69e. The Humanities and the Future of Humanity: The Nature of Spiritual-scientific Knowledge and its Significance for Human Life
17 May 1912, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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69e. The Humanities and the Future of Humanity: The Nature of Spiritual-scientific Knowledge and its Significance for Human Life
17 May 1912, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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Today I have the task of saying something about the nature of spiritual-scientific knowledge. The point is that here we have been speaking of spiritual-scientific knowledge in such a way that it is not so much the field that has been considered as the nature of the knowledge. For example, today's psychology is not a spiritual science in our sense, because the way psychology is treated and practised today, as only external observation, is actually a soul teaching without soul. In the official science of the soul, one finds how ideas connect to sense perception, etc. But for those who demand spiritual science in a different sense, official psychology is barren; one cannot know anything about the fate of the soul, for example after death, through it. It is possible to penetrate into the nature of the spiritual and human soul to such an extent that one can say something about the fate of the soul. Spiritual science is misunderstood from many sides, from those who believe they are standing on the firm ground of a religious system or of science. Spiritual science, as advocated here, has basically nothing to do with religious beliefs and all religious systems. Spiritual science regards what lies in religious beliefs as a field of research and seeks what lies within them. You could just as easily call botany a meadow or a field, as you called theosophy a religious confession. 300 to 400 years ago, natural science was in such a state that great thinkers [such as] Kepler et cetera had abandoned sensory observation. Sensory observation cannot lead to truth in the field under discussion. Spiritual science wants nothing more than to fathom the highest, most valuable insights using the same logical paths as scientific insights. The botanist must bring the end of plant formation into a whole organic entity with the beginning: development from seed to flower and fruit and again to seed, etc. Goethe expressed the development of man towards old age and the decision. The spiritual and soul-like is like a seed; he says that in old age one becomes a mystic. But Goethe did not mean by “mystic” what is today understood as nebulous, but rather that man becomes more and more mature through his experiences and actions, he matures and forms the fruit of his life. We recognize this particularly by what we do wrong, but usually cannot repeat it. Experience and strength accumulate in man, which he does not use, and these strengths have their highest elasticity and are most mature immediately before death; they form the seeds, the spiritual-soul germs. The ideas and impulses in man do not pass away; they have inner effectiveness, inner activity and must continue to work. These combine to form the spiritual and soul germ, and that which has inner activity, inner strength and inner truth is what Goethe calls the mystical, and the person who grows old is what he calls a mystic. It is different in youth: then we see what lives in the soul shooting outwards; it pushes outwards; one is an idealist, active, effective, not a mystic; from the first hour of physical existence, the soul shoots into outer activity, into outer formation, education, like the germination power in the plant. This fact escapes external psychology, the view that a spiritual-soul core lives in us, which becomes more and more impulsive towards old age and then undergoes an intermediate state, in order to penetrate into external life again afterwards. The consistent development of the methods of today's psychology, as begun by Franz von Brentano, of strictly scientific methods, will and must lead to the doctrine of reincarnation. However, for this to happen, it is necessary for man to transform himself into an instrument. How do we understand, recognize anything at all? If we can know how things, how a work of art, is composed, if we are able to follow it in its becoming, in composition, when man himself is present. But it is not so with nature, as Goethe says; not the becoming, the become, appears before us, and the other meaningful word of Goethe's is: we do not understand the become. But there is something where we are present in the process of becoming. Man alternately passes through the state of sleep and the state of wakefulness. What tires him? It tires him when he wears out part of his conscious activity. There is no fatigue when you let your thoughts wander freely, consciously dreaming while awake; that does not tire you. But thinking, where the conscious will is involved, it is the conscious will that makes us tired, that wears us out. Sleeping in a railroad car is not the same as resting in bed at home. Here the organism rests, while in the railroad the body remains in motion. The imposed movement contradicts the innate forces of the organism. Every time an activity is imposed on the organism from the outside that it does not have by its own nature, fatigue sets in; this is also the cause of seasickness. Every night during sleep, a becoming, an arising occurs in our organism that restores what we have previously worn out. We are in the process of becoming, but we are not aware of it. But this is what spiritual science strives for: that people develop in such a way that they can be consciously aware of this becoming. Through meditation and concentration, they can consciously fall asleep – which, of course, is not falling asleep: you live within yourself without using your thoughts or your organism. But at first he experiences this as a miserable state, because he perceives his own brain, for example, as an obstacle; he must first work on the brain from the spiritual-soul, so to speak rework it, in order to express through the brain what one experiences spiritually and soulfully. In this process, the teacher is consciously involved in the process of becoming and works in the same constructive way on the body and the organism as the soul and spirit work on the child's organism in the process of becoming. If one compares children whose parents are still living with those whose parents have already died, the trained observer can make many an interesting observation. For example, the teacher wants to stimulate something in a child who has lost his father early, and cannot make any progress. The sympathies and antipathies that the father had are incorporated into the child's state of mind. One can rediscover the father's sympathies or antipathies towards the mother or towards others, or the sense of how the father wanted to educate the child. Thus, pronounced antipathies, etc., occur in a striking way in the child, as a continued effect of the dead. It is the spiritual soul of the father that affects the spiritual soul of the child. Spiritual science will not be guided by prejudices or aversions, but these will be guided by the impulses that spiritual science gives to human life. Raphael's father was not a great painter, but when he died – Raphael was eleven years old at the time of his death – he was able to live out and develop what was in him that could not have developed in the material realm, unhindered by the physical, and this radiated into the spiritual and soul life of the boy Raphael and enabled him to overcome obstacles. Just as our hearts and lungs do not tire because they are in harmony with the rhythm of the world, so our soul and spirit, when they live in the spiritual world, are brought into harmony with the rhythm that is their own; our feeling, sensing, thinking is imbued with this rhythm; Theosophy has a healing effect. Man is provided with a spiritual leader, which no longer lets him rush along unconsciously like a driverless locomotive, but spiritual science can be something for the soul: that it knows that it is integrated into the spiritual-soul world, and that its thoughts are connected to world thoughts, will. Faust wants to expand his self into a kind of spiritual organism; he feels within himself the forces of the cosmos. [So one can say:] In your thinking live world thoughts, etc. |
69e. The Humanities and the Future of Humanity: Spiritual Science and the Spiritual World Outlook on the Goals of Our Time
07 Dec 1913, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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69e. The Humanities and the Future of Humanity: Spiritual Science and the Spiritual World Outlook on the Goals of Our Time
07 Dec 1913, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear attendees, for a number of years now I have taken the liberty of speaking from this place about the subject of spiritual science, as it will also be meant in tonight's reflection. May I be allowed to present the foundations of this spiritual science in a certain way, I would like to say, in a clear way, and then to speak in more detail about some special subjects of this spiritual science in the next reflection the day after tomorrow. It is - and this has been mentioned frequently over the years - fully understandable to anyone who stands on the ground of this spiritual science, as it is meant here, that in our time, from the most diverse sides, not only the most manifold objections, but, one might even say, hostilities against this spiritual science are asserting themselves. Not only does this spiritual science present itself to the rest of contemporary spiritual life as something still foreign to this spiritual life today - it has that in common with everything that has been incorporated into it as a new acquisition of human spiritual culture in a certain respect - but precisely in relation to the spiritual goals of our time, this spiritual science must appear on the one hand as something quite incomprehensible, fantastic, dreamy, although on the other hand it represents something that arises from the deepest longings and, one may say, from the most urgent needs of the soul life of the present day. With this I would like to have defined, so to speak, the theme of this evening. Spiritual science, as it is meant here, differs from the outset precisely from that in a fundamental way, the continuation of which it wants to be, and it is only too understandable that it experiences hostility after hostility from that side. I am referring to the scientific school of thought of our time, because basically, spiritual science, as it is meant here, wants to be a continuation in the truest, most genuine sense of scientific thinking for the spirit and its secrets, its laws - a continuation of the scientific way of thinking that has left its mark on the spiritual life of the West for three to four centuries. Nevertheless, although precisely because of this characteristic spiritual science is in no way obliged to confront the justified claims of natural science, it nevertheless differs in a certain respect from what is actually called science today from the point of view of the natural scientific way of thinking. It is just as much a science as natural research, but because it considers the objects, entities and processes of spiritual life, it must necessarily develop the scientific methods in a different way than natural science, which is limited to the senses and to the intellect (which has the senses as its basis), must do today. And so, let our attention be drawn to this fundamental difference between spiritual-scientific research and natural-scientific research. What we usually call science today starts from that state, from that mood of the human soul, which is present in normal life, in everyday human life. We speak of what man can do by virtue of his soul, by virtue of his body, by virtue of his mind applied to the observations of the senses and to experiment, what man can do by virtue of all this, where the limits of knowledge for what has been indicated; in short, it is perfectly right to say that this scientific direction takes the human soul as it is, observes the environment of this soul and from this gains the laws of sensual-physical existence. The most important work for this science is therefore done in research, always within the activity of working itself, and what comes out of this activity is science, is a scientific result. Spiritual research is different. Spiritual research, as it is meant here: Although, as we shall see in a moment, it is the same processes in the life of the soul that spiritual research has to undertake, which also govern external science, external scientific knowledge, but these activities of the spiritual researcher are for him preparations for his research, are for him there to prepare the soul for it, so that it can arrive at what can be called seeing. Of course, everything is meant spiritually, but if one assumes this spiritual meaning, then one can say: outer science presupposes the human soul, and these observations are based on the observation of the senses, on what the intellect has to say about the laws of existence. Spiritual research uses all human soul powers, whether they are powers of understanding, will or feeling, to prepare what could be called the senses – in a figurative sense, of course – which then lead to direct perception , to prepare for the spiritual researcher to devote his work and efforts to preparing himself, so that he can then, as it were, access the impressions of perceptions from the spiritual world through himself. Now I do not want to speak, not in this reflection, of abstractions, of concepts, of speculations, of a philosophy of ideas, but I want to lead directly into the facts of the soul life, which is suitable for spiritual research. All spiritual research is based on the fact that the human soul can apply to itself what is always on everyone's lips today as a scientific buzzword, that the human soul can apply to itself what lies in the word 'development'. Spiritual research starts from the premise that the human soul can undergo an inner development that brings about a transformation, a change in these soul forces, so that these soul forces become different in a certain sense. So everything that is the result of this spiritual research is not gained by simply accepting the soul in its abilities, but only comes about when, through careful preparation, the soul has transformed itself in such a way that it no longer has the sensual world around it in its direct spiritual perception the sensual world around it, but that it has another, a higher, a spiritual world around it, just as it has the sensual-physical world around it in ordinary life, which is viewed through the senses. Now one could easily believe that some very special preparations are needed to transform the soul in this way. That is not the case, basically. What the soul has to undertake is based on things that are actually always present in everyday soul life, that belong to the most essential powers of this soul life, but which, in order to become suitable for spiritual research, must be developed into the infinite, one might say. I will now show from a different angle, than I have often done in the past years, how the human soul, as it were, goes beyond itself, beyond its everyday point of view, in order to become an observer of the spiritual world. What it has to undertake in the intimate inner life has, as its elements, as its starting point, precisely the forces that are necessary in the most everyday life. One of these forces can be touched upon by using an easily understandable term that refers to something that is absolutely necessary in everyday life. It is what we call in this everyday life attention, interest in the things of the environment. This attention – I have already spoken about it from a different perspective in these lectures – consists in our focusing on some object in our environment, so that through this focusing it remains, as it were, in our soul life, living on in memory. How necessary this attention is for everyday life can be seen from a very ordinary way of looking at things, which focuses on the connection between this attention and memory. Many a person will complain that their memory is either weakening or that it is in some way faulty or deficient. If one were to study – to the extent that such study is necessary for ordinary life – the connection between attention and memory, one would get over many of the things that one so often notices as defects in oneself. I will start with a very trivial matter. Many a person cannot find an object in the morning that they still had in the evening. They have put it down with half-consciousness, not with attention. A cufflink that we put down in the evening in such a way that we harbor the arbitrary thought: You are now putting this button in this place - maybe we even think about the surroundings - in this environment. You will see, if you let these thoughts pass through your mind in the evening, that you will go directly to the place of the button in the morning, and it turns out that there is a connection between our ability to remember and what can be called attention. To a certain extent, the memory problem is an attention problem, and if we could get used to arbitrarily paying attention to things that we know need to be remembered, we would contribute an infinite amount, not only to the memory of the things in question, but we would also see that our memory is really strengthened by frequently practicing such activity, which means that the forces behind our memory would also become strong. Just as it is true that, to a certain extent, a good memory is part of an outwardly healthy mental life, it is equally true that observing what we call attention is very necessary in everyday life. But there is another way to convince oneself of the connections between the human mental life and attention. Everyone knows – and especially those who are a little familiar with the literature on contemporary psychology – how a healthy psyche must be a coherent psyche, so that when we look back to the point of childhood that we usually remember, we must recognize the events that have occurred to us as our own. It would be unhealthy if the memory were so full of holes that we see our own experiences as those of a foreign being, when we would not recognize them as our own. In the case of diseased souls, these experiences emerge as if they were another ego. Much could be done if, through spiritual science, one had trained oneself to be attentive to these things – one can recognize them – to be attentive to souls that show a tendency towards such holes in, let us say, their ego, their continuous memories, and one would then intervene in such a way as to strengthen and systematically strengthen interest. Much of the harm done to such souls could be averted by a certain education if one considered the connection between the life of memory, the life of the soul as a whole, and what we call attention. What we might call attention is not attention to this or that, but the activity of attention, the activity that unfolds in the soul life while we are paying attention. For the purposes of spiritual research, this must be strengthened, increased, in intensity and without limit. This happens in what we might call the concentration of human thinking, feeling and willing, or, in general, the concentration of the entire soul life. In our outer, everyday life, we develop attention by being stimulated by impressions from outside, by what, I might say, has a more brilliant, outstanding effect on our soul than anything else. This challenges our attention. We very rarely succeed in producing this attention through pure arbitrariness; but spiritual research must prepare for this: increasing attention to an unlimited degree through inner arbitrariness, through training of the soul, through intimate practice - one may say - into the unlimited. An increase in attention is brought about in this way: If we have stimulated certain ideas, perhaps ideas that do not correspond to an external fact, but symbolic ideas that we can survey precisely, so that we know that no supernaturally conscious ideas are involved; that we take the same , quite arbitrarily, without any process forcing us, into the center of our consciousness, and then bring about such a life of consciousness as only develops in normal human existence during sleep. During sleep, all external senses fall silent, all movement ceases, and the human being lies still in relation to his corporeality. Even the worries and concerns of life fall silent in sleep; only in normal life during sleep does unconsciousness occur. Again, I can only describe the principles here, not everything. You can find more details in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my “Occult Science”. But the soul can, through training, through years of exercises, produce such a mood in itself that its inner self arbitrarily silences everything in itself that otherwise only remains silent during sleep. The soul is, so to speak, in the same state in relation to outer activity and perception as in sleep, except that it is awake and thus detached from all outer life. The soul focuses solely and exclusively on the self-chosen idea with the most intense attention of all its activity. As a result, everything that the soul would otherwise use up of its energy to absorb and process the manifold impressions of the day, everything that the soul expends in energy, is now used to push itself towards this one goal of the idea. The soul life is concentrated, and something is now being created with that which even the most significant minds of human development have always regarded as the most worthy apparatus for all world exploration. What is needed now is what can be compared with the apparatus of the human soul, but I do not attach any particular importance to the comparison, with something like spiritual chemistry. To understand why a person carries out an experiment on the soul, which is not just an inner process of imagination but a real process in the soul that actually brings about something in reality, I will use the comparison with chemistry to help us understand each other. Something is done with the soul that could be called spiritual chemistry. When we have water in front of us, its components are not necessarily recognizable externally. The chemist breaks this water down into hydrogen and oxygen. He separates the hydrogen from the water. Hydrogen has very different properties than water, properties that cannot be suspected in water as such. Just as one can only assume the properties of hydrogen in water, so too can one only assume the properties of the soul and spirit in the human being standing before us in everyday life; for just as hydrogen is bound to water, so too are soul and spirit bound to the physical body in everyday life. What I have characterized as an unlimited increase in attention to an arbitrary idea or sensation or concept concentrates the soul's powers so that this soul stands out from the physical body. Now it must be said, though, that when the soul wants to prepare itself, it must do so with patience and energy and often for years – that varies from person to person – but then the one who prepares his soul really does achieve connecting a meaning with something that can justifiably appear nonsensical to many people in the present. The spiritual researcher attains to connect a meaning in direct inner experience with the word: I now experience, I now feel in the pure spiritual-soul realm and know that in what I experience and feel, nothing lives that is connected to the physical-sensual. The spiritual researcher now knows the meaning of this word, which in ordinary life seems nonsensical, because he experiences this meaning through the direct power of the reality of what it means to have emerged from the physical body with his spiritual soul. The soul and spirit are as independent and endowed with other properties as hydrogen is endowed with other properties when it is removed from water. It is not an external process that can be compared experimentally with any external process, but it is a process that leads to the soul and spirit being drawn out. Only then does it prove its true independence, only then does it show itself in what it is in its true, own nature and what connects it to the physical-sensory for everyday life, which it uses to perceive the external world and to carry out the tasks of the external world. The first thing that a person can experience from their physical senses is thinking and imagining. Since I do not want to speak in abstractions, but rather in the concrete facts of the inner experience of the , I do not wish to shy away from pointing out this experience, even at the risk, which I fully understand, of not being taken seriously by some people who believe they are standing on the firm ground of science. When the spiritual researcher, after years of hard work and sacrifice, has come to the point where he associates a meaning with the words: You experience and perceive things outside of your body, then at first he experiences this only in relation to thinking, which, as one can already suspect in ordinary life, one knows through spiritual science. That one must use the brain for thinking, that stops. One feels that one is inside the imagination, and one does not feel with this inner experience of the brain and nervous system, but one feels - as I said, I say this at the risk of not being taken seriously by some - that one what one is experiencing now, one feels oneself like an external object, like an inner self circling around a body located outside of oneself, if one has given it independence, and one experiences oneself circling around one's own body, one's own brain, and an important experience then occurs. One learns to recognize how ordinary thinking occurs, because in order to make progress in real spiritual research, one has to advance in stages. At first it is often a dull experience. But when you have progressed to the point where you can connect a full meaning with the word: You now live in a thinking that happens outside of your brain, human life is indeed between birth and death – so you have to return at a certain time. You can only develop the thoughts you have outside the body with your brain when you return. This gives a very different feeling than the usual one, because you perceive the process with your brain. You start to use your brain as an instrument, you know that you have something in your brain that offers resistance, that you have to forcefully push into. A strange feeling arises when the imagination moves outside the brain and the brain begins to imagine, a feeling that can only be compared to a certain fear of now having to think again through the instrument of the brain, because one is now facing life outside oneself. You have, so to speak, got to know yourself from the outside for the first time, have learned to look back at your physical body from the outside, and the immersion imposes the necessity of working with heavy matter, plastic, so to speak, so that those experiences that you first undertook outside of this brain can now be expressed within. In this way, a kind of emancipation of intellectual life from physical life can occur, so to speak. When this emancipation occurs, one no longer has the physical-sensory world around one. This physical-sensory world disappears at the same moment as the emergence from the physical body occurs. One has a new world around oneself, a world that can be described as the world of spiritual states. Only now can one see through what spiritual states are through direct contemplation. Something occurs that I would like to mention at this point, because I always want to progress from the abstract to the concrete in these considerations; one imagines this entering into the spiritual world wrongly if one imagines it according to the pattern of external perceptions. Here the observer stands there and the object stands there. When a spiritual researcher begins to perceive spiritual states, after having prepared himself, he must, in a certain sense, immerse his entire being in the object or being he is perceiving. Just as, in everyday life, when we experience something in our own soul, we experience this or that mood, this or that inner [affect ], how one expresses this in what is called the development of one's outlook, so one can only experience what states of mind are by imitating, as it were, with the spirit freed from the body, immersing oneself in what one perceives, really imitating in an inner play of expression the states of the spiritual outer world. It is therefore an inner play of expression that one lives into, and one cannot say, when speaking correctly, “I have perceived an object or being of the spiritual world as if it were a being of the sensory world.” Rather, one can only say, “I have experienced in this being that which, in me, causes me to express myself with my soul and spirit in such and such a way.” In my inner expression, I emulate the peculiarity of the being in question. One becomes acquainted with an inner play of expression, in the reception of cipher-like ideas, and in a certain sense one becomes one with the being of the spiritual world. But it requires the spirit to be so sensitive within itself that the spirit expresses its own states as one otherwise expresses the states of one's own soul. An experience, in contrast to mere perception, is the beholding of the spiritual world, a becoming one with its states. This is precisely how this living into the spiritual world differs from the experience of everyday reality, which is ultimately something passive, something that one stands by, as it were, while that which allows itself to be led upwards by the will, to live into the spiritual phenomena, must certainly be in action, in activity - this inner activity, which in itself creates expression, forms. The soul must transform itself for the conditions of the spiritual world if it wants to penetrate into the spiritual world. In this way, one experiences the conditions of the spiritual world, as one experiences forms in the physical-sensual world. But one can experience not only the conditions of the spiritual world, but also the processes, the events of the spiritual world. This happens when one leads other powers of the soul upwards from the physical body. Not only the power of imagination can be led upwards, but also another power. But then another everyday activity of the soul must be increased to infinity, and that is what can be described with a word that is a necessity in everyday life, the word “devotion”. If one succeeds in consciously developing this devotion, as it were, in the general world process, which we otherwise only develop unconsciously in sleep, when one is, so to speak, completely devoted, without doing anything oneself, to the general happening, as in sleep, when one so learns to be devoted, fully consciously while awake, to the spiritual world, then one comes to tear out, as it were, yet another soul activity of our inner life, out of the physical-sensual. This activity is the one through which we - as strange as it may sound, but it is true - experience the fruit in the outer physical: speaking, the power of speech. This power of speech, as is well known, is rooted in the activity of the brain, in the activity of the organs that ultimately lead to the larynx and so forth. This power of speech plays a completely different role than is usually believed. Most human thinking is expressed in words, so that the words run through the mind, so that, as modern science admits, for those who look more closely at things, all speechless thinking in humans also runs in such a way that they vibrate inwardly in a subtle way. The body is actually in a state of perpetual inner activity when it thinks. This activity silently repeats, so to speak, what would otherwise be expressed more robustly in the movements of the speech organs and the nervous system. If, through careful practice, increased attention, that is, through concentration, increased devotion, that is, meditation, one arrives at the activity that the soul must expend when it speaks in everyday life, if one arrives at this activity without living it out in external speech, then one has raised a second soul power from the physical body. This elevation is somewhat more difficult than the other, but it can be attained through robust, energetic practice. When I speak to you, my soul is spontaneously active, and that which is carried out in this activity is expressed in the outer word. If we now succeed in holding back the activity that would otherwise fade away in the word, so that it is carried out without a word and without that vibration, purely inwardly, in the soul, if, so to speak, the word “strength” is experienced inwardly in the soul, then the soul life is strengthened and invigorated the soul life inwardly strengthens itself far more than in the mere operation [separation?] of the thought from the physical-sensual, and then, through a similar spiritual chemistry, so to speak, one draws the ability to speak, the power of speech, out of the physical body, experiences it only in the soul. Once again, you know what it means to be outside of your physical body in your spiritual and mental experience and to now experience, where you cannot use your larynx to speak, where you develop these activities outside of your body, as you usually do when speaking, you now experience the ability to speak inwardly. You now experience the inner word. You experience the inner word purely spiritually. This experience of the inner word is very closely related to the experience of the power of memory. Of course, when I say the experience of the power of memory, I do not mean what is expressed in the ability to remember, but rather what stands behind this ability to remember, what does not consciously live in everyday life, what works and remains half unconscious. When we incorporate a thought into memory, we are exercising soul activity, and this is related to speech power. This is therefore something we call the lower-soul power of memory, just as we can say the lower-soul power of speech, which we draw from ordinary speech and in which we then live as spiritual researchers. We live purely in the spirit and soul in the word, in the power of remembrance, when in ordinary daily life the memory is transformed so that we remember the everyday experiences, those where all memory is silent, as in sleep. What is left, so to speak, is what is otherwise used for memory. In everyday life, something is always used for remembering; inner strength is used to make what is happening take root in the soul life. Now that we have brought about a soul life that erases ordinary memory, this strength, which is otherwise used for remembering, is used purely spiritually, it pulses in the inner purely spiritual, recognizing literally. So when we raise the power of speech from the physical-bodily, we not only experience states, but we can immerse ourselves in the essences of the spiritual world so that we experience what happens in them. We now develop not only a play of facial expressions, but what could be called an inner spiritual power of the gesture, [an inner gesture]. This must always be emphasized - that on which activity as a spiritual experience is based. If you want to experience a spiritual being, you have to immerse yourself in it and experience its processes, just as we accompany our own inner experiences with gestures, expressing in the gesture what is going on in our soul itself. Many people - myself included - use far too many gestures to express what is inner soul life. Just as the soul life, flowing out, branches out, so it must lead to inner gestures of spiritual and soul experience. Then one experiences processes, not just states; these are experienced through the thoughts that are raised up, the processes through the ability to speak and remember that is raised up. Then, when one experiences conditions of the spiritual world, one also experiences one's own inner conditions, and this leads deep into the nature of the human soul. As the spiritual researcher begins to experience inner states, he connects the following with a meaningful concept: He knows why the materialistic view of the present is so difficult to refute from a purely idealistic point of view. This is because, as the materialistic way of thinking correctly asserts, everyday thinking does indeed arise from the nervous system, from the brain. For what one has in ordinary consciousness as content, as something experienced by the soul, is basically only an image of the soul. There is not enough time to go into the arguments regarding pictoriality in detail. I will merely suggest that it is quite clear to the spiritual researcher who has come this far what ordinary feeling, will and imaginative life want. They take the form of images that emerge from the body. They emerge like the reflections of our own self when we stand in front of a mirror. The body forms what could be called a mirror for spiritual and psychological experience. However, like every image, the image is not actually complete. The image would only be complete if, when we step in front of a mirror in our ordinary lives, we had to send out forces from ourselves to shape the mirror in such a way that its material composition becomes such that it sends the images back to us. For we actually accomplish this in our body, that we first place this body with our deeper spiritual-soul in the ability to reflect back to us what we call our everyday life. We first make it a mirror in truth, it must be said, and that is the secret of the human soul life. The spiritual researcher is led to a spiritual-soul experience that stands outside and behind the physical body, and he observes how the truly true spiritual-soul aspect first works on the body so that the contents of everyday soul experience then emerge from the body. It is as impossible for the spiritual researcher who sees through it to think that the spiritual-soul experience is only a function of the brain as it would be to think that the image we have in front of us rises up out of the mirror as a reality. With the same right one could claim: When one sees oneself in the mirror, what looks out comes out of the mirror – so that the spiritual-soul comes out of the nervous system. The reality of the soul and spirit lies behind the physical, and in truth the body is between the truly spiritual, which is its active agent, its plastic creator, and the everyday, limited to sensory experiences that in reality only take place in images. In this way one arrives at what is truly spiritual and soulful and stands behind the physical. When one arrives at this, then what one experiences as a state is quite different from what one would like to describe as the spiritual-soul through external speculation, because one is confronted with direct vision, with what the I is spiritually and soulfully in human nature. Then the doctrine of repeated earthly lives ceases to be mere theoretical knowledge. Then an expansion begins, one might say, of memory, which can then extend beyond repeated earthly lives. The complete human experience is seen through, how it unfolds not only between birth and death, but through many earthly lives and through the spiritual experiences between death and birth. That which can be called repeated earthly lives becomes an immediate experience. By developing the memory and power of speech, by transforming them into a power of knowledge and experience, past earthly lives emerge from the floods of spiritual life as reality, and the certainty emerges that the present one is also the cause of the following ones, and that between death and a new birth there is a much longer life than earthly life. By pushing back the ordinary power of memory, the higher power of memory is awakened. When the power of memory, which otherwise only allows us to look back to birth, is eradicated, it awakens to an increased power that now extends to an understanding of repeated earth lives! This realization does not need to take on a modern spiritual truth from old religious systems. People who know nothing about the methods of spiritual research and who have superficially absorbed something of it, that this spiritual science must speak of repeated earthly lives, can very easily come to believe that some old Buddhist truth is being recycled. Such a claim is no more useful than if one wanted to claim that today only one person could prove the Pythagorean theorem by going to the [gap in the transcript]. Spiritual science has nothing to do with anything historically handed down, but only with what the mind can explore within itself at any time through the stated means. Just as one arrives at the results of science through external experimentation, so one arrives at the results of spiritual research through inner experimentation. That the results of spiritual science may appear fanciful today is hardly surprising to anyone who knows the nature of this spiritual science and how it can be applied to the spiritual life of the present time. In this sense, it must be emphasized time and again: Just as the Copernican view seemed strange, so the results of spiritual science may seem paradoxical to the modern mind. But just as the Copernican world view has become part of modern culture, so will the results of spiritual research. Certainly, the way people today approach this spiritual research is the same way they approached the Copernican worldview; and if someone back then had planned to give a lecture to present something like the Copernican worldview, which at the time also had to appear as something quite fantastic , one would perhaps have announced such a lecture back then: the Copernican world view as a surrogate for Christianity; especially because one could have believed that the Copernican world view endangered Christianity. It took a long time before people began to realize that the matter is different, and in our time one can actually have a different experience from the genuine aims of the present. Compared to the experiences I have here, one must be touched in a pleasant way, as one could hear a Catholic theologian, who is a deeply feeling philosopher, said: Certainly a prejudiced world once opposed the Copernican worldview as if it could endanger religious life; today - and it is not I who says this, but this Catholic theologian - today the true Catholic will even know that what is being explored in the secrets of existence, what is being of the greatness of the world, can never contribute to the satisfaction of religious life, but only to the greater admiration for the greatness of the divine Creator, the more one gets to know his deeds in the development of the world. - The time will also come when one will recognize in repeated lives on earth a promotion of the Christian point of view, as today in the Copernican worldview a promotion of the Christian view. Thus I have spoken to you, as it were, of two soul powers that can be led upwards from the experience with the physical body. There is still a third soul power that must be spontaneously led upwards on the path to spiritual research, and through this third soul power one now attains not only to the states and processes, but to the entities of the spiritual world itself, so that this spiritual world becomes, on another level, something like the natural world — not something that is spoken of in generalities, but rather as one speaks not in generalities about nature, but about individual animals, plants, stones, individual clouds, mountains, rivers, and so on. Where the spirit does not appear before the eyes as a sum of real spiritual beings, something else must indeed be brought up from this human truth as it stands before us in everyday life. We must remember how we entered life as human beings. What distinguishes us as human beings from the other sensual phenomena on earth is that we must, in the early days, make of ourselves that which most beautifully characterizes our destiny. We enter the world as quadrupeds, so to speak; we first acquire the ability to stand upright and walk. I want to make it clear from the outset, to avoid any misunderstanding, as I have done elsewhere, that I am aware that other creatures also walk on two legs, such as chickens, for example, but the difference is that they are designed to do so from the outset, whereas humans overcome gravity by the application of an inner force that acts purely in the material world. In the first years of his physical existence, the human being makes himself into an upright being, into that being of whom those who are more deeply attuned have always known what it means to stand upright, to be able to direct one's gaze out into the universe. But the human being makes himself into this. An inner strength is applied, through which the human being actually becomes what he is destined to be. This power does not come to our consciousness again in the course of life. In a time when our consciousness is still in the realm of dreams, we experience what, so to speak, gave us our position, our equilibrium in the world, whereby we are human beings. But we can rediscover them, and the spiritual researcher must rediscover them, these powers. These powers remain in the soul. In normal life they are only used to maintain the upright position of the human being, but then they rest. They are again brought up, and this inner soul power, when it is experienced, is something that is revealed by a will that is also being led upwards, permeated by that will, which allows our spiritual and mental experience outside of the physical body to bring us into different situations regarding the various truths of the universe. In this way one attains the following: Just as man in the physical world makes himself what he is only through his upright balance, as he, so to speak, grasps his I-being in his inner activity and power of preparation for the earth, so he grasps, when he grasps this inner activity through which he human being, when he grasps this activity in its organization, he grasps the inner truth of other spirit beings, grasps the inner essence of real spirits, experiences how other beings make themselves into their essence, as he makes himself into an essence on earth through what has been stated. However, all these things can only be attained through a certain resignation, through a certain inner tragic mood. Much has to be overcome, and in a sense these surmountings are a kind of suffering. But if the spiritual researcher courageously goes through this suffering, then he will succeed in detaching from this suffering the inner activity that is now able not only to educate us, that gives man on earth his true outer purpose, that makes man can turn his gaze out into the universe, but also to delve into other beings, to grasp their destiny by living it, and to experience how they become what they are in their worlds in a different way from human beings on earth. Now one experiences not only conditions and processes, but the inner life of the spirit beings themselves. One enters into it by becoming one with these truths through inner mobility, through the right inner strength. Now it is a certain, but inwardly mobile physiognomy. Just as a person acquires his overall physiognomy on earth, so he emerges into the physiognomies of the other truths on this third level. In this way one ascends to the spiritual co-experience of the spirit beings through inner play of features, through inner gestures and postures, then through inner physiognomy, through knowing the inner being of other spirit beings. In this way the spiritual world gradually becomes a true reality, and it always shows that this becoming of the spiritual world a true reality differs from the experience of the outer physical world. This is experienced in passivity. A spiritual world can only be experienced in activity, and this brings us to the point that really shows us how this spiritual science must be introduced into the spiritual cultural life of the present. As I said, I wanted to show today how the spiritual researcher comes to his experiences. I will develop special experiences the day after tomorrow. But what can emerge from today's is that the spiritual researcher appeals to the activity of the soul, to that which the soul can only lead up from the physical-bodily in un- [gap in the transcript] activity, can experience purely spiritual-soul activity. In the immersion, which is purely spiritual-soul, in the other truths, the states, processes and the essence of these truths themselves are experienced. All these things cannot be experienced without extending to the entire soul what is otherwise only experienced in the moral. When a person experiences inwardly in the moral sense: 'You want to do this, that is good', then the experience of one's inner duty, which must become an outer deed, is indeed the experience of the highest morality. This experience is an inner one, and it is such that the person must disregard himself, because basically all immorality comes from selfishness. Morality, however, comes from disregarding the narrow-mindedness that man places in the foreground. Just as man, through his feelings, becomes free in the moral, at least from that which he otherwise uses in everyday life, so in the life of the soul as a whole he becomes free in the experience of the higher worlds. In a certain respect, the moral life is the dark model for the higher life of knowledge. I did not want to show by words, but by describing soul processes, what spiritual science consists of and what the relationship between spiritual life and spiritual science is. If, on the other hand, we look at contemporary life, we can truly say that this experience is not geared towards the inner life of the soul. In particular, when a person is supposed to recognize the world, he is passive today. One could substantiate with almost grotesque examples how much man likes to be passive today. It is very gratifying that you have appeared today in such large numbers, even though [gap in transcript] are connected with light images. But you will all admit that the presentations that are linked to light images are preferred to those where such promises are not made. The spiritual researcher appeals to the supersensible, the invisible, and if he also makes use of the light pictures, it is only to make something extraordinarily sensible. But humanity today is to a great extent not disposed to be won over to the spirit or to something that can be explored by appealing to the activity of the soul, but to contemplation. Of course, in the spiritual fields that have produced the most admirable achievements, this beholding is necessary; but the spirit cannot be grasped in external contemplation. What is sensual is not spiritual. This is trivial, but it is not understood. I am not telling fairy tales. It could happen that an otherwise very meritorious contemporary philosopher recently said or presented a [monistic] idea. In an introduction in which he wanted to write about an evolution in philosophy, he said that if you read Kant and so on, you read into concepts, but that could be remedied, because today – and again, it should be noted that nothing should be said against the technical achievements of the present time , these technical achievements have their significance, their justification; but what has been said is characteristic – the philosopher says that if you want to immerse yourself in Spinoza's Ethics, it is difficult to live into the intangible concepts. So you use the movie to help! You depict how Spinoza sits there spontaneously when a thought occurs to him, how the thought expansion then occurs to the same. Then you depict the force on the one hand, which represents the expansion, then you depict the remaining orderly concept, as concepts are generally formed. The person in question has set out to do nothing less than present Spinozian ethics through film. Thus, one might hope to see a complete cinematographic adaptation of Spinoza's Ethics, or Kant's “Pure Reason”. As I said, I am not criticizing the arts, although it seems strange when the editor says that in this way ancient metaphysical longings of the human soul can be satisfied by an art that the superficial mind usually regards as something playful. Thus, ancient metaphysical longings could be satisfied by the application of this cinematic art. I wanted to mention this because it shows how man today has the need not to put his soul into action, not to appeal to what, out of all passivity, must go into the fullest activity, as well as what man today wants to be offered everything, that is, how he does not boldly want to achieve existence in his own activity, does not want to prove existence to himself by leading this activity in his own activity to a proof of existence, but wants to have existence proved to him from outside. The reasons why one assumes something to be must be forthcoming. This is there for the thought habits of the whole of philosophy: increasingly imaginable from the standpoint that all thinking that cannot prove that it is based on foundations of something, to which nothing has been added, that all this thinking is understood as mere fantasy. Gradually, the goals of the present tend to declare all thinking to be fantasy that cannot prove that it has been sucked out of the material existence that presents itself from the outside. I have indicated this basic character in the goals of the present. This basic character was necessary, because only through the fact that man has enjoyed an education through the natural sciences have the great, powerful explorations of natural science come about, which has commercially and technically transformed the globe, and has also greatly increased knowledge. For this to happen, it was necessary for man to be passively confronted with the outside world. The boldness that man must develop for his inner experience is, so to speak, incorporated today into outer activity. It is a law of human life that whatever grows on the one hand must, in a sense, wither on the other. The last three to four centuries have brought it to the point that humanity has been able to undertake such tremendously bold things as the achievements up to aeronautics. The fact that boldness was developed for the external achievements has resulted in an education in humanity that has provided inner boldness for a certain period of time, where it is necessary to grasp a spiritual that cannot be grasped if one surrenders positively, but only if one is able to surrender to this spiritual with its activity, so that one stands on the point of view: What you experience in yourself is not reality. One can never come to a real knowledge of the spirit, because the spirit only lets us actively enter into its spheres. So, what is the basic requirement for the recognition of spiritual science is, of course, spontaneously opposed to the goals of the present. However, this too turns out to be the case for the process of becoming as a whole: just as an elastic body, when sufficiently compressed, exerts its counter-force, so too, when something is pushed to a certain point, the opposing force, the reaction, asserts itself. Anyone who can observe our age knows how in our time, already quite thoroughly in souls, without them knowing it themselves deeply, that opposite longing is present - after education in external natural science has brought it to a certain high point - the soul, as I said, longs, without often knowing it itself today, for a knowledge of that which is present behind the senses as the actual basis of all human life. To use the same comparison again: spiritual science today is at the same point in relation to the aims of our time as natural science was at the time of Giordano Bruno, who, in his insights, broke through what had been thought of as a blue celestial sphere, as a blue vault. What was significant was that Bruno said: What is up there is not a real boundary, it is only caused by the boundary that man sets for himself. What the human being recognizes must set as a boundary, that extends there. In those days, the limited world was broken through, the view was expanded into the unlimited distances of space. But such a firmament – now a temporal firmament – is there for mere natural science, and when it asserts it from its standpoint, it is justified; only it should recognize its limitations. Such a temporal moment is what asserts itself for the external world in birth and death. Just as the physical firmament is only set in space by man himself and knowledge could be newly expanded in relation to spatial infinity, so spiritual science will do the same for the spirit, [as] what was once the temporal firmament [has been broken through] for birth and death, and teaches us to look into a temporal infinity, that is, into the eternity, into the immortality of the human soul. The opponents will still have to find the newly expanded view of the spirit today. But just when you are considering the goals of the present, you see that on the one hand there are people for whom it seems completely outrageous and nonsensical that such things can be said as they are said in spiritual science. On the other hand, however, it can be perceived how the soul always thirsts to really get to know the world as spiritual science recognizes it as its task to explore. Much of what later emerges clearly in the soul is first present as a dark urge. The spiritual researcher sees it and knows that the very near future will find souls who will come to recognize spiritual research as the path to spiritual science. So superficially everything speaks against spiritual science. But if one considers what is taking place in the depths of the soul, then there is a guarantee that spiritual science will truly win the hearts and souls of people. Today, people only draw from what they often say is based on the true goals of science; they do not draw the right conclusions, otherwise they could come to something that is to be said now for our understanding through a kind of metaphor. I do not want to deal with the meaning of the great significant word that stands at the beginning of the Bible. To what extent it corresponds to a fact in human life on earth can be dealt with on another occasion. But with a tremendous view of the development of human experience, this Bible word stands before us, this Bible word, which is put into the mouth of the adversary of humanity, so to speak:
And this indicates to both the religious person and the scientifically discerning person, when the matter is only considered in its depths, how man has been tempted in certain respects to go beyond the measure allotted to him in primeval times. Here too, it has already been discussed how this word, or rather what lies behind it, is connected with the possibility of evil and the fact of human freedom. Thus one could say that a world view that is hallowed by tradition, which spiritual science certainly recognizes as much as anyone, that such a world view sets the word at the beginning of human development of the temptation to want to go beyond human beings in inner experience. One can say of every time that it is a transitional time. It is often said in a trivial way, but it is important, even if every time is a transitional time, that one characterizes the transitional moments in the right way, and that he who tries to penetrate into the goals of the time recognizes them even where they still remain unconscious to the souls. But whoever reveals them, whoever penetrates them, notices that today, in fact – if nothing superstitious is meant – something like an evil spirit lurks at man's side. Allow me to say what I want to say with a strong expression. [Gap in the transcript.] The saying may seem paradoxical to some; but it is intended to express as clearly as possible, by means of an apparent [paradox], what is to be said. If we consider the transitional moments of our time, it becomes clear that much of what is believed today is a kind of seducer, not meant in the superstitious sense. But when you say something like that, using extrasensory words, you have to remember the word:
Again, there is something like a tempter, and it is difficult to become aware of him because one does not draw the consequences from what lies dormant in the goals of the world. Because one does not draw this conclusion, it seems paradoxical when [one] shows you the conclusion. If it were true what some materialistically minded people draw from current science, then one would have to say: Man is placed in the mere animal kingdom by what is today understood as the theory of evolution. Today, one only feels quite clever, and one thinks that one can consider the lower classes stupid when one can say: what man experiences in terms of morality and intellect is only a higher education of what appears in the animal kingdom, and the more one can associate man with the animal kingdom, the more one believes today to be scientific. Even if a philosophy today makes the somewhat weak attempt to come up with a value system alongside it, this itself is something imperfect, because it must be said that if the consequences were really drawn from what is regarded today as a genuine scientific way of thinking, then it would consist in the fact that distinguishing between good and evil would amount to the same thing that we feel towards the laws of nature. Good and evil would arise from the human soul with the necessity of natural law. Since, if one wants to base oneself on the ground of science, as one often does, one wants to base oneself on the narrowly defined science, it is inconsistent not to draw the conclusion that man should actually be understood merely as an animal transformation, and that the moral should be classified in what is recognized as natural laws, as natural necessity. But then it follows that, just as there is no distinction between good and evil in the law of nature, there is no distinction between good and evil. As I said, it sounds paradoxical, but it is true nevertheless; the tempter is standing there again, only due to inconsistency we do not see him, the tempter who now says the opposite of the tempter who is put at the top by the Bible. Now he says: You will be like the animals and no longer distinguish good from evil. This may seem ridiculous to some people today; it only seems ridiculous to those who do not understand the consequences that lie in some purely materialistic views of the present. So one could say that today the tempter speaks the opposite of what he did then. Back then he said:
Man was to be elevated above himself. As a result, he stands there today, saying: You will be like the animals, you will also recognize as animals and no longer distinguish good from evil. - Just as that was a tempter's word, so is this a tempter's word, even if it is not spoken out of inconsistency. The more one will recognize – it rests in the goals of the present – how the soul, when it becomes aware of this temptress word, that the soul will then develop the longing to recognize the spirit again in its immediate form, which lifts it out of what the [gap in the transcript]. On the one hand, it [spiritual science] may be perceived as a dreamer, as something nonsensical. One can understand that. But on the other hand, it can also be seen as being called for by the deepest goals of our time, which rest in the souls. Because it is so intimately connected with all the goals of the human soul, when one stands on its ground one feels how one is in harmony with what spiritual science wants to express with clarity, how one is in harmony with the intuitions of the spirits who have always worked for spiritual science. These spirits of the past, because spiritual science is something that is only to be bestowed upon our time, have not yet tried to express in a clear way what spiritual science has to say today. But as what can be clearly expressed in a time [gap in the transcript], so the leading spirits have always felt what spiritual science is. I had to express clearly some things that had to follow today from what is often called science, which is not followed because people are not consistent enough; the soul, familiar with the spirit and its development, has always felt this. Even if development is fully recognized as the continuous pole of our lives, something enters into this human experience with the human soul that goes beyond everything that can be observed externally as external development. And spiritual research only shows, one might say – if I may use the may use the word, which sounds dry and pedantic in the face of these things, only shows through spiritual experiment that what we call the immortal, the eternal, the truly spiritual human soul can really be experienced in detachment from the physical. Thus, through spiritual science, man will always look at what man's dignity and man's destiny in earthly life really is. We feel when the tempter approaches, however unconsciously, however unacknowledged, and wants to tell us: Development shows man only as the last link in animal development - when he says: You will be like the animals and no longer distinguish evil from good. In the face of this temptation, spiritual science will stand united in the good with the personalities of all times who are striving towards the spiritual light. It will hold up as knowledge to this tempter what Schiller said out of deep poetic intuitions and in which what has been considered is to be summarized. When Schiller became aware of how the similar idea emerged through Herder and Goethe, that man [is] placed at the pinnacle of the animal organization, it was clear to Schiller that such a teaching could only be properly grasped if at the same time the spirit is fully recognized in its independent significance, separate from the physical. That is why Schiller does not say what so many say today, and which, when taken to its logical conclusion, gives the tempter language, but rather, Schiller said the following – and at the same time saw humanity's true destiny – he said the following about the incarnation of man on earth, at the moment when man comes into existence:
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69e. The Humanities and the Future of Humanity: Theosophy and Anti-theosophy
09 Dec 1913, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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69e. The Humanities and the Future of Humanity: Theosophy and Anti-theosophy
09 Dec 1913, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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It goes without saying that there is opposition [to spiritual science or theosophy is widespread], which is why [this] topic [was chosen] for today's lecture. Spiritual science [it is called] in relation to the constitution that the human soul must have in order to be theosophically minded. This mood is called theosophical in the same sense as it has been for centuries. [It is] that mood of the human soul through which it experiences the conviction that there is an inner core of being that can be reached by man, which is linked to the divine-spiritual that pervades and permeates the world. The theosophical mood gives a very general characteristic of knowing oneself as one with the cosmos. [Gap in the transcript. What is spiritual scientific research?] There are certain soul activities through which the soul itself undertakes the experiment, whereby something like spiritual chemistry is brought about. This makes one so detached in soul and spirit from the physical and bodily that one connects a meaning with the words: I live, I feel myself spiritually independent of my body, so that I look at this body from the outside. Just as inorganic chemistry separates hydrogen from water, so spiritual chemistry separates the soul-spiritual from the physical-bodily. In this way, the human being experiences himself as having been emancipated threefold in the soul-spiritual. What is otherwise experienced in sleep, unconsciously, the spiritual researcher experiences consciously; for he works consciously, from outside, on the physical-bodily. We can call this a conscious sleep experience. The physical body is like a mirror. The spent forces of the physical body are in a state of constant disintegration during wakefulness. The growth forces are depleted, hence [comes] sleep. The researcher consciously becomes acquainted with what then occurs during the replacement. A kind of reproduction occurs, a reawakening of pure growth forces. The second thing is the wonderful mystery of the onset of physical life. The first periods of childhood appear to us like a dream. Our powers of consciousness are still as in dream life. We only remember back to a certain point in childhood, [to] where full self-awareness sets in. We can then say “I”. In these early days, the same powers and abilities are already present that will later break out. How are these powers present in the child? In such a way that they are used for the plastic development of the physical body. Only the formal, the form-like, has been inherited by the human being. He himself refines these plastic powers into individual talents. One can see this in the physical organization of a being who works plastically. One observes how this spiritual core descends from above and works into the inheritance from father and mother. I have said before that this core is the fruit of previous earthly experiences. A moment comes when the physical organization is, so to speak, hardened, to use a rough expression, so that the spiritual soul can no longer work plastically on it. This is comparable to standing in front of a mirror. If we can stand in front of it, we cannot go through it, but the reflection that arises in front of us is reflected back. The process just described can be compared to that. What has been flowing in earlier is now reflected back into itself. This is the emergence of self-awareness. These forces are the same ones that work on our body. The spiritual researcher is in the spiritual world, knows that he is within the Divine-Spiritual that permeates the world. This spiritual-soul experience is the fruit of a soul practice full of renunciation that lasts for years and years. Thus, in what is reflected in the hardened organism, the spiritual scientist is absolutely on the ground of a theosophical view. We could not live this life without the soul-spiritual emerging from the soul's subconscious in its reflection. But at that moment it is only the part that is not allowed to penetrate into our work and creativity. It is the non-creative part. That remains with us for our everyday life. With this, we must turn our attention to what [gap in the transcript]. This is how it presents itself to the spiritual researcher at the moment of our life when we remember a later existence on earth; our spiritual and soul core is there, but it is covered by what can only experience itself in its self-reflection. We do not see what lies behind the reflecting surface as our spiritual and soul core. Then it becomes clear that our spiritual and mental core is hidden within the physical organism, which acts like a mirror that covers everything. All diligence is based on developing this self-awareness. Our organism has to create something to cover the spiritual and mental core in order to be diligent in the world. This is the anti-osophical mood. It is no wonder that it is so. The spiritual researcher also has to make sure that this is intact in him. He has to forget his theosophical mood and behave exactly as if he were an anti-osophist. Now it is always the case that abilities develop in a one-sided way. It is natural for most people to let the pendulum of their soul life swing according to the anti-sophical mood. This is rooted in human nature in the deepest sense. Life itself produces this; there is no need to be surprised. We may extinguish our consciousness of the spiritual for external purposes, But there are moments when every human being experiences a kind of yearning, a dawning of consciousness of his spiritual core. Then he is apt to let the theosophical mood enter into the anti-Sophical mood. In itself it is so understandable that this theosophical mood can be overgrown by the everyday mood. We therefore see the two currents: earlier the scientific, antisophical, now the theosophical longing of the soul in our time. The consequence of this is that the antisophical mood has taken hold in another current. You are probably familiar with the beautiful story of Pythagoras, who, when asked by Cleon why he was a philosopher, replied: “Human life seems to me like a fair, full of people who are supposed to buy and sell or enjoy games. But I am like someone who wants to see everything.” In our time, this saying can no longer be used in this way. But what is the meaning of the words? What did Pythagoras want to say with them? His saying is based on the feeling that man achieves something particularly valuable with knowledge that cannot be readily applied in outer life. To let the soul rule freely is a kind of theosophical mood. In our inclination, born of the theosophical mood, towards that which leads man away from the physical, we now transcend centuries. But now the opposite of the above is coming from America: pragmatism in the form of many brilliant aphorisms. This attitude says: whether there is truth in a perception is not important, but whether what is perceived proves useful. For example, immortality: there is no need for objective reasons to prove it. But it makes life more secure, and a person becomes useful if they perceive it to be true. So we act as if a god et cetera were there. This attitude has found a kind of companion in the “Philosophy of As If”. The book is already in its second edition. While the author wrote the preface as a young man, he only completed the work itself after his retirement. This philosopher claims that whatever can be said about transcendental things can be regarded as if they were there. It is therefore the direct opposite of the theosophical sentiment of Pythagoras and Socrates, because that philosophy of “as if” knows no objective truths in the transcendental. The anti-Sophian mood is dominant today among certain leading minds, and it is to be found in the broadest scope of human mental life. I would also like to refer to some other significant minds, but I do not want this reference to be taken as a disparagement of intellectual capacities. I only mention the opponent because a certain acknowledgment can lie in the mention. I would like to remind you of the famous speech by the great physiologist Du Bois-Reymond about the limits of knowledge of nature. According to this attitude, the world is to be regarded only as an enormous mass of interacting atoms. Where does a science based on such arguments end up? It says: we can understand the mathematical processes underlying the visible world, but not what matter is, not what consciousness is. What lies beyond the realm of the sensually perceptible is not only “ignoramus”, but “ignorabimus” – we will never know. It is characteristic that Du Bois-Reymond assigns a strictly defined area to science. But beyond that, there is supposedly nothing more to be known. Then, at the end of the speech, we find the following striking statement: “There are limits to our knowledge of nature. Supranaturalism would have to be applied to that which haunts space as matter. But here is how Du Bois-Reymond expresses it: Where supernaturalism begins, science ends. — This statement is eminently anti-sophistic. It virtually forbids man to penetrate to the spiritual core of his being. As one searches in the broadest periphery today, one encounters this anti-sophistic mood everywhere in leading science. It is characteristic of our time. But the strange thing is that, despite all the great logic with regard to external science, despite all the education of human thought when it comes to the theosophical mood, an assertion pops up like a shot, a counter-assertion that is not even attempted to be justified. Is this justification omitted out of affect or out of antipathy towards the spiritual world? Where does this antipathy come from? Where it begins, it penetrates from the depths of the soul as an impulse with a certain passion. I must mention here that there are subconscious depths of the soul life that are much greater than we suspect. Many things emerge from the subconscious that give impulses. Our entire, so mysterious, soul condition depends largely on the subconscious soul activity. Is the spiritual researcher able to explore this? He can explore it and substantiate it with expressions of the conscious soul life. We have many kinds of subconscious urges. One can clearly feel that a sentence like the one just mentioned by Du Bois-Reymond about supernaturalism emerges from the subconscious soul regions. [gap in the transcript] Consider someone who is overcome by fear. There is great tension in their soul life; certain subconscious soul powers are vividly active. I would like to refer here to the excellent research by the Danish physiologist Lange. These phenomena can be scientifically proven. Fear affects the organic body down to the vessels, so that certain irregularities occur in the organism. When someone is in fear, it is very easy for him to get into the mood that can be described with the words: Above all, give me something to hold on to, otherwise I will fall over. Let us observe a scholar who occupies himself only with science. His organism develops in such a way that a mood is awakened in him by his stay-at-home thinking, which can express itself like a sudden shock, like fear in increased measure. This mood of fear sits deep down in organic processes. What happens there are instinctual, subconscious forces. The spiritual researcher must now move from the passive to the active. If one is primarily concerned with sensory perception, then it is precisely out of a subconscious mood of fear that one can come to such a conclusion: Give me something material that I can hold on to, otherwise I will fall. Materialism breeds fear. It breeds the belief that you are only in front of a reality when you are in front of something you can hold on to in space. So the anti-sophical mood, as a mere belief in sensual quality, is basically nothing more than a mood of fear. You will have to get used to the fact that this is true, however paradoxical it may sound. The “Ignorabimus” has the same reason: fear. The anti-soph falls over when it has nothing to hold on to as reality. This shows us what we have to hold on to if we want to explore the reasons for the anti-sophic mood. Never can it be missing [...] that this soul of mine, like a compressed ball, suddenly springs open and feels the longing for the home from which it comes. These explanations should lead us not to disdain anti-philosophy, but to learn to understand it. The achievements of our time, especially the great technical ones, all that in a certain sense signifies the greatness of our time, needs an anti-philosophical mood as its correlate. But anti-philosophy will produce the theosophical mood as a natural reaction. All those who have delved deeper into the knowledge of the world with all their soul have had the theosophical mood. The human soul cannot do without it. One must recognize that anti-philosophy may well produce efficiency in the outer life, but that in the long run man cannot be satisfied with it. The core of the soul proves to be the reality of human life and asserts itself from the deep sources of the soul. There will always be moments of celebration in life when the theosophical mood arises and rises. Then man is at one with all that is great and sublime in all times. Goethe, for example, was such a spirit. He, in particular, expressed the theosophical mood in many places. Not a lesser man next to Goethe, but a great man, the naturalist Albrecht von Haller, who deserves the highest respect, made the following statement out of an anti-theosophical mood:
This is anti-philosophy. Only the shell, not the actual core, which is connected to the cosmic soul! Goethe sensed this as an anti-philosophical sentiment and, speaking from his theosophical perspective, said:
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70a. The Human Soul, Fate and Death: The “Barbarians” of Schiller and Fichte
01 Dec 1914, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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70a. The Human Soul, Fate and Death: The “Barbarians” of Schiller and Fichte
01 Dec 1914, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear attendees! Every winter I have been able to give a few lectures in different European cities, including here in Munich, on topics in the field of spiritual science. I believe it is a legitimate sentiment that the lectures I am giving this winter should take their starting point from what is so close to us in these fateful days. The impulses that these days stir in our hearts and souls will be the subject of today's introductory lecture. Do we not have the feeling that in these trying times of ours, no word can be spoken that is not accompanied by an intense feeling, which looks towards those fields in the east and west, where powerful judgments are being written into the course of human development, not by words, but by deeds? One could see how, since the days of August, what lives in the deepest impulses of the German people has been drawn out like a mighty breath of the spirit; one could see how, in our time, courage to make sacrifices, selflessness, devotion, and an infinite love have grown out of the depths of souls. All this has given rise to a unified feeling, the like of which we have not seen for a long time. It is not for me, in these reflections, to transgress Bismarck's 1870 warning to those whom fate has left behind from the fields of battle, that they must not, above all, anticipate events with words and reflections until something decisive has happened. I will not deal with what lies in the impulses of the day, but with what runs through these impulses of the day and what can, must occupy the spiritual researcher in particular - albeit in complete harmony with the feeling that has seized everyone. Dear attendees! In recent times, there has been much talk of heredity in schools of thought that are more or less influenced by materialism. By this heredity one means something that is fundamentally quite external to the spiritual contemplation of things and entities: the survival of the qualities of preceding beings in subsequent beings. I do not intend to discuss the essence of this idea of inheritance today; but I would like to draw attention to how something similar to this inheritance is present in the lower spheres in the entire progress of the spiritual development of humanity, and in particular in the life of a nation, as a kind of spiritual inheritance, but more comprehensive and universal than what is usually called by that name. What is it that holds the souls of a people together, that can pour fire into the souls of a people, as it now passes through the spiritual veins of the people? One can say: It flows down like a real, actual stream, like a stream [from] the spiritual world; in this stream live the impulses of the best leading spirits, the best leading geniuses of a people. Not only in the sense of the Greek fairy tale is it real for the spiritual researcher that the forces that were connected in the leader-geniuses with a people remain with this people, in that the same forces live on in this people, and that one can truly say that out there in the fields to the east and west, the same forces live in those who have to enter the scene of events with blood and soul, the same forces live as they lived in the best leadership geniuses of the people. Two of these leading geniuses shall be singled out today. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” says a weighty word; by the fruits one can also recognize what is contained in the deepest forces of the national soul, and these fruits, these highest fruits, which grow out of the roots and trunk of the national soul, these are the deeds of the leading geniuses of a nation. Therefore, one can say: Let the forces blow over our fields in the east and west, which we can also perceive in such spirits as those who are to be singled out today from the culture of Central Europe, in Schiller and Fichte. And let us start from a moment that is particularly suitable for these two guiding geniuses, to bring them close to our feelings. I do not want to evoke sentimental feelings by starting with the last moments of Schiller and Fichte, with those moments when they passed through the gateway of death, but because I believe that the symbolic and the symptomatically significant of these geniuses are indeed characteristically expressed in the moment of their death. Here we turn to Schiller. It is indeed remarkable that we have grown so fond of spirits like Schiller that literature, to our great satisfaction, gives us the means to observe the most intimate personal side of these geniuses as well. And so we can almost step in front of Schiller's sickbed and dying bed from the accounts of the younger Voß, Schiller's friend, and let the fact have its effect on us, in which the victory of the soul over the external body has been expressed in this spirit. We can follow the last days of this genius, can follow how his body was visibly dedicated to death and only maintained itself through the tremendous power of his soul. Then we accompany him into the death chamber, see how this spirit, in the hour of death, is directed towards the highest things, see how he has his youngest child brought to him, how he takes it and looks deeply into its eyes, how he gives it back and turns away. We can guess, as the younger Voß suggests, what thoughts may have crossed his mind: how much he, as a father, could and should have been for this child. And it is truly not a sentimental feeling when one says: this looking into the eyes of the child, one feels it as a symbolic looking into the eyes of the German people. When one allows the whole personality of Schiller to take effect on oneself, then one says to oneself: He had to go through the gate of death with the feeling of how much should have emerged from the seeds he had sown in the cultural field of the German people. That is why we, with a deep interest in the development of German culture, are looking closely at the living Schiller, at the Schiller who is still alive today, at the Schiller from whom radiate the forces that can still be effective in our souls today. A similar moment is the moment of death in Fichte, in Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the great German philosopher, one might say the most energetic philosopher who has ever walked through the history of philosophy. When the German people had experienced the deepest humiliation, Johann Gottlieb Fichte spoke to them the most invigorating words in his “Discourses to the German Nation,” and when the time came for the German people to seek liberation from their humiliation, Fichte took the most heartfelt interest, interest with his whole personality, and we feel this interest most keenly when we look at his last days. His wife was a nurse. She brought the military hospital fever home with her. She recovered, but passed it on to the philosopher himself. And now we see him: a kind of victim of the war in his last days and hours. The philosopher who had found the most powerful words to characterize the inner life of the human soul in its strength, the philosopher who, in his “Speeches to the German Nation,” sought to understand and proclaim the German essence, as he himself always said, from the “roots of life's stirrings,” where did his thoughts dwell in his last hours? Oh, it is very characteristic: in the feverish delirium of his last hours, he felt - Johann Gottlieb Fichte - his soul at the battlefields, at the crossing of the Rhine, which was just taking place under Blücher. His thoughts were absorbed in the feverish fantasy of participating in the war. When his son approached his bedside and offered him a medicine, Fichte said that he could not have experienced anything more satisfying than this upsurge of his people. He pushed the medicine away and said, “I know that I will recover.” These were his last moments. A philosopher, ladies and gentlemen, bearing in mind the saying: “You shall know them by their fruits.” What Schiller and Fichte can be to their people expresses what also lives in this people today, what this people fights and bleeds for. That which is real in the world reveals itself outwardly in the most diverse stages of transformation; but one can recognize that which lives in the national instincts, in the subconscious soul stirrings of the members of this nation, by the fruits, where it is expressed at its highest peak. It was in a time of great difficulty that Fichte delivered his “Speeches to the German Nation” to his oppressed people. Right at the beginning, he raised three questions, three questions that can be said to have only limited significance today. The first question is: Is there a German nation in truth and reality and is its existence in danger? Regarding the last words, however, the question can still be asked today. The second question is: Is it worth the effort to devise the means for this German nation to continue to exist and to exist in what way? Well, I think one need only look at Schiller and Fichte and the others related to them and one will find: The nineteenth century answered this question through the facts of its German cultural development. And the third question that Fichte raises is: what means are suitable for helping the German people to achieve a future that corresponds to them? Today, we should be particularly concerned with what Fichte sought as the sources from which he spoke at that time about these means for his people, what occupied him as the sources from which he tried to hint at the essence of Germanness, as he said. It must be admitted that what he said about Germany, what he indicated as the means for developing this Germanness, did not find its expression in the nineteenth century, and today we must think differently about things than Fichte did, differently about the significance of a nation's language than Fichte thought at the time, differently about the effectiveness of precisely the kind of educational method that Fichte indicated, because in it he saw the means to secure the future of the German people. What matters is not that, but rather the soul-germs out of which Fichte spoke his powerful words at that time; for out of these soul-germs the German people still live today. And I believe I am not saying anything unjustified when I say that in particular what I have meant from this place as spiritual science has often been discussed, and may be linked to Johann Gottlieb Fichte , for even if what he spoke in his time sounds different from the results of spiritual science today, the same soul-germs gave rise to Fichte's science in his time and to spiritual science in our time, as I believe. This can be shown in detail. For those of the honored listeners who in past years have heard much of what has been said from this place about spiritual science, it will be clear without further ado what I want to suggest briefly and in general terms about spiritual science. What is the essence of spiritual science? In relation to the search for spiritual results, it consists in the fact that spiritual science, unlike the other sciences, the external sciences, does not merely go to what presents itself to the external senses and shines to the mind when it devotes itself to the external world, but that it goes to what arises in the soul when it remains passive to things, but that it goes to what can only be can be recognized and experienced when the soul - allow me to use this word of Johann Gottlieb Fichte - goes to the deepest roots of its life impulses, when it actively seeks to recognize inwardly, when it not only allows the world to flow into it, but when it tries to embrace the world in its innermost core by invoking the deepest forces lying within the soul. And so, one could say, without being presumptuous about respect to conventional science, spiritual science is a kind of science that relies on the inner courage of the soul, on being inwardly stirred, on grasping the world in one's activity. And here we may say: in all the impulses of the development of German culture – this is particularly evident in minds such as Fichte and Schiller – in all these impulses of the development of German culture, it is found, either in a germinal or more or less explicitly suggested form, that man finds knowledge of the world by seeking knowledge of the soul in his innermost being. We need only recall what is so epigrammatically presented to us in Goethe's Faust, where Faust encounters the spirit and speaks to it:
And then, after this suggestion of how the spirit – the spirit that lives and moves in all things – reveals the secrets of nature to him, Faust draws attention to how this knowledge is connected to the living comprehension of one's own soul.
The one - and this is more or less the meaning of the whole spiritual cultural development of Central Europe - the one who is able to recognize himself in the deepest soul as a spiritual being, does not get involved in setting the boundaries of knowledge, because he knows: wherever he goes, the spiritual part of his soul goes with him. And he will find spiritual essence everywhere. And so arises (I can only hint at this today) from this spiritual science, living in the activity of the soul, a knowledge of the human being, the human being that goes through its temporal existence in the body between birth and death, but which belongs to eternity, which enters through birth into physical existence, which through the gate of death again emerges into the spiritual world and there experiences its further destiny. And it is not only in a theoretical sense that the nature of the soul is spoken of in spiritual science, but spiritual science, in its active recognition, brings to life that which lives in man as an eternal being; it makes this recognizable by showing that one can look from the spirit, which is free from the body, at that which lies between birth and death in the human body. Spiritual science does not merely want to provide theories, but rather an expansion of spiritual experience. And so it comes to the conclusion that it is possible for those who apply the spiritual research method to their own soul to experience the moment that a person experiences in the natural progression when they pass through the gate of death: to look at what the body and bodily laws are from the being that is outside of the body. The retrospective view of the bodily and the sense of oneself in the spiritual as a real inner experience is one of the foundations of spiritual-scientific knowledge. Now we turn to Fichte, to something that he gave right at the beginning of his “Speeches to the German Nation”. And from what he gave there, one can see what he meant by what he often emphasized: to make human wisdom out of the innermost “roots of the stirrings of life.” Fichte wants - I have to say this so that his words can be understood - to indicate how it seems to him when someone comes to him and says: Oh, what you tell us about a special education, , about rejuvenating the nation, that can no longer make an impression on us; because it is all so contrary to what we have experienced so far that we lack the possibility of having confidence in this completely different thing. And then Fichte says, as it were, as an objection: He who speaks in this way seems to him to be a person whom he now characterizes in the following way. Fichte says:
— he means his time —
Fichte rejects one objection and characterizes the person who wants to look back at the old that is facing the new, as well as the spiritual researcher who comes to the certainty: When the soul has gone through the gate of death, it stands as a truly observing being in front of its corpse and looks at it like an external object. Now, esteemed attendees, I do not believe that anyone can doubt that Fichte could only arrive at such a symbol because the seeds of spiritual science were already alive in him, just as they were able to live in the energetic philosopher in his time. And was it not Fichte who, time and again, at every opportunity, tried to make clear how all being of the outer sense is rooted in the spiritual? Only a few characteristic words from his penetrating “Speeches to the German Nation” will be mentioned here:
– and he means his philosophy –
- says Fichte —
One grasps Fichte, as it were, at the very root of his being when one hears such words from him, and when did he utter such words? They came to him at a time when he wanted to speak about the essence of Germanness, as he coined the word. But what is it that this essence expresses? For Fichte, it is that which does not lead to a philosophy of death, to a philosophy of matter, to a philosophy of outer sensuality or observation of the senses, but which leads to the knowledge of that world in which the eternal is rooted in the human soul as in the universal cosmic eternal. And out of the energy of his being, out of the deepest 'roots of life impulses', Fichte tried to grasp in its cosmic significance that which gives the human being within him the guarantee of his eternal being. Fichte opposes everything that can be sensually perceived in its highest forms, everything that confronts man in the outer sun and planets and in other outer beings; and he opposes all this with what he believes he knows to be the essence of the self rooted in man, the eternal self that passes through birth and death. And in his writing, which he was compelled to write because of the charge of atheism, he spoke in a wonderful way about this energetic consciousness of the eternal nature of the human soul. He also addresses what is external reality, and in contrast to this external reality, he sets the spiritual, which can be grasped in the innermost inner human being. It is as if he were addressing what passes before us as sun and planets, to which Fichte says:
Dear attendees, these are words that may be said – as the spiritual researcher may mean – one might claim that Fichte's soul sought the body within the Central European people in order to find the language with this corporeality, thus to speak of the eternity of the human self, of its triumph over the external world of the senses. Everything that Fichte, one might say, out of this consciousness, also transferred into his “Discourses to the German Nation” as their deepest inner forces, all this is basically for Fichte always the basis for answering another question, the question that can be characterized as the question: How does man find what he is supposed to be in the highest sense of the word? And there we stand, one might say, before the peculiarity of how German culture actually wants to understand this humanity. Fichte, with powerful words, has indicated how it is basically in the nature of Germanness to transcend Germanness precisely through Germanness, to represent humanity in its generality, to seek out in the human soul that which is elevated above all nationality, above all limitations of space and time. Therefore, one can say: the Englishman is English, the Frenchman is French; the same cannot be said for the German, fundamentally, if one wants to grasp the essence of his Germanness in the spirit of such geniuses as Fichte and Schiller were. The Englishman is English, the Frenchman is French, the German has at his innermost being the question: How can I become German? And this German is always standing before him like an ideal, which he wants to approach, which he first wants to become. And when he believes he has grasped it, which lies in the innermost stirrings of human life, in order to become such, then, precisely through his Germanness, he rises above the narrow bounds of nationality. Fichte's statement is characteristic in this regard:
- he means German philosophy -
It is certainly legitimate to point to this ideal of becoming German in our own day, when the word “German barbarism” has arisen from all corners of the compass and when, as it seems and as we shall shortly will be shown, the judgments that are passed on Germanness today are based on nothing other than the necessary misunderstanding that must arise when there is no sense of what Schiller and Fichte, for example, understood to be the essence of their people. Let us now turn our gaze away from Fichte and towards Schiller! One could cite many things about Schiller; one could go into this or that of his poetry and writings! But to grasp what connects him to Fichte and what connects him to the essence of German culture, one must point to a work by Schiller that unfortunately is appreciated very little, and basically, but which, if it is appreciated properly, shows how this striving for becoming German, which for Schiller is identical with becoming human, how this striving has been expressed in Schiller. And this writing is the one in which Schiller expresses himself in a very general, human, non-philosophical way: the “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man”. What does he want to present to his fellow human beings in these letters? Oh, Schiller is deeply convinced that the outer man who stands before us, who goes through birth and death, is only the outer shell of man, and that man's endeavor must be to seek the higher man in man. Schiller seeks it in his own way, according to the peculiarities of his own time, but he seeks it characteristically. On the one hand, he says to himself: out there is the world of the senses, sensory forces that have an effect on people. Schiller summarizes everything that is brought about in man under the concept of external natural necessity, also in man. Can man truly be human if he is subject to this natural necessity, he asks. No, is the answer, then he is a slave to this natural necessity. There is something else, there is the rigid concept of reason; everything that can be understood by theory, everything that reason can think up, can man, if he devotes himself to it, be fully human? No, says Schiller, because then man is subject to the compulsion of the necessity of reason, he is its slave. How do you free the true human being from himself, as it were? Then we release him, when we come to feel what reason inspires in us in the same way that we feel the sweetness of a sensual impression, when we lovingly feel what higher spirituality is in the same meaningful way that we can lovingly feel through the senses what makes an impression on them. Schiller seeks to elevate what is sensual into the sphere of spirituality, and to grasp what is spiritual with the freshness and liveliness of the senses. Then, in this middle state, man becomes free. When this thought is suggested, it cannot immediately make the impression it does when the human soul completely immerses itself in it. This is a thought that seeks to answer the question of what path of development a person should embark upon if they want to rise above themselves, if they want to redeem the person hidden within them and come to a higher conception of reality. One could say that such thoughts arose at the pinnacle of human development. And how does Schiller seek to interweave his thoughts with everything that he is aware of as the essence of his people? In our days, Schiller's words have often been quoted – beautiful words – in which he, as it were, sees the essence of the German people, which he himself, as the highest human being, seeks to fathom in his aesthetic letters.
- says Schiller -
And so one may say, when looking at these two geniuses, Fichte and Schiller, that the deepest German search and striving is to seek and fathom the most general human, the higher self in man - as spiritual science would say - and how one can live one's way into it. In this they stand, one might say, at the dawn of the development for which we seek the sun, of that development which a culture is capable of creating, which, whatever external undertakings it may pursue, to whatever flowering it may come in the external world, seeks only to use this external world to find the body for a soul, for that soul which we can best characterize when we look to such geniuses as Schiller and Fichte. One may now raise the question: did the people of Schiller and Fichte live on after these geniuses had departed from the physical world? Is it disputable that the spirit that lived on a peak in Schiller and Fichte, that it also progresses in the plains of German intellectual life? Well, esteemed attendees, I was reluctant to talk about this question when I should somehow be calling upon German judgment itself. This could very easily be taken as a kind of self-aggrandizement, as a kind of self-deception. So let another way be chosen to characterize the extent to which the belief can be justified that in the course of intellectual culture after Fichte and Schiller down to our time something of this Fichte and Schiller and all the geniuses related to them, above all also of Goethe, whether something of this lived. We need not dwell on what Germans can think about this survival of the soul in Fichte and Schiller and Goethe; we may first refer to a man who did not think and write in German, but who stood on the heights of nineteenth-century cultural development: Emerson. What I want to present as an opinion about what survived of Schiller's, Fichte's, Goethe's soul, is presented with words that were originally written in English by the English American Emerson. He – not a German, but an English-speaking American – says:
He continues:
At another point he says:
And now another of Emerson's judgments about this German character:
he says,
So judges, dear ladies and gentlemen, a nineteenth-century writer writing in English, one of the greatest, about those who are today called the German “barbarians”. What could be characterized as self-aggrandizement or something else, if only it could be taken out of German judgments, must be understood differently if it comes from such a place. But now, esteemed attendees, is such a judgment only heard at such heights of humanity as Emerson's, and do others perhaps have a different judgment in general? We may point to a very recent judgment, as it were, juxtaposing it with that judgment about Germanness. Those who do not have the time or opportunity to read Miss Wylie's book 'Eight Years in Germany' can also take the very nice excerpts that Hofmiller has made of it and find important sayings from that book in them, getting an overview of an English-written judgment on the German character, written a few months before the outbreak of the war. But when and how was it written? Not written in the way that many people write today when they speak of the German “barbarians”, but written in such a way that the writer first spent eight years in Germany, got to know everything, delved deeper into the essence she wanted to describe. After visiting hospitals, schools, medical and other institutions, she wrote about the German character in English:
- to us Englishmen -
Many of the judgments, esteemed attendees, that are being read today, where are they being read? In newspapers, including English newspapers. Not so long ago, in 1912, a number of scholars in Manchester gave lectures on German nature, German politics, German history, German education, German economics, German literature. In the preface to the book, which was also translated into German and is called “Germany in the Nineteenth Century”, published by Herford, we are given a hint as to why these lectures were given. They were given, so we are told, to teach people from the press somewhat correct ideas about the German character. We shall quote only a few of Herford's individual words, spoken in England and in English, about the German character:
In 1912, these words were spoken in English in England, for the press, so that they would be better informed about German character. I leave it to each individual to decide what these press people learned from these lectures. When these lectures were printed, a man whose name may have also come up for discussion in recent days wrote a preface to them. In this preface, written by Lord Haldane, are the words:
—Germany's—
And further:
Dear attendees, in this book there is something else that is highly, highly remarkable, something quite unique. Something that was also spoken in English in Manchester in 1912: “No German words are more deeply imbued with the juice of national ethics than those that describe these things: true, thorough, loyal.” I do not wish to express this as something that only sounds out of the German soul, but we have heard it across the Channel: “true, thorough, faithful” are words that, more than any other words, are “imbued with the juice of national ethics”. Now, let us – without, of course, engaging in day-to-day politics or speaking about the events without authorization – let us tie what we are experiencing in our days to these words. In recent weeks, it has often been rightly pointed out how the current war originated in southeastern Europe, and how Austria's mission – one might say – in relation to Bosnia and Herzegovina is linked to these war events, all the way down to the Balkans. I, esteemed attendees, lived in Austria during the aftermath of Austria's undertaking this mission. Those who lived in Austria at the time and tried to look into the course of events in the 1980s often heard a word that had been cleverly and humorously coined by Bismarck, but which, one might say, expressed something related to fate. “There are autumn crocuses in Austria,” he said. Autumn crocuses! You see, the Austrian liberals had a leader named [Eduard] Herbst. He was a great, important man. These liberals, under Herbst's leadership, had resisted what Bismarck considered to be Austria's advance into the east, which was in keeping with the times and his views. That is why Bismarck called them “Herbstzeitlose” (autumn crocus). Well, one does not need to cite human judgments everywhere, which arise very easily from feelings and passions, which come from sympathies and antipathies; but history is actually the real teacher of things. What, then, did Austria do that led to the events that are intimately connected with what is happening today, with everything that is happening today? All of this goes back to its ultimate beginning, to the mission that was assigned to Austria at the Congress of Berlin to advance into the Balkans. Who was it that opposed Russia's intentions at the Congress of Berlin and advocated this mission for Austria? It was British policy. Above all, it was those who represented British policy at the time who assigned this mission to Austria. This put Germany in a difficult position with regard to Russia. Everything that happened after that, up to the assassination of the Archduke, is only the consequence of what was conferred upon Austria at the Congress of Berlin, for anyone who looks back in history with understanding. Today Germany and Austria must take the stage for what England conferred upon Austria at that time, and England is among the enemies of Germany and Austria. That, dearest present, is the consequence of history. When one speaks of loyalty, there is also a loyalty to what one has once done. When one is characterized from the English point of view, one cannot help but say: “No words are so deeply imbued with the ‘juice of national ethics’ as those that describe these things: ”true , thoroughly, faithfully” – one cannot help but take these words seriously, and one would like to ask: Is it inner truthfulness to act in 1914 against what one initiated decades earlier? Is it thorough, and above all, is it faithful? Such questions may be raised today. And when you consider all of this, then yes, then you have to say: Is it really possible to discern from the most recent events what the German character is, how it is connected to its great geniuses, and how this German character must relate to today's events? It cannot truly be seen from the latter, no matter how many compilations are made about the very latest events. It must be seen from what ruled in the deeper forces of Europe and what ultimately led to today's events. But something ruled in these forces of Europe, that is what lived on in Fichte, Schiller, Goethe and the others in the German people, in the peoples of Central Europe. One man whom I would always like to mention is Herman Grimm, whom I would always like to call Goethe's governor. He tried to express in beautiful artistic words what he had absorbed from the great German period, what had become a world view. And these words of Herman Grimm, which express a feeling, not a judgment, and may therefore be taken from the German essence itself – in contrast to the judgments of non-Germans cited above – are cited as a testimony to how the seeds of the spiritual way of thinking of Fichte, Schiller and Goethe have taken root in people. How beautifully this was expressed in Herman Grimm's words, which he wrote in his Homer book:
So Herman Grimm 1895 - since 1901 he is dead, and then how the look into the spiritual world of Herman Grimm's words:
Anyone familiar with the German character knows that these words are taken from the innermost being of the German people, that they were truly not a lie in the mood of the German character. But the Germans have never subscribed to an opinion that is different, which Herman Grimm expressed in 1895:
Dear attendees, compared to what one could know by looking at the driving forces of Europe with a gaze that is strengthened by the essence that has reached its highest level in Schiller, Fichte and Goethe – looking at these forces means recognizing that the answer to what has recently been heard again from across the Rhine must be given in a completely different way: Who wanted this war, those of mine who want to answer this question themselves? I believe that, when faced with the deeper forces at work in European life, it can be said with certainty, if one wants to proceed with a certain external sophistry: this or that did not want the war. One can say perhaps: not everyone wanted it – this can be proven sophistically. But one can also ask a different question, because whether the answer is correct depends on the correct formulation of the question. Who would have been able to avoid the war? And here only one answer is possible: only the Petersburg politicians would have been able to avoid the war. But this too need not be proved from the most recent events, from Blue and Yellow Books; it can be proved from the effective forces at work in the last decades within the life of the nations of Europe. And I will try, in a way that may perhaps be felt to be peculiar, to draw attention to how one can find the thing that has come to expression in this terrible war today as competing effective forces. Let us assume that someone had taken it upon themselves to observe how provocative press reports were coming from Russia this spring, as these hinted at a certain mood that became more and more intense during the spring. He would then have followed the events of July, the last days of July, and he would also have tried to talk to some well-meaning Russian friends who see the better sides of the Russian people and would like to overlook what was going on as a real will directed against peace. What could someone who had proceeded in this way have said today, that is, this summer? He could have characterized this summer as follows: He could have described how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, attacking German politics. These attacks intensified into strong demands for pressure that Germany should exert on Austria in matters where Germany could not easily attack Austrian rights. One could not lend a hand to this, because if one alienated Austria from Germany, then one would necessarily become dependent on Russia in Germany. Would such a dependency have been tolerable? One could have believed it earlier by saying to oneself that one had no conflicting interests with Russia, one could even ask Russian friends who would explain this or that to one, and one could not contradict them. But the process, in view of everything, shows, when one considers what is happening in Russia, that even a complete subordination of Germany to Russia cannot protect us against our striving not to come into conflict with Russia. With these words one can characterize what took place between Europe's center and east; the words fit our present situation. But now I have done something strange; I have only slightly altered words; because I did not make these words myself, not for our present situation; they are altered from words that Bismarck spoke in the German Reichstag in 1888. Bismarck said in 1888:
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I think that if the very same words can be applied to 1914, which were aptly applied by Germany's greatest statesman in 1888, then this is an extremely strong indication of the explosive elements that have always been present; that one must look for what is at stake in this war in terms of something other than merely the most recent events is proven by this. And do only people who are steeped in a certain spirituality say that it is the nature of the German to proclaim “peace on earth and goodwill toward men”? I said that anyone who looks into the German essence cannot perceive this as a lie. But those who would like to believe that such a thing only existed in the spiritual heights on which Herman Grimm stood, should look at the words with which Bismarck, in the same session of the Reichstag in 1888, characterized his attitude towards the German sentiment that Herman Grimm expressed when he said: “Peace on earth and goodwill towards men”. That is what is rooted in our deepest souls. They are remarkable words that Bismarck spoke at the time; he said, roughly: “In a machine like the one we have, you don't wage wars of aggression.” And he concludes his deliberations in this sense, saying: Suppose I were to come before you – in the Reichstag that is – and explain that it is better that we attack, and demand that you grant so many millions of marks, would you have the confidence to grant it? Bismarck said: “I hope not.” One must look at the moods, at the forces prevailing within the soul, if one wants to recognize the truth, the actuality in this regard. However, Bismarck recognized the truth; he knew that because he stood up for England's demands on Austria regarding the Balkans at the Congress of Berlin, he provoked Russia's antagonism towards Germany, but he also knew that he had had done everything that could mitigate this antagonism, so much so – he said himself – that he could have believed that he would have been awarded the highest Russian order for his services to Russia if he had not already had it. But that was precisely Bismarck's constant endeavor, to postpone for as long as possible what threatened from the east. These are just a few examples, esteemed attendees, of what history says, what history says to those who delve into the fundamentals that can provide real answers to the question of who wanted this war. Now, dear attendees, in German intellectual life, as it radiates from such geniuses as Fichte, Schiller, and Goethe, lies much that can, so to speak, give us a clue as to how we are to understand what now so often confronts us as a characteristic of what are called German “barbarians.” Then one could find some very peculiar tests. There is a European spirit that has also made a great impression in Germany. He once spoke about this in one of his writings, in which he particularly expressed his inclination towards the spiritual life, towards mysticism; he spoke about what he owes to the three greatest mystics, whom he cites and as the third of whom he names a German spirit, Novalis; he speaks about Novalis and what he was to him. Novalis, he says, is like a spirit that leads to heights that are the real heights of humanity. It is basically a very, very beautiful and intimate characteristic of the German spirit Novalis. If an angel - so he says - or a genius from the cosmos descended to earth and wanted to experience on earth what is actually particularly important for the cosmos on earth - one would like to show him everything that Shakespeare has written, what happens between Hamlet and Ophelia and others - that may be very important for the Earth, he says, but even if it is important for the Earth, it would not be necessary for a genius who descended from another planet to Earth to learn something special. This characterization lists many other things that would be unimportant to someone who descended from the cosmos to Earth. But what lives in Novalis' soul, which – for anyone who knows Novalis – is clearly drawn from the deepest depths of the German national spirit, is characterized by this characterization with beautiful words:
Because what can be spoken does not express the deepest human essence, he finds in Novalis:
Such are the words of the Novalis critic in Novalis. He who once spoke of Novalis, who once characterized the German soul as giving experiences to the genius who descended from cosmic heights, is Maurice Maeterlinck. Dear attendees, I have nothing to add to what Maurice Maeterlinck has said today, to what I have quoted, but I would like to say that Novalis spoke a wonderfully beautiful word from a truly German soul. “The only true temple” - says Novalis - “is the human body. In it lies a uniquely heavenly form. It is said to touch heaven when you feel the human body.” So Novalis at a perhaps tangible point. It is the same as what Goethe says: “What would all the suns, all the stars in the sky, be, all the splendor of the stars, if it did not all shine in the human eye, flow into human hearts and a human soul could delight in it with admiration.” Those who spoke like Goethe and Novalis felt this out of their spirituality: that there is a supreme work of art, a higher work of art than all human works of art: the human form, the work of divine art. However, only those who know that spiritual beings permeate the world and who see the greatest work of divine art in the human being will speak of the human form as Goethe did. Perhaps this may be recalled in an age when the German is accused of particular “barbarism” because it is said to have happened that some cannonballs also fell on the cathedral of Reims. Now, after seeing this cathedral in 1906, I know for sure that I am the equal of anyone in my admiration of this work of art – however, I have also gained the impression that it is fragile, so that it will not last for much longer will not last long, that it must be damaged by natural causes, but in many a judgment it depends not only on how one stands in relation to this judgment, how one perceives something, but whether one makes this judgment at all or not. In view of the fact that, against the background of our fateful events, the human form, the work of the gods, is destroyed in countless cases when challenged by fate, then, yes, the judgment may be made that a human work of art can also be fired upon. I know there is only one objection, someone might say: a cathedral only exists once, a person exists any number of times. I'll leave it to others to argue about what constitutes “barbarism” in this context, but I believe that anyone who understands the way of thinking of Goethe, Schiller and Fichte will not dispute that this judgment – there are so many people and only one cathedral and therefore the cathedral must be spared even if the people are shot – that this judgment is in fact the most brutal “barbarism”. There is a very definite character which may be called the stamp of the German spirit.And I believe it is already apparent from what I have only been able to hint at, that this German character is intimately, intimately connected with humanity's search for spirituality, for the invisible, and that this search, which has found expression in the German leaders, , is also connected with this, even if only unconsciously, those who with blood and soul in our fateful days must make the sacrifices that must be made for the further development of humanity. And once you have delved into the essence of Central Europe, as expressed in the geniuses we have mentioned, you will no longer be able to object; you will no longer be able to doubt that this Central Europe is a body for a soul, that it contains an invisible power, which invisible power must have a perceptible impulsivity for a higher purpose in its own essence. And when you look at things this way, then you can feel, no matter what may come: you can feel trust, strength, confidence when once again the German world is faced with the question of being or not being. Not a Hamlet answer, a Faust answer can give the German essence: “Whoever strives, we can redeem them.” One is always becoming German. When Germany has grown old, it can become young again. Goethe has one of the symbols in his “Faust” be the rejuvenating potion. And where he talks about Goethe, not a German, again the English-speaking Emerson, says with reference to what has become of Goethe, the words:
Thus Emerson in reference to Goethe, whom he designates as the head and the content of the nation. And one can be mindful of the words of the American Englishman that it may lie precisely in the mission of the people of Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, to do something of what Emerson points out: “We must write sacred books to reconnect heaven and the earthly world. The secret of genius is not to tolerate that a lie should remain in existence for us." To what extent this is connected with today's lecture, I leave to you to judge. But I believe that I have at least stammered out the one thing that this lecture has hinted at, which is about the essence of Central Europe, about this culture that, according to Schiller's words, is the heart of Europe - the other is the leaf and the flower - what “great men of the past” make us feel about this culture. Emerson says: “They call to us with a friendly voice”. We want to hear something of these friendly voices, because perhaps it can be used in our time. How we can arrive at something that can be suggested for our present time by really listening to the living spirit of these minds will be discussed tomorrow. Today, as an introduction, I wanted to point this out, not so much what was in my words, but what emanates from certain German geniuses and can flow into our hearts as consolation, hope, confidence, as a support in our mental and physical life for the present. For it can, when one feels vividly what flows over from the spirits, whose essence lives on in the German national spirit, it can, what flows over, in the soul to a hope, to a confidence, but also to something dense, what one can feel as the deepest truth in Central Europe. And it is peculiar that, as if from the same spirit in which Goethe, Schiller and Fichte worked, the German-minded Schleiermacher wanted to coin his word about the connection of all human striving with the invisible, who also fell upon it, one can say, to suggest the deepest German essence by pointing to the invisibility of this German essence. And this invisible, this spiritual essence, which Fichte spoke so energetically in times when the German nation was in decline, to encourage it, it still sounds to us today in the right way, even if not in times of humiliation, but in times when we experience a supreme, a wonderful thing, we can just point to what the German nation has always striven for as its most precious. Today, as if from the soul of this German people and for our own consolation, we can say with Schleiermacher, saying with him, still expressing our feelings today in the center of Europe, in the heart of Europe: “Germany is still there and its invisible power is still unweakened.” And today we may add, after all that has developed out of German strength, it may justifiably hope: this invisible strength of the German people is not only unbroken today, it is also indestructible for an incalculable time. |
68b. The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit: Birth and Death in the Life of the Soul
07 Jan 1905, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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68b. The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit: Birth and Death in the Life of the Soul
07 Jan 1905, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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Report in the “Münchner Neueste Nachrichten”, January 1905 Theosophical lectures. The Secretary General of the Theosophical Society in Germany, the writer Dr. Rudolf Steiner of Berlin, gave two theosophical lectures at Café Luitpold. In the first lecture, he discussed the topic: “Birth and Death in the Life of the Soul.” He began by pointing to Plato's account of the death of Socrates, which offers a treatise on the immortality of the soul, in which the mystical conviction of the soul's immortality based on inner experience and the inner victory over death are clearly expressed. Like Socrates, the mystic feels independent in his true inner life from the apparent meaning of things that surrounds him. In order to recognize this true inner life, the essence that lies behind the phenomenal world, in one's own introspection, to seek the soul, one must, as mysticism teaches, seek to create within oneself that inner silence through contemplation and meditation, through which one can, for a longer or shorter period of time, become deaf and blind to the impressions of the outside world. The world of the spirit must become as real to his inner vision as the world of the senses is to his sensory vision. The mystic must learn to know directly, free of the senses, in contrast to indirect, sense-bound knowledge. When, in this heightened state of consciousness, he experiences the eternal in the conscious and willed elevation above the sensory world, it can be said of him in the traditional language of mysticism that he has crossed the narrow gate of death, in that he has died to the sensory world; for the mystic, death is the highest goal to which they aspire in their quest for higher knowledge. Just as the mystic, by immersing himself in his own soul, is reborn to knowledge free of the senses in the spiritual world, so too will the answer to the question of what birth and death are become clear to him in inner vision. Birth presents itself to the mystic as an externalization of the soul for the purpose of gaining indirect knowledge through the sense world, for indirect contact with it, according to inner urge, desire and longing, for the accumulation of experience through the sense world. Death is the means to liberation, to gradual rebirth in the spiritual world, after the desire has been fulfilled, and to the internalization of the collected experiences in the spiritual state, which is referred to as Devachan by Indian mysticism. The soul, in that it is enriched by this, is born again into the sense world, and the internalized develops anew out of itself. Involution and evolution constitute the soul's life process. It must continually descend into the world of the senses and ascend into the spiritual world, in eternal becoming and dying – an eternal law to which the great mystic Goethe pointed with the words of the poet: “He who does not have this dying and becoming remains only a passive guest on this earth.” |
68b. The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit: Theosophy and the Visual Arts
17 Jan 1906, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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68b. The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit: Theosophy and the Visual Arts
17 Jan 1906, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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Report in the “Münchener Neueste Nachrichten,” January 1906 Ch. Th. Theosophy and Art. The well-known theosophical speaker Dr. Rudolf Steiner from Berlin spoke on January 17 and 18 in front of a large audience in the Prinzensaal of Café Luitpold about theosophy and art. In the first lecture, he sought to illuminate the essence of the visual arts, painting, sculpture and architecture from a theosophical point of view. According to the theosophical world view, as he explained in his introduction, the outer material nature is only the expression of the deeper world essence. In the nascent nature, the formation initially takes place inwardly in three stages, occultistically so-called “elemental realms”, from the formless to a world of forms and flowing images, models of the outer world. According to the speaker, the artist's creative process is connected with these realms. In the imaginative state, the artist rises again into nature as it develops, into these higher realms, beholds the images of the world that lie behind the world, and brings them into waking consciousness. He relives the formation of the world. The speaker believes that from his theosophical point of view he should point out that internalization, the spiritual deepening to rediscover the inner spiritual world, the stepping out to self-expansion and devotion to the universe was also the characteristic of the initiation into the mysteries, to which he somewhat strangely associated artistic talents. The speaker believes he can find a difference in the visual arts in the fact that in painting and sculpture only the higher realm of images and figures is reproduced, while in architecture the formless is newly formed, and in this way it represents a repetition of the construction of the world from the formless natural forces. That is why the idiosyncrasy, the character, is so evident in architecture. Nothing is as closely related to the character of a nation as its architectural style. |
68b. The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit: How to Understand Illness and Death
29 Oct 1906, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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68b. The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit: How to Understand Illness and Death
29 Oct 1906, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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Report in the Generalanzeiger of the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, November 1906. Theosophical lectures. Dr. Rudolf Steiner of Berlin gave three theosophical lectures at Café Luitpold. The first dealt with the topic: “How do we understand illness and death?” After a general introduction about the theosophical views of the human being, the relationship between the inner life and spiritual forces and the physical body, their gradual manifestation in the different age groups, the speaker explained how the saying is proved: nature has invented death in order to have much life. In further remarks about illness, the lecturer sought to suggest how, in the process of illness, the life force seeks to overcome the disturbing forces of the outside world, the pathogens, and how the process of illness can serve to make the person more and more immune, to strengthen them against the damaging influences of the environment. The speaker also discussed, from his point of view, the effect of poisons on the body and touched on the field of psychotherapy, pointing out how the developed mind can have a healing effect on the body. In the second lecture, the speaker sought to clarify the principles of a Theosophical education for children, following on from his remarks on the development of the human being. The first seven years of life should naturally be devoted to the development of the physical body, and in particular, one should seek to influence the senses of the child in this age period. The educator should try to take into account the particularly strongly developed imitative instinct of the child. From the age of seven until the onset of puberty, on the other hand, the educator must act authoritatively in order to strengthen the child's character, to build up a solid foundation of good habits in him, to incorporate into his memory a sum of ideas that he will need in life. It is only after the development of the power of judgment in the subsequent period of life that one can dispense with authoritative guidance and work towards the young person's self-determination. In the third lecture, the speaker discussed the topic: “Blood is a very special juice” (Faust). He believed that this passage should be interpreted as meaning that Goethe really wanted to point out the importance of blood for the human organism and its relationship to the surrounding forces of the outside world, to the old view that with influence over a person's blood, a certain power over the person himself and his inner life was bestowed. Furthermore, he tried to explain how cultural issues are related to blood issues in issues of blood mixing. The lecture, which was received with approval, was followed by a lengthy discussion. |
68b. The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit: Clairvoyance and Fantasy
07 Nov 1908, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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68b. The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit: Clairvoyance and Fantasy
07 Nov 1908, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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[Dear attendees:] During their beautiful friendship, so significant for the newer intellectual life, Goethe and Schiller exchanged the works they were working on during the time of their friendship, and when Schiller received some parts of the “Wilhelm Meister” from Goethe, he wrote him strange, one might say, at first, peculiar words. Overwhelmed by the impression of the chapter he received at the time, he wrote:
These words may seem strange, but they will no longer seem so strange once we have delved a little into Schiller's soul and examined how he actually meant this saying. We will gain insight by comparing these words with the content of that famous letter that Schiller wrote to Goethe shortly after the two had formed their friendship, the letter that I have mentioned many times before. There Schiller wrote:
And now he is spreading it across the way in which Goethe views the world. He says that Goethe directs his gaze freely and openly and objectively over the things of the world and that he tries to gain an insight not by speculative means, but by seeking what is necessary in the totality of the world's phenomena. A “heroic” undertaking, as Schiller calls it. And then he explains in his own way why he finds this undertaking so heroic, and then he says: All your powers, your powers of mind, work together harmoniously and ultimately align themselves with the unifier of all powers of mind in your soul, with imagination. So we see from this that Schiller sees something in Goethe's way of looking at the world, and indeed in the soul activity of Goethe, from which his artistic works have flowed, that it can lead people very deeply into the secrets of existence. Schiller therefore sees something special in the way Goethe developed his imagination, his fantasy, and if one examines what thoughts and opinions were actually exchanged between Goethe and Schiller, one finds that Schiller absorbed a meaningful concept of fantasy in the contemplation of the highest spiritual, and that is what one could call the “inner truth of fantasy”. Schiller strove, and this can be seen again from his letters, to recognize how man, through development, can become a complete human being. In every human nature, he saw a higher human being, a representative human being, whom the ordinary everyday human being must increasingly approach. In Goethe's way of letting the powers of the mind work together in the imagination, of letting the imagination radiate what assigns each other soul power its place — in this kind of soul activity Schiller found something that makes man a complete human being, that best brings him to unite with the very foundations of the world from which man and things have flowed. When we hear our great minds talk about imagination, it looks a little different than when, not only in everyday life, but also in many circles close to or even devoted to science today, imagination is talked about. Today, imagination is contrasted with the objective pursuit of truth as if it were directly opposed to the mental faculties that lead to the investigation of truth, as if it only served to combine things in an arbitrary way. If we can bring ourselves to understand Goethe and are convinced that Goethe was an expert in these matters, then perhaps a Goethean saying will be enlightening for us:
Yes, Goethe addresses the beautiful, that is, the creations of the imagination, the content of artistic creation, in such a way that he says: art, the beautiful, and thus the children of the imagination, are a manifestation of secret laws of nature that could never be fathomed without their activity. Now, however, we have to agree with common sense, which describes imagination as a capacity for association that works according to the desires of the soul, that is, out of pleasure and other impulses that have nothing to do with objective knowledge. We have to admit that imagination often leads people away from the truth. Where would it lead us if we were to admit that imagination plays a role in external scientific research? Admittedly, no one will deny that imagination may play a preliminary role in scientific research. Those who are able to work with combining imagination are able to recognize hidden connections that others do not see, who work in the laboratory or in the physics cabinet and structure experience upon experience. But of course it must be fully admitted that for certain areas of research, of life, it is absolutely necessary that when someone makes such combinations through their imagination, they prove what they have combined in strict external evidence through experience. Thus imagination can be a guide to this or that connection, but it must be verified by the means of external, objective research; we are willing to concede that. Nevertheless, a word such as Goethe's – or a position on the matter such as Schiller's – indicates that Goethe sees something in the works of imagination, in the creative activity of imagination, that also contains a truth, in contrast to the arbitrary, unfettered play that we might better call a fantastic play of ideas. But anyone who speaks of fantasy in such a way that it contains something of truth, you will readily admit, cannot speak of being forced by the external world to recognize this truth. When we string fact after fact and seek to fathom the laws, then the results of our observations force us to our judgment. When we let our imagination speak, then there is no such external compulsion. That which underlies imagination, that which imagination brings forth, would therefore be something that, as truth, permeates imagination. Accordingly, an inner lawfulness would have to prevail in such a way that certain thoughts, brought together by imagination, appear before a higher forum as real, that certain conclusions of imagination, through an inner necessity, present an expression of truth. Therefore, if creative imaginative activity is to have true justification, there must be something at work that acts as an inner guide to direct a person in their imaginative work, that does not allow him to fertilize his thoughts at random, according to his desires and pleasures, but rather what guides him to stringing thought to thought with a sure inner direction and thereby obtains something that is, in a certain sense, an expression of truth. When we hear a true and great poet speak of imagination as a means of unraveling inner truths, then it is certainly permissible to measure this creative soul activity, this imagination, against that soul activity, that soul capacity, which, in the sense of spiritual science or theosophy, is suitable for leading into the foundations of existence. Over the years, we have spoken at length about this spiritual world that underlies the material world. The methods that lead to the results we have so often discussed are – as terrible as the word may sound to some modern people – the so-called clairvoyant methods. Spiritual science offers information about facts and beings of the spiritual world, and these facts and beings are found through clairvoyance. It will not be my task here to discuss certain lower forms of clairvoyance – they can only be touched on – because these lower forms can never lead to any real results of spiritual science. On the other hand, it will be my task, in accordance with the time allotted to us, to discuss the method and scope of so-called higher clairvoyance, that is, clairvoyance achieved through genuine, truly appropriate training. Many people today only know clairvoyance in the form of so-called lower clairvoyance, where it occurs to us as an accidental gift or disease, in somnambulism and other forms. There are conditions in human nature through which a person does not relate to his environment in the usual way, but in which he has filled his soul life, we might say, with images from another world. For the outside world, the somnambulist is in a kind of sleep. This sleep may be present to such a slight degree that the layman will always reply: Yes, he is indeed completely awake, he just sees differently than the ordinary person in his waking state. And such a person who sees differently is called a clairvoyant. When he perceives images in this more or less sleep-like state, these images sometimes form strange content, sometimes quite meaningful content. He can communicate these images and amaze those around him with the things he sees. In this somnambulistic state, he himself knows certain things through prediction, which then come true despite all objections. Such a person, who has tuned down his external daytime consciousness, can make statements about certain conditions that lie ahead of him, which appear astonishing. Such a patient can indicate exactly what can help him and how he is to be treated. In such states, the human soul does indeed penetrate through the shell of the external sense world and has another world before it. This cannot be denied, and anyone who denies it has simply not done any research in this field. But all these forms are not what really interest us. That which is gained through such lower clairvoyance cannot be the subject of the spiritual science we are talking about here. The subject of this spiritual science is only that which is gained through the path of trained clairvoyance, the clairvoyance that man has acquired through the fully conscious application of the methods given to him by the corresponding schools. The aspiring clairvoyant performs each step with strict self-control, in complete awareness, just as other people behave in relation to the external world that they perceive with their senses. The only question now is this: how do we visualize the process of becoming such a clairvoyant? If we want to define its nature, we can say: In terms of scientific methodology, it can be compared to what we call external research in the modern sense of the word. The researcher makes use of all kinds of instruments and tools to explore what is within the sensory world. He invents scientific methods by which he can systematically see things in such a way that they reveal their secrets to him, so to speak. Thus the scientific researcher surrounds himself with instruments, he equips himself with methods that enable him to arrange things in such a way that they tell him something. The spiritual researcher also works with his instrument, with a very complicated one at that, and he cannot explore anything without this instrument. What is this instrument? It is himself. But he is not himself in the state in which the soul is in everyday life. Man only becomes this instrument when he has so transformed his entire capacity for knowledge, his soul constitution, through the methods that can be given to him, that he has acquired other, indeed now spiritual organs. He must have experienced the moment when he can say from his own experience: Now, every reasonable person says to himself, it cannot be that what surrounds us is exhausted by the tools of our five senses, because if someone does not have one of these senses, he lacks the possibility to see with seeing eyes, so the world of light is not there [for him]. It is there when the organ is there. With each new organ, a new content of the external world presents itself, so we must not limit reality. There must therefore be or be able to be hidden, invisible supersensible worlds around us, and insofar as one expresses this in this cautious way, 'they can be there', logically there is no objection to it. Someone who becomes clairvoyant in the sense just described reeducates themselves in such a way that this hidden world becomes as perceptible to them as the world of light and color is to ordinary eyes. And just as a new world, the world of light and color, opens up for the one born blind, so a new world streams in from the surroundings of the thus awakened clairvoyant, which then becomes their world of observation. But one must not believe that this is achieved by any means that could be described as superstitious or prejudiced. It is accomplished by a strict transformation of the human cognitive faculty into an instrument of higher perception. Of course, I can only hint in general terms at how this happens. But we also want to go to such, so to speak, higher chapters, also in public lectures, and at least sketch out how research is done. Man, when he perceives the surrounding world, will be most true to that surrounding world if he lets it tell him what it has to say to him, as far as possible without the interference of arbitrariness. Therefore, we see that the scientist is rightly endeavoring, and carefully endeavoring, to ensure that nothing of subjective arbitrariness of any kind is mixed into what he strives for as a result, that everything is dictated by the things themselves, that man, through his methods, only gives nature the opportunity to express itself. The less arbitrariness we apply in doing so, the better it is. But man cannot help reflecting on the things of the external world, and a little consideration will show you that you gain your perception, your sense impressions, from the external world, from observation; that you let the individual things of external life flow in; but you will also understand that what is called the concept does not flow into us from the external world. Even an external fact can provide you with the proof that, where man investigates the external world, he actually brings the concepts from his inner being; and modern thinking in particular will have to admit this. If this thinking looks back a few millennia and considers the concepts about the structure of our solar system, it must say to itself: When the eye looked up, external perception saw the same as Copernicus and Galileo saw; but the laws that govern it, the concepts and ideas about the structure of the world, have only been acquired over time. How did Copernicus, for example, come to his view of the starry sky? By combining the same observational material that his ancestors had in a different way, by applying the mind, the world of concepts that ruled in him, in a different way than his ancestors. Through what he added to the observation, he saw the essential for our century. We could show this for all fields. The most orthodox Darwinian must admit: people looked at the facts of the world before Haeckel, too. That they came to their theory does not depend on Haeckel experiencing the environment in a different way, but on his approaching things in a different way. So it is essential what the person brings to it. And there is another example that shows how concepts and ideas are not something that flows into the human being from the outside, but something that he himself must bring into the world. Try to think about it when you go out to sea to a point where you only have sea, sea, on which the vault of heaven seems to rest all around you. You will then say to yourself: the vault of heaven seems to rest on the surface of the sea in the form of a circle; but you will not understand the circle through such observations. You will only understand it when you disregard the external observation and are able to construct the circle in your own mind, independently of the observation, when you are able to draw the picture mentally, in which all points are the same distance from the center. To have this image in your mind, to understand the [circle], you do not need chalk, no external observation. You can construct it in your mind and realize all the laws in your mind. And when you step out into reality and see arrangements that are in a circle, then it must correspond to what you have thought up in your study as the laws of the circle. The great Kepler would never have been able to discover the laws governing the movement of the planets if the orbit of the planets had not first appeared to him in his mind and he had then realized that when he looked out, the stars moved in the lines that he had first constructed in his mind. Thus we carry the world of concepts and ideas within us in the higher sense of the word. We bring them to the external things, and these tell us: What you have thought, we carry out. The star says, as it were: You have conceived a line in your soul; but I move in the sense of this line. And so you come to realize that what lives in your soul, without you taking in an external sensory observation, that this underlies the spiritual basis and laws of this sensory world; but you have to get the confirmation from this sensory world. You can only make a statement about this sensory world when it offers you phenomena that correspond to what you have thought. Now imagine that a person — and in this case I am indeed quoting the simplest things from the so-called school of esoteric science — tries to hold on to a thought that is constructed in his own soul, such as a circle, without going out into the world of observation with the image in his soul. If a person can now manage to refrain from all external observation for a while and is able to hold the attention to such an inner image, if he makes himself blind and deaf to his surroundings and remains attached to such an image, if he concentrates his soul on this image, then he is practising the first elementary activity on the way to clairvoyance – that which is called concentration. Everything assumes that the human soul initially clings to something that lives within itself alone, for which it is initially unimportant whether or not there is something external to which it corresponds. What matters is the activity of the soul, to hold fast in strict inner direction such activity that is directed towards a soul image. That is what matters. Now, of course, a single such activity is not enough; it must be repeated often; and even if it is repeated over and over again, what is actually effective is not what the person can gain in terms of mental images, when he is actually still completely dependent on the stimulation of the external sense world. There are thousands of years of experience in relation to clairvoyance, experiences of people who know and give their advice to develop inner soul forces. Above all, I just want to point out that there are certain truths, core statements. One need not be convinced of the truth of such sentences, which in a certain sense are the possessions of researchers in this field. Suppose someone says: I cannot be convinced from the outset of the truth of such sentences, which perhaps relate to an eternal. That is not necessary; that is not the beginning. The greater the impartiality, the better. When the teacher gives the student something and says, “Fill your soul so that during the time it lives in your soul, you perceive nothing around you and give yourself entirely to this soul content,” then you do not need to believe in this soul content. The teacher can even say, “Don't believe in it, but let it work in you.” That is what matters. Focus on that and you will see that such a resting of the soul on that content has an effect. Not that you gain a conviction, but that this content works in your soul, that is what matters. — If someone says that the teacher gives his student something that is not true at all, it can be calmly retorted: It may be that it is not true, that the external truth is not applicable to such a sentence; but that is not the point, but rather that it becomes a working force in the soul, that out of the soul comes forth what was hidden and of which the soul was not previously aware. One will see that with constant repetition of such instruction one can have inner experiences. Certain symbols and symbolic representations are particularly effective for bringing hidden soul abilities to the fore. And a symbolum will be used to characterize how something like this actually works. I would like to speak of the symbolum that I have often referred to, the black cross surrounded by red roses. Let us first consider the abstract meaning, which is not of great importance for the training of clairvoyance. It will be best if we recall Goethe's words:
Die and become – what does that mean? It means nothing other than that in the development of our soul we must rise above the things of our sensory world, that these things must first disappear around us, so to speak, so that we find ourselves in a state in which we are unconscious of the sensory world, which can be compared to the process of battle and death. The sensory world must first die. But whoever remains without content, whose soul remains empty when the content dies, is a dull guest. This is more or less what Goethe means: when you succeed in diverting your attention from all external things, when you are certain that nothing from the external world is flowing in, when you can then draw something out of the hidden depths of your soul that fills the field of vision of your soul, that is different from the external, then you have risen anew in another world, then you have “become”. Die and become – the dying of the lower nature, of outer sense perception, is characterized by the black cross. The dawning of a new world out of this death of the sense world is characterized by the red roses on the cross. And if we then interpret this rose cross in a comprehensive cosmic sense, we must say: in the mineral kingdom, in the plant kingdom, in what is called unconscious nature, there is a spiritual element. This underlies everything. The human being directs his gaze to his environment, he perceives it. To those who have an inkling of the spiritual, this environment appears only as an external expression of the underlying spiritual. They say to themselves: The whole unconscious nature is based on a divine-spiritual; but it is as if it were in a grave, it is as if it were dead. The human soul is like steel on flint; when it strikes it in recognition, what lies hidden within it shines forth. In the human soul, divine spiritual content arises; it comes to life. Thus, the spirit must first pass through the death of the unconscious world in order to come to new life. And I could tell of all possible areas of spiritual life. I could cite what could serve as a first intellectual explanation of this symbol. But that is not the point at all. The only point is that we do not entertain the thought that it was invented arbitrarily. For the budding clairvoyant, it is not a matter of what it might mean. Someone might say: Well, you may talk about the Rose Cross all you like, but to the objective researcher it makes no difference, because he gains nothing about the secrets of nature by imagining a black cross; that tells him nothing. When we carry out experiments with the falling-body machine or other apparatus, we discover a law. This, expressed in words, means something to us; it corresponds to an objective truth; a rose cross means nothing to me. That is how the person concerned can say. He who has undergone clairvoyant training may reply: That does not matter, it is not the point. The images in question are not meant to depict anything in external reality, so they are most effective when they are symbols that are open to multiple interpretations. What matters is not that one wants to express in such a symbolum the things of the outer world as they are, but that one forms such a symbolum in purely inner soul activity, initially in dependence on the outer expressions, that one contemplates such a symbolum in the soul in a way that is as concentrated as possible and excludes outer things. What this symbolum brings about in the soul is what matters. When a person allows something like this symbol to live in his soul with ever-increasing inner concentration – and many other things as well – then these are the means to awaken the forces slumbering within him. Something very special happens to the person. He can experience – and these are real experiences – that the proofs, the real guarantees of this matter arise within him. In the end, the human being will experience the following feelings, which I ask you to observe carefully. He will say to himself: What I imagined was really only a kind of bridge; this rose cross is a bridge. Now I have received something that is not connected with it, to which the rose cross has only helped me, which rises in my soul and which is first of all an experience that cannot be obtained through external stimulation. At first, the student does not know whether what is arising within him is a bubble, a mirage, a fantastic construct, or whether it corresponds to some kind of reality. He does not know, but what matters is that he acquires the ability to experience and see such things within himself. For even that is still a detour for higher clairvoyance. What occurs at first are images. But now, when the student continues to do such exercises, a further feeling arises for him that can be proven by nothing more than by the experience, the feeling that tells him: It now also does not depend on the images, but on what is expressed in these images. And now he knows that it is with these images, which he experiences in his innermost being, something like this: If you press on your eye or let an electric current pass through it, then any light impulse can pass through the eye, a light can shine within you. In this case, you have a light impression that is caused by the constitution of the eye. It is the same when the images first appear, which are evoked by following the appropriate advice. Then, like spiritual flashes, things flash through the soul that are indeed new, but they really appear the same as the light that you generate in the eye through a blow or an electric current. But you know very well when you are confronted with an external object that although the nature of the eye enables you to perceive light, you can say to yourself through experience, through a certainty gained in the experience: that which has been evoked only by my eyes is nothing, the real thing is the object. I stand facing the object, it communicates itself to me through my eye as an object. This moment occurs for the clairvoyant person. These images ultimately become a means by which a new reality is expressed. Just as surely as the person who faces an external object with his eye knows that the object is expressing itself, so the clairvoyant knows that although it depends on his nature whether such images arise, he also knows quite precisely: in the way these images are now experienced by him, objective entities and facts of the spiritual world are expressed. This can only be attained through strict inner schooling in a completely natural way. Just as one can distinguish fantasy from reality in outer experiences, so it is necessary for the pupil to maintain a sound judgment and a sound mind in this area, for here it is much easier to mistake illusion for reality than in outer life. Therefore, in such schooling for real higher clairvoyance, something else must go along with it. If the student were to allow only what has been described to approach him, then he would be exposed to the danger of becoming a madman in a sense, and that is because in this realm of changing images of the higher spiritual life, he can conjure up appearances for reality through his subjective feelings, through his personality. This training must go hand in hand with the fact that the person, through certain instructions given to him, learns to renounce everything in this higher spiritual world that is connected with his desires, that is connected with his personality. Here we come to a chapter where it is very difficult to be understood. For what do all contemporary psychologists say? They are not familiar with what has just been described and what is experienced as reality by hundreds. They therefore say: When a person is confronted with the external world, the sensory world corrects him by giving him realities; but when a person abandons himself to his inner activity, then, of course, feeling and subjective inclination are involved, and then feeling is transformed into such images; this can never claim to be objective. In the area where these gentlemen think they are right, they are right, because they have no concept of what must take place in terms of the actual eradication and obliteration of subjectivity, subjective opinions and inclinations. These must be completely eliminated. One must learn to renounce any preference or sympathy. There are again very special exercises for this, so that what our popular psychologists rightly describe for ordinary human life does not occur, namely, that the arbitrary interferes. Man must have thrown out everything that could conjure up appearance for him as reality. But then he can keep the objective spiritual in its true form. Something else needs to be said. Where clairvoyance is prepared in this way of training, where expertise prevails in this field and not dilettantism — the latter of which is terribly rife in the world — great importance is attached to not starting the path without certain prerequisites. For there is a great difference between setting out on this difficult path as an ignorant person, equipped only with the ordinary concepts of the world, and setting out after having absorbed higher concepts about certain secrets of existence, which can be explored and tested. There is a great difference whether one advances in this or that way. One can also go through this path with a small amount of outer experience. But then the soul's content is poor, and everything that can be seen is compressed into a few images. And then the incorrectly trained clairvoyants come into being, whom you will find again and again, who present in their writings: Now I have come so far that I have united with God through concentration, through the expression of my soul; and then they express God as a diamond illuminated by light or something like that. This is a mistaken idea, an idea that is basically no different from the usual description of an external thing of the senses, except that the person concerned calls it God. When such “clairvoyants” repeatedly discuss their higher world and express all the glories of the higher world through nothing but such trivial descriptions, it is because they have not approached this training properly prepared. But when someone approaches these things with a proven teacher, then what he achieves, what flows into the images he has prepared, is a diverse world view, and everything that the surrounding external nature can offer people, with all its beauties and glories and secrets, is only a small part of the whole world that surrounds them. Much more magnificent and glorious is that which lies as the unknown world behind the known and which shines forth as the primal source of all that is visible. But it is also the case that the person who experiences this knows that he is not deceiving himself, that he is not, for example, projecting external impressions into this realm; he knows full well that what he experiences there, he can never experience in the external sense world. This is the path of calm development by which man comes to truly see into the spiritual worlds. This is trained clairvoyance. Now, what objectively happens to a person when he applies such methods? We remember that for spiritual science, the human being is not limited to what the senses can perceive, but that this external, this physical body, is merely one part of the whole human nature. For spiritual science, this physical body is permeated by supersensible parts, first of all by the etheric body, and the astral body is incorporated into the physical and etheric bodies. In the astral body we have the carrier of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, of drives, instincts, desires, of all inner experiences. Integrated into this is the fourth link of the human being, the carrier of self-awareness. What sleep actually is in the sense of spiritual science has already been characterized here before you. What happens then when, in the evening, for the human being's subjective perception, all the impressions of the day sink down into the sea of forgetting, when, so to speak, forgetting or unconsciousness spreads around the person? What has happened to this person? The physical body and ether body remain in bed; but the astral body, together with the ego, has moved out and now acts on the physical and ether bodies from the outside. Our inner worlds sink into oblivion because the astral body does not make use of the external sense organs during the night. In the morning, the astral body with the ego then descends again into the physical and etheric bodies; it makes use of the senses again, and the world of the senses emerges for the human consciousness. How can a person perceive the external world of the senses? Because he has eyes and ears and the other sense organs. If these organs did not exist, the environment would be silent and lightless for the human being. When the astral body is externalized at night, it is also in a world, a spiritual world. But it has no organs to perceive it. In its fine substantiality, it has no organs like those that the human being has today in the coarse physical substance. Only through organs can a world around the human being be perceived. If the astral body had organs, then it would be able to perceive its environment just as well when it is outside the physical and etheric bodies as it can perceive what surrounds a person in the physical world with the help of the physical senses. Now the question is: if a person is to perceive the spiritual world, then his astral body must be given organs, spiritual ears and spiritual eyes. How does this happen? This happens through the methods that have been mentioned, through concentration, through living in certain ideas and images. When such a person's astral body goes out at night, this astral body is quite different. This is known by those who have attained clairvoyant consciousness. It is as if you were to imagine that in the physical body the organs begin to differentiate and perceive the environment. What was a disorderly mass is divided into organs. It takes a long time for the organs to form in the astral body, until what was once like an undifferentiated mist begins to emerge in beautifully formed organs. But then what was possible for man before, to have these images in his soul, which were characterized earlier, occurs. This world of images arises from the fact that the human being integrates such organs. Since ancient times, the process that occurs for the human being has been called purification, cleansing, catharsis, for the reason that the human being thereby learns not only to sense the spiritual world through the veil of external sensuality but because he then looks into this spiritual world in such a way that his vision is purified from the outer sensual world, that the outer sensual world is blurred and yet unconsciousness does not occur. Catharsis, purification, cleansing has always been correctly described as the first stage of trained clairvoyance. Then a later stage occurs for the clairvoyant. At first, when the person returns to the physical and etheric body in the morning, the external organs are working again and have more power. He cannot, so to speak, handle the internal, still fine and mobile organs; the external impression of the eye and ear drowns out what the internal astral organs can see. It is always present, because the spiritual world is within the sense world — but as long as the human being still has these organs weakly developed, as long as they are only in the astral body, they are drowned out by the sensory organs and the powers of the etheric body. By working diligently in this way, the human being develops organs so strong and capable of being controlled internally that when he enters his physical and etheric bodies in the morning, he can see through these organs not only sensory perceptions but also the spiritual. At that moment, the person has attained what has always been called enlightenment or photism within the schools that work in this field. These are all very real processes that can be experienced, and they do not arise from something happening to the person that is beyond his control. Step by step, the person applies the methods used in the corresponding schools to transform himself into the instrument through which he can perceive the spiritual world. What is it that enables a person to become clairvoyant? It is the organization of his inner invisible being, the transformation of the chaotic structure of this inner being, which otherwise only has an experience when the outer world is affected, into an organization that is just as regular as the outer physical body has become through outer nature. Exactly the same path of development that nature has taken with man, to transform him from a lower stage to today's being with perfect organs, the same path of development is taken up by man himself, is continued by him. Where nature leaves man, he himself continues to work. Whoever reflects on this will not find the slightest illogicality in the fact that the one who sets out on the path can have real experiences. When man gains insight into the spiritual worlds in this way, he owes it to the fact that he has made his inner man so strong that he is an independent being in relation to the external organs. Man has become his own master. This is a principle that is expressed in all such schools as an abstract characteristic of this matter. If man has come to this stage, he owes it first of all to the control over his etheric body. In the undeveloped human being, the life body is, so to speak, somewhat inelastic, following only the forces of nature. In the clairvoyant, it is something that the astral body adapts to its forms. It has become elastic because the stronger power is at work in it. If we now touch on the kind of clairvoyance that is evoked by lower states, which we generally characterize – and this is of course speaking in a laymanly way – as human states of weakness, then we have to say: this comes from something quite different and can never be controlled, but it is based on the same laws. Whenever a person becomes somnambulant of their own accord, or when a person is influenced by unlawful means, or when a person is going through this or that illness, it may happen that their etheric body is dissolved in the physical body, so that the compact connection between the physical body and the etheric body does not exist, as it does in the normal state. This can actually happen as a result of disease processes, and basically most of what is seen in the field of low-level clairvoyance can be traced back to pathological conditions. Then the person has an etheric body that is not so firmly bound. While in the trained clairvoyant the loosening occurs because the astral body strengthens and gains control of the etheric body, in the case of low-level clairvoyance it occurs because an organ becomes diseased. Through the illness, it is released from the etheric body to a certain extent; the etheric body becomes free for such people. As long as the physical brain is still in a normal, intimate connection with the etheric, the astral body cannot do anything with the etheric; the physical brain holds the etheric body. If an abnormality occurs, a larger or smaller piece of the etheric body will separate from the physical body; it can be handled more easily, and it is handled by the astral body so that a kind of natural enlightenment occurs, but which in its content cannot offer any higher world, cannot lead to higher results, because all control, all certainty, all conscious pursuit of things is excluded. People who have become clairvoyant in this way can, because their condition is based on the same principle as that of the trained clairvoyant, namely, on the control of the etheric body by the astral body, can have unordered insights into the higher worlds; what they relate may be fact, but a real result of spiritual science can never arise from it. What has been said here is not a denial of the reality of what such people see, but an alerting to the fact that the strict results of spiritual science can only be achieved through the path of trained clairvoyance. I would just like to touch on one possible objection. Someone might say: So lower clairvoyance is always based on pathological conditions; how can a disease process produce real insight? — That is a shortsighted view. Health and insight do not go hand in hand. A person can become ill, and precisely through this process of illness the supersensible world can be opened up for influences from the higher world; there is nothing contradictory about this. Nor does it imply that a person should be made ill in order to become clairvoyant. Thus we see what it is that brings the facts and beings of a higher world into the field of consciousness in the same way that the world around us is brought into this consciousness through sensory observation. It is exactly the same thing, only in a different field of vision. And just as we perceive plants and minerals in the world of the senses, so in the spiritual world we have around us that which makes this world of the senses explicable to us in the first place, because it has emerged from the spiritual world. And when the clairvoyant makes statements about what he has seen, he does so in order to tell. He does not want to prove anything, he wants to tell what he experiences by applying strict methods to his own soul development. And by telling, he imparts a world that can be logically understood, that can be grasped by the ordinary mind. If we express the experiences of the clairvoyant in a different way, we have to say: our inner world, our soul world, is determined in ordinary life by what is going on outside. That I, for example, imagine a green stem with leaves on it, that I assert this image, comes from the fact that I am organized in a certain way. The rose out there determines me, its forces stream into me, by conveying to me the idea of its outer being. It is the same in the spiritual realm. These spiritual entities reveal themselves to the developed person, they are reflected in his inner soul life, just as external sense perceptions are reflected in ordinary thinking. Thus the clairvoyant experiences the spiritual external world in his soul life and says to himself: When I look at the sense world, I know that this sense world is created, ordered and determined by the beings whose activity and rule is revealed to me when I direct my clairvoyant gaze to the sense world. He says to himself: The fact that the sensory world appears to me in an organized way is because it has been shaped by the beings I see. The flower before me, a crystal, a mountain range, it is all worked out of the spirit. I see the spiritual foundations. I would see nothing of them if I left it to my own discretion. I must, so to speak, sacrifice my soul life and let the world of the higher spiritual self flow into my soul; it must have an effect on me, it is the determining factor. And now imagine something: Imagine that this world is there, that it is at work, that it is always at work on people, even if not on their consciousness. Imagine that a person is standing in the world; around him is the world that the clairvoyant sees; it has an effect on every person. On the merely sensual observer it has an effect in that it presents an external face; on the clairvoyant it has an effect in such a way that he does not see this spiritual world at first, but that it works as a determining force, that he cannot look up to a world of spiritual forces, but that the forces of these entities flow to him in an unconscious way. He does not see them, but they send forces, order his life of ideas, determine what his soul experiences. A person sees another person; if he saw nothing more, he would only receive a picture of the external world. Now the spiritual world works by sending him its forces. Now he is not satisfied with the ideas of the external, sensual world. He is transforming himself, in order to gradually make himself into the sublime image that the Greeks, for example, represented in the statue of Zeus. The same power and essence that the clairvoyant sees works, as it were, on the person endowed with true imagination, so that it stands by his side, guiding and leading him, combining the images. And so imagination works like a soul force that is fertilized by the worlds into which the clairvoyant looks, a soul force into which the higher worlds send their laws, so that the person gifted with imagination transforms the external things so that the truths of the spiritual worlds live in them. There we have the real basis of imagination, and there we understand that Schiller could say of Goethe, how with him understanding and reason and feeling and all the soul powers work together harmoniously and are fertilized by imagination. We understand that he could say: What is created in this way characterizes the human being as the only true human being, because he does not work only through a single soul power, but takes everything together, and everything works towards the imagination — which does not have to agree with external truth —, towards the imagination. And so we can also understand that Goethe can be the view: There is a form of imagination that does not need to agree with external truth, but which has its own certainty. We have seen this. There is a form of imagination that does not yet lead to clairvoyance, but which is fertilized by the forces that the clairvoyant sees. It is understandable that Schiller finds all other human activities one-sided, but in the contemplation of Goethe it dawns on him: the artist who takes the individual soul forces together in order to allow the spiritual worlds to fertilize what he receives as an external new formation in the sense world; such an artist is the only true human being. Of course, Schiller knew nothing of spiritual science, but he sensed what it was about. Likewise, what Goethe says about imagination is absolutely right. It is true when Goethe says that genuine art, that is, art that creates out of imagination, is the revelation of secret laws of nature that could never be discovered without imagination. While external observation may provide us with purely external sensory facts and truths, inner truth is something that the imagination, fertilized from above, is much closer to than the powers of reason. And so we see how things are distributed in the world, so to speak. Man is predisposed to ascend into the higher worlds. The higher abilities lie dormant in every soul. Those who have the patience and endurance — perhaps through many lives — may hope to glimpse into the worlds that make the outer sense world understandable in the first place. But until then, until man achieves this, something is given him as a forerunner, a representative for insight into the higher worlds. He can allow himself to be inspired by these higher worlds and then, in the work of the artist, for example, transform the external world in such a way that it offers a reflection of the spiritual worlds. And so, in art, we do not merely see the world of the senses as nature creates the world of the senses, but in great works of art we see the Creator Himself, Who has passed through the medium of the human spirit and human imagination. We see in the surroundings of the work of art an external reflection of that which, although not an immediate sensory reality, is an expression of spiritual worlds, insofar as spiritual worlds can find expression through the sensual-material. And so we see that in the spiritual life of humanity, imagination lights the way to the great goal of clairvoyance, of looking into the spiritual worlds. Individual people have already achieved this goal by using the means mentioned. This spiritual world appears to us as the ruler of all lower existence and clairvoyance as that through which the human being gains a share in the spiritual world; it calls the human being up into the spheres of a higher world. And imagination is the representative of clairvoyance in the world of the senses, so that a person can already have a reflection of the spiritual world, for example through art. And the deeper we look into this context, the more we recognize: Clairvoyance is the ruler of the human mind in the broadest sense of world knowledge and understanding; and imagination is the deputy of clairvoyance within the sensual world. |
68b. The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit: Tolstoy And Carnegie
06 Nov 1908, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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68b. The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit: Tolstoy And Carnegie
06 Nov 1908, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear attendees! For many years now, I have had the honor of addressing you from this very spot about subjects related to spiritual science or, as it has become customary to call it, theosophy. Those of you in the audience who have attended several lectures over the past years will have seen that the basis of spiritual science as represented here is such that one can say: Spiritual science or Theosophy should not be considered merely as a dreamy, idle occupation of a few people who are far removed from life, but should rather shine more deeply into the tasks and riddles of life. On the one hand, it is true that this spiritual-scientific world view is intended to direct our gaze up into the spheres of the spiritual foundations of the world, to convey knowledge of these spiritual foundations of the world; but on the other hand – and it need only be recalled here to the lecture on the education of the child from the point of view of spiritual science, which has been given here — on the other hand, this spiritual-scientific world view has the task of making life understandable, of giving guidelines and guiding stars to action and work in practical life, of providing orientation in the broadest sense precisely about what is going on around us before our eyes and ears, and of giving a deeper understanding of it by drawing precisely this understanding from the deeper, spiritual causes. What we are to deal with today can be considered a contribution in this direction. What can initially confuse people, what initially causes people all kinds of conflict, is when their world view, when the affairs of life confront them with important personalities, with their opinions, with their thoughts, and when these personalities contradict each other so often. Many of you will have already felt how Theosophy or spiritual science, by broadening one's view, leads precisely to a harmonization of opinions through understanding. Today we will deal with two contemporary personalities whose work is taking place right among us, whose opinions, so to speak, are going around the world from east to west and from west to east. These are personalities who are so well suited to leading us to the deep contradictions that run through our lives – for perhaps you will not find two personalities who are so opposed in all that they think and feel, in all that they express as being the right thing to do for our needs today – on the one hand we have Tolstoy, the much-mentioned, the effective one, a personality of whom one might say that no term is sufficient to properly encompass what he actually is for the present day; it will hardly suffice to say that Tolstoy is a moralist, if one believes a reformer in certain areas , if one wanted to use the term prophet or the like, but whoever pronounces the name of this personality will always be aware that something very inner to human nature is struck in this, that something lives in this personality that seems to emerge from other depths of the soul than those that move on the surface of existence today – and the other personality that is to be contrasted with it, so to speak, is the American millionaire Carnegie. Why is Carnegie being contrasted with this personality today? Just as Tolstoy is trying to find a satisfactory solution to life and the riddles of life from the depths of his soul, so Carnegie, in his own way, is also seeking to gain principles of action and direction from the depths of our time, from his practical, one might say, “fundamentally intelligent” view of life. Perhaps one could say – but it sounds almost trivial – that just as idealism and realism have confronted each other in all ages – but with these shades as radically pronounced as possible – so do Tolstoy and Carnegie confront each other. The great German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte once said: “What one's worldview is depends on what kind of person one is.” He was pointing out how a person's worldview is sometimes more subtly and sometimes more coarsely intertwined with their unique character and temperament, with their entire life. And if we first look at the life, the character traits, and the personality traits of the two people we want to talk about, we already have the greatest possible contrast. The rich Russian aristocrat, who was born into the opulence of life, so to speak, who is virtually forced by his social position in life not only to get to know all sides of this life down to the most superficial outbursts of our present day, but to live with them and savor them, we see how, oversaturated to these contents of life, which are offered on the surface today, he takes refuge in the highest moral ideals, which seem to fly over life endlessly, and of which most people, even if they admire them, will be convinced today that they may be beautiful, but that they can only realize a little in life. On the other hand, we see Carnegie, born, one might say, out of need and misery, at least educated out of need and misery, familiar with all kinds of privation, with the necessity of doing the most menial of work, endowed with none of the things that life offered to someone like Tolstoy on the surface of today's social order, endowed with an honest will to work, with an one might say, idealistically colored certain ambition to become a whole human being, he worked his way up; Carnegie works his way up through this sphere to a kind, one might say, of realistic idealism, also to a kind of moralism that counts on what is immediately apparent, what can be directly experienced in practical life. We see how Tolstoy, in the most radical way, throws down the gauntlet, so to speak, to today's social order, how his criticism becomes not only harsh when he speaks of the current social order, but how it seeks to intervene, so to speak, in a devastating way in current thoughts, feelings and impulses of the will. Carnegie sees how life has developed historically up to our present time and, for his soul, has the one word, so to speak, that expresses everything in relation to his first, most direct relationship to life: Yes, he says to everything that the present has brought us – a full satisfaction with what is around us! He sees how the gap between rich and poor has grown, how the ways of earning a living have changed, and everywhere he is permeated by the judgment: It does not matter whether we find this good or bad, but that it must be so, that we just have to reckon with it, and yet, working his way through – this is the characteristic feature of this personality – working his way through from a realistic view to a kind of idealism that sets itself the great goal of providing guidelines for a good life within these existing conditions, for a life that serves human progress in the most beautiful way, and for a social order that serves human progress and development. Our consideration should not take sides with one or the other school of thought; it should be clear from the conditions of human development how such contradictions could have arisen. And if Theosophy has a task in relation to such phenomena as these two personalities present, then it is precisely to understand, from the deep foundations of existence, preferably of spiritual development, where such phenomena come from. It is not my intention to teach anything biographical about either of these personalities, only to say what the souls of both can reveal to us so that we can then penetrate to a deeper understanding of them. From the outset, Tolstoy is a person who does not have to struggle with the external hardships of life, but is born into wealth and abundance, so to speak. He could easily have done so if he had harbored a superficial soul, as so many thousands and thousands more do, lost in wealth and abundance. But his individuality was not suited to that. From the very beginning, from childhood on, what could have an effect on this soul was always that which touched the deepest questions of the soul, of the world view. At first, he accepts life as it presents itself to him. As a boy, he is not yet able to think critically about what is going on around him; what later emerged in him in a monumental way as a critique of today's way of life is far from that. As a boy, he takes for granted what is around him and going on. But there is already something in the boy like a lightning strike in his soul. One of his childhood friends once came home from high school with a strange message. He said something like, “Yes, someone – maybe a teacher – has made a new discovery, namely that there is no God.” This was something that struck like lightning into this young soul, which had actually taken for granted not only everything external but also the religious life as it played out around him. That something like this is possible, that presented itself together with another thing to this youthful mind. You only have to put yourself in a child's shoes for once, and you will be able to know that a child's soul could actually believe that such a discovery could possibly be made. And such events have been incorporated again and again into this soul life. And we could give a long description of how Tolstoy, during his military service, in his dealings with the social classes to which he belongs, gets to know all the misery of today's life, how he becomes weary of it, how he the most diverse thoughts, how he, after he had got to know the misery of war and its social history, the literary life in Petersburg, how he became tired of what life is today in other areas of Europe. We could describe all this – it is well known today – but what can interest us are the questions that arose for Tolstoy. First of all, the question increasingly and more sharply arises in his soul: What is actually a certain center of life in the face of all the confusing circumstances around us, where can a center be found? Gradually, religion becomes an important question for him, and this question becomes all the more significant for him as he is unable to break away from external customs for a long time. But the religious question becomes something deeply incisive for him. More and more clearly and distinctly he asks himself: What exactly is religion for man? And for a long time he is not really clear about how that connecting bond of the soul with some higher world, with an unknown spiritual source, what that bond looks like, where it goes from the soul, etc. Above all, the people he has met in his circles seem to him to be so detached from the religious mood of the soul, so parched in relation to the living source of life. Not, as I said, to take sides, but only to describe this mood of the soul as clearly as possible. And then, in my opinion, he sees himself as a soldier in the Caucasus, during the siege of Sevastopol, among the lower classes of the population. He gets to know their souls; he delves into such souls in an intimate way. He finds that there is something original in such souls, that they are even less torn away from the original ground, and the problem arises before his soul as to whether there is not more truth and authenticity in the naivety of the existence of lower, subordinate social classes than in the circles in which he had to live. And lo and behold, here too, one mystery after another presents itself to him and he cannot solve any of them. You only need to read something like his unfinished novel “Morning Hours of a Landowner” to see how he wrestled with the question: Yes, now I have seen the people who have broken away from the original source of existence, who have withered away on the periphery; I have sought a path to religious depth from the soul of primitive people, but an answer to this question fails because today's so-called educated people can never communicate with these primitive original states of the soul. In short, there is no answer to the burning questions that existed for him either. And so it goes on, and so he comes to see all the contradictions and contradictions in life more and more clearly, and one need only go through his original artistic work: “War and Peace”, his novellas, “Anna Karenina” and so on, and one will see how, although the artistic form is always the most important thing at first glance, these works are permeated by the desire to understand life in all its contradictions, and above all to understand the contradictory nature of human character, because that is what confronts him as contradictory. You feel how true it is, what he says later, when he has already turned to a kind of moral writing: “It has caused me unspeakable torment, and I know that it has caused many of my colleagues in literature just as much torment, to depict an ideally psychologically constructed character that is true to reality. It torments him that there can be such a contradiction between what one must imagine as ideal if there is to be salvation and order in the world, and what presents itself to his spiritual eyes in reality. That always tormented him as long as he was still artistically active. There was something else. Tolstoy was not just an objective observer during the whole period in which the mental torments took place; he experienced life and took part in everything. He also experienced these things inwardly; he could feel the intimate pangs of conscience, the intimate reproaches that a person must make to himself when he suddenly realizes in a certain respect that he was born into certain circles and must take part in everything that happens there, and yet it seems contradictory to him when he judges it. Those personalities who felt this were driven to the brink of suicide; one need only sense what is going on inside such people. Man learns infinitely more through the opportunities he has to criticize himself than through criticism of his surroundings. And so Tolstoy's view broadened more and more, until he went from a survey of the immediate circumstances to an overview, so to speak, of the entire developmental history of humanity, and there it became clear to him to what extent great and significant, namely religious impulses of humanity have come into decline. Thus, without any intention of being critical, he was confronted with the depth and intensity of feeling of the great impulse given to the world by Christ Jesus, and alongside it the Roman world, the Roman Caesaranism, which had completely subjugated Christianity to the service of power of things that do not serve the salvation of humanity, as the Christian impulse was to and could do, but which bring humanity into the confusion that presented itself to it, and so his view became more and more a criticism of everything that existed, and it is harsh enough. From his historical perspective, he believed that he had to perceive the contradictions of people as the most difficult. On the one hand, the greatest wealth, on the other, the most terrible poverty, which was particularly evident in the stunted development of the souls, so that people in this stunted development of spiritual matters are not able to find their way out of what they experience to the great spiritual treasures, especially to those that can be found in original Christianity, to which they must penetrate! Thus, the most comprehensive problem for him was the contrast between the ruling upper class of society, with its power and luxury, and the downtrodden masses, oppressed in mind and body. This presented itself to him in the most comprehensive way. And he became a critic, perhaps in a more comprehensive way than any before him, who never tires of describing more and more the way things are, and who is so skilled at describing that the mere description can sometimes inspire shudder. It is perhaps quite characteristic if we highlight a symptomatic feature from his view of the world, which will immediately show us how he approached the tasks of life. He once said that he would have liked to write a fairy tale with something like the following content: A woman had learned something very bad about another woman and had developed the deepest antipathy towards her as a result. She wanted to do something to her that could not really be compared to anything in terms of evil. She went to a magician and asked for advice. She stole a child from her enemy. The magician told her that she could satisfy her hatred in the most intense way if she could bring this child, who she had stolen from a woman living in the poorest of circumstances and who would have ended up in need and misery there, to a rich house. And indeed, she succeeds in bringing the child to a rich house. The child is adopted. It is cared for in every way in the manner of the rich – it is pampered, and has it pretty good, so to speak. The woman who had brought the child to the rich woman is furious when she finds out; because that is not how she had imagined the child would fare. She goes to the magician and complains that he has given her such bad advice. He, however, says she should just wait. More and more, the child is embedded in luxury. The woman says: The magician has deceived me. But he replied: Just wait. It is the worst thing you have done to your enemy. The child continued to develop. It becomes conscious and feels an inner contradiction to the external situation. It says to itself: “Everything I long for must be in an unknown world; but I cannot find it. I know that the way I have been cared for has made me too weak to make the decision to take any reasonable path to the foundations of existence. All this becomes the worst inner torment for the developing human being. Tolstoy knew well how such psychological experiences appear; he wanted to show how this human being was driven to the brink of suicide by this inner turmoil. You can see symptomatically from such a thing how Tolstoy thinks. Much more than from definitions, we can see from Tolstoy's will about social order how he thought about social order. This was the attitude of one of the two personalities we are dealing with today towards the world. Now let us add the opposite: Carnegie. He is the child of a master weaver. His father has some work as long as there are no large factories. Carnegie's childhood falls precisely during the boom of big industry in this area. His father no longer receives orders. He has to emigrate from Scotland to America. He can only earn the barest necessities with difficulty. The boy had to work in a factory as a schoolboy. He recounts it himself, and one senses the tone of such a description if one has previously delved into the psychological experiences that we have just explored in Tolstoy. He himself describes what an event it was when he received a wage of one dollar and twenty cents for his work for the first time. He later became one of the richest personalities of the present day, one of those who, as we shall see shortly, actually had to find ways of investing their millions; but he can say, and this is significant: No income later, no matter how large it was – and a lot of money passed through his hands – no income gave me as much joy as that first dollar. And so it goes on. He works in this way for a long time and contributes to the family's upkeep. There is something in him like a hidden strength that works towards him becoming what, in the circles in which he now moves, is called a “self-made man”. This satisfies him, that as a twelve-year-old boy he had the feeling: Now you will become a man, because he feels that you are a man when you can earn something. That was the thought of his soul. Later he will go to another factory, work in an office, and later become a telegraph operator and earn more. He recounts: “A telegraph operator in America had the task of knowing all the addresses by heart. I was worried about losing my job.” — He quickly learned all the names of an entire street. So he was a “made man” again. Now he sneaks into the office with other messengers before official duty begins. They practice telegraphing. His highest ideal is to become a telegraphist himself. He actually finds employment as such. Now his greatest joy is to find a patron from whom he can borrow a book every Saturday. He waits longingly for such a book. Now events occur that are significant for him. A higher-ranking railroad official, who has played a major role, gives him the task of working his way out by taking shares in a certain enterprise. With great effort, he raises the $500 that is necessary; he has been contributing to the family's upkeep in the most arduous way for some time. It is only through the efforts of his mother that he is able to raise the $500 to buy ten shares. And now – again, we have to feel what this means emotionally – there comes a day when he receives the first small dividend corresponding to his shares. It strikes him as a mystery, like the solution to a mystery, which he could not have grasped before: that money can make money. The concept of capital dawns on him. This was now as important to him as any idealistic problem is to some thinker. Before that, he only knew the possibility of getting a wage in return for work. That capital can generate money now dawned on him. And now it is interesting to see the intensity with which such experiences can be absorbed by such a soul. He is making progress. The right thing dawns on him at the right moment. When the problem of the sleeping car arises, he is ready to take part. Step by step, he advances until he finally knows how to exploit the situation in the right way. When the time came to change from building bridges of wood to bridges of iron, he adjusted himself to the new trend, grew richer and richer, and finally became the steel king, who must seek ways - and now he has a practical sense of morality - how he, in relation to his practical sense of morality, must behave with his wealth. For him, as I said, there is none of what Tolstoy felt: no criticism of life, but an acceptance of life as a matter of course. What Tolstoy found so contradictory is what Carnegie imagines: If we look back at older phases of human feeling, we see that, in primitive conditions, princes do not differ particularly in terms of their lifestyle from those living around them. There is no luxury, no wealth in today's sense, but also none of the things that bring wealth; there is no contrast between rich and poor. In primitive times, however, as development was, this had to develop, and the contrasts became more and more pronounced. It is good, he says, that there are palaces next to the hut; because there is a lot in it that is supposed to be there, we have to understand its necessity. But he notices how, in primitive conditions, there is a personal, human relationship between master and servant, how everything becomes impersonal in our relationships, how the employer stands in relation to the employee without knowing him, without knowing anything about the servant's spiritual needs, how hatred and so on must develop as a result; but that's how we have to accept it, that's just how it is. So an absolute yes to all outer life! And when we consider how he is a thoroughly practical and sober-minded thinker of his kind, how he views this life, how he knows all the different chains that capital takes precisely because he is inside it, how he knows many a healthy things to say when you see that, then you have to say: this man, too, has tried to enlighten himself about life, and there is something complacent in him towards Tolstoy; and his practical morality – I use the word deliberately – it presents him with the question: How should our life be shaped if what has developed as a necessity is to have meaning? He says: Well, old conditions have led to wealth being inherited from ancestors to descendants. Is this still possible in our conditions, where capital shoots from capital in such an eminently necessary way? He asks himself this question vividly. He looks at life with penetrating meaning and says: No, it can't be done that way, and by considering all things, he comes to a peculiar view. He comes to the following conclusion; he says to himself that the only way this whole life of the rich man can make sense is if the rich man regards himself as the steward of wealth for the rest of humanity, that the owner of the wealth says to himself: I should not only acquire the wealth, not only have it and perhaps bequeath it to my family members, but rather, I should use what I have acquired, since I have used mental and other powers to bring it together, since I have poured industriousness into it, I should in turn use this industriousness to administer this wealth for the benefit of humanity. Thus it actually becomes an ideal for him that man, while acquiescing in the conditions of the time, acquires as much wealth as possible, but leaves no wealth behind, but applies it for the good of mankind. Now he comes to a sentence that is characteristic of this world view; the sentence is: 'Died rich dishonored!' So, the ideal he sets for himself is that one may indeed become rich in order to gain the opportunity through wealth to work with it for the benefit of humanity, but he imagines that one must be done with the work of putting wealth at the service of humanity by the time of one's death. He says: It is honorable to leave nothing behind when one dies. Of course, this “nothing” is not to be taken pedantically; the daughters, for example, are to inherit enough to live on, but in radical terms he says: getting rich is a necessity, dying rich is dishonorable. For him, an honest man is one who, so to speak, comes to terms with life and does not leave to some uncertainty what he has acquired through his own hard work. And now we have to feel the contrast between two such opposing personalities as Tolstoy and Carnegie are. Carnegie himself feels the contrast and he speaks out: Oh, Count Tolstoy wants to lead us back to Christ, but in a way that no longer fits with our lives. Instead of wanting to lead us back to Christ, it would be better to show what Christ would advise people to do today, under today's conditions. In his sentence: He who dies rich is dishonored, he finds the real expression of the Christian idea and lets it be known that he believes that if Christ were to speak audibly to people today, he would agree with him and not Tolstoy. At the same time, however, we see that this man, Carnegie, is truly a noble nature, and not, as many are who accept circumstances and do not reflect on them, a lazy one. He has not only said what I have presented as the main point; he has sought the most diverse ways to use his wealth and more. It does seem strange at first when life can confront us with such contradictions, when two personalities arise in the same era who, from what one may call an objective world view, come to such different points of view, and the may be quite difficult for the human being, and it is not at all to be criticized from the outset if someone were to say today: Oh, my whole soul goes to where Tolstoy preaches his great ideals; how sublime this personality appears. But I also have to think about the practical demands of life, and if a person is not an abstract dreamer and idealist, but really goes through the thought processes of such a person with a realistic mind, as Carnegie offers them, then you have to say: that is perfectly justified. But it shows me how, for the person who lets the practical demands of life affect him, it is impossible to truly do justice to the ideals, to truly believe in the fulfillment of the great ideals. And so a new conflict can arise for such a person, as it did for Tolstoy. And now let us try, I would like to say, to delve a little deeper into these two personalities, now from the perspective of the science of the soul. Tolstoy does indeed succeed in fully defending what he believes to be the original Christian teaching; he tries to criticize in the harshest possible way everything that has become of Christianity, that has emerged here and there, and he seeks to find the great impulses of Christianity. Tolstoy presents these impulses of Christianity in a relatively simple way. He says: When man understands these impulses, it is clear that he has within himself a spark of an eternal divine power that permeates the world. And the second thing that becomes clear to him is that this spark contains the essence of his own immortality and that, if he has understanding, he can no longer do anything other than seek a deeper human being in the ordinary earthly human being. And when he follows this feeling, when he realizes that he has to seek a deeper person in himself, then he cannot help but overcome what lies in his lower nature, and so he becomes a strict demands of the other nature, the development of the higher person in himself, the person who follows the Christ. How would a person - I will not say Carnegie himself, but someone who considers what might follow from Carnegie's view of life - how would such a person relate to Tolstoy's position on Christ? He would say: Oh, it is great and powerful to live in Christ, to let Christ come alive in oneself. But he would say to him: In the external circumstances, this cannot be realized. How should the state's circumstances be shaped if one lives according to this strict Christian demand? Even if the question has not been asked from a different angle, Tolstoy gives the answer as definitely as possible. He says: “What such a view leads to in the external order, for the state, for external historical events, I do not know, that is beyond my knowledge; but that one must live in the spirit of this Christian faith, that is a certainty for me.” And so for Tolstoy the words: “The kingdom of God is within you!” (Luke 17:21) into a deep and significant view of the kind of certainty that a person can have about the highest things. The view of an inner certainty gradually takes shape in him, and so he seeks to find this foundation stone in the soul, which makes it possible for the soul to become ruthlessly certain about certain things, about this or this soul says to itself: however strange it may seem, what will become of it if only the outer world view is maintained, because this inner certainty is the only one, it must be fulfilled. It eludes my observations what may follow, but they must be good because under certain circumstances they must arise from the eternal good source of all things. Perhaps in no other contemporary personality is there such a strong reliance on inner certainty and the firm belief that, in this reliance, whatever may come, good must come. Perhaps in no other contemporary personality is this belief as intense as in Tolstoy. Therefore, no other personality with such a personal, individual share, with such inner truth, has professed such a world view. And here we have another opportunity to illustrate the state of mind of both. Carnegie reflects: How should people behave towards each other, how should the rich behave towards the poor? And then the thought goes through his mind: It is not always good to give something to someone who begs for it; because it is possible that you might make the beggar lazy - says Carnegie; maybe you are not doing any good by doing so. You should look at the people you support. Actually, only those who have the will to work should be supported. And Carnegie implements this in a whole system. He says he understands very well that the man who gives something just to get rid of the beggar does more harm than the miser who gives nothing at all. We do not want to judge such things, we want to characterize them, but let us look at a similar situation in Tolstoy: He meets a person who becomes his friend. This friend does not form a worldview, but feelings within himself. Tolstoy sees a peculiar behavior in him – many people today cannot believe such things; but they are true nonetheless. His friend is robbed. Thieves steal sacks from him; they leave one behind. What does the friend do? He doesn't chase after the thieves, but carries the one sack to them as well and says: They certainly wouldn't have stolen if they hadn't needed the things. And in other circumstances, Tolstoy sees this friend – and he becomes his admirer, he understands this very clearly. There you have the view of people who are considered parasites, so to speak, on one side and on the other. Life views intervene in life in this way, and the symptoms on the surface can characterize the mood of the soul. But now we have to say: Tolstoy is not only a harsh critic of life in relation to all that we have mentioned; but by grasping the fundamental source of human certainty, he is also led to a remarkable point in his soul development, and that is where Tolstoy actually appears to us in his full greatness for the first time – for those who can appreciate such greatness. One thing that flows from this view of certainty, which one cannot admire enough, is Tolstoy's position on the value of science, contemporary science, and then a certain world of ideas about life and other important problems and questions flows out. Because he tried so hard to look inside the human being, he was able to see through all the futility in the methods of our worldly sciences. Of course, it is easy to understand what these sciences achieve, to follow the paths they take, but what these sciences – and here I am speaking entirely in the spirit of Tolstoy – can never do is answer the question: How do these various external, chemical-physical processes fit into life? What is life? And now we come to what must actually be meant here. Tolstoy comes to a peculiar way of exploring a deep, scientific problem, the problem of life. Please, my dear attendees, look around you at our Western science, where life is spoken of, and make only one comparison to that, which Tolstoy uses in relation to this riddle of life. He says: “People who try to solve the riddle of life in the sense of today's science seem to me like people who want to get to know the trees in their uniqueness and do it this way: they are in the middle of the trees, but don't look at them, but take a telescope and point it at distant mountain slopes, where, as they have heard, there should be trees whose essence and nature they want to explore. “That's how people strike me who carry their soul, the source of their life, within themselves, who only need to look within themselves to see through the mystery of life, but what do they do? They make instruments for themselves, build methods for themselves and try to dissect what is around them, and there they see even less what life is. Through such a comparison, a thinker like Tolstoy - an eminent thinker - shows us that he feels what is important in relation to this question. Those who work their way into this side of Tolstoy's worldview know that what his book “On Life” has to say about the exploration and evaluation of life is worth more than entire libraries of Western Europe written from the standpoint of today's science on the problem of life. And then one also learns to feel what it means to have such spiritual experiences as Tolstoy, what it means to think about certainty as he did. One then learns to admire how things that one, when one is, so to speak, in the scientific method of our present time, has to go through with long-folded trains of thought, has to write whole books, as Tolstoy's are completed in five lines. The value of such a book as this one about the life of Tolstoy cannot be overestimated. Today's scientist may find it to be mere feuilleton; but anyone who is able to adapt their way of thinking to the spirit of these discussions will find a solution to the problem of life that is not available elsewhere. And so we see, as this observation shows more and more, how Tolstoy's spirit becomes something that concentrates more and more, that with a few strokes is able to conjure up and solve great problems not in many words, but with radiant words of power, in contrast to the long discussions of a scientific and philosophical nature that are otherwise common. Here we are confronted with the very depths of Tolstoy's soul, and only when we know him from this point of view can we begin to understand the profound spiritual reasons why a person can become someone like Tolstoy on the one hand or someone like Carnegie on the other, who seems very plausible to us and is an important personality. We shall understand the spiritual foundations that lead to Tolstoy on the one hand and to Carnegie on the other if we now characterize from the point of view of spiritual science how this spiritual development takes place and is expressed in certain personalities. The spiritual researcher sees something quite different from the ordinary in the course of human development. Just as spiritual science sees a multi-faceted being in the person standing before us, and sees in the physical body only one facet, only the effect of higher spiritual facets, with the etheric, astral and ego bodies behind them, so she also sees in what confronts us in the social order, in human life, what confronts us externally visible as a people, as a tribe, as a family, the physical body, the physical body of the people, the physical body of the tribe, the physical body of the family, a spiritual reality behind it. When one speaks of the spirit of the people, the spirit of the time, in today's science, these are words that do not mean much. What is the person thinking who speaks of the German, French or English national spirit? For the modern thinker, it is really only the sum of so and so many people; they form the reality, and the national spirit is a complete abstraction, something that one forms in one's mind when one seeks the concept from the many details. People have no idea that what appears to us as so many people is just as much the expression of an etheric body, an astral body and an ego as it is of the human body, and that it is truly also the expression of a spiritual. Today we have lost what we used to possess; it is no longer easy to explain how this spiritual reigns behind the sensual. An old friend of mine, a good Aristotelian, tried to make his audience understand how the spiritual can be objectified in the sensual appearance by means of a simple example. Vincent Knauer – that was the man – tried to make it clear that spirit prevails in form, by saying: Let us consider a wolf that eats nothing but lambs for a whole lifetime for my sake; it then consists of nothing but lamb matter; but it has not become a lamb because of that. It does not depend on the matter, but on the fact that there is something in the wolf, which stands behind it as the spiritual, which is the essential, which structures and builds up the matter. This is a very real thing, something that one must know, otherwise all study of the external world moves in the insubstantial. No matter how much you examine in the sensual world, if you do not penetrate to the spiritual, then you do not come to the essential. But it is the same with terms such as 'popular spirit' or 'zeitgeist'. For the spiritual researcher, a group of people is not just what can be observed in the physical world; there is something spiritual living behind it. And so, for the spiritual researcher, there is a spiritual reality, a real spiritual reality, not a mere, insubstantial abstraction in the Christian development, for example. Besides the Christian, there is a spirit of Christianity, which is a substantial reality. Such a spirit works in a very peculiar way; it works in such a way that we can make it understandable in the briefest way by means of a parable. Imagine that a farmer has brought in some kind of harvest and is now dividing it up. He sells one part, one part goes aside to be consumed, one part he keeps back; this is to form the next sowing. It then comes to light again as something new. It would be bad if nothing were kept back; what lies within would die. This is a comparison that leads us to a real law in human development. Development takes place so rapidly that at a certain point in time certain impulses are given; these must become established and spread. If at a certain point in time a spiritual impulse such as Christianity were given, it would become established in the outer world and take on this or that form, but it would dry up and die in the same way that the outer parts of a tree merge into the bark. These outer forms are destined to gradually wither away, no matter how fruitful the impulse is. However, just as the farmer retains something, something of the spiritual impulses must remain, flowing as it were through underground channels and then reappearing with original strength as a fertilizing influence in the development of mankind. Then personalities appear to us in whom such an impulse, perhaps going through centuries, is embodied. Such personalities appear to us in strong contrast to the environment; they must indeed stand in contrast because the environment is what is withering away. Such personalities are often inclined not to take the environment into account at all. From a spiritual point of view, Tolstoy is such a personality in whom the Christian impulse has been kindled for our time. And things are happening powerfully in the world so that they can achieve far-reaching effects. If we seek them out at their source, they appear radically; for they must radiate. And we will no longer be surprised when we know such a law that such personalities appear to us in this one-sidedness, and on the other hand, not be surprised at personalities who cannot have anything at all in them of these central currents, who are completely within the peripheral effects of the world. One such personality is Carnegie. He can see the whole picture and think out the best way to find one's way in it. Carnegie does not see what is pulsating through humanity as the spiritual. Tolstoy, because he seeks inner certainty so strongly, can seek the kingdom of God within, but because that which has spread as a real current under the surface is embodied in him, he can, to a certain extent, have no heart or mind for what is happening around him as it dies away. And so we see such contradictions that cannot come together. We have an external material aspect, and the observer, who is important to us, does not see the spiritual that prevails in it; we have the spiritual that wells up powerfully from the depths of a personality, and we cannot grasp how this can be realized in the external world. Humanity would increasingly come to such contradictions if another spiritual current did not also arise, a spiritual current that can look equally at underlying spiritual causes and at what these spiritual causes become in external reality. And if we follow theosophy from this point of view, it leads into the deepest depths of spiritual life; it does not seek this merely in such powerful impulses that do not organize themselves into ideas and facts, it seeks to get to know this spiritual life in concreteness. Thus it can see how the spiritual flows into reality; it is able to build the bridge between the most spiritual and the most material, and in this way can bring these points of view together in a higher balance. — We shall see another example of this coming together tomorrow. Today we want to present such contrasts in two personalities and learn to understand them from the point of view of spiritual life. Thus, Theosophy appears to be called upon not only to preach tolerance in an external way, but to find that inner tolerance that looks with admiration into a soul that gives great impulses from the center of life, which today must seem improbable, impossible, and radical because it contains in a concentrated way what must be spread out over a whole area in the future, and what must then look quite different. Theosophy can see this; it can also look at reality objectively and do justice to another personality like Carnegie. Life is not a monotonous phenomenon, life is a many-voiced phenomenon, and it is only through the expression of all contrasts that it can develop in its richness. But it would be bad if these did not find their harmonious balance. Man's nature will tend to crystallize one or other of the contradictions, and so it must be, but in order that people may not lose their way in human life, there must also be a central world-view that can, in a sense, identify with all contradictions and thereby gain understanding for what appears to be so contradictory. If Theosophy works in this sense, harmonizing souls in their contradictions, then it will be able to truly establish what external harmony in the world should be. External harmony can only be the reflection of the inner harmony of the soul. If Theosophy can achieve this – and that is its real goal in relation to cultural life – then it will find the proof it seeks. It does not want theoretical proofs, it does not want to be called crazy; it wants to establish what it has to say, to introduce it into life, and then to see how life becomes harmonious and blissful as a result, as what it has to say becomes established in life as guiding principles. When Theosophy can see in life how what it incorporates is reflected back to it and how it makes life appear in such a way that it becomes harmoniously balanced within despite the contradictions, then it sees this as the proof of its principles, its true evidence. |
68b. The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit: The Mission of Devotion
12 Mar 1910, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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68b. The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit: The Mission of Devotion
12 Mar 1910, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear attendees! When I last had the honor of speaking to you here about the “mission of wrath” and “the mission of truth” for the human soul, I was able to refer to the saying of the great Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “You will never find the limits of the soul, and even if you walk through all the streets, so far are its territories.” And even in those days, the validity of this saying about the vastness of the human soul was proved by the fact that we can only penetrate to some extent into the complicated structure of our own soul if we first bring a little order, so to speak, into our consideration of the soul; that is, if we do not simply look at the soul as it presents itself to us — as a sum of surging sensations, feelings, urges, desires, of perceptions, of ideas, of ideals, and so on, but that we realize how this soul into three separate areas: what can be called the sentient soul within the human being, what can be called the mind or emotional soul, and finally the third, highest soul element, which can be called the consciousness soul. For these three different soul members have three completely different types of developmental conditions. And that which can teach us, so to speak, how one of these soul members develops is not at the same time suited to give us insight into the developmental laws and developmental conditions of the other of the soul members mentioned. Our sentient soul initially presents itself to us as that which responds within us to external stimuli that confront us from both nature and human life, which first receives impressions from the outside world and then, on the basis of these impressions, develops what we can call the passions for something, the urges to do or want this or that. Everything that confronts us in the way of drives, desires, passions, in the form of an unordered soul life, however it unfolds even in the lowest human soul, we describe as the realm of the sentient soul. When a person progresses in their development, when they become more inwardly focused, as it were, then what might be called the emergence of the intellectual or mind soul in relation to the sentient soul occurs. As long as a person gives way to anger in response to some external stimulus, as long as he is seized by the affect of fear in response to some external impression, we can only speak of the sentient soul. But when a person independently processes the feelings and impressions of the external world within themselves, when, in addition to being devoted to the external world, they can also immerse themselves in themselves, combining the impressions of the external world, then they gradually rise above the mere surge of the sentient soul and comes to what can be called the rational control of instincts, desires and passions with ideas, which on the other hand can be described as a soothing, purifying of unbridled instincts and passions by the mind. In short, the mind or soul, which actually form a unity, are what elevates man above the mere sentient soul. That such an elevation takes place, that man can, as it were, turn away from the outside and process the impressions within himself to a certain perfection, is taught us by the outer life when we consider an example such as the following. There were certainly many people who were contemporaries of the events from 1750 to 1815. Enormous upheavals of life occurred during that time. Let us take a closer look at those who experienced these events. They had an effect on their sentient soul. All those who were able to see them were carried away by the sensations and impressions. But only those who processed these impressions within themselves became wiser and richer in worldly wisdom and experience. They then faced the world in 1815 with a different inner soul life, with a clearer inner soul life than in about 1770. That is the elevation of the intellectual or mind soul out of the sentient soul. If we only had this intellectual or emotional soul at work within us, then we would, so to speak, become more and more introspective. We would become richer in worldly wisdom and experience, but we would not come to know the world, as we call it, to recognize the great laws that lie behind things. We can only approach this by going out of ourselves again, , that we again permeate the impressions with what we have acquired in the way of life experience and worldly wisdom; and that occurs through the soul of consciousness, which leads the human being out of himself and into the world again. He allows the consciousness soul to prevail at the moment when he, so to speak, not only becomes richer and richer within himself in ideas, but also applies these ideas to into order and to penetrate it in such a way that the laws of existence, the laws of the world, gradually appear to him, so that he, as it were, connects with his consciousness soul to the outside world. And if we ask ourselves – this too has already been mentioned – what is going on within us to bring these three soul elements into corresponding activity, to work one out of the other, to let one have an effect on the other? That which is at work within us is the actual human I, the actual bearer of human self-awareness. But it is also this human I that is in a state of perpetual development. As it were, it still rests submerged in the sentient soul. As long as only the sentient soul rules, the I appears as a slave to this sentient soul, devoted to all impressions of the external world, overwhelmed by all the impressions of color, light and warmth, tyrannized by its passions, instincts and desires. But then this I continues to work, even working to make the person more and more mature. By purifying the intellectual soul from the sentient soul, the I becomes more and more independent, it becomes more and more the master of the drives, desires and passions, and it is increasingly led to determine the direction and goal of life itself. Then the I works its way up to the consciousness soul, so to speak, to penetrate through the skin of the soul, as it were, and to reunite with the things, to live in the things and events of the world. Thus we see that it is the I that reigns in these three soul members, and we emphasized in the last lectures - this is only briefly repeated today - that something like an affect, like anger, works through its own nature within the sentient soul in order to allow the I to develop in the right way. If a person initially surrenders to external impressions in such a way that he directly follows such an impression in the sense of the sentient soul, so that he erupts in anger, then this anger itself has an effect on his soul. We can experience that anger, because it obscures the I, because it takes away the full, clear, bright consciousness of the I, because it does not allow the I to emerge into completely selfish existence, thereby beneficially moderating this still undeveloped I. It is still entirely a slave to the sentient soul; it would abandon itself entirely to the ruling drives, and it dampens it down to a certain powerlessness, not letting it live itself out completely. By damping it, it actually does a good thing. If anger only led to the expression of the ego, then every time the ego was expressed, it would reinforce the ego in its selfishness, in its self-will. In this sense, we could see the mission of anger as educating the ego. Anger poisons selfishness, as it were, by pushing the ego down. And we can find this in all affects, that they signify a kind of self-regulation of the soul or the ego. And then we were able to point out how truth works in the human soul to educate the ego. Since truth is something that a person must fully understand within himself if he really wants to experience it in his own ego, he can only experience it by recognizing it within himself. Thus the I must live entirely within itself if it wants to arrive at a real truth. A million people can vote against the truth 3 x 3 = 9; if the I has grasped this truth within itself, then the I knows that 3 x 3 = 9, that it is true. In this way the I is completely within itself when it penetrates the truth. But at the same time, truth is something that does not allow any selfishness or egoism to arise, but something that leads this ego out of itself at the same time. Truth is the only thing that must be experienced in the ego completely and that at the same time can make the ego completely unselfish. For once we have arrived with our ego at a truth that must be experienced in itself, then this truth does not belong only to the individual ego, but is a common property for each and every ego. Thus truth is a powerful educator for the intellectual soul, because it leads the I out of selfishness and at the same time highly encourages the powers of selfhood. For truth can only be experienced in an I that wants to seek this truth in itself. Thus, in a certain sense, affects such as anger, when they are overcome and purified, can be seen as educators of the sentient soul, and truth as a powerful educator of the mind or mind soul. Likewise, there is now an educator for the consciousness soul, for that in us which leads our I and thus our soul in turn completely out of us and allows us to grow together with the outer world, with that which does not rest in us but is outside of us, and with which we must grow together if we do not want to become desolate within ourselves. And today's meditation is to be devoted to the education of this third soul element. Just as anger has the mission of dampening selfishness in the sentient soul in a certain respect, and as truth has the mission of guiding the I in the rational soul, both to be within itself and to instinct to express itself, then what we call devotion becomes the educator for the consciousness soul, showing the right way to reconnect with the outer world, with that which lies outside of our ego. Only when we recognize its purpose for this third of the human soul's members can devotion truly reveal itself to us. In order to be able to present the whole mission of devotion for the human soul, we must look a little deeper into the workings of our soul. Devotion is, after all - already according to the use of the word - what allows man to go out of himself and penetrate into the other, which, above all, is first of all an unknown behind the visible, behind the perceptible. But we can only understand this devotion if we first ask ourselves: how must spiritual science, from whose point of view we are speaking here, understand this whole relationship of man or the human ego to the unknown? It has been emphasized time and again from this point that spiritual science is called precisely to penetrate through the external world of physical reality to that which is initially unknown and hidden for this external physical reality. And it has been pointed out again and again that man can only penetrate into the unknown spiritual world behind the physical world by awakening the spiritual organs, the spiritual faculties of perception, in his soul itself, which lead beyond the sensual-physical. And so that we can understand each other, I will only hint at a few words of what you will now find in great detail as a description of the path that the human soul can take into the spiritual world, both in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in the second section of the recently published “Occult Science”. What you will find there in detail is briefly hinted at here. It will be hinted how man can become a spiritual researcher and make communications from the spiritual world when he cultivates his soul in such a way that the forces and abilities slumbering in it come to external activity. There man must, with his will and consciousness, evoke something that otherwise always occurs in everyday life without his will. The everyday event that takes place with a person without their will is that the surging perceptions, drives, passions, that pleasure and pain, cease to be conscious in the soul when the person finds themselves tired in the evening, and sink into an indeterminate darkness. At this time of falling asleep, external impressions cease. But instead, the human being sinks into the state of unconsciousness, or rather, the subconscious. His soul is empty of external impressions; but he also knows nothing, so to speak, of any world or inner experiences. The spiritual researcher, the one who wants to live in the spiritual world, must be able to consciously and deliberately evoke that which takes place so spontaneously. He must consciously silence external impressions. He must also command all interests, all sympathies and antipathies with external impressions to stand still and be silent. The spiritual cognizer must voluntarily evoke in himself the same silence and cessation of external stimuli and impressions that occur when he falls asleep at night due to fatigue. But he must be present throughout all of this; he must be able to prevent, through his will and consciousness, that his consciousness passes into unconsciousness when he empties his soul of all external stimuli and impressions. He must, so to speak, be able to be conscious with an empty soul as he is otherwise conscious with a full soul that receives external impressions. So then, the spiritual researcher must have the strength to reject all external impressions, but still be able to consciously remain in the state of the empty soul. That is the first act that the spiritual researcher has to perform. The second step is to allow a series of images and sensations and volitional impulses, which are described to him, to take effect on his soul. These images and sensations and volitional impulses, which he must now bring to life in his soul through his inner strength, are not there to reflect external impressions, to give an external truth. Anyone who were to look at them from this point of view would be very much mistaken. What must constitute the inner life of spiritual knowledge is an ascent of very definite, or, as I see it, symbolic concepts and ideas, etc., which have such a strong effect in the soul that they might indeed mightily shake up this soul life from within, shake it up more powerfully than all outer impressions and stimuli can shake up the soul life. That is the second act of spiritual knowledge, when the spiritual researcher can stimulate such experiences in himself that powerfully shake up his soul. But this must not be the end. If the spiritual investigator were to stop at this act, he would not be able to ascend in truth to an insight into the spiritual world; he must add the third act, which consists in his power to would otherwise have an earthquake-like effect on his soul through mere inner contemplation, so that he transforms his entire soul life as if to an inner sea calm, to a complete [inner] calm. Then, when he is able to control and work on his soul inwardly, he will experience that something rises from his inner being, which can only be compared at a higher level to the outer senses at a lower level. Then – this has already been said several times – the spiritual world, which is always around him like color and light around the blind, will flood in as light and color flood into the eye of the blind who has undergone an operation. In this way, then, can man penetrate into the spiritual world. Then the spiritual unknown, the spiritual facts and spiritual entities that prevail and are active behind the sensual-physical world, open up to him, which are not there for the merely sensual and intellectual perception of reality. Now the human being is standing in the middle of a world of spiritual life. But at first this spiritual world is closed to the physical gaze and mind. We have to ask ourselves: What are the reasons for this spiritual world being closed to the physical gaze and mind of the human being? There are reasons for this, and these reasons will become clear to us when we ask ourselves: Well, where in ordinary life do we encounter that which stands like a boundary between the physical and the spiritual world? We encounter it at precisely the moment we described earlier. What does the spiritual researcher actually do when he activates his inner soul powers? He makes the moment that otherwise occurs involuntarily for a person, the moment of falling asleep, into a conscious one, and what otherwise occurs through falling asleep is shaped by the spiritual researcher into a supreme experience. In ordinary consciousness, everything that a person could possibly experience sinks into unconscious darkness when falling asleep. In the world into which the human being plunges every night, and in which he dwells during sleep, he could perceive the spiritual world. For it has been shown here many times that precisely that which we call the 'soul being' lifts itself out of the physical body and out of what is connected with it, out of the etheric or life body, but at the moment when what we call the soul being lifts itself out with sleep, for the person in normal consciousness, consciousness itself ceases, that is to say, the world into which he enters is shrouded in a veil so that he cannot see it. But the person who becomes a spiritual researcher sees into this world! And how does a person attain consciousness of the external world? He attains consciousness of the external world when he submerges himself in his physical body in the morning and makes use of his physical organs and the physical mind that is connected to the brain. But in doing so, he is bound to the limits of the physical organs. The spiritual researcher, on the other hand, once he has achieved what has just been outlined, when he has acquired these inner abilities, he in turn returns to his physical body, so that he no longer needs to perceive only through the physical senses, but can perceive his environment directly with the inner organs of the soul. In this way he sees behind that which extends in the outer world like a boundary and obscures the actual spiritual world. The spiritual researcher learns to see behind every color into that which the color presents to us; the spiritual researcher hears behind every sound that which stands behind it as a spiritual being. He sees behind every perceptible impression. The world becomes crystal clear to him. And when he sees through the carpet of the external world, spiritual beings and realities are revealed to him. When the spiritual researcher penetrates into the spiritual world, there is no way for him to avoid – without running the risk of being shipwrecked – but to undergo two important experiences in the course of his initiation or development in spiritual research. These two important experiences are also described in more detail in the two books mentioned earlier. These are the ones who are called the guardians of the threshold. It is the case that before a person's inner soul abilities awaken in the right way, before he is able to dive down into that darkness in sleep, before he perceives the reality behind it, he must meet with what is called the little guardian of the threshold. This is the perception through which the human being's own being clearly and distinctly comes before the soul in real self-knowledge. Through this, the human being learns to understand what he actually is. Above all, he comes to know what can be called real individual knowledge of karma and reincarnation. The human being learns to recognize how he has gone from life to life before entering this life, and learns to recognize how he has inscribed this or that in his soul in past lives as his karma by living in one way or another, true or laden with error, surrendering to beautiful or ugly impressions, performing good or evil deeds in past lives. Depending on how he has lived, he learns to recognize what his soul has inscribed in itself and what it still has to go through in order to eliminate all error, all that which would prevent the soul from reaching a certain level of perfection. Everything that the soul has of imperfections within itself, the person gets to know there as a kind of second self, as something that he has to overcome, as a kind of doppelganger, of which he knows exactly: you have to overcome that, otherwise you will never reach the goal of the human life path. This encounter with one's own double would be a harrowing, terrible event for a person if they were not sufficiently prepared. Spiritual science ensures that a person only comes to see this Guardian of the Threshold in his true form when they are sufficiently prepared. And one should not enter into one's own human soul life before one has made this experience, how imperfect one must be through one's whole past life. Through this, that is developed in us which enables us to enter into the own powers of the soul without danger. What would happen if we were to enter the underworld of the soul without this encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold? Something would happen that would be very destructive for the human being. Let us assume that, through some event, a person enters into the supersensible spiritual abilities of his soul without having met the little guardian of the threshold. In that case, however, this entering would not be able to undergo all that attenuation, all that purification, which is only possible if we have a double of ourselves in our entire imperfection. Then the good qualities of our soul would not emerge to mitigate, so to speak, all that which rules in our ego and is woven from selfish impulses and drives that only take our ego into account. If a person were to descend into his ego without first becoming acquainted with the Guardian of the Threshold, it would mean that all the evil aspects of his nature would be stirred up in him. All the evil impulses of his nature that he is capable of would be awakened in him. All the arrogance, vanity and mendacity rooted in his soul would assert themselves with a mighty force. And man would become, to the highest degree, a being that consumes and burns itself through its own selfishness; man would perish in his own selfishness; he would bring himself into such a conflict with the world that he would first consume himself in his own selfishness. This is what can characterize us, as if man enjoys a certain benefit in his life in that his consciousness is darkened when he falls asleep. If he did not dwell unconsciously in sleep, he would draw from the world, in which he would then be conscious, a continuous increase of his egoism and his untruthfulness. Now, for all the things that have to occur, so to speak, at a higher level of human development, there are weak imprints in ordinary life, something like preparations. We can say that even if a person in this embodiment has no inclination to go beyond the ordinary life to a higher level of consciousness, he can still always prepare for it, even in this life. And a preparation for this descent into one's own soul, a preparation that works in such a way that it protects the normal outer soul, so to speak, from sinking into complete selfishness and untruthfulness, is everything that we take into our sentient soul in the way of feelings and emotions of humility. Humility is an effective means of self-education in that, when we let it prevail in our conscious daily life, when we let humility permeate our soul, it imbues our soul life with a soul substance that prevents the soul from drawing all the forces of selfishness out of the ego when it descends into the spiritual world. That is why humility is so highly recommended as a preparatory quality for all those who want to prepare themselves in their ordinary waking lives to gradually enable their soul to become selfless even in places where it might otherwise become selfish. Through everything that we pour into our soul as humility, we also make our encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold easier for ourselves. We make it easier for ourselves by becoming aware of our imperfection while we are still awake, and so we do not find the Guardian standing before us in such a terribly repulsive form. We, so to speak, strip away his horror. Thus humility is a good educational tool for descending into our own soul, into its depths, which otherwise remain closed to us for our own good. As long as we are immature, they must remain closed if we do not want to suffer shipwreck in life. This is, as it were, a kind of boundary downwards, towards that 'below' which we have to describe as that which lies in the depths of our soul life, which is hidden from ourselves when we are asleep. But there is another boundary; and this comes to our mind when we once again familiarize ourselves with what has just been outlined. It was said that the spiritual researcher is not dependent on mere physical perception, on mere thinking with the mind, when he returns to the physical body, but that he is able to bring out soul abilities, inner abilities, through which he can see through to the spiritual foundations, to the spiritual entities and facts of the world. These now also close themselves to the outer gaze of people in the normal state of consciousness. Why is this so? They close themselves for the reason that if man were to stand unprepared before that which exists behind the sense world as its primal foundations, he would be blinded, as if destroyed. The path that shows us, so to speak, in the mildest form, how man steps out of his ordinary physical abilities, as it were, and faces the outside world spiritually, is the path of what is called ecstasy. This is not really good. It does, however, lead a person to rise in a certain way above his physical seeing and hearing and grasping and understanding to a kind of spiritual vision of the external world, but this ecstasy, as it is so often described, obscures the direct consciousness of the self. The person is then out of himself; he does not carry his self into the world of spiritual experiences. Just as sleep spreads a veil over what we would experience to our detriment, because we would have to become selfish as a result, so the veil of external reality spreads over the spiritual world behind it, and this also occurs as a beneficial effect for the person who wanted to approach this spiritual world unprepared. But anyone who wants to enter into this spiritual realm as a true spiritual researcher will have a different encounter. It is the encounter with the so-called great or greater guardian of the threshold. This is what shows us, at the moment when we break through, so to speak, the ordinary looking and ordinary understanding, how far we are from a complete understanding of the world. Then we encounter the great guardian of the threshold. And he clearly instructs us that we should no longer ask all those questions about the ultimate reasons so easily, that we should no longer curiously enter behind the veil of existence without first carefully and slowly weaving and working from step to step on the abilities that lead us up, in order to slowly gain insights from world to world. Then we learn through this Great Guardian of the Threshold — he shall be characterized here only from this point of view — what abilities we still lack to penetrate into the spiritual world. At the same time we receive instructions on how to develop what we do not yet have. The self-perfection to which we must submit presents itself to us with all clarity through what is called the greater guardian of the threshold. Now, however, man can also prepare himself for this degree of higher experience, for this degree of penetration into all the spiritual undercurrents, into the great unknown beings, in his ordinary, so-to-speak normal consciousness. And because everything in humanity is geared towards development, our ordinary life also contains that through which we may approach the secrets of existence, the unknown worlds that lie behind the realities of the senses. This is contained within us like a teacher who can gradually lead us to soften the impression of the greater Dweller of the Threshold. Just as we, when we are led as a humble one to the lesser guardian of the threshold, can soften this encounter, who then does not appear to us in his gruesome form, in which he would otherwise crudely present us with the doppelganger of our imperfections, so we can soften that other encounter with the greater guardian of the threshold, whom every human being must meet in the course of his development. We can also soften the impression of that great, powerful figure, which shows us through its glory, through the way it confronts us when it tells us: “This is how you must become” — which shows us precisely through its majesty what we still have to develop. We will not be repelled with fear and terror as before a cherubim with a fiery sword if we are properly prepared. And unconsciously, people who are on the right path in life, on the path of true inner morality, are always preparing for this great moment. And what prepares us in our consciousness soul to emerge in the right way in this consciousness soul with the I, not only into physical reality, but into spiritual reality, in order to be allowed to acquire spiritual knowledge, that is what is meant by the word 'devotion'. Devotion is the stirring of inner impulses in the soul for the unknown, for us insofar as we cannot yet understand it. If we had nothing within us that pointed us to what we cannot yet understand, then the urge and the longing could not awaken to come to the unknown. Everything that we want to understand one day and can only understand when we have entered into it must first work in us in a dark way, like a yearning. That which draws us to that which we are not yet equal to, beneath which we still stand, outside of which we find ourselves, that is devotion. We can be truly devoted precisely to that which we know: we do not yet penetrate it with our soul powers, with our knowledge. But then this devotion is something that brings us precisely in the right way to the subject, so that we enter it in a dignified way, so that we can gain true, non-trivial knowledge from it. It is understandable from the outset that all knowledge must be preceded by something like such a feeling. A person need only consider that, while man must understand everything through logic, that is, one must approach everything through logical thinking, that logic is what can prove everything in existence to us. But what does logic itself prove to us? If we are not to arrive at the self-contradiction that logic proves itself, then we must assume that there is something in the human soul other than mere logic, which in turn is proved by logic. Logic can only be proved by something that itself has nothing to do with logic. And that is in man that which can be called his original, healthy sense of truth. Thus, the logical ultimately leads us back to feeling. All understanding leads us back to feeling. If we are sincere, we cannot get beyond this. Therefore, it should not surprise us if the first thing that occurs to us when we have the highest knowledge of an unknown behind things is that devotional feeling that we call devotion. And when this devotion, which rules and works in us and moves our soul, before we have recognized something that we reverently worship, when this feeling itself is what leads us up, so to speak, up the mountain to what then yields to our recognition – that is devotion in the highest sense of the word. But everything that confronts us in the highest style also confronts us in the first outward form. And so devotion in its highest perfection is indeed that which lives in us as a yearning devotion to an unknown, so that it may one day reveal itself to us when we are ready for it, but it is present to a lesser degree in relation to everything that we have not yet recognized, even in the ordinary external world. When, for example, a younger person looks up to an older, more experienced one, he cannot, of course, see beyond him; for it is vanity, if we believe, sometimes even very much out of today's consciousness of time, to be able to judge everything at any level of existence. For anyone who has a concept of knowledge, it seems strange when someone, for example, believes that they can describe a comprehensive personality like Goethe biographically, because the point is that we can basically only understand someone to whom we have already made ourselves equal. If we were unable to develop a relationship with someone to whom we have not yet made ourselves equal, then we would not be able to understand them at all. But the human soul is so constituted: if it retains its healthy feelings, then it can long revere a thing, devote itself to it devoutly, before it recognizes the same. And so it is with all maturing of the human soul. And those who look at life in its even most external depths will find this confirmed, which has been emphasized here many times: that in later life one always remembers again and again with such gratitude the hours and moments of childhood in which one could so reverently worship this or that human being, this or that personality. It will always be a great moment when a person is able to experience in the circle of his family the veneration of this or that personality with whom one is acquainted. The child may not yet have seen this personality, so has not even enjoyed the external impression; it looks up, so to speak, from the stories about what one can see, as if to a complete stranger. Then it experiences the day in such a way that it first gains an impression of the previously revered personality in the external experience. Then it may stand with shy reverence at the door handle that is to give it access to the personality it has learned to revere. When the child has had these feelings, it also approaches the external impression in a completely different way, then something of the wonderful radiance that our soul can radiate is present where it first develops devotion and worship before approaching the object. Devotion and reverence are something wonderfully luminous that can cast a wonderful radiance [on that] which we encounter only later. One remembers – as I just said – back to the greatest moments of one's childhood, to just such moments when one has truly learned to revere even in the face of what one may encounter in the outside world. And so, in these seeds of devotion, we have a small reflection of what that all-encompassing devotion can give, which builds up to that which must remain more or less unknown to us. Even if it has already opened up to us to a certain extent as knowledge of the spiritual world, something still remains unknown to us; for behind every known thing there is again an unknown. Even the ordinary devotions are a reflection of this comprehensive devotion, with which our soul strives towards the unknown before it can fully penetrate into this unknown. Thus, in devotion, we have a power that enables us to take the path to the unknown. And since it is true that the spiritual and the unknown give rise to powers and abilities that are known and evident in the outer human senses, it is also the case that our own powers, which flow to us from the spiritual world, can only flow to us if we seek the right path to this spiritual world ourselves, the path through devotion. Even in the ordinary life, as it presents itself to us between birth and death, we can find the healing power of devotion. If we look at life in this way, we have to say that, alongside all the other moods that can be developed for the world, alongside the moods of joy and pleasure, alongside the moods of exultation and enthusiasm, it is also possible to develop the mood of devotion in the face of the phenomena of existence, whether familiar or unfamiliar. We encounter this, for example, in poetry, in the fact that alongside the song of jubilation, alongside joy and delight, there are also hymns and odes. It confronts us in all the arts, and we may say: just as there are works of art that affirm us, as it were, in how we are the same and akin to the things of existence, so there are also works of art that evoke in us an inkling of how we can strive for the highest, that draw us, as it were, towards a highest. Thus, we encounter sufficient occasions for devotion throughout life; and we should observe this in life; above all, we should not ignore it in a true life pedagogy, because it is important that we absorb into our life destiny in our childhood that which devotion can give us. If we observe life between birth and death, we can find what is called karma, the great law of fate, which presents itself to us as a chain of spiritual causes and effects; but it presents itself in a very peculiar way. For example, certain things that are laid down as causes in early youth present themselves in later life as effects. What we may absorb in childhood through this or that only emerges as an effect in old age. And the effects are not the same, but such that we must first understand the connection between cause and effect. The young person who grows up, educated in the right way and without what is distorted into some dark side of devotion, who grows up in the right devotion, will notice that this is transformed into something else in his soul. We can see this in a more intimate knowledge of life, here or there, that this or that person enters into a group of other people – perhaps he says little or nothing – but his presence already pours out what can be called a beneficent element. The presence of such a person blesses and delights those around him. What radiates from him spiritually has come into him. But this power of blessing does not come into a person's later life if it is not rooted in what we have developed in our youth as the mood of devotion. Devotion in youth transforms itself throughout life into the power to bless in old age. This is a karmic connection that we encounter between birth and death. We do not need to know this only from spiritual science; anyone who knows life can see it everywhere. We could put it in symbolic words: Those who have not been able to worship devoutly with bowed knees and clasped hands in their youth will never be able to stretch out their hands to bless. The bowed knees and clasped hands of youth are the cause that, in old age, transform into blessing hands. This is one of our wisdoms of life. There we see one of those forces that come to us from the spiritual world, even if we are not yet able to see into it. Devotion first leads us up into the spiritual world, which is still closed to our vision because the greater guardian of the threshold is not allowed to show himself to us. It closes itself to us, but sends us out of itself the forces that, in their all-pervasive effects, emerge from our actions themselves. In this way we can develop within us a mood of devotion towards an unknown world. Perhaps we will not yet be able to penetrate to an understanding of it, but it pours out forces from itself, which are transformed in our soul and become impulses for our outer life. Just as when we fall asleep tired in the evening and wake up refreshed in the morning, just as the night brings us refreshment, just as what comes out of us makes our tired arms able to work again, so it is in our outer life when we know how to relate to the unknown worlds — which we are not yet able to see into, which stand behind the reality of the senses — when we approach them devoutly. Thus they may, like a gentle sleep, veil their powers from our consciousness; but they give us their powers. And it is through devotion that we can make our way to unknown worlds and that opens up the powers of these unknown worlds to us, thereby bringing us out of ourselves with our ego and making us capable of being effective in the outer world. Thus we approach the unknown worlds with our devout ego. Our I is enriched by them with that which can bring us together with the world again. We become more powerful, stronger, more vigorous through what devotion gives us. This is the mission of devotion for the soul element that we call the consciousness soul and through which we in turn step out of ourselves and pour our ego into the outside world, as it were. We owe everything that makes us fruitful for the outside world to our devotional moods towards that which is worthy of worship. And the person who cannot be devout will not be able to intervene [in life]. There will be people who will come and say: Yes, I don't succeed at anything, people don't believe in me, people don't want to understand me. Then one falls back on appearances, which prove themselves, but not on the reasons. The reasons lie in the fact that such people, who feel compelled to feel misunderstood, have never been able to find the mood of devotion within themselves. This is the mission of devotion for the education of our ego to grow together with the world. Thus we first grow unconsciously into the world through the forces that devotion gives us, in order to gradually approach the spiritual world itself, when we have matured through what devotion produces in us. But we must also be clear about the fact that devotion in a certain sense leads the ego out of itself, and that a person who wants to follow the right paths in the world must never divest himself of his ego in the present period of development, because the ego gives him the ability to judge, the right power of deduction, and the possibility to place himself in the world without confusion. Therefore, anyone who has an inclination to indulge in devotional moods must bear in mind that, while they may go as far as possible in the devotional mood, they must never lose themselves in devotion. We can describe the two elements of devotion that are revealed to us in it as devotion, on the one hand, and love, on the other. When our soul is permeated and warmed by love for a being, that love is the one element that leads us to devotion; the devotion of the will is the other element that leads to devotion. And wherever love and devotion arise, they must also arise [as love and devotion] to the unknown; for there is an intimate connection between all beings, even between the lower beings and ourselves. What is in our soul consists of love and devotion, which can then be lived out as devotion. But we must not lose ourselves in devotion; we must enter into the mood of devotion while preserving our ego. If we do not do this, then we paralyze our will, then a weakening occurs instead of a strengthening of our will. If we approach things with a blind love that is not permeated with the soul, then this love becomes blind, then instead of knowledge we will come to a form of superstition, blind faith. And above all, if our love is not permeated and purified by intellect and mind, we will end up with what we can call unguided, unadvised love. But that is enthusiasm. It is the kind of thing that can ultimately escalate into delusion in the face of the unknown. Just as we are gradually condemned to spiritual powerlessness through a devotion or surrender in which we lose our ego, so we are seduced into erring in the world through our love, which is not illuminated by the deeds of the guide who is there for all our orientation: the soul of mind or soul of feeling. We must not lose our will or our feelings, advised by reason, if the favorable effects of devotion are to occur, as described. At the same time, it will be readily apparent that education in devotion, like devotion itself, necessitates something that is far removed from mere intellectualism. When a correct middle course must be found between good and evil, then what one might call the tact and sense of life always comes into play. Therefore, one will not be able to lead someone into devotion in the right way through abstract ideas, but only by pouring out one's whole soul, which in turn comes from a properly guided devotion. That is why, especially in the education of devotion, looking at the other devout person can have such a powerful effect, and why example must play such a great role here. This is why devotion, where it should be cultivated, relies so heavily on being cultivated in community; this is also why a person walking alone through the world can find little opportunity for devotion. And just as devotion can easily develop in the contemplation of others, so it is also that which leads us out of ourselves and brings us together with other people, for nothing ignites our devotion more powerfully than when we can share it with others who are looking up to the same thing. In this way, devotion also leads our soul upwards to the heights, where it steps out of itself as the consciousness soul, where it enters into communion with the environment. In devotion, man has something that leads man out of himself, that frees him from mere selfish feeling, willing and thinking, that instructs him to have something in common with others in his ego, to which he can look up. This is the mission of devotion in human society. It leads from I to I, and, when it is fostered and cultivated in the right way, it pours a wonderful mood and atmosphere over a community. Thus devotion plays the greatest conceivable role for man in both his ordinary and elevated life. And devotion also leads him up to the heights of life. This is what all those strive for who want to break through the outer sensual cover and enter the spiritual world. That is what they strive for through the longing and urge of devotion: to penetrate to that which they thus devoutly venerate, to be able to live with that which they first devoutly venerate; to be able to unite with that which one first devoutly venerates, to be able to stand in that which one first strives for from below. This has always been called mystica, spiritual union with the spiritual world, from which man comes, but with which he can consciously unite when he has gradually matured to do so. Mystical union was the lofty ideal of all spiritual aspirants. To all spiritual aspirants, that which lives and works in the human soul appeared as a feminine force that draws up in a devout mood to that which permeates and interweaves the world and can fertilize the soul as a masculine force. This is also what Goethe felt, based on his good knowledge of the mystical mood of human development, when he wrote the “Chorus mysticus” at the end of his life's work. There he wrote the words that, as if from unknown spiritual depths, resonate in our soul and present the riddle of our soul's striving and development to our mind's eye, telling us that everything we encounter in the external world is a parable for something eternal, that what is insufficient for sensual striving can be achieved through spiritual striving. What we cannot describe with words of the physical world is done when we come together with that which inspires us from the spiritual world. And then they fade away, these words, into that wonderful dictum that tells us: The soul is like an eternal feminine that allows itself to be fertilized by what lives as a masculine in the secrets of the world, behind sensual existence. Thus, Goethe's “Chorus mysticus” sounds to our ears like the great riddle of human development:
But when we learn from the understanding of the mission of devotion to grasp our own soul as it draws us as the eternal feminine towards the eternal masculine, which is to flow into us as world wisdom, then we also gain from this understanding of the mission of devotion this higher understanding of the real union with the eternal masculine in the world. And we feel certain, in the face of what unfolds as a world secret, that we can achieve this unio mystica through our spiritual striving and that we are approaching this unio mystica more and more through the mood of devotion, in order to experience it in the end. And so, on the one hand, we hear Goethe's words when we contemplate the human soul:
And so another saying rings true to us as the expression of the truth that flows from the unio mystica, which must impose itself on us when we receive the certainty that we can unite with the eternal masculine. As if in amplification of Goethe's saying, “The Eternal Feminine draws us upward,” he who is certain of the former attainment of the unio mystica will say, looking up to the mysteries of existence: The Eternal Masculine leads us upward! |