| 26. Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts: Aphorisms from a Lecture to Members Given in London on August 24th, 1924.
24 Aug 1924, London Translated by George Adams, Mary Adams Rudolf Steiner |
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| 26. Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts: Aphorisms from a Lecture to Members Given in London on August 24th, 1924.
24 Aug 1924, London Translated by George Adams, Mary Adams Rudolf Steiner |
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[ 1 ] In the present stage of its evolution the human consciousness unfolds three forms, the waking, the dreaming, and the dreamless sleeping consciousness. [ 2 ] The waking consciousness experiences the outer world through the senses, forms ideas about it, and out of those ideas can create such as portray a purely spiritual world. The dreaming consciousness develops pictures in which the outer world is transformed, as, for instance, when the sun shining on the bed is experienced in dream as a conflagration in all its details. Or a man's own inner world may appear before him in symbolic pictures, as, for instance, the throbbing heart in the picture of an over-heated oven. Memories also re-appear transformed in the dream consciousness. What these memory pictures contain is not borrowed from the world of the senses, but from the spiritual world. However, it is not possible through the memory pictures to penetrate with understanding into the spiritual world, because they are just too dim to rise into the waking consciousness, and because what little may be perceived cannot be really understood. [ 3 ] But it is possible in the moment of waking to grasp so much of the dream world as to become aware that it is the imperfect copy of a spiritual experience which has happened in sleep, but which for the most part evades the waking consciousness. In order to comprehend this, it is only necessary to shape the moment of waking in such a way that the outer world is not conjured all at once before the soul, but that the soul, without as yet regarding the outer world, feels itself surrendered to what has been experienced within. [ 4 ] In the dreamless sleep consciousness the soul passes through experiences which mean nothing more for the memory than an indifferent period of time between falling asleep and waking. These experiences may be spoken of as non-existent, until the way into them has been opened up through spiritual scientific investigation. But if this takes place, if the Imaginative and Inspired consciousness described in anthroposophical literature be developed, then out of the darkness of sleep the pictures and inspirations belonging to the experience of previous lives on Earth make their appearance. It then becomes possible to survey also the content of the dream consciousness. This cannot be grasped by the waking consciousness; it has to do with the world in which man dwells as a disembodied soul between two earthly lives. [ 5 ] If one learns to know what is hidden behind the dream- and sleep-consciousness in the present age, then the way is clear to the understanding of the forms of human consciousness in past ages. One cannot, however, arrive at this by means of outer investigation; for evidence received from the outer world shows only the after-effects of the experiences of human consciousness in prehistoric times. Anthroposophical literature gives information as to how, by means of spiritual investigation, one may attain to the vision of such experiences. [ 6 ] It is found by means of spiritual research that in ancient Egyptian times man possessed a dream-consciousness which was much more like the waking consciousness than it is at the present day. The memory of the dream experiences passed into the waking consciousness, and the latter provided not only the sense impressions that can be grasped in clearly outlined thoughts, but in addition to these the Spiritual that is at work in the world of the senses. Man's consciousness thereby lived instinctively in the world he had left when he incarnated on the Earth—the world he will re-enter when he passes through the gate of death. [ 7 ] Inscribed monuments and other records preserved from ancient times give to those who penetrate them with an impartial mind, clear evidence of a consciousness of this kind, belonging to an age of which no outer relics exist. [ 8 ] In ancient Egyptian times the sleep-consciousness contained dreams of the spiritual world, just as the sleep consciousness of the present day contains dreams originating from the physical world. [ 9 ] But among other peoples we find in addition another kind of consciousness. The experiences undergone during sleep passed over into the waking consciousness in such a way that there was an instinctive vision of repeated earthly lives. The traditions regarding the knowledge of repeated earthly lives possessed by ancient humanity originate from these forms of consciousness. [ 10 ] In the developed Imaginative consciousness we find again the dream-consciousness which in ancient times was dim and instinctive, only in the Imaginative consciousness it is fully conscious, like our waking life. [ 11 ] And through the Inspired knowledge we become aware of the pre-historic instinctive insight which still saw something of the repeated earthly lives. Modern writers of works on the history of humanity make no note of this transformation in the forms of human consciousness. They would like to believe that on the whole the present forms of consciousness have existed as long as humanity has been on the Earth. [ 12 ] And what, in spite of this, does point to other forms of consciousness, viz., the myths and fairy-tales, they would prefer to look upon as the result of the poetic fantasy of primitive man. Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society[ 13 ] 88. In the waking day-consciousness man experiences himself, during the present cosmic age, standing in the midst of the physical world. This experience conceals from him the presence, within his being, of the effects of a life between death and birth. [ 14 ] 89. In dream-consciousness man experiences, in a chaotic way, his own being unharmoniously united with the spiritual being of the world. The waking consciousness cannot seize the real content of the dream-consciousness. To the Imaginative and Inspired Consciousness it is revealed how the Spirit-world through which man lives between death and birth is helping to build up his inner being. [ 15 ] 90. In dreamless sleep-consciousness man experiences, all unconsciously, his own being permeated with the results of past earthly lives. The Inspired and Intuitive Consciousness penetrates to a clear vision of these results, and sees the working of former earthly lives in the destined course—the Karma—of the present. Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society[ 16 ] 91. The Will enters the ordinary consciousness, in the present cosmic age, only through Thought. Now in this consciousness we always have to take our start from something sense-perceptible. Thus, even of our own Will, we apprehend only what passes from it into the world of sense-perceptions. In the ordinary consciousness it is only by observation of himself in thought that man is aware of his Will-impulses, just as it is only by observation that he is aware of the outer world. [ 17 ] 92. The Karma that works in the Will is a property belonging to it from former lives on Earth. This constituent of the Will cannot therefore be apprehended with the ideas of our ordinary sense-existence, which are directed only to the present earthly life. [ 18 ] 93. Because they are unable to take hold of Karma, these ideas refer what is unintelligible to them in man's impulses of Will to the mystic darkness of the bodily constitution, whereas in reality it is the working of past earthly lives. Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society[ 19 ] 94. With the ordinary life in ideas transmitted through the senses, man is in the physical world. For this world to enter his consciousness, Karma must be silent in his thinking life. In his life of ideation, man as it were forgets his Karma. [ 20 ] 95. In the manifestations of the Will, Karma works itself out. But its working remains in the unconscious. By lifting to conscious Imagination what works unconsciously in the Will, Karma is apprehended. Man feels his destiny within him. [ 21 ] 96. When Inspiration and Intuition enter the Imagination, then, beside the impulses of the present, the outcome of former earthly lives becomes perceptible in the working of the Will. The past life is revealed, working itself out in the present. Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society[ 22 ] 97. For a cruder description it is permissible to say: Thinking, Feeling and Willing live in the soul of man. For greater refinement we must add: Thinking always contains a substratum of Feeling and Willing; Feeling a substratum of Thinking and Willing; Willing a substratum of Thinking and Feeling. In the life of thought, however, Thinking predominates; in the life of feeling, Feeling predominates; and in the life of will, Willing predominates over the other contents of the soul. [ 23 ] 98. The Feeling and Willing of the life of Thought contain the karmic outcome of past lives on Earth. The Thinking and Willing of the life of Feeling karmically determine the man's character. The Thinking and Feeling of the life of Will tear the present earthly life away from Karmic connections. [ 24 ] 99. In the Feeling and Willing of Thinking man lives out his Karma of the past; in the Thinking and Feeling of Willing he prepares his Karma of the future. Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society[ 25 ] 100. The thoughts of man have their true seat in the etheric body. There, however, they are forces of real life and being. They imprint themselves upon the physical body, and as such ‘imprinted thoughts’ they have the shadowy character in which the everyday consciousness knows them. [ 26 ] 101. The Feeling that lives in the Thoughts comes from the astral body, and the Willing from the Ego. In sleep the human etheric body is certainly irradiated with the world of his Thoughts, but man himself does not partake in it. For he has withdrawn, with the astral body the Feeling of the Thoughts, and with the Ego their Willing, out of the etheric and the physical. [ 27 ] 102. The moment the astral body and Ego loose their connection during sleep with the Thoughts of the etheric body, they enter into connection with ‘Karma’—with the beholding of the events through repeated lives on Earth. To the everyday consciousness this vision is denied, but a supersensible consciousness can enter into it. |
| 35. The Spiritual-Scientific Basis of Goethes Work
10 Jul 1905, London Rudolf Steiner |
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| 35. The Spiritual-Scientific Basis of Goethes Work
10 Jul 1905, London Rudolf Steiner |
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Anthroposophy will only be able to fulfill its great and universal mission in modern civilization when it is able to grasp the special problems which have arisen in every land by reason of the intellectual possessions of the people. In Germany, these special problems are in part determined by the inheritance bequeathed to her intellectual life by the men of genius living at the close of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. Any one who approaches those great minds, Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, Novalis, Jean Paul and many others, from the point of view of Anthroposophical thought and its attitude toward life, will have two important experiences. The first being that, as a result of this profoundly spiritual attitude, a new light is thrown upon the working and works of these men of genius; the second, that through them Anthroposophy receives new life-blood, which must, in some way as yet not clear, produce a fructifying and strengthening effect in the future. It may be said without exaggeration that the German will understand Anthroposophy if only he brings his mind to bear upon the highest conceptions for which the leading spirits of his land have striven, and which they have embodied in their works. It will be the task of future generations to reveal the Anthroposophical and spiritual-scientific basis of the great advancement in the intellectual life of Germany during the period in question. It will then be shown what an intimate knowledge and understanding of the influences at work during this period is obtainable by regarding things from an Anthroposophical point of view. It is only possible on this occasion to make a few references to one man of genius who was the leading light of this age of culture, namely, Goethe. It is possible that new life may be infused into the active principles of Anthroposophy through Goethe's thought and the creations of his mind, with the result that, in Germany, Anthroposophy may appear by degrees to be something akin to the spirit of the people. One thing will be made clear: that the source of the Anthroposophical conception is one and the same as the fount from which Germany's great poet and thinker has derived his creative power. The most clear-sighted of those among whom Goethe lived acknowledged without any reservation that there was no branch of intellectual life which his attitude toward life and the world could not enrich. But one must not allow oneself to be deceived by the fact that the quintessence of Goethe's mind really lies concealed below the surface of his works. He who wishes to win his way to a perfect understanding of them must become intimate with their innermost spirit. This does not mean that one should become insensitive to the beauties of their style or their artistic form. Nor must one put an abstract interpretation upon his art by means of intellectual symbols and allegories. But, just as a noble countenance excites no less admiration for the beauty of its features because the beholder is able to perceive the greatness of the soul illuminating this beauty, so it is with Goethe's art; not only can it lose nothing, but rather will it gain infinitely, when the outward expression of his creative power is illuminated by that depth of conception of the universe which possesses his soul. Goethe himself often has shown how justified we are in having such a profound conception of his creative power. On January 29, 1827, he said to his devoted secretary Eckermann concerning his Faust, “It is all scenic and, from the point of view of the theatre, it will please everyone. More than this I did not wish. If only the performance gives pleasure to the majority of the audience, the initiated will not miss the deeper meaning.” It is only necessary to bring an impartial insight to bear upon Goethe's creative power in order to recognize that it is only an esoteric conception which can lead us to a full understanding of his working. He felt within him an ardent desire to discover in all phenomena of the senses the hidden spiritual force. It was one of his principles of search that the inner secrets are expressed in outward facts and objects, and that those only can aspire to understand Nature who look upon the phenomena as mere letters which enable them to decipher the inner meaning of the workings of the spirit. The words: “All we see before us passing, Sign and symbol is alone,” in the Chorus Mysticus, at the end of Faust, are not merely to be regarded as a poetical idea, but as the outcome of his whole attitude toward the world. In Art, too, he saw only a revelation of the innermost secrets of the world; in his opinion, it was through Art that those things are to be made clear which, though having their origin in Nature and being active in her, yet with the means at her disposal, she cannot express. He sought the same spirit in the phenomena of Nature as in the works of a creative artist; only the means of expression were different in the two cases. He was constantly at work on his conception of a gradual process of evolution of all the phenomena and creatures in the world. He regarded man as a compilation of the other kingdoms. The spirit of man was to him the revelation of a universal spirit, and the other realms of Nature, with their manifestations, appeared to him as the path of evolution leading to man. All this was not merely a theory with him, but became a living element in his work, permeating all that he produced. Schiller has given us a fine description of this peculiarity of Goethe's mind, in the letter with which he inaugurates the intimate friendship which united them (August 23, 1794):
In his book on Winckelmann, Goethe has expressed his opinion as to the position of man in the evolution of the realms of Nature:
It was Goethe's life-work to strive to obtain an ever clearer insight into the evolution of the living world. When, after moving to Weimar (about 1780), he embodied the result of his investigation in the beautiful prose-hymn, Nature, we find over the whole a certain abstract tinge of pantheism. He must perforce use words to define the hidden forces of being, but before long these cease to satisfy his ever-deepening conception. But it is in these very words that we first meet with the ideas which we find later in such perfect form. He says there, for instance:
When Goethe (1828), having reached the summit of his insight, looked back upon this stage, he expressed himself thus concerning it:
It was with such a conception that Goethe approached the animal, mineral and vegetable kingdoms to grasp the hidden spiritual unity in the manifest multiplicity of sense-perceptible phenomena. It is in this sense that he speaks of primeval plant, primeval animal. And it was for him Intuition which stood behind these conceptions as the active spiritual force. In his contemplation of things, his whole being strove toward what in Anthroposophy is called tolerance. And ever more and more he sought to acquire this quality by means of the strictest inward self-education. To this he frequently refers; it will suffice to quote a very characteristic example from the Campaign in France (1792):
Thus he endeavored to rise higher and higher and to reach the point which divided the real from the unreal. Only here and there do we find references to his innermost convictions. One of these occurs, for instance, in the poem The Mysteries, which contains his confession as a Rosicrucian. It was written in the middle of the 80's in the 18th century, and was regarded by those who knew him intimately as revealing his character. In 1816, he was called upon by a “fraternity of students in one of the chief towns of North Germany” to explain the hidden meaning of the poem, and the explanation which he gave might well stand as a paraphrase of the three objectives of the programme of the Anthroposophical Society. Only when one is capable of appreciating the full significance of such points in Goethe is one in a position to recognize the higher meaning, to use his own expression, which he has introduced into his Faust for the initiated. In the second part of this dramatic poem is in fact to be found what Goethe had to say concerning the relation of man to the three worlds: the physical, the astral and the spiritual. From this point of view, the poem represents his expression of the incarnation of man. A character which, to the mind that refuses a spiritual-scientific basis, presents insuperable difficulties, is that of Homunculus. Every passage, every word, however, becomes clear as soon as one starts from this basis. Homunculus is created by the help of Mephistopheles. The latter represents the repressive and destructive forces of the Universe which manifest in the realms of man as Evil. Goethe wishes to characterize the part which Evil takes in the formation of Homunculus; and yet from such beginnings is to be produced a man. For this reason, he is led through the lower realms of Nature to the scene of the classical Walpurgis Night. Before he sets forth on these wanderings, he possesses only a part of human nature. What he himself says concerning his connection with the earthly part of human nature is striking.
The Nature of Homunculus becomes quite clear in the light of the following lines which refer to him:
The following words are also added, “He is, methinks, Hermaphrodite.” Goethe here intends to represent the astral body of man before his incarnation in mortal (earthly) matter. This he also makes clear by endowing Homunculus with powers of clairvoyance. He sees, for instance, the dream of Faust in the laboratory where work is going on with the help of Mephistopheles. Then in the course of the classical Walpurgis Night the embodying of Homunculus, that is, the astral man, is described. He is sent through the realms of Nature to Proteus, the spirit of transformations.
Proteus then describes the road which astral man has to take through the realms of Nature in order to arrive at an earthly incarnation and receive a physical body.
The passage of man through the mineral kingdom is then described. Goethe makes his entrance into the vegetable kingdom particularly contemplative. Homunculus says: A tender air is wafted here; The philosopher Thales, who is present, adds in elucidation of what is taking place:
The moment, too, when the asexual being has implanted within him the double sex, and therewith sexual love, is also represented:
That the investing of the astral body with the physical body, composed of earthly elements, is really meant here is expressly stated in the closing lines of the second act:
Goethe here makes use of the evolution of beings in the course of the fashioning of the earth in connection with the incarnation of man as a special being. The latter repeats as such the transformations which mankind has undergone in reaching its present form. In these conceptions, he was in line with the theory of evolution held by spiritual science. His explanation of the origin of the lower forms of life was that the impulse which was aspiring to a higher grade had been stopped on a certain level. In his diary of the Journey through Switzerland, of 1797, he noted a conversation with the Tübingen professor Kielmeyer, which is interesting in this connection. In it, the following words occur, “Concerning the idea that the higher organic natures in their evolution take several steps which the others behind them are unable to take.” His studies of plants, animals, and of man are entirely pervaded by these ideas, and he seeks to invest them with an artistic form in the transformation of Homunculus into a man. When he becomes acquainted with Howard's theory of the formation of clouds, “he expresses his thoughts concerning the relation of spiritual archetypes to the ever-changing forms in the following words:
In Faust, we also find represented the relation of the imperishable spiritual man to the mortal envelope. Faust has to go to the Mothers to seek for this imperishable essence, and the explanation of this important scene is developed quite naturally in the second part of the play. Goethe conceives the real being of man as a trinity (in accord with the Anthroposophical teaching of Spirit-self, Life-spirit, Spirit-man). And Faust's visit to the Mothers may be termed in Anthroposophical phraseology the forcible entry into Devachan. There he is to find what remains of Helena. She is to be reincarnated; that is, she is to return from the realm of the Mothers to the earth and, in the third act, we really do in fact see her reincarnated. In order to accomplish this it is necessary to reunite the three natures of man: the astral, the physical, and the spiritual. At the end of the second act, the astral (Homunculus) has put on the physical envelope and this combination is now able to receive within it the higher nature. Such a conception introduces an inner dramatic unity into the poem, whereas with a non-occult forcible entry the individual events remain a mere arbitrary collection of poetical incidents. Without taking into account the spiritual-scientific foundation of the poem, Professor Veit Valentin, of Frankfort, has already drawn attention to the inner connection of Homunculus and Helena in an interesting book, Die Einheit des Ganzen Faust, 1896. But the contents of this work can only remain an intelligent hypothesis if one does not penetrate into the spiritual-scientific substratum underlying it all. Goethe has conceived Mephistopheles as a being to whom Devachan is unknown. He is only at home on the astral plane. Hence he can be of service in the creation of Homunculus, but he cannot accompany Faust into the realm of the Mothers. Indeed, that plane is to him Nothingness. He says to Faust, in speaking to him of that world:
But Faust, with his spiritual intuition, at once divines that in that world he will find the real essence of Man.
In the description which Mephistopheles gives of the world which he dares not enter, one understands exactly what Goethe means to express.
Only by means of the archetype which Faust fetches from the devachanic world of the Mothers can Homunculus, the astral being who has assumed physical form, become a spiritually-endowed entity, Helena in fact, who actually appears in the third act. Goethe has taken care that those who seek to penetrate the depths shall be able to grasp his meaning for, in his conversations with Eckermann, he has lifted the veil as far as it seemed to him practical to do so. On December 16, 1829, he said concerning Homunculus:
And, on the same day, he points out further how Homunculus is still wanting in Mind: “Reasoning is not his concern, he wants to act.” The whole of the further development of the dramatic action in Faust, according to this reading, follows easily on the foregoing. Faust has become acquainted with the secrets of the three worlds. Henceforth, he looks at the world from the point of view of the mystic. One could point out scene after scene which bears this out, but it will be sufficient to draw attention here to a few passages. When, towards the end, Care approaches Faust, he becomes outwardly blind but, in the course of his development, he has acquired the faculty of inward sight.
Goethe once, in answer to the question, “What was Faust's end?” replied definitely, “He becomes a mystic in the end,” and the significant words of the Chorus Mysticus, with which the poem closes, can only be interpreted in this sense. In the West-East Divan he also expresses himself very clearly on the subject of the spiritual development of man. It is to him the union of the human soul with the higher self. The illusion that the real man exists in his outward body must die out; then higher man comes into existence. That is why he begins his poem Blessed Longing with the words: “Tell it to none but to the wise, for the multitude hasten to deride. I will praise the living who longs for death by fire.” And, in conclusion, he adds: “And as long as thou hast not mastered this; dying and coming into existence; thou art but a sad and gloomy guest on the dark earth.” Quite in harmony with this is the Chorus Mysticus, for its inner meaning is but this: The transient forms of the outer world have their foundation in the imperishable spiritual ones to which we attain by regarding the transient only as a symbol of the hidden spiritual:
That to which reason, appointed as it is to deal with the world of the senses and its forms, cannot attain, is revealed as an actual vision to the spiritual sight; further, that which this reason cannot describe is a fact in the regions of the spiritual.
In harmony with all mystical symbolism, Goethe represents the higher nature of man as feminine, entering into union with the Divine Spirit. For in the last lines:
Goethe only means to characterize the union of the purified soul drawing near to the Divine. All interpretations which are not made in a mystic sense fail here. Goethe considered that the time had not yet come when it was possible to speak of certain secrets of our being in any other manner than he has done in some of his poems. And, above all, he felt it to be his own mission to furnish such a form of expression. At the beginning of his friendship with Schiller, he raised the question, “How are we to represent to ourselves the relationship between the physical and the spiritual natures of man?” Schiller had tried to answer this question in a philosophical style in his letters Concerning the Aesthetic Education of Man. To him, it was a question of the ennobling and purifying of man; to him, a man under the sway of nature's impulses of sensual love and desires appeared impure; but then he considered just as far removed from purity the man who looked upon the sensual impulses and desires as enemies, and was obliged to place himself under the rule of moral or abstract intellectual compulsion. Man only attained inner freedom when he had so absorbed moral law into his inner being that he desired only to obey it. Such a man has so ennobled his lower nature that it becomes by itself an expression of the higher spiritual, and he has so drawn down into the earthly human nature the spiritual that the latter possesses a direct sentient existence. The explanations which Schiller gives in these Letters form excellent rules of education, for their object is to further the evolution of man so that he may, by absorbing the higher ideal man, come to contemplate the world from a free and exalted point of view. In his way Schiller refers to the higher self of man thus:
All that Schiller says in this connection is of the most far-reaching significance. For he who really carries out his injunctions accomplishes within himself an education which brings him directly to that inward condition which paves the way for the inner contemplation of the spiritual. Goethe was satisfied, in the deepest sense of the word, with these ideas. He writes to Schiller:
Goethe now endeavored on his part to set forth the same idea from the depths of his conception of the world—but veiled in imagery—in the problem-tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. It is placed in the editions of Goethe at the end of the Conversations of German Emigrants. The Faust story has often been called Goethe's Gospel; this tale may, however, be called his Apocalypse, for in it he sets forth—as a fairy-tale—the path of man's inner development. Here again, we can only point out a few short passages, it would need a large book to show how Goethe's spiritual insight is concealed in this tale. The three worlds are here represented as two regions separated from one another by a river. The river itself stands for the astral plane. On this side of it is the physical world, on the other side the spiritual (Devachan), where dwells the beautiful lily, the symbol of man's higher nature. In her kingdom, man must strive if he would unite his lower with his higher nature. In the abyss—that is, in the physical world—dwells the serpent which symbolizes the self of man. Here too is a temple of initiation, where reign four kings, one golden, one silver, one bronze, and a fourth of an irregular mixture of the three metals. Goethe, who was a freemason, has clothed in freemasonic terminology what he had to impart of his mystic experiences. The three kings represent the three higher forces of man: Wisdom (Gold), Beauty (Silver), and Strength (Bronze). As long as man lives in his lower nature, these three forces are in him disordered and chaotic. This period in the evolution of man is represented by the mixed king. But when man has so purified himself that the three forces work together in perfect harmony, and he can freely use them, then the way into the realm of the spiritual lies open before him. The still unpurified man is represented by a youth who, without having attained inner purity, would unite himself with the beautiful lily. Through this union he becomes paralyzed. Goethe here wished to point out the danger to which a man exposes himself who would force an entrance into the super-sensible region before he has severed himself from his lower self. Only when love has permeated the whole man, only when the lower nature has been sacrificed, can the initiation into the higher truths and powers begin. This sacrifice is expressed by the serpent yielding of its own accord, and forming a bridge of its body across the river—that is to say, the astral plane—between the two kingdoms, of the senses and of the spirit. At first man must accept the higher truths in the form in which they have been given to him in the imagery of the various religions. This form is personified as the man with the lamp. This lamp has the peculiarity of only giving light where there is already light, meaning that the religious truths presuppose a receptive, believing disposition. Their light shines where the light of faith is present. This lamp, however, has yet another quality, “of turning all stones into gold, all wood into silver, dead animals into precious stones, and of destroying all metals,” meaning the power of faith which changes the inner nature of the individual. There are about twenty characters in this allegory, all symbolical of certain forces in man's nature and, during the course of the action, the purifying of man is described, as he rises to the heights where, in his union with his higher self, he can be initiated into the secrets of existence. This state is symbolized by the Temple, formerly hidden in the abyss, being brought to the surface, and rising above the river—the astral plane. Every passage, every sentence in the allegory is significant. The more deeply one studies the tale, the more comprehensible and clear the whole becomes, and he who set forth the esoteric quintessence of this tale at the same time has given us the substance of the Anthroposophical outlook on life. Goethe has not left the source uncertain from whose depths he has drawn his inspiration. In another tale, The New Paris, he gives in a veiled manner the history of his own inner enlightenment. Many will remain incredulous if we say that, in this dream, Goethe represents himself just at the boundary between the third and fourth sub-race of our fifth root-race. For him, the myth of Paris and Helen is a symbolic representation of this boundary. And as he—in a dream—conjures up before his eyes in a new form the myth of Paris, he feels he is casting a searching glance into the development of humanity. What such an insight into the past means to the inner eye, he tells us in the Prophecies of Bakis, which are also full of occult references:
Much, too, might be quoted to show the underlying elements of spiritual science in the fairy tale, The New Melusine, a Pandora-fragment, and many other writings. In his novel, Wilhelm Meister's Traveling Years, Goethe has given us quite a masterly picture of a Clairvoyante in Makarie. Makarie's power of intuition rises to the level of a complete penetration of the inner mysteries of the planetary system:
These words of Goethe's prove clearly how intimate he is with these matters, and whoever reads through the whole passage will recognize that Goethe so expresses himself, albeit with reserve, that he who looks beneath the surface may feel quite certain of the spiritual-scientific foundation in his being. Goethe always looked upon his mission as a poet in relation to his striving toward the hidden laws of Life. He was often forced to notice how friends failed to understand this side of his nature. He describes thus, in the Campaign in France in 1792, how his contemplation of Nature was always misunderstood:
Goethe could only understand artistic work when based on a profound penetration of the truth. As an artist, he wished to give utterance to that which in Nature is suggested without being fully expressed. Nature appeared to him as a product of the same essence which also works through human art, only that in the case of Nature the power has remained on a lower level. For Goethe, Art is a continuation of Nature revealing that which in Nature alone is hidden:
To understand the world is to Goethe to Hue in the spirit of worldly things. For this reason, he speaks of a perceptive power of judgment (intellectus archetypus), through which Man draws ever nearer to the secrets of our being:
Thus did Goethe represent to himself Man as the organ of the world, through which its occult powers should be revealed. The following was one of his aphorisms:
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| 211. Knowledge and Initiation: Cognition of the Christ Through Anthroposophy: Knowledge and Initiation
14 Apr 1922, London Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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| 211. Knowledge and Initiation: Cognition of the Christ Through Anthroposophy: Knowledge and Initiation
14 Apr 1922, London Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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Anthroposophy, as I am attempting to expound it, represents a science of initiation originating in the necessity of the day. A science of initiation has existed always. Anthroposophy springs from the same foundation as ancient science, but in the course of human evolution ages succeed each other and vary in their demands. And thus the science of initiation arising out of the modern spirit is in some respects peculiar to this age, just as there was an initiation science of the Middle Ages, of Ancient Greece and of yet older periods of human evolution. In the course of history the whole constitution and mood and tendency of the human soul undergoes changes. The so-called science of initiation has to investigate and understand what is the eternal in the human being and in the universe. We have to consider the needs and the subconscious longings of today, and a science of initiation, an ancient science that meets those needs and longings, is what Anthroposophy strives for. It is for that very reason that it meets with such opposition, for the present time, standing as it does in the midst of the thoughts of natural science, is filled with certain judgments and prejudices which very often prevent us from consciously recognizing the sub-conscious longings within. And yet, if we regard life without bias, we have to understand that the conceptions of external natural science do not reach to what is eternal in the human being and in the universe, when, on the other hand, we of to-day turn aside from the external thoughts of natural science and attempt to find the eternal by inner mystic contemplation, we may indeed reach to a certain amount of faith or belief, but we do not attain that clear knowledge which to-day is necessary. Between these two extremes Anthroposophy has to take its stand. So it is that Anthroposophy is so generally misunderstood, because it endeavours in accordance with modern needs to attain to a science of initiation which is exact and of the nature of knowledge, and not of the nature of vague kinds of mysticism. But to understand what are the unconscious longings and needs of our time is to understand the need for such a thing as Anthroposophy. I am not dwelling any longer on this introductory aspect because I assume that those who are here this evening have already experienced two things: that our natural scientific thoughts—borrowed from natural science and modeled upon it—do not reach far enough to penetrate and place before us the eternal in man and in the world, and that mysticism only reaches in a vague and unclear way and therefore, in that sense, is insufficient to meet present needs. One could prove these things by a multitude of examples if one were to dwell upon them further. Anthroposophy seeks for what may be called exact clairvoyance, again to borrow a term from scientific usage; that is to say it seeks to develop a knowledge and perception of the spiritual worlds which is no less exact, no less conscientious in the sense of exact science, than is the best tendency and striving of our natural scientific age. I shall now indicate briefly how this path is begun. We must consider in the first place what we know in the ordinary life of the soul by means of our ordinary self-knowledge as the three forces or faculties that work in the soul, viz., thinking, feeling, and willing. We know in our thoughts that we are, as it were, awake; that we are essentially wakeful human beings. It is by virtue of our thinking life, which ceases between going to sleep at night and regaining consciousness in the morning, that we are awake, and it is in our thoughts that our soul-life is filled with a kind of clarity, an inner light. Next, as to the feeling life. The feelings are perhaps even more important for the human being (or he attaches more importance to them) than are his thoughts, but we know from our ordinary observation that the feelings of our soul-life are far less clear and filled with light than our thoughts. In a sense our thoughts, our conceptual life, play into our feelings and bring them into a certain clarity, but our feelings seem to surge up from the unknown depths of our life. They do not appear with the full clearness of our life of thought. Then we come to the third category of our soul-life, the impulses of will. Our impulses of will come from still deeper down and are still less clear and have less light. But from what we know already in the observation of our ordinary life about thinking, feeling and willing, we realize at once how little we know of what is happening within us; for example, when an impulse of will arises making us take some action! We realize how little we know of what is happening in that life of will itself, and yet we find that thinking, feeling and willing still form a kind of unity in our soul-life. At the one pole is our conceptual life, our thinking life, we find in the way in which we join the concepts together like the links of a chain that there is an element of will at work in the process. Then passing to the other pole, the life of will—for the feeling life stands midway between the two—we find that for willing there is a certain element of conception; the concepts play into our willing life. So we see that in our soul-life there are the two poles, thinking on the one hand and willing on the other, with feeling as it were between the two, and that in these three something works in them all. Now with the development of a higher science, the science of initiation, according to modern requirements and to Anthroposophy, it is necessary to train, develop and evolve by our own conscious activity both the conceptual thinking-life and the will-life, and it is thus that we can trace what has been called an exact clairvoyance, a modern science of initiation. In the one case we have to carry out exercises in thought, and in the other of will. So it is that the way is sought to pass through those portals which lead into the super-sensible worlds; indeed without entering those worlds in consciousness it is impossible to gain that clear knowledge we need of the eternal in the soul and in the universe. It is while taking the exercises in thought that special attention has to be paid to what is not generally observed in ordinary life, viz., that slight additional element of will which is playing into the thinking life. This subject is dealt with in much greater detail in my book that is translated into English under the title Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and How to Attain It. We have above all to train that element of will which is at work in our thinking life, and in a sense have to exercise it. We have to select that very thing which passes unnoticed in the ordinary everyday thought-life, and pay less attention to what is most important to us in that life. We have to form a clear concept in our minds—its content is not of much importance; it may be either a simple or a complex concept—and then hold it as the full content of the soul to the exclusion of all else. To do this calls forth the full energy of the soul and an exercise of strong will power. The selected concept must be clearly abstracted for a certain time from everything else in the world, so that the forces of the soul are concentrated upon it alone. In the case of one individual these exercises may have to be carried on for months, in the case of another years, but sooner or later, provided they are undertaken systematically and with persistent energy, the soul-life will develop and experience an inner strengthening. What happens may be compared with the effect produced by exercising a certain muscle, by its doing the work for which it is best fitted, until it is developed to its full power. After a time has elapsed (varying, as we have seen, according to the individual) there will come a certain moment when the soul will have an experience of such strength and power that it will be shaken to its very foundations. This experience may be described somewhat as follows: with the strengthening of the soul-life the door is opened to an entirely new way of thinking and to entirely new thoughts. It may be compared with the way in which sense impressions and thoughts are experienced in the ordinary soul-life. How do we experience sense impressions? In all sense impressions such as those of colour and sound, heat and cold, there is a certain vitality and life; they are experienced in a very living way and in the full sap of life. But in the way in which the thoughts are experienced there is something abstract, something vague and sketchy in outline; it is all grey and pale as compared with the intensity and living nature of the sense experiences. Now, when this new way of thinking has been attained, we find that the whole thought-life has become as intense and as full of life as is the ordinary soul-life in sense experiences and perceptions. It is called imaginative thinking; imaginative not in the sense of arbitrary fantasies in the mind but a pictorial, formative thought filled with inner life and possessing a quality of strength and intensity comparable with the sense impressions of the ordinary life. And with this life of imaginative thought, which is saturated with a kind of plastic vitality, there comes the realization that within us is an entirely new human being of which we never knew consciously before. The ordinary physical human being may be described as an ‘organism in space’; we see the different organs spread out in space, so to speak, and know that they are all connected together, that the heart is connected with the whole and the right hand with the left and so forth. The new human being that we come to know within us in the life of imaginative thought, however, is better described as ‘an organism in time’. Suddenly there stands before us in a single imaginative tableau or picture a memory of our whole life; in the first place to a point in early childhood; not, however, in the way in which isolated memories of the past appear more or less dully in the ordinary consciousness, but as the whole individual life laid out before us in a single moment. In this sense we, as human beings, are time-organisms. We have come to experience what in the modern science of initiation are called the ‘formative forces of the body’; not the full human being, using the term body in its extended sense, but its formative forces which in the older science of initiation are called the ether or etheric body. So we come to experience something that works within and builds up the physical organism of man; to know that when we entered this life in the physical body of a child we brought with us certain super-sensible forces direct from the super-sensible world; to know that these forces were modeling and moulding our physical organs, our minds, the circulation of our blood, even in our earliest childhood, and were gradually taking possession of the whole of our organism stage by stage. In the space-organism of the physical body the formative forces of the etheric body were building all the time. With this experience comes also an understanding of how we enter this world with certain particular faculties and qualities of character, and of how one individual will develop in quite a different direction from another. This knowledge of what works in our physical organism as a super-sensible thing brings us to the stage of the exact higher knowledge which the present age needs as its science of initiation. Thus to know the formative forces or etheric body from imaginative knowledge is the first and necessary stage we must pass through before we can learn to know what is essentially the eternal which was working in the human being in the spiritual worlds before birth. As we have to learn to carry the power of will into our thoughts, and to strengthen that power in the holding of thoughts with the full forces of the soul, so we then have to carry out exercises in the opposite direction. We have to attain the power to extract the soul from the concept that we have learned to hold to the exclusion of everything else, so that they fill our consciousness, and then to extract ourselves from them so that our consciousness is empty of content and yet we maintain our wakefulness. Now let us consider our ordinary life. Here our consciousness is always filled with thoughts, sense perceptions and memories, and the moment they cease to be there we tend to drop into sleep. Therefore it needs a still greater activity, a greater power, to hold the soul in full wakefulness when it is rendered empty of what has been held within it by imagination and concentration. This power is attained in the next stage if, by means of the exercises referred to earlier, we have once attained the power to hold a concept in our consciousness to the exclusion of all else. It consists in being able to detach the soul from the particular concept leaving the consciousness empty of content and yet wakeful, and once this is acquired there enters into the emptied but wakeful consciousness something which is entirely new to us, something which is not of the nature of a reflection, a memory or a conception, but a super-sensible reality. It floods into the soul, this spiritual reality of being which is in all the individual things of the world, and we see it blossoming forth from everything in nature. Into the consciousness that we have had the strength to train through meditation and concentration, and then to empty of content while keeping it fully wakeful, there streams the reality of spiritual being so that we perceive the super-sensible reality of being in the world. This is the super-sensible reality of which Anthroposophy and the science of initiation speak, not as of a vague ‘beyond’ but of something that is present, that is certainly outside the world of the senses and not perceived therein. So we may learn to penetrate into an entirely new thinking, to see that whereas our ordinary thought is making use of the time and the instruments of the physical brain and the nervous system, this new thinking is independent of the physical organism and outside it. It is thinking purely through the forces of the soul. This new thinking is so entirely different in its conditions from our ordinary life of thought that we may say we recognize for example that in this new spiritual perception, this spiritually perceptive thought, you have something in which there is no such thing as ordinarily you have in memory. In our ordinary life of thought, if it is healthy and sound at all, there is memory. If we learn a certain thought or concept we can call it to memory again. But in this super-sensible thinking, which does not make use of the physical organism, we cannot call back to mind; we have no memory of the experiences in this new thought we have had, and if we wish to return to it we must only remember the activity of soul, the exercises and the precise path which we took in inner activity and concentration of will in order to reach that particular knowledge or super-sensible concept. We can remember the path our soul took and we can repeat that path. Then that perception, that super-sensible knowledge, is freshly again before us. In the physical world if we have seen a rose, for example, and want to have it raised before us again in all its full colour and freshness, it is no use trying to remember it. No memory will restore what we received by our sense perception; we must come before the rose again. So in the higher super-sensible thinking to have our thoughts again before us in all their freshness we must return by the path that led us to them. Let me put this to you in a personal way. When I speak on the higher knowledge it is not from reading books on the subject or from hearing about it, but as one who has attained to and experienced it. If I give a lecture I cannot do so like one who speaks on external science, who simply has his knowledge systematized in his memory and then gives it out; I must pass through the full experiences, through all those qualities of feeling and of thought, of inner life and activity, through which I had to pass before I had gained that knowledge for the first time. I must speak from the full freshness of the past to give it full freshness in the present. So different are the conditions of this higher knowledge that is attained by the science of initiation from the conditions of the ordinary knowledge which is connected with the physical instruments of the physical brain and nervous system. There is yet another faculty of soul in which the student of the higher knowledge must train himself. It is that faculty which we know in ordinary life as presence of mind, the power to meet a circumstance that comes upon us suddenly and, without spending a long time in deliberation, to perceive the right course immediately. This faculty must be developed and enhanced, so that he who has these experiences before him in the super-sensible world, shall be able to grasp the reality of the spiritual world as it flits past. He must have the presence of mind to recognize it at once. Now by the exercising and training of the soul to attain the power of detaching it from the content of consciousness, and of holding it empty and yet fully awake, we are led to perceive something still higher than was explained in the first part of this lecture. We are led to what is essentially the soul and spiritual being of man that had lived in the spiritual worlds before it united with the physical substance of heredity, with the physical bodily substance, for the course of this earthly life. We come to know our own eternal being, our life of soul and spirit in the spiritual worlds before birth. This second stage of knowledge is known as inspired or inspirational knowledge, as a technical term in this modern science of initiation. Just as the outer air enters our lungs through inhalation so does the spiritual world enter into our emptied consciousness. Thus we inhale, so to speak, the spiritual world as we knew it before we descended into physical earth existence. So we learned to know one facet of our being, the other side is the spiritual immortality. This will be dealt with in the third part of this lecture. We come to know in this second stage, but to know clearly, what might be defined as the ‘birthlessness’ or ‘unbornness’ (just as we speak of deathlessness or immortality) of that other side of the eternal in man, viz., that which existed in the spiritual worlds, his life in those worlds before birth. Our present age has very few conceptions, even though it may have dim conceptions through faith, about immortality, but in this second stage we learn to know our birthlessness, our eternal on the other side, our life in the spiritual reality before we entered this particular earthly life. This higher ‘inspired knowledge’ leads us also in another direction which however can only be touched upon here, since it would take many lectures to describe it in detail. Just as we learn to know the super-sensible, the eternal reality of our own being, and to enter through inspired knowledge into our own soul and spirit before we entered this physical life, so do we learn to recognize the spirit in the world around us. This must be described in a few short sketches. If we look out upon the universe the sun appears to us as a physical ball, but when we enter into ‘inspirational knowledge’ we see it not only as the concentrated physical object that is seen by the senses. We see something that spreads through the whole universe and is accessible to us, namely, the spiritual quality and being of the sun, the sun-like being itself. What we see everywhere in mineral, in plant and animal, what is in man too as sun-force that we see physically concentrated when we look up to the sun. Though it may sound strange from the point of view of modern science, what we thus attain through inspirational knowledge is the power to perceive this sun-like being in everything, in the mineral, the plant, the animal and the human being. We learn to perceive the sun-force working in every single organ, in the heart, the liver and so forth, of the physical organism, and in everything within the whole universe that is accessible to us. This is the actual reality that is attained through the science of initiation. And out of inspiration-knowledge we see that just as the sun does not only have a sharp outline, the same applies to the moon. The external physical moon is only the physical concentration, while the moon-substance streams through the whole universe. It is in mineral, plant and animal and every organ of man, in them the moon- and sun-substances live on. This experience comes in the second stage of inspirational knowledge, and it leads to something which is eminently practical and which already has been developed as a science, viz., the anthroposophical science of medicine. By its means we learn to see how in every human organ there is a kind of balance between the sun-force and the moon-force, the sun-substance and the moon-substance. In the former we recognize that there is something that expresses itself in the life element, in the blossom and growth of youthful forces, and in the moon-force something that expresses itself in degeneration and aging, in the thinning down of those blossoming, living forces which we can describe as a spiritual reality, as the sun-force. We recognize that there is a kind of balance and that both forces, both qualities of being which are at work permeating every single organ, are necessary; we see how that when we are sick it is because there is a preponderance, an imbalance of the one force over the other. Hence it becomes possible to exercise a healing influence on this or that organ of a sick human being by bringing to bear upon it the particular forces that are at work in some plant or mineral from the external world; the preponderance of one force at work in the sick man is counteracted by a particular plant or mineral in which the opposite spiritual force is at work. So we attain to a definite and rational science of medicine, and one that has not merely collected a number of empirical results but is built up scientifically upon rational conceptions. I have shown how we can come to a true self-knowledge, how this can also help us in practical life. I have shown this for one field of activity, it is also possible to do the same for others. So we can say: initiation science provides on the one hand the basis for the deepest longings of the human soul; on the other, gives us what we need to work practically in the world, but deeper than through external science. This second aspect of human knowledge leads to the Spirit of the Cosmos. Higher still is that which leads us to conscious knowledge of man's passing through the gate of death. It is only when this inspirational knowledge is attained that we come to perceive and recognize in full consciousness, the inner soul nature of our own human being. We then recognize our reality, the reality of our existence purely in soul, that is to say, independently of the body, for we recognize how we lived without a physical body in the spiritual worlds before birth. Having thus dealt with the inspirational knowledge that brings us experience of our spiritual life before birth, I now come to the third stage of higher knowledge, that which leads us to conscious knowledge of the passing through the gate of death to immortality. This knowledge of the soul-spiritual of man remains one-sided if there is progress only up to inspired knowledge, before birth. To obtain knowledge of life after death, the exercises to develop super-sensible knowledge must be raised to a still higher degree. This time, just as to start with, the element of will was trained and carried into the life of thought which thus became strengthened, so now it is a matter of carrying the thoughts into the life of will. For example, suppose that in the evening we set ourselves to think over the events and experiences of the day that is past, not however by beginning with the morning and following out the events in the order in which they took place, but beginning with those that were the most recent and tracing them backwards. What is the effect of this exercise of following the events of the day in the opposite way from their natural sequence? In our ordinary life and experience our thoughts all the while are being moulded and conditioned and determined by the course of our experiences in ‘time’; as they occur so do our thoughts take their impression. Whereas in those exercises whereby we pass from one event or experience to another in the reverse order we are training a strong element of will, not in the way that is determined by the external events or experiences but in the opposite way. By this means we develop strong forces of will and carry the thinking life into the willing life. It may be done by remembering a tune or melody backwards, or by following the action of a drama from the fifth Act back to the first. It may at first only be possible to pick out isolated episodes during the day, but gradually the power is attained of having the whole of the day's experiences before us in a kind of picture, passing backwards from the evening to the morning. Thus do we drive the power of thought right down into our will-life. Further, the will-life should be trained so strongly that not only do we go about our life with those qualities and faculties and characteristics which we already had in childhood, or gained through education; we also carry on a rigorous self-education as mature men and women, especially if we set ourselves deliberately to train one or other specific quality or characteristic wherein we are lacking, and to develop along those lines, no matter if the exercises take a number of years. Thus by self-education we train ourselves to will, until we come to pass into the super-sensible world from yet another side. This may be explained as follows. Think of our soul life; what is our volitional life like? For instance, we have a certain conception, and as a result we wish, let us say, to raise our arm; a conception and then an act of will. But we have no knowledge of the way in which we raise our arm; that will-process by means of which we pass from conception to action is entirely hidden from us. We are asleep, so to speak, in our will life, and we are awake in our conceptual and inner thought-life. By way of comparison, how is it that the eye enables us to see the external world? It becomes transparent, and by thus practising a sort of self abnegation enables us to see right through it to the world. So much for the physical sense, but in a sense of soul the whole of our organism must be made transparent so that we learn to look on our physical organism in a physical sense and in a sense more transparent. Then do we come to experience the moment of death. When we have attained the power, through these exercises of the soul, of making our physical body transparent, we have before us a picture of the moment of death and we pass in conscious experience out through the gate of death and experience our immortality. This is the stage of Intuitive knowledge, the true intuitive knowledge. We know that once we have reached this stage after passing through Imagination and Inspiration, that we then belong to the universe as an eternal being, that we behold the spirit in the universe with the eternal spirit in us. That is the plateau initiation science reaches when it adapts to modern consciousness. In old times it rose in us in an atavistic, dreamlike way, but today it has to be in full consciousness, from the transitory to the eternal. The conclusion should not be drawn that this science of initiation is only of importance to those who immediately set out to acquire these higher faculties of knowledge which have been described as imagination, inspiration and intuition. No. It is necessary for every human being, but just as it is not given to every man to become a painter so it is with this science. Everyone with a healthy and unbiased artistic sense can understand and appreciate a painting, and in the same way those who through the science of initiation have attained imaginational, inspirational and intuitional knowledge of the spiritual world, can describe that knowledge to their fellow men. And when once shown it can be understood by those who will exercise the simple unbiased faculties of thought and judgment normal to our present stage of development; such people can then take their stand upright as human beings equal to the tasks of life in the present age. We must not meet this science of initiation with all sorts of prejudices and all sorts of confusions arising out of the prejudices and habits of thought and judgment that are external. For example, we must not confuse it with any kind of vision and hallucination, for it is outside and beyond the visionary, hallucinatory, or the mystical experiences. Imagination, inspiration and intuition are the very opposite of such. What is the characteristic of hallucinatory and visionary experience? It is that the person is completely given up to his visions and hallucinations; dependent upon them and therefore unable to maintain his full independence. But when undergoing this higher training of the soul that has been described, when we are developing this higher knowledge, imagination, inspiration and intuition in the soul, all the time there is standing beside us, fully present and fully there, the ordinary human being with his feet on the ground, his firm and sound judgment unhampered, entirely capable of exercising criticism, and with the full presence of mind of the ordinary healthy human being at the present stage. We are not completely given up and lost in these spiritual experiences but maintain full control; standing beside us is a normal and healthy human being. Anthroposophy is actually a continuation of that modern striving for knowledge which has led to the results of natural science with its achievements of external scientific knowledge. This the anthroposophist would by no means decry, but would maintain that the results of external science need to be supplemented and completed, in the present experience and stage of the world, by a science extending into the higher spiritual worlds. In that sense it is a continuation of the true striving for knowledge of our age, and despite the triumphs of natural science it may well be said by those with a heart and an understanding of the experiences of the modern world, that the need of men for this higher knowledge is being proclaimed on every side. One may speak, for instance, of the need for higher knowledge in the religious and moral and ethical demands of the human soul. The subject that will be dealt with in the following lecture is the application of this science of initiation to an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. In conclusion, just as we see the external features and physiognomy of a man confronting us but do not know him well until we become his friend, entering into his life with heart and soul until we know him from within, so it is with the natural science that we have attained so far. For it shows the external features or physiognomy of the world, and the need of the world and of humanity to-day is to gain a knowledge that not only shows those things but enters into the spiritual and soul-life of the universe. It is that which this higher knowledge of initiation reaches; something that perceives the spiritual and soul-being in all the universe and in the human being himself. In that sense and to develop to its real completion, the fundamental striving for knowledge, this science of initiation springing from the needs and from the spirit of the age in which we live and whose tasks we have to accomplish. |
| 211. Knowledge and Initiation: Cognition of the Christ Through Anthroposophy: Cognition of the Christ Through Anthroposophy
15 Apr 1922, London Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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| 211. Knowledge and Initiation: Cognition of the Christ Through Anthroposophy: Cognition of the Christ Through Anthroposophy
15 Apr 1922, London Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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Clairvoyance, which is the basis of the modern science of initiation, has always existed. In the past ages it was something that rose up within the human being like an elemental force, and on the path of initiation those who had gone through fewer stages were essentially dependent for their progress upon the authority of those who had gone through more stages than they. But to meet the needs of the human soul of today we cannot build on authority; to do so would be to contradict the stage it has now reached. In our age the methods are entirely built, as in external science, upon the continuous and full control of the individuality and personality; in the soul life there must be control in every stage and in every step taken by the new candidate for initiation. Hence in speaking of exact clairvoyance in connection with the modern science of initiation we use the word ‘exact’ as it is used in the term “exact” science. Yesterday I spoke of the insight we gain into the cosmos and into the working of all things through the modern science of initiation. That insight is by no means something which, when we study it, lives in the soul merely as a theory or an abstract conception; it is something which becomes a living, spiritual force which penetrates us fully in all our powers and faculties when we allow it to work upon us. Thus the anthroposophical spiritual movement has been made effective in many spheres of life and particularly in that of the artistic life. Through the help and self-sacrifice of its friends and members in many countries the movement has been able to build the Goetheanum, its headquarters at Dornach, near Basle, Switzerland,1 as an independent school of anthroposophical science. And in all its forms this building expresses that same deep spiritual reality which finds utterance through the spoken and the written word for the ideas and thoughts of the science. Had any other spiritual movement in our time required to build a headquarters it would have commissioned an architect to design it on Antique, Renaissance or Gothic lines, or in one of the prevailing styles. This the Anthroposophical Movement, by reason of its inner nature, could not do. The architectural forms of the Goetheanum are drawn from the same source out of which the ideas of the super-sensible spring, as they are proclaimed through the world. Everything that is found in Dornach, be it sculpture or painting, is carried by a new style out of which Anthroposophy is born in this modern age. Whoever visits this School for Spiritual Science will find that on the one hand the anthroposophical world view is proclaimed from the rostrum in words and on the other hand the forms of the building and the paintings express in an artistic way what is expressed by the word. That which can work from the stage should only be another form of revelation than that what can be effected through the word. Anthroposophy should come out of the deepest foundations of humanity, of which theoretical Anthroposophy is only one branch, education and the arts are the others. In this way anthroposophical life becomes a factor in the most varied fields of human existence. The Waldorf School, which has been founded in Stuttgart, is not in any sense a school where children are taught a particular anthroposophical conception of the world. It is one where the teachers themselves, not so much in what they teach as in how they do so and in the whole way in which they exercise the art of education—are permeated in their faculties with that which anthroposophy can give them. Reference could be made to other directions in which the modern science of initiation is proving itself of use in every branch of human life and activity. Moreover it operates upon and vitalizes the religious needs of civilized humanity, and as these needs are deeply connected with an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha it is with that subject that I propose to deal now. Let me begin by connecting what I have to say with what was said yesterday about the path of spiritual development for modern times leading to imagination, inspiration and intuition. I showed how by imagination and concentration, by means of certain exercises, the student can develop his thought-power until it becomes something which may be called imaginative in the real sense of the word, and in such a way that thought becomes not what it ordinarily is—abstract, cold, and in outline sketchy if compared with the intense vitality of sense impressions—but imaginative, pictorial, vivid and full of life, and in these characteristics no way inferior to impressions of the senses. The man who has attained to imaginative thinking, has something as full of life as when in normal daily existence he yields to the impressions of the world of colour or of sound. But between the students of the new science of Initiation who attain to this imaginative thought, and those who abandon themselves to uncontrolled vision and hallucination, there is an important difference. The man who is subject to visions and hallucinations is not aware that the pictures which arise before him are subjective; on the other hand, he who has imaginative thought is fully aware that what he has before him is not an external reality but is something subjective having its origin in his own inner life. He knows the subjective nature of that imaginative picture-world. He knows too, that when through ‘imaginative thought’ he comes to perceive what was called yesterday his ‘time organism’—the formative force body that works within the physical body as its sculpturer and architect—he is perceiving the first spiritual super-sensible thing that he can experience, and something that essentially belongs to his own inner being. Then there comes the second stage on that path of development when he becomes so strong that he is not only able to concentrate the full forces of his soul at will upon the concepts, and then upon the imaginative pictures he has before him in imaginative thought, but can divert that picture world away from his consciousness while maintaining it in a fully wakeful condition. He is now ready for the real imaginations to pour into him from the external world spiritually, speaking through the outside spiritual universe, i.e., the objective imaginations as against the subjective picture-world that he had before. Here is attained the stage I have described as inspirational knowledge. He perceives his own spiritual being as it exists independently of his physical bodily organism, and as it existed in the worlds of soul and spirit before he entered into this physical life through conception and birth. He has before him a picture of his prenatal existence in the spiritual world and of the spiritual realities of the whole universe, and comes in contact through conscious knowledge with the spiritual reality of man and of the universe. Thus, through this imaginative, inspirational knowledge, he discovers what he was before he descended into this physical incarnation in a physical body for this life. He discovers also that when he came down from the spiritual worlds he carried with him into this physical life the power of thought which he here possesses in his ordinary consciousness. What is this power of thought? It is that which he already had in his life in the spiritual worlds before birth, but ordinary consciousness only shows it in a pale and abstract outline. He then comes to recognize something that may be thus described: he gazes upon the picture at the gate of death, and the moment of death, and sees that the physical body is no longer held together and built up in its whole forces by the force of an indwelling human soul but is given over to the forces of the earth as they work in the external mineral world; he sees how, through decay or the process of burning, the human physical body is given up to those mineral forces and assimilated with the earth. He sees by comparison how, in effect, what is carried into the earthly life through birth is something (speaking now in the sense of the soul) that dies into the physical body just as the latter dies into the earth at death. What he had in his power of thought in the ordinary consciousness was something that was vital and full of spiritual life in the spiritual worlds before conception and birth, but was then killed in the physical body so that it appeared in ordinary consciousness as the power of deadened thought. Because of this fact knowledge of today is so unsatisfactory for man, as he comprehends, in a certain sense, only lifeless nature. It is an illusion when he thinks that through scientific experiments he can reach anything else. Certainly there will be progress beyond representing only lifeless nature; they will be able to create organic substances. But it will not be understood by the deadened thinking, even when they have been created in the laboratories. With this kind of thinking, which is the corpse of the soul which is spiritually dead, only death can be understood. In what then does the process consist that was described as the development of the soul to imaginative, inspirational and intuitional knowledge? It is in effect this, that we call to life within ourselves what was killed in our power of thought. When we develop the living, imaginative, plastic thought, and inspirational and intuitional cognition, we call to life our power of thought, which was dead. We have now reached the point where we should be able to understand human evolution and history. Modern scientific history usually skims over the surface of external events, without regarding the metamorphoses that go on within the soul of man from age to age. We may ask why is it that in this age humanity has had to pass through a period when thought was abstract and of a deadened quality. The answer is that the full, living, spiritual thought, by its very vitality and fullness of life, exercises a kind of compulsion on the human soul. It is by passing through this dead and abstract thought that humanity has been able to achieve freedom, and for the evolution and development of freedom this stage was a necessary one. After man has attained to Imagination and Inspiration, he has to say to himself: Something has happened to me, which causes me anxiety. I mention this as an unusual fact, for the strange thing happens, that the man of today when he has risen to Imagination and Inspiration, experiences real anxiety. This stems from the fact that today, when he becomes clairvoyant, man has to say to himself: I have become too strongly egotistical through my development. Anxiety arises in the heart and mind (Gemüt), for man has the feeling that his ego works too strongly. In ancient initiation, before the Mystery of Golgotha, the candidate went through the opposite experience: As he attained to initiation he found that in a sense he was becoming less ego-conscious, that he was pouring himself out into the universe and becoming less in possession of himself. His ego-consciousness was rather weakened than strengthened. The turning point between these two characteristics of initiation is the Mystery of Golgotha. The first human being to pass through initiation, and to experience this deeply disquieting feeling when the ego becomes too strong, was St. Paul at Damascus. The passage in the New Testament (Acts 9) is so well known as to need no further reference here. It was on that occasion that he gained insight into the necessity for weakening the power of his ego; he realized that the initiate of the new age stood in need of a force to weaken the intensity of the ego-life, and as a result of his experience he pronounced the words which were to give the keynote to the whole development of humanity through initiation as from the moment of the Mystery of Golgotha. These words, which resounded forth into the future and pointed out the direction to be taken by the succeeding period of evolution, were ‘Not I, but Christ in me.’ When we look upon the place of Golgotha, and receive into ourselves the forces of the Christ Who descended to earth from the spiritual worlds and Who since the Mystery has permeated the earth, we are enabled to diminish the forces of the ego and to pass through initiation in the right way. The abstract thinking of which I spoke in the first part of this lecture, where the power of thought is deadened and becomes like a soul-corpse living in the physical body, has prevailed only in the more recent times of human evolution. It began, gradually, some three or four centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha. In the more ancient people, man brought with him into his physical life out of the spiritual worlds more of the full life of thought which is now dead abstract thought. This may be confirmed by studying, without bias, the evolution of humanity and the records and experiences of man, whether initiate or non-initiate, in ancient times. Much is said today about so-called Animism, the poetic fancy of simple and primitive peoples, in an endeavour to explain the experiences of the past ages as recorded and handed down in tradition. But by facing up to realities we see that it was not in a kind of poetic fancy that ancient man described the woods and forests, lakes and mountains, springs, brooks, clouds and thunder and lightning, and everything physical in the world of Nature in a spiritual way. He saw and described not only the physical things that we see, but the spiritual beings that inhabited every flower and mineral, every spring and wood. That description was not, as in the modern conception of Animism, something created out of poetic fancy, but a direct experience of the living, spiritual power which man brought with him into physical life. It was as though, in a spiritual sense, he sent out feelers which felt and touched and realized, giving him experiences of the spiritual beings which inhabit everything in external nature. It is only since the third or fourth century after Christianity that gradually developed in humanity dead thinking, that dead consciousness which today can only see the mineral world. Ancient man experienced in himself something that was living; he was able to experience and to know the spiritual beings in the world and to recognize them as the same thing that had lived within him before he entered into the physical life. His experience was a very practical one, explaining his pre-natal existence in spiritual worlds, and he felt that something was born with him into this physical life and lived within him; he did not feel that this thought proceeded from the organism of his physical body, for he knew it was a living thing he had brought with him from the spiritual world before his birth. Now we can quite well realize how the course of human evolution would have continued along the line that has been described, and how the thinking power of man would have become more and more dead. We can imagine evolution continuing in a straight downward line, and that is what would have happened if the Cross had not been raised upon Golgotha. Looking at the picture of death we see that had it not been for the Mystery of Golgotha the physical body of man would die, that his soul-life would die with his physical body. We can say out of our consciousness of this abstract, deadened thought, that our soul-life, i.e., our life of thought, partakes of death. And this is what humanity would have had to experience gradually more and more but for the Cross on Golgotha; no longer would there have been the living thought, but the soul-life would have slowly expired in universal death. This is how we can regard the Mystery of Golgotha by means of the modern science of initiation, just as it is possible for those who are rooted in Christianity to regard the Mystery through the simple study of the Gospel records. This fresh aspect of the Mystery is the starting point for a new evolution and an upward one. He who goes through the experiences and training of the modern path of initiation, and who attains to inspirational and intuitive cognition, is able to attain to the point where a spiritual world is revealed, of which the Mystery of Golgotha is shown as the great solace in world existence. He also realizes that he has attained freedom, but as the price of that freedom he finds this deep and troubling experience, as he passes through the way of initiation to ‘imagination’ and ‘inspiration’, that his ego has been strengthened and intensified, and is now too strong. That is one pole of his experience. The other pole is that in spite of the strengthened ego he has gained from evolution he cannot save himself or mankind from the universal death of the soul-life. But when he looks out, from his spiritual experience in inspirational and intuitive cognition, upon the picture of the Cross on Golgotha, he sees that through the passing of that Divine Being, the CHRIST—first through the physical body of a human being, Jesus of Nazareth, and then through the gate of death—mankind can be redeemed from universal death. On the one hand man has strengthened the ego-consciousness, but this cannot save him from universal death; and on the other hand he sees redemption from that death in the picture of the Cross on Golgotha and of the dying and the risen Christ. Through this conscious spiritual knowledge he is able to understand from out of what experience the wonderful writers of the Gospels wrote. He sees that until the third or fourth century after Golgotha something still remained of that living thought in humanity, something of that spiritual world which man brought into his physical life, and that it was this which enabled isolated human beings in the first three or four centuries to understand the Mystery of Golgotha; even as the modern initiate can understand it by means of the new science of initiation when he goes through that path and through the exercises which have been described. From the knowledge contained in the Gnosis—which resembles in some respects modern anthroposophical science—we find that in the first few centuries there was a certain understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, and that unless that understanding had still existed in isolated human beings the Gospels never could have been written. They were written out of the last relics of the old pre-Christian science of initiation. Hence we see why St. Paul out of his experience was able to say, “Were it not for the risen Christ then all our faith and all our life of soul would have been in vain, would have remained dead'. Then we understand that the Divine Being, the God, descended to the earth and went through the gate of Death, and lives in and with the earth since the Mystery of Golgotha, and, as was not the case before, the forces of Christ are working especially in the evolution of humanity upon the earth. We know that He passed through and conquered death, that He rose again through conquering the death of the soul forces and redeemed the soul from death. And so are we able to enter our thinking life again, to enliven what has become dead in the soul-life by looking up from the deeply moving and troubling experience of our too much strengthened ego to the picture of the Mystery of Golgotha. It is thus that anthroposophy can show the path, not away from Christ, but to Him. I shall now give an outline of what anthroposophical cognition tells us of the evolution of mankind in its approach to the Mystery of Golgotha. In primeval times, when man's thinking was still alive and filled with spiritual vitality, he saw the spiritual alongside the physical being when he looked out upon the physical phenomena of the world of Nature. The spiritual thought he experienced in a somewhat dreamlike, instinctive consciousness, and he knew that his spiritual origin was in the spiritual worlds. From out of the great masses of men who thus knew instinctively of the spiritual world there arose individuals who gave themselves up to science, to the path of knowledge, just as in our time individuals become scientists and learned men. In that time when in the forces of all human souls there was still a connection with the spiritual world, there arose men of science and learning, initiates, who also by exercises and by training the soul (though different in character from those described for the modern science of development) attained to a kind of imagination, inspiration and intuition. Intuition is the third stage of spiritual development, Here the initiate perceives not only pictures of the spiritual world, but enters into and communes with the spiritual beings themselves. In the spiritual worlds the initiates held a mighty and majestic communion with beings who descended from the divine spiritual worlds; they raised themselves to this inter-course. The most ancient and primeval teachers of humanity were spiritual beings who taught, not through the external senses and not by walking in physical bodies among men and teaching through the physical ear, but through the spiritual consciousness of the ancients. Now what was it primarily that these spiritual beings, the sublime teachers, taught mankind through these ancients? It was the mysteries of ‘unbornness’ of the human soul. They taught in clear knowledge that which was already known or felt instinctively by the masses of mankind, namely, how the life of man is connected in the spiritual worlds before birth. From these ancients, divine spiritual teachers, humanity learnt to know the destinies of the human soul through its connection with the life before birth. We can see how in ancient times death and resurrection were represented merely in pictorial form in the cults and ceremonies. The cults represented the death and the resurrection of gods, of divine beings, prophetically and in a picture that was not at that time a real and practical experience of the mysteries of death. For man had not then the same tragic experience of death as he has today; he still had within him the living life he had brought from the spiritual worlds into his physical life. Death to him did not mean that tragedy which it was to mean later when the soul-life had been drawn into the physical body and become like a corpse. In those ancient cults where death and resurrection of the Divine Being were represented as in a picture it was more like a pictorial prophecy of what was to come—the Mystery of Golgotha. The men who witnessed these cults and ceremonies were already able to say in dim prophecy that the god passes through death and conquers it, and that because the god conquers death so can the divine in the human soul. Nevertheless the pre-Christian mysteries and understandings and teachings of humanity by the divine spiritual beings was a teaching principally of the mysteries of birth not of death. And that is a deeply significant fact in the evolution of humanity. The first initiates of the Christian era, looking upon the Mystery of Golgotha, recognized that the old initiation and the old teaching of the mysteries did not penetrate into the knowledge of death. They realized however that this knowledge was revealed in the Mystery of Golgotha. Then there was understood and was revealed what can only be described by saying literally that in the Mystery of Golgotha something happened which concerned the destinies of the gods themselves. It may be put in this way: looking down upon the earth, the divine spiritual beings could see that through a destiny that was beyond the power of the gods, the earth and humanity and all that was connected with humanity were being given up to death. But who was it that had no experience of death? The gods, the divine spiritual beings, those from whom the ancient primeval teachers of humanity descended to commune with the initiates when they had raised themselves to a consciousness of the spiritual. And they, the gods, did not partake in that death through which all earthly human beings were destined to pass. Therefore it was decided between the gods, not only as a matter concerning mankind but as one concerning the gods themselves, that a god should pass through the mystery of death on earth in a human body. That is the great mystery that we must understand about the Mystery of Golgotha. It not only concerns man but also the gods. So it is that when we come to view the Mystery through the modern science of initiation our aspect or outlook is super-sensible. Anthroposophy leads to an understanding of this. Not only the initiate of today but every man may receive a stimulating impulse, encouragement and understanding from the modern science of initiation. We, all of us, may attain to an intensified and strengthened power of knowledge, and having done so may recognize that the Mystery of Golgotha which took place within earth-existence, was at the same time a cosmic and an earthly event. Then are we able to say, ‘It is not I, but Christ in me Who makes me live again in the spiritual life of the soul.’ Anthroposophy does not lead to irreligion but to a religious life in the fullest sense of the term; we are deepened and penetrated with new spiritual forces. Through spiritual-scientific cognition of the Mystery of Golgotha man overcomes all doubts which are contained so strongly in today's religious life. External science has given us freedom, but with it has come doubt. It is the task of Anthroposophy to sweep away these doubts that have come in the train of external science and which were a necessary stage in the development of humanity, and because Anthroposophy is a spiritual science it is able to do so. It can instill into the heart and soul of man a religious sense for everything in the world and in mankind, and above all it can give an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha in a form that can be received, not only by those who adhere to the older Christian tradition, but by all men on the earth. Anthroposophy did not come to found sects or new religions. It came to call to life again what is the religion of humanity, the synthesis of all religions, the religion that is already there—Christianity. Not only is it able to call Christianity into fresh life, but for those who have been bereft of Christianity by modern science and the doubts arising from it, it is able to bring about, in the fullest sense, a resurrection of the religious life. Amongst all the other life-giving forces, Anthroposophy is able at this present time to enliven us and to bring about the resurrection of religious experience for all mankind.
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| 214. The Mystery of the Trinity: The Other Side of Human Existence
30 Aug 1922, London Translated by James H. Hindes Rudolf Steiner |
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| 214. The Mystery of the Trinity: The Other Side of Human Existence
30 Aug 1922, London Translated by James H. Hindes Rudolf Steiner |
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Since we can come together so seldom and would like to include as much as possible in these lectures, it could easily happen that too much is included. Nevertheless, today, from a certain point of view, I would still like to try to characterize for you what could be called the other side of human existence on earth. I would then like to relate that to the significance of a deeper spiritual knowledge of our time. How much do we finally know about our existence if we use only our senses and the intellect bound up with those senses as our source of knowledge? Ordinary sense-consciousness only allows us to spend the waking part of our existence in full consciousness. The spiritual powers that lead the world did not add the sleeping state to human existence for nothing. From falling asleep to waking up a very great deal happens to the human being. Indeed, most of what the spirit has to effect through human beings in earthly existence is actually achieved during the sleep state. During the waking state, all that can occur on earth is what we can undertake with ourselves and the things around us. But what higher, spiritual beings undertake with the human soul in human evolution, in order to bring the soul to complete development within earthly existence—this happens during the sleep state. We should not lose sight of the fact that modern initiation knowledge can look closely at the significance of the events that occur when the human being is asleep. Of course, these events occur not only for initiates but for all people; the development of all human beings depends upon them. The initiate can only draw attention to these sleep state events. However, every human being who gives any thought at all to the meaning of earth existence should increasingly feel and sense the significance of what occurs while he sleeps. Today I would simply like to describe all that plays into the sleeping state of the human being. As you know, when a person falls asleep we characterize what happens externally by saying that the astral body and the I are loosened from the physical and etheric bodies. The I and the astral body are then in the spiritual world; they no longer permeate the physical and etheric bodies as they did in the state between waking and falling asleep. When we look at what happens with human beings in the sleeping state our attention is drawn to the various ways they are connected to the earth during waking. To begin with, we are connected to the earth through our senses—we perceive and know the appearances of the various kingdoms of nature. However, we are also connected with the earth through what we do unconsciously while awake. For example, we breathe—for the most part, unconsciously—and the entire earth, if I may put it this way, plays into the air we breathe. Innumerable substances dispersed in a very fine state are present in the air we breathe. Precisely because they are in this finely dispersed state they have an extraordinarily significant effect when inhaled into the human organism. What enters the human being when he perceives through his senses enters consciously. But a great deal also enters the human being unconsciously when he is awake. And this unconscious element has more substance than what enters through the abstract, ideal state of perceiving and thinking. The world around enters us in a more substantial form through our breathing. If you would only take into consideration just how dependent the human organism is upon everything that it takes in with the various substances of earthly nourishment, then you would be able to acknowledge that there is much that affects us in our waking state. But this fact is of less interest to us today. We are much more concerned with what is working on the human being in his sleeping state. The point here is this: Just as we see external earthly substances connected with us during our waking state, so too, when we enter the sleeping state, we enter into a certain connection with the entire cosmos. That is not to say that we should imagine a human being taking on the magnitude of the cosmos every night with his or her astral body—that would be an exaggeration—but we do grow into the cosmos every night. Just as we are connected here on earth during the day with the plants, the minerals, and the air, so too we are connected during the night with the movements of the planets and with the constellations of the fixed stars. From our falling asleep until our waking the sky full of stars becomes our world just as the earth is our world in the waking state. Now, to begin with, we can distinguish various spheres through which we pass between falling asleep and waking. The first sphere we pass through is that in which the human I and the human astral body—that is, the human soul when asleep—feels itself connected with the movements of the planets. When waking in the morning and, as it were, having slipped into our physical body we can say that we have in us our lungs, our heart, our liver, our brain. Likewise when we enter the sleep state we must say that in the first sphere with which we come into contact after falling asleep—which is also the sphere we are again in contact with just before awakening—in this sphere we have within us the forces of planetary movement. It is not that we take the entire movements of the planets into ourselves every night. But what we carry within us as an image or copy is a small picture, in which the movements of the planets are actually copied, reflected. And this is different with every human being. We can say that, when falling asleep, every human being experiences the movements of the planets. Everything that goes on as movement “out there” in the space of the universe between the planets is experienced inwardly in a kind of globe of planets in the astral body. That is the human being's first experience after falling asleep. Do not ask, my dear friends, what this has to do with you. Do not say that you do not perceive this. You may not see it with your eyes nor hear it with your ears. But in the moment you fall asleep, at that moment, that part of your astral body that during waking permeates and is a part of your heart—that part becomes an eye. We see with this organ, which I will call a “heart-eye.” When we enter the sleep state this organ begins to perceive what is happening in the way I have just described. This heart-eye really does perceive what the human being experiences there—even if the perception is, for present-day humanity, very dim and obscure. What we experience there is perceived by this heart-eye in such a way that, in the time after falling asleep when the physical and etheric bodies are lying there in bed, this heart-eye looks back at us. The I and the astral body look back at the physical and etheric bodies with the heart-eye. What the I and the astral body experience in their body inwardly as a picture of the movements of the planets, radiates back to the heart eye from their own etheric body. The I and the astral body see the mirror image of the planetary movement coming out of their own etheric body. Upon awakening, because of the way the human being is presently constituted, we immediately forget the dim consciousness provided by our heart-eye during the night. This consciousness is dim and, at the most, can only be found echoing in certain dreams; in their inner flexibility these dreams still have something of the planetary movements. As we approach wakefulness, images from our lives settle into these dreams which, fundamentally speaking, are actually dependent upon the movements of the planets. The images enter at this point because the astral body is being submerged into the etheric body, which preserves our memories of earthly life. The following is a specific example: You wake up in the morning; you have once again gone through the spheres of planetary movement. Let us say you have experienced there a special relationship between Jupiter and Venus because such an event is connected with your destiny, your karma. This could happen. You could have experienced a special relationship between Jupiter and Venus. If you could lift what was experienced there between Jupiter and Venus into the light of your day consciousness, then much concerning your human abilities would be clear to you. For those abilities have come from the cosmos, not from the earth. How you are related to the cosmos determines how you are gifted, how you are good, or at least how you are inclined to good or to evil. You would be able to see what Jupiter and Venus discussed with one another, and what you perceived with your heart-eye. (I could just as well say heart-ear, for it is hard to distinguish such things.) But this is all forgotten because it has been perceived so very dimly. As this exchange between Jupiter and Venus continues within you it causes corresponding movements in your astral body and something else, from your etheric body, mixes in—for example, what you experienced around noon when you were seventeen, or when you were twenty-five years old, say, in Oxford or Manchester or anywhere. Such earthly images are mixed with the cosmic experiences. The pictures in dreams do have a certain significance; but the pictures arc not what is of primary importance. They are, so to speak, the fabric woven to clothe cosmic events. Concerning the experience that thus comes into existence for the perception of the heart, we can say that it is bound up with a certain anxiety. For almost everyone there are feelings of a spiritual kind of anxiety mixed in with this experience, especially when what was experienced cosmically shines back and echoes from the human etheric body. For example, this anxiety arises for the perception of the heart if what has been brought about through the special relationship between Jupiter and Venus radiates back with a ray—which would say a lot for your heart perception—radiates back from the human forehead, and if this ray is then mixed with the sound and light from another ray, say, from the region just below the heart. This perception of anxiety leads every soul not entirely hardened to such perceptions to actually say to itself in sleep: The mists of the cosmos have taken me into themselves. It really feels like you have become as thin as the mists of the world and are swimming like a cloud, just a part of cosmic fog, within the larger mists of the cosmos. This is the experience immediately after falling asleep. Then out of this anxiety, out of this feeling of one's self as just another mist within the cosmic fog, something comes into the human soul that could be called devotion to the divine that is weaving through the world. Those are the two basic feelings that come over the human being in the first sphere after falling asleep: first that I am within the mists of the world, and then that I would like to rest in the bosom of God so as to be safe from dissolution in these mists. These feelings must be carried by the perception of the heart when we again awaken in the morning and enter into our physical and etheric bodies. If this experience were not carried over into life then all the substances we take into our bodies for nourishment the next day, or whatever else our metabolism may process—even if we starve, for then the substances are taken from our bodies—these substances would assume solely their earthly character and would thus bring about disorder in the whole human organism. It is simply a fact that for the human waking condition the significance of sleep is enormous. In this epoch of earth's development man is still spared the task of having to carry the divine from sleep into waking. Because of the way human beings in the present age are constituted they could hardly muster the strength to carry these things in full consciousness from the other side of existence to this side of existence. After the experiences connected with the planetary movements, the human being goes into the next sphere. In doing so we do not leave the first; it remains for the perception of the heart. The next sphere is much more complicated and is perceived with that part of the astral body that, during the day, during waking, permeates and is a part of the solar plexus, permeates and is a part of our entire limb system. The solar plexus and limb system of the human being, that part of the astral body that penetrates and permeates the solar plexus and the arms and legs—this part of the astral body perceives what happens in the night in the next sphere. In the next sphere we feel the forces in our astral bodies that originate in the constellations of the zodiac. These forces come in two forms, the first consisting of those forces which come directly from the constellations of the zodiac, the other form arising when these forces from the zodiac pass through the earth. It makes a very big difference whether the zodiacal signs are above or below the earth. In this sphere the human being perceives with what I would like to call “sun perception” because that part of the astral body connected with the solar plexus and the limb system is involved in the perception. I would like to call this perceiving part of the astral body the “eye of the sun” or the “sun-eye.” Through it we become aware of our entire relationship to the zodiac and the movements of the planets. In this sphere the picture is enlarged, we grow more into the picture of the cosmos. This experience is again mirrored to us by our own physical and etheric bodies, which we are now looking at. What comes forth from our body every night is brought into connection with the entire cosmos, with the movements of the planets and the constellations of the fixed stars. The experience with the fixed stars may occur for some people half an hour after falling asleep, for some after a longer period and for others very shortly after falling asleep. A person experiences himself in all twelve constellations. The experiences with the fixed stars are extraordinarily complicated. My dear friends, I believe you could have visited the most important regions of the earth as a world traveler and still you would not have had the sum of experiences that your sun-eye gathers for you from a single constellation of the zodiac. Because the people who lived in ancient times still had powerful dreamlike powers of clairvoyance and perceived, in a dreamlike way, much of what I have been describing, all of this was relatively less confusing to them. Today, a person's sun-eye can hardly come to any kind of clarity—and we must come to clarity even if we forget it in the day. We can hardly come to any kind of clarity concerning what we experience in twelve-fold complexity during the night unless we take into our hearts and minds what Christ wanted to become for the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. Simply having felt what it means for the life of the earth that Christ went through the mystery of Golgotha, simply thinking about Christ in our ordinary life on earth brings such a tinge, such a hue, into our astral body, by the indirect path through the physical and etheric bodies, that Christ can become our leader through the zodiac from falling asleep to waking. Once again the human being wonders: Will I be lost in the multitude of stars and their activities? But if we can look back to thoughts, feelings, and will impulses turned toward Christ during our daytime waking state, then Christ becomes a leader who helps us to bring order into the complex and confusing events of this sphere. Only when we observe the other side of life do we realize the full significance of Christ for the earth life of humanity since the Mystery of Golgotha. In the present, ordinary civilization, there is actually no one else who understands what Christ must still become for the life of earth. All these things, which have not yet been experienced by many people, are wrongly explained. Only when you know what I have just explained can you understand the various ways in which people who have not yet been touched by the Christ event bring their nightly experiences while asleep into waking day consciousness. When we have gone through the misty existence in the sleep state and entered the second sphere we stand before a complicated and confusing world. Only when Christ steps forward as a spiritual sun and becomes our leader is complex confusion resolved into a kind of harmonious understanding. This point is important because our karma appears, actually appears to our sun-eye, the moment we step into this sphere of whirling confusion, this sphere of planetary movement and of the fixed star constellations of the zodiac. All human beings perceive their karma, but only in the sleeping state. The afterimage or afterglow of this perception slips into our waking state through our feelings. Much of the condition of soul that we can find in ourselves—if, to some extent, we strive for self-knowledge—is a very dim echo of this zodiacal experience. People can receive strength for their daily lives because Christ appeared as the leader and led them from Aries through Taurus, Gemini, and so forth, and explained the world to them in the night. What we experience in this sphere is nothing less significant than this: Christ becomes our leader through the complex and confusing events in the zodiac; he stands there as the being who leads us, who leads us from constellation to constellation, in order for us to take into ourselves, in an orderly fashion, the spiritual forces that we once again need—and they are, indeed, ordered—for our waking life. Fundamentally speaking, this is what the human being experiences every night between falling asleep and waking. He experiences this because he is related to the cosmos as a soul and spirit. Just as he is related to the earth through his etheric and physical bodies, he is also related to the cosmos with his soul, with his spirit and his astral body. When the human being has separated from his physical and etheric bodies and so grown out into the cosmic world, he then feels within himself a strong kinship to the world he is entering. He feels this kinship in his experience of the pictures reflected back to him from what has been left lying in bed. He feels a strong tendency to move out beyond the zodiac with his inner life. But this he cannot do between birth and death because another element mixes into all these experiences during the time when the human being is asleep, another element which, compared with what comes from the planets and the fixed stars, is of an entirely different nature. This is the element of the moon. During the night the element of the moon, even during the new moon, tinges to a certain extent the entire cosmos with a special something that is like a substance. This tingeing is also experienced by us. But we experience it in such a way that these moon forces hold us back within the world of the zodiac and lead us once again to waking. With a dimly conscious awareness we already experience this moon element in the first sphere. But during the second sphere we experience the secrets of birth and death in an especially powerful way. With an organ lying even deeper than the heart-eye and the sun-eye, with an organ that is, so to speak, apportioned to the whole human being, we actually experience every night how our soul-spirit being descends—that is, has descended—from the world of soul and spirit and has entered into physical existence through birth; and we experience how the body gradually goes over into death. The human being is actually always dying. In every moment he only subdues death until death then really occurs as a single event. But in the moment we experience how the soul, so to speak, goes through earthly nature, bodily nature, in this same moment we also experience—and through the very same forces—our connection with the rest of humanity. You have to remember this: Not even the most insignificant encounter, insignificant relationship—or even the most decisive—is without a connection to our total destiny, to the total karma of the human being. All our involvement with other human beings, all human relationships, which have, of course, an intimate connection with the mystery of birth and death, appear, I would like to say, before our spiritual eye at this point during the second sphere. This comprehension of karma happens whether the souls with whom we have ever had a connection in past lives, or with whom we now, in this earth life, have a relationship, are presently in the spiritual world or are on the earth. We feel ourselves at this point to be in touch with and living within our total life destiny. This experience is connected with the fact that all the other forces, those of the planets and the fixed stars, want to draw us out into the cosmos while the moon wants to put us again into the world of people, basically tearing us out of the cosmos. The moon has forces that are actually opposed to the forces of the sun as well as the forces of the stars. It constitutes our kinship to the earth. For this reason every night, in a certain sense, it brings us back from the experiences of the zodiac into the planetary experiences and once again into earthly experiences, in that we are brought back into the physical body of a human being. From a certain point of view this is the difference between sleeping and dying: When a human being merely falls asleep he or she maintains a strong connection to these moon forces. Every night, in a certain sense, these moon forces also point out to us again the meaning of our life on earth. But this can only be the case because we receive everything reflected back from the etheric body. In death we pull the etheric body out of the physical body; the backward view of memories from the last life on earth then appears. For a short while, a few days, the etheric body permeates the cloud of which I have spoken. As I said, every night we experience ourselves as a cloud, as a cloud of mists in a world of fog. But this cloud of mists that we ourselves are, this cloud is without our etheric body during the night. When we die the cloud is, to begin with, in the first days after our death, with our etheric body. Then the etheric body gradually dissolves into the cosmos and our memory disappears. And now, in contrast to what we had earlier when our experience of the stars was only radiated back from the human being, who remained lying in bed, now, after death, we have an immediate, inner experience of the movements of the planets and the fixed star constellations. If you read my book Theosophy33 you will find, described from a certain point of view, what these experiences after death consist of. I describe what appears as if surrounding the human being between death and a new birth. But just as the world would have no color if there were no eyes in your body, no sounds if you were without ears, just as you could not breathe without lungs and a heart, so too, after death you would not be able to perceive what I have described as the soul world and spirit land, your environment in the spiritual world, unless you had Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, and so forth. That is then your organism: with your cosmic organism you experience all of this. The moon can no longer bring you back because it could only bring you back to an etheric body; but your etheric body has been dissolved into the cosmos. As I described the process in Theosophy, there is still so much left of the power bequeathed to the human being by the moon that after death we must remain a while in the soul world. We keep looking at the earth intently, until we go over into what I described as spirit land. There we experience ourselves as being beyond the zodiac, beyond the realm of the fixed stars. In this way we live through the time between death and a new birth. I could describe the details of this entry into, and life within, the spiritual world—the entry made every night. But the concepts I use for this description must not be pushed too far; these things can hardly be expressed with earthly concepts. Nevertheless, I can describe it to you as follows. Picture a meadow and picture flowers in this meadow; from every blossom in the meadow and on the trees, a kind of spiral goes forth unwinding upward into cosmic space. The spirals contain the forces through which the cosmos regulates and effects the growth of plants on the earth. For plants grow not only out of their seeds; plants grow out of the cosmic, helical forces that surround the earth. These forces are also present in winter, also in the desert, and also when there are no plants present. In order to enter into the movements of the planets every night we must use these helical forces as a ladder. Using the ladder-like quality of the spiraling forces of the plants we climb up into the movements of the planetary world. With the force that the plant uses to grow upward, a force coming forth from its roots (you see, it has to apply a force in order to grow upwards) with this force the human being is carried into the second sphere that I described. When it comes to those experiences I have described for you—when we are beset by a certain anxiety and say: I am a figure of mists in the universal cosmic fog, I must rest in the bosom of God—when we consider these experiences with respect to conditions on the earth, then, again, the soul can say to itself: I rest in all of that which lays like a cosmic blessing over a field of grain when it blossoms, which lays over a meadow when it blossoms. Everything that sinks down to the plants lives and expresses itself in the spiraling lines of force, is, fundamentally speaking, the bosom of God, the bosom of God enlivened and active within itself. Therein the human being feels embedded in every period of sleep. The moon leads us back again to our animal nature while the forces of plants constantly strive to carry us further out into the universe. In this way we are connected with the cosmos. In this way the cosmos works between our falling asleep and our waking. And the heart-eye, sun-eye, and human eye go through the night feeling things in a way similar to the way, say, that we experience any kind of relationship to another human being. But we are not told this, neither do we think this out by ourselves, but rather the plants tell us this, the plants, which give us a ladder to climb up into the planetary world where we are then forced out into the world of the zodiac. One could have an experience like this: I have a relationship to a particular person; the lilies tell me, the roses tell me, because the forces of the roses, the forces of the lilies, the forces of the tulips have driven me precisely to this place. The entire earth becomes a kind of “book of life” that enlightens us about the human world, the world in which we live, the world of human souls. The people of various ages and epochs have had these experiences in different ways. If you look toward old India you will see that those wanting to discover something through the sleeping state, through a relationship with the world of the stars, wanted information only from those fixed stars and constellations that happened to be above the earth at any given time. They never wanted connections to the constellations below, the constellations whose forces had to go through the earth. Just take a look at the Buddha posture or at the posture of any sage whatsoever from the Orient, who strives for spiritual wisdom through exercises! Look at how he crosses his legs one over the other and sits on them. He assumes this posture because he wants only his upper body and what is connected to the stars above to become active within. He does not want what also works through him through the sun-eye, what works through the limb system, to become active within. He wants the forces of the limb system more or less excluded. Therefore, you can see, in the position of every Oriental striving for wisdom, how he wants to develop a relationship only to what is above the earth. He wants only to develop those connections leading to knowledge in the soul realm. The world would have remained incomplete if this had remained the only kind of search for knowledge, if, in order to acquire knowledge, humankind had been restricted to the Buddha posture alone. Already, during the age of the Greeks, a human being had to enter into a relationship with the forces encountered when he develops in the direction of those constellations that, at any given time, are below the earth. This tendency is hinted at in a wonderfully intimate way in Greek tales. You are always told of a kind of initiation in Greek tales. When it is said that certain heroes in Greece have descended into the underworld, that they have experienced initiation, this means that they have become acquainted with those forces that work through the earth. They have come to know the chthonic powers. Every age has its special task. In order to teach other people, the Oriental initiate learned primarily about what was to be found before birth, before conception actually, that is, what lay in the soul-spiritual realms human beings live through before descending into the earthly world. What approaches us in such a magnificent way in Oriental writings and in the Oriental worldview comes to us because people back then could look into the life human beings led before they descended to the earth. In Greece people began to know the forces that depended upon the earth itself: Uranus and Gaia. Gaia, the earth, stands at the beginning of Greek cosmology. The Greek always sought to find out about, to know, the mysteries of the earth itself, mysteries that were, of course, also cosmic mysteries that worked through the earth. The Greeks wanted to know about the mysteries of the underworld. In this way the Greeks developed a proper cosmology. Consider how little knowledge of history (as we call it) the Greeks had. Yet the Oriental never had any at all. The Greeks were far more interested in what was going on when the earth was being formed in the cosmos and then later when the inner powers of the earth, the Titanic forces, fought against other powers. The Greeks pointed to these gigantic, powerful spiritual forces that form the foundation for earthly conditions and in which humanity is so entangled. It is incumbent upon us in the new age to understand history and be able to point out that humanity has come out of an old, dreamlike clairvoyant condition, that we have now arrived at an intellectually colored consciousness that is merely tinged with the mythical. We must now work our way out of this consciousness and once again into a seeing into the spiritual world. This present epoch marks the transition to a conscious experience of the spiritual world that can only be achieved with effort. For this purpose we must, above all, look at history. We have, therefore, in our anthroposophical movement, again and again reviewed the various historical epochs from our time all the way back to the time when human beings still received knowledge from higher, supra-earthly beings. We have followed the historical development of humanity. The external knowledge of our time views this historical development of man in a completely abstract way. What abstract lines are drawn when people today develop knowledge of history! Ancient peoples followed a history still clothed in mythos, a history that included nature and its events. We can no longer do that. But people have not yet acquired a faculty that would lead them to ask: What was it like when the first human beings received wisdom from higher beings? And what was it like as that wisdom gradually faded away? What was it like when a God himself descended in order to incarnate in a human body through the mystery of Golgotha, in order to fulfill a grand, cosmic mission with the earth, so that the earth could receive its meaning? The whole of nineteenth and twentieth century theology suffers from the inability to understand the spiritual significance of Christ. You see, modern initiation science must bring this understanding. There must be a modern science of initiation that can penetrate once again into the spiritual world, that can speak once again about birth and death, about life between birth and death and life between death and a new birth, and about the life of the human soul in sleep just as we here today have spoken to one another. Once again it must be possible for man to know about this spiritual, other side of existence. All of humankind's progress in the future will be possible only if human beings also become acquainted with this other side of existence. Once people turned to the upper worlds alone for their knowledge. This can easily be observed in the posture of the Buddha. Later people came to their cosmology by reading it out of the development of the earth; they were initiated in the Greek chthonic mysteries, as passages in the Greek myths recount again and again. Now that the secrets of heaven and the secrets of earth have been studied in the old science of initiation we need a modern science of initiation that can move back and forth between heaven and earth, that can ask heaven when it wants to know something about earth and that can ask the earth when it wants to know something about heaven. If I may say so in all modesty, this is how the questions are posed and given preliminary answers in my book An Outline of Occult Science.34 The attempt is made there to describe what the modern human being needs, just as the ancient Orientals needed the mysteries of heaven and the Greeks needed the mysteries of the earth. In our present age we should observe how things stand with this modern initiation and its relationship to modern man. To characterize briefly the tasks that form the foundation of modern initiation I will say something now that I was already able to say to a few of you in Oxford during these days of my visit to England. Namely, I would like to begin by pointing out that while it was important for the most ancient initiates to look up into the spiritual world from which man descended when he clothed himself with an earthly body, and while for later initiates such things as I characterized by pointing to Greek portrayals of a descent into the underworld were important, it is the obligation of modern initiation, as I have already said, to seek as knowledge the rhythmical relationship of heaven and earth. This can only be achieved if we consider the following. Certainly, we must know heaven, and certainly we must know the earth. But then we must also look at the human being, in whom, among all the beings around us, heaven and earth work together to create a unity. We must look at—that means with our sun-eye, with our heart-eye, with the entire human eye—we must look at the human being. The human being! For humanity contains infinitely more secrets than the worlds that we can perceive with our external organs of perception, that we can explain with an intellect bound to the senses. The task of present-day initiation knowledge is to come to know the human being spiritually. I would like to say that initiation science wants to come to know everything for this reason: in order to understand the human being through knowledge of the whole world, through knowledge of the whole cosmos. Now compare the situation of the present-day initiate with the situation of the ancient initiate. Because of all the abilities that existed in the soul of ancient humanity the initiate then could awaken memories of the time before the descent into an earthly body. For this reason initiation for the ancient was an awakening of cosmic memories. Then, for the Greeks, initiation meant looking into nature. Modern initiates are concerned to know the human being directly as a spiritual being. Now we must acquire the ability to set ourselves free from the grasp of earth, from the ties connecting us with the world. I would like to repeat an example that I have just recently mentioned. Achieving a relationship to the souls who have passed through the gate of death, who have left the earth, either recently or long ago, is one of the most difficult tasks of initiation knowledge. However, it is possible to achieve such a relationship by awakening forces that lie deeper in the soul. Here we must understand clearly, however, that we have to accustom ourselves, through exercises, to the language we must speak with the dead. This language is, I would like to say, in a certain sense, a child of human language. But we would go completely astray if we thought that this human language here could help us to cultivate communication with the dead. The first thing we become aware of is that the dead are only able to understand for a short time what lives as nouns in the language of earth. What is expressed as a thing, a closed off thing, the characterization of a noun, is no longer present in the language of the dead. In the language of the dead everything is related to activity and movement. For this reason we find that some time after the human being has passed through the gate of death, he has a real feeling only for verbs. In order to communicate with the dead we must sometimes direct a question to them by formulating it in such a way that it is understandable to them. Then, if we know how to pay attention, the answer comes after a while. Usually several nights must pass before the deceased person can give us an answer to our questions. But we must first find our way into the language of the deceased; finally the language appears for us, the language the dead actually have, the language the deceased has had to live into after death, distancing himself from the earth with his entire soul life. We find our way into a language that is not at all formed according to earthly conditions, but is rather a language arising from feelings, from the heart. It is a kind of language of the heart. Here, language is formed in the way vowels or feeling sounds are formed in human language. For example, when we are amazed we say “Ah!” or when we want to lead ourselves back to ourselves we speak the “ee” sound. Only in such instances do the sounds and sound combinations receive their due, their real meaning. And beginning with such instances language becomes something that no longer sounds bound up to the speech organ. It is transformed into what I have just described, a language of the heart. When we have learned this transformed language, the forces that rise from the flowers give us information about humankind and we ourselves begin to speak with what comes from the flowers. When we enter into the tulip blossom with our soul forces we express, in the Imagination of the tulip, what is expressed here on the earth in the formation of words. We grow again into the spiritual aspect of everything. From the example of language, just characterized, you see that the human being grows into entirely different conditions of existence when he has gone through the gate of death. You see, we really know very little about a human being if we only know his or her external side; the modern science of initiation must know the other side. This begins with language. Even the human body, as it is described if you read the relevant literature, becomes something else for us. The body becomes a world in itself when we grow into the science of initiation. While the initiate in ancient times reawakened an ability in people that had been lost, while he brought to memory what they had experienced before descending to the earth, the initiate of the present age must do something entirely new, something that represents progress in the human being, that will still have significance for us when humanity itself will one day have left the earth, indeed, when the earth is no longer even present in the cosmos. This is the task of modern initiation science. Out of this strength modern initiation science must speak. As you know, from time to time the science of initiation enters into the spiritual development of the earth. This has happened again and again. The initiation science we need actually sees only a beginning in the assumptions of contemporary science. This initiation science will be increasingly contested. You will need strength to get through all that stands against modern initiation. Before modern initiation, which is a conversation with super-sensible powers, actually first received its proper power in the last third of the nineteenth century, the adversarial powers were already at work to bring about a condition of human culture and civilization, in many ways an unconscious condition, which actually amounts to a complete extermination of modern initiation. Just consider how popular it has become to respond to everything that appears in the world as knowledge with the words: This is my point of view. People say “This is my point of view” without having gone through any kind of development. Everyone is supposed to make his own point of view count from the location where he just happens to be standing at the moment when he speaks. And people are offended, even angry, when a higher knowledge is mentioned, a knowledge that can only be acquired through the work of self-development. When the possibility of achieving a modern initiation appeared, primarily in the last third of the nineteenth century, adversary powers were already at work. Above all they wanted to bring about a great leveling of people, also in the spiritual realm. There are many people I could mention through whom these enemies of modern initiation have worked. My dear friends, you must believe that the words I must speak out of the spirit of this initiation science must also sound the way they do from the point of view of ordinary conditions here on the earth. If I attempt to make clear to you how the sounds of human language become different when language is to be used in the presence of the beings of the spiritual world, then you will not misunderstand me when I say: I myself will never misunderstand the great significance, spoken from the merely earthly point of view, of someone like Rousseau; and if I speak from the merely earthly standpoint I will set out with all élan to praise and speak well of Rousseau, just as others speak of him.35 But if I should rise to an attempt to clothe in earthly words what initiation knowledge says concerning Rousseau I would have to say that with his equalization, with his spiritual leveling, Rousseau represents the supreme babbler of modern civilization. This is something that humanity cannot readily assimilate, that someone like Rousseau can be called a great spirit, a great personality, from the earthly point of view but—if we really want to get to know this person through the modern science of initiation (where we must know heaven and earth and describe the rhythm between them from both sides)—must be called the supreme babbler from the point of view of initiation. Only the harmony of what resounds from the one side and from the other side leads to a true knowledge of the human being. For this true knowledge of the human being must be built upon the same wisdom the old initiates build upon: Ex deo nascimur. All remembering must by built upon what comes to meet us when we look out into the world where, as I have today described the process, we have unconsciously allowed Christ to become our leader. But we must bring him into our consciousness more and more. Then we can recognize what belongs to death in the world as standing under the leadership of Christ. Then we can recognize that we live into the dead world with Christ: In Christo morimur. Finally, because we are submerged in the grave of the earth and its life we experience with Christ the resurrection and the sending of the Spirit: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus. The modern initiate must strive above all for this Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus. If you consider this counsel and compare it with the modern attitude coming from science you will recognize that there will still be immense opposition, perhaps of a kind you cannot even imagine today, which will take the form of external actions and deeds that, above all, will have a tendency to make initiation science entirely impossible. What I would like to leave in your hearts, in your souls, when I speak in such an intimate circle of friends, is this: Through the descriptions given by modern initiation science, I would like to awaken strength so that a few people are actually present in the world who can find the proper place between what wants to come into the earthly world from spiritual worlds and what, from the direction of the earthly world, wants it to be impossible for spirituality to penetrate into the life of earth. This is what I have wanted to draw attention to, in such an intimate circle of friends. An opportunity had already been given to speak in a more external lecture, such as, to my great satisfaction, we were able to have in Oxford. Since the opportunity was given to describe the external side, so the esoteric side must also be handled in this smaller circle, it must also be described. I believe it would be good if you could get beyond the fact that there is much that sounds paradoxical when I speak out of spiritual worlds. It has to sound paradoxical because the language of spiritual worlds is so different from any earthly language. What should actually be expressed differently can only be brought into earthly language with a great exertion of force. Therefore, it should be understandable if some things are shocking when they appear unmediated as a simple description of spiritual worlds. My dear friends, in addition to characterizing the fundamental intention that was behind today's lecture, I also want to express my deep satisfaction that I have been able to be here and speak to you in London. It is always gratifying. As I have already said, we are seldom together here. May what we can found in our hearts, in our souls, through such rare gatherings bring about a togetherness that should always be present among those who call themselves anthroposophists—a togetherness of hearts and souls extending over the whole world. Today's lecture has been given with this goal in mind, that we use such brief times together as an inspiration for the greater togetherness that unites all our hearts and all our souls. And to document, as it were, this intention I would like to add the following words. Speaking out of this frame of mind I would like to say: Let us remain together, my dear friends, even as we leave now to go in such widely separate directions.
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| 152. Occult Science and Occult Development: Occult Science and Occult Development
01 May 1913, London Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond Rudolf Steiner |
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| 152. Occult Science and Occult Development: Occult Science and Occult Development
01 May 1913, London Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond Rudolf Steiner |
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The theme we are to consider today leads at once into a sphere which belongs to all humanity, apart from distinctions. We are to speak, in the first place, of that realm of man's aspiration which in its true, original form can be described in no human language but only in the language of thought—I refer to the realm of occult science. Through his human faculties man strives for occult knowledge and may also acquire it, but occult knowledge has a greater significance for the world than it has merely within the human soul. In the world around us we can distinguish different substances and materials through which its various phenomena and manifestations are given expression. In the Primal Principle, the essential nature of which can hardly be expressed in words of human language, all creatures, all things of the earth and all worlds are rooted. But the individual differentiations of this Primal Principle come to expression in the physical world in the substances of earth, of water, of air, of fire, of ether, and so forth. One of the finest, most highly attenuated substances within the reach of human faculties is called Akasha. The manifestations of beings and of phenomena in the Akasha are the most delicate and ethereal of any that are accessible to man. What a man acquires in the way of occult knowledge lives not only in his soul but is inscribed into the Akasha-substance of the world. When we make a thought of occult science come alive in our souls, it is at once inscribed into the Akasha-substance and this is of significance for the general evolution of the world. For no being in the whole world other than man is able to make in the Akasha-substance the inscriptions that can be called by the name of Occult Science. It is important to bear in mind one characteristic feature of the Akasha-substance, namely that in the spiritual world between death and a new birth, man lives in this substance, just as here on the earth he lives in the atmosphere. If a seer, using the means at his disposal, were to come into contact with human souls living between death and rebirth he would be able to observe the following.— In the present cycle of evolution—formerly it was different—a man who here on the earth is never able to kindle to life within him thoughts and ideas belonging to Spiritual Science, cannot be seen, even when he is actually present, by a soul living between death and a new birth. But when a man living on the earth causes a thought or an idea from the domain of Spiritual Science to quicken within him so that it can be inscribed into the Akasha-substance, he becomes visible to the souls who are living between death and rebirth. Profoundly shattering impressions may come to a seer who has prepared himself patiently for clairvoyant vision when he enters into relation with souls who have passed through the gate of death. I will give you an actual example. A seer found a man who had passed through the gate of death, leaving behind him his wife and children whom he dearly loved. This man and his family were kindly, good-hearted people but had no inclination whatever for spiritual knowledge; they had not outgrown the religious traditions through which certain souls today still feel connected with the spiritual world. Some little time after he had passed through the gate of death, this man said to himself: ‘I have left behind on the earth my wife and children; they were the very sunshine of my life, but my spiritual sight cannot reach them. I have nothing but the remembrance of the time I spent together with them on the earth.’ An entirely different picture can be seen if a soul still on the earth forms strongly spiritual thoughts and ideas. In this case, when another soul, living between death and a new birth, looks down upon one he has left behind, he can follow his soul-life at the present time because it is inscribing itself into the Akasha-substance. This is an indication of how anthroposophical teaching will bridge the gulf between the so-called living and the so-called dead; and already now we can see how human beings who have some understanding of the spiritual may be a blessing to the so-called dead by reading to them in thought the truths of Spiritual Science. If, either reading aloud or to ourselves, we follow in thought the ideas and concepts of Spiritual Science, at the same time feeling that one or more who have passed through death are there in front of us while we read, then this reading becomes very real to them, because such thoughts are inscribed into the Akasha-substance. Such reading may be of the greatest service, not only to those on the other side of death who while they were on earth concerned themselves with Spiritual Science, but also to those who during their earthly life would have nothing to do with it. The question may be asked: As the dead are living in the spiritual world, do they need such reading of Spiritual Science by those on the earth? There are many who believe that it is only necessary to have passed through the gate of death in order to experience everything that can be attained only by dint of great effort on the earth, through Spiritual Science. Such people also believe that after death a man will be able to acquire all occult knowledge, because he will then be in the spiritual world. This, however, is not the case. Just as here on the earth there live beings other than man, who perceive everything that man is able to perceive by means of his senses, whereas—as in the case of the animals—they are unable to form ideas or concepts of it, so it is with souls living in the super-sensible worlds. Although these souls see the beings and facts of the higher spiritual worlds, they can form no concepts or ideas of them if men here on the earth do not inscribe such concepts and ideas into the Akasha Chronicle. This mission of human life upon earth is by no means without purpose; on the contrary it has very deep meaning and purpose. If human souls had never lived on the earth, the spiritual worlds would still be in existence but there would be no occult knowledge of these spiritual worlds. In the course of world-evolution the earth has reached a point at which spiritual knowledge can be developed by spiritual beings organised and constituted as men are on the earth. What has been inscribed into the Akasha-substance through Spiritual Science would never have been there if this science had not existed on the earth. If a man tries to put the life of his soul on the earth to the test, he will discover in the first place that during our present age he has applied his faculties for the acquisition of knowledge to aims other than the attainment of spiritual knowledge. These faculties have been used for the acquisition of data of knowledge produced by means of the senses and through the intellect that is bound to the brain. Thus human knowledge is of two kinds: the one pertains only to experience acquired by means of the senses, which needs the organ of the intellect in order to transform it into knowledge; the other kind is Spiritual Science. The knowledge that belongs only to the sense-world forms the one stream; the other consists of what men inscribe through Spiritual Science into the Akasha Chronicle. For Spiritual Science develops ideas and concepts which are then inscribed forever in the Akasha Chronicle. All science, all knowledge pertaining to experiences acquired through the senses, to technical things, to the commercial and industrial life of mankind, when inscribed in the Akasha-substance has this effect: the Akasha-substance discards it, thrusts it away, and the medley of ideas and concepts is obliterated. If these facts are perceived with the eyes of a seer, a conflict may be observed in the Akasha-substance between the impressions made by the occult knowledge acquired by man—impressions which are eternal—and those made by thoughts based upon the senses, which are only transitory. This conflict arises from the fact that when man first began to inhabit the earth as man (that is to say, in the ancient epoch of Lemuria), he was already then destined by sublime spiritual Beings to acquire Spiritual Science. But through what we call the Luciferic influence, through the encroachment of Luciferic beings, man diverted his power of thought and other powers of soul which he would otherwise have used for the acquisition of occult knowledge only, to the study of things belonging exclusively to the physical world. There are many who say that whereas ordinary science is accessible to everybody, spiritual or occult science can be made intelligible only to those who are able to see into the spiritual worlds. This is a fundamental error, for in the depths of his own soul every man is capable, even before he becomes a seer, of recognising the truths of Spiritual Science. Admittedly, occult truths can be discovered only by the seer, but when they have been discovered, and expressed in the normal language of human reason, they can be intelligible to every human soul who has the will to remove the obstacles to such understanding that exist within himself. As a result of the Luciferic impulses it became possible at a later period in the evolution of the earth for another Being whom we call Ahriman, to acquire influence over the souls of men. And only when the possibility of understanding Spiritual Science is held back through Ahrimanic influence in the soul does that understanding remain unattainable. If the Being we call Ahriman did not work in every human soul, if our souls were free from his influence, then an idea or thought belonging to Spiritual Science would need only to be spoken and the soul, through its subconscious relationship to this truth, would feel: This idea, this statement of Spiritual Science, is true. In every human soul there is a life which the everyday consciousness understands and can account for, and a subconscious soul-life which lies submerged as if in the depths of an ocean and only from time to time is brought to light. In the depths of the soul there lies, for example, the fear that is present in every human being—the fear of the spiritual. This fear is the outcome of Ahriman's influence and would not exist if Ahriman had not gained power over the souls of men. The reason why a man is usually unconscious of such fear is that it works in the deepest foundations of his soul and plays no part in what he can account for with his everyday consciousness. Sometimes this fear knocks at the door of a man's ordinary consciousness without any knowledge on his part of what is inwardly disquieting him; and then he looks for something that will act as an opiate, that will deaden this feeling of fear. He finds this opiate in materialistic thoughts, theories and ideas. Materialistic theories are not devised on a logical basis, although it may be believed that this is the case; they are devised as the result of a dread of the spiritual, which is the consequence of Ahriman's influence upon the soul. Hence the preparatory condition for actual understanding of spiritual truths is much less a knowledge of physical science than an education of the soul in the virtue of moral courage, spiritual courage. Therefore we may say that occult science must be explored by the seer, but it can be understood by every human soul if this soul will only liberate within itself all the moral courage at its command and so frustrate the obstacles proceeding from Ahriman. Should anyone wish to understand occult truths through the original moral forces of his soul he may make the following attempt: he may allow Spiritual Science to work upon his soul without saying to himself, ‘I agree with this’, or, ‘I do not agree with it’. He may assimilate the ideas and concepts given by the seer and allow them to work upon his soul; and if he has absorbed the occult knowledge with inner enthusiasm and not as the result of mere curiosity, he will have an experience that may be compared with a feeling of soaring without physical ground under his feet, with a feeling as if he were hovering in the air. This attempt will have a completely different effect according to whether it is carried out by a person with religious, reverential inclinations towards spiritual life, or by someone accustomed to materialistic thinking. One who has no actual occult knowledge, but whose inclinations and feelings with regard to the spiritual world have nevertheless a religious quality may feel somewhat insecure as the result of this attempt but very much less so than a materialist who has no feeling of attraction to the spiritual world. The latter will experience a strong feeling of fear, of insecurity. The materialist may convince himself through this experience that the effect of occult ideas and concepts upon him is that they give rise to dread and terror. And then he may say to himself: ‘This proves to me, not only that I am full of fear of this realm, but that fear is one of my intrinsic tendencies.’ If, for example, Ernst Haeckel or Herbert Spencer had made this attempt they would have convinced themselves not only that occult knowledge is not contradictory or impossible of belief but that in the inmost depths of their souls they were full of fear; and they would soon have forgotten all doubt and disbelief in what they had been wont to consider fantastic spiritual teachings and would have admitted to themselves that to overcome this fear was of very great significance. Having made this confession they would soon have abandoned their opposition to the spiritual teachings. They would have said to themselves: ‘I must endeavour to strengthen moral courage within myself.’ Then, perhaps, they would have taken their own self-training in hand and if they had succeeded in overcoming this fear would have said: ‘Now that we have become stronger souls we no longer have any doubts as to the truth of spiritual science.’ This experience, arising from the strengthening of moral courage within the soul, is a victory over Ahriman, whose influence can be perceived in the science of Ernst Haeckel and the philosophy of Herbert Spencer. It is Ahriman who has inspired souls to take a materialistic direction. If only a small portion of mankind, as a result of genuine knowledge, will work in the way above indicated to strengthen their moral courage, these materialistic theories will gradually disappear from the world. Occult knowledge is necessary for the whole process of evolution, as it is inscribed in the Akasha-substance. The importance of this can be evident from a brief outline of the evolution of humanity on the earth. Man's evolution on earth advances in stages from one civilisation-epoch to another; during these successive epochs the souls of men dwell, as individualities, in bodies belonging to the several civilisations. All the souls here this evening were incarnated in bodies that belonged to earlier periods of culture. Each individual soul advances in accordance with the karma it has built up for itself. As well as this evolution of individual souls which depends upon their karma, we must recognise the evolution of mankind as a whole which advances from epoch to epoch. A Grecian body, an Egyptian, Chaldean, ancient Persian or ancient Indian body was, in the finer parts of its structure, quite different from one of the present age. Distinction must be made between the inner progress of the ‘I’ and the astral body from incarnation to incarnation, and the outer progress and change in the physical and etheric bodies from one race to another, from one nation to another, from one epoch to another. This progress of the physical and the etheric bodies from one epoch to another would not be perceptible to those who study anatomy and physiology, but it happens, nevertheless, and can be recognised through occult science. The human physical body will be quite different when, in the normal course of evolution, our souls appear again on the earth in future incarnations. In the present epoch of human life a delicate organ is being developed in man. It is not perceptible to anatomists and physiologists, yet it exists as an anatomical structure. This rudimentary organ is situated in the brain, near the organ of speech. The development of this organ in the convolutions of the brain is not the result of the karma of individual souls but of human evolution as a whole on the earth; and in the future all men will possess it, no matter what the development of the souls incarnating in the bodies may be, and irrespective of the karma connected with these souls. In a future incarnation this organ will be possessed by human beings who at the present time may be opposed to Anthroposophy as well as by those who are now in sympathy with it. This organ will in future time be the physical means, the physical instrument, for the application of certain powers of the soul; just as, for example, Broca's organ in the third convolution of the brain is the organ of the human faculty of speech. When this new organ has developed it may either be used rightly by mankind, or it may not. Those people will be able to use it rightly who are now preparing the possibility of having in their next incarnation a true remembrance of the present one. For this physical organ will be the physical means for remembering an earlier incarnation—which in the case of by far the greater majority of people is possible now only through higher development, through Initiation. But a faculty which in the present epoch it would be possible to acquire only through Initiation will later on become the common property of mankind. Our modern knowledge was formerly the special knowledge possessed by the Atlantean Initiates only; everyone can now possess it. In the same way, remembrance of former lives on earth is possible at present only for Initiates but in times to come it will be possible for every human soul. The Initiate is able to attain certain knowledge without the use of a physical organ, but this knowledge can become the common property of mankind only when a physical organ through which it can be acquired is developed in mankind as a whole in the course of evolution. The reincarnated souls must, however, be able to use this organ in the right way and only those who in the present incarnation have inscribed occult thoughts and ideas in the Akasha-substance will be capable of this. One often hears it asked: What is the use of believing in former lives when mankind in general can remember nothing about them? But from what is known of life, how much more surprising it would be if men in general were even now able to remember their former lives. If we ask ourselves what is necessary to enable us to remember anything, we shall have to reply: We can remember only that about which we have previously thought. Everyday life can teach us that this is so. Suppose someone on getting up in the morning cannot find his cuff-links, no matter where he looks. Why is he not able to find them? Because while he was putting them away he was not thinking of what he was doing. Let him, however, try every evening while putting his links away to think quite consciously: I am putting my cuff-links away in this place. Then he will never be uncertain but will go straight to the place where he has put them; the thought brings the process back into his memory. When we are living in a future incarnation we shall only be able to remember those that are past if we can grasp the true nature of the soul which continues from one incarnation to another. A man who does not study occult science in the present life can acquire no knowledge of the constitution and nature of the soul, and if he has no such knowledge, how should he, when he is again incarnated, remember that to which he never gave a thought in the earlier incarnation? Through the study of Spiritual Science, which includes, among other things, the study of the intrinsic nature of the soul, we prepare in ourselves that which will enable us in a future incarnation to remember what happened in the present one. There are, however, many people nowadays who are not willing to devote themselves to the study of this knowledge. These human beings will be reborn, perhaps in their next incarnation, with the above-mentioned organ for the remembrance of former lives physically developed; but they have not prepared themselves in such a way as to be able to remember the past. What, then, is the significance of Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy in the life of the present day, in addition to all that has been said? Through Anthroposophy we become able to use in the right way the organ that will be developed in human beings of the future, the organ for the remembering of former lives on earth. In our present incarnation we must inscribe in the Akasha-substance the knowledge we acquire in order that in our next incarnation we may be able to use this organ—which is developing in man whether he wishes it or not. In the future there will be men who are able to use this organ for remembering past lives and others who are not able. Certain illnesses will appear in the latter, owing to the presence in their physical bodies of an organ which they are unable to use. To have an organ and be unable to use it gives rise to nervous diseases in a very definite form, and those that will be caused in cases of this kind will be far worse than any yet known to man. When we study the connection of facts in this way we begin to get an idea of the mission and purpose of Anthroposophy and of the importance of understanding life and mankind through this knowledge. But lest the impression made upon you by what has been said should lead to any misunderstanding, I will mention yet another fact which may mitigate anything that was painful in that impression. Although a genuine occultist realises that Anthroposophy must enter into the spiritual life of our present time in order that the man of the future may be able to use the organ for remembering past lives and remain physically in good health, nevertheless it cannot be said categorically that a man who in this epoch is not ready to accept Anthroposophy will suffer in his following incarnations in the sense referred to above. For a long time to come it will still be possible for a human being, even if he has neglected to use this organ in the present life, to put this right in the next, for there will be several more opportunities for him to regain health and acquire anthroposophical knowledge. The time will come, however, when this possibility will cease. For this reason, even if we have not yet reached the crucial moment, we are nevertheless living in the epoch when Anthroposophy must be membered into the spiritual life of mankind. Anthroposophy is an essential development in the general progress of mankind and does not stem from the personal opinions of individuals. And so especially in our own time, the possibility will be given for the subjective development of the human soul, leading to personal vision of the spiritual worlds, to genuine occult development. It may be said that every individual who will apply the original forces within his soul, undisturbed by Ahrimanic influences, can understand everything that is revealed from the spiritual worlds; hence in a certain sense it is possible for every human being to unfold consciousness of the spiritual worlds by undergoing occult development. At the present time, three particular powers of the soul may well be developed in order to establish an occult link with the super-sensible worlds. The first of these powers is that of thinking. We live in relation with the world around us by forming thoughts about our surroundings. In ordinary, everyday life a man thinks thoughts which are caused through impressions made on the senses, or through the intellect that is bound up with the brain. In my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment it is said that through meditation, concentration and contemplation, through strengthening his life of soul, a man can make this power of thinking independent of external life. I want to call your attention here to how the power of thinking within the soul, which otherwise is developed only through thought about the external world, can be made essentially free and independent of everything belonging to the body. That is to say, through such development it becomes possible for the soul to think, to form thoughts within itself, without using the brain as an instrument. This is easy to understand if we consider the chief characteristic of ordinary, everyday thinking which is dependent upon the impressions conveyed through the senses. The chief characteristic of ordinary thinking is that each single act of thinking injures the nervous system, and above all, the brain; it destroys something in the brain. Every thought means that a minute process of destruction takes place in the cells of the brain. For this reason sleep is necessary for us, in order that this process of destruction may be made good; during sleep we restore what during the day was destroyed in our nervous system by thinking. What we are consciously aware of in an ordinary thought is in reality the process of destruction that is taking place in our nervous system. We now endeavour to practise meditation by devoting ourselves to contemplation, for instance, of the saying: Wisdom lives in the Light. This idea cannot originate from sense-impressions because according to the external senses it is not so. In this example, by means of meditation we hold the thought back so far that it does not connect itself with the brain. If in this way we unfold an inner activity of thinking that is not connected with the brain, through the effects of such meditation upon the soul we shall feel that we are on the right path. As in meditative thinking no process of destruction is evoked in our nervous system, this kind of thinking never causes sleepiness, however long it may be continued, as ordinary thinking may easily do. It is true that the opposite often occurs when someone is meditating, for people often complain that when they devote themselves to meditation they at once fall asleep. But that is because the meditation is not yet as it should be. It is quite natural that in meditation we should, to begin with, use the kind of thinking to which we have always been accustomed; it is only gradually that we can accustom ourselves to give up thinking about external things. When this point is reached meditative thinking will no longer make us sleepy, and we shall then know that we are on the right path. When the inner power of thinking can thus be developed without using the thinking faculty of the body, then and only then shall we acquire knowledge of the inner life and recognise our real self, our higher ‘I’. The path to true knowledge of the human self is to be found in the kind of meditation just described, which leads to the liberation of inner thought-power. Only through such knowledge do we realise that this human self is not confined within the limits of the physical body; on the contrary, we come to recognise that this self is connected with the phenomena of the world around us. Whereas in ordinary life we see the sun here, the moon there, the mountains, hills, plants and animals, we now feel ourselves united with everything we see or hear; we are a part of it all, and for us there is now only one external world—our own body. In ordinary life we are here and the external world is around us, but after the development of the independent power of thinking, we are outside our body, one with all that we otherwise see; our body in which we live is now outside us; we look back upon it as the only world upon which we can now gaze. In this way, by liberating the power of thinking, we can actually emerge from the physical body and contemplate it as something external. Even more can be done: for example, we can give a positive answer to the question: Why do we wake up every morning? During sleep our physical body lies in the bed and we are actually outside it, just as is the case during meditative thinking. On waking we return to our physical body, being drawn back to it by countless forces, as by a magnet. A man usually knows nothing of this. But if through meditation he has made himself free, he is consciously drawn back by the same force which, on waking from sleep, draws his soul back into his physical body without consciousness on his part. We also learn through meditation how the human being comes down from the higher worlds in which he lived between death and a new birth, and how he unites with the forces and substances provided by parents, grandparents and so forth. In short, we learn to know the forces that draw human beings back from their life between death and a new birth to new incarnations. As a fruit of such meditation one may look back over a great part of the life spent in the spiritual world between death and a new birth, before conception took place. But through this kind of meditation one can, as a rule, look back only to a certain point that lies before the present incarnation; it would not be possible to look further back into earlier incarnations themselves. To do this at the present time, as the organ referred to above has not yet developed in the human brain, another kind of meditation is necessary. This other kind can become effective only if feeling is brought into the meditation. All meditation as now described may also be permeated with feeling. We will now consider the subject-matter which, in the process of meditation itself, must be permeated by feeling. If, for instance, we take: ‘Wisdom radiates in the Light’, and we feel inspired through the radiation of wisdom, if we feel uplifted, if we feel inwardly aglow, if we can live in and meditate upon the content of these words with inner zeal, then we have in our souls something more than meditation in thoughts. The power of feeling we then activate in the soul is the power we otherwise use in speech. Speech comes into being when thoughts are permeated with inner feeling. This is the origin of speech, and Broca's organ in the brain comes into existence in this way: the thoughts of the inner life that are permeated with feeling become active in the brain, and build the organ that is the physical instrument of speech. When our meditation is really permeated by such feelings we hold back in our souls the force that in everyday life we employ in speaking. Speech may be said to be the embodiment of the inner soul-force which gives expression to these thoughts If now, instead of allowing the soul-force to be applied in speaking, we develop meditation from these thoughts that are permeated with feeling, if we continue this meditation to further and further stages, we gradually gain the power—now actually without the physical organ but through Initiation—to look back into earlier lives on earth and also to investigate the period between earthly lives, the period which always lies between death and a new birth. Through cultivating the withholding of speech within the soul or, as the occultist says, withholding the ‘word’ within the soul, we can eventually look back to the primeval beginning of our earth, back to what the Bible calls the creative act of the Elohim. We can look back to the time when repeated earth-lives actually began for human beings. For the occult development we attain through withholding the word, or withholding speech, enables us to look into the successive epochs, in so far as these are connected with our earth, with the spiritual life of our planet. We become able to behold the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, in so far as they are connected with the spiritual life of the earth. But these two clairvoyant faculties which are developed in meditation through thoughts and through thoughts permeated with feeling, cannot lead us to experiences lying before the epoch of the present earth, experiences connected with earlier planetary incarnations of our earth. This requires the development of the third meditative power, of which we will now speak briefly. We can further permeate the content of our meditation with impulses of will in such a way that if we meditate, for instance, on ‘The Wisdom of the World radiates in the Light’, we may now really feel the impulse of our will united with that activity; we can feel our own being united with the radiating power of the light, and let this light shine and vibrate through the world. We must feel the impulse of our will to be united with this meditation. When our meditation is filled with impulses of the will, we are holding back a force which otherwise would pass into the pulsation of the blood. It is easy to realise that the inner life of the ‘I’ can pass over into the pulsation of the blood when we remember that we grow pale when we are afraid and blush when we are ashamed; these are the signs that the soul-force is passing over into the pulsing of the blood. If the same force which influences the blood is activated in such a way that it does not descend into the physical but remains in the soul only, this is the beginning of the third form of meditation which we can influence through impulses of will. He who achieves these three forms of occult development feels, when he liberates the power of thought, as though he had an organ at the root of the nose—these organs are described as ‘lotus-flowers’ by means of which he can become aware of his ‘I’ or Self that extends far into space. A man who by meditation has cultivated thoughts permeated with feeling becomes gradually conscious, through this developed force which would otherwise have become speech, of the so-called sixteen-petalled lotus-flower in the region of the larynx. By means of this lotus-flower he can comprehend what is connected with temporal things, from the beginning of the earth's existence until its end. By means of this organ he also learns to recognise the occult significance of the Mystery of Golgotha, of which we shall speak in the next lecture. Through the soul-force which in normal everyday life would extend to the blood and its pulsation but is held back, an organ develops in the region of the heart. By means of this organ the nature of the earlier incarnations of the earth—known in occultism as the Saturn-, Sun- and Moon-evolutions—may be understood. Reference is made to this organ in my book Occult Science—an Outline (pp. 276–7). As you will now realise, occult development is achieved by means of faculties and possibilities that are actually present in the life of the human soul. The first occult power that has been mentioned stems from a higher development of the power of thinking, the power that is otherwise applied only for thoughts connected with the external world. The second power is only a higher development of the force which in everyday life is applied by every human being through the body, in speech, in the development of the organ for the word. The third power is a higher cultivation of the force that exists in the human soul to cause the blood to pulsate faster or slower, to direct a greater or smaller amount of blood to one or another organ of the body; to direct it more to the centre when we grow pale, more to the surface when we blush, to direct it more or less strongly to the brain, and so on. When a man cultivates these forces that are present within him, but in ordinary life are used for his outer, bodily existence only, occult development begins. The findings of occult investigation can be understood today by every human being who is willing to clear away obstacles to comprehension. What can be learnt as the result of occult development is occult science, and in the present cycle of man's existence occult science must flow into the human soul in order that it may learn to know its own being—which is independent of the body. The forms of all the substances in the external world, such as earth, water, air, etc., pass away; the forms of the Akasha-substance endure. Through its inner life, our soul must feel itself connected with the Akasha-substance, and in future time it will have the wish to remember what it is experiencing in the present epoch. The possibility of acquiring ideas and concepts that can lead to this remembrance results from the study of occult science, which means that the knowledge gained through occult development must be spread abroad and accepted. I have therefore tried in this first lecture to bring home to you that in addition to the impulses underlying the development of humanity, the spreading of anthroposophical occult knowledge and the pointing of the way to occult development are vitally necessary. It is not by means of words based upon ordinary human considerations that I have tried to elucidate the mission of Spiritual Science, but through the study of facts which are the findings of occult research. Whoever will allow these facts to work upon his soul will realise that anyone who understands their full significance cannot possibly deny the need to spread the knowledge of Spiritual Science at the present time. There is certainly no need to become fanatical in order to recognise the necessity of anthroposophical development; what is needed is to understand the facts that lie at the foundation of man's occult life. Truth to tell, it can only be ignorance of these facts that still keeps mankind away from anthroposophical life. Among the spiritual movements of our time, Anthroposophy as it is here understood will be the least fanatical, and the one that proceeds most decisively from objective considerations. It is necessary to affirm repeatedly that all kindred theories and teachings must finally unite in anthroposophical circles in deeply-rooted, living feeling. There is an objective spiritual life, the reflection of which in the world of maya is the life by which we are surrounded. Occult development is a step from semblance towards reality. And because genuine understanding of these facts can lead to nothing else than the impulse to take the necessary steps, the future destiny of Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science will be secure, because more and more souls will have the wish to recognise the objective truth regarding the World-Spirit. The anthroposophical fire that can be kindled in us is only an outcome of the Cosmic Fire which streams forth spiritually from the beginning to the end of existence. It is this that I wanted to say to you in this first lecture concerning the mission of the Anthroposophical Movement in the spiritual life of the present day.
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| 152. Occult Science and Occult Development: Christ at the Time of the Mystery of Golgotha and in the 20th Century
02 May 1913, London Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond Rudolf Steiner |
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| 152. Occult Science and Occult Development: Christ at the Time of the Mystery of Golgotha and in the 20th Century
02 May 1913, London Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond Rudolf Steiner |
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The Mystery of Golgotha is the most difficult of all Mysteries to understand, even for those who have already reached an advanced stage of occult knowledge. And of all the truths within the range of the human mind it is the one that can most easily be misunderstood. This is because the Mystery of Golgotha was a unique event in the whole evolution of the earth; in the evolution of mankind on the earth it was a mighty impulse which had never before been given in the same way and will never be repeated in a similar form. The human mind always looks for a standard of comparison by means of which things can be understood, but what is incomparable defies all comparison and because it is unique will be very difficult to comprehend. In the Anthroposophical Movement we have endeavoured to describe the Mystery of Golgotha from many different points of view, but new aspects and new features of this momentous event in the evolution of humanity may continually be presented. One aspect will be presented today and attention directed particularly to what may in a certain sense be called the renewal of the Mystery of Golgotha in our own age. The Mystery of Golgotha should not be regarded as an event quite separate from the evolution of humanity, as coming into consideration only during its duration of three or thirty-three years; we must remember that it occurred in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, in the Greco-Latin civilisation-epoch, and remind ourselves that preparation was made for it during the whole period of the development of the ancient Hebrew people. What happened in humanity during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch was of the utmost importance in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha; so too was the worship of Jehovah which was practised among the ancient Hebrews. It is therefore essential to consider the nature of the Being who revealed himself in those times under the name of Jahve or Jehovah. The man of the modern age brings his intellect to bear upon everything; he wants to comprehend things from the standpoint of the intellect. But the moment a man crosses the threshold leading from the world of the senses into the super-sensible worlds, at that moment the possibility of grasping reality by means of the intellect alone, ceases. The intellect can render good service on the earth, but directly a man enters the super-sensible worlds, although it can still be considered a useful instrument, it is no longer in itself a means of acquiring knowledge. Intellect likes, above all, to make distinctions and requires definitions in order to understand things. Those of you who have often followed my lectures will have noticed the almost complete absence of definitions—because realities cannot be grasped by their means. There are, of course, good and bad definitions—some are comprehensive, others less satisfactory. In order to understand the things of the earth, definitions may be helpful; but when it is a matter of understanding realities—above all super-sensible realities—one cannot define, one must ‘characterise’; for then it is necessary to contemplate the facts and the beings from every possible vantage-point. Definitions are always one-sided and remind one who has studied logic of the old Greek School of Philosophy where endeavours were once made to define a man. The following definition was given: ‘A man is a two-legged creature without feathers.’ The next day someone brought in a plucked fowl and said: ‘This is a two-legged creature and has no feathers; it is therefore a man.’ We may often be reminded of this when definitions are demanded for something that is so many-sided and profoundly philosophical that definitions are inadequate and all that can be done is to characterise. In order to be able to distinguish the different beings in the super-sensible worlds, people would like above all to have definitions. They ask: ‘What exactly is this or that being?’ But the more deeply one penetrates into the super-sensible worlds, the more do the beings there merge into one another; there is no longer any demarcation and consequently it is very difficult to distinguish the one from the other. Above all, the factor of evolution must not be left out of account when thinking of the name of Jahve or Jehovah, especially in connection with the name of Christ. Even in the New Testament you will find—and in my books I have often referred to it—that in Jehovah the Christ revealed Himself, to the extent that was possible in times before the Mystery of Golgotha. If it is desired to make a comparison between Jehovah and Christ it is well to take sunlight and moonlight as an illustration. What is sunlight, what is moonlight? They are one and the same, and yet very different. Sunlight streams out from the sun but in moonlight is reflected back by the moon. In the same sense Christ and Jehovah are one and the same. Christ is like the sunlight, Jehovah is like the reflected Christ-light in so far as it could reveal itself to the earth under the name of Jehovah, before the Mystery of Golgotha had come to pass. When contemplating a Being as sublime as Jehovah-Christ we must seek in the very heights of the super-sensible world for His true significance. In reality it is presumption to approach such a Being with everyday concepts. The ancient Hebrews endeavoured to find a way out of this difficulty. In spite of inadequacy, human thinking made efforts to form an idea of this sublime Being. Attention was not turned directly to Jehovah (a name that in itself was held to be inexpressible), but to the Being to whom our Western literature refers by the name of Michael. Naturally, a great deal of misunderstanding may arise from this statement, but that is unavoidable. One person may say, ‘This will evoke the prejudices of Christians’; another will have nothing to do with such matters. Nevertheless the Being whom we may call Michael, and who belongs to the Hierarchy of the Archangels—whatever name we may give him—this Being does exist. There are many Beings of the same hierarchical rank, but this particular Being who is known esoterically by the name of Michael is as superior to his companions as the Sun is to the planets—Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, and so on. He—Michael—is the most eminent, the most significant Being in the Hierarchy of the Archangels. The ancients called him the ‘Countenance of God’. As a man reveals himself by his gestures and the expression of his countenance, so in ancient mythology Jehovah was understood through Michael. Jehovah made himself known to the Hebrew Initiates in such a way that they realised something they had never, with their ordinary powers of comprehension, previously been able to grasp, namely, that Michael was verily the countenance of Jehovah. Hence the ancient Hebrews spoke of Jehovah-Michael: Jehovah the unapproachable, unattainable by man, just as a person's thoughts, his sorrows and cares, lie hidden behind his outward physiognomy. Michael was the outer manifestation of Jahve or Jehovah, just as in a human being the manifestation of his Ego is to be recognised in his brow and countenance. We can therefore say that Jehovah revealed himself through Michael, one of the Archangels. Knowledge of the Being described above as Jahve was not confined to the ancient Hebrews, but was far more widespread. And if we investigate the last five hundred years before the Christian era, we find that throughout this whole period revelation was given through Michael. This revelation can be discovered in another form in Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, in Greek philosophy, even in the ancient Greek tragedies, during the five centuries before the event of Golgotha. When with the help of occult knowledge we endeavour to shed light upon what actually took place, we can say that Christ-Jehovah is the Being who has accompanied mankind through the whole course of evolution. But during the successive epochs Christ-Jehovah always reveals Himself through different Beings of the same rank as Michael. He chooses a different countenance, as it were, to turn towards mankind. And according as one or the other Being from the Hierarchy of the Archangels is chosen to be the mediator between Christ-Jehovah and humanity, widely different ideas and conceptions, impulses of feeling, impulses of will, are revealed to men. The whole period which surrounded the Mystery of Golgotha can be described as the Age of Michael, and Michael may be regarded as the messenger of Jehovah. During the period which preceded the Mystery of Golgotha by almost five hundred years and continued for several decades afterwards, the leading form of culture bore the stamp of Michael. Through his power he poured into mankind what was destined to be imparted at that time. And then came other Beings who equally were the Inspirers of mankind from the spiritual worlds—other Beings of the rank of the Archangels. As has been said, Michael was the greatest, the mightiest, among them. Therefore an Age of Michael is always the most significant, or one of the most significant, that can occur in the evolution of humanity. For the Ages of the different Archangels are repeated; and a fact of supreme importance is that every such Archangel gives to the Age its fundamental character. These Archangels are the leaders of the different nations and peoples, but because they become leaders of particular epochs, and because they were also leaders in bygone Ages, they have become in a certain sense also the leaders of mankind as a whole.1 As regards Michael, a change has taken place; for Michael himself has attained a further stage of development. This is of great importance, for according to occult knowledge we have again, within the last few decades, entered an epoch inspired by the same Being who inspired the Age during which the Mystery of Golgotha took place. Since the end of the nineteenth century, Michael may again be regarded as the leader. To understand this we must consider the Mystery of Golgotha from another point of view and ask ourselves: What, in this Mystery, is of chief importance? The fact of supreme importance is that the Being who bears the name of Christ passed through the Mystery of Golgotha and through the gate of death at that time. Never, throughout the evolution of the earth, could one speak of the Mystery of Golgotha without considering the fact that the Christ passed through death—that is the very core of the Mystery. And now think of the laws of Nature. A great deal can be understood by studying them and in future time much more will be learnt, but we must be mere dreamers if we do not realise that the understanding of life as such is an ideal attainable only through actual development, never through the mere study of these laws. True, there are dreamers today who believe that through scientific knowledge a fundamental understanding of the principle of life will eventually be achieved, but this will never be the case. In the course of the earth's evolution many more laws will be discovered through the use of the senses, but the principle of life as such can never be revealed to the world in this way. Hence life appears to us to be something which here on the earth is inaccessible to science, and just as life is inaccessible to human knowledge so is death to the true knowledge that is attained in the super-sensible worlds. In the super-sensible worlds there is no death—we can die only on the earth, in the physical world—and none of the Beings of an hierarchical rank higher than that of man have any knowledge of death; they know only different states of consciousness. Their consciousness can for a time be so diminished that it resembles our earthly condition of sleep, but it can wake out of this sleep. There is no death in the spiritual worlds, there is only change of consciousness; and the greatest fear by which man is possessed—the fear of death—cannot be felt by one who has risen into the super-sensible worlds after death. The moment he passes through the gates of death his condition is one of intense sensibility, but he can only exist in either a clear or a dimmed state of consciousness. That a human being in the super-sensible world could be dead would be inconceivable. There is no death for any of the Beings belonging to the higher Hierarchies, with the one exception of Christ. But in order that a super-sensible Being such as Christ should be able to pass through death, He must first have descended to the earth. And the fact of immeasurable significance in the Mystery of Golgotha is that a Being who in the realm of His own will could never have experienced death, should have descended to the earth in order to undergo an experience connected inherently with man. Thereby that inner bond was created between earthly mankind and Christ, in that this Being passed through death in order to share this destiny with man. As I have already emphasised, that death was of the greatest possible importance, above all for the present evolutionary period of the earth. A Being of unique nature who until then was only cosmic, was united with the earth's evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, through Christ's death. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, He entered into the very process of the earth's evolution. This had not been the case before that event, for He then belonged to the cosmos alone; but through the Mystery of Golgotha, He descended out of the cosmos and was incorporated on earth. Since then, He lives on the earth, is united with the earth in such a way that He lives within the souls' of men and with them experiences life on the earth. Thus the whole period before the Mystery of Golgotha was only a time of preparation in the evolution of the earth. The Mystery of Golgotha imparted to the earth its meaning and purpose. When the Mystery of Golgotha took place the earthly body of Jesus of Nazareth was given over to the elements of the earth, and from that time onwards Christ has been united with the spiritual sphere of the earth and lives within it. As already said, it is extremely difficult to characterise the Mystery of Golgotha because there is no standard with which it can be compared. Nevertheless we will endeavour to approach it from still another point of view. For three years after the Baptism in the Jordan, Christ lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth as a man among men of the earth. This may be called the earthly manifestation of Christ in a physical, human body. How, then, does Christ manifest Himself since the time when, in the Mystery of Golgotha, He laid aside the physical body? We must naturally think of the Christ Being as a stupendously lofty Being, but although He is so sublime, He was nevertheless able, during the three years after the Baptism, to express Himself in a human body. But in what form does He reveal Himself since that time? No longer in the physical body, for that was given over to the physical earth and is now part of it. To those who through the study of occult science have developed the power to see into these things, it will be revealed that this Being can be recognised in one belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angels. Just as the Saviour of the world manifested Himself during the three years after the Baptism in a human body—in spite of His sublimity—so, since that time, He manifests Himself directly as an Angel, as a spiritual Being belonging to the hierarchical rank immediately above that of mankind. As such, He could always be found by those who were clairvoyant, as such, He has always been united with evolution. Just as truly as Christ, when incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, was more than man, so is the Christ Being more than an Angel—that is His outer form only. But the fact that a mighty, sublime Being descended from the spiritual worlds and dwelt for three years in a human body also includes the fact that during that time this Being Himself progressed a stage further in His development. When such a Being takes on a human or an angelic form, He Himself progresses. And it is this that we have indicated in speaking of the evolution of Christ-Jehovah. Christ has reached the stage where He reveals Himself henceforth not as a human being, not through His reflection only, not through the name of Jehovah, but directly. And the great difference in all the teachings and all the wisdom that have streamed into the evolution of the earth since the Mystery of Golgotha, is that through the coming of Michael—the Spirit Michael—to the earth, through his inspiration, man could gradually begin to understand all that the Christ Impulse, all that the Mystery of Golgotha, signifies. But in that earlier time Michael was the messenger of Jehovah, the reflection of the light of Christ; he was not yet the messenger of Christ Himself. Michael inspired mankind for several centuries, for almost five hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha, as was indicated in the old Mysteries, by Plato and so forth. Soon, however, after the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place and Christ had united Himself with the evolution of the earth, the direct impulse of Michael ceased. At the time when the old documents we possess in the form of the Gospels were written—as I have said in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact—Michael himself could no longer inspire mankind; but through his companions among the Archangels men were inspired in such a way that much soul-force was received unconsciously through inspiration. The writers of the Gospel had no clear occult knowledge themselves, for the inspiration of Michael came to an end shortly after the Mystery of Golgotha. The other Archangels, the companions of Michael, could not inspire mankind in such a way as to make the Mystery of Golgotha comprehensible. This accounts for the divergent inspirations of the various Christian teachings. Much in these teachings was inspired by the companions of Michael; the teachings were not inspired by Michael himself but bear the same relation to his inspirations as do the planets to the mighty sun. Only now, in our own age, is there again such an influence, a direct inspiration from Michael. Preparation for this direct inspiration from Michael has been going on since the sixteenth century. At that time it was the Archangel nearest to Michael who gave mankind the inspiration that has led to the great achievements of natural science in modern times. This natural science is not attributable to the inspiration of Michael but to that of one of his companions, Gabriel. The tendency of this scientific inspiration is to create a science, a world-picture that promotes understanding of the material world alone, and is connected with the physical brain. Within the last few decades Michael has taken the place of this Inspirer of science, and in the next few centuries will give to the world something that in a spiritual sense will be equally important—indeed more important, because it is more spiritual—immeasurably more important than the physical science which has advanced from stage to stage since the sixteenth century. Just as his companion Archangel endowed the world with science, so will Michael in the future endow mankind with spiritual knowledge, of which we are now only at the very beginning. Just as Michael was sent as the messenger of Jehovah, as the reflection of Christ, five hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha in order to give that era its keynote, just as then he was still the messenger of Jehovah, so now, for our own epoch, Michael has become the messenger of Christ Himself. Just as in the times of the ancient Hebrews, times which were a direct preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha, the Initiates among the Hebrews could turn to Michael as the outer revelation of Jahve or Jehovah, so we now are able to turn to Michael—who from being the messenger of Jehovah has become the messenger of Christ—in order to receive from him during the next few centuries increasing spiritual revelations that will shed more and more light upon the Mystery of Golgotha. What happened two thousand years ago could only be made known to the world through the various Christian sects and its profundities can only be unveiled in the twentieth century when, instead of science, spiritual knowledge—our gift from Michael—will come into its own. This should fill our hearts with deep feelings for spiritual reality in our present time. We shall be able to realise that within the last few decades a door has opened through which understanding can come. Michael can give us new spiritual light which may be regarded as a transformation of the light that was given through him at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha; and the men of our day can receive that light. If we can realise this we can grasp the significance of the new age that is now issuing from our own; we can be aware of the dawn of a spiritual revelation that is to come in the next few centuries into the life of humanity on the earth. Indeed, because men have become freer than in former times, we shall be able, through our own wills, to progress to the stage where this revelation may be received. Reference shall now be made to the event in the higher worlds which has led to this altered state of affairs, to this time of a renewal of the Mystery of Golgotha. When we look back we remember what came to pass at the Baptism by John in the Jordan, when Christ revealed Himself in a human form, visible on the earth among mankind. Further, we will fill our souls with the thought of how, as regards His outer form, Christ then united Himself with the Hierarchy of the Angels and has since that time lived invisibly in the sphere of the earth. Let us remember what has been said—that in the invisible worlds there is no death. Christ Himself, because He descended to our world, passed through a death similar to that of human beings. When He again became a spiritual Being, He still retained the remembrance of His death; but as a Being of the rank of the Angels in which He continued to manifest Himself outwardly, He could experience only a diminution of consciousness. Through that which since the 16th century had become necessary for the evolution of the earth, namely the triumph of science at higher and higher levels, something which has significance also for the invisible worlds entered into the whole evolution of mankind. With the triumph of science, materialistic and agnostic sentiments of greater intensity than hitherto arose in mankind. In earlier times too there had been materialistic tendencies but not the intense materialism that has prevailed since the sixteenth century. More and more, as men passed into the spiritual worlds through the gate of death, they bore with them the outcome of their materialistic ideas on the earth. After the sixteenth century more and more seeds of earthly materialism were carried over, and these seeds developed in a particular way. Christ came into the old Hebrew race and was led to His death within it. The angelic Being, who since then has been the outer form assumed by Christ, suffered an extinction of consciousness in the course of the intervening nineteen centuries as a result of the opposing materialistic forces that had been brought into the spiritual worlds by materialistic human souls who had passed through the gate of death. This onset of unconsciousness in the spiritual worlds will lead to the resurrection of the Christ-consciousness in the souls of men on earth between birth and death in the twentieth century. In a certain sense it may therefore be said that from the twentieth century onwards, what has been lost by mankind in the way of consciousness will arise again for clairvoyant vision. At first only a few, and then an ever-increasing number of human beings in the twentieth century will be capable of perceiving the manifestation of the Etheric Christ—that is to say, Christ in the form of an Angel. It was for the sake of humanity that there was what may be called an extinction of consciousness in the worlds immediately above our earthly world, in which Christ has been visible in the period between the Mystery of Golgotha and the present day. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha something took place in a little-known corner of Palestine, something that was the greatest event in the whole evolution of humanity, but of which little notice was taken by the people of that day. If such a thing could be, need we be astonished when we hear what conditions were like during the nineteenth century, when those who since the sixteenth century had passed through death, confronted Christ? The ‘seeds of earthly materialism’ which were increasingly carried into the spiritual world by the souls who went through the portal of death since the sixteenth century, and which caused more and more darkness, built the ‘black sphere of materialism.’ Christ took this black sphere into being in the sense of the Manichean principle for the purpose of transforming it. For the angel being in which the Christ had manifested himself since the Mystery of Golgotha the black sphere caused a ‘death by suffocation.’ This sacrifice by Christ in the nineteenth century is comparable to the sacrifice on the physical plane through the Mystery of Golgotha and can be called the second crucifixion of Christ on the etheric plane. This spiritual death by suffocation, which brought about the extinction of the consciousness of the angelic Being is a repetition of the Mystery of Golgotha in those worlds that lie immediately behind our world. It took place to make possible a revival of the Christ consciousness which was earlier hidden in human souls on earth. The revival becomes clairvoyant vision of humanity in the twentieth century. Thus the Christ-consciousness may be united with the earthly consciousness of men from our time on into the future; for the dying of the Christ-consciousness in the sphere of the Angels in the nineteenth century signifies the resurrection of the direct consciousness of Christ—that is to say, Christ's life will be felt in the souls of men more and more as a direct personal experience from the twentieth century onwards. Just as the few who once were able to read the signs of the times and in contemplating the Mystery of Golgotha were able to realise that Christ had descended from the spiritual worlds to live on the earth and undergo death in order that through His death the substances incorporated into Him might pass into the earth, so are we able to perceive that in certain worlds lying immediately behind our own a sort of spiritual death, a suspension of consciousness, took place. This was a renewal of the Mystery of Golgotha, in order to bring about an awakening of the previously hidden Christ-consciousness within the souls of men on the earth. Since the Mystery of Golgotha many human beings have been able to proclaim the Name of Christ, and from this twentieth century onwards an ever-increasing number will be able to make known the knowledge of the Christ that is given in Anthroposophy. Out of their own experience they will be able to proclaim Him. Twice already Christ has been crucified: once physically, in the physical world at the beginning of our era, and a second time spiritually, in the nineteenth century, in the way described above. It could be said that mankind experienced the resurrection of His body in that former time and will experience the resurrection of His consciousness from the twentieth century onwards. The brief indications I have been able to give you will gradually make their way into the souls of men, and the mediator, the messenger, will be Michael, who is now the ambassador of Christ. Just as he once led human souls towards an understanding of Christ's life descending from heaven to the earth, so he is now preparing mankind to experience emergence of the Christ-consciousness from the realm of the unknown into the realm of the known. And just as at the time of the earthly life of Christ the greater number of His contemporaries were incapable of believing what a stupendous event had taken place in the evolution of the earth, so, in our own day, the outer world is striving to increase the power of materialism, and will continue for a long time to regard what has been spoken of today as so much fantasy, dreaming, perhaps even downright folly. This too will be the verdict on the truth concerning Michael, who at the present time is beginning to reveal Christ anew. Nevertheless many human beings will recognize the new dawn that is rising and during the coming centuries will pour its forces into the souls of men like a sun—for Michael can always be likened to a sun. And even if many people fail to recognize this new Michael revelation, it will spread through humanity nevertheless. That is what may be said today about the relation of the Mystery of Golgotha which took place at the beginning of our era and the Mystery of Golgotha as it can now be understood. From time to time other revelations will be given and for these our minds must be kept open. Should we not be aware that it would be selfish to keep these feelings exclusively for our own inner satisfaction? Let us rather feel that the solemn duty we have recognized through Anthroposophy is to make ourselves into willing instruments for such revelations; and although we are only a small community in mankind which is endeavoring to comprehend this new truth about the Mystery of Golgotha, to grasp this new revelation of Michael, we are nevertheless building up a new power that does not in the least depend upon our belief in this revelation but simply and solely upon the truth itself. Then we shall realize that only a few of us are adequately prepared to declare the following to the world, in so far as the world is willing to listen. From now onwards there is a new revelation of Christ; we will be ready to acknowledge it; we will belong to the few who will help it to become more powerful, to become lasting; we will base ourselves upon the inner strength of such a revelation, so that it may spread among mankind, for this knowledge will gradually be shared by all. This is what we call wisdom and some may call folly. To stand firm we need only remind ourselves that this is the time of the second Michael revelation, and remember what was said by one of the early Initiates at the time of the former Michael revelation: What often seems folly to man, is wisdom in the eyes of God. Let us try to draw strength from feelings and spiritual knowledge which must in many respects seem folly to the outer world. Let us have the courage to realize that what appears to be folly to those who depend upon the senses for knowledge, to us may be wisdom, light, and clearer understanding of the super-sensible worlds towards which we will strive with all the power of our souls and of our conviction.
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| 228. Man As A Picture of The Living Spirit
02 Sep 1923, London Translated by George Adams Rudolf Steiner |
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| 228. Man As A Picture of The Living Spirit
02 Sep 1923, London Translated by George Adams Rudolf Steiner |
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After the excellent conference at Ilkley and summer school at Penmaenmawr, it gives me heartfelt pleasure to be able now to give this lecture at our London centre. I may remind you first of what I said in former lectures here.1 Man, in accomplishing his work from day to day and from year to year, works in the physical body which is given to him upon Earth, and through which he is physically linked with all earthly life. So long as we contemplate what surrounds us here in this physical existence upon Earth, including that which we ourselves contribute to if, we shall of course fix our attention mainly on the times we spend in waking life. Yet as I said in those earlier lectures, that which goes on for man during the times when he is fast asleep is still more important for his whole existence—even for what he is and does in earthly life. When we look back in memory from any given point in our life, we always exclude the times we spent asleep; we join the things we did and underwent by day and while awake, as though they were to form a continuous whole. Yet none of this would be possible without the intervening periods of sleep. Above all, if we want to know the true being of man, we must pay attention to these periods of sleep. A man might easily say that he knows nothing of what goes on during sleep. To ordinary consciousness this may seem true, but in reality it is not so. For if we had to look back into a life uninterrupted by sleep, we should be mere automata. True, we should still be spiritual beings, but we should be automata. Even more important than the daily periods of sleep throughout our life are the times we spent in sleep as very little children. We retain the good effects of those early periods of sleep all through our life; in a sense, we only supplement them by what accrues to us spiritually night by night during the rest of life. If we came into the world as little children wide-awake and never slept, we should, once more, be automata, in this automatic state we should be unable to do anything consciously at all. We should not even recognize what came about through us, as our own concern. We may believe we have no memory at all of what transpires during sleep, but even that is not quite true. When we look back in memory, seeing the things we experienced while awake and omitting the periods of sleep, the fact is that we see a void, a nothing, in the intervals of time when we were sleeping. It is as though you were looking at a white wall where at one place the white paint was lacking; you see a black circle. Or there might be a hole with no light behind it; you see the empty hole inasmuch as you see darkness. So do you see the darkness when you look back on your own life. The times you spent asleep appear as darkness in the midst of life. And in reality it is to these darknesses of life that you say ‘I.’ If you did not see the darknesses you would have no consciousness of ‘I.’ You owe the ability to say ‘I’ to yourself, not to the fact that you were active every day from morning until night, but to the fact that you were also sleeping. The Ego as we know it in this earthly life is, to begin with, darkness of life, emptiness, even non-existence. If we consider our life truly, we shall not say that we owe our consciousness of self to the day but rather that we owe it to the night. This is the truth. It is the night which makes us real human beings and no mere automata. Indeed if we look back into earlier epochs of human evolution upon Earth, though he was no mere automaton even then, for he already had certain differences between his waking and sleeping states, yet inasmuch as he was more or less aware of his sleeping states even in ordinary waking life, man's earthly life and action was far more automatic than it is today. Truth is, we never bring our real and inmost Ego with us from the spiritual world into the physical and earthly; we leave it in the spiritual world. Before we came down into earthly life it was in the spiritual world, and it is there again between our falling asleep and our awakening. It stays there always, and if by day—in the present form of human consciousness—we call ourselves an ‘I,’ this word is but an indication of something which is not here in the physical world at all; it only has its picture in this world. We do not see ourselves aright if we say: ‘Here am I, this robust and real man, standing upon Earth; here am I with my inmost being.’ We only see ourselves aright if we say: ‘Our true being is in the spiritual world, and what is here of us on Earth is but a picture—an image of our true being.’ It is entirely true if we regard what is here on Earth, not as the real man himself, but as the picture of the real man. I will now show how you can see this picture-character of man more clearly. Let us imagine ourselves asleep. The Ego is away from the physical and etheric body; the astral body too is away. Now it is the Ego which works in the blood of man and in his movements. In sleep the movements cease, inasmuch as the Ego is away; the blood however goes on working, and yet the Ego is not there. We need only think of the physical body and we must ask ourselves: What happens to it while we are asleep? Something must still be living and working in the blood, even as the Ego lives and works in it by day. Likewise the astral body, living as it does in the whole breathing process, leaves it by night, and yet the breathing goes on. Here again, something must be there within the breathing process, working in it even as the astral body does in waking life. Thus every time we go to sleep, with our astral body we forsake those inner organs which are the organs of respiration, and with our Ego we forsake the pulsating forces of our blood. What then becomes of them by night? The answer is that while the man lies asleep in bed, Beings of the adjoining Hierarchy enter into the pulsating forces of the blood from which his Ego has departed. Angels, Archangels and Archai are then indwelling the self-same organs in which the human Ego dwells in waking life by day. Moreover in the breathing organs which we have forsaken inasmuch as the astral body is outside by night, Beings of the next higher Hierarchy—Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes—are living then. Thus when we go to sleep at night, setting forth with our Ego and astral body, leaving behind the body of our waking life, Angels, Archangels and higher spiritual Beings enter into us and animate our organs while we are outside—until we re-awaken. And what is more, as to our ether-body, even in our day-waking life we are not able to fulfill what is needed there. The Beings of the highest Hierarchy—Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones—have to indwell this ether-body even while we are awake; they remain there always. Lastly the physical body; if we ourselves had to achieve all the great and wonderful processes taking place there, we should not merely do it very badly; we could not set about it at all. Here we are utterly helpless. What outer anatomy ascribes to the physical body could not even move a single atom of it. Powers of quite another order are required here, namely none other than those that have been known since primeval times as the supreme Trinity—the Powers of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They—the essential Trinity—indwell the physical body of man. Therefore in truth, throughout our earthly life our physical body is not our own. If it depended on us, it could not go on at all. It is, as was said of old, the true Temple of the Godhead—of the Divine threefold Being. Likewise our ether-body is the dwelling-place of the Hierarchy of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. They have to help in caring for the organs which are assigned to the etheric body. As to those physical and etheric organs on the other hand which are deserted every night by the astral body, they are provided for by the second Hierarchy—Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai. Lastly, the organs forsaken during sleep by the human Ego have to be cared for in the night by Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. There is a constant activity within the human being, proceeding not only from man himself. Only in waking life he lives in this bodily nature, so to speak, as a subtenant. For at the same time it is the Temple and the dwelling-place of spiritual Beings—the Beings of the Hierarchies. Bearing all this in mind, we only see this outer form of man aright if we admit: It is a picture—a picture of the working-together of all the Hierarchies. They are within it. Look at this human head in all the detail of its form; look at the rest of the body in its human form. I do not look at it truly if I describe it as a reality—as a real being, thus or thus. I only look at it truly if I say: It is a picture of an invisible, super-sensible working of all the Hierarchies together. Only when things are seen in this way can one speak truly and in detail of what is commonly propounded in a rather abstract manner. The physical world is not the true reality, so it is said; it is a maya—the true reality is behind it. Yet such a statement does not help us much. It is too general, as if one were to say: Flowers are growing in the meadow. Just as this statement will only be of use if you know what kind of flowers, so too the knowledge of the higher world can only be applied in practice if one is able to point out in detail how it is working in the outer picture, maya, or reflection, which is its physical, sense-perceptible manifestation. Man therefore, seen in his totality, both in his earthly life by day and in his earthly life by night, is related not only to his physical and visible environment on Earth but to a world of higher spiritual being. Through all the kingdoms of Nature upon Earth—mineral, plant, animal kingdom—there works what we may call a lower spiritual realm. So too throughout the world of stars there works a higher spiritual realm—a realm which also influences man. Looked at in his totality, man is related through his physical existence to plants and animals, to water and to air; so too, he is related spiritually to the world of stars. The latter too is but a picture, a revelation of the underlying spiritual reality. It is the Beings of the Hierarchies who are really there. When he looks up to the stars, man in reality is looking up to the spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies. That which is raying down upon him is but a kind of symbolic light which they send to him of their presence, so that here too, even in physical life, he may have some indication of the living Spirit which in reality fills the entire Universe. Just as on Earth we may long to know this mountain or that river, this animal or yonder plant, so should we feel a longing to get to know the starry world in its true being. In its true being it is spiritual. In Penmaenmawr I tried to tell a little of the real spiritual nature of the Moon, such as it shines upon us from the cosmic spaces in the present phase of earthy evolution. When we look up to the Moon, we never really see the Moon itself; we see at most a scanty indication of it where the illuminated crescent is continued. What we are seeing is the reflected sunlight, not the Moon itself. So altogether, only the cosmic forces thrown back or reflected by the Moon reach us upon Earth, never what lives within the Moon itself. That it reflects the Sun's light to the Earth is but a part, nay, the smallest part of what pertains to the Moon. All physical and spiritual impulses that reach it from the great Universe, the Moon reflects to us like a mirror. And as we never see through to the other side of a mirror, so do we never see the interior of the Moon, where, in effect, there lives a spiritual population among whom are very high guiding Beings. These guiding Powers, with the rest of the Lunar population, were once upon a time on Earth, whence they withdrew to the Moon more than 15,000 years ago. Before that time the Moon looked even physically different. It did not merely reflect the sunlight to the Earth but mingled in the sunlight something of its own essence. This is however not the point which interests us now. What does concern us at this moment is the fact that in the present epoch the Moon is there like a fortress in the Universe—a cosmic fortress within which lives a population which fulfilled its human destinies more than 15,000 years ago, and, with the spiritual guides of humanity, withdrew thereafter to the Moon. For there were once upon a time on Earth very advanced Beings—Beings who did not put on physical human bodies as do the men of today. They lived rather in etheric bodies, yet for the men who lived on Earth at that time they were the great leaders and educators. It was these mighty teachers and educators who brought to mankind, long, long ago, the primeval wisdom—the original and sublime wisdom-teachings of mankind, whereof the Vedas, the Vedanta, are but a distant echo. They now are living in the Moon and only radiating spiritually to the Earth what issues from the Universe outside the Moon. Something of the erstwhile Moon-forces has indeed remained behind on Earth, namely the physical forces of reproduction in man and animal; but that is all. Only the most external and physical element remained behind when at a certain time of old Atlantis the great teachers of mankind migrated to the Moon, which had itself withdrawn from the Earth long before. Therefore when we look upward to the Moon we only see it truly if we realize that there are lofty spiritual Beings there—Beings who were once upon a time on Earth and who now make it their task to ray down to Earth not what they bear within themselves, but the forces, both physical and spiritual, which they reflect and thus transmit from the great Universe. Whoever seeks Initiation-wisdom in present time, must among other things seek to receive into this Initiation-wisdom what the Beings of the Moon with their sublime spiritual forces have to tell. Now this is only one of the ‘cities’ in the great Universe—one colony, one settlement among many. Others are no less important, notably those belonging to our planetary system. And as concerns ourselves—as concerns humanity on Earth—the other pole, the opposite extreme to the Moon, is the population of Saturn. The Saturn population too, as you may gather from my Occult Science, was once united with the Earth, yet in a very different way from the population of the Moon. The Saturn-beings are connected with the earthly life in quite another way. They reflect nothing from cosmic space. Even the physical sunlight is only just reflected on to Earth by Saturn. Saturn like a lonely recluse wanders slowly round the Sun, shedding very little light. What outer Astronomy can tell us about Saturn is but a very small portion of the truth. The significance of Saturn for humanity on Earth is made manifest, if only in a picture, every night when man is sleeping, and it is realized more fully between death and new birth when man is going through the spiritual world—and therefore too through the world of stars—as I explained in a lecture here not long ago. True, in the present phase of evolution man does not meet Saturn directly; yet by a roundabout way—which we need not go into now—he does come into contact with the Saturn-beings. Within Saturn in effect, Beings of high perfection, very sublime Beings live—Beings who are in near relation to Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones are as it were the Beings nearest to them—nearest among the Hierarchies. The sublime Beings, whom we may call the Saturn population, do not ray down to Earth or give to men from Saturn anything that can be found in the external, physical world. But they preserve the cosmic memory, the cosmic record. All facts and all events, both physical and spiritual, which the planetary system has undergone, all that the Beings within our planetary system have ever experienced—the Saturn-beings faithfully preserve it in memory. In recollection they are forever looking back on the entire life of the planetary system. Even as we look back in memory upon the limited range of our earthly life, so do the Saturn-beings—in their collective activity—cherish the cosmic memory of what the planetary system as a whole and all the beings in it have undergone. For man himself, the spiritual forces living in this cosmic memory are present, inasmuch as he comes into relation with the Saturn-beings between death and a new birth, and also—more in picture-form—every night. Thereby the spiritual forces proceeding from the Saturn-beings—forces in which the deepest inner life of the planetary system is contained—are also working within man. Even as memory is our own deepest inner life on Earth, so too what lives in Saturn represents the innermost and deepest ‘cosmic I’ of the whole planetary system. Inasmuch as these influences are also there in man, many things are going on in human life, of the significance of which we are for the most part quite unconscious—which none the less play the greatest imaginable part in our lives. What we are conscious of, is after all only a very small portion of our life. Say for example there was an incisive moment, an all-important event in your life. You met another human being with whom you then went on through life together; or it was some other event, essential to your future life. If you look back in time from this event, you will be struck by the fact that something like a plan was leading you towards it, beginning long before. Something that happened, say, between your thirtieth and fiftieth year—follow it backward through your life and you will very likely find: ‘I entered on the path leading to this event when I was ten or twelve years old; all that then followed was leading up to it, so that I landed there.’ Elderly people, looking back contemplatively upon their life, will find that it all works out. They will be able to say: ‘There was a subconscious thread running through it all. Unconscious forces were impelling me to the decisive events of my life.’ These are the Saturn forces—forces implanted in us through our relation, such as has been indicated, to the ‘inner population’ of Saturn. While therefore, of the Moon, only the physical forces of reproduction are there on Earth (for these are Lunar forces, once again, which remained at the Moon's departure), the very highest forces, namely the cosmic moral forces, are on Earth through Saturn. The source of cosmic equity, the great ‘restorer of the balance’ for all that happens upon Earth, is Saturn. And if the Moon-forces, now upon Earth, have to do only with heredity—heredity through father, mother and so on—the Saturn forces enter into human life through all that lives in Karma, from incarnation to incarnation. In this respect the other planets are intermediate between the two—they mediate between the physical upon the one hand and the highest ethical upon the other. Jupiter, Mars and so on are there between Moon and Saturn. They in their several ways mediate what Moon and Saturn at the uttermost extremes bring into human life—the Moon inasmuch as its spiritual Beings have withdrawn, leaving behind with the earthly realm only the physical aspect, the physical force of propagation; and Saturn inasmuch as it represents the moral justice of the Universe in its highest aspect. These two are working together in that the other planets are there between them, waving the one into the other. Karma through Saturn, physical heredity through the Moon: these in their interrelation show how man upon his way from earthly life to earthly life is connected with the Earth itself and with the great Universe beyond the Earth. As you will readily understand, my dear Friends, the science of today, fixing attention upon the earthly life alone, can only tell about a very little part of man. It tells a lot about the forces of heredity, yet even here it fails to see that these are Lunar forces left behind on Earth. It fails to relate them to the cosmic activities, transcending the mere earthly life, to which they properly belong. And it knows nothing at all about the destiny of Karma with which this earthly life is infused. Yet in reality, even as physical man is pulsated through and through by the living blood, so are the Beings bearing within them the vast memory of the planetary system with all its cosmic happenings, pulsating through man's Karma upon Earth. Looking into our own inner life, we must admit: We are true human beings only inasmuch as we have memory. Looking out into the planetary system with all its physical and spiritual happenings, and reaching upward to Initiation-science, we must equally admit: This planetary system would be void of inner life were it not for the inhabitants of Saturn preserving through the ages the memory, the cosmic past thereof, and also pouring ever down into mankind the forces springing from this preservation of the cosmic past, whereby all human beings are immersed in a living spiritual-moral nexus of causes and effects leading from earthly life to earthly life. In earthly life, as to his conscious action, man is confined—in his relation to other men—within narrow limits. But if he takes into account what he experiences between death and new birth, there his relation to other human beings, who like himself will be discarnate, living no longer in physical bodies, reaches far wider circles. True, between death and re-birth he is at one time more in the neighbourhood of the Lunar influences and at another more in the neighbourhood of those of Saturn, Mars and so on. Yet through the cosmic spaces the one kind of planetary force interpenetrates the other. As upon Earth we work from man to man across the narrow confines of terrestrial space, so between death and new birth there is a working from planet to planet. The Universe then becomes the scene of man's activity and of the mutual relations between men. There between death and new birth, maybe the one departed soul is in the realm of Venus while the other is in Jupiter's domain; yet the interactions between them are far more intimate and tender than is possible within the narrow confines of earthly life. And even as the cosmic distances are called into play, to be the scene of action of the relations between human souls between death and new birth, so too the Beings of the Hierarchies are there, working throughout the cosmic spaces. We have to tell not only of the working of the several kinds of Beings—say, the inhabitants of Venus, or of Mars. We have to tell of the relations between the populations of Mars and Venus—a never-ending interaction, a constant to and fro of spiritual forces between the population of Mars and that of Venus amid the Universe. This which goes on in the Universe between the populations of Mars and Venus—this everliving interplay in the spiritual Cosmos, the deeds of Mars and Venus fertilizing one another—all this again has its relation to man. Even as the Saturn-memory is related to human Karma, and the physical Lunar forces, left behind on Earth, to the external force of reproduction, so is the hidden spiritual interaction between Mars and Venus related to what appears in earthly life as human speech. For we could never speak by virtue of physical forces alone. It is the eternal being of man, going on from earthly life to earthly life, living in effect between death and new birth, which radiates into this outer world the gift of speech. Whilst as a spiritual being we are on our way from death to a new birth, we come into the sphere of action of the mutually fertilizing life which goes on between Mars and Venus—between the spiritual populations of Mars and Venus. Their spiritual forces, raying to and fro, co-operating, enter also into us ourselves upon our way from death to a new birth. This too is reproduced on Earth as in a physical picture, out of the innermost being of man, entering into the organs of speech and song. Never should we be able to speak through these organs if they were not physically kindled by the forces we receive into the depths of our being between death and new birth—forces derived from what is ever streaming to and fro in the Cosmos between Mars and Venus. Thus in our daily life and action we are under the influence of the same spiritual forces, to the outward signs of which we look up with awe and wonder when we look out into the starry heavens. He alone is able to look up with inner truth who knows that in the stars, raying down to us from cosmic space, are to be seen the signs and characters of the great cosmic writing. For they are but the written signs of the great Universe—of the eternal, all-embracing spiritual life and process which also lives within us and of which we, once more, are but the image. Long, long ago, in an instinctive atavistic clairvoyance, mankind had vision and perception of these things. The vision faded. If he had kept it, man could never have grown free. The ancient vision was therefore darkened. In compensation, the Mystery of Golgotha came into earthly life. A sublime Being from the population of the Sun came to Earth. He could not, it is true, bring to mankind all at once a consciousness of what is going on in yonder world of stars, but He brought with Him the forces whereby this consciousness can gradually be achieved. Therefore it happened that to begin with, while the Mystery of Golgotha was taking place, a Gnostic wisdom was still there, inherited from olden time, through which the Mystery was understood This wisdom too then faded out; during the fourth century after Christ it vanished altogether. Yet the spiritual force which had come to Earth through Christ remained. Man can now call this force to life within him, if he once opens his eyes to the reality of spiritual worlds, as he can do through the communications of modern spiritual Science. How much is yet to come to the humanity of modern time through looking thus once more to spiritual worlds! It is a striking fact: yonder in Asia, in more than one Asiatic, Oriental country, are living those who still preserve some relic of the old instinctive wisdom. They are the educated people, the true scholars, in the Oriental sense. No doubt this remnant of an ancient wisdom no longer belongs, in the best sense of the word, to our time; it needs to be replaced by a more conscious wisdom. And yet these bearers of an ancient and instinctive wisdom look down with not a little contempt upon the people of Europe and America. They are persuaded that their ancient Oriental wisdom even in its decadence, even the remaining rags and tatters of it, are preferable to the kind of knowledge of which Western civilization is so inordinately proud. Hence it is interesting to see a book recently published by a Cingalese, an Indian of Ceylon, The Culture of Souls among the Western Nations, wherein the author says to the Europeans, in effect: Since the Middle Ages your knowledge of the Christ has died out. No longer have you any real knowledge of the Christ, for he alone who can look up into the spiritual world can have real knowledge of the Christ. Hence you must first let teachers come to you from India, from Asia, to teach you Christianity again. You can actually read it in this book. A Cingalese Indian says to the Europeans: Teachers must come to you from Asia; they will be able to tell you what Christ really is. Your European teachers no longer know it. Since the decline of the Middle Ages you have lost your knowledge of the Christ. Yet in reality it is for Europeans and Americans themselves once more to summon courage to look into the spiritual worlds from which the knowledge of the Christ, the wisdom of the Christ can be regained. Christ is the Being who came down from spiritual worlds into the earthly life. Therefore in His true inwardness He can only be understood in the light of the Spirit. Upon this way it is also necessary for man to learn to look upon himself as a picture—an image of the spiritual Beings, spiritual realities and activities, on Earth. And he can do so best of all by permeating himself with such ideas and perceptions as I presented to you at the beginning of this lecture. Amid his conscious experiences in the stream of time he looks into the emptiness. He becomes conscious that his true Ego never descends from the spiritual world; that in the physical world he is but a picture. The real ‘I’ is not here in the physical world at all. He sees, as it were, a hole in time—a seeming darkness—and it is to this that he says ‘I’. Man should therefore become aware of the deep significance of this fact. When he looks back and remembers his past life, he must admit: I see in memory the experiences I underwent from day to day, but there is ever and again a hole, a gap of darkness. It is this darkness which in my ordinary consciousness I call ‘I’. But I must now become conscious of something more than this. I have summed up this ‘something more’ in a few words, which—as a kind of meditation reaching out to the true ‘I’—may be inscribed in the soul of every human being of our time. Ever repeatedly we may call to life in us these words of meditation, which I will write as follows: Ich schaue in die Finsternis: Entering ever and again into a meditative saying of this kind, we can confront the Darkness. We realize that here on Earth we are only a picture of our true Being—that our true Being never comes down into the earthly life. Yet in the midst of the Darkness, through our good will towards the Spirit, a Light can dawn upon us, of which we may in truth confess: This Light am I myself in my reality.
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| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Notes from the Second Lesson in London
27 Aug 1924, London Translated by John Riedel Rudolf Steiner |
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| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Notes from the Second Lesson in London
27 Aug 1924, London Translated by John Riedel Rudolf Steiner |
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As in the previous lesson, we will first hear resounding towards us the words that are spoken to human beings like an eternal admonition, like an admonition of eternity resounding in the past, in the present, and in the future, calling out to a human being that he should become self-aware, in order to find his proper relationship to the world and to himself.
My dear brothers and sisters! A harrowing admonition was spoken by the Guardian of the Threshold to the human being in the first Lesson. This first admonition shows a person how willing, feeling, and thinking, as they live in a human being in this materialistic age, continue to live in him when endeavoring to rise above materialism. It shows how willing, feeling, and thinking appear in the imaginations of the three beasts, which can be very harrowing indeed if felt deeply enough. They show us how little of all that is at work near the surface of one’s soul life really accords with the actual intentions buried deep within the soul. This is how it is with all esoteric life, as described last time, that wants to speak to us directly out of the spiritual world. There we are shown on one side all the depths, the moral depths in our soul through which we shall have to pass in order to find our way to the true being of the world and to ourselves. On the other side, we are shown the heights to which a person should ascend. There is no true esoteric pathway to self-awareness if the person will not be carried both down and under into the depths, and also will not be carried out and into the heights. Only if we develop the courage to go to the depths as well as to the heights, only then will the stark strong impulse come into our souls, the impulse which is necessary for esoteric development. For the sake of our esoteric development, a person has to stop feeling cut off from our cosmic environment. Let us ask about the relationship of our day life to our surrounding cosmic world. Around us a person perceives the mineral, plant, and animal world. Yet he feels separate from this world in his body. This isolated existence in body was good for his own development. But today there is a tendency to separate oneself too much from the world, really, not merely in thoughts. Every night we enter the realm of sleep from which only chaotic dreams well up to the surface. Instead of being among animals and plants there, we are surrounded at best by shadow images of them. We are infinitely alone with ourselves there. Our dream life is filled with infinite loneliness and this continues to work on in our daytime consciousness. We continue to dream on in our illusions, and out of this arise all the things that are rooted in our egoism. On our way to the godlike spiritual we have to overcome this egoism. This proper feeling, this attitude of mind must give rise to the beginning of an esoteric path. Whomever is not willing in a certain way to break with all that has formed itself in his ordinary self will not get far along an esoteric path, for we are concerned here with a genuine turning point in development. For the world, much depends on how many human beings will find their way on to a truly esoteric path. We must begin by trying to experience the elements that surround us. After having shattered us with the appearance of the three beasts, the Guardian in turn instructs us to look into the world of the elements, for on the path to the spirit we have to grow into the different elements. There is the earth below… There is fluidity. We must feel how they are united with us, how they are united inwardly and externally. So it is also with air, which is within us, which is again external to us. So it is with warmth, so it is with all the elements. The issue is for us to summon up the necessary attentiveness through an intimate melding into the advice, the teachings that we here receive and sustain. Think, my dear friends, imagine touching something, imagine feeling something. It is just the same, however, when you observe, when you hear… Imagine, you are a single great sense organ, you remain on the floor of the earth, while the earth below bears you up. It is just the same as touching something with your finger, just so you touch the earth with your entire body as you stand and walk. It is only because it has become so habitual that a person doesn’t say it this way. What is customary, habitual a person must in turn emerge from in esoteric development. A person must learn to find himself to be a sort of finger touching, tasting the earth. The entire person himself becomes a sensory organ.
As a whole human being you must feel like a finger feeling and touching something. You will then feel how earthly forces are your supports within existence so that you don't sink down into the heaviness. With these words the Guardian is telling us that we should feel as the godhead tasting on the earth with this finger, this finger which we are as whole human being. Now we come to a second aspect. As we continue, we no longer only feel the earth supporting us with our feet, but we also feel how the blood … in this finger of the godhood that we are… how the blood lives and moves. One feels for instance blood living in a finger, that for example is sick or injured in some way. In this way a person becomes aware of the watery element. This is how we feel the watery element within ourselves.
Water beings … in our own blood, in our blood vessels … a sculpting. Outside, in the cosmos, the water, the fluid element, it tosses waves and wavelets on its surface which a person finds beautiful. But in occult development a person must experience how this same water element also lives in us, molding and sculpting us. Earth for us is merely like supporting pillars. Water sculpts us inwardly. Whereas earlier it was unknown, a person should become aware of inner touching: O Man, live inwardly in your touching’s whole sphere. … My dear friends, please note in all these mantras the exact choice and position of each word. We must take the words as god-given, inspired, inspired out of the spiritual world. It is just this way for every single word, from the progression of pillars to sculptors, of something lower to something higher, to what not merely supports us outwardly, but rather chisels, plastically molds us inwardly. Now we come to the third stage. The Guardian instructs us to look up to the air element. A person breathes in and out. The movement is initially automatic, unconscious, but it moves in him nevertheless. When there is something wrong with his breathing, he notices that in it is something that is moralistic, soulful. If a person breathes wrongly while asleep, for example, fear and anxiety live in the dream. Here the person is not merely sculpted. He becomes built by water going out into all organs. All that is fully formed first built itself out of fluidity. Blood contains the formative forces. … In seven years, the material parts of the organs are offloaded and newly formed out of the blood. All the material substance you have in your body now was not there eight years ago. All of you sitting here have been essentially rebuilt out of your blood stream during the course of the last seven or eight years. Whereas the fluid element is our sculptor, air is something we sense in our soul, so that fear arises if we breathe too much carbon dioxide and faintness occurs if we have too much oxygen, which is like being dissolved into the cosmos.
In this way we proceed upwards into a realm where a moral aspect begins to appear. We have progressed from support to etheric sculptor and then on to nurturer. In the fourth stage we ascend to fire, the element of warmth. The earth is scarcely felt by us. The formative, sculpting process is perhaps felt in childhood, if at all. As regards the air, the nurturers take care not to let us feel them. But warmth, whether it is cold or hot, a person feels the warmth element of the cosmos as belonging to himself. Yes, he would totally feel, by means of the admonition of the Guardian, passing by the three beasts and coming up into the cosmos altruistically not egoistically, that he will be carried out and beyond into the realm of the living moving warmth. … Viewed occultly it is as follows: When a person thinks, he inwardly grasps the fire element of the cosmos. He does not think only in his head. The thinking ability goes far, far out into the cosmos. In the summer he feels the Fire Spirits, the Dynamis, Archai, and Seraphim. In the winter he lives into the cold element with thinking, his thoughts rise up in ice and snow, into the sun-resplendent air. … The fire element is smoothy intimately bound together with the human being. And the human being then says to himself, “If you climb high up a mountain, then it gets colder and colder, and just so you come upon the Exusiai, the Kyriotetes, the Archangels, and the Cherubim, on such a world in which wisdom rules. If you descend from the mountain, or if you come into warm, summer-like times, you come out of the realm of the Cherubim with their wisdom into the realm of the Seraphim’s love, out of the realm of the light-filled wisdom of the Kyriotetes and the Exusiai, into the realm of the fire wielding Dynamis, … who forge in fire … out of the realm of the Archangels, who transform in the water weaving wisdom world into the realm of the Archai and Angeloi. …
Here it rises up into morality. The nurturers, … they nurture still from the outside. The fire-mights are not merely nurturers, they help us, they help us inwardly. After a person takes up this admonition, he once again fastens the whole together with the words, as a summary of the previous:
And so, after we were shattered down, we now receive from the Guardian's earnest countenance the instruction to enter, thinking, into the elemental world, to take up within us the existence of the elements... So, the Guardian admonishes us to live ourselves into earth, water, air and fire. We do that with our physical and etheric body. But the soul cannot simply penetrate the realm of the elements, it must expand into the realm of the planets. The wandering stars, depending on how they face the Earth, they express in their mutual relationships what rules in our souls. Our physical and etheric body ... familiarize themselves ... in the realm of the elements. Our souls expand into the circling of the wandering stars,... of fast-moving Mercury, of nearby Moon, of Venus as she carries cosmic love out into the world’s far reaches, of the forceful craft of Mars, of the wisdom spewing forth from Jupiter, of the maturity of Saturn as he drives all that bears essence with fire-nature. ... It is our soul that therefore expands out into the cosmos. The Guardian says:
And he fastens this once more together, as the many circles of the planets become fastened together as a single circling:
So far, we have only accounted for the physical and etheric body, and for the soul, but not yet for the spirit. Out to the spirit moving and weaving within the “I” we must gush, not merely to the planets, but rather out to the fixed stars. The “I”, that forever and ever wields authority, we must carry out to the realm of the fixed stars.
And once again, the Guardian fastens these two lines together. ...with might surging and seething in us... in the words:
When we feel such a word, sounding together as a whole through earth, water, air, fire, planets, and fixed stars, when we feel it in its entirety, while we hearken to the words, which come to us from the Guardian, then the might of Michael wields authority in this present time through the school. And we may feel this might of Michael in his sign, and feel how Michael, who since the year 1879 and beyond to our time has marshalled his leadership, has accepted all that was grounded since the fifteenth century in the emblem of the Rosae et Crucis. And we may feel the demeanor of the Rose Cross in the three-part word I honor the Father, I love the Son, I unite with the Spirit. This will not be spoken, but accompanies in gesture the threefold word Ex Deo nascimur, In Christo morimur, Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. We must now understand as three-sided what the Guardian gives to us as he accompanies us across the abyss of existence, not with earth-feet but with soul-wings. We think in customary life. In our thoughts live simply the felt shadow in reality of the embrace of essential being. We ask, what are our thoughts? They are a corpse. Just as soul and spirit depart from a physical corpse, and the body is given over to the earth, that is what god-like spiritual beings make of the body of our thoughts. Between death and rebirth living thoughts were fully alive. Then it descended into the physical body where it lives as if in a coffin. The human physical body is the coffin of living thoughts. We should feel this as the truth, with which we are guided by the spiritual world. So, the Guardian says to us: Your thoughts are mere semblance, but you can dive into this illusory appearance and then behind it feel true selfhood … as a godliness. … In the interweaving etheric, there within feel the spirit-beings, that weave, move throughout … The Guardian speaks to the human being:
There is a rhythm in this, as though we were climbing down a mountain … In the trochaic rhythm of macron then breve, stressed then unstressed, we connect in meditation with the pulse of living world thoughts in which we were before descending down to earth. But not only thinking, we also bear feeling within us. This is not only semblance but also substance. Thoughts are semblance. In feelings semblance and substance mingle ... The powers of the world rule in us. We are expected not only to honor but also to consider that objective world forces wield and weave authority in us:
In this verse we swing up in turn to existence. The rhythm of breve then macron, unstressed then stressed, is quite different. We should live in this cosmic rhythm, in which the soul rises up to existence, after it has lost existence in thoughts. Here it progresses from honoring to considering. It becomes more intimate. We honor, indicating that the beings guide us more from the outside. We consider how the powers of life rule in our own inner being. Then we go down to greater depths. The Guardian points out how the cosmos lives and weaves in our will. The power of existence rises up in us. We are to lay hold of the power within us, the might of world creating:
Here we become aware how existence, newly made, rises up out of all that is semblance-being. It needs another rhythm, the spondaic, macron, macron, stressed, stressed. The two stressed syllables express how the mighty beat of existence thrusts into soul and spirit. Note the intensification from honor, to the more intimate consider, and then to the going-entirely-into-the-thing grasp. Similarly guiding beings outside us in the cosmos), powers of life within us, world-maker-might in the cosmos as well as within us. Here, in the last line of the third verse, the corresponding word world-maker- might comes at the beginning of the line, not at the end. This is also important. The rhythm is therefore spondaic, stressed, stressed, stressed, and stressed. When this threefold mantra resounds from the Guardian of the Threshold to the human soul, waiting to fly over the abyss, then may the soul feel how the magic might of Michael surges and seethes through the room. … And how, since the beginning of the new age, Michael is coalesced, is amalgamated, is confederated2 with the stream of Rosae et Crucis... In Michael’s Sign we receive what comes to us here in this way with the three-sided countenance of the Rose Cross... Both the mantras and also anything about the content of the Lessons may only be passed on to members of the esoteric School, that is, those who possess the blue membership card. Those who have been unable to attend may receive the mantras from those who were here. But in every case, it is the one who wishes to pass on the mantras who must ask either Dr. Wegman or myself. It is part of the esoteric guidance that in every single case there must be a concrete request. Taking notes is not authorized. If notes were taken, one is duty bound to burn them within a week.
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| 218. First Steps in Supersensible Perception and The Relation of Anthroposophy to Christianity: First Steps in Supersensible Perception
17 Nov 1922, London Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond Rudolf Steiner |
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| 218. First Steps in Supersensible Perception and The Relation of Anthroposophy to Christianity: First Steps in Supersensible Perception
17 Nov 1922, London Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond Rudolf Steiner |
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There is no doubt that at the present time numbers of people are longing to know something of the spiritual worlds and even modern scientists have been at pains to discover paths leading to knowledge of the Supersensible. But in all these attempts to penetrate to the supersensible world, modern man finds stumbling-blocks created by the judgments issuing from modern scientific thinking with all the authority it commands; and in regard to the many sources from which people imagine that knowledge of the supersensible world can be derived, the prevailing opinion is that concerning the supersensible worlds there can be no exact knowledge in the sense of modern science, for none of the evidence put forward stands up to any valid test. Now the anthroposophical Spiritual Science of which I am venturing to speak to you in these lectures, strives to reach exact, genuinely exact, knowledge of the supersensible world: “exact,” not in the sense that experiments are made as in domains of science concerned with the external world, but in the sense that inner faculties of soul otherwise slumbering in man during his everyday life and ordinary scientific pursuits are unfolded in such a way that the full clarity of consciousness implicit in really exact science is maintained throughout. Whereas, therefore, in exact scientific thinking, consciousness is maintained as it is in ordinary life and exactitude of method is strictly adhered to during investigation of the external world, in anthroposophical Spiritual Science we proceed by adopting an initial attitude of what I will call intellectual humility, saying to ourselves: “I was once a child and my faculties then fell far, far short of those I have acquired through education and through life and now possess as an adult human being.” It is quite evident that certain faculties which did not previously function have unfolded since childhood, and the question arises naturally: Is it not possible, then, that faculties are slumbering in the adult human being just as his present faculties were slumbering in his soul during childhood? Provided that certain methods are put into practice, these faculties can indeed be drawn forth from the soul. In anthroposophical Spiritual Science these inner faculties must be drawn out in such a way that the methods whereby the actual approach to supersensible knowledge is made, are in line with our own development. The preparation for looking into the higher world presupposes exactitude of method. As I said in my last lectures here,1 it is possible for “exact clairvoyance” to be acquired by methods as precise and systematic as those employed when the facts of ordinary knowledge are being used in the investigation of nature. I shall speak less to-day of how this exact clairvoyance can actually be attained—I shall mention this merely in passing, for the two previous lectures dealt with the methods for the attainment of exact clairvoyance, and information about these methods is available from the book that has been translated into English under the title, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. I want to-day to indicate why it is that in his ordinary life the human being is unable to penetrate into the higher worlds. This is denied to him, primarily because he is only capable of perceiving the world in the actual present. Our eyes can perceive the world and its phenomena, our ears can hear sounds in the immediate present only. So it is with all our senses. We can only know the past of our earthly life in recollection or remembrance, that is to say, in pale, shadowy thoughts. Just think how living and concretely real were experiences undergone ten years ago and how pale and shadowy are our thoughts and recollections of them to-day. Everything that lies outside the present moment can only live in man's ordinary consciousness in the form of shadowy remembrance. But this shadowy remembrance can be kindled and fired into higher reality through the methods which, as I have said, I do not propose to discuss in detail to-day—through methods of mediation in thought, concentration upon thoughts, self-training and the like. A man who applies such methods to himself, learning thereby to live in his thoughts with all the intensity with which he otherwise lives in his external sense-impressions only, acquires a certain faculty of observing the world not only in the immediate present. Depending upon the aptitude of the individual concerned, exercises leading to this result must of course be practiced for a long time, in conscientious, systematic meditation and concentration. Many a human being, especially in the present age, already brings with him at birth the faculty which can be developed by these methods. This does not mean that the faculty is immediately evident at birth, but at a certain moment in life it emerges from within the human being and he knows that had it not come with him at birth it would have been impossible for him to acquire it in the ordinary course of his existence. This faculty consists in being able to live within the thoughts themselves, just as through his body, man lives in the physical world. Such a statement must not be taken lightly. Let it be remembered that man owes to his living participation in the physical world everything that enables him to claim an existence of his own. When he reaches the stage where without depending upon impressions received through the eyes, ears and other senses he can unfold an inner life as active and intense as the life of these outer senses, an inner life consisting not merely of shadowy thoughts but of inwardly living thoughts experienced with all the intensity otherwise implicit only in sense-impressions ... then he knows the reality of a second kind of existence, a different form of self-consciousness. I will call it an awakening—an awakening to a life not outside the body but within the innermost core of being, while the physical body is as quiescent and as insensible to impressions from outside as is otherwise the case only during sleep. If we think about our own inner life and being, we find that in ordinary existence we really only know what has been conveyed to us via the senses. But sense-perceptions tell us nothing whatever about our inner life and being. With ordinary consciousness we cannot look inwards in the real sense. But when the new kind of self-consciousness in the realm of pure thinking is unfolded, we learn to look inwards just as in ordinary existence we can look outwards, into the external world. The experience then arising can be described somewhat as follows:—As we look into the external world, the sun or some source of light must be there to illumine the objects around us. Through the light that is outside us, we perceive these objects. When, in the process of pure thinking, consciousness of this second existence awakens—it is however a process of actual “beholding” as colourful and rich in content as sense-perception—then we can become aware of an inner light ... not in a figurative sense but as a spiritual reality ... a light which illumines our own inner life and being just as in the ordinary way objects are illumined for us by some external source of light. This condition of human experience, therefore, may be called “clairvoyance,” “clear seeing.” And this clairvoyance in the spiritual self-consciousness that has now been awakened, engenders, in the first place, the faculty whereby a man is able once again to be consciously present in every moment he has lived through during his earthly existence. The following, for example, is possible—I say to myself: When I was 18 years old, I had certain experiences. But now, when the new consciousness has awakened, I no longer merely remember these experiences; I can actually live through them again with greater or less intensity. Once again I am the human being I was at the age of 18 or 15 or 10 ... A man can transfer himself in consciousness into every moment of his life and he thereby unfolds an inner, illumined perception of what, in contrast to the spatial body in which the senses are contained, may be called a “Time-body.” But this Time-body is ever-present, ever in operation; it is not experienced in a succession of separate moments, but as one complete whole. It is present in all its inner mobility. A vista arises before the human being of the whole of his previous earthly life, whereas in ordinary circumstances he merely recollects this earthly life in shadowy thoughts. The whole course of his earthly existence lights up for him, but in such a way that he lives consciously in each single moment. When this inner illumination arises, a man knows that he is the bearer not only of a physical, spatial body. He knows that he is the bearer of a second: ethereal body, a body actually woven from the pictures of his past earthly life, but pictures which, with creative power, shape this earthly life itself, shape and mould the very organism and its activities. He thus learns to know the reality of a second man within himself. This second man is conscious of living within a delicate, ethereal world of light—just as the spatial body lives in a physical world. The world is revealed in its finer, more delicate formations; the delicate, ethereal formations perceived in this way underlie everything physical. Strange to say, it is only possible to keep very brief hold of what is experienced in this finer body. A man who by the development of exact clairvoyance has filled his ether-body, or “body of formative forces,” with light, is able to perceive the etheric reality of the world and of his own being; but in most cases he will find that the impressions pass away very quickly; they cannot be retained. And he is aware of a kind of anxiety to return as quickly as may be to the perceptions of the physical body in order to be assured of an inner sense of consolidation as a human being, as a personality. He experiences his own self in his ether-body. In this ether-body he also perceives etheric realities of the higher world. But at the same time, he finds how fleeting all these impressions are; he cannot keep hold of them for any length of time, indeed he must always resort to some means of help. By way of example, let me tell you what procedure I myself adopt in order to prevent the impressions of this etheric vision from vanishing too rapidly. Whenever such impressions come, I try not only to perceive them but to write them down; in this way, the inner activity is carried out not only by abstract faculties of soul but is strengthened by the act of writing down the impressions. The point of importance is not the subsequent reading of what has been written but the strengthening of the activity which, to begin with, is purely etheric. In this way a quality so fluid and evanescent that it quickly passes away pours as it were into the ordinary human faculties. This condition is not induced unconsciously as in the. case of a medium, but in full consciousness. An ethereal quality is poured into the ordinary human faculties. This enables us, too, to understand something of great importance, namely, how we can “keep hold” of a supersensible, etheric world (later on we shall be speaking of other supersensible worlds) ... a world which embraces the course of our life hitherto and also the etheric realities of outer nature extending to the sphere of the stars. This ether-world becomes a reality and consciousness of the self within this ether-world arises; moreover, we know that it is impossible, without returning again to the physical body, to keep a hold on this world for longer than at most two to three days—even when the faculties have been developed to a high degree. Certain powers of which I will speak presently enable one who is an Initiate in the modern sense to perceive all this with clear vision; such a man knows, too, what it is that he is able in this way to hold within his ether-body, or body of formative forces, without the support of the bodily faculties. It is the same as the vision that arises before the higher self-consciousness when, as the human being passes through the gate of death, the physical body is laid aside and >begins to decay. This vision, too, for the reasons given above, can remain only for some two or three days after death. Through the development of exact clairvoyance, therefore, the first conditions of existence into which man passes after death, can be experienced; they are experienced in advance, with conscious knowledge. The conditions which the Initiate is able to experience consciously in advance, set in for every human being when the physical body is laid aside at death. But in the ordinary way a man can retain consciousness of these conditions for no longer than two or three days—that is to say, for as long as he is able, having developed higher knowledge, to hold fast his ether-body, or body of formative forces. (I shall explain presently why it is that the human being is, nevertheless, conscious during the existence after death.) For two or three days after death the human being has, in his ether-body, consciousness of the etheric world. Then this consciousness fades away; he becomes aware that the ether-body is falling away from him just as the physical body fell away and that he must pass into a different state of consciousness in order to live on after death as a conscious individuality. The reality of what I am now describing to you as the first moments after death (they are the first moments of the cosmic existence to follow) can be affirmed by one who has acquired the faculty of seeing into the higher world, because he experiences in advance the conditions which in the normal life of man set in only after death. Because he has developed the intensified consciousness of self that is no longer dependent upon the body, he experiences in advance, in his present consciousness, these moments which immediately follow death. He is able to shed light upon his own higher existence and to realise that he has within himself the light which during the first two or three days after death will reveal to him a world quite different from the world revealed to him by his senses during earthly life between birth and death.2 This inner illumination is necessary before it is possible to survey that supersensible picture of the course of earthly life which, as I have said, lasts for a few days after death. A man must kindle within himself a spiritual light which shines inwards. Instead of being aware only of the present moment in the way made possible by the senses, he will then reach a higher stage. The attainment of further knowledge of the Supersensible depends not only upon a change in perceptive consciousness but also upon a change in the state of ordinary existence. Our ordinary existence as human beings is enclosed within the spatial, physical body; the boundaries of our skin also constitute the boundaries of our actual life. Our life extends as far as our body. Within this field of experience, we cannot reach what I have so far been describing as knowledge of the higher worlds. Knowledge of the higher worlds can only be attained when ordinary experience is transcended by consciousness that is not confined within the boundaries of the spatial body but participates in the life of the whole world around. This extended consciousness leads to knowledge of the higher worlds. As I have said, on this occasion I propose merely to speak about the methods through which a modern Initiate acquires exact knowledge of the higher worlds. The rest is to be found in the book mentioned above. When we have acquired the faculty not only of experiencing a second existence in the life of thought—an existence that still remains within the confines of the spatial body—but also the faculty of living outside the body, a further stage is reached. It is attained when we are capable not only of letting thoughts live with full intensity in our consciousness but of eliminating them at will as the result of systematic exercises and practice. By this means, consciousness arises of experiences outside the body. Let me give a simple example. Suppose we are looking at a quartz crystal. It is there before our eyes. A person who is trying to make himself into a medium or to induce some kind of self-hypnosis stares fixedly at the crystal and the impression it makes puts him into a state of confused consciousness. Such procedure is altogether alien to anthroposophical Spiritual Science. The exercises it adopts are of an entirely different character and can be described as follows:—We look steadily at, say, a crystal, until we can entirely ignore it as an object physically perceived, and re-orientate our attention. A crystal is there before us and we learn gradually to see it not with physical eyes but with eyes of soul; the physical eyes are open but are not used for the purpose of looking at the physical crystal and in this act of inner cognition the crystal in front of us is eliminated, as a physical object, from our vision.—The same procedure may also be adopted with a colour; it is there before us but we no longer look at it as colour, we eliminate it from our physical vision. Such an exercise can also be applied to thoughts engendered in the immediate present by circumstances of external life, or to those which arise in the form of remembrances or recollections of earlier moments of earthly life.—Such thoughts are eliminated, emptied from the consciousness, so that we are simply awake and in a state of consciousness from which the external world is altogether excluded. If such exercises are conscientiously carried out, we discover that it is possible for our life to extend beyond the boundaries of our spatial body. Then, in the real sense, we share in the life of the whole surrounding world instead of perceiving its physical phenomena only. Thereby, in complete clarity of consciousness, an experience arises which may be compared with recollection of the life passed through during sleep. Just as acts of ordinary perception are limited to the immediately present moment, so is our ordinary life limited to the experiences that have arisen in the hours of our waking consciousness. Just think of it—When you think back over your life, the periods of sleep are always blanks sofar as ordinary consciousness is concerned. Nothing that has been experienced by the soul during these periods of sleep is remembered; remembrance, therefore, is a stream in which there are constant interruptions, but this fact is usually ignored. The experiences of the soul during sleep arise like intensified remembrances in consciousness which has awakened to such a degree that with it the human being is able to live outside his body. This condition leads to the second stage of knowledge in the supersensible world and we become aware, to begin with, of what we experience as beings of soul when the physical body is asleep and quiescent, when it has no perceptions, when the will is not functioning and when the soul has, so to speak, temporarily departed from the body. In ordinary waking life we can in this way recollect the experiences through which we have passed while outside the body during every period of sleep. But it is very important to understand what these experiences really are. The experiences of the soul from the moment of falling asleep to that of waking are, of course, experiences in a realm outside the body, and actual awareness of them is possible only when consciousness of life outside the body has awakened. At this stage, knowledge comes to us not only of something which, like the “time-body,” is illumined by an inner light, but with the faculty of waking remembrance that is now illumined by exact clairvoyance, we learn to know what really comes to pass in us during sleep. This experience will, at first, cause astonishment. Living in the physical body with our ordinary consciousness, we have within us, lungs, heart, and so forth; from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking we have, in very truth, not a personal, human consciousness but a cosmic consciousness. In this higher state of consciousness, it is as though the after-images of the planetary and starry worlds were within us. This may sound strange, but it is perceptible reality at this stage of higher knowledge. We feel ourselves within the all-pervading cosmic life and contemplate the world from this cosmic vantage-point. Experiencing as inner reality what was round about us in ordinary life, during every period of sleep we live through in backward sequence, all the experiences that came to us here, in the physical world, from the previous moment of waking to that of falling asleep. If, for example, after a normal day we go to sleep, we live backwards over the experiences of the day—first the experiences of the evening, then those of the afternoon, then those of the morning. Thus during sleep at night, we live backwards through all the experiences of the day. The development of the exact clairvoyance of which I am speaking here, is connected with this power of conscious recollection of the experiences of sleep. Just as in the ordinary way we can remember things experienced years ago in full waking consciousness, by means of this exact clairvoyance we can call up remembrance of this backward sequence of the day's experiences. And so in actual fact, this exact clairvoyance is an extension of the ordinary faculty of recollection or remembrance. We look back upon our experiences during sleep, knowing that in sleep we have been living outside the boundaries of the physical body in a cosmic existence which is a reflection of the whole life of the universe; during this cosmic existence we live backwards through the happenings of the day. We find then, that the time taken by this backward review is shorter than that taken by the experiences themselves in physical life. When we are able in the real sense to investigate this realm of existence through systematic practice and increasingly exact knowledge, we discover that this backward review takes place three times more quickly than the physical experiences in our ordinary consciousness. Let us say that a man is awake for two thirds of his whole life and asleep for one third—During the one third spent in sleep, therefore, he lives through the experiences which, in the physical world, have occupied two thirds of his existence. When exact clairvoyance enables us in waking consciousness to remember the life of sleep, we also realise that this backward review is significant, not so much in itself, but as a foreshadowing. Ask yourselves what you think about a recollection of something that happened to you 20 years ago—You say: “I experience it now in shadowy thoughts of remembrance; but the remembrance itself is the guarantee that it is not phantasy but a picture of an actual experience in my past earthly fife.”—Just as remembrance itself is the guarantee that it is related to a real experience in the past so the conscious recollection of the experiences of sleep is the guarantee that in itself it is only the foreshadowing of something belonging to the future. Proof that a remembrance relates to something in the past is not needed. When exact clairvoyance has been acquired, it is equally unnecessary to prove that the recollection of these night-experiences is not a phantastic picture of the present. It reveals in itself that it has to do with the future—indeed with that moment in the future when the physical body of a man will be actually laid aside at death, whereas now, in exact clairvoyance, it is only figuratively laid aside. By this means, knowledge arises of what the human being experiences after death, when the three days of which I have spoken, have elapsed. This process also enables us to understand the significance of those two or three days after death when the human being is aware of living in a cosmic consciousness, when from the vantage-point, of the Cosmos he once again surveys the etheric picture of his life, looking back over the course of his earthly existence. We learn to know that these first days after death are followed by a life which runs its course three times more quickly than earthly existence. This same knowledge, after all, resulted from conscious recollection of the experiences passed through during sleep. The etheric vision which persists for only a short time after death is followed by a life lasting some 20 or 30 years, or maybe less—according to the age reached in earthly existence. Approximately—for everything here is approximate—this life runs its course three times more quickly than earthly existence. If therefore a man dies at the age of 30, the life of which I am speaking now will last for about 10 years; if someone has reached the age of 60 and then dies, he lives through his life in the backward sequence of events, in 20 years ... but all these periods are approximate. With exact clairvoyance these things become known, just as a past experience is known through an act of recollection or remembrance. Thus, we learn to know that death is followed by a life in the supersensible world during which we live through the whole of our past earthly life in backward sequence. Every night we live backwards through the events of the preceding day; after death we live back over the whole of our earthly life. We experience it all once again in its spiritual aspect and thereby unfold a true judgment of our own moral worth. During the period after death we unfold consciousness of our personal, moral qualities, of our moral worth, just as here on Earth we are conscious of life in a body of flesh and blood. After death we live in a world that is conditioned by our own moral qualities and our deeds on Earth. By living through earthly life again in backward sequence and because we are not diverted from true moral judgment by instincts, natural urges and passions but survey our life from a purely spiritual standpoint, it is possible for us to form a true judgment of our own moral worth. The forming of such a judgment requires the length of time of which I have just been speaking. When this period after death has come to an end, the backward-flowing remembrance of our moral life on Earth fades away and we must now pass onwards through the spiritual worlds with a different kind of consciousness. Knowledge of this different kind of consciousness can also be attained by exact clairvoyance. The attainment of such knowledge depends upon the capacity not only to live outside the confines of the spatial body but to unfold a kind of consciousness entirely different from that belonging to the physical world. At this stage the human being discovers that a supersensible, purely spiritual state of existence follows the period during which judgment of the moral qualities is formed—this period lasts, as we have heard, for a third of the time spent in earthly life. This is followed by a different kind of existence, by a life that is purely spiritual. But before knowledge of it can be acquired, exact clairvoyance must have developed to a still higher stage. If you think about the experiences undergone during sleep, you will realise that the human being does indeed lead a life outside his physical, spatial body. But he has no real freedom of movement in this life. He has to make his way through the experiences that have come to him during the hours of waking consciousness—only in reversed order. And a man who through exact clairvoyance has attained supersensible insight into these experiences—he too feels as though he is confined in a world which he is able to call up into his clairvoyant vision but in which he cannot move, in which he is fettered. Freedom of movement in the spiritual world—this is what must be acquired as the third stage of supersensible knowledge. Without such freedom of movement, it is not possible for spiritual consciousness in the real sense to arise. In addition to exact clairvoyance, a power which I will call that of “ideal magic” must be acquired. I use this term in order to distinguish it from the unlawful form of magic which resorts to external means and is fraught with a great deal of charlatanism. A firm distinction must be made between such practices and what I now mean when I speak of “ideal magic.” I mean the following: — When a man surveys his life with ordinary consciousness, he can perceive how in certain respects he changed with the passing of every year or decade. His habits have changed—slowly maybe, but definitely nevertheless. Certain faculties have developed, others seem to have disappeared. Anyone who honestly observes certain faculties of his earthly life can say to himself that more than once he became a changed being. But this change has been wrought by life; he has surrendered himself to life and life educates him, trains him, moulds and shapes his soul. A man who is intent upon finding his way into the supersensible world as a real knower, in other words one who strives to acquire the power of ideal magic, must not only be able to make his thoughts so inwardly forceful and intense that he becomes aware of a second existence as described above, but he must be capable of freeing his will, too, from bondage to the physical body. In ordinary life the will can only be brought into operation by making use of the physical body—be it through the legs, arms, or organs of speech. The physical body provides the basis for the life of will. But the following is possible and must, furthermore, be systematically carried out by anyone who as a spiritual investigator wishes to add to the power of exact clairvoyance that of ideal magic. He must develop such strength, of will that at a certain point in his life he can, at his own bidding, get rid of some habit and acquire an altogether different one. Even with the most resolute will, it may take a man several years to change certain forms of experience, but it is possible, nevertheless. Instead of allowing life in the physical body to be his educator, he can take this education and self-training into his own hands. Exercises of will such as I have described in the book mentioned above, will lead one who is striving to be an Initiate in the modern sense to the stage where he is able not only to be conscious during sleep of what he has experienced by day. He will be able to induce a condition which is not that of sleep but is lived through in full, clear consciousness. At this stage he is capable of movement and action even during sleep; he is not, as in ordinary consciousness, a merely passive being while outside his body, but he can act and be active in the spiritual world. If he is incapable of this, he will make no progress during his sleep-life. One who becomes in the true sense a modern Initiate has acquired the faculties whereby he can also be active as a self-conscious human being in the life which runs its course between the onset of sleep and the moment of waking. And when the will becomes operative while he is actually living outside the body, he will be able gradually to unfold an altogether different kind of consciousness, namely, the consciousness that can actually perceive what the human being experiences during the period after death following the one described. With this more highly developed consciousness, vistas open out of the existence which follows earthly life and of the existence which precedes it. We behold a life which runs its course through a spiritual world just as physical life on Earth runs its course through a physical world. We learn to know ourselves as beings of pure Spirit in a spiritual world just as here, on Earth, we know ourselves as physical beings in the physical world. And it is now possible to ascertain the duration of this life—the period during which we assess our own moral worth. By integrating will into the life of soul in this way through ideal magic, we learn to understand the nature of the consciousness that awakens in us as adult human beings, and to compare it with the dim consciousness of earliest childhood. As you well know, ordinary consciousness has no remembrance of these first years of childhood. The consciousness of the human being in this period of his life is dull and dim; his entry into the world is wrapped in sleep. The ordinary consciousness of an adult human being is clear and intense in comparison with the dim, dark consciousness of the first years of earthly life. But one who has acquired the power to put ideal magic into operation in the way described, understands the difference between his waking consciousness as an adult and this dim consciousness of early childhood; he knows that he rises to a higher level as he passes from the dim consciousness of childhood into the clearer consciousness of adult years. And with knowledge of how the dreamlike consciousness of childhood is related to that of adult life he is able to understand how his adult consciousness is related to that illumined consciousness which, imbued with the power not only of exact clairvoyance but also of ideal magic, makes him capable of moving freely in the spiritual world. He learns to move freely in the spiritual world just as after early childhood when he had no such freedom of movement, he learnt to move about freely in the physical body. In addition, therefore, to knowledge of how the consciousness of childhood is related to that of ordinary adult life, he learns to know how ordinary consciousness is related to a higher, purely spiritual consciousness. Thereby a man is led to the realisation that in his life after death he is not only a spiritual being living among spiritual beings, but he can discover how long this life lasts. Here again I must quote as an example the recollection of an experience of earthly life. We realise that just as this recollection bears within it a reality belonging to the past, so this new experience bears within it the knowledge that the higher consciousness of the Initiate anticipates as it were this spiritual existence after death. And then we learn to know how this purely spiritual life is related to the earthly life that has stretched from birth to death. When an Initiate looks back to his earliest childhood, he knows that as the years advance, the easier it is for him to look into the spiritual world. There are, of course, human beings who while still comparatively young have the power to see into the spiritual world. But this vision increases in clarity and exactitude with every year that passes. The faculty of entering into this other state of consciousness grows constantly stronger and with it comes clearer and clearer knowledge of the relation between the one state and the other. For example: a man has reached the age of forty and is only able, let us say, to remember back as far as his third or fourth year. By studying how the length of the period of the dreamlike consciousness of childhood is related to these forty years, we learn to recognise that the spiritual life after death will be longer than the span of an earthly life by as many times as this earthly life as a whole is longer than the dreamy life of earliest childhood; hence the life after death lasts for many centuries. The period during which the moral life is re-experienced and assessed after death is followed by a purely spiritual life during which man lives for many centuries as a spiritual being among other spiritual beings. During this period of existence, he has around him the tasks which belong to the spiritual world, just as here, in earthly existence, he has around him those which belong to the physical world. When exact clairvoyance and the power to move freely in the spiritual world have been acquired, the nature of these tasks is revealed.—All the forces which finally lead over to a new life on the Earth are drawn from this spiritual world in which the human being lives after death. The future life on Earth stands there as a goal from the very beginning of the life after death. And this life on Earth as a human being ... it is in very truth a microcosm ... this microcosm is the outcome of great and mighty experiences in the spiritual world after death. Now a seed in the physical world is minute—nevertheless it unfolds and later on will grow into a large plant or animal. It is also possible to speak of a spirit-seed which the human being unfolds and develops when his physical life on Earth is over. In communion with Spiritual Beings and out of the spiritual forces of the universe, he elaborates a spirit-seed for his new earthly life. This process is not a recapitulation of the past earthly life but embraces modes of activity and realities of being far greater and mightier than can ever exist on Earth. In his post-earthly existence, amid the experiences and realities of the spiritual world, the human being prepares his future earthly life. I have spoken of the cosmic consciousness which arises in human beings after their death.—This cosmic consciousness is, after all, present every night during sleep, although in such dimness that, to use a contradictory expression, it is really an ‘unconscious consciousness.’—Because they have this cosmic consciousness in their post-mortem, spiritual existence, human beings live together not only with other spiritual beings who never come down to the Earth, having their abode in worlds of pure Spirit, but paramountly with all the souls who are either incarnate in human physical bodies or, having themselves passed through the gate of death, have also entered into the cosmic consciousness that is common to all. The relationships woven on Earth between soul and soul, in the family, among individuals who have found one another inasmuch as they have met in physical bodies—all such ties in their earthly form are laid aside. What men experience as lovers, as friends, as associates of other human beings near to them in some way, in short, all experiences in the physical body—all are laid aside just as the physical body itself is laid aside. … But because these ties of family, of friendship, of love and affection have been unfolded here, on the Earth, they are transmuted after death into those spiritual experiences which help to build a later life. Even during the period when the moral worth of the past life is assessed, the human being is working not for himself alone but for and in communion with souls who were esteemed and loved by him on Earth. Through exact clairvoyance and through ideal magic these things become matters of actual knowledge, of direct vision, not of mere belief. Indeed, it may truly be said that in the physical world an abyss stretches between souls, however dear they may be to one another, for their meeting takes place in the body and the relationships between them can only be such as are determined by the conditions of bodily existence. But when a human being himself is in the spiritual world, the physical body belonging to one whom he loved and has now left behind does not constitute an obstacle to living communion with the soul. Just as the faculty for “seeing through” physical objects must be acquired before it is possible to gaze into the spiritual world, so the human being who has passed through the gate of death can penetrate through the bodies of those he has left behind, and enter into communion with their souls while they are still living on the Earth. I wanted to speak to you in this first lecture of how perception of the supersensible life of man can be developed. I have tried to indicate that when we strive to unfold exact clairvoyance and the power of ideal magic, it is possible to speak with real knowledge of the higher worlds, just as exact natural science is able to speak about the physical world. As we learn to penetrate more and more deeply into these higher worlds—and undoubtedly there are human beings who by developing their faculties will be capable of this—we shall find that no branch of science, however highly developed, can deter us from accepting the knowledge which can be revealed through exact clairvoyance and ideal magic concerning man's existence not only on the Earth between birth and death but also between death and the return to earthly life through a new birth. In the lecture tomorrow I shall speak of the impulse brought into the life of man on Earth by the Christ Event, the Event of Golgotha. It will then be my task to show that the knowledge of which I have been speaking, inasmuch as it is a concern of every single individual, sheds light upon the whole evolution of the human race on Earth and can therefore also reveal what the entry of Christ into earthly existence signified for mankind. The aim of these lectures is to show, on the one hand, that in speaking of supersensible knowledge there is no need to be at variance with the exact scientific thinking of modern times. The theme of the lecture tomorrow will be that the Mightiest of all Events in the life of mankind on Earth—the Christ Event—is revealed in a new and even more radiant light to souls who are willing to receive knowledge of the supersensible world in the way set forth. To-morrow, then, I shall be speaking of the relation of anthroposophical Spiritual Science to Christianity.
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