquired because it lived in a physical body, also have to be laid aside. This requires a certain time and that marks the period of kamaloca. The kamaloca period is followed by experiences in the spiritual world or devachan. In our writings it has been characterized more from the aspect of what man experiences through the different elements spread out around him. We shall now consider the period between death and a new birth from another side. Let us begin with a general survey. When man has gone through the gate of death he has the following experience. During life on earth he is enclosed within his skin, and outside is space with things and beings. This is not so after death. Our whole being expands and we feel that we are becoming ever larger. The feeling of being here in my skin with space and surrounding things out there is an experience that we do not have after death. After death we are inside objects and beings. We expand within a definite spatial area. During the kamaloca period we are continually expanding, and when this expansion reaches its end, we are as large as the space within the orbit of the moon. The fact of dwelling within space, of being concentrated in one point, has quite a different meaning after death than during physical existence. All the souls who dwell simultaneously in kamaloca fill out the same space circumscribed by the orbit of the moon. They interpenetrate one another. Yet this interpenetration does not mean togetherness. The feeling of being together is determined by quite other factors than filling a common spatial area. It is possible for two souls who are within the same space after death to be quite distant from one another. Their experience may be such that they need not know of one another's existence. Other souls, on the other hand, might have close, intimate connections and sense each other's presence. This depends entirely on inner relationships and has nothing to do with external spatial connections. In later phases when kamaloca has come to an end, we penetrate into still vaster realms. We expand ever more. When the kamaloca phase draws to a close, man leaves behind him as if removed everything that during his physical existence was the expression of his propensities, longings and desires for earthly life. Man must experience all this but he must also relinquish it in the Moon sphere or kamaloca. As man lives on after death, and later recalls the experiences in the Moon sphere, he will find all his earthly emotions and passions inscribed there, that is, everything that developed in his soul life as a result of his positive attraction to the bodily nature. This is left behind in the Moon sphere and there it remains. It cannot be erased so easily. We carry it with us as an impulse but it remains inscribed in the Moon sphere. The account of the debts, as it were, owing by every person is recorded in the Moon sphere. As we expand farther we enter a second realm that is called the Mercury sphere in occultism. We shall not represent it diagrammatically, but the Mercury sphere is larger than the Moon sphere. We enter this sphere after death in the most varied ways. It can be accurately investigated by means of spiritual science. A person who in life had an immoral or limited moral disposition lives into the Mercury sphere in a completely different way from one who was morally inclined. In the Mercury sphere the former is unable to find those people who die[d] at the same time, shortly before or after he did, and who are in the spiritual world. He so enters into the spiritual world that he is unable to find the loved ones with whom he longs to be together. People who lack a moral disposition of soul on earth become hermits in the Mercury sphere. The morally inclined person, however, becomes what one might call a sociable being. There he will find above all the people with whom he had a close inner connection on earth. This determines whether one is together with someone. It depends not on spatial relations, for we all fill the same space, but on our soul inclinations. We become hermits when we bring an unmoral disposition with us, and sociable beings, if we possess a moral inclination. We encounter other difficulties in connection with sociability in the Moon sphere during kamaloca but by and large whether a man becomes a hermit or a sociable being there also depends on the disposition of his soul. A thorough-going egoist on earth, one who only indulged his urges and passions, will not easily find in the Moon sphere the people with whom he was connected on earth. A man who has loved passionately, however, even if it were only physically, will nevertheless not find himself completely alone, but will find other individuals with whom he was connected. In both these spheres it is generally not possible to find human beings apart from those with whom one has been connected on earth. Others remain unknown to us. The condition for meeting other people is that we must have been with them on earth. Whether or not we find ourselves with them depends on the moral factor. Although they lead to a connection with those we have known on earth, even moral strivings will not carry us much farther beyond this realm. Relationships to the people we meet after death are characterized by the fact that they cannot be altered. We should picture it as follows. During life on earth we always have the possibility of changing a relationship with a fellow man. Let us suppose that over a period of time we have not loved someone as he deserved. The moment we become aware of this we can love him rightly, if we have the strength. We lack this possibility after death. Then when we encounter a person we perceive far more clearly than on earth whether we have loved him too little or unfairly, but we can do nothing to change it. It has to remain as it is. Life connections bear the peculiar quality of a certain constancy. Because they are of a lasting nature, an impulse is formed in the soul by means of which order is brought into karma. If we have loved a person insufficiently over a period of fifteen years, we shall become aware of it after death. It is during our experience of this that we bring about the impulse to act differently in our next incarnation on earth. We thereby create the impulse and the will for karmic compensation. That is the technique of karma. Above all, we should be clear about one thing. During the early phases of life after death, namely during the Moon and Mercury periods (and also during subsequent periods that will shortly be described), we dwell in the spiritual world in such a way that our spiritual life depends on how we lived on earth in the physical world. It not only is a question of our earthly consciousness. Our unconscious impulses also play a part. In our normal waking state on earth we live in our ego. Below the ego-consciousness lies the astral consciousness, the subconscious sphere. The workings of this sphere are sometimes different from our normal ego-consciousness without our being aware of it. Let us take an actual example that occurs quite frequently. Two people are on the friendliest of terms with each other. One develops an appreciation for spiritual science while the other, who previously appeared quite complacent towards it, comes to hate spiritual science. This animosity need not pervade the whole soul. It may only be lodged in the person's ego-consciousness, not in his astral consciousness. As far as his astral consciousness is concerned, the person who feeds his animosity still further might in fact have a longing and a love for the spirit of which he is unaware. This is quite possible. There are contradictions of this kind in human nature. If a person investigates his astral consciousness, his subconscious, he might well find a concealed sympathy for what in his waking consciousness he professes to hate. This is of particular importance after death because then, in this respect, man becomes truly himself. A person may have brought himself to hate spiritual science during a lifetime, to reject it and everything connected with it, and yet he may have a love for it in his subconscious. He may have a burning desire for spiritual science. The fact of not knowing and being unable to form thoughts of his memories can result in acute suffering during the period of kamaloca because during the first phase after death man lives mainly in his recollections. His existence is then not only determined by the sorrow and also the joy of what lives in his ego-consciousness. What has developed in the subconscious also plays a part. Thus man becomes truly as he really is. Here we can see that spiritual science rightly understood is destined to work fruitfully in all spheres of life. A person who has gone through the gate of death is unable to bring about any change in his relation to those around him, and the same is true of the others in relation to him. An immutability in the connections has set in. But a sphere of change does remain that is in the relationship of the dead to the living. Inasmuch as they have had a relationship on earth with those who have died, the living are the only ones who can soothe the pain and alleviate the anguish of those who have gone through the gate of death. In many cases such as these, reading to the dead has proved fruitful. A person has died. During his lifetime for [one] reason or another he did not concern himself with spiritual science. The one who remains behind on earth can know by means of spiritual science that the deceased has a burning thirst for spiritual science. Now if the one who remains behind concerns himself with thoughts of a spiritual nature as if the dead were there with him, he performs a great service to him. We can actually read to the dead. That enables the gulf that exists between the living and the dead to be bridged. The two worlds, the physical and the spiritual, are severed by materialism. Consider how their union will take hold of life itself! When spiritual science does not remain mere theory but becomes a life impulse as it should, there will not be separation but immediate communication. By reading to the dead we can enter in immediate connection with them and help them. The one who has avoided spiritual science will continue to feel the anguish of longing for it unless we help him. We can assist him from the earth if such a longing is at all present. By this means the living can help the dead. It also is possible for the dead to be perceived by the living, although in our time the living do little to bring about such connections. Also in this respect spiritual science will take hold of life, will become a true life elixir. To understand in which way the dead can influence the living let us take the following as our starting point. What does man know about the world? Remarkably little if we only consider the things of the physical plane with mere waking consciousness. Man is aware of what happens out there in front of his senses and what he can construe by means of his intellect in relation to these happenings. Of all else he is ignorant. In general he believes that he cannot know anything apart from what he observes by means of sense perception. But there is much else that does not happen and yet is of considerable importance. What does this mean? Let us assume that we are in the habit of going to work at eight o'clock every morning. On one occasion, however, we are delayed by five minutes. Apart from the fact that we arrive five minutes late nothing unusual has happened apparently. Yet, upon closer consideration of all the elements involved, we might become aware that precisely on that day, if we had left at the correct time we would have been run over. That means that had we left at the right time we would no longer be alive. Or what is also possible and might have occurred is that a person might have been prevented by a friend from sailing on the Titanic. He might feel that had he sailed he surely would have been drowned! That this was karmically planned is another matter. But do think, when you consider life in this way, of how little you are in fact aware. If nothing of what might have taken place has happened, then you are simply unaware of it. People do not pay attention to the countless possibilities that exist in the world of actual events. You might say that surely this is of no importance. For the outer events it matters little, yet it is of importance that you were not killed. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that we might have known that there was a high probability of being killed. If, for instance, we had not missed the train that was involved in a major accident. One cannot mention all possible cases and yet they happen constantly on a small scale. Certainly, for the external course of events we only need know what can be observed. Let us assume that we definitely know that something would have happened had we not missed the train. Such a knowledge makes an inner impression on us, and we might say that we have been saved in a remarkable way by good fortune. Consider the many possibilities that confront people. How much richer would our soul lives be if we could know all the things that play into life and yet do not happen! Today people only consider the poverty-stricken sequence of what has actually occurred. It is as if one were to consider a field with its many ears of wheat and reflect that from it a relatively small number of seeds will be sown. Countless others will not sprout and will go in another direction. What might happen to us is related to what actually occurs as the many grains of wheat that do not sprout are related to those that sprout and carry ears. This is literally so, for the possibilities in life are infinite. Moments in which especially important things for us in the world of probability are taking place are also particularly favorable moments for the dead to draw near. Let us suppose that a person left five minutes early, and as a result his life was preserved. At a particular moment he was saved from an accident, or it might also happen that in such a manner a joyful event escaped him. A dream picture that imparts a message from the dead can enter life at such moments. But people live crudely. As a rule, the finer influences that constantly play into life go unheeded. In this respect, spiritual science refines the feelings and sensations. As a result, man will sense the influence of the dead and will experiences a connection with him. The gulf between the living and the dead is bridged by spiritual science that becomes a true life elixir. The next sphere after death is the so-called Venus sphere. In this sphere we become hermits if on earth we have had an irreligious disposition. We become sociable spirits if we bring a religious inclination with us. Inasmuch as in the physical world we are able to feel our devotion to the Holy Spirit, so in the Venus sphere shall we find all those of a like inclination towards the divine spiritual. Men are grouped according to religious and philosophic trends in the Venus sphere. On earth it is so that both religious striving and religious experience still play a dominant part. In the Venus sphere the grouping is purely according to religious confession and philosophic outlook. Those who share the same world-conception are together in large, powerful communities in the Venus sphere. They are not hermits. Only those are hermits who have not been able to develop any religious feeling and experience. For instance, the monists, the materialists of our age, will not be sociable, but lonely beings. Each one will be as if encaged in the Venus sphere. There can be no question of a Monistic Union because by virtue of the monistic conception each member is condemned to loneliness. The fact that each is locked in his cage has not been thought out. It is mentioned so that souls may be brought to an awareness of reality as compared to the fanciful theories of monism that have been elaborated on earth. In general we can say that we come together with those of the same world-conception, of the same faith as ourselves. Other confessions are hard to understand in the Venus sphere. This is followed by the Sun sphere. Only what bridges the differences between the various religious confessions can help us in the Sun sphere. People do not find it easy to throw bridges from one confession to another because they are so entrenched in their own views. A real understanding for one who thinks and feels differently is particularly difficult. In theory such an understanding is often claimed, but matters are quite different when it is a question of putting theory into practice. One finds, for instance, that many who belong to the Hindu religion speak of a common kernel in all religions. They in fact, however, only refer to the common kernel of the Hindu and Buddhist religions. The adherents of the Hindu and Buddhist religions speak in terms of a particular egoism. They are caught in a group egoism. One might insert here a beautiful Estonian legend about group egoism that tells of the origin of languages. God wished to bestow the gift of language on humanity by means of fire. A great fire was to be kindled and the different languages were to come about by having men listen to the peculiarities of the sounds of the fire. So the Godhead called all the peoples of the earth to assemble so that each might learn its language. Prior to the gathering, however, God gave preference to the Estonians and taught them the divine-spiritual language, a loftier mode of speech. Then the others drew near and were allowed to listen to how the fire was burning, and as they heard it they learned to understand the various sounds. Certain peoples preferred by the Estonians came first when the fire was still burning quite strongly. When the fire was reaching its end the Germans had their turn, for the Estonians are not particularly fond of the Germans. In the feebly crackling fire one heard, “Deitsch, peitsch; deitsch, peitsch” (German, whip). Then followed the Lapps of whom the Estonians are even less fond. One only heard, “Lappen latchen” (Lapp, lash). By that time the fire was reduced to mere ashes, and the Lapps, brought forth the worst language of all because the Estonians and the Lapps are deadly enemies. Such is the extent of the Estonians' group egoism. A similar group egoism is true of most peoples when they speak of penetrating to the essential core common to all religious creeds. In this respect, Christianity is absolutely not the same as all the other creeds. If, for example, the attitude in the West was comparable to that toward the Hindu religion, then old Wotan still would reign as a national god. The West has not acknowledged a ruling divinity to be found within its own area, but one outside it. That is an important difference between it and the Hinduism and Buddhism. In many respects, Western Christianity is not permeated by religious egoism. Religiously it is more selfless than the Eastern religions. This is also the reason why a true knowledge and experience of the Christ impulse can bring man to a right connection with his fellow men, irrespective of the confessions they acknowledge. In the Sun sphere between death and rebirth it is really a matter of an understanding that enables us not only to come together with those of a like confession, but also to form a relationship with mankind as a whole. If sufficiently broadly understood in its connection with the Old Testament religion, Christianity is not one-sided. Attention has been drawn previously to something of considerable importance that should be recognized. You will recall that one of the most beautiful sayings of Christ, “Ye are Gods,” is reminiscent of the Old Testament. Christ points to the fact that a divine spark, a god dwells in every human being. You are all Gods; you will be on a par with the Gods. It is a lofty teaching of Christ that points man to his divine nature, that he can become like God. You can become God-like, a wonderful and deeply moving teaching of Christ! Another being has used the same words, and it is indicative of the Christian faith that another being has done so. At the opening of the Old Testament Lucifer approaches man. He takes his starting point—and therein lies the temptation—with the words, “You shall be as Gods.” Lucifer at the beginning of the temptation in Paradise and later Christ Jesus use the same words! We touch here upon one of the deepest and most important aspects of Christianity because this indicates that it is not merely a matter of the content of the words, but of which being in the cosmic context utters them. In the last Mystery Drama it had to be shown that the same words have a totally different meaning according to whether spoke by Lucifer, Ahriman or the Christ. We touch here upon a deep cosmic mystery, and it is important that we should develop an understanding for the words, “Ye are Gods” and “Ye shall be as Gods,” uttered on one occasion by the Christ, on the other by Lucifer. We must consider that between death and rebirth we also dwell in the Sun sphere where a thorough understanding of the Christ impulse is essential. We must bring this understanding along with us from the earth, for Christ once did dwell in the Sun but, as we know, He descended from the Sun and united Himself with the earth. We have to carry Him up to the Sun period, and then we can become sociable beings through the Christ impulse and learn to understand Him in the sphere of the Sun. We must learn to discriminate between Christ and Lucifer, and in our time this is only possible by means of anthroposophy. The understanding of Christ that we bring with us from the earth leads us as far as the Sun sphere. There it acts as a guide, so to speak, from man to man, irrespective of creed or confession. But we encounter another being in the Sun sphere who utters words that have virtually the same content. That being is Lucifer. We must have acquired on earth an understanding of the difference between Christ and Lucifer, for Lucifer is now to accompany us through the further spheres between death and rebirth. So you see, we go through the Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Sun spheres. In each sphere we meet, to begin with, what corresponds to the inner forces that we bring with us. Our emotions, urges, passions, sensual love, unite us to the Moon sphere. In the Mercury sphere we meet everything that is due to our moral imperfections; in the Venus sphere all our religious shortcomings; in the Sun sphere, everything that severs us from the purely human. Now we proceed to other spheres that the occultists terms the spheres of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Here Lucifer is our guide and we enter into a realm that bestows new forces upon us. Just as here we have the earth below us, so there in the cosmos we have the Sun below us. We grow into the divine-spiritual world, and as we do so we must hold fast in memory what we have brought with us of the Christ impulse. We can only acquire this on earth and the more deeply we have done so, the farther we can carry it into the cosmos. Now Lucifer draws near to us. He leads us out into a realm we must cross in order to be prepared for a new incarnation. There is one thing we cannot dispense with unless Lucifer is to become a threat to us, and that is the understanding of the Christ impulse, of what we have heard about Christ during our life on earth. Lucifer approaches us out of his own accord during the period between birth and death, but Christ must be received during earthly life. We then grow into the other spheres beyond the Sun. We become ever larger, so to speak. Below us we have the Sun and above, the mighty, vast expanse of the Starry heavens. We grow into the great cosmic realm up to a certain boundary, and as we grow outward cosmic forces work upon us from all directions. We receive forces from the mighty world of the stars into our widespread being. We reach a boundary, then we begin to contract and enter again into the realms through which we have traveled previously. We go through the Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon spheres until we come again into the neighborhood of the earth and everything that has been carried out in the cosmic expanse has concentrated itself again in an embryo borne by an earthly mother. This is the mystery of man's nature between death and a new birth. After he has gone through the gate of death he expands ever more from the small space of the earth to the realms of Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. We have then grown into cosmic space, like giant spheres. After we as souls have received the forces of the universe, of the stars, we contract again and carry the forces of the starry world within us. This explains out of spiritual science how in the concentrated brain structure an imprint of the total starry heavens may be found. In fact, our brain does contain an important secret. We have yet another mystery. Man has gathered himself together, incarnated in a physical body to which he comes by way of his parents. He has journeyed so far during his expansion in cosmic space that he has recorded his particular characteristics there. As we gaze from the earth upward to the heavens, there are not only stars but also our characteristics from previous incarnations. If, for instance, we were ambitious in previous earth lives, then this ambition is recorded in the starry world. It is recorded in the Akasha Chronicle, and when you are here on the earth at a particular spot, this ambition comes to you with the corresponding planet in a certain position and makes its influence felt. That accounts for the fact that astrologers do not merely consider the stars and their motions but will tell you that here is your vanity, there is your ambition, your moral failing, your indolence; something you have inscribed into the stars is now working out of the starry worlds onto the earth and determines your destiny. What lives in our souls is recorded in the vastness of space and it works back from space during our life on earth as we journey here between birth and death. If we truly understand them, these matters touch us closely, and they enable us to explain many things. I have concerned myself a great deal with Homer. Last summer during my investigations into the conditions between death and rebirth I came upon the immutability of the connections after death. Here, in a particular passage, I had to say to myself that the Greeks called Homer the blind poet because he was such a great seer. Homer mentions that life after death takes place in a land where there is no change. A wonderfully apt description! One only learns to understand this through the occult mysteries. The more one strives in this direction, the more one realizes that the ancient poets were the greatest seers and that much that is secretly interwoven in their works requires a considerable amount of understanding. I would like to mention something that happened to me last autumn and which is quite characteristic. At first, I resisted it because it was so astonishing, but it is one of those cases where objectivity wins. In Florence we find the tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici by Michelangelo. The two brothers are portrayed together with four allegorical figures. These figures are well known, but at a first visit it occurred to me that something was not quite right with this group. It was clear to me that the one described as Giuliano is Lorenzo, and vice versa. The figures, which can be removed, had obviously been interchanged on some occasion and it has gone unheeded. That is why the statue of Giuliano is said to be that of Lorenzo, and vice versa. But I am really concerned here with the four allegorical figures. Let us first deal with this wonderful statue, “Night.” It cannot be understood simply in terms of an allegory. If, however, knowing about the etheric body and imagining it in its full activity, one were to ask, “What is the most characteristic gesture corresponding to the etheric body when it is free from the astral body and ego?” the answer would be the gesture as given by Michelangelo in “Night.” In fact, “Night” is so molded that it gives a perfect representation of the free, independent etheric body, expressed by means of the forms of the physical body when the astral body and ego are outside it. This figure is not an allegory, but represents the combination of the physical and etheric bodies when the astral body and ego are outside them. Then one understands the position of the figure. It is historically the truest expression of the vitality of the etheric body. One comes to see the figure of “Day” as the expression of the ego when it is most active and least influenced by the astral, etheric and physical bodies. This is portrayed in the strange gesture and position of Michelangelo's “Day.” We obtain the gesture of the figure “Dawn” when the astral body is active, independent from the physical and etheric bodies and the ego, and of “Dusk” when the physical body is active without the other three members. I struggled long against this piece of knowledge and to begin with thought it quite absurd; yet the more one gets into it, the more it compels one to recognize the truth of the script contained in these sculptures. It is not that Michelangelo was conscious of it. It sprang from his intuitive creative power. One also understands the meaning of the legend that tells that when Michelangelo was alone in his studio, the figure “Night” became endowed with life, and would move around freely. It is a special illustration of the fact that one is dealing with the etheric body. The spirit works into everything in art as in the evolution of humanity. One learns to understand the world of the senses only if one grasps how the spirit works into sensible reality. There is a beautiful saying by Kant. He says, “There are two things that have made a specially deep impression on me, the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” It is particularly impressive when we realize that both are really one and the same. Between death and rebirth we are spread out over the starry realms and receive their forces into ourselves, and during our life in a physical body the forces we have gathered are active within us as moral impulses. Looking up to the starry heavens we may say that we dwell among the forces that are active out there during the period between death and rebirth. This now becomes the guiding principle of our moral life. The starry heavens outside the moral law within are one and the same reality. They constitute two sides of that reality. We experience the starry realms between death and rebirth, the moral law between birth and death. When we grasp this, spiritual science grows into a mighty prayer. For what is a prayer but that which links our soul with the divine-spiritual permeating the world. We must make it our own as we go through the experiences of the world of the senses. Inasmuch as we strive consciously towards this goal, what we learn becomes a prayer of its own accord. Here spiritual knowledge is transformed immediately into feeling and experience, and that is how it should be. However much spiritual science might work with concepts and ideas, they will nevertheless be transformed into pure sensations and prayer-like feelings. That is what our present time requires. Our time needs to experience the cosmos by living into a consideration of the spirit in which the study itself takes on the nature of a prayer. Whereas the study of the external physical world becomes ever more dry, scholarly and abstract, the study of spiritual life will become more heartfelt and deeper. It will take on the quality of prayer, not in a one-sided sentimental sense but by virtue of its own nature. Then man will not know merely as a result of abstract ideas and the divine that permeates the universe is also in him. He will realize as he advances in knowledge that he truly has experienced it during life between the last death and a new birth. He will know that what he experienced then is now in him as the inner riches of his life. Such considerations, related as they are to recent research, help us to gain an understanding of our own development. Then spiritual science will be abler to transform itself into a true spiritual life blood. We shall often speak further about these matters in the future. |
323. Astronomy as Compared to Other Sciences: Lecture I
01 Jan 1921, Stuttgart Tr. Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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From this feeling proceeded such a phrase as that of Kant, who said: In every domain of science there is only so much real science as there is mathematics in it; one ought really to bring Arithmetic or Geometry into all the sciences. |
323. Astronomy as Compared to Other Sciences: Lecture I
01 Jan 1921, Stuttgart Tr. Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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To-day I should like to make some introductory remarks to what I am going to lay before you in the coming days. My reason for doing this is that you may know the purpose of these talks from the outset. It will not be my task during the following days to deal with any narrowly defined, special branch of science, but to give various wider viewpoints, having in mind a quite definite goal in relation to science. I should therefore like to warn people not to describe this as an ‘Astronomical Course’. It is not meant to be that. But it will deal with something that I feel is especially important for us to consider at this time. I have therefore given it the title “The relation of the diverse branches of Natural Science to Astronomy,” and today in particular I shall explain what I actually intend with the giving of this title. The fact is that in a comparatively short time much will have to be changed within what we call the sphere of science, if it is not to enter upon a complete decline. Certain groups of sciences which are now comprised under various headings and are permitted to be represented under these headings, in our ordinary schools, will have to be taken out their grooves and be classified from quite other aspects. This will necessitate a far reaching regrouping of our sciences. The grouping at present employed is entirely inadequate for a world-conception based upon reality, and yet our modern world holds so firmly to such traditional classification that it is on this basis that candidates are chosen to occupy the professorial chairs in our Universities. People confine themselves for the most part to dividing the existing, circumscribed fields of Natural Science into yet further special branches, and they then look to the specialists or experts as they are called. But a change must come into the whole scientific life by the advent of quite different categories, within which will be united, as in a whole new field of science, things that today are dealt with in Zoology or Physiology, or again, let us say, in the Theory of Knowledge. The older forms of scientific classification, often extremely abstract, must die out, and quite new scientific combinations must arise. This will meet with great obstacles at first, because people today are trained in the specialized branches of science and it will be difficult for them to find an approach to what they will urgently need in order to bring about a combination of scientific material in accordance with reality. To put in concisely, I might say: We have today a science of astronomy, of Physics, of Chemistry, of Philosophy, we have a science of Biology, of Mathematics, and so on. Special branches have been formed, almost, I might say, so that the various specialists will not have such hard work in order to become well grounded in their subject. They do not have too much to do in mastering all the literature concerned, which, as we know, exists in immense quantities. But it will be a matter of creating new branches which will comprise quite different things, including perhaps at the same time something from Astronomy, something from Biology, and so on. For this, a reshaping of our whole life of science will of course be essential. Therefore, what we term Spiritual Science, which does indeed aim to be of a universal nature, must work precisely in this direction. It must make it its special mission to work in this direction. For we simply cannot get any further with the old grouping. Our Universities confront the world today, my dear friends, in a way that is really quite estranged from life. They turn out mathematicians, physiologists, philosophers, but none of them have any real relation to the world. They can do nothing but work in their narrowly confined spheres, putting before us a picture of the world that becomes more and more abstract, less and less realistic. It is the change here indicated—a deep necessity for our time—to which I want to do justice in these lectures. I should like you to see how impossible it will be to continue the older classifications indefinitely, and I therefore want to show how other branches of science of the most varied kinds, which, in their present way of treatment, take no account of Astronomy, have indeed definite connections with Astronomy, that is, with a true knowledge of universal space. Certain astronomical facts must perforce be taken into account in other branches of science too, so that we may learn to master these other fields in a way conformable to reality. The task of these lectures is therefore to build a bridge from the different fields of scientific thought to the field of Astronomy, that astronomical understanding may appear in the right way in the various fields of science. In order not to be misunderstood, I should like to make one more remark about method. You see, the manner of presenting scientific facts which is customary nowadays must undergo considerable change, because it actually arises out of the scientific structure which has to be overcome. When today facts are referred to, which lie somewhat remote from man's understanding,—remote, just because he does not meet with them at all in his scientific knowledge,—it is usual to say: “That is stated, but no proved.” Yet in scientific work is often quite inevitable that statements must be made at first purely as results of observation, which only afterwards can be verified as more and more facts are brought to support them. So it would be wrong to assume, for instance, that right at the beginning of a discourse someone could break in and say, “That is not proved.” It will be proved in the course of time, but much will first have to be presented simply from observation, so that the right concept, the right idea, may be created. And so I beg of you to take these lectures as a whole, and to look in the last lectures for the plain proof of many things which seem in the first lectures to be mere statements. Many things will then be verified which I shall have to handle at first in such a way as to evoke the necessary concepts and ideas. Astronomy as we know it today, even including the domain of Astrophysics, is fundamentally a modern creation. Before the time of Copernicus or Galileo men thought about astronomical phenomena in a way which differed essentially from the way we think today. It is even extraordinarily difficult to indicate the way in which man still thought of Astronomy in, say, the 13th and 14th centuries, because this way of thinking has become completely foreign to modern man. We only live in the ideas which have been formed since the time of Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus; and from a certain point of view that is perfectly right. They are ideas which treat of the distant phenomena of universal space, in so far as they are concerned with Astronomy, in a mathematical and mechanical way. Men think of these phenomena in terms of mathematics and mechanics. In observing the phenomena, men base their ideas upon what they have acquired from an abstract mathematical science, or an abstract science of mechanics. They calculate distances, movements and forces. But the qualitative outlook still in existence in the 13th and 14th centuries, which distinguished Individualities in the stars, an Individuality of Jupiter, of Saturn ... this has become completely lost to modern man. I will make no criticism of the things at the moment, but will only point out that the mechanical and mathematical way of treating what we call the domain of Astronomy has become the exclusive one. Even if we acquaint ourselves with the stars in a popular fashion without understanding mathematics or mechanics, we still find it presented, even if in a manner suitable for the lay-mind, entirely in ideas of space and time, of a mathematical and mechanical kind. No doubts of any kind exist in the minds of our contemporaries—who believe that their judgment is authoritative—that this is the only way in which to regard the starry heavens. Anything else, they are convinced, would be merely amateurish. Now, if the question arises as to how it has actually come about that this view of the starry heavens has emerged in the evolution of civilization, the answer of those who regard the modern scientific mode of thought as absolute, will be different from the reply which we are able to give. Those who regard the scientific thought of today as something absolute and true, will say: Well, you know, among earlier humanity there were not yet any strictly scientifically formed ideas; man had first to struggle through to such ideas, i. e., to the mathematical, mechanical mode of regarding celestial phenomena of the Universe, a later humanity has worked through to a strictly scientific comprehension of what does actually correspond to reality. This is an answer that we cannot give, my dear friends. We must take up our position from the standpoint of the evolution of humanity, which in the course of its existence, has introduced various inner forces into its consciousness. We must say to ourselves: The manner of observing the celestial phenomena which existed among the ancient Babylonians, the Egyptians, perhaps even the Indian people, was due to the particular form which the development of the human soul-forces was taking in those times. Those human soul-forces had to be developed with the same inner necessity with which a child between the 10th and 15th year must develop certain soul-forces, while in another period it will developing other faculties, which lead it to different conclusions about the world. Then came the Ptolemaic system. That arose out of different soul-forces. Then our Copernican system. That arose from yet other soul-forces. The Copernican system did not develop because humanity had happily struggled through to objectivity, whereas before they had all been as children, but because humanity since the middle of the 15th century needed precisely the mathematical, mechanical faculties for its development. That is why modern man sees the celestial phenomena in the picture formed by the mathematical, mechanical faculties. And he will some day see them again in a different way, when in his development he has drawn up out of the depths of the soul other forces,—to his own healing and benefit. Thus it depends upon humanity what form the world-concept takes. But it is not a question of looking back in pride to earlier times when men were “more childlike,” and then thinking that in modern times we have at last struggled through to an objective understanding which can now endure for all future ages. There is something which has become a real necessity to later humanity and has given color to the requirements of the scientific mind. It is this: Men strive on the one hand for ideas that are clear and easy to control—namely, mathematical ideas—, and on the other hand they strive for ideas through which they can surrender most strongly to an inner compulsion. The modern man at once becomes uncertain and nervous when he does not feel the strong inner compulsion presented, for instance, by the argument of the Pythagorean theorem, but realizes, let us say, that the figure which is drawn does not decide for him, but that he must develop an activity of soul and decide for himself. Then he at once becomes uncertain and nervous and is no longer willing to continue the line of thought. So he says: That is not exact science; subjectivity comes into it. Modern man is really dreadfully passive; he would like to be led everywhere by a chain of infallible arguments and conclusions. Mathematics satisfies this requirement, at least in most cases; and where it does not, where man have interposed their own opinion in recent times,—well, my dear friends, the results are according! Men still believe that they are being exact, while they hit upon the most incredible ideas. Thus in mathematics and mechanics men think they are being led forward by leading-strings of concepts which are linked together through their own inherent logic. They feel then as if they had ground under their feet, but the moment they step off it they do not want to go on any further. Concepts which are easy to grasp on the one hand, and the element of inner compulsion on the other: this is what modern man needs for his “safety.” Fundamentally, it is on this basis that the particular form of world-conception, supplied by the modern science of Astronomy, has been built up. I am not at the moment speaking of the single facts, but merely of the world-conception as a whole. This attitude towards a mathematical, mechanical conception of the world has so penetrated the consciousness of humanity, my dear friends, that people have come to regard everything that cannot be treated in this way as more or less unscientific. From this feeling proceeded such a phrase as that of Kant, who said: In every domain of science there is only so much real science as there is mathematics in it; one ought really to bring Arithmetic or Geometry into all the sciences. But this idea, as we know, breaks down when we think how remote the simplest mathematical ideas are to those, for instance, who study Medicine. Our present division of the sciences gives to a medical student practically nothing in the way of mathematical ideas. And so it comes about that on the one hand what is called astronomical knowledge has been set up as an ideal. DuBois-Raymond has defined this in his address on the limits of the knowledge of Nature by saying: We only grasp truths in Nature and satisfy our need of causality inasmuch as we can apply the astronomical type of knowledge. That is to say, we regard the celestial phenomena in such a way that we draw the stars upon the chart of the sky and calculate with the material which is there given us. We can state exactly: There is a star, it exercises a force of attraction upon other stars. We begin to calculate, having the different things, to which our calculations apply, visibly before us. This is what we have brought into Astronomy in the first place. Now we observe, let us say, the molecule. Within the complex molecule we have the atoms, exercising a force of attraction on one another, moving around each other,—forming, as it were, a little universe. We observe this molecule as a small cosmic system and are satisfied if it all seems to fit. But then there is the great difference that when we look out into the starry sky all the details are given to us. We can at most ask whether we understand them rightly, whether after all, there might not be some other explanation than the one given by Newton. We have the given details and then we spin a mathematical, mechanical web over them. This web of thought is actually added to the given facts, but from a scientific point of view it satisfies the modern need of man. And now we carry the system, which we have first thought out and devised, into the world of the molecule and atom. Here we add in thought what in the other case was given to us. But we satisfy our so-called need of causality by saying: What we think of as the smallest particle, moves in such and such a way, and it is the objective counterpart of what we experience subjectively as light, sound, warmth etc. We carry the astronomic form of knowledge into every phenomenon of the world and thus satisfy our demand for causality. Du-Bois Raymond has expressed it quite bluntly: “When one cannot do that, there is no scientific explanation at all.” Yes, my dear friends, what is here claimed should actually imply that if, for example, we wished to come to a rational form of therapy, that is to say, to understand the activity of a remedy, we should have to be able to follow the atoms in the substance of the remedy as we follow the movements of the Moon, the Sun, the planets and the fixed stars. They would all have to become little cosmic systems. We should have to be able to calculate how this or that remedy would work. This was actually an ideal for some people not so very long ago. Now they have given up such ideals. Such an idea collapses not only in reference to such a far off sphere as a rational therapy, but in those lying more within reach, simply because our sciences are divided as they are today. You see, the modern doctor is educated in such a way that he masters extraordinarily little of pure mathematics. We may talk to him perhaps of the need for a knowledge of astronomy but it would be of no use to speak of introducing mathematical ideas into his field of work. But as we have seen, everything outside mathematics, mechanics and astronomy should be described, according to the modern notion, as being unscientific in the strict sense of the word. Naturally that is not done. People regard these other sciences too as exact, but this is most inconsistent. It is, however, characteristic of the present time that the demand should have been made at all for everything to be understood on the model of mathematical Astronomy. It is hard today to talk to people in a serious way about such thing; how hard this is I should like to make clear to you by an example. You know of course that the question of the form of the human skull has played a great role in modern biology. I have also spoken of this matter may times in the course of our anthroposophical lectures. Goethe and Oken put forward magnificent thoughts on this question of the human skull-bones. The school of Gegenbauer also carried out classical researches upon it. But something that could satisfy the urge for a deeper knowledge in this direction does not in fact exist today. People discuss, to what extent Goethe was right in saying that the skull-bones are metamorphosed vertebrae, bones of the spine. But it is impossible to arrive at any really penetrating view of this matter today, because in the circles where these things are discussed one would scarcely be understood, and where an understanding might be forthcoming these things are not talked of because they are not of interest. You see, it is practically impossible today to bring together in close working association a thoroughly modern doctor, a thoroughly modern mathematician,—i.e., one who is master of higher mathematics—, and a man who could understand both of them passably well. These three men could scarcely understand one another. The one who would sit in the middle, understanding both of them slightly, would be able at a pinch to talk a little with the mathematician and also with the doctor. But the mathematician and the doctor would not be able to understand each other upon important questions, because what the doctor would have to say about them would not interest the mathematician, and what the mathematician would have to say—or would say, if he found words at all,—would not be understood by the doctor, who would be lacking the necessary mathematical background. This is what would happen in an attempt to solve the problem I have just put before you. People imagine: If the skull-bones are metamorphosed vertebra, then we ought to be able to proceed directly, through a transformation which it is possible to picture spatially, from the vertebra to the skull. To extend the idea still further to the limb-bones would, on the basis of the accepted premises, be quite out of the question. The modern mathematician will be able, from his mathematical studies, to form an idea of what it really means when I turn a glove inside out, when I turn the inside to the outside. One must have in mind a certain mathematical handling of the process by which what was formerly outside is turned inward, and what was inside is turned to the outside. I will make a sketch of it (Fig. 1)—a structure of some sort that is first white on the outside and red inside. We will treat this structure as we did the glove, so that it is now red outside and white inside (Fig. 2). But let us go further, my dear friends, and picture to ourselves that we have something endowed with a force of its own that does not admit of being turned inside out in such a simple way as a glove which still looks like a glove after being inverted. Suppose that we invert something which has different stresses of force on the outer surface from those on the inner. We shall then find that simply through the inversion quite a new form arises. The form may appear thus before we have reversed it (Fig. 1): we turn it inside out and now different forces come into consideration on the red surface and on the white, so that perhaps, purely through the inversion, this form arises (Fig. 3). Such a form might arise merely in the process of inversion. When the red side faced inward, forces remained dominant which are developed differently when it is turned outward. And so with the white side; only when turned towards the inside can it develop its inherent forces. It is of course quite conceivable to give a mathematical presentation of such a subject, but people are thoroughly disinclined nowadays to apply to reality what is arrived at conceptually in such a way. The moment, however, we learn to apply this to reality, we become able to see in our long bones or tubular bones (that is, in the limb bones), a form which, when inverted, becomes our skull bones! In the drawing, let the inside of the bone, as far as the marrow, be depicted by the red, the outside by the white (Fig. 4). Certain forms and forces, which can of course be investigated, are turned inward, and what we see when we draw away the muscle from the long bone is turned outward. But now imagine these hollow bones turned inside out by the same principle as I have just given you, in which other conditions of stress and strain are brought into play; then you may easily obtain this form (Fig. 5). Now it has the white within, and what I depicted by the red comes to the outside. This is in fact the relationship of a skull-bone to a limb-bone, and in between lies the typical bone of the back—the vertebra of the spinal column. You must turn the tubular bone inside out like a glove according to its indwelling forces; then you obtain the skull-bone. The metamorphosis of the bones of the limbs into the skull-bones is only to be understood when keeping in mind the process of inversion, or ‘turning inside-out’. The important thing to realizes is that what is turned outward in the limb-bones is turned inward in the skull. The skull-bones turn towards a world of their own in the interior of the skull. That is one world. The skull-bone is orientated to the world, just as the limb-bone is orientated outward, towards the external world. This can be clearly seen in the case of the bones. Moreover, the human organism as a whole is so organized that it has on the one hand a skull organization, and on the other a limb-organization, the skull-organization being oriented inward, the limb-organization outward. The skull contains an inner world, the limb-man an outer world, and between the two is a kind of balancing system which preserves the rhythm. My dear friends, take any literature dealing with the theory of functions, or, say, with non-Euclidean geometry, and see what countless ideas of every kind are brought forward in order to get beyond the ordinary geometrical conception of three-dimensional space;—to extend the domain—widen out the concept of geometry. You will see what industry and ingenuity are employed. But now suppose that you have become an expert at mathematics, who knows the theory of functions well and understands all that can be understood today of non-Euclidean geometry. I should like now to put a question concerning much that tends in this direction (Forgive me if it seems as if one did not value them highly, speaking of these things in such trivial terms. And yet I must do so, and I beg the audience, especially trained mathematicians, to turn it over in their minds and see if there is not truth in what I say.) The question could be put as follows: What is the use of all this spinning of purely mathematical thoughts? What is it worth to me, so to speak, in pounds, shillings and pence? No one is interested in the spheres in which it might perhaps find concrete application. Yet if we were to apply to the structure of the human organism all that has been thought out in non-Euclidean geometry, then we should be in the realm of reality, and applying immeasurably important ideas to reality, not wandering about in mere speculations. If the mathematician were so trained as to be interested also in what is real,—in the appearance of the heart, for example, so that he could form an idea of how through a mathematical process he could turn the heart inside out, and how thereby the whole human form would arise,—if he were taught to use his mathematics in actual life, then he could be working in the realm of the real. It would then be impossible to have the trained mathematician on the one hand, not interested in what the doctor learns, and on the other, the physician, understanding nothing of of how the mathematician—though in a purely abstract element—is able to change and metamorphose forms. This is the situation we must alter. If not, our sciences will fall into decay. They grow estranged from one another; people no longer understand each other's language. How then is science to be transformed into a social science, as is implied in all that I shall be telling you in these lectures? A science which leads over into social science is not yet in existence. On the one hand we have Astronomy, tending more and more to be clothed in mathematical forms of thought. It has become so great in its present form just because it is a purely mathematical and mechanical science. But there is another branch of science which stands, as it were, at the opposite pole to Astronomy, and which cannot be studied in its real nature without Astronomy. It is however, impossible, as science is today, to build a bridge between Astronomy and this other pole of science, namely, Embryology. He alone is studying reality, who on the one hand studies the starry skies and on the other hand the development of the human embryo. How is the human embryo generally studied today? Well, it is stated: The human embryo arises from the interaction of two cells, the sex-cells or gametes, male and female. These cells develop in the parent organism in such a way as to attain a certain state of independence before they are able to interact. They then present a certain contract, the one cell, the male, calling forth new and different possibilities of development in the other, the female. The question is put: What is a cell? As you know, since about the middle of the 19th century, Biology has largely been built upon the cell theory. The cell is described as a larger or smaller, spherule, consisting of albuminous or protein-like substances. It has a nucleus within it of a somewhat different structure and around the whole is an enclosing membrane. As such, it is the building-stone for all that arising by way of living organisms. The sex-cells are of a similar nature but are formed differently according to whether they are male or female, and from such cells every more complicated organism is built up. But now, what is actually meant when it is said that an organism builds itself up from these cells? The idea is that substances which are otherwise in Nature are taken up into these cells and then no longer work in quite the same way as before. If oxygen, nitrogen or carbon are contained in the cells, the carbon, for instance, does not have the effect upon some other substance outside, that it would have had before; such power of direct influence is lost to it. It is taken up into the organism of the cell and can only work there as conditions in the cell allow. That is to say, the influence is exerted not so much by the carbon, but by the cell, which makes use of the particular characteristics of carbon, having incorporated a certain amount of it into itself. For example, what man has within him in the form of metal—iron for instance—only works in a circuitous way, via the cell. The cell is the building-stone. So in studying the organism, everything is traced to the cell. Considering at first only the main bulk of the cell, without the nucleus and membrane, we distinguish two parts: a transparent part composed of this fluid, and another part forming sort of framework. Describing it schematically, we may say that there is the framework of the cell, and this is embedded, as it were, in the other substance which, unlike the framework, is quite unformed. (Fig. 6) Thus we must think of the cell as consisting of a mass which remains fluid and unformed and a skeleton or framework which takes on a great variety of forms. This then is studied. The method of studying cells in this way has been pretty well perfected; certain parts in the cell can be stained with color, others do not take the stain. Thus with carmine or saffron, or whatever coloring matter is used, we are able to distinguish the form of the cell and can thus acquire certain ideas about its inner structure. We note, for instance, how the inner structure changes when the female germ-cell is fructified. We follow the different stages in which the cell's inner structure alters; how it divides; and how the parts become attached to one another, cell upon cell, so that the whole becomes a complicated structure. All this is studied. But it occurs to no-one to ask: With what is this whole life in the cell connected? What is really happening? It does not occur to anyone to ask this. What happens in the cell is to be conceived, my dear friends, in the following way,—though to be sure, it is still a rather abstract way. There is the cell. For the moment let us consider it in its most usual form, namely the spherical form. This spherical form is partially determined by the thin fluid substance, and enclosed within it is the delicate framework. But what is the spherical form? The thin fluid mass is as yet left entirely to itself and therefore behaves according to the impulses it receives from its surroundings. What does it do? Well, my dear friends, it mirrors the universe around it! It takes on the form of the sphere because it mirrors in miniature the whole cosmos, which we indeed also picture to ourselves ideally as a sphere. Every cell in its spherical form is no less than an image of the form of the whole universe. And the framework inside, every line of the form, is conditioned by its relationship to the structure of the whole cosmos. To express myself abstractly to begin with, think of the sphere of the universe with its imaginary boundary (Fig. 7). In it, you have here a planet, and there a planet (a,a1). They work in such a way as to exert an influence upon one another in the direction of the line which joins them. Here (m) let us say—diagrammatically, of course,—a cell is formed; its outline mirrors the sphere. Here, within the framework it has a solid part which is due to the working of the one planet on the other. And suppose that here there were another constellation of planets, working upon each other along the line joining them (b,b1). And here again there might be yet another planet (c), this one having no counterpart;—it throws the whole construction, which might otherwise have been rectangular, out of shape, and the structure takes on a somewhat different form. And so you have in the whole formation of the framework of the cell a reflection of the relationships existing in the planetary system,—altogether in the whole starry system. You can enter quite concretely into the formation of the cell and you will reach an understanding of this concrete form only if you see in the cell an image of the entire cosmos. And now take the female ovum, and picture to yourselves that this ovum has brought the cosmic forces to a certain inner balance. They have taken on form in the framework of the cell, and are in a certain way at rest within it, supported by the female organism as a whole. Then comes the influence of the male sex-cell. This has not brought the macrocosmic forces to rest, but works in the sense of a very specialized force. It is as though the male sex-cell works precisely along this line of force (indicated by Dr. Steiner on the blackboard) upon the female ovum which has come to a condition of rest. The cell, which is an image of the whole cosmos, is thereby caused to relinquish its microcosmic form once more to a changing play of forces. At first, in the female ovum, the macrocosm comes to rest in a peaceful image. Then through the male sex-cell the female is torn out of this state of rest, and is drawn again into a region of specialized activity and brought into movement. Previously it had drawn itself together in the resting form of the image of the cosmos, but the form is drawn into movement again by the male forces which are, so to speak, images of movement. Through them the female forces, which are images of the form of the cosmos and have come to rest, are brought out of this state of rest and balance. Here we may have some idea, from the aspect of Astronomy, of the forming and shaping of something which is minute and cellular. Embryology cannot be studied at all without Astronomy, for what Embryology has to show is only the other pole of what is seen in Astronomy. We must, in a way, follow the starry heavens on the one hand, seeing how they reveal successive stages, and we must then follow the process of development of a fructified cell. The two belong together, for the one is only the image of the other. if you understand nothing of Astronomy, you will never understand the forces which are at work in Embryology, and if you understand nothing of Embryology, you will never understand the meaning of the activities with which Astronomy has to deal. For these activities appear in miniature in the processes of Embryology. It is conceivable that a science should be formed, in which, on the one hand, astronomical events are calculated and described, and on the other hand all that belongs to them in Embryology, which is only the other aspect of the same thing. Now look at the position as it is today: you find that Embryology is studied on its own. It would be regarded as madness if you were to demand of a modern embryologist that he should study Astronomy in order to understand the phenomena in his own sphere of work. And yet it should be so. This is why a complete regrouping of the sciences is necessary. It will be impossible to become a real embryologist without studying Astronomy. It will no longer be possible to educate specialists who merely turn their eyes and their telescopes to the stars, for to study the stars in that way has no further meaning unless one knows that it is out of the great universe that the minute and microscopical is fashioned. All this,—which is quite real and concrete,—has in scientific circles been changed into the utmost abstraction. It is reality to say: We must strive for astronomical knowledge in cellular theory, especially in Embryology. If DuBois-Raymond had said that the detailed astronomical facts should be applied to the cell-theory, he would have spoken out of the sphere of reality. But what he wanted corresponds to no reality, namely that something thought-out and devised—the atoms and molecules—should be examined with astronomical precision. He wanted the astronomical type of mathematical thoughts, which have been added to the world of the stars, to be sought for again in the molecule. Thus you see, upon the one hand lies reality: movement, the active forces of the stars and the embryonic development in which there lives, in all reality, what lives in the starry heavens. That is where the reality lies and that is where we must look for it. On the other hand lies abstraction. The mathematician, the mechanist, calculates the movements and forces of the heavenly bodies and then invents the molecular structure to which to apply this kind of astronomical knowledge. Here he is withdrawn from life, living in pure abstractions. These are the things about which we must think, remembering that now we must renew, in full consciousness, something which was in a certain sense present in earlier times. Looking back to the Egyptian Mysteries, we find astronomical observations such as were made at that time. These observations, my dear friends, were not used merely to calculate when an eclipse of the Sun or Moon would take place, but rather to arrive at what should come about in social evolution. Men were guided by what they saw in the heavens, as to what must be said to the people, what instructions should be given, so that the development of the whole social life should take its right course. Astronomy and Sociology were dealt with as one. We too, though in a different way from the Egyptians, must again learn how to connect what happens in social life with the phenomena of the great universe. We do not understand what came about in the middle of the 15th century, if we cannot relate the events of that time to the phenomena which then prevailed in the universe. It is like a blind man talking about color to speak of the changes in the civilized world in the middle of the 15th century without taking all this into account. Spiritual Science is already a starting point. But we shall not succeed in bring together the complicated domain of Sociology—social science—with the observations of natural phenomena, unless we first begin by connecting Astronomy with Embryology, linking the embryonic facts with astronomical phenomena. |
273. The Problem of Faust: Goetheanism In Place of Homunculism and Mephistophelianism
19 Jan 1919, Dornach Tr. George Adams Rudolf Steiner |
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To imagine thus that there was once a nebular condition (the Kant-Laplace theory) and that then, one after another, cardboard box out of cardboard box, the successive stages always proceeded out of the earlier—this is an abnormal idea of present-day science. |
273. The Problem of Faust: Goetheanism In Place of Homunculism and Mephistophelianism
19 Jan 1919, Dornach Tr. George Adams Rudolf Steiner |
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In the two lectures following the performance of the later Walpurgis-night scene, from the second part of Faust, I hoped to evoke the feeling that, in the whole of his inner life, Goethe was in reality on the path to the supersensible world. I wanted you to feel that he succeeded, as perhaps no other artist, no other poet, has ever done, in developing an artistic creation out of this spiritual life, so that in this creation neither the art not the wisdom falls short and, in its own place, each of the spheres—of striving and wisdom—achieves harmonic expression. I should not like you to think that in what has been said I have been wishing to give an interpretation of this poem; that was not at all my aim. For in this sphere I consider interpretation to be utterly useless. All that was attempted in these studies was to create the possibility for you to absorb and enjoy a poem, a work of art, in the same element in which it was created. Such studies should simply teach the language, as it were, the spiritual language, in which such a work is written, and should not expound or interpret, for as a rule that too often results in misconstruction and misinterpretation. Now, if we keep to this mood in the matter, the following may perhaps be of use. You see, there are two fundamental feelings at the base of all striving for knowledge, of every kind of striving towards spiritual experience. One of these feelings comes from man having to think, having to form ideas, as he lives his life between birth and death in the physical body. I think you will agree that we should not be complete human beings, were we not to think about things and about ourselves. Then, too, if we wish to make our lives fuller in the physical body, between birth and death, we have not only to think but also to will. And feeling lies midway between thinking and willing; sometimes it partakes more of thinking and forming ideas, sometimes more of willing. Hence, for the purpose of our proposed study, we may ignore feeling, and consider the one pole of forming ideas, thinking, and then turn to the other pole of human activity, the willing. Man is a thinking and a willing being. But there are special features about this thinking and willing. The trivially-minded, average man looks upon what can be attained as the attainment of a goal if, on the one hand, he thinks as clearly and forcibly as possible, in his own opinion, at least, and if he wills in accordance with his needs. What distinguishes the man of learning who is fundamentally honest, is that he finally admits, when he tries to advance on the path of thinking, that with his thinking in the physical body he still only goes a certain distance towards his goal. With this thinking, my dear friends, it is exactly as if a man were striving towards a goal; he cannot see it though knowing in what direction it lies. He wants to hasten towards it, but although he knows where the goal must be, it is wrapped in darkness. He imagines it will only become clear when he reaches it. And while he is feeling that he is still nowhere near the goal but a considerable distance from it, some being seems to seize from from behind, and to stop him going farther. And he says: Thinking, the forming of ideas, drives me in a certain direction, then I am stopped; were I to pursue the path of thought in this direction, I should never be able to reach the goal thinking itself has indicated.—Thus he comes to one of the boundaries to which he is by nature subject in the life between birth and death. And it may be said that whoever has never experienced the suffering and blows of fate arising from the goal of thought, has certainly no very deep cognitional life. If, by the inner constitution of his soul, a man can fancy he is able to reach the goal of thought by thinking, he is doomed to superficiality. We can be preserved from superficiality only when by trying to think as deeply and clearly as possible, we begin to feel harassed by the hindrances to thought. This feeling of being frustrated in thought is a profound human experience, without which we cannot pass beyond superficiality into a really deep comprehension of life. And this is not the only boundary set to the human being's full experience between birth and death; the other is encountered where the will is unfolded. This is the sphere in which there germinate men's desires arising out of the life of instinct. Man is driven to willing in the crudest sense through hunger and thirst and other instincts; and there is then a rising scale from instinct up to the purest spiritual ideals. In all these impulses, from grossest instincts up to spiritual ideals, willing is deployed. But now, if we are to try and establish ourselves in life with our will that passes over into action, we again come to a boundary. Fundamentally, Goethe's aim in Faust was to establish Faust in life by means of his will, so that he should be able to experience all that makes life happy, all that shatters life, all that gives freedom and all that is sinful. And if we try to take our stand in life with the will that passes over into action, the will translated into deed, we again find ourselves up against a boundary. But now it is a different feeling that arises. It is not so much that in our thinking we are stopped and hindered from reaching our goal, but rather that, while we are willing, we are seized upon, and our willing goes on no longer in accordance with our own wishes. In the act of willing one is snatched away. Someone else arises in our willing, who carries us off. This then is the second feeling which, when experienced by man, leads him out of superficiality into a profound conception of life. Self-satisfied philistines, it is true, are of the opinion that a man reaches his goal by sufficiently developing his thinking and willing. But it is on these paths of complacency and self-satisfaction that the superficiality of life lies. There does not lie here what makes it possible in life's testing, after suitable probation and the crossing of an abyss, to enter another world, a world that cannot be lived through with the consciousness developed in the life between birth and death. A man is tested when, with suitable intensity, he realises in his soul the two boundary lines already referred to. Men must understand precisely from what Goethe has given, that it is not merely the bliss of endeavor—often imaginary and based on pure illusion—that can be experienced, but rather what leads a man to his goal over all hindrances, disappointments and disillusions. And whoever strives to avoid disillusionment, and refuses to transform, to metamorphose, the whole human being in certain moments of life, cannot press forward to knowledge of man, to the understanding of man. We need not realise, my dear friends, that in this connection the Christ-permeated conception of the world and of life must, in the near future, experience a significant change. Hitherto, Christianity through the way it has developed in the different religious denominations is, usually, only at its initial stage. If we want to describe this development, we might say that it has created the feeling in man that Christ did once exist. And even this feeling that Christ once existed has been lost again in the materialistic research of the nineteenth century. What Christ brought into the world, Christ's connection with the striving of the human soul, into all this life will first pour in future through the researches of Spiritual Science, and through a spiritual kind of cosmic feeling—a supersensible experience. This will be seen if, to begin with, in this intellectual age, the majority of mankind can only have the experience in Imaginations, in imaginative pictures. But these two basic feelings of which I have just spoken as arising from the two boundaries of self-knowledge and self-comprehension, these two feelings must find a crossing-point from a passive to an active Christianity. Just think how, for many people in the past, Christ has been nothing more than a helper in straits where a man is unable to help himself. Think of the strange way in which the Roman Catholic Church took on, at a certain time, the forgiveness of sins; anyone might sin as much as he liked, provided he repented and did due penance afterwards, he was forgiven. In short, Christ was there to help in time of need, to make good what men as a whole had no intention themselves of making good. And then look at the other, more Protestant error, where a man remains passive too, arranging his worldly life, his worldly activities, to suit himself, and then perhaps expecting that merely by belief in Christ, by a passive feeling of being united with Christ, he will be saved. This twofold passive relation to Christ belongs, and must belong, to the past. And what is to take its place must be a relation to Christ that is an active force, a going to meet Him, so that Christ does not do for a man what the man does not want to do, but gives him power through His being to do it himself. An active Christianity—or rather a Christianity that comes to activity—is what must take the place of passive Christianity in which actually (forgive the trivial mode of expression) a man does what he pleases on the physical plane, making God into a kindly friend who pardons everything if only man turns to Him at the right moment. This my dear friends, will at the same time mark the dividing line between the age which must now belong to the past, the age that has led to so terrible a human catastrophe, and the age that must come. It is only when this coming age has passed over from a Christianity that is passive to one that is active, that it will be qualified to heal those evils that have already shown themselves and will continue to do so increasingly so long as the principles of the past prevail. These evils are rooted deep in human hearts and souls; and they must be healed if earth-evolution is to proceed. The two basic feelings of the boundaries to thinking and willing may also be described by saying: The one boundary makes it clear that a man cannot arrive at knowledge of his own nature. As human beings we are so constituted that we cannot, on the one hand, arrive at our own human nature, cannot with our thinking reach ourselves. In willing we do this, for willing actually proceeds form ourselves; in willing we lose ourselves; but here another seizes us—another cosmic being is formed simply according to the principle of this duality. He is a dual being, not a monad, but a dual being. The one member of this twofold being cannot reach itself, the other loses itself. Hence man is never correctly represented when shown as a mere monad, but only when an effort is made to show him as standing midway between being unable to reach himself, and losing himself. And when it is possible for men to feel both at the same time with all intensity, then he feels himself rightly as a man on earth. When he feels a kind of oscillation between the two, then he feels himself man on earth. In spite of this oscillation, what must be arrived at is repose of being. This repose of being is attained in the physical sphere by the pendulum, the balance; in the spiritual, moral sphere, man must be able to attain the condition of repose reached by the balance and the pendulum. He must not aspire to a position of absolute rest; that would make him indolent and corrupt. He should strive for the state of repose midway between the beats, midway between the not-reaching and the losing himself. In order to develop these feelings correctly it is essential that other feelings be added concerning life and reality. You know, my dear friends, I have often called your attention to the one-sided way in which evolution is understood today. Think how the whole of evolution is now conceived as if what comes after were always the result of what went before. Actually, the man of today thinks of the successive stages of evolution almost like a set of cardboard boxes fitting into one another. And then, as for development, one box represents the human being between birth and the seventh year; then the second is taken out, and that is the human being from seven to fourteen; the third from fourteen to one-and twenty, and so on—one always coming out of another. To modern man the most acceptable idea is evolutionary advance in a straight line. This is really at the bottom of all the grotesque notions that are learnt at school nowadays, notions which in future will be regarded as scientific lunacy of the enlighted period of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To imagine thus that there was once a nebular condition (the Kant-Laplace theory) and that then, one after another, cardboard box out of cardboard box, the successive stages always proceeded out of the earlier—this is an abnormal idea of present-day science. For things are not like that. Just think how evolution in the individual man between birth and death appears, to even a moderately unprejudiced observation! The actual limit of the first period in life is the change of teeth, as we know—the cutting of the second teeth. I have often drawn attention to this. How what is this second cutting of teeth at about the seventh year, at the close of the first life-period? It is a consolidation, a hardening, of the human being, when a hardening process takes place in men. It is like a drawing together of all the life-forces, so that eventually the densest, most mineralised part, the second teeth, can appear. It is a real concentration and densification of all the forces of life. The second period in life ends at puberty. And the case here is exactly the reverse. Here there is no concentration of life-forces but, on the contrary, a rarefication of them all, a dispersal, an overflowing. An opposite condition pulses in the organism. And then again, only in a more refined way, in the twenty-first year when the third life-period ends, consolidation takes place in man, the forces of life are once more drawn together. With the twenty-eighth year there is again expansion. The twenty-first year has more to do with the placing of what is within man,the twenty-eighth more with his attitude to the whole wide universe. Approximately at the thirty-fifth year there is again a kind of contraction. That is the middle life—the thirty-fifth year. Thus, evolution does not go in a straight line but, rather, in waves: contraction, hardening; softening, expansion. That is essentially the life of man as a whole. By being born here in the physical world, we contract into our individual skins; while we are living our life between death and a new birth, we are increasingly expanding. What follows from all this, my dear friends? It follows that the idea of evolution going in a straight line is of no help at all; it leads mankind astray, and we must reject it. All evolution proceeds rhythmically; all evolution goes with the rise and fall of waves—expanding, contracting. Contraction, expansion. Goethe sensed this in its elementary stages. Read his Metamorphosis of Plants; read his poem The Metamorphosis of Plants, and you will see how he follows the particular formation from foliage leaf to foliage leaf, then to petal, stamen, on to pistil; how he describes it as a continuous expansion, contraction, not only in external forms, the saps also expand with their forces and again contract—expand, concentrate; expand, concentrate. When in the eighties of the last century I wrote my first introduction to Goethe's scientific works, I tried to reconstruct his archetypal plant, tried to bring into a picture this expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction—on and on right up to the blossom. No one can really understand life who does not picture it in rhythm, as a progressive rhythmic process. It must be repeatedly emphasised that to imagine evolution as proceeding in a straight line does not help us to a true understanding of life. The same applies to the understanding of man's historical life. In the most recent number of the periodical Das Reich (October 1918) where I dealt with Lucifer and Ahriman in life, I pointed out how luciferic and ahrimanic periods alternate rhythmically in historic evolution. Life never proceeds in a straight line; it goes in waves. But while this is so, it is associated also with an external change. And only by looking clear-sightedly into these relations can we arrive at a deeper comprehension of life. Those who think of evolution as proceeding in a straight line, say: First there existed the most undeveloped animals, then more and more perfect ones, up to the apes, and out of these developed man.—If we apply this to what is moral—I have often called your attention to this—if we extend this further, it follows that the genuine, thorough-going Darwinian says: We already see in the human kindliness, and so on. This again is a worthless idea, for it takes no account at all of the rhythm of life. According to this idea evolution goes on in a straight line, one cardboard box coming out of another. In reality the matter is like this. Imagine the most highly developed animals with their proclivities further developed in a straight line—this way you do not arrive at man, you would never come to man. But the more highly developed animals would evolve those very qualities you find attractive in the animal kingdom, in a most unattractive way. What you admire in animals as companionableness, as incipient good-will and social behaviour, when further developed turns to its rhythmic opposite—to the principle of evil. Mad man developed according to Haeckel's idea, then, my dear friends, there would have evolved from the anthropoid apes a human society inevitably destined to develop the war of all against all. For in all these aptitudes, good as they may be in animals, there lies the further evolutionary impulse to clash together in violent and most bloody conflict. That is rhythm, a wave-like rise and fall, and no one finds what is hidden in nature who does not see the possibilities of evolution in rhythm. To look only on the outside of events can never teach us to realise what in reality is there. Man was able to develop only because, in the higher animals, their evolutionary possibilities did not come to anything, for these were met by another wave of cosmic becoming which subdued the tendency to evil, in a way overcame it, by what men were meant to be in the very beginning. So that we have to picture it thus: The animal kingdom rises to a certain height; then comes the other wave to meet it, and this deadens the evil development. My dear friends, reincarnation can also be regarded from the moral point of view. What would man have become had he just been born, over and over again on the physical plane, and being thus born physically on the physical plane, he had not been met by all that is constantly being taken up into the spiritual world and again sent down; were man not thus ensouled after birth then he would live always at war on earth. They would only with to live in conflict and would develop the most terrible fighting instincts. These fighting instincts rest on the foundation of the human soul; they are rooted in the human organism. But they are paralysed, if I may so express it, by what comes from above out of the supersensible, from those human beings who are constantly taken up into the spiritual world. This is expressed also in the outward form, my dear friends. It is altogether grotesque for those with inner sight when the human head is represented as having gradually evolved from the animal head. It is indeed complete nonsense. The truth is that, were the animal head to develop further, a fearsome monster would emerge in what, in the present incarnation, you evolve out of the lower part of your body. Were that alone to form the head, were it to form the head out of itself, the result would be a real abortion of a head—a horrible animal-monster. For that is where the possibility of such a monstrosity lies. Only because the spiritual comes from above and, as it were, washes up against it, is the human head able to arise. It springs from the relationship of two forces, the one pressing upward from the body, the other coming to meet it from the cosmos. This human head is constructed in a state of equilibrium; and it is because of its equilibrium that we are not able to deal freely with what we bring with us from the spiritual world. We slip into our physical head and cannot there clearly express what we actually are, when we hurry into existence through birth. If we could think as we did before birth, we should not think a Homunculus, we should think a man, a Homo. You remember in my Christmas lecture at Basle (December 22, 1918) not long ago, I mentioned in passing that, before his birth, Nikolaus von der Flüe saw scenes that he lived through as a man after his birth. But when a man is born, and does not overcome being asleep in his cognition—that is, when he cannot develop waking existence outside his body, but thinks only with his body—then he never thinks a man but only a Homunculus. A man never reaches the real man by seeking to enter into himself through the head. It is really a fact thgat he seeks to enter in but is held back; somewhere in the middle of man there exists what his is unable to reach. This is within man himself, yet he remains Homunculus and does not come to Homo. Actually were we in possession of every technical resource, we should put into the phial that represents Homunculus on the stage, only a horrible little monstrosity, small, and therefore not unattractive; and this is really what would come into being were it left to the human body alone, out of itself, to produce something. There would come forth a sort of animal that nevertheless would be no animal but a human abortion; something on the way to becoming human yet not quite succeeding. Neither do we succeed if we do not make the approach by way of this path to becoming men, this path that does not reach man. We do not then succeed for we do not thus enter inside ourselves. And again, if man grasps himself through his will, he is immediately seized upon by another being. Then he loses himself, then all kinds of strange motives and impulses surge up into his willing. Only when a man endeavours to bring the inner forces into equilibrium does he succeed in becoming complete man. Now, my dear friends, with what I have said compare three different passages in the second part of Goethe's Faust that you can now have the opportunity on witnessing. Think of the sublime moment when Faust appears before Manto. Goethe is trying here to shed over the whole incident the inner repose of the human soul called forth by experiencing equilibrium. Faust would like, on the one hand, to avoid the sentimentality of the abstract mystic, and one of his last speeches is “O, could I from my path all magic ban”. He did not want external magic, he wanted to find the inner path to the supersensible world. He is near it, and then again far from it. As I explained yesterday Goethe is perfectly honest when Faust is standing before Manto. But Faust, my dear friends, does not hold to this abstract repose; he is tossed from pillar to post. Hence from the one side he is continually thrown to the opposite, where man loses himself through the will. Compare all this with what happens to Faust in the scenes where he is developing his life with Mephistopheles. There you have always the Faust of will, who, however is continually losing himself by his impulses being seized by Mephistopheles. This is where a man goes astray in his willing, where he will lose himself; here you have all the dangers that threaten man's moral impulses. And this is expressed with tremendous depth in Goethe's Faust. Then take the moment when Mephistopheles joins the Phorkyads, when he himself takes on the form of a Phorkyad, and in all his ugliness goes as far as admitting it. Previously he was lying, but when the Phorkyads surround him he is obliged to admit his ugliness. Read the speech of the Phorkyads again; they too acknowledge their ugliness, and are in a certain way honest in their ugliness. In this moment you have a contrast to that sacred and sublime moment when Faust stands before Manto. What makes us lose ourselves in motives of will is clearly seen when Mephistopheles appears for the last time in the Classical Walpurgis-Night. Faust appears for the last time visibly, in the external drama, precisely in this scene with Manto—Mephistopheles in the scene with the Phorkyads. Goethe wished to indicate from the depths of his profound experience that, fundamentally, what makes us lose ourselves in the motives of will can only be set right if we not merely abhor it morally, but also experience it as something offending our taste. This was at the root of Schiller's feeling too, when he placed what is moral in such close connection with the aesthetic in his Aesthetic Letters. This is just what is so distressing, my dear friends, that in the recent development of mankind culture has been brought to such a high pitch as, for instance, we see in Schiller's Aesthetic Letters, and this has all been forgotten. Imagine how Schiller believed that in these letters, written in the first place to the Duke of Augustonburg, he had brought about a deed of political significance. Whoever grasps the following two facts in their true depth learns much concerning the evolution of mankind. First he learns that Schiller's Aesthetic Letters were the outcome of his conception of Goethe's urge towards becoming; and, secondly, that this could be forgotten, that this forgetting has largely contributed to the present human catastrophe. Those who keep these two facts before them indeed learn much about the evolution of humanity. And, from the point of view of drama, how great is the moment when in the terrible scene where Mephistopheles is among the Phorkyads we are shown how what is morally impermissible lives in man like a feeling that is aesthetically offensive. There, shown in all its atrocity, is the impulse, the essential impulse, that drives man to lose himself in the pole of will. Should a man fail to recognise this it will prove his ruin; only by realising it is one freed from it. You will find this expressed in the last scene of my first Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. There it is shown how only knowledge, a clear conception of who it is who tempts and seduces us, can save us from being led astray. It is therefore essential in the age of the consciousness-soul now entered that, in order to overcome temptation, we should strive in the right way to come to know the tempter, not allowing ourselves to sink down into a merely external knowledge of nature and a merely abstract mysticism. In short, my dear friends, abstract mysticism, the ‘easy understanding of the divine within’, from which nothing results but a terrible egotistical abstraction—this abstract mysticism is just as bad as materialism. As I said, take three moments in Goethe's Faust. Take purely artistically what you can feel as Faust stands before Manto; what you feel when Mephistopheles becomes a Phorkyad among the Phorkyads. And take the third moment when Homunculus crashes against Galatea's shell-chariot—feel what this Homunculus is. We come from the spiritual world seeking through conception and birth for physical existence. In this physical existence we meet with what, out of this physical existence, is given us as our physical body. Every evening we go back into the world that we leave at birth; every morning we, as it were, repeat our birth when we plunge again into our physical body. Then we can feel how, coming in from without, we do not arrive at what man is; we meet only with Homunculus, the manikin, the human being in embryo, and we realise how difficult it is to come to the real man. We might arrive at the real man could we contrive to have a perfectly clear conception just before waking, when all the evolutionary possibilities of the night are exhausted. This clear conception, my dear friends, would be a world-conception, it would be such that we should no longer feel ourselves hemmed in by any boundary, but feel as if poured out over the whole universe, over all cosmic light, all cosmic sound, all cosmic life, and in front of us a kind of abyss. One the far side of this would be a continuation of what we were feeling before we met the abyss on waking—namely, warmth. Warmth flows out over the abyss. Now, however, we cross the abyss by waking, into air, water and earth of which our organism is composed. Certainly we are approaching man, and by letting Homunculus fructify in the spiritual world, we have prepared ourselves to understand man. But in the ordinary course of life we do not do what I have just mentioned. The living conception we develop when sleep should have had its effect upon us before we wake, would have to be brought with us into waking life. This conception would be an experiencing ourselves in light, in cosmic sound, in cosmic life, a meeting with the beings of the higher hierarchies, just as here the physical body comes into connection with the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. This conception, developed concisely just before waking when sleep has done its work upon us, we should have to bring deep down into our physical body; then we should be able to understand what this human body is. But alas “the Gods will not suffer it”. We plunge down; it flashes, flames up, and we hardly notice it. Instead of looking into ourselves, we hear with our external ears; instead of feeling ourselves within our skin, we feel what is outside with our sense of touch. If we did not sink down into what we are able to reach only by the physical eye, the physical ear, through physical sound and physical touch, Homunculus would receive new life and become man, but against the resistance of the elements he is dashed to pieces. The light of the eye flames up instead of cosmic light, we begin to hear physical sound in the ear instead of cosmic sound, the life of the body is aroused instead of cosmic life—Homunculus is shattered. If we experience this consciously, we experience the end of the Classical Walpurgis-night. Thus, this end scene is taken from actual, true life. These things are not there merely to be spoken of on Sunday afternoons in the Anthroposophical Society. They are there as truth, to become gradually known to mankind, so that as impulses they may with their being penetrate what must be accepted in the future evolution of man, if he is to advance to what can save and not destroy. For men will really find the correct connection with reality only if they adopt new concepts and from now onwards they begin to see what has always been extolled as the great achievement of the nineteenth century is at an end. You see, my dear friends, it is not surprising that, from a certain point of view, this achievement of the nineteenth century, that continued into the twentieth, should be felt to be perfect. It is not to be wondered at all. Is it not true that before the tree becomes bare in autumn, it is in its fruiting in its most perfect stage of development. This natural science of the nineteenth century, that still haunts the twentieth, al these technical perfections that have reached a certain height, are the tree before it yields its fruit. All from which it has grown has to wither, and it is not enough that the tree should go on growing, a fresh seed must be sown in the field of human culture, a new tree must be planted. It does not suffice to think we understand the evolution of animals, to think of them as having advanced to the stage of man. It is not enough that frequently some spirit arises, who first writs articles of genius about animals, and later, to follow these, a book about the origin of man. Rather is it essential that men should discard the idea of a straight line in evolution, that they should learn to understand the rhythm of life, flowing like the waves of the sea, that they should learn how, in the inner being of man, the way does not go straight on, but across two boundaries. At the one boundary we feel almost suffocated, for someone seizes us and will not allow us to go where our thinking would take us. On the other side we feel as if the powers of Mephistopheles were dragging us to destruction. We must find the balance between what belongs to Homunculus and what belongs to Mephistopheles, between not being able to reach ourselves in Homunculus, and grasping the self only to lose it in Mephistopheles. The understanding of this equilibrium is what modern man must gain. And Goethe, foreseeing this in feeling, lived himself into this understanding when with absolute honesty he tried in his Faust to speak as he did of the riddle of humanity. Mankind must strive to grow out of what today is the typical point of view of the crowd. Nothing is more resented at present than this striving, and nothing is more injurious to mankind than this hostility against any effort to rise above the commonplace. On the other hand, as long as this resistance is not definitely opposed by those who recognise the necessity of penetrating into the supersensible, there can be no sure human evolution. At the end of the nineteenth century Hamerling, in his Homunculus sought to make what we might call a last appeal to mankind out of the past, by presenting all that is decadent in modern humanity as Homunculism. We might picture this to ourselves, my dear friends; suppose someone were now to read this Homunculus of Hamerling's which appeared at the end of the eighties of the nineteenth century. I have given many lectures about it, even before the war I actually spoke of it, not without a certain significance. Let us suppose then that someone reads Hamerling's Homunculus and lets work upon him what Hamerling imagines as the evolutionary progress of his Homunculus. He thought it out at that time, when men had already broken away from Goethe and all that he gave, and wished to hear no more of it. Hamerling represented the evolution of his Homunculus, how he was completely under the sway of materialistic thinking, how he lived in a world where people did not enrich themselves with spiritual treasure but became millionaires instead. Homunculus was a millionaire. He pictured the world where men treat even spiritual matters with frivolity, the world in which journalism—with respect be it mentioned—that was already developing, has since sunk yet deeper into the slough. We assume then that someone reads this Homunculus, and he might say: Why, yes, this Hamerling who died in 1889, had, when he wrote his Homunculus, with his physical eyes actually only seen mankind as it then was, hurrying on its chosen path. He might continue: Had people then taken seriously what Hamerling emphasises in his Homunculus, had they let it work upon them a little more deeply and not just as a literary production, but as something to be taken in earnest, then indeed they would not have been surprised to learn that, because of men being as they then were, our present world-catastrophe had of necessity to arise. This is what anyone reading Homunculus today might say to himself. What is there in the development of this world-catastrophe to astonish us, when a writer in the eighties of the last century was able to represent the man Homunculus in this way? But, underlying this representation of man, of Homunculus, is at the same time the appeal not to stop short at the life that can give us only Homunculism, but to cross the abyss where Spiritual Science speaks of the supersensible knowledge that alone can change Homunculus into Homo. And so it might be said: Mankind is placed in the Homunculism which, in the scent we are today presenting, finds itself in a world the man of today is not very eager to enter—in a world leading to the region of the Phorkyads, between Homunculism and Mephistophelianism. Goethe divined this and represented it in his Faust; he also divined that a path must be made that will avoid the crags of fantastic, abstract mysticism, as it avoids the other crags of a phantom-like conception of nature, remote from all reality,a path that leads to supersensible knowledge where fresh social impulses will be found. This is a very deep layer of consciousness. Let us penetrate it, let us permeate our feeling with it, let us learn to understand the language of this sphere of consciousness, coming as it does from the region where we feel: Through thinking, a man cannot reach himself; through willing he loses himself. To be unable to reach oneself in thinking is Homunculism; losing oneself in willing is Mephistophelianism. And when we feel this then we enter into such profound scenes with a language that makes intelligible what forms the conclusion of the Classical Walpurgis-night. Ultimately, everyone views the universe according to how the forces he has received enable him to represent it. But the present task of mankind consists in raising those forces, so that much of the universe may be seen that, to man's hurt, has not been seen during the last decades. Thus, going deeply into such a profound scene as the one we are now producing, is a way for men to advance in the direction which mankind at this time should take. What lies in true Goetheanism is what mankind at this time should take. What lies in true Goetheanism is what mankind must seek. This is not the Goetheanism of the professors, not the Goetheanism of the Goethe Society at the head of which is not a Goethe enthusiast at all but a former finance minister bearing the significant name of Kreuzwendedich; neither is it all that men thought they must make out of Goethe's teaching at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. What must be sought will become something good and a good impulse towards man's advancement in the direction he must go—if in the coming age he is to find salvation and not destruction. |
205. Therapeutic Insights: Earthly and Cosmic Laws: Lecture V
03 Jul 1921, Dornach Tr. Alice Wuslin, Gerald Karnow, Mary Laird-Brown Rudolf Steiner |
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This is really the truth of the Kantian philosophy that is so erroneous. Kant wished to investigate human subjectivity, and he concocted a few abstract concepts that actually do not say anything. |
205. Therapeutic Insights: Earthly and Cosmic Laws: Lecture V
03 Jul 1921, Dornach Tr. Alice Wuslin, Gerald Karnow, Mary Laird-Brown Rudolf Steiner |
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After the studies we have been conducting recently, a basic fact of human life and nature will be able to stand clearly before our soul. It is precisely when we consider a more exact relationship of the human being to his environment that the riddle always arises: how did it come to be that one cannot penetrate into the real nature of the outer world? This outer world lies before us in its phenomena, in its events, and even if we have only a feeble need for knowledge we must presume that behind these phenomena that lie before us as colored, as resounding, as warming world, and so on, the real nature of reality is concealed. There is, as it were, a veil there, and only behind this veil is the nature of reality to be found. A similar riddle exists in relation to what is within the human being. In the last few days I have suggested that this inner element of the human being reveals the riddles of its organs only if one really arrives at this inner element. The fact is, however, that to begin with in ordinary consciousness one cannot see so deeply down into one's own inner being that one is able really to penetrate the nature of the lungs, liver, and so forth, in the way we described yesterday. This fact of the existence of two riddles—the riddle regarding the unknowableness of the outer world and the riddle of the unknowableness of the inner world—can be understood out of the knowledge of the whole being of man, if one permits oneself to consider once the whole human nature, which shows only one side between birth and death, having its other side between death and a new birth. Let us study the human being as he presents himself to us here between birth and death. We need only look at an aspect of the inner soul that is connected with our entire, normal daily life. We need only consider the inner fact of memory. I spoke yesterday of how this memory actually is based upon a reflecting-back on the outsides of the inner organs. We need this memory, however, for our soul life. I have often pointed out facts that show how the disturbance of this memory can undermine the entire normal life between birth and death. I told you of an example showing that the capacity for memory can extinguish itself in the human being. Such cases are well known. You can read in psychological literature of numerous such cases. It is a well-known fact that this can occur, and in a lesser degree this phenomenon is much more frequent than is generally realized. With such human beings, you need only picture that these processes—without the person knowing it in the ordinary sense of the word—are just as they are for you during sleep every night: consciousness is extinguished. Such an abnormal discontinuity of consciousness, however, has an extraordinarily significant influence upon the whole consciousness of the personality. A human being who has undergone such an experience is not quite able to get along with himself; there is something horrifying in his life afterward. From this you can see how important it is for the ordinary life between birth and death—except during the sleeping state—to have continuity of consciousness. This continuity of consciousness is closely connected with our memory. We need this memory, therefore, in order to maintain our ordinary life normally. When one undergoes an occult development, another fact arises, the fact that it is necessary to develop soul forces that actually, during the moments of spiritual seeing, also extinguish ordinary memory. As long as one maintains this ordinary memory, one is basically unable to see into the spiritual world. Pupils of an occult development usually experience that when they begin to work on their development they have certain visions; then later they begin to complain that they no longer have these visions—the visions stay away. The reason for this is that for such visions—if they are genuine, true visions, and not hallucinations—there is really no memory. It is not possible to recall a vision, for the vision is something real. If you look at a piece of chalk and then look away, you have a memory picture. If, however, you wish to have the chalk before you, the real chalk, then you must return again to the perception; you must have the reality before you again. To experience this reality, memory is of no help at all. If you touch a hot iron, you burn yourself. Regardless of how much heat you retain in your memory, however, you cannot burn yourself. You must return to the real experience, because the vision brings you into connection with something real and not a mere picture. It is a matter, then, of returning to the vision and not merely recalling it, for a real seeing is a real occult experience and cannot become recollection; one can come to it again only in an indirect way. One can say to oneself that before the vision appeared we had gone through this or that in ordinary consciousness. This can be recalled, and one must call this stage back to the point when the vision appeared. One returns to this point. The vision cannot appear directly; rather one must retrace the path, as it were. This is not taken into account by many people, who believe that a vision can be recalled in the ordinary sense. One must therefore undermine memory in a certain respect in occult development. This is absolutely necessary and cannot be prevented. It therefore must be said that one who strives for such an occult development must above all be certain that in ordinary life he is a reasonable person, that is, that he has no false mystical tendencies but has a healthy intellect and a sound memory. He who in ordinary life already has a tendency to wallow in unclarity and sentimentality is not fit to undergo an occult development. One absolutely must have the ability to recall the events of the day in full clarity before one can risk pressing forward to visions for which there is no such recollection. The precautions that are recommended for an occult development are actually rooted in the nature of occult development itself. You thus can say that for the ordinary consciousness there is memory, and it is part of normal life between birth and death to have this memory. Now I can sketch for you how human nature relates to the possession of this memory. Let me sketch it in this way (see drawing, pg. 84). What I am drawing now does not exist in this way but can be perceived in the etheric body. With this line I am indicating schematically that which is really extended over the whole body, and you would have to picture that from the head—and therefore from the sense perceptions, the sense organs—up to this line is what is outside the organs. This line represents the schematic borderline for the organs of the human being: this is the point of reflection, and beyond this line, therefore, lie heart, lungs, liver, and so on. Here (arrows) is where the reflection occurs. This line is symbolic of the human memory. You can actually picture that we have within us a kind of membrane that is really the membrane separating the etheric body from the astral body; in reality, however, it is not spatial—I have merely indicated it schematically. What is perceived is thrown back by the force of the organs that are behind it. It is thereby reflected, but reflected here, and we cannot see through it in ordinary consciousness; we cannot see through this memory membrane into the inner element of the human being; the memory conceals from us the inner element of man. It must conceal man's inner being, for otherwise the human being would not be normal in the ordinary life between birth and death. Memory is what closes off for us our ordinary consciousness from what is within. As soon as this memory is interrupted, as soon as it is torn, as happens through occult development, we see into our organs, as I described it yesterday. Now, you see, we have the answer to the riddle of the not-being-able-to-look-within. This inner element must be concealed, for otherwise we would not be able to be normal in life between birth and death. We need this memory. The inner element of our self is thus hidden by our memory reflection. This understanding is what is necessary for a solution to this riddle. From the other side, from the direction of the outer world, we see the veil of the senses spread out, as it were, and we do not see behind it. Let us look at the matter in this way, asking ourselves: how would it be if we were not to perceive the veil of the senses, behind which lies the essence of the world: let us say that the sense veil were perforated everywhere—if one could look through it everywhere, how would it be then? We would always flow with our perception, with our observation, into the objects. We would merge with'the objects. We would not be able to differentiate ourselves from the objects. What would be the result? We would never be able, if we were not able to differentiate ourselves from the objects, to develop feelings of love, for love is based upon the fact that one does not flow over into the other but rather remains an individuality, separated and yet “feeling across” (hinueberfuehlt). We are organized in such a way that we are capable of love between birth and death. In occult development this capacity for love must be replaced by Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition; we must, so to speak, break through the capacity for love. It would ruin our life totally and we would become brutal and cold if in our ordinary life we did not have love. Therefore it is necessary for one who attempts an occult development from this direction to develop above all, to the highest degree, the capacity for love. If he has developed it in such a way that he cannot lose it through occult development, that he maintains it in spite of this occult development, then he can dare to penetrate through the veil of the senses and look into the real objectivity. You thus see the second riddle placed before your soul. The human being must be organized in such a way that he is able to have memory and able to love. Because he must be capable of love, he is unable with his ordinary consciousness to see behind the veil of the senses, and because he must be able to remember, he is unable to look into his own inner being. This is really the truth of the Kantian philosophy that is so erroneous. Kant wished to investigate human subjectivity, and he concocted a few abstract concepts that actually do not say anything. In reality it is so that we must understand the human being between birth and death as a being capable of both memory and love. In this life the human being learns to know what lives in sensation; he learns to know what lives in love, and this he must carry through the portal of death. We are here on earth, therefore, in order to bring to fruition in ourselves these two faculties. Now, if the human being, through memory, must hold apart his perceiving and thinking being, which pushes against the veil of the senses here, then he develops, primarily through the head (though the human being is head in total), the life that we designate as the life of consciousness. This life of consciousness goes no further than the thought. The thought becomes memory picture, but we do not penetrate any further than to the memory picture. There the thought is stopped. Only through the fact that it is stopped there can it return again as memory. There the thought is stopped, and our normal life between birth and death actually consists of preventing the thought from descending into the organs. Its forces do descend, as I described yesterday, but the thought as such, as it lives in us as picture, we must not allow to descend into the organs. At the moment when we die, the thought becomes what it should not become in the ordinary consciousness; the thought then becomes Imagination. This Imagination, which in occult development is striven for with all one's effort, occurs when the human being passes through death. All his thoughts become pictures; the human being then lives entirely in pictures. One therefore can understand the dead only if one learns to know this picture-language. Immediately after death the thoughts transform themselves into pictures. The human being lives with these pictures for some time between death and a new birth. Then the pictures gradually become Inspiration. The soul thus in fact grows further. The pictures become Inspiration; then the human being begins to perceive the music of the spheres. The music of the spheres becomes something real for him: he lives in the world of world-tones. Finally he grows together with the objective-spiritual universe: his soul becomes entirely Intuition. He becomes, as it were, one with the universe. When this Intuition has existed for some time, we are at the same point at which the world Midnight Hour occurs, of which I also spoke yesterday. Now the return path begins, and Intuition is suited to take up something of what the human being has left behind in having lived here on earth. When the human being goes through the portal of death, he lives by virtue of forces other than those that here on earth we call the will. He lives into more cosmic forces. The will becomes absorbed, let me say; the will gradually disappears. When the human being has arrived at the Midnight Hour of the world, however, that is after he has gone through the Imaginative stage, the stage of Inspiration, the Intuitive stage, and arrives, as it were, at the height of life between death and a new birth, then Intuition fills itself again with will. The thought again becomes permeated by will, and this will saturates the soul more and more; the soul wrestles through again to Inspiration and then to Imagination, undergoing Imagination for some time; then it is again ripe to be embodied here. Out of the pictures is formed, in the way I have described, what appears as the transformed metabolic-limb man of the previous incarnation. You see, therefore, that through those stages that are striven for in occult development, the human being ascends to the Midnight Hour of the world and then takes the reverse path down again to Imagination, arriving again at thought formation when he embodies himself (see drawing). During this entire time the human being absorbs the will, and now, coming again into physical existence, we see how what works in out of the cosmos, what he absorbed from the previous incarnation, is as in a picture, and the will is still within this picture. We thus have here will-saturated Imagination. When the human being therefore arrives at a new physical life, still before his conception, he does indeed have an Imagination, but a will-saturated Imagination. Out of the Imagination, which is essentially what existed already as picture, arises the head and what belongs to it, as well as the will, which takes hold now of the new limbs and the metabolism. This thus distributes itself over the head and the rest of the human being. The head is essentially, let me say, crystallized, frozen thought; what lives in the rest of the human being is organized will. Actually the human being can truly awaken only in the head. After all, you know your thoughts—your mental images in ordinary consciousness—one can say this about all present-day human beings. What happens in the will, as I have often mentioned, is just as unknown to man as what happens in sleep. How does one know, when one lifts an arm in ordinary consciousness, what is taking place? One perceives that an arm is lifted—we have this mental image—but the act of will as such remains in sleep, similar to the period between falling asleep and awakening. One therefore can say that regarding the metabolic-limb system, man also sleeps during the day. He awakens actually only in relation to the head-man. This all works together again. You see, official science today speaks of a certain logic. It speaks in the logic of the mental image, of making judgments, and of drawing conclusions. Picture such a conclusion. The well-known conclusion, which resides in all logic, is related to the famous logical personality: all human beings are mortal; Caesar is a human being; therefore Caesar is mortal. This is the conclusion, and every part of the conclusion is a judgment: “All human beings are mortal” is a judgment; “Caesar is a human being” is a judgment; “therefore Caesar is mortal” is a judgment. The whole is a conclusion. Man, Caesar, are mental images. If you question a person today who is one of the very clever people—we must always consider the very clever people, for they determine the prevailing tone—he says, “Everything actually takes place in the nervous system; the nervous system is the mediator of the mental image, judgment, conclusion, even of feeling and will.” Already with this kind of forming mental images, making judgments, drawing conclusions, things are not as present official thinking believes them to be. Only forming mental images as such is actually the concern of the head. When you make a judgment, then you must feel, through the mediation of the etheric body, how you stand on your legs. You do not really make judgments with your head at all; you make judgments with your legs, although with the legs of the etheric body. He who makes judgments even when he is lying down stretches his etheric legs. Making judgments is not based on the head; it is based on the legs! Of course nobody believes this today; nonetheless it is true. Drawing conclusions is based on the arms and hands, and generally upon that which lifts man out of what the animal also has. The animal stands on its legs; the animal is itself a judgment, but it does not draw conclusions. The human being draws conclusions; for that purpose his arms have been liberated; that is what his arms are there for, not for walking. The human being has his arms free so that he can be a being that can draw conclusions. What happens when one stretches one's etheric legs or when one moves one's astral arm is a judgment, is a conclusion, which merely reflects itself in the head as mental image and then actually becomes a mental image. One thus needs the entire human being, not merely the nerve-sense human being, in order to arrive at judgments and conclusions. Now, if you take this into consideration, you will say to yourself: the human being really lifts judgments and conclusions out of his limb system. These are fundamentally already acts of will, and this comes out of a much more indefinite state than forming mental images. We basically experience the same thing when we finish drawing a conclusion as when we wake up in the morning: we have lifted it out of the depths of our being. That which has become old from the previous life to this life, which lives itself out in the head, leads us to be able to have mental images. In the head we are old in relation to the cosmos when we are born. Our will is able to renew itself because in relation to the cosmos we have become young. What we carry with us as our head is always reminiscent of the previous incarnation. It is the old element. The metabolic-limb system, however, has been conquered by the will in entering this incarnation. It is actually mediated by the mother's body. The rest of the body—this can be confirmed by an outer, empirical study of embryology—is actually constructed from out of the cosmos in the mother. The head is simply a copy of the cosmos, brought about by outer forces. Whoever wishes to deny this should also say that it is nonsense that the magnetic field of the earth positions the needle of the magnet. The physicist goes beyond the magnet's needle if he wishes to explain it; the physiologist, the embryologist, the biologist, remains in the mother's body when he wishes to explain the embryo. That is just as nonsensical as if one wished to explain the needle of the magnet only out of itself. One must proceed out to the whole cosmos. In development we have, to begin with, the head, and the rest of the body is only attached to it; this part the will conquers for itself, having approached Imagination during the passage through life between death and a new birth from the Midnight Hour of Existence onward. Now, when we study this human being (see drawing, page 84) we find that everything pertaining to thinking and perception lies above the membrane of memory, while everything pertaining to willing lies below this membrane. The will works up from below, works up out of the unconscious, and one finds it only in the way that we explained yesterday. There the will works upward. In regard to the will, we are sleeping. We thus actually have the human being as a duality in the life between birth and death. It is true the human being is a monad, but he is this in regard to the whole world, and this monadic quality must be brought about in becoming; he must renew it again and again. In reality, however, the human being between birth and death is dualistic: the thought, to some extent, with the perception on one side, the will with the feeling (Gemüt) on the other side. The human being is thereby actually the average, I would like to call it, of two worlds. Be honest and ask yourselves, in every moment of your lives what do you have in consciousness? Your memory pictures—what you experienced at age two, three, five, or six—are the content of your consciousness. What comes through from below, welling up out of the will, is love, the capacity for love. The human being is actually nothing other than what in the average of two worlds appears as memory pictures and love. Basically the human being is organized in such a way that above is a world that is cosmic thought, while below is a world that is cosmic will. The human being is continually a point of attack for Lucifer from the side of will and a point of attack for Ahriman from the side of thought (see drawing, page 84). Ahriman continually strives to make the human being all head. Lucifer continually strives to cut the head off so that the human being cannot think at all, so that everything streams out in warmth by way of the heart, overflows with world love, flowing into the world as world love, as an excessively sentimental cosmic being flows out. In our age, in our highly praised civilization, it is chiefly Ahrimanic influences active in us. These Ahrimanic influences have always been sensed by sensitive human beings. When I was still a very young man, I spoke once with an Austrian poet who was quite well known at that time; he had a fine feeling for what is emerging in our civilization, and he expressed it in a half-pictorial way; this half-pictorial quality was for him, however, a reality. He said to me—and it seems to me as if it were happening today—“Considering how we human beings are today, and especially if things continue along the lines they are going now, humanity will actually be confronted by a terrible fate, for the human being will gradually lose the agility of his limbs; he will no longer be able to walk properly; he will always want to ride a bicycle and to travel mechanically. He will lose the agility of his hands, and everything will become technical. Just as a muscle atrophies if it is not used, so everything in the human body will atrophy and the human being will become merely a head. The head will become bigger and bigger until finally the human being will just roll along, with the rest of his organism totally crippled.” This picture hovered like a nightmare before this Austrian poet—Hermann Rollett was his name—and he described it very visually, for it weighed upon him terribly, this picture that human beings will become rolling heads due to our civilization. There is something quite true underlying this picture, however. What underlies it is that, in fact, in our time the powers are extraordinarily strong that would like to develop our heads more and more. With the physical head they will not succeed so well, but with the etheric head they will be more successful. It is therefore so, in fact, that in our time the Ahrimanic powers would like to make us thoroughly head-men; they would like to transform us completely into mere thinkers. For the human being in a healthy development, however, the other pole exists, the will pole, which always counteracts this so that when we die the will has grasped the thought. Thought must not yet be alone. You see, when we are born, we have gathered new will, but the thought separates itself and finds our head; the will takes hold of the rest of the body. While we live on the earth there is within us a continual interaction between will and thought. The will takes hold of the thought, and we must carry this fusing of will and thought through death. Ahriman would like to prevent this. He would like for the will to remain separate, for the thought alone to be particularly cultivated. We would lose our individuality if we were finally to arrive at the point toward which Ahriman strives. We would completely lose our individuality. We would arrive, in the moment of death, at an excessively, intensively cultivated thought. We human beings would be unable to hold this thought, and Ahriman could lay hold of it himself and integrate it into the rest of the world so that this thought would work further in the rest of the world. This is, in fact, the destiny that threatens humanity if we persist in the present-day materialism; then Ahrimanic powers would become so strong that Ahriman could steal thoughts from the human being and incorporate them into the earth in their effectiveness, so that the earth, which actually ought to come to an end, would become consolidated. Ahriman works toward consolidating the earth, toward the earth remaining as earth. Ahriman works against the saying, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” He wishes the words to be cast aside and heaven and earth to remain. This can be accomplished only if the thoughts of human beings are stolen, if human beings are deindividualized. If Ahriman could continue to work as he has been able to especially since the year 1845, human brains would become more and more rigid, and human beings would live as though subject to compulsive thoughts, to materialized thoughts, as I explained yesterday. This would show itself particularly in human beings being guided in their education in such a way that they would no longer have mobile thoughts; rather, when they reached a certain age, they would have completely fixed thoughts. Now ask yourselves whether that is not already true to a great extent in our time! Just think how fixed the thoughts of many human beings are today. Is it possible to teach much to human beings today? Their thoughts are so rigid, so solid, that it is almost impossible to teach them very much. This is already being used by Ahriman. Ahriman strives more and more to intensify the process of making thoughts into compulsive thoughts. An active product in the scientific realm of these compulsive thoughts is atomism. In atomism, the spirit behind the veil of the senses is not intimated but only atoms, everywhere vibrating, whirling atoms. Of course you cannot reach behind the veil of the senses in any other way than with thoughts. Ahriman, however, has confused people so much already that they have materialized their thoughts. They no longer believe that they themselves have actually merely constructed a world with thought-atoms; they consider this as reality. They therefore have externalized the thoughts. This is a thoroughly Ahrimanized world. Today we have an Ahrimanized science, Ahrimanized through and through. That this is actually the case can sometimes be encountered in a frightening way. I received, for example—maybe thirty-five years ago—a manuscript. It was a very scholarly manuscript. It intended to give the human differential—I am telling you a true story! By the human differential was meant the differential that if one integrates it will result in the human being. If one therefore integrates from foot to head, one will get the human being. It was a very scholarly treatise, and the physician who brought it to me said, “You may meet the author personally,” for he was in his clinic. When I became acquainted with the man, he said, “Yes, this is so; I have experienced it myself. I consist altogether of differential atoms. Everywhere there are differentials, and I am only an integral.” He conceived himself as differentiated exclusively into atoms; that was an intellectual-Ahrimanic form of consciousness. In the last analysis, however, it is merely the system of atomism grown rigid. When this manuscript was brought to me, I was led to recall that there is a LaPlacian world formula: according to it, it should be possible, by integration from the processes of atoms, to calculate, by inserting a specific value, when, let us say, Caesar crossed the Rubicon, or something similar! Here one does not integrate from foot to head, but rather one merely needs to integrate from the world's beginning to its end. This can be done simply by bringing atoms into the world formula in the appropriate way. This whole way of thinking looks suspiciously similar to the treatise of the man who considered himself an integral locked in between the borders of foot and head. By viewing such matters correctly, one can receive clear insight into the progressively Ahrimanic nature of our culture. This must, of course, be counteracted, which can happen only if our concepts are again led to have a pictorial quality, so that we do not merely work with abstract concepts but rather bring to our concepts a pictorial quality. Then, when passing through the portal of death, we will already be bringing pictures with us, and we will find the connection to what the world demands. Otherwise humanity approaches the danger of losing itself. What actually ought to be individualized by the flowing of the will into the thoughts will become mineralized, will be made into universal earth. The earth thus would become a world- being, but humanity would in terms of its soul flow into a great cemetery. Such overviews of civilization must occasionally be made. In our time it is absolutely essential to make such overviews, for whoever is able to oversee more precisely the matters of evolution today knows how rapidly this ossification of our civilization is approaching us. On this occasion I would not like to forget to mention that until the year 869 A.D., until the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, man's members were considered to be body, soul, and spirit. At this Eighth Ecumenical Council, the following formula, to which I have repeatedly drawn attention, was established for the West: it must not be believed that man consists of body, soul, and spirit, but only of body and soul, and the soul has a few spiritual properties. This decision then passed into the world. In the Middle Ages it was heresy to believe that man consisted of body, soul, and spirit. Today philosophy professors discover by means of "unprejudiced science" that man consists only of body and soul. This "unprejudiced science" is nothing but a decision by the Eighth Ecumenical Council. That, however, strives toward something else. One could say that through this Eighth Ecumenical Council humanity has lost the consciousness of the spirit, which must be regained. If we proceed further along the path I have just described to you, however, humanity will also lose consciousness of the soul. Among the materialists of the nineteenth century, this consciousness of the soul had already disappeared to such an extent that it was said that the brain secretes thoughts just as the liver secretes bile. It seemed, therefore, as if only a consciousness of the bodily processes remained. In fact, already today, without people knowing it, there are all kinds of underground societies that work toward things that lead in a direction similar to the one decided upon in 869 at the Council of Constantinople. They work to explain that man does not consist of both body and soul but rather that man consists only of the body and that the soul is merely something that develops out of the body. It is therefore impossible, if you take this viewpoint, to educate man from the aspect of soul; one must find a substance, a material substance, that can be injected into a human being at a certain age; then he will develop his talents by injection. This tendency definitely exists. It is right in line with the Ahrimanic development: no longer establish schools in order to teach, but inject certain substances instead. This is possible. It is not as if it were not possible. It is indeed possible, but the human being is made thereby into an automaton. One would speed up immensely what would otherwise be achieved by means of developing ready-made thoughts, with an education that overpowers thinking. There are already such substances that can be developed, substances that if injected at seven years of age, for example, could make the public schools altogether expendable; the human being would then become a thought automaton. He would become exceptionally clever but would not have a consciousness of it. This cleverness would just run off like a machine. What do many people today care, however, whether the human being has an inner life or not, as long as outwardly he walks around and does this or that? Such human beings that submit themselves by preference to the Ahrimanic civilization—and they do exist today—strive for such ideals. After all, what could be more tempting than the attitude, such as today is spreading far and wide, which would prefer to find an injectible substance to struggling with the children for years and years? One must present these things as being drastic. If one does not present the situation as being drastic, humanity today would not notice toward what goals it is striving. By such an injectible substance, one would simply achieve a loosening of the etheric body in the physical body. As soon as the etheric body is loosened, the play between the etheric body and the universe would become exceedingly lively, and man would become an automaton. The physical body here on earth must be developed through spiritual will. Out of the full consciousness that one faces when confronting the automization of the human being, the methods for the Waldorf School, the pedagogical methods for the Waldorf School, were discovered. In this regard they should be motors of civilization that will lead again to a spiritualization, for basically—one can already say this—today above all it is necessary for the spiritual life among human beings to be particularly nurtured. One therefore should look courageously upon all that appears as symptoms of the improvement of individual human beings. I have often mentioned before how humanity strives today to place routine in place of a real practice of life—routine, which is truly the mechanization of life. I was overjoyed recently when I read that there are still people who, going beyond the ordinary routine of life, have already perceived the practical life as something important. Recently a news item spread through the world, describing how Edison tested the people he wished to prepare for some sort of practical work. It did not interest him at all whether or not a merchant was able to keep books. That, he said, can be learned in three weeks if one is a reasonable, intelligent person. None of these specialties interested him at all; these one can learn. When Edison wished to know whether people would be of any use in practical life, however, he tested them by asking them questions like, "How large is Siberia?" Thus when he wished to discover whether someone was a good bookkeeper, Edison did not ask whether he could conduct an audit properly, but he asked, “How large is Siberia?” or “If a room is five meters long, three meters wide, and four meters high, how many cubic meters of air are contained in this room?” and similar questions. He posed questions like, “What is standing at the place where Caesar crossed the Rubicon?” and so on, just general questions. And according to the extent to which a person could answer such questions, Edison hired him as a bookkeeper, or whatever. He knew that if a person could answer such a general question this was a proof that his schooling had not been in vain, that as a child he had developed mobile thoughts, and this is what Edison demanded. This is how practical life really should be conducted, whereas in recent times we have steered precisely in the opposite direction, succumbing more and more to specialization, so that finally one could really despair of finding the people needed for practical life. It is impossible to get anyone to do something outside the pigeonhole into which he wants to fit. Already today it must be said that in this way too we must work toward the mobility of thoughts. If there is such a working toward the mobility of thoughts, then these thoughts will not harden, and Ahriman will be in a difficult position. You can see yourselves, if you look at life, how few Edisons there are who have such practical principles. It is necessary to work toward a pictorial quality of concepts; whoever works toward the pictorial quality of concepts will no longer be able to say that he does not understand spiritual science. It is precisely that tug which a person giyes himself in order to receive from abstractions the pictorial quality of concepts that presents on the one hand the possibility of grasping that the earth evolved out of ancient Moon, Sun, Saturn; on the other hand, for the inner life, the life of feeling intermingles with the pictorial conceptions, with the imagination. The fully human being thus will arise. |
350. Learning to See in the Spiritual World: The Development of Independent Thinking and of the Ability To Think Backward
28 Jun 1923, Dornach Tr. Walter Stuber, Mark Gardner Rudolf Steiner |
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It is interesting that often it is the most brilliant people who regress very much in old age. You may have heard that Kant was reckoned to be one of the wisest men, but in old age he became feeble-minded. His body regressed so much that he could not express his wise mind any more. |
350. Learning to See in the Spiritual World: The Development of Independent Thinking and of the Ability To Think Backward
28 Jun 1923, Dornach Tr. Walter Stuber, Mark Gardner Rudolf Steiner |
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[ 1 ] A few questions were put to me last time. I will now answer them, but in a somewhat different order than they were asked. The questions are: [ 2 ] What is the relationship between coming to see the secrets of the universe and one's conception of the world and of life? [ 3 ] How far must one go before one finds higher worlds on the path of natural science? [ 4 ] Do the forces from the cosmos influence the whole of humanity? [ 5 ] What connection do plants have with the human being and the human body? [ 6 ] These are, of course, very complicated questions and so I would like to organize my remarks in such a way that the answers emerge gradually. One cannot do otherwise with such complicated questions because if you ask, How can I come to see the secrets of the universe?—this means, How can I arrive at a true spiritual science? Now, you must not imagine that this is something easy to do nowadays. Most people, when they hear that something like Anthroposophy or spiritual science exists, think to themselves: Very well, if that is so, I too will acquire for myself the capacity to see the spirit. I will manage it within a week then I will be able to know everything for myself. [ 7 ] Needless to say, it is not as simple as that. One has to realize that a great deal is required to master even ordinary science. In order to undertake the simplest observations, one must first learn how to use the instruments. Of course it is comparatively easy to use a microscope, but if one wants to investigate something with the help of a microscope one cannot simply say: I will now put a piece of muscle or the like under the microscope and look into it; then I will know what goes on in the muscle. If you were to proceed like that, you would see nothing. To see something under a microscope, one must first prepare the slides. A piece of muscle is no use by itself: one must make very thin slices with a fine razor, and sometimes a little must be removed and another cut made so that finally one has a very thin film. And very often even then the microscope does not help. For if you have such a sliver of muscle or cell under the microscope, you will probably still see nothing. What one must do is ask oneself: How can I make visible what is under the microscope? Then, often, what one must next do is color what one wants to see with certain dyes to make it visible. But then one must realize one has changed something. One has to know how it would be if one had not changed it. But these things are still really quite simple. If one wants to observe the stars with a telescope one must first learn how to handle a telescope, although this is much simpler than a microscope. You know there are people who set up telescopes in the streets for people to look through. By itself, this does not help much. For this again requires lenses and a clock, which in turn one must then also learn to handle, etc. These are only examples to show you how complicated it is to investigate the simplest things in the physical world. [ 8 ] Now, to investigate the spiritual world is really much more difficult, for more preparation is necessary. People imagine they can learn to do it in a week. But this is not so. Above all, one must realize that one has to activate something one has within oneself. What ordinarily is not active must be made active. [ 9 ] To make things clear for you I must explain that in all investigation of the spiritual world, as in normal science, one must frequently start with some knowledge of what is not normal. You can only learn how things really are if you know how they are when they are not normal. I once gave you a particular example of this. We have to consider this because people in the outside world call people mad who investigate the spiritual world, however normal they may be. We must therefore set about our investigations in such a way that in the end we arrive at the truth. Of course one must not think one can achieve anything by concerning oneself overmuch with what is diseased and abnormal, but one can learn much from it. [ 10 ] For instance, there are people who are not normal because they are, as is said, mentally deranged. What does this mean? There is no worse word in the world than "mentally deranged" (geistesgestört) for the spirit can never be deranged. Consider the following case for instance: If somebody is deranged for twenty years—this happens—and afterward recovers, what has occurred? Perhaps for twenty years this person says that he is being persecuted by others—that he suffers, as one says, from paranoia—or he says that he sees all kinds of specters and apparitions which are not there, etc. This can continue for twenty years. Now somebody who has been deranged for twenty years can become normal again. But in these cases you will always notice one thing. If someone was deranged for three, five or twenty years and recovers, he will not be quite the same as he was before. Above all you will notice that he will tell you, after he has recovered, that throughout the time he was ill he was able to look into the spiritual world. He will tell you all sorts of things that he saw in the spiritual world. If one then pursues the matter with the knowledge one has gained of the spiritual world as a completely healthy person, one finds that some of what he says is rubbish but. that also much of it is correct. This is what is so strange, someone can be deranged for twenty years, recover, and then tell you that he has been in the spiritual world and has experienced these things. And if one knows the spiritual world as a healthy, normal person, one must admit that he is right in many instances. [ 11 ] If you speak to him during his mental ill-ness, he will never be able to tell you anything sensible. He will tell you the nonsense he experiences. People who are mentally disturbed over a long period do not actually experience the spiritual world during their illness. They have not experienced anything of the spiritual world. But after they have recovered they can, in a certain way, look back to the time they were ill, and what they have not experienced appears to them like glimpses into the spiritual world. This conviction that they have seen much of the spiritual world only appears when they have recovered. [ 12 ] One can learn much from this. One can learn that the human being contains something that is not used at all during the time he or she is insane. But it was there, it was alive. And where was it? It was not in the outer world for the person told you that the sky was red and the clouds green—all kinds of things. The sick one saw nothing properly in the outer world, But the inner being, which the person cannot use in the deranged state, is in the spiritual world. When he or she can use the brain again and can look back on what the spiritual being lived through, then spiritual experiences come. [ 13 ] From this we see that a human being who is mentally ill lives spiritually in the spiritual world. The spirit in the person is perfectly healthy. What, then, is ill in a mentally ill patient? It is, in fact, the body: the body cannot use the soul and spirit. When a person is called mentally ill, there is always something ill in the body, and obviously when the brain is ill one cannot think properly. In the same way, when the liver is ill, one cannot feel properly. [ 14 ] This is why "mentally ill" (geisteskrank) is the most incorrect expression that one can use, for "mentally ill" does not mean that the spirit (geist) is ill. It means the body is so ill that it cannot use the spirit which is always healthy. Above all you must be quite clear that the spirit is always healthy. Only the body can become ill, with the result that it cannot use the spirit in the right way. When someone has a diseased brain it is like having a hammer that breaks with every blow. If I say to someone who does not have a hammer, You are a lazy fellow, you are not even able to strike a blow—then this is, of course, nonsense. He could well strike a blow but he does not have a hammer. It is therefore nonsense to say someone is mentally ill. The spirit is perfectly healthy, only it lacks the body through which to act. [ 15 ] A good example of what one can learn in this way comes from considering how our thinking works. From what I have told you, you will see that, though one has the spirit, one needs a tool for thinking, and this is the brain. In the physical world one needs the brain. It is not particularly clever of materialism to say one needs a brain. Obviously one needs a brain. But this postulate explains nothing about the spirit. We can also learn that the spirit can completely withdraw itself. In the case of mental illness the spirit does withdraw completely. And it is important to know this, because this shows that people today—and now I am going to tell you something that will really surprise you—cannot think at all. They delude themselves that they can think, but they cannot. I will show you why people cannot think. [ 16 ] You will object: But people go to school; nowadays one already learns to think quite well even in grade school. So it seems, at least. Nevertheless, people today cannot think at all. It only appears as if they could. In grade school we have grade school teachers. These have also learned something; ostensibly they have also learned to think. Those from whom they have learned have, as one says in Stuttgart, "swollen heads." These are very clever people according to present ideas. They have been to a university. Before they went to university they went to high school. There they learned Latin. If you think back a bit you might say: But my teacher did not know Latin. Perhaps not, but he learned from teachers who did. And what they learned was entirely under the influence of the Latin language. Everything one learns today is under the influence of the Latin language. You can see this from the fact that when someone gives you a prescription, he writes it in Latin, It stems from the time when everything was written in Latin. It is not so long ago, only thirty to forty years, that if one went to university one was obliged to write one's thesis in Latin. [ 17 ] Everything one learns today is under the influence of Latin. This is because in the Middle Ages, up to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—this is not so long ago—all teaching was in Latin. For instance the first person to lecture in German was a certain Thomasius1 in Leipzig. This was not long ago, it was in the seventeenth century. Everywhere lectures were given in Latin. Everybody who learned anything had to go through the Latin language and in the Middle Ages everything one could learn was in Latin. If one wanted to learn anything new one had to learn Latin first. You may protest: But surely not in the grade schools. But there were no grade schools before the sixteenth century. Only gradually, as the vernacular was adopted by science, did grade schools come into existence. So, you see, Latin influences our whole thinking. All of you think like people who have learned to think under the influence of Latin. And if you were to say that the Americans, for instance, could not have learned Latin so long ago—well, today's Americans emigrated from Europe! They too depended on the Latin language. [ 18 ] Latin has a certain peculiarity. It was developed in ancient Rome in such a way that it thinks by itself. It is interesting how Latin is taught in high schools. One learns Latin; and then one learns thinking, correct thinking according to Latin syntax. So one's whole way of thinking does not depend on anything one does, but on what the Latin language does. You understand, don't you, that this is something quite significant. Anybody today who has learned something does not think for himself: the Latin language thinks in him, even if he has not learned Latin. Strange as it is, one meets independent thinking today only in the few people who have not been to school very much. [ 19 ] I am not suggesting that we return to illiteracy. We cannot do this. In no realm do I advocate going backward, but one must understand how things have become as they are. Therefore it is important to be able to go back to what the simple person knows, though he has not had much schooling. He is not very forthcoming because he is used to being laughed at. In spite of everything, it is important to know that contemporary human beings do not think for themselves, but that the Latin language thinks in them. [ 20 ] You see, as long as one cannot think for oneself, one can in no way enter the spiritual world. This is the reason why modern science is opposed to all spiritual knowledge; because through Latin education people can no longer think for themselves. This is the first thing to learn—independent thinking. People are quite right when they say: the brain thinks. Why does the brain think? Because Latin syntax goes into the brain and the brain thinks quite automatically in modern humanity. What we see running round the world are automatons of the Latin language who do not think for themselves. [ 21 ] In recent years something remarkable has happened. I hinted at it last time, but you may not have noticed it, because it is not easy to see. Something remarkable has happened in recent years. Now, as you know, besides the physical body, we have the etheric body. (I will not speak for the moment of the rest.) The brain belongs to the physical body. The etheric body is also in the brain and one can only think independently with the etheric body. One cannot think independently with the physical body. One can think with the physical hotly only when—as with Latin—the brain is used like an automaton. But as long as one only thinks with the brain, one cannot think anything spiritual. To think something spiritual one must start to think with the etheric body—with the etheric body which, in the case of the mentally ill, is often not used for years. It has to be awakened to an inner activity. [ 22 ] This is the first thing one has to learn: to think independently. Without independent thinking, one cannot enter the spiritual world. But it is, of course, necessary first of all to find out that one has not learned to think for oneself in one's youth! One has only learned to think what has been thought for centuries through the use of the Latin language. And if one really grasps this then one knows that the first condition for entry into the spiritual world is this: Learn to think independently! [ 23 ] Now we come to what I wanted to point out when I said that in recent times something remarkable has happened. The people who, more than anyone else, thought along Latin lines were the people of learning—those who, for instance, created physics. They worked it out with thoughts derived from Latin and with the physical brain. When we were small, when I was about as old as young E. here, we learned physics which was worked out with a Latin brain. We only learned what was thought out with a Latin brain. Since then a lot has happened. When I was small the telephone was just being invented. Until then it did not exist. After this followed all the other great inventions that everyone now takes for granted as if they had always been there. They only appeared in the last decades. This caused more and more people to become involved in science who were not Latin trained. This is rather a strange thing. When one looks into the scientific life of the last decades one finds more and more technicians of this kind involved in science. These people had not had much to do with Latin and so their thinking did not become so automatic. And this non-automatic thinking was then picked up by others. This is why today physics is full of concepts and ideas that fall apart. They are most interesting. There is, for instance, Professor Gruner2 in Bern who two years ago spoke about the new direction in physics. He said that all the concepts have changed in the last years. [ 24 ] The reason that one does not notice this is because if you listen to lectures on popular science people tell you what was thought twenty years ago. They cannot tell you what is thought today because they themselves cannot think yet. If you take the thoughts of thirty years ago as valid, it is just like taking a piece of ice and melting it; the ideas melt away. They are no longer there if one wants to follow them exactly. We must see this. If someone learned physics thirty years ago, and sees what has become of it today, he wants to tear his hair out, because he has to confess: I cannot handle all this with the concepts I have learned. This is how it is. And why? Because in recent years, through the development of humanity, the human being has reached the point when the etheric body is supposed to begin to think, and human beings do not want this to happen. They want to go on thinking with the physical body. The concepts fall apart in the physical body, and yet human beings do not want to learn to think with the etheric body. They do not want to think independently. [ 25 ] Now you see why, in the year 1893, it became necessary for me to write the book The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,3 It is not the contents of this book that are so important, though obviously at that time one wished to tell the world what is said in it, but the most important thing is that independent thinking appeared in this book for the first time. No one can possibly understand this book who does not think independently. From the beginning, page by page, a reader must become accustomed to using his etheric body if he would think the thoughts in this book at all. Hence this book is a means of education—a very important means—and must be taken up as such. [ 26 ] When this book appeared in the nineties people did not know at all what to make of it. It was as if someone in Europe wrote Chinese and no one could understand it. It was of course written in German, but people were completely unaccustomed to the thoughts expressed in it, because all connection with Latin was purposely cast off. For the very first time, quite consciously, it was intended that there should be no thoughts in it that are influenced by Latin, but only independent thoughts. Only the physical brain is a Latin scholar. The etheric body is no Latin scholar. And therefore one has to try to express such thoughts in a language one can only have in the etheric body. [ 27 ] I will tell you something else. People have noticed, of course, that concepts have changed in the last decades. When I was young the professor filled the whole blackboard with writing. You had to learn it all and then you did well in your exams. But recently, people have begun to notice what Gruner said in his inaugural lecture: none of our concepts would remain valid if there were no solid bodies, only fluids. If the whole world were liquid, as Gruner imagined in his lecture, then our concepts would be invalid and we would have to think quite differently. [ 28 ] Yes, of course one would have to think differently if there were no solid bodies. In that case you, as you sit here, could do nothing with the concepts you learned in school. If you, say, as a fish, suddenly became clever and had the idea that, as a fish, you wanted to attend a human university, then you would learn something that does not exist for a fish, because it lives in water. A fish only has a boundary sensation of a solid body; the moment it touches the body, it is immediately repulsed. So, if a fish began to think, it would have to have thoughts quite different from those a human being has. But a human being likewise needs such different thoughts, because other thoughts escape him, so that he has to say to himself: If everything were liquid I would have to have quite different thoughts. [ 29 ] Well, have I not told you about the condition of the earth when there were no solid bodies and when everything was fluid, even the animals? I have told you of this condition. Can you not then understand that present day thinking cannot reach back to these conditions? It cannot think them. So present day thinking cannot make anything of the beginning of the world. Naturally, then, a human being today begins to say to himself: Good heavens! If the world were fluid we would have to have quite different concepts. But in the spiritual world there are no solid bodies. So, with all the concepts with which Latin has gradually schooled us, we are unable to enter the spiritual world. We must wean ourselves of these concepts. [ 30 ] Here is another hidden truth. In Greek times, which preceded the Latin era (the Latin era only began in the fifth or sixth century B.C. but the Greek period is much older), in Grecian times there was still a knowledge of the spirit, One could still see into the spiritual world. When Rome emerged with the Latin language, this was gradually extinguished. Now I must again say something you will find curious, but you will understand it. Who has used Latin, only Latin, throughout the centuries? More than anyone, the Church. It is precisely the Church that claims to teach humanity about the spirit that has contributed the most to drive out the spirit. In the Middle Ages all universities were ecclesiastical. Of course one must be grateful to the Church for founding the universities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but it founded them in Latin, and Latin thought has no possibility of attaining the spirit. And so it gradually came about that human beings only have concepts relating to solid bodies. Just look at the Romans, they only introduced dry, prosaic and unspiritual concepts into the world. And this was the reason that all ideas became so material. How would the Greeks have described the sacrament of the Eucharist? They would certainly not have described it as if the elements were actually blood and flesh. This stems from materialism. So even the concept of the Eucharist has become materialistic and this is connected with the Latin language. [ 31 ] Latin is entirely logical. I have worked with many people who were Latin in their whole attitude to life, although they spoke German. If one wanted to make something clear one quickly translated it into Latin, because since the time of Christ only in Latin does one think logically. But this logical thinking only applies to solid bodies. If one wants to enter the spiritual world one needs fluid concepts. [ 32 ] There is for instance the Theosophical Society. It also wanted to reach the spiritual world. The Theosophical Society says that man has a physical body, an etheric body, etc. But these people are materialistic because they think the physical body is dense, the etheric body is a little thinner and the astral body thinner still. But all these are still bodies, they never become spirit. If one wants to reach the spirit one has to find concepts which are constantly changing. Even when I draw something on the blackboard you will notice that I take this into consideration. When I draw the physical body I try to portray physical man as he is. But if I try to draw the etheric body, I would never dream of representing it in the same way. I would do it like this. The human being has an etheric body which expands. But you must know that this is not so much the etheric body, but the picture of one instant. In the next moment it is different. So if I wish to draw the etheric body, I would have to draw, quickly wipe it off, draw differently, again wipe it off, draw again and wipe it off. It is in constant movement. With the concepts we have today, we cannot catch up with these movements. This is what you have to keep in mind, concepts must become mobile. People must get into the habit of it, This is why it is necessary that thinking become completely independent. [ 33 ] But this is not enough. I will tell you something more. As you know a human being develops, but one does not usually notice it. However, when a person is quite young, one does notice it. One knows that a child who is only four years old can neither write nor read nor do sums. An eight year old child can perhaps do these things. Here one can see development. But in later life when we have made our way, we are so terribly superior that we don't admit that we can still develop. But we do, throughout our lives, and it is remarkable how we develop. Our development goes like this: Imagine this is man: I will draw him diagrammatically. When the child is quite young its development proceeds from the head. After the change of teeth, the development proceeds from the chest. Therefore one must watch how a child between seven and fourteen breathes—that it breathes adequately, etc. So this is a picture of the older child. (Nowadays one would have to say it differently. Children do not like to be called children any more. From fourteen onward one must call them "young ladies" and "young gentlemen.") Only at puberty does the development proceed from the limbs and from the whole human being. So one can say that only when one has reached puberty is one developing from the whole being. And this goes on throughout our twenties and thirties. But when one becomes older—some of you can already see it in yourselves—there is a certain retrogression. This need not be the case if one has adopted a spiritual mode of life, but in normal life there is a certain retrogression as one gets older. It is just the task of Anthroposophy to see to it that in the future one does not regress as one gets older. Slowly and gradually this must happen. [ 34 ] Now there are people whose mental capacities diminish alarmingly. But the mind, the spirit, cannot diminish. It is again only the body. It is interesting that often it is the most brilliant people who regress very much in old age. You may have heard that Kant was reckoned to be one of the wisest men, but in old age he became feeble-minded. His body regressed so much that he could not express his wise mind any more. And so it often is. Especially the very intelligent become feeble-minded in old age. It is an exaggerated form of what happens to everybody. Eventually in old age there comes a point when one can no longer use the physical body. The reason for this is mainly be-cause the arteries harden with excessive deposits of calcium, And the more this happens, the less one can make use of the physical body. As, up to the fortieth year, development proceeds from the head into the whole body, so, in the same degree, the process reverses. As one proceeds from the forties to the fifties one comes back to using the chest more, and in old age one goes back to using the head. So if one becomes really old, one again has to use one's head much more. But now one would have to use the finer head—the etheric head. But this is not learned in Latin education. And it is just those who, in the last decades, had a materialistic Latin education who were most strongly affected by senility. [ 35 ] In old age one must go back to childhood. There are people in whom this is very noticeable. They become mentally weaker and weaker. The mind, the spirit, however, remains completely intact. Only the body becomes weaker and weaker. In the end such people can no longer do the things they first learned to do in life. Such things happen. Let us say somebody gets old. He can no longer do the work he used to do. He can only do what he did as an older child. Finally he cannot even do this. He can only play and can only understand ideas he learned when playing. There are even very old people who can only understand what their parents or their nurse told them in the very first years of their lives. The saying about returning to second childhood is well founded. One really does return to childhood. [ 36 ] Actually it is not a misfortune, that is, if one has developed a spiritual life. In fact it is rather fortunate, for as long as one is a child, one can use one's etheric body. If a child tears around and shouts and does all kinds of things, this is not done by the physical body—except if it has a stomachache, but even then the stomachache has to be transferred to the etheric and astral bodies so that the child throws itself about as a result. What tears around is not the physical body. Now one grows old and returns to childhood. Gradually one has learned not to tear around any more, but one no longer uses the etheric body like a child, but for something more sensible. So it can be fortunate that one returns to childhood. [ 37 ] This is the second point. The first was that in order to enter the spiritual world one has to learn to think in the right way. We shall have to speak further about how one achieves this. The matter is very complicated. Today we have to concentrate on the question why there has to be independent thinking. One must break away from much in modern education, for what one learns in modern education is not independent thinking, it is Latin thinking. Do not imagine that the thinking emerging from socialist theories being developed today is free thinking! It has all been learned from what originally came from Latin, but people do not know it. The worker may have this or that intention in his will, but when he begins to think he thinks in bourgeois concepts and these originate in Latin thinking. So the first thing one has to learn is independent thinking. [ 38 ] The second thing is that one must learn not only to live in the present moment, but to be able to turn back into the life one led in childhood. If you want to penetrate into the spiritual world you must continually remember to ask yourself how it was when you were twelve years old. What did you do? One must not do this superficially, but imagine it in great detail. Nothing is better than to begin to try to picture: Oh yes, there I was twelve years old—I can see it quite clearly—there was a pile of stones by the roadside and I climbed up on it. Once I fell off it. There was a hazel bush and I took out my pocket knife and cut off some branches and cut my finger. It is important really to visualize what one did so many years ago; in this way one gets away from just living in the present. If you think the way one learns to think today, you think with your present physical body. But if you turn back to when you were twelve, you cannot think with your physical body as it then was, for it is no longer there (I told you the physical body is renewed every seven years) so you have to think with your etheric body. If you think back to something that happened twelve or fourteen years ago, you call on your etheric body. This is the way to call up inner activity. [ 39 ] Above all, one should get accustomed to think in a new way, different from one's usual thinking. How do you think? You know we met here at nine o'clock. I began by reading to you the questions on the slips of paper. Then I proceeded with various observations and we have now arrived at saying: We have to think back into the life we lived when we were twelve or fourteen years old. Now when you get home, you can, if you find it really interesting, think through these thoughts again. One can do this. Most people do it. They go through it once again. But you can do something different. You can ask yourself: What did he say last? The last thing he said was that one should think back to one's early life, to the age of twelve or fourteen years. Before that he said one has to have independent thinking. Earlier still he described how Latin gradually took over. Before that, how a person who was mentally ill for a time and then looks back on it, says he has experienced extraordinary things. It was further explained to us how the inner being cannot be mentally ill—only the body can be ill. Now you have run backward through the whole lecture. [ 40 ] But in the world things do not run backward. I could possibly have given you the lecture backward in the first place, but then you would not have understood it. One has to begin at the beginning and then look at the whole as it gradually unfolds, but once one has understood it, one can think it backward. But things do not run backward. So I tear myself free from things. I say: Just to be contrary, I will think things exactly not the way they go in the outer world, but I will think them backward. This requires a certain strength. When I think backward I have to make myself inwardly active. A person who wants to look through a telescope has to learn how to handle it. In the same way a person who wants to see into the spiritual world must learn how to handle it. He must think backward many times. One day the moment will come when he knows: Ah, now I am entering the spiritual world. [ 41 ] You see, throughout your whole life you have accustomed your physical body to thinking forward, not backward. When you begin to think backward your physical body does not take part in it. Something strange happens. This is the first advice to those who ask: How can I reach the spiritual world? You can also read this in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment.4 What is said there repeatedly is: At least learn to go backward through the course of the day; then other things, People have, of course, only learned to think with their physical body. They notice this and have to make a great effort to think backward, but they have only learned to think with the physical body, not with the etheric body. Now there is an all-out strike by the etheric body; yes, a real "general strike." And if people would not fall asleep so easily, they would know that, if they began to think backward, they would arrive at the spiritual world. But the moment the vision begins, they fall asleep. People fall asleep, because the effort is too great. So one must exert one's entire will and all one's strength not to fall asleep. In addition, one must have patience. Sometimes it takes years, but one must have patience. [ 42 ] If somebody could tell you what you experienced unconsciously when you went to sleep after thinking backward, you would see that it was something very wise. The most stupid people begin to have extraordinarily wise thoughts in their sleep, but they do not know anything about it. [ 43 ] So today I have drawn your attention to the fact that one must first learn to think independently. Well, one can do this. I do not want to say—for I am not a conceited fool—that only my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity serves this purpose, but it was quite consciously written in a way that would lead to independent thinking. Independent thinking; thinking backward accurately over things that happened when you were ten or twelve years old, or over other things one has experienced—with these we have at least begun to describe how one tears oneself free from the physical body and how one finds one's way into the spiritual world. We will pursue this further and eventually deal with all four questions.
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334. From the Unitary State to the Tripartite Social Organism: Address to the Swiss Citizens
18 Apr 1920, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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I have often referred to the description by Herman Grimm, who said: “Future people will have a hard time understanding the madness that speaks of the origin of the earth from the primeval mist in this Kant-Laplacean idea.” — But today it is regarded as a great development and science. What was cultivated there then drove out the most diverse currents, and these currents flowed into the proletariat. |
334. From the Unitary State to the Tripartite Social Organism: Address to the Swiss Citizens
18 Apr 1920, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear attendees, at your request I would like to discuss with you today some aspects of the social impulse, which wants to face the world under the name of the threefold social organism. And it may be carried out into the world from here, for the very reason that spiritual science is to be practised here and actually already today the widest circles could understand that a recovery of the general world conditions can only come about through a deepening of the spirit. After this short lecture, we still have a tour of the building ahead of us, so you will understand that I want to be brief and can only give you a few aphoristic pointers to the essentials of the idea of threefolding. This idea of threefold social order is not entirely new. It has its origin in decades of observation of the conditions prevailing in Europe, especially in Central Europe, and especially of those conditions that led to the terrible catastrophe of the last five to six years. For the person speaking to you today, these circumstances, under which a large part of the world is now suffering terribly, did not come as a surprise. It was in the spring of 1914 that I gave a series of lectures to a small audience in Vienna – in Vienna, you know, the world conflagration started in Vienna! Within these lectures I had to say, simply under the obligation, I would like to say, to the time, that one should not calm down in doing so, but should always praise the great importance of the development of the present in all possible words, but that one should look at what is being prepared. And I had to say at the time – so it was in the early spring of 1914, many weeks before the outbreak of the World War! – Anyone who surveys the social conditions of Europe with a certain expert eye can only compare certain phenomena, especially in our economic life, with a kind of social cancer disease that must come to a terrible outbreak in the shortest possible time. You see, anyone who said something like that in the spring of 1914 would have been seen as a dreamy idealist with pessimistic views. And those who considered themselves “practitioners” at the time spoke of the general political situation as being relaxed, of the best relations between the governments of Europe, and so on. Today, it may well be pointed out that it was not the idealist who was wrong with his prediction, but rather the ten to twelve million people who have been killed since then by the world conflagration, and three times as many who have been crippled within the civilized world, who provide sufficient proof that the “idealist” was right to speak such words. One is also reminded today in a certain way of the position that people who thought they were practical took at that time. For even today, those who speak of the fact that we are by no means at the end of the European decline, but that we will continue to move further and further down the slippery slope, will hardly be fully believed unless a sufficiently large number of people come to realize how to counteract this general decline.Even today, some will say that one is being pessimistic when making such a prognosis. One is not being pessimistic, one is only speaking out of an understanding of the circumstances. And just as today, strengthened, so to speak, by spiritual science, one can take a deeper look at the situation, so it has been possible for decades. One could carefully observe how the individual relationships between states in Europe developed more and more into antagonisms, and how the measures taken were by no means sufficient to deal with the tensions that were accumulating everywhere. And one had to foresee what was coming: the years of terror that we now seem to have left behind us. Today, however, it may be said that just before these terrible years, if I may put it this way, there were no ears to hear these things. It was only when a great part of Europe was struck by the terrible adversity that is now here that people began to listen. So people said at the time, there were no ears to hear, and even today we still have to wait and see if we are really being heard. Nevertheless, despite the hardship, despite the terrible lessons that the last few years have brought us, it cannot be said that the idea of threefolding, which has emerged from careful observation of the circumstances, has already been received in the appropriate way today. And so I would like to tell you right at the outset why people are so opposed to this idea of threefolding, why they consider it a kind of utopia, a kind of fantasy. You see, the reason for this is that conditions of such a complicated nature, conditions that have spread such devastation and chaos, have actually never existed before in the whole of human development! Humanity has been through a lot; at certain times, a lot has also befallen Europe. Conditions as they are now have really not yet existed in the time of historical development. Circumstances have brought it about that in the past small groups of humanity have been seized by phenomena of decline. Even when the great Roman Empire was heading for its decline, it was still a small area in relation to the whole earth. Today, the amalgamation of conditions that we have spread across the whole civilized world makes the phenomena of decline more visible. It is no wonder that it is now necessary to have not a small idea of how to improve this or that in a limited area, but rather a comprehensive idea that really intervenes as deeply as the confusion runs deep. The threefold social order is such an idea. It is based not only on observation of the actual situation but also on a consideration of the historical moment in which humanity finds itself today. And it is also because it actually takes into account all of present-day civilized humanity that the idea of threefolding is so rejected. It is considered utopian, it is thought to be something that has been thought up. But it is the most real, or at least wants to be the most real, that has to be integrated into the present circumstances. If we take a look at the development of intellectual, political and economic conditions in the present day, we have to link them to the same development over the last three to four centuries. Anything further back has a completely different character. The last three to four centuries, and especially the 19th century and the period since then, have brought humanity to a very particular state of development. In some areas, this is not yet apparent. The health of the Swiss people has been rightly mentioned here. It must be counted on for the future. But it is also necessary, in order for this health to remain, that there be no illusions that, in the face of all that is now collapsing, a small area could remain isolated. This cannot be the case. You see, there are large areas in Central and Southeastern Europe today that you know suffer greatly from the fall of the exchange rate. The economist opposes this fall in the exchange rate, I would say, as a major phenomenon compared to minor phenomena that have always existed in the past. It was known that when the value of a currency falls in any particular area, imports into that area are somewhat undermined; exports are thus all the more encouraged. This law can no longer be applied to the devastation of economic conditions that has occurred in Central and Eastern Europe. But so far, only the disadvantages of the fall in the value of a currency in certain areas have been shown! It will not take them very long to realize the disadvantages of a currency appreciation in a country! They will come, and it will not take that long, then the countries with depreciating currencies, where economic conditions are declining, will not be alone in their worries; the countries with appreciating currencies will think with fear about their high currencies. These things show those who can see into the circumstances how, despite the fact that the economic area of the earth basically forms a unit today, despite all state structures, how the weal and woe of a small area of the earth depends on the weal and woe of the whole earth. Therefore, even today, social conditions can only be considered in a completely international sense. If we look at what has actually brought us to today's situation, we have to say: We see how far we have come – today you do not see it yet – – but you could actually say, you could see it in the malformation of Eastern Europe, in the malformation of Russia. It must be said: such things are deeply significant, as we can now read in Russia, for example – I will mention a small thing, but it is deeply significant – as we can now read in Russia. You could read that Trotsky called on people not to celebrate May 1, but to work on May 1. Please, over there in Russia, the ideal of socialism is to be realized on a large scale – a paradise was promised to the people. That which the proletariat has designated as its sign of manifestation for decades – the May celebration – is something that must be abolished there. It is only one expression of all that must be abolished there! For a long time people have spoken of the evils of militarism, and rightly so. In Russia, labor is currently being militarized. In Russia, it is currently being said that it is nonsense that a person here on this earth should have control over his own person. There can be no such thing as freedom of disposal over one's own person. This is clearly shown by the fruits it has borne in the extreme case to which the development of the last three to four centuries has brought it. We must look at these things. We must realize that this state – I do not mean the individual state, but the state in general – which has developed from quite different conditions over the course of these last three to four hundred years, that this state has overburdened itself with things that the state as such cannot provide. For why? You see, in order to look at such things soberly and clearly, without fantasy, we have to embrace the idea that the whole life of humanity is something similar to the life of the individual human being. We cannot describe the life of the individual in such a way that we always say: Now, when a person is forty years old, he is in the world the effect of the cause that was present at thirty-nine years, which in turn is the effect of the cause present at thirty-eight years, and so on. We cannot say that, but there is an inner, lawful development in the human being. Man gets second teeth around the seventh year, according to an inner law. He goes through other developmental stages in later years. There is a certain impulse living within man that makes him ripe for something at a certain time. It is the same with all mankind. What has emerged in all mankind over the last three to four centuries is something from which mankind cannot escape. There was no other way for humanity than to call for democracy. Whatever ideals have been set in the external social life, the ideal of democracy is the one that has most powerfully seized and must seize humanity of the present. The state must become democratic, democratic in the broadest sense. Especially in Switzerland, where there is an old democracy, people should feel this, but they will also gradually perceive the necessity to relieve this democracy of certain areas. What does democracy mean? Democracy means that people should have the opportunity to decide for themselves, either by referendum or by representation, on matters that are the same for everyone and that are the concern of every mature person. That is the ultimate ideal of democracy: equality among people with regard to decisions, in other words, everything that is equal among people of legal age. But what did the state, which has just developed in the course of history and emerged from very different circumstances, strive for? There are two fields in human life where democratic decisions can never be taken: one is the field of intellectual life and the other is the field of economic life. Those who are sincere in their belief in democracy must realize that if democracy is to be complete, intellectual life must be excluded from the sphere of the purely democratic state, as must economic life. Anyone who is able to observe in this area can see from obvious examples how impossible it is to carry intellectual life as such into the democratic political sphere. I will not speak of the conditions here; that is not for me; but it is not at all possible to look at these conditions only from a small point of view today, but one must look at the whole world, at least the whole civilized world. But if you look at the former German Reichstag, which apparently existed until 1914 and beyond, you have a perfect example of how the state – whether it is more or less democratic is not important in this case – has become overburdened with purely spiritual matters. Among the parties in the German Reichstag, they had a very large party, the so-called Center. In the present metamorphosis of the old Reichstag, which is called the National Assembly, the Center Party is again playing a role. This Center Party had no interests except purely religious, that is, spiritual matters. If any economic or political question came up, it was decided by some compromise which the Center Party made with other parties. But it is quite natural that this Center always had only the interest to promote its own spiritual interests. In short, if you follow the train of thought to its conclusion, it becomes clear that matters of purely spiritual concern have no place in the political parliament. Take economic life. You see, Austria is the country that really shows, I would say is the textbook example of what has developed under the newer conditions, of the fact that the countries must perish. Only, Austria is the textbook example of what is perishing! Anyone who, like myself, has spent thirty years of their life in Austria and has been able to see the developments that took place in the last third of the 19th century could see all the conditions coming about that have developed there, could see all the newer social conditions occurring. They also thought of making a parliament in Austria. But how was this parliament formed? Four curiae were formed: the curiae of the cities, the curiae of the provinces, the curiae of the municipalities, and the curiae of the big landowners. These were purely economic curiae, economic associations that were elected to the political parliament. They then decided from their economic point of view what should be public law. There you have the other example! In the German Reichstag you have the example of how a party that seeks purely intellectual goals turns out to be a troublemaker in a purely economic parliament. In Austria you have built up a parliament based on purely economic curiae, and anyone who has observed the situation knows that this parliament was never able to deal with what would have been necessary in Austria, for example: to regulate the spiritual conditions insofar as they manifested themselves in the secular conditions of the nationalities. In Austria one could see something else. There the state was only a political entity. There were thirteen official languages. These thirteen official languages could not be brought under one roof; one could not bring them under one roof under the impression, because the people with the different languages had the most diverse intellectual interests in Austria. They tried to preserve some of it through private channels. Oh, I was often there when, you know, such long straws, the ones in the so-called Virginia cigars, were auctioned off in America in favor of the school associations! The school associations were founded to do something out of the intellectual interests themselves that the state as such could not do. But the idea of a unified state was too much in people's minds for such private foundations to achieve any great or widespread effect. And so I could go on telling you about the impossibility of keeping together certain things that the modern state wants to keep together. The medium-sized states of Europe and Russia have had to learn the hard way that the centralized state cannot survive as it has existed up to now. Those who have not yet been affected by this fate still believe that it can be averted. It cannot be averted unless we grasp the legal idea of how to remedy the situation by human will. And here, based on ample observation and consideration of historical circumstances, is where the idea of threefold social order comes in. It says: People must become ever more honest and sincere in their striving for democracy. But then the democratic principle must be limited to the mere state principle, in which every person has to decide in the same way on everything that concerns all mature people. As I said, this can be done either by referendum or by representation. But then, the entire intellectual life, on the one hand, must be separated out from this state structure, from what is to be administered strictly by parliament. This entire intellectual life has increasingly come into the power of the state in recent centuries, and even today most people regard it as a great advantage of the modern state idea to absorb intellectual life, especially the school system. There is still a great deal of resistance to the most terrible prejudices. But the world does not see the connections. But if you ask yourself: how did it actually come about that today we are not only faced with class struggles, but with the approval of class struggles? That we are faced with a complete lack of understanding between people? That we are witnessing the tyrannical rule of a few hundred thousand people in Russia over millions of people today, pretending to be democratic? Where did it all come from? It has been slowly prepared. One needs to think of a single word – I have pointed this out in my book 'The Key Points of the Social Question in Present-Day Necessities of Life' – to see why, out of error, a large part of humanity today, the part of humanity that includes the proletariat, stands up and believes: Only by means of what you are all too familiar with, can they bring about any kind of change in the circumstances. The only word that needs to be mentioned is the one that could be heard at all, all social democratic events over decades: it is the word “ideology”. And this word, ideology, ladies and gentlemen, points to the entire course that the materialistic world view has taken in modern times. Whatever one may think of the earlier conditions of humanity, we certainly do not want to restore the earlier conditions, we want forward and not backward; but one must still say: look at the man of the past! He knew that there lived in his soul something that had a direct connection with the spiritual that permeates the world. What, after all, has man known since the middle of the 15th century about these connections between his inner being and a spiritual in the world! The sun, they say, is a glowing ball of gas. What do people know today about the stars, about the sun! If you ask our scholars: what was the origin of the evolution of the earth? — they will tell you: it was once a nebula; then the sun and planets were formed over thousands of years. People have also surrendered to this realization! I have often referred to the description by Herman Grimm, who said: “Future people will have a hard time understanding the madness that speaks of the origin of the earth from the primeval mist in this Kant-Laplacean idea.” — But today it is regarded as a great development and science. What was cultivated there then drove out the most diverse currents, and these currents flowed into the proletariat. And basically, what is being advocated in Russia today by Trotsky and Lenin is only the final consequence of what our scholars taught as materialism at the universities. Here in Switzerland, there was a man who ranted a lot in the 1970s, but he saw what was coming. They didn't like him because he ranted a lot, Johannes Scherr. But besides a lot of ranting, he also saw important things. And he said as early as the 1970s: If you look at the economic development, if you look at the spiritual life, as it had to come down more and more, you will finally come to the point where Europe has to say: nonsense, you have won! In the last five to six years, people have been saying, and still do: “Nonsense, you have won!” Ideology, what does it mean? It means nothing other than: All spiritual life is ultimately only a smoke that rises from mere economic life. Economic conditions are the only reality, as Marxism preaches in all keys. And that which arises from economic conditions is that which man carries within himself as the content of his soul. Law, custom, religion, science, art: all ideology. This is the seed that has sprouted: ideology, disbelief in the spiritual life. Where does this disbelief come from? This disbelief comes from the amalgamation of the spiritual life with the state life in recent centuries. For intellectual life, ladies and gentlemen, can only flourish if it is placed entirely on its own ground. Consider – I will pick out only the school system, because it is the most important area of the public intellectual life – the school system is organized so that those who teach and educate are at the same time the administrators of the teaching and education system. Just imagine: the teacher of the lowest class in the school has no one to obey but someone else whom he does not obey but whose advice he follows, who is himself involved in teaching and education. Someone who is so far relieved that he can simultaneously administer the teaching and education system, so that no one from any political department can interfere in the spiritual life itself, so that the spiritual life itself stands on its own feet. You can read about this in my book. I have tried to make the matter as clear as possible, that only a spiritual life that is left to its own devices can free us from all the harmful effects that have plunged us into misfortune. But only one that is drawn directly from the spiritual can, in turn, generate faith in the spiritual, the connection with the spiritual. I would like to be clear. We founded the Waldorf School in Stuttgart because there is still a school law there that I would say leaves a small gap. This Waldorf School is a real unified school, because the children of the workers from the Waldorf Astoria factory are next to the children of the factory owners and so on, all together; it is a real unified school, a complete elementary school, up to the fourteenth, fifteenth year of age. I held a pedagogical course for the teachers I selected myself, in order to prepare the teachers for this school, where teaching should only be done according to the knowledge of human nature, according to the observation of what what is in man; where teaching should not be based on some or other prejudice that it must be so and so, but on observation of what comes into the world through man, what should be taught from it. I have reported on this in a wide variety of journals, including here, on how the methods in the Waldorf School have been established. But what I want to mention to you now is this: if you consider such a course to be the way to teach and educate, then you are guided by what knowledge of human nature, what real spiritual science, reveals. But in today's school system, there is something else. There is also what the teachers believe to be the right thing for the education of the child. But then more and more something else has come. I had to look at it, precisely because I had to proceed very practically when I founded the Waldorf School with regard to its spiritual content. Coming from political life, the decrees are: First class: this and that must be taught, that and that is the teaching goal. Second class: this and that must be taught, that is the teaching goal. — You see, that comes from political life! Is it not obvious that it does not belong there, that the person who does not look inside, who understands nothing of teaching and education, must give the instructions? The prescriptions must come only from those who are educators, and they should not be called over as experts to the ministry, but should be involved in the living process of educating and teaching. Spiritual life must be placed on its own ground in all areas of the school system. Then the spirit will take hold of people again. So that one must say: the state honestly realizes democracy by relieving itself of the intellectual life, which is based entirely on expertise and professional competence, in which, after all, one truly cannot decide by majorities, but only according to what one knows. There it is a matter of only the specialized and the factual being the deciding factors, of the decisions coming from the self-administration of the school system. That is one area that must be excluded from the state. The other area is the economic one. Do you see where all the things come from that are driving the world more and more into a general economic crisis today? Where do such things come from, as for example in 1907 in Europe, which could be very well noticed by individual people? But it happened at that time, even if not without pain, it still passed without major catastrophes for the world economy, I would say, only with the pain of some. Then again there was rejoicing among everyone about the great economic progress and “how we have come so gloriously far” in more recent times. No one noticed how certain characteristic phenomena were pointing to what is now gradually developing into a general world crisis. These characteristic phenomena... All these things have taken place everywhere, on a small and large scale. They can essentially be traced back to the fact that since the beginning of the 19th century, money has gradually become the ruler over the entire economic life. Money as the ruler over the entire economic life; what does that mean? You see, whether it is wheat – because you have to look at the monetary value – it costs so and so many francs. When you buy skirts, if you just look at the monetary value: francs. In short, money is not specified, it is not based on the concreteness of economic life. It is something that exists in the non-real world, like the abstract concepts in the intellectual life, with which you cannot lure a dog behind the stove in reality. Except that the abstract, fantastic concepts do not cause as much harm as this generalized abstractness of money. One can point out how, in the course of the 19th century, the money lender gradually became the actual driving force in our economic life. Whereas before, it was only the economic, economic man who mattered. Gradually, the possibility also arose for states to become involved in economic affairs, so that states themselves became economic actors. If one examines the causes of war impartially, one will find that they arose and had to arise from purely economic circumstances, because the circumstances I have mentioned developed. Here again, careful study provides insights into what is at stake: that we must return to a coming together of man with economic production itself. Man must again be brought close to what he produces. Man must again grow together with wheat and rye and everything else he produces, and he must change economic life according to what he produces. And people must not be allowed to multiply this money purely for the sake of it. Without thinking about these things, we will not get anywhere. A recovery of economic life is only possible if man is brought together with the economy again, working out of the needs of the economy. But this can only come about if one does not organize from the state, but if one allows the people who are in the corresponding economic sectors to come together in associations, if one builds an economy of interests merely on expertise and skill and craftsmanship in economic life. Two things are necessary: first, that one can do what one wants to produce, and second, that one has the trust of the people. But this can only be achieved if one is involved in the corresponding branch of the economy and has grown together with it. But this is how the individual occupations arise, this is how the laws of production and consumption arise. On the other hand, the various economic methods can only be brought into a certain relationship with each other if the various associations work independently, without interference from the state or any other authority. Just as intellectual life must be set apart from state life and stand on its own two feet, so must economic life. Intellectual life can flourish only if the individual who has the abilities can also develop these abilities for the benefit of his fellow human beings. Spiritual life is most ideal and most socially beneficial when the individual, who is gifted, can work in the service of his fellow human beings. Economic life is most effective when those who produce in any field, or when the consumer circles, combine in such a way that simply through the existence of the associations and connections, there is a real trust that is not dependent on money, when the credit system is a real one and not a mere fiction , as was the case in the previous period, and when you know that you can support any branch of production because the people you have now got to know and who have grown together with their branch of production are in that branch of production. This is certainly still the case in small communities; in the large-scale conditions that have actually brought about the decline, it is no longer the case. You see, I have only been able to sketch out what threefolding is about. I could only show you that, to a certain extent, the development of humanity has reached the point where what was once charged to the state as a unified entity now wants to be divided into three independent areas: the spiritual life, which administers itself independently, in the democratic state life, which will be the legal life in particular, and in the economic life, which is standing on its own two feet and is in turn a separate area. That alone is the essential thing: we can see from what the civilized world should and actually wants to strive today, except that people have not yet become aware of it, and that people want to hold on to the old conditions. You see, it is very strange how one can see precisely in Social Democracy, as it is developing today, the most conservative principle. For what does Social Democracy want? It wants to turn the state into a single large cooperative, through which it could militarize everything. This could be said today when looking at Russia, where everything is being militarized. The militarization of labor is already being discussed from a Russian perspective, because social democracy with a Marxist slant says: the state is there. We now load everything onto it, education and economic life and everything. That is the unhealthy thing! The socialist idea in particular represents the last, most unhealthy consequence of what has developed over the last few centuries. The healthy thing is to recognize that what has been charged to the state, what it cannot decide out of its democratic nature, must be separated from it and put on its own two feet, intellectual life and economic life. Of course, one can understand that many people today cannot go into such ideas, because people today have been brought up to regard the state as something that works best through a certain omnipotence. One is not really serious about the democratic idea if one wants to saddle the state with everything. One is only serious about the democratic idea if one wants to see that which can be treated equally among all mature people. If it depends on the individual person, on the abilities that he carries into this world from other worlds through his birth, then it is a matter of this world, this spiritual world, also having to be organized out of these abilities. In economic life, it is important that we do not impose an abstract organization on everything, which the monetary economy is by its very nature, but that it should be possible to manage out of the concrete economic life. But out of the concrete economic life, only associations can be formed that join together and that, through their mutual relationship, really achieve what can be a healthy relationship between consumers and producers. Of course, such a concept, which, as it were, addresses everything that is currently being pushed aside in the wake of decline, and which recognizes that decline can only be stopped by thoroughly seeking a new formation, such a concept cannot be understood immediately. One realizes that it cannot be understood immediately. For people are actually organized to always think to themselves: Yes, things are bad now, but they will get better again. They think that improvement will come from some unknown quarter. That is how it was done, for example, in Germany during the war. Whenever things went badly, people waited for improvement to come from some unknown quarter. It did not come! So today we should not wait for things to improve, from somewhere, we don't know where! No, humanity today – as the advent of democracy itself testifies – is called upon to act in a mature way. But one is only mature when one does not expect improvement to come from some vague source, but when one says to oneself: Improvement can only come from one's own will, from an understanding will that sees through the effect. [Gap] If only one percent of today's civilized humanity could bring themselves to a clear recognition of the danger for the whole civilized world, and could see, could see how urgently the conditions strive for threefolding! But threefolding is being trampled underfoot everywhere. If only one percent of people would understand things to a certain degree, things would get better. Because only through people can improvement come! The worst thing for humanity has always been fatalism. But the worst thing today is precisely this fatalism! Recently, you could read here in a paper that appears in Basel a letter from a German who says: We in Germany must now accept going through Bolshevism. Then, when we have gone through Bolshevism, then — one does not know from where! — the better will come. This is the most terrible fatalism. It is the consequence of the fact that, basically, the deepest essence of Christianity is still not understood today. The Christ came into the world for all men. He did not come into the world merely for the one people from which He proceeded; He did not fight merely for the one national God, for He taught: Not this one national God, but that which is God for all men, that is what matters. Have not people in the last five or six years looked back to the old Jehovah again, have they not fought everywhere for the folk gods by giving these folk gods the name of Christ? Was it the real Christ, the Christ to whom all people are entitled, that they spoke of? No, it was not the Christ to whom all people are entitled that was spoken of; it was the individual folk gods! And, of course, the individual peoples are spoken of in this sense today, as they were then, as embodying their separate ideals. Christianity, in turn, must be understood as a general one; but not just in words, but in mature ideas. You see, just by giving a few sketchy thoughts in this short time today, but by speaking again and again to people about threefolding, there were also people who appeared who are “good Christians” today, that is, they appeared with phrases. They talked about all sorts of things, but they thought it should be said today that Christianity should be fulfilled, that Christ should really come. — I could only reply: There is a commandment: You shall not take the name of your God, the name of your Lord, in vain. — Does that make one a bad Christian because one does not always have the name of Christ on one's tongue? The Christ did not just want to be addressed with the name “Lord! Lord!” – but he wanted to bring an attitude among people that, when developed, takes on concrete forms, that do not always just refer to his name, but that bring about social conditions in his spirit that embrace all people equally. It may appear that the words used do not mention Christianity, but this threefold social organism is intended to be in the spirit of true, genuine, practical Christianity. And I am deeply convinced, dear ladies and gentlemen, that one day it will be recognized that the idealists who speak of threefolding today are the true practitioners. And the others, who say: Oh, pipe dreams! — these are the ones who speak that way today, well, just as, for example, the foreign ministers of the German Reichstag and the Austrian delegation spoke almost identically in June 1914. These two practical gentlemen said something similar in Berlin and Vienna: Our friendly relations with St. Petersburg are the very best there are. The political situation has relaxed; we are approaching peaceful conditions in Europe - in May, June 1914! Negotiations are in progress with England, the practitioners said in Berlin, which will soon lead to satisfactory results. The satisfactory results then came in August 1914! So the “practitioners” spoke, so the practitioners foresaw things. We should bear this in mind, ladies and gentlemen, when we hear such a proposal as the threefold social order being dismissed as the mere idealism of a few visionaries, whereas it should be seen as the most practical of proposals, the one that takes reality most fully into account and seeks to align itself with our times! I thank you, my dear attendees, for listening to what I had to present. I can only ask for your indulgence, since in the short time available to me I could, of course, only present a few pure thoughts without the necessary proofs, but which you can find in the corresponding books and magazines, which are also available here in Switzerland, and which you can also find in “Social Future”, published by Dr. Boos. I have only been able to give you a few guiding ideas; and I only hope that these guiding ideas may perhaps be able to evoke in you the feeling that this impulse of the threefold social order is not a randomly thrown-out idea, but that this threefold is a response to the deepest needs of humanity today, but one that can truly lead humanity out of its current plight. It can lead us out of chaos and decline and towards a new beginning, which so many people today long for, and rightly so. [Closing words of the organizer. |
339. The Art of Lecturing: Lecture III
13 Oct 1921, Dornach Tr. Fred Paddock, Maria St. Goar, Peter Stebbing, Beverly Smith Rudolf Steiner |
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After the pattern of this book, The Lessing Legend, by the party-scholar Mehring, one of the students of my Worker's Education School—for many years, I did indeed teach in such an institution, even giving instruction in lecturing—proved in a trial-speech that the Kantian philosophy originated simply from the economic conditions out of which Kant had developed. One always encountered matter similar to this (in these circles) and probably could find them still today, although by now they have more or less become empty phrases. |
339. The Art of Lecturing: Lecture III
13 Oct 1921, Dornach Tr. Fred Paddock, Maria St. Goar, Peter Stebbing, Beverly Smith Rudolf Steiner |
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Along with the tasks which one can set oneself in a certain realm as a speaker it will be a question at first of entering in the appropriate way into the material itself which is to be dealt with. There is a twofold entering into the material, in so far as the message about this material is concerned in speaking. The first is to convert to one's own use the material for a lecture so that it can be divided up—so that one is as it were placed in the position of giving the lecture a composition. Without composition a talk cannot really be understood. This or that may appeal to the listener about a lecture which is not composed: but in reality a non-composed lecture will not be assimilated. As far as the preparation is concerned, it must therefore be a matter of realizing: every talk will inevitably be poor as regards its reception by the listeners which has merely originated in one's conceiving one statement after the other, one sentence after the other, and going through them to a certain extent, one after the other, in the preparation. If one is not in the position, at least at some stage of the preparation, of surveying the whole lecture as a totality, then one cannot really count on being understood. Allowing the whole lecture to spring, as it were, from a comprehensive thought, which one subdivides, and letting the composition arise by starting out from such a comprehensive thought comprising the total lecture,—this is the first consideration. The other is the consulting of all experiences which one has available out of immediate life for the subject of the lecture,—that is, calling to mind as much as possible everything one has experienced first-hand about the matter in question,—and, after one has before one a kind of composition of the lecture, endeavoring to let the experiences flow here or there into this composition. That will in general be the rough draft in preparing. Thus one has during the preparation the whole of the lecture before one as in a tableau. So exactly does one have this tableau before one, that, as will indeed naturally be the case, one can incorporate the single experiences one remembers in the desired way here or there, as though one had written on paper: a, b, c, d.—There is now an experience one knows belongs under d, another under f, another belongs under a,—so that one is to a certain extent independent of the sequence of the thoughts as they are afterwards to be presented, as regards this collecting of the experiences. Whether such a thing is done by putting it onto paper, or whether it is done by a free process without having recourse to the paper, will determine only that he who is dependent upon the paper will speak worse, and he who is not dependent upon the paper will speak somewhat better. But one can of course by all means do both. But now it is a matter of fulfilling a third requirement, which is: after one has the whole on the one hand—I never say the ‘skeleton’—and on the other hand the single experiences, one has need of elaborating the ideas which ensue to the point that these things can stand before the soul in the most complete inner satisfaction. Let us take as an example, that we want to hold a lecture on the threefold order. Here we shall say to ourselves: After an introduction—we shall speak further about this—and before a conclusion—about which we shall also speak—the composition of such a lecture is really given through the subject itself. The unifying thought is given through the subject itself. I say that for this example. If one lives properly, mentally, then this is valid actually for every single case, it is valid equally for everything. But let us take this example near at hand of the threefolding of the social organism, about which we want to speak. There, at the outset, is given that which yields us three members in the treatment of our theme. To deal with, we shall have the nature of the spiritual life, the nature of the juridical-state life, and the nature of the economic life. Then, certainly, it will be a question of our calling forth in the listeners, by means of a suitable introduction,—about which, as mentioned, we shall speak further—a feeling that it makes sense to speak about these things at all, about a change in these things, in the present. But then it will be a matter of not immediately starting out with explanations of what is to be understood by a free spiritual life, by a juridical-states life founded on equality, by an economic life founded on associations, but rather of having to lead up to these things. And here one will have to lead up through connecting to that which is to hand in the greatest measure as regards the three members of the social organism in the present—what can therefore be observed the most intensively by people of today. Indeed, only by this means will one connect with what is known. Let us suppose we have an audience, and an audience will be most agreeable and sympathetic which is a mixture of middle-class people, working-class people—in turn with all possible nuances—and, if there are then of course also a few of the nobility—even Swiss nobility,—it doesn't hurt at all. Let us therefore assume we have such a chequered, jumbled-up audience, made up of all social classes. I stress this for the reason that as a lecturer one should really always sense to whom one has to speak, before one sets about speaking. One ought already to transpose oneself actively into the situation in this way. Now, what will one have to say to oneself to begin with about that which one can connect with in a present-day audience, as regards the threefold social organism? One will say to oneself: it is extraordinarily difficult in the first place to connect onto concepts of an audience of the bourgeois, because in recent times the bourgeoisie have formed extraordinarily few concepts about social relationships, since they have vegetated thoughtlessly to some extent as regards the social life. It would always make an academic impression, if one wanted to speak about these things today out of the circle of ideas of a middle-class audience. On the other hand, however, one can be clear about the fact that exceptionally distinct concepts exist concerning all three domains of the social organism within the working-class population,—also distinct feelings, and a distinct social volition. And it means that it is nothing short of the sign of our present time, that precisely within the proletariat these qualified concepts are there. These concepts are to be handled by us, though, with great caution, since we shall very easily call forth the prejudice that we want to be partisan in the proletarian direction. This prejudice we should really combat through the whole manner of our bearing. We shall indeed see that we immediately arouse for ourselves serious misunderstandings if we proceed from proletarian concepts. These misunderstandings have revealed themselves in point of fact constantly in the time when an effect could still be brought about in middle-Europe, from about April 1919 on, for the threefolding of the social organism. A middle-class population hears only that which it, has sensed for decades from the fomenting behavior of the working- class, out of certain concepts. How one views the matter oneself is then hardly comprehended at all. One must be clear that being active in the world at all in the sense, I should like to say, of the world-order has to be grasped. The world-order is such—you have only to look at the fish in the sea—that very, very many fisheggs are laid, and only a few become fish. That has to be so. But with this tendency of nature you have also to approach the tasks which are to be solved by you as speakers; even if only very few, and these little stimulated, are to be found to begin with at the first lecture, then actually a maximum is attained as regards what can be attained. It is a matter of things that one stands so within in life, as for instance the threefolding of the social organism, that what can be accomplished by means of lecturing may never be abandoned, but must be taken up and perfected in some way, be it through further lectures, be it in some other way. It can be said: no lecture is really in vain which is given in this sense and to which is joined all that is required. But one has to be absolutely clear about the fact that one will actually also be completely misunderstood by the proletarian population, if one speaks directly out of that which they think today in the sense of their theories, as these have persisted for decades. One cannot ask oneself the question for instance: How does one do it so as not to be misunderstood?—One must only do it right! But for this reason it cannot be a matter of putting forward the question: Then how does one do it so as not to be misunderstood?—One tells people what they have already thought anyhow! One preaches to them, in some way, Marxism, or some such thing. Then one will, of course, be understood. But there is nothing of interest in being understood in this way. Otherwise one will indeed very soon have the following experience—concerning this experience one must be quite clear—: if one speaks today to a proletarian gathering so that they can at least understand the terminology—and that must be striven for—then one will notice particularly in the discussion, that those who discuss have understood nothing. The others one usually doesn't get to know, since they do not participate in the discussions. Those who have understood nothing usually participate after such lectures in the discussions. And with them one will notice something along the following lines.—I have given countless lectures myself on the threefolding of the social organism to, as they are called in Germany, “surplus-value social democrats,” independent “social democrats,” communists and so on.—Now, one will notice: if someone places himself in the discussions and believes himself able to speak then it is usually the case that he answers one as though one had really not spoken at all, but as though someone or other had spoken more or less as one would have spoken as a social-democratic agitator thirty years ago in popular meetings. One feels oneself suddenly quite transformed. One says to oneself roughly the following: Well, can it then be that the misfortune has befallen you, that you were possessed in this moment by old Bebel?1 That is really how you are confronted! The persons concerned hear even physically nothing else than what they have been used to hearing for decades. Even physically—not merely with the soul—even physically they hear nothing other than what they are long used to. And then they say: Well, the lecturer really told us nothing new!—Since they have, because one was obliged to use the terminology, translated the whole connection of the terminology right-away in the ear—not first in the soul—into that which they have been used to for a long time. And then they talk on and on in the sense of what they have been used to for a long time. This is the approximate course of countless discussions. At most, a new nuance entered into the matter when, from their newly attained standpoint, the Communists made an appearance and declared something like this: Above all else it is necessary to gain political power! Certainly, it is quite natural—I speak from experience and cite examples that actually occurred—that one first has to have political power. For instance, one person believed that if he had the political power in the capacity of head of the police, he would certainly not install himself as a registrar, since by profession he was a shoe-repairman, and he could well understand that a shoe repairman could not know anything of the responsibilities of a registrar. Therefore, if he were head of the police (over the whole country), he would not make himself a registrar since he was a shoe-repairman.—He did not realize that by saying this he really implied that while he felt quite well suited to be installed as Minister of the police, he did not consider himself qualified to be a registrar!—This was a kind of new nuance for the discussion. The nuances were always approximately in this form. Well, nevertheless, we must understand that in order to be comprehensible one must speak out of the inmost thoughts of the people. For, if one does that, their unconscious mind can follow somehow. This is particularly the case when the lecture is structured in the manner I have already indicated and shall elaborate on still further. But concerning the points that are really important, we must avail ourselves of concepts based on experience which, in this case, are concepts that can be formulated out of the experiences of the feelings of the working class. Consider the spiritual part of the threefold social organism. Since the dawn of Marxism, the workman has developed quite definite concepts in regard to this spiritual aspect, namely the concept of ideology. He says: The spiritual life has no reality of its own. Religion, concepts of justice, concepts of morality, and so forth, art, science itself—that is nothing by itself. Only economic processes exist on their own. In world-historical development, one can follow how actual reality consists of how one level of the population relates to the other in economic life. From this factor of how one class relates to another in the life of the economy, the concepts, the feelings in religion, science, art, morals, rights, and so on, must evolve quite by themselves like a form of smoke that arises from something. So, rights, morality, religion, art are not realities by ideologies.—In all social-democratic and other Proletarian meetings, this expression, “ideology,” along with the underlying sentiment that I have just characterized, could be heard for decades. It was nothing short of an especially developed means of indoctrination to make people understand: The middle class speaks of truth per se. It speaks of the values of morality and art—but all this has no standing in reality by itself; these are chimeras that arise from the economic process. One of the leaders of the working class, Franz Mehring,2 carried this matter to special extremes in a book, The Lessing Legend. A not very significant book by a typical middle-class professor, Erich Schmidt,3 was published concerning Lessing. The reason that it isn't very significant is that it is not really Lessing who is being dealt with there, but a papier-mache figure, wrongly designated as “Lessing,” to which Erich Schmidt links the remarks, narrations and observations that he was capable of due to his special talent or lack of talent. The reader is not dealing with a person at all in this book but with a made-up statue calling [sic] “Lessing.” Before the book Lessing by Erich Schmidt had even been written, when I heard Erich Schmidt give a lecture in Vienna in the Academy of Sciences, where he presented the first beginnings of the first chapter of this Lessing-book in condensed form in a speech, I already knew that this middle-class professor did not have particularly clear conceptions about the living man Lessing but only a papier-mache Lessing. At that time, I was strangely impressed by this speech, which demonstrated so clearly that if a person is otherwise enjoying a certain social standing and is allowed to speak, even in such a venerable academy of sciences, he need not say anything of real substance. For, at the most important points, where Erich Schmidt brought out something that was supposed to be characteristic for the personality whom he was discussing, he always said—singling out something of Lessing's manner of working or style of writing—“That's typically Lessing!” And this expression, “That's typically Lessing!”—one heard, I believe, fifty times during this lecture at the academy. Well, if one is dealing with John Smith from New Middletown, and one has to characterize him, relating the special way that he keeps up his compost heap, one will be able to say along the same lines, “That's typically Smith!”—One will have made an equally weighty statement. What I am saying is that we are dealing with something extraordinarily insignificant. But a proper social-democratic writer, as was Franz Mehring, ascribed the insignificance of Erich Schmidt's book on Lessing to the fact that Erich Schmidt was a middle-class professor, and so he said, “Well, that's a product of the Bourgeois.”—And now he pitted his Proletarian product against it, and he called his book, The Lessing Legend. This book examines the economic conditions under which Lessing's forefathers had lived and what they did, how Lessing himself was placed in his youth within the life of the economy, how he had to become a journalist, how he had to borrow money—this is, after all an economical aspect—and so on. In short, it is shown how Lessing's conception of Laocoon, how his Dramaturgy of Hamburg, how his Minna von Barnhelm had to be the way they were because Lessing had grown out of certain economic conditions. After the pattern of this book, The Lessing Legend, by the party-scholar Mehring, one of the students of my Worker's Education School—for many years, I did indeed teach in such an institution, even giving instruction in lecturing—proved in a trial-speech that the Kantian philosophy originated simply from the economic conditions out of which Kant had developed. One always encountered matter similar to this (in these circles) and probably could find them still today, although by now they have more or less become empty phrases. But it was indeed so, and it meant that the modern member of the working-class held the view that everything pertaining to the spiritual life is ideology. In regard to the political life of rights, the Proletarian only gives credence to what is once again established within economic conditions as relationships between people. For him, these are the social classes. The class holding power rules over the other classes. And a person belonging to a certain class develops class consciousness. Therefore, what the modern workman comprehends of the political life of rights is the class and what is close to his heart is class consciousness. The third member of the social organism is the economic part. There too, clearly defined concepts exist within the working-class, and the central concept that is referred to again and again, in the same manner as the concepts, ideology and class consciousness, is the concept of surplus value. The workman understands: When something is being produced, a certain value is attached to the economic product; of this value, he receives a portion as compensation, the remainder is taken away for something else, He designates the latter as “surplus value,” and occupies himself with this increment value, of which he has the feeling that he is deprived of it insofar as the value of the fruits of his labours are concerned. Thinking these matters through in this manner, one can see how within that segment of the populace that has developed in recent times as the active and truly aggressive one, clearly defined concepts do in fact exist for the three spheres of the threefold social organism. The social life reveals itself in a threefold way—this is approximately how a proper Proletarian theorist would put it—it reveals itself in the first place through its reality, through the value-producing economy. This value-producing economy does itself produce the surplus value out of the economic life. Through the balance of power that develops, the socially active people are split into classes in the economic life, which represents the only reality; therefore, if they contemplate their human worth, they arrive at class consciousness, not human consciousness. And then there develops what one likes to have on Sundays, and what one needs—but also sort of inbetween—to properly invent machines, so that every so often, in one's free time, inventions can be made and so on; thus, ideology develops, which, however, results as a nebulous product out of the actual reality, out of the economic life. I am really not drawing caricatures, I am only describing what dwelled in millions, not thousands, but millions of heads in the decades preceding the war, continuing also through the war. The working-class therefore does have a concept of threefoldness of the social organism, and one can relate to that. One can relate to it in a still further sense. Once can refer to the fact that in recent times the economic life has basically developed in a separate direction, since it contains its own inherent laws of necessity, and that the other elements of life, the spiritual life and the political life of rights, have lagged behind. People could not remain behind in the economic life. In the last third of the nineteenth century, they first had to change over to universal communications, then to the world economy. An inner necessity underlies that. In a certain sense, it develops b itself unless people ruin matters as was the case because of the war. But because other matters did not keep up with the pace and because abstract intellectualism developed in them, awareness of the economic life became influential to an extraordinary degree and mainly affected people everywhere suggestively by its very nature. And this suggestive influence did not only take root in human conceptions but it turned into establishments. Intellectualism gradually has taken complete hold of the social life. Abstraction, the abstract element is the property of intellectualism. In life, one finds, let's say, butter; or a Madonna by Raffael, or one has a toothbrush or a philosophical work; in life, there are powder boxes for women, and so on. Life is made up of a lot of things, as you know. I could continue with this list endlessly. But you will not deny that these items differ vary greatly from each other and that if one wants to gain concepts of all these things, these concepts will be very different from each other. But in the social life of recent times something developed nevertheless that became extremely significant for all relationships in life and that is not so very differentiated after all. For, we can say that a certain amount of butter costs two francs; a Madonna by Raffael costs two-million francs; a toothbrush costs only about two-and-a-half francs now; a philosophical work—which might be the least expensive—costs, shall we say, if it is a think single volume, seventy rappen; a powder box, if it is of especially high quality, costs ten francs. Now we've found a common denominator for the whole thing! Now we only need to consider the differences of the numbers, something that is part of one area. But we have spread an abstraction, the monetary value, over everything. This has ingrained itself especially deeply into people's manner of thinking, although people do not always admit to it. Certainly, a person who is a poet considers himself as the world's most important point, he will therefore not evaluate himself in the above way; neither will a person who is a philosopher, and so on. Least of all one who is a painter! But the world evaluates all these matters today in this style in the social evaluation of human beings. And the end-result is that, let us say, a poet has a net value of ten-thousand francs for a publisher, if the publisher is generous from the time he beings to write his novel until it is finished. So this is the value of a poet for a certain period of time, isn't that right? We have placed him also in the equalizing abstractions.
Well, I could cite all sorts of examples here; but I already said that the middle-class didn't waste much time thinking about these matters. A poet in his attic room4—I am now referring to the “Oberstuebchen” that is situated on a floor high above the others—naturally considers himself something quite special, but in social life he was worth ten-thousand francs. But he paid no attention to that unless he happened to belong to the working-class. He paid no heed to it. But the laborer did; from all this, he drew the conclusion: I don't have butter, I don't have powder, I don't have a philosophy book. But I have my capacity for work; I offer it to the owner of the factory, and to him, it is worth, let's say, three francs for each day; the daily capacity for work. You must forgive me for writing “poet” here for the reason that one could experience that a poet was treated a good bit worse in the course of the last few decades than the workman with his daily capacity for work. For the latter could defend himself still better than the poet, and as a rule, the ten-thousand francs were not worth more than the wage of three francs for the Proletarian working capacity, with the exception of a few. It goes without saying that poets such as, for example, the blessed E. Marlitt—I don't know if many of you remember her—earned splendid wages with her The Secret of the Old Spinster, a novel concerning which the best criticism would be the one expressed once by a certain person: Oh book, if only you had remained the secret of the old spinster! Now the workman considered what he had become by having been placed into the abstraction of prices in regard to his capacity for work. For what does anything in the economic life represent by virtue of having a price-tag? It is a commodity. Anything for which a price can be paid must be considered a commodity. I've said that the life of the middle-class runs its course along with a certain indifference in regard to such matters. But these concepts arose from the working-class and in this manner, the idea emerged: We ourselves have become a commodity with our capacity for work. This is something that now worked together with the other three concepts. A person who understands modern life correctly, knows that when he comprehends the four concepts, ideology, class consciousness, surplus value, capacity for work as a commodity in the right way so that he can place himself into life with these four concepts in regard to experiences, that he then encounters with these four concepts the reality of consciousness that exists in particular among the segment of the population which actively and consciously wants to bring about a transformation of social conditions. One therefore has the task of contemplating how to deal with these four concepts. If a lecturer has a mixed audience of working-class people and those of the middle-class, he will have to speak first of all in such a manner so as to call attention to the fact that the working-class could not help but arrive at these matters and how, due to modern life, a workman could not become acquainted with anything except the processes of the economic life. For this is how matters developed since approximately the middle of the fifteenth century. This was when it slowly began. For if we go back further than the middle of the fifteenth century, we find that man with his being was still connected with what he produced. One who makes a key pours his soul into his key. A shoemaker makes shoes with all his heart. And I am quite certain that among those, where these things continued on in a healthy way, no disdain existed in regard to any such labor. I am fully convinced—not only subjectively, for, if necessary, such matters could be proven—that Jakob Boehme5 enjoyed producing his boots just as much as his philosophical works, his mystical texts that he wrote, likewise in the case of Hans Sachs,6 for example. These matters—that something that is material is looked down upon, and that spiritual matters are over-valued—have only developed along with intellectualism and its abstractions in all areas. What happened is that through the modern economic life, which has been permeated by technology, the human being has been separated from his product so that no real love can any longer connect him with what he produces. Those people who can still develop a sense of love for what they produce in certain professional fields, are becoming increasingly rare. Only in the so-called professions of the mind, this love still exists. This is what causes the unnatural element in social differences and even classifications in recent times. One has to go east—perhaps this is no longer possible now, but it was the case decades ago—in order to still find joy in one's profession. I must admit I was really delighted, actually moved, when, decades ago, I encountered a barber in Budapest to whom I had gone for a haircut, who danced around me all the time and each time when he had cut off something with his scissors, would say, taking his hand-mirror: Oh what a wonderful cut I've just made! What a great cut this was!—Please go and try to find a barber capable of such enthusiasm today in our civilized country! What has taken place is the separation of man from his product. It has become something of indifference to him. He is placed in front of a machine. What does he care about the machine! At most, it interests—not even the one who built it, but the one who invented it' and the interest that the inventor has in the machine is usually not a truly social interest. For social interest only begins when one can discover the possible value, the monetary yield, in other words, when the whole thing has been reduced to the level of its price. It is, however, the economic life that the modern workman has become familiar with above all else. He has been placed into it. If he is to approach the spiritual life, the latter is nowhere connected with his immediate inner life. It does not move his soul. He accepts it as something alien, as ideology. It is part of the modern historical process that this ideology has developed. If, however, you are successful in calling forth a feeling in the workman that this is the case, then you have achieved the beginning of what has to be attained. For a member of the working-class listens to you today with the following attitude: it is an absolute necessity of nature that all art, all science, all religion are ideologies. He is very far from believing that with this view he has simply become the product of modern-day developments. It is very difficult to make that clear to him. If he does notice it that everything is merely supposed to be ideology, he feels terrible about it and turns his whole way of thinking around; then he becomes aware of the completely illusory nature of this view. He among all people is, as it were, predisposed better than any other to feel disgust over the fact that everything has turned into ideology; but you must make him realize this in his feelings. The thoughts that you set forth or have developed in your own mind do not interest the listener. But in the way that I have described it, you lead him to the point of sensing the matter. For what is important is that you put the subject into the right light for workmen by giving your sentences this nuance. For members of the middle-class, the matter must be put in a different light again, for what is quite proper for people of the working-class is detrimental for those of the middle-class in this area. It is not only a matter of lecturing correctly, but due to the diversity of life today it is a matter of speaking well in the sense of what I said yesterday, and that as far as possible a lecturer addresses the members of the middle-class as well. What has to be made clear to them is that, because they were indifferent to what was developing, they helped cause the problem. Because of what the middle-class did, or rather didn't do, matters developed to the point where they have become ideology for the working-class. Members of the middle-class must be made to comprehend. Once upon a time, religion was something that filled the whole human being with an inner fire; it was something that gave rise to everything that a person carried out in the external world. Customs derived from what people considered holy in regard to social life. Art was something by means of which a human being rose above the hardships and difficulties of life on earth, and so on. But, oh, how the value of these spiritual properties has declined in the past few centuries! Because of the manner in which the middle-class upholds them, the workman cannot experience them in any other way but as ideology. Take the case that a workman comes into the office of the employer for whatever reason. He has his own views concerning the whole management of the business. Let's assume that the bookkeeper, to whom he was called, or the boss himself, ahs just left the office. He sees a large volume in which many entries are made. The workman has his own views concerning what the figures in it express. He has recently developed these views. Now, because the bookkeeper or the boss happens not to be there and he is half-a-minute early, he opens the cover and looks at the first page. There, it says on top of the page, “In God's Name!” (“Mit Gott”). That catches his attention, for, indeed, this religious element appearing on the first page in the words, “In God's Name,” is really pure ideology, because the workman is convinced that there isn't much that is in “God's Name” in the pages that follow, This is right in the style in which he pictures conditions in the world in general, There is as little truth in what people call religion, custom and so on as there is in this book, where it says “In God's Name” on the first page. I don't know whether it says “In God's Name” in ledgers in Switzerland; but it is quite common that people begin their account books with “In God's Name.” Therefore, it is a matter of making it clear to people of the middle-class that they are the cause for the view concerning ideology among workmen. Now, each party has its portion. Then, the lecturer has reached the point where he can explain how the spiritual life must once again acquire reality, since it has in fact turned into ideology. If people have only ideas concerning the spirit and not the whole relationship with the actual spiritual life and substance, then this really is ideology. In this way, one acquires a bridge to the sphere, where a conception can be called forth concerning the reality of the spiritual life. Then it becomes possible to point out that the spiritual (cultural) life is a self-contained reality, not merely a product of the economic life, not just an ideology, but something real that is based on its own foundation. A feeling must be evoked for the fact that the spiritual life is a reality based on its own foundation. Such a self-evident reality is something else than an abstract fact, for something with an abstract basis must be based on a foundation elsewhere. The workman claims that ideology is based on the economic life. But inasmuch as a person only abandons himself to abstract ideas in his spiritual life, this is indeed something ephemeral, something illusory. Only if people penetrate through this nebulous, illusory element, through the idea to the reality of the spiritual life—as happens by means of Anthroposophy—only then can the spiritual life be experienced as real once again. If the spiritual life is merely a sum of ideas, then these ideas do indeed stream up from the economic life. There, they have to be organized, there one has to provide them with an artificial effectiveness and order. And this is what the state has done. In the age when the spiritual life evaporated into ideology, the state took it in hand to bestow on it at least that reality, which people no longer experienced in the spiritual world itself. This is how one has to try to make it comprehensible in what way all this, which the state has given the spiritual life without being qualified to do so—since it has turned into ideology—does have a reality. It must have, after all, a reality. For if a person does not have legs of his own but wants to walk, he must have artificial ones made. In order to exist any given thing must have reality. Therefore the spiritual life must have its own reality. This is what must be felt, namely, that the spiritual life must have its own reality. To begin with, you will make a paradoxical impression among the people of the middle-class as well as those of the working-class. You must even call forth an awareness of the fact that you appear paradoxical. You can do this by giving rise to the conception among your listeners that you think in the same manner as the workman by making use of his language, and at the same time that you think like a member of the middle-class by making use of his terminology. But then, after having developed these trains of thought which can be brought out with the help of what is recalled of experiences gained in life, after you have gone through something like this as a preparation, then you arrive at the point of speaking to people in such as way that gradually a comprehension can be brought about for the issues that must be met with understanding. Speaking cannot be learned by means of external instructions. Speaking must be learned to a certain extent by means of understanding how to bring to the lecture the thinking which lies behind it, and the experience which lies before it, in a proper relationship. Now, I have today tried to show you how the material first has to be dealt with. I have connected with what is known, in order to show you how the material may not be created out of some theory or other, how it must be drawn out of life, how it must be prepared so as to be dealt with in speaking. What I have said today everyone should now actually do in his own fashion as preparation for lecturing. Through such preparation the lecture gains forcefulness. Through thought preparation—preparing the organization of the lecture, as I have said at the beginning of today's remarks: from a thought which is then formed into a composition—by this means the lecture becomes lucid, so that the listener can also receive it as a unity. What the lecturer brings along as thinking he should not weave into his own thoughts.—Since, if he gives his own thoughts, they are, as I have already said, such that they interest not a single person. Only through use of one's own thinking in organizing the lecture does it become lucid, and through lucidity, comprehensible. By means of the experiences which the lecturer should gather from everywhere (the worst experiences are still always better than none at all!) the lecture becomes forceful. If, for example, you tell someone what happened to you, for all it matters, as you were going through a village where someone nearly gave you a box on the ear, then it is still always better if you judge life out of such an experience, than if you merely theorize.—Fetch things out of experience, through which the lecture acquires blood, since through thinking it only has nerves. It acquires blood through experience, and through this blood, which comes out of experience, the lecture becomes forceful. Through the composition you speak to the understanding of the listener; through your experience you speak to the heart of the listener. It is this which should be looked upon as a golden rule. Now, we can proceed step by step. Today I wanted more to show first of all in rough outline how the material can be transformed by degrees into what it afterwards has to be in the lecture. Tomorrow, then, we resume again at three o'clock.
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74. The Redemption of Thinking (1956): Lecture I
22 May 1920, Dornach Tr. Alan P. Shepherd, Mildred Robertson Nicoll Rudolf Steiner |
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I tried to prove in this talk that Thomism is a spiritual monism, which manifests by an astute thinking of which the modern philosophy—influenced by Kant and Protestantism—has no idea or has no strength for it. Thus, I fell out also with monism! Today it is exceptionally difficult to speak of the things in such a way that the spoken arises from the real thing and is not put into the service of any party. |
74. The Redemption of Thinking (1956): Lecture I
22 May 1920, Dornach Tr. Alan P. Shepherd, Mildred Robertson Nicoll Rudolf Steiner |
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During these three days, I would like to speak about a topic that one normally considers from a more formal aspect, and whose contents one normally only considers that the position of the philosophical worldview to Christianity was fixed as it were by the underlying philosophical movement of the Middle Ages. Because just this aspect of the matter was recently refreshed because Pope Leo XIII called on his clerics to do Thomism the official philosophy of the Catholic Church, our present topic has a certain significance from this side. However, I would just like to look not only from this formal aspect at the matter that is connected as medieval philosophy with the central personalities of Albert the Great (1193-1280) and Thomas Aquinas (~1225-1274), but in the course of these days I would like to show the deeper historical background from which this philosophical movement arose which our time appreciates too little. One can say that Thomas Aquinas tried to grasp the problem of knowledge, of the complete worldview in a quite astute way in the thirteenth century, in a way that is hard to comprehend with our thinking today because conditions are part of reflection that the human beings of the present hardly fulfil, even if they are philosophers. It is necessary that you can completely project your thoughts in the way of thinking of Thomas Aquinas, his predecessors and successors that you know how you have to understand the concepts which lived in the souls of these medieval people about which, actually, the history of philosophy reports quite externally. If you look now at the centre of our consideration, at Thomas Aquinas, he is a personality that disappears, compared with the main current of Christian philosophy in the Middle Ages, as a personality as it were who is, actually, only the exponent of that which lives in a broad worldview current and expresses a certain universality with him. So that Thomism is something exceptionally impersonal, something that only manifests by the personality of Thomas Aquinas. Against it, you recognise immediately that you look at a full, whole personality if you envisage Augustine (354-430) who is the most important predecessor of Thomism. With Augustine, we deal with a struggling person, with Thomas Aquinas with the medieval church that determines its position to heaven, earth, human beings, history et cetera. It expresses itself—indeed, with certain restrictions—as church by the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. A significant event takes place between both men, and without looking at this event, it is not possible to determine the position of both personalities to each other. This event took place in 553 when Emperor Justinian I (527-565) branded Origen (185-~254) as a heretic. The whole colouring of Augustine's worldview becomes clear only if you consider the historical background from which Augustine worked his way out. However, this historical background changes because that powerful influence on the West stops which had originated from the Greek academies in Athens and somewhere else. This influence lasted until the sixth century, and then it decreased, so that something remained in the western current that was quite different from that in which Augustine had still lived. I ask you to take into consideration that I would like to give an introduction only today that I treat the real being of Thomism tomorrow, and that the purpose of my executions will completely appear, actually, only at the third day. Since I am in a special situation, also with reference to the Christian philosophy of the Middle Ages, in particular of Thomism,—you forgive for this personal remark. I have emphasised many a time what I experienced once when I reported that before a proletarian audience what I have to regard as truth in the course of western history. It caused that the students took kindly to that, however, the leaders of the proletarian movement believed that this was no real Marxism. Although I appealed to freedom of teaching, one answered to me in the decisive meeting that this party knows no freedom of teaching but only reasonable compulsion!—Hence, I had to finish my teaching, although I had many students of the proletariat who supported me. I experienced something similar another time with that which I wanted to say about Thomism and the medieval philosophy twenty years ago. At that time, the materialist monism was on its climax. To the care of a free, independent worldview, but only to the care of this materialist monism, the Giordano Bruno Association was founded in Germany in those days. Because it was impossible for me to take part in all empty gossip and phrases that appeared as monism in the world, I held a talk on Thomism in the Berlin Giordano Bruno Association. I tried to prove in this talk that Thomism is a spiritual monism, which manifests by an astute thinking of which the modern philosophy—influenced by Kant and Protestantism—has no idea or has no strength for it. Thus, I fell out also with monism! Today it is exceptionally difficult to speak of the things in such a way that the spoken arises from the real thing and is not put into the service of any party. Hence, I would like to speak about the phenomena, which I have indicated, during these three days again. Augustine positions himself as a struggling personality in the fourth and fifth centuries, as I have already said. The way in which Augustine struggles makes a deep impression if one is able to go into the special nature of this struggle. Two questions rose in Augustine's soul of which one has no idea today where the real cognitive and psychological questions have faded, actually. The first question is that which one can characterise possibly while one says, Augustine struggles for the being of that which the human being can acknowledge, actually, as truth fulfilling his soul. The second question is, how can one explain the evil in a world that has, nevertheless, sense only if at least the purpose of this world deals with the good? How can one explain that never the voice of the evil is silenced in the human nature also not if the human being strives honestly and sincerely for the good? I do not believe that one approaches Augustine really, if one interprets these two questions in such a way, as the average human people of the present would like to understand them. One has to look for the special colouring that these questions had for this man of the fourth and fifth centuries. Augustine experiences an internally moved, excessive life at first. However, in this life both questions appear repeatedly in him. He is in a conflict. The father is a pagan; the mother is a devout Christ. The mother did her best to win the son over to Christianity. At first, the son attains a certain seriousness of life and turns to Manichaeism. We want to look at this worldview later that Augustine got to know when he changed from a dissolute life to a serious one. Then, however, he felt more and more rejected—indeed, only after years—by Manichaeism, and a certain scepticism seized him from the whole trend of the philosophical life in which at a certain time the Greek philosophy had ended, and which survived then until the time of Augustine. However, now scepticism withdraws more and more. Scepticism is only something to Augustine that brings him together with Greek philosophy. This scepticism leads him to that which exerted a deep influence certainly on his subjectivity on his whole attitude for some time. Scepticism leads him to a quite different direction, to Neoplatonism. Neoplatonism influenced Augustine even more than one normally thinks. One can understand his whole personality and his struggle only if one recognises how much he is involved in the Neoplatonic worldview. If one goes objectively into his development, one hardly finds, actually, that the break, which in this personality took place with the transition from Manichaeism to Neoplatonism or Plotinism, recurred with the same strength, when Augustine turned from Neoplatonism to Christianity. Since one can say, actually, Augustine remained a Neoplatonist to a certain degree. That is why his destiny induced him to get to know Christianity. It is, actually, not at all a big leap, but it is a natural development from Neoplatonism to Christianity. One cannot judge the Christianity of Augustine if one does not look at Manichaeism, a peculiar way to overcome the old pagan worldview at the same time with the Old Testament, with Judaism. At that time, Manichaeism had expanded over North Africa where Augustine grew up in which many people of the West already lived. In the third century, Manichaeism came into being by Mani, a Persian (216-277). History hands down exceptionally little of it. If one wants to characterise Manichaeism, one must say, it depends more on the attitude of this worldview than on the literal contents. It is typical for Manichaeism above all that the separation of the human experience into spiritual and material does not yet make sense. The words or ideas “spirit” and “matter” have no sense for Manichaeism. Manichaeism sees in that what appears material to the senses something spiritual and does not tower above that which presents itself to the senses if it speaks of the spiritual. It applies to it much more than one normally thinks that it assumes spiritual phenomena, spiritual facts, indeed, in the stars and in their ways that it assumes that with the sun mystery something spiritual takes place here on earth at the same time. Something material manifests as something spiritual at the same time and vice versa. Hence, it is a given for Manichaeism that it speaks of astronomical phenomena, of world phenomena in such a way as it also speaks of moral and of events within the human evolution. Thus, the contrast of light and darkness which Manichaeism teaches—copying the ancient Persian worldview—is something naturally spiritual at the same time even more than one thinks. Manichaeism still speaks of that what moves there apparently as sun at the firmament, of something that is also concerned with the moral entities and impulses within the human evolution. It speaks of the relations of this moral-physical, which is there at the firmament, to the signs of the zodiac like to twelve beings by whom the primal being, the primal light being of the world, specifies its activities. However, something else is still distinctive of Manichaeism. It considers the human being by no means as that which the human being is to us today. The human being appears to us as a kind of crown of the earth creation. Manichaeism does not concede this. It considers the human being, actually, only as a scanty rest of that which should have become a human being on earth by the divine light being. Something else should have become a human being than that which now walks around as a human being on earth. That which now walks around as a human being on earth originated because the original human being whom the light being had created for supporting him in his fight against the demons of darkness lost this fight against these demons and was moved by the good powers into the sun. However, the demons still managed it to snatch a part of this original human being as it were from the real human being escaping to the sun and to form the earthly human race from it, which walks about on earth like a worse issue of that what could not live on the earth here because it had to be carried away into the sun during the big spiritual fight. The Christ Being appeared to lead the human being who was like a worse edition of his original destiny on earth, and Its activity shall erase the effect of the demons from the earth. I know very well that not everything that one can still put into words of this worldview by our word usage, actually, is sufficient; since all that just arises from the depths of the soul life that are substantially different from the present ones. However, the essentials are that what I have already emphasised. Since as fantastic it may appear what I tell you about the progress of the earth in the sense of Manichaeism, it did not imagine that as something that one can only behold spiritually, but that a sense-perceptible phenomenon happens at the same time as something spiritual. That was the first to work powerfully on Augustine. We understand the problems that are connected with the personality of Augustine, actually, even by the fact that one envisages this mighty effect of Manichaeism, of its spiritual-material principle. One must ask himself, why did Augustine become dissatisfied with Manichaeism? Not, actually, because of its mystic contents but because of the whole attitude of Manichaeism. First, Augustine was taken in by the sensory descriptiveness, the vividness of this view, in a way. Then, however, something stirred in him that could not be content just with the vividness with which one considered the material as spiritual and the spiritual as material. One really does not manage it differently, as if one goes over from that which one has often only as a formal consideration to reality if one looks at the fact that Augustine was just a person who resembled very much the people of the Middle Ages and maybe even modern people than those people who were the natural bearers of Manichaeism. Augustine already has something of a renewal of mental life. In our intellectual time that is prone to the abstract, one considers that which goes forward historically in any century as result of the preceding century and so on. It is pure nonsense if one states that that which happens, for example, in the eighteenth year of a human being is a mere effect of that which has happened in the thirteenth, fourteenth years. Since in between something takes place which works its way up from the depths of human nature which is not a mere effect of the preceding in the sense as one speaks of effect and cause justifiably, but which is the sexual maturity which just emerges from the nature of humanity. One has to acknowledge such leaps also at other times of the individual human development, where something works up its way from depths to the surface; so that one cannot say, what happens is only the immediately straight effect of that which has preceded. Such leaps also take place in the evolution of humanity, and you have to suppose that the spiritual condition of Manichaeism was before such leap and Augustine lived after the leap. He could not help ascending from that which a Manichaean considered as material-spiritual to the purely spiritual. Hence, he had to turn away from the vivid worldview of Manichaeism. That was the first to experience in his soul intensely, and we read his words: “the fact that I had to imagine bodily masses if I wanted to meditate on God and believed that nothing could exist but of that kind—this was the most substantial and almost the only reason of error which I could not avoid.” Thus, he points back to that time in which Manichaeism lived in his soul; and thus he characterises this lifetime as an error. He wanted something at which he could look up as to something that forms the basis of the human being. He needed something that one cannot see as something material-spiritual immediately in the sensory universe, as the principles of Manichaeism did. As everything struggles intensely seriously and strongly to the surface of his soul, also this: “I asked the earth, and it spoke, I am not that. And what is on it, confessed the same.” What does Augustine look for? He looks for the actual divine.—Manichaeism would have answered to him: I am that as earth, as far as the divine expresses itself by the earthly work.—Augustine continues: “I asked the sea and the abysses and what they entail as living: we are not your God, search Him above us.—I asked the blowing winds and the whole atmosphere with all its inhabitants: the philosophers who looked the being of the things in us were mistaken, we are not God.” Neither the sea, nor the atmosphere, nor everything that you can perceive with the senses. “I asked the sun, the moon, and the stars. They said: we are not God whom you search.” Thus, he got free of Manichaeism, just of the element of Manichaeism that one has to characterise, actually, as the most significant. Augustine looks for a spiritual that is free of anything sense-perceptible. He lives just in that epoch of soul development when the soul had to break away from mere considering the sense-perceptible as something spiritual, the spiritual as something sense-perceptible; since one also misjudges the Greek philosophy in this respect absolutely. Hence, people have difficulties to understand the beginning of my Riddles of Philosophy because I tried to characterise it in such a way as it was. If the Greek speaks of ideas, of concepts, the today's human beings believe that he means that with his ideas that we call thoughts or ideas today. This is not the case, but the Greek spoke of ideas as of something that he perceives in the outside world like colours and tones. What appeared in Manichaeism with an oriental nuance exists in the entire Greek worldview. The Greek sees his idea as he sees a colour. He still has the sensory-spiritual, spiritual-sensory, that soul experience which does not at all ascend to that which we know as something spiritual that is free of anything sense-perceptible as we understand it now—whether as a mere abstraction or as real contents of our soul, this we do not yet want to decide at this moment. The soul experience that is free of anything sense-perceptible is not yet anything that the Greek envisages. He does not differentiate between thinking and sense perception. One would have to correct the whole conception of the Platonic philosophy, actually, from this viewpoint, because only then it appears in the right light. So that one may say, Manichaeism is only a post-Christian elaboration of that what was in Hellenism. One also does not understand the great philosopher Aristotle who concludes the Greek philosophy if one does not know that—if he still speaks of concepts—he already stands, indeed, hard at the border of abstract understanding that he speaks, however, still in the sense of tradition seeing the concepts close to sense-perception. Augustine was simply forced by the viewpoint, which people of his epoch had attained by real processes that took place in them among whom Augustine was an outstanding personality, no longer to experience in the soul as a Greek had experienced. He was forced to a thinking that still keeps its contents if it cannot talk of earth, air, sea, stars, sun and moon that does not have vivid contents. He has to push his way to a divine that should have such abstract contents. Only such worldviews spoke to him, actually, which had originated from another viewpoint that I have just characterised as that of the sensory-extrasensory. No wonder that these souls came to scepticism because they strove in uncertain way for something that was not yet there and because they could only find that which they could not take up. However, on the other side the feeling to stand on a firm ground of truth and to get explanation about the question of the origin of the evil was so strong in Augustine that, nevertheless, Neo-Platonism influenced him equally considerably. Neo-Platonism or Plotinism in particular concludes Greek philosophy. Plotinus (~204-270) shows—what strictly speaking Plato's dialogues and in the least the Aristotelian philosophy cannot show—how the whole soul life proceeds if it searches a certain internalisation. Plotinus is the last latecomer of a kind of people who took quite different ways to knowledge than that which one later understood generally about which one developed an idea later. Plotinus appears to the modern human being, actually, as a daydreamer. Plotinus appears just to those who have taken up more or less of the medieval scholasticism as an awful romanticist, even as a dangerous romanticist. I experienced that repeatedly. My old friend Vincenz Knauer (1828-1894), a Benedictine monk who wrote a history of philosophy and a book about the main problems of philosophy from Thales to Hamerling was the personified gentleness. This man scolded as never before if one discussed the philosophy of Neo-Platonism, in particular that of Plotinus. There he got very angry with Plotinus as with a dangerous romanticist. Franz Brentano (1838-1917), the brilliant Aristotelian, empiricist, and representative of the medieval philosophy wrote a booklet What a Philosopher Is Epoch-making Sometimes (1876). There, he got just angry with Plotinus, because Plotinus is the philosopher who was epoch-making as a dangerous romanticist at the end of the ancient Greek era. It is very difficult for the modern philosopher to understand Plotinus. About this philosopher of the third century, we may say at first, that what we experience as our mind contents, as the sum of concepts that we form about the world is to him not at all, what it is to us. I would like to say if I may express myself figuratively (Steiner draws): We understand the world with sense perception, then we abstract concepts from the sense perception and end up in the concepts. We have the concepts as an inner soul experience and we are aware more or less that we have abstractions. The essentials are that we end up there; we turn our attention to the sensory experience and end up where we form the sum of our concepts, our ideas. That was not the way for Plotinus. To Plotinus this whole world of sense perception hardly existed at first. However, that which was something for him about which he spoke as we speak about plants, minerals, animals and physical human beings, that was something that he saw now above the concepts, this was a spiritual world, and this spiritual world had a lower border for him. This lower border was the concepts. We get the concepts by turning to the sensory things, abstracting and forming the concepts and say, the concepts are the summaries, the essences of ideal nature from sense perception. Plotinus said who cared little about sense perception at first, we as human beings live in a spiritual world, and that which this spiritual world reveals as a last to us that we see as its lower border this are the concepts. For us the sensory world is beneath the concepts; for Plotinus a spiritual world, the real intellectual world, is above the concepts. I could also use the following image: we imagine once, we would be immersed in the sea, and we looked up to the sea surface, the sea surface would be the upper border. We lived in the sea, and we would just have the feeling: this border surrounds the element in which we live. For Plotinus this was different. He did not care about this sea around himself. However, for him this border which he saw there was the border of the world of concepts in which his soul lived, the lower border of that what was above it; so as if we interpreted the sea border as the border with the atmosphere. For Plotinus who was of the opinion that he continued the true view of Plato is that what is above the concepts at the same time that which Plato calls the world of ideas. This world of ideas is definitely something about which one speaks as a world in the sense of Plotinism. It does not come into your mind, even if you are followers of modern subjective philosophy, if you look out at a meadow to say: I have my meadow, you have your meadow, the third one has his meadow, even if you are persuaded by the fact that you all have the mental picture of the meadow only, isn't that so? You talk about one meadow that is outdoors; in the same way, Plotinus speaks about one world of ideas, not of the world of ideas in the first head, or in the second head, or in the third head. The soul takes part in this world of ideas. So that we may say, the soul, the psyche, develops as it were from the world of ideas, experiencing this world of ideas. Just as the world of ideas creates the psyche, the soul, the soul for its part creates the matter in which it is embodied. Hence, that from which the psyche takes its body is a creation of this psyche. There, however, is only the origin of individuation, there only the psyche divides, which, otherwise, participates in the uniform world of ideas, into the body A, into the body B and so on, and thereby the single souls originate only. The single souls originate from the fact that as it were the psyche is integrated into the single material bodies. Therefore, in the sense of Plotinism the human being can consider himself as a vessel at first. However, this is only that by which the soul manifests and is individualised. Then the human being has to experience his soul that rises to the world of ideas. Then there is a higher kind of experience. Talking about abstract concepts did not make sense to a Plotinist; since a Plotinist would have said, what should abstractions be? Concepts cannot be abstract, cannot be in limbo, they must be the concrete manifestations of the spiritual. One is wrong if one interprets in such a way that ideas are abstractions. This is the expression of an intellectual world, a world of spirituality. That also existed in the usual experience with those people out of whom Plotinus and his followers grew up. For them such talking about concepts generally did not make sense, because for them the spiritual world projected into their souls. At the border of this projection, this world of concepts originated. However, only if one became engrossed, if one developed the soul further, that resulted which now the usual human being could not know which just someone experienced who soared a higher experience. Then he experienced that which was still above the world of ideas which was the One if you want to call it this way, so he experiences the One what was for Plotinus that which no concept reaches if one could delve into it without concepts in the inside, and which one calls Imagination spiritual-scientifically. You can read up that in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? What I called Imagination there delves into that which is above the world of ideas according to Plotinus. Any cognition about the human soul also arose for Plotinus from this worldview. It is already contained in it. One can be an individualist only in the sense of Plotinus, while one is at the same time a human being who recognises that the human being rises to something that is above any individuality that he rises to something spiritual in which he rises upwards as it were, while we are more used today to submerging in the sensory. However, everything that is the expression of something that a right scholastic considers as a rave is nothing fictional for Plotinus, is not hypothetical. For Plotinus this was sure perception up to the One that could be experienced only in special cases, as for us minerals, plants, animals are percepts. He spoke only in the sense of something that the soul experiences immediately if he spoke about the soul, the Logos that participates in the Nous, in the world of ideas and in the One. For Plotinus the whole world was a spiritual being as it were; again it has a nuance of worldview different from that of Manichaeism and that of Augustine. Manichaeism recognises a sensory-extrasensory; for it, the words and concepts “matter” and “spirit” do not yet make sense. From his sensory view, Augustine strives for attaining a spiritual experience that is free of the sense-perceptible. For Plotinus the whole world is spirit, for him sensory things do not exist. Since that which seems material is only the lowest manifestation of the spirit. Everything is spirit, and if we penetrate deeply enough into the things, everything manifests as spirit. This is something with which Augustine could not completely go along. Why? Because he did not have the view. Because Augustine just lived already as a forerunner in his epoch—as I would like to call Plotinus a latecomer, Augustine was just a forerunner of those human beings who do no longer feel that in the world of ideas a spiritual world manifests. He did not behold this world. He could learn it only from others. He could only find out it that one said this, and he could still develop a feeling of the fact that something of a human way to truth is contained in it. This was the conflict, in which Augustine faced Plotinism. However, actually, he was never completely hostile to an inner understanding of Plotinism, even if he could not behold. He only suspected that in this world something must be which he could not reach. In this mood, Augustine withdrew into loneliness in which he got to know the Bible and Christianity, and later the sermons of Aurelius Ambrosius (St. Ambrose, ~340-397, Bishop of Milan) and the Epistles of Paul. This mood persuaded him finally to say, what Plotinus sought as the being of the world in the being of the world of ideas, of the Nous, or in the One that one reaches only in special preferential soul states this appeared on earth in the person of Christ Jesus.—This arose to him as a conviction from the Bible: you do not need to soar the One; you need only to look at the historical tradition of Christ Jesus. There the One descended and became a human being. Augustine swaps the philosophy of Plotinus for the church. He pronounces it clearly when he says: “Who could be so blinded to say that the church of the apostles deserves no faith which is so loyal and is supported by the accordance of so many brothers that it handed its scriptures conscientiously down to the descendants that it also maintained their chairs up to the present bishops with apostolic succession.” Augustine now places much value on the fact that one can prove, in the end,—if one only goes back through the centuries—that there lived human beings who still knew the disciples of the Lord, and an ongoing tradition of plausible kind exists that on earth that appeared which Plotinus tried to gain in the mentioned way. Augustine was now eager to use Plotinism, as far as he could penetrate into it to the understanding of that which had become accessible to his feeling by Christianity. He really applied that which he had received from Plotinism to understand Christianity and its contents. Thus, he transformed, for example, the concept of the One. For Plotinus this One was an experience; for Augustine who could not penetrate to this experience the One became something that he called with the abstract term “being,” the world of ideas was something that he called with the abstraction of “essence,” psyche something that he named with the abstraction “life” or also with the concept “love.” The fact that Augustine proceeded in such a way characterises best of all that he tried to grasp the spiritual world from which Christ Jesus had come with Neoplatonic, with Plotinist, he thought that there is a spiritual world above the human beings from which Christ comes. The tripartition was something that had become clear to Augustine from Plotinism. The three personalities of trinity—Father, Son, and Spirit—became clear to Augustine from Plotinism. If one asks, what filled the soul of Augustine if he spoke of the three persons? One has to answer, that filled him, which he had learnt from Plotinus. He also brought that which he had learnt from Plotinus into his Bible understanding. One realises how this works on, because this trinity comes alive again, for example, with Scotus Eriugena (John Scotus Eriugena, ~815- ~877, Irish theologian, philosopher) who lived at the court of Charles the Bald in the ninth century. He wrote a book about the division of nature (De divisione naturae, original title: Periphyseon) in which we still find a similar trinity. Christianity interprets its contents with the help of Plotinism. Augustine kept some basic essentials of Plotinism. Imagine that, actually, the human being is an earthly individual only, because the psyche projects down to the material like into a vessel. If we ascend a little bit to the higher essential, we ascend from the human to the divine or spiritual where the trinity is rooted, then we do no longer deal with the single human beings but with the species, with humanity. We do no longer direct our ideas so strongly to the whole humanity from our concepts as Augustine did this from Plotinism. I would like to say, seen from below the human beings appear as individuals; seen from above—if one may say it hypothetically—the whole humanity appears as a unity. For Plotinus now from this viewpoint the whole humanity grew together, seen from the front, in Adam. Adam was the whole humanity. While Adam originated from the spiritual world, he was a being, connected with the earth, that had free will, and that was unable to sin because in it that lived which was still up there—not that which originates from the aberration of the matter. The human being who was Adam at first could not sin, he could not be unfree, and with it, he could not die. There the effect of that came which Augustine felt as the counter-spirit, as Satan. He seduced the human being who became material and with it the whole humanity. You realise that in this respect Augustine lives with his knowledge completely in Plotinism. The whole humanity is one to him. The single human being does not sin, with Adam the whole humanity sins. If one dwells on that which often lives between the lines in particular of the last writings of Augustine, one realises how exceptionally difficult it was for Augustine to consider the whole humanity as sinful. In him, the individual human being lived who had a sensation of the fact that the single human being becomes responsible more and more for that which he does and learns. It appeared almost as something impossible to Augustine at certain moments to feel that the single human being is only a member of the whole humanity. However, Neo-Platonism, Plotinism was so firm in him that he was able to look at the whole humanity only. Thus, this state of all human beings—the state of sin and death—transitioned into the state of the inability to be free and immortal. The whole humanity had fallen with it, had turned away from its origin. Now God would simply have rejected humanity if he were only fair. However, He is not only fair; He is also merciful. Augustine felt this way. Hence, God decided to save a part of humanity—please note: to save a part of humanity—God decided that a part of humanity receives His grace by which this part of humanity is led back to the state of freedom and immortality which can be realised, however, completely only after death. The other part of humanity—they are the not selected—remains in the state of sin. Hence, humanity disintegrates into two parts: in those who are selected, and in those who are rejected. If one looks in the sense of Augustine at humanity, it simply disintegrates into these two parts, into those who are without merit destined to bliss only because the divine plan has wisely arranged it this way, and in those who cannot get the divine grace whatever they do, they are doomed. This view, which one also calls the doctrine of predestination, arose for Augustine from his view of the whole humanity. If the whole humanity sinned, the whole humanity would deserve to be condemned. Which dreadful spiritual fights did arise from this doctrine of predestination? Tomorrow I would like to speak how Pelagianism, Semipelagianism grew out of it. However, today I would still like to add something in the end: we realise now how Augustine as a vividly struggling personality stands between that view which goes up to the spiritual and for which humanity becomes one. He interprets this to himself in the sense of the doctrine of predestination. However, he felt compelled to ascend from the human individuality to something spiritual that is free of any sense-perceptible and can arise again only from the individuality. The characteristic feature of the age whose forerunner Augustine was is that this age became aware of that of which in antiquity the human being did not became aware: the individual experience. Today one takes many things as phrases. Klopstock (1724-1803, German poet) was still serious, he did not use commonplace phrases when he began his Messiah with the words: “Sing, immortal soul, on the sinful men's redemption.”—Homer began honestly and sincerely: “Sing, o goddess, to me about the rage ...” or: “Sing, o muse, to me of the man, the widely wandered Odysseus.”—These men did not speak of that which lived in the individuality; they spoke of that which speaks as a general humanity, as a type soul, as a psyche through them. This is no commonplace phrase if Homer lets the muse sing instead of himself. The fact that one can regard himself as an individuality arises only gradually. Augustine is one of the first to feel the individual existence of the human being with individual responsibility. Hence, he lived in this conflict. However, there just originated in his experience the individual pursuit for the non-sensory spiritual. In him was a personal, subjective struggle. In the subsequent time, that understanding was also buried which Augustine could still have for Plotinism. After the Greek philosophers, the latecomers of Plato and Plotinus, had to emigrate to Persia, after these last philosophers had found their successors in the Academy of Gondishapur, in the West this view to the spiritual disappeared, and only that remained which the philistine Aristotle delivered as filtered Greek philosophy to future generations, but also only in single fragments. This propagated and came via the Arabs to Europe. This was that which had no consciousness of the real world of ideas. Thus, the big question was left; the human being has to create the spiritual from himself. He must bear the spiritual as an abstraction. If he sees lions, he thinks the concept of the “lion” if he sees wolves, he thinks the concept “wolf” if he sees the human being, he thinks the concept of the human being, these concepts live only in him, they emerge from the individuality. The whole question would not yet have had any sense for Plotinus; now this question still gets a deep different sense. Augustine could still grasp the mystery of Christ Jesus with that which shone from Plotinism in his soul. Plotinism was buried; with the closing of the Neoplatonic Academy in Athens by Emperor Justinian in 529, the living coherence with such views ended. Different people felt deeply, what it means: the scriptures and tradition give us account of a spiritual world, we experience supersensible concepts from our individuality, concepts which are abstracted from the sensory. How do we relate to existence with these concepts? How do we relate to the being of the world with these concepts? Do our concepts live only as something arbitrary in us, or does it have anything to do with the outer world? In this form, the questions appeared in extreme abstraction, but in an abstraction that were very serious human and medieval-ecclesiastical problems. In this abstraction, in this intimacy the questions emerged in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. Then the quarrel between realists and nominalists took place. How does one relate to a world about which those concepts give account that can be born only in ourselves by our individuality? The medieval scholastics presented this big question to themselves. If you think which form Plotinism accepted in the doctrine of predestination, then you can feel the whole depth of this scholastic question: only a part of humanity could be blessed with the divine grace, can attain salvation; the other part was destined to the everlasting damnation from the start whatever it does. However, that which the human being could gain as knowledge to himself did just not arise from that into which Augustine could not yet transform his dreadful concept of predestination; this arose from the human individuality. For Augustine humanity was a whole, for Thomas every single human being was an individuality. How is this big world process of predestination associated with that which the single human being experiences? How is that associated which Augustine had completely neglected, actually, with that which the single human being can gain to himself? Imagine that Augustine took the doctrine of predestination because he did not want to assert but to extinguish the human individuality for the sake of humanity; Thomas Aquinas only faced the single human being with his quest for knowledge. In that which Augustine excluded from his consideration of humanity, Thomas had to look for the human knowledge and its relation to the world. It is not enough that one puts such a question in the abstract, intellectually and rationalistically. It is necessary that you grasp such a question with your whole heart, with your whole personality. Then you can estimate how this question weighed heavily on those persons who were its bearers in the thirteenth century. |