| 203. Jehovah, Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman
13 Mar 1921, Dornach Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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| It is the case that the superficial Bible investigator really does not for the most part, understand what stands in the Bible at all. If one understands the Bible, one sees that it speaks with extraordinary exactitude, one only has to take those sentences quite exactly: “Jehovah formed man out of the dust of the Earth.” |
| As the I5th Century approached, the culture in Europe was tending more and more to the purely intellectual element; and, under the influence of this intellectual element, our modern natural Science developed. Now, consider the following:—The old Jewish religion must not be grasped merely with reference to external worlds, that would only be a materialistic religious understanding; we must grasp it in its inner spirit. |
| The Mystery of Golgotha was indeed transmitted historically and spoken of in the traditional Church Communities, but a true understanding of it could no longer be found. In place of it, Modern Science grew up into an element which knew not Jehovah, a spiritual-less, God-less element; and, because its understanding could not yet expand to the Christ-element, it developed into that physical mineral element, utterly devoid of spirit. |
| 203. Jehovah, Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman
13 Mar 1921, Dornach Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
|---|
From the whole tendency of these presentations of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science you will see how essential it is to understand that in the various spheres of existence there are different Spiritual beings who have inserted themselves therein, taking part in the work, giving force and direction. It is necessary that humanity in our present age should be permeated with the knowledge that different spheres of existence are guided and directed by different Spiritual beings; for our civilisation has in the course of recent years lost this consciousness of the presence of concrete spirit in life. In general people will willingly talk of the Divine permeating everything, but such talk does not help one to an understanding of the World which can provide a sufficient basis for life. It is, of course, quite true that, in the last resort, everything recognised as spirit must tend towards unity; but if one perceives that unity too soon, one simply loses all real insight into the course of world-happenings; therefore, it is necessary to leave off speaking in general in such an abstract way about the Divine, and learn to know the concrete Spiritual guiding beings in Nature and History, as we have over and over again tried to do. It is from this point of view that I should like to point to-day, to certain really important and significant things at the base of the constitution of our world. I pointed out in the last lecture that certain Beings find themselves together when it comes to building up and animating man, they find themselves united in opposition in the world. We put the old truth of the opposition coming from the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Spiritual forces before our souls in the last lecture from a certain point of view, and now we will try to understand the matter from another aspect. Just that, in our newest civilisation, which is now involved in such catastrophic events, and manifests in such decadent forces, just that which is so characteristic in our modern civilisation, is the extension of intellectual thinking throughout the whole of humanity. One must really try to acquire an insight into the quite different mood of soul of civilised Europe before the 7th and 8th centuries. It is just that intellectual thought, which to-day is so prevalent everywhere, which permeates the entire soul-life of man and, from a certain aspect, will still continue to permeate it. The point now is, that one must seek to grasp what is externally comprehensible, and try to unite that with a more psychic concept; for it is well if, from the aspect of the spirit, one really seeks to grasp and permeate external and material existence itself. That which underlies our organism of thought consists in purely mineral processes occurring within us. Please understand me aright, my dear friends; those processes in us which are processes of our own human nature, and which we have in common with the animal and plant-nature, these are connected only indirectly but not directly, with the fact that we have become intellectual thinking human beings according to the modern idea of the development of man. The fact that we have in us a firmly consolidated mineral constitution gives us the capacity for intellectual thought. When we look at all those Kingdoms of Nature which are outside us in cosmic space, and which are also within us, we must say:—Let us first of all contemplate the sphere of warmth, of the Warmth-ether; we carry the effect of this Warmth-ether in our own blood, and the activity of our blood consists essentially in the fact that our blood, as the carrier of warmth guides these warmth-processes through our entire organism. Now our intellectual thinking does not depend on anything of what transpires in the sphere of warmth, it does not depend upon what transpires in us when we inspire and transmute the air in our organism. Thus, when we consider the warmth-processes in the Cosmos, we can say:—These warmth-processes are continued within the skin of our organism; but that which meets us in the Cosmos as warmth-processes, which specially meets one who regards the Cosmos in the condition when it showed itself exclusively in warmth processes, that which meets us in ourselves as warmth-processes, none of that stimulates us to intellectual thinking. Then if we look to the kingdom of the Air, there too we find events taking place; these processes are continued in our organism through our breathing process; everything we find represented thus is within us through air, but that again has nothing directly to do with our intellectual thinking. As a third sphere we can look to the phenomenon of water; we see outside in the Cosmos the processes in the fluid-sphere. These too are continued in our digestion in so far as it occurs in the fluids. Outside in nature we see the circulation of Fluids and in ourselves we also see a kind of circulation of fluids. All that transpires in us in that way, has again nothing to do with what is our intellectual thinking. But when we look out into the Cosmos and see how water condenses to ice, how certain mineral substances deposited as sediments, form stones and crystals, in short when we consider the processes of the mineral sphere and their corresponding processes in our own organism, we find that what transpires as mineral processes has to do with all that finally culminates in our intellectual thinking. We therefore as human beings, are incorporated into the Cosmos in these various spheres; but if we only incorporated in these different spheres without being envolved to special degree with the mineral kingdom, with those forces which appear in crystallisation, and in the deposits of salts, and which thus meet us in the external world, we should never have become the thinking beings we have become, especially since the middle of the 15th Century. It is an absolute fact—that since the middle of the I5th Century, it is this working of the mineral forces in the human organism which has become predominant. Previous to that, other forces, those of water, of air, and so on, were dominant to a special degree in man. Hence man's intellectual thinking was not then the most significant element in the works of man. Now, in everything which surrounds us in the various spheres in which we live, the realm of the solid Earth, of flowing water, of air and warmth, (for a moment we will look away from the higher spheres) in all these are working Divine Spiritual Beings. These spheres do not only consist in what we call material world-forces and entities, but all these spheres are permeated by various Spiritual beings. I will therefore make a diagram to represent an important fact in our connection with the Cosmos.  Suppose I draw the sphere of the mineral world (see Diagram) as white; I must then characterise the sphere of the water as red, the sphere of the air as blue, and then finally the warmth-ether above as reddish. Now this is the remarkable characteristic; all those Spiritual beings which the pre-Christian age and especially the pre-Christian Judaism imagined as standing under the guidance of Jahve or Jehovah, and who were regarded by the Hebrew Initiates as belonging to the Realm of Jahve or Jehovah, extended their dominions over the three first Realms—Warmth, Air, Water. And so if I am to draw that sphere in the Cosmos which was under the rulership of Jehovah, I must say; It is this sphere—(the three upper layers). It was really the case that the Jehovah rulership embraced the spheres of Nature as we have them, with the exception of the physical-mineral sphere. It must be quite clear to you that when in the ancient Jewish writings, reference is made to the Divine, this always refers to the Jehovah sphere of Warmth, Air, and Water. That was a deep Initiation-Truth of the pre-Christian age, and is even Spiritually indicated in the story of Creation. It is clearly expressed there, and one has merely to understand the meaning of the Bible words aright to see how this is brought to expression. Jehovah devoted Himself, so to speak, to the Earth, and formed man out of the dust of the Earth. He took that which was not his own sphere, for the forming of external man. The Bible expresses that fact quite clearly. As I have said, in the pre-Christian Jewish Initiation knowledge, it was known as an Initiation-Truth, that Jehovah did not form external man out of His own sphere of power, but turned to the Earth, and from out of the earthly dust which was foreign to Him, He formed that human vessel which could not come from His own kingdom. Then He breathed that which comes from Him, the animal soul, the breath. That it is which He gave forth from Himself, and it came from the three spheres over which He ruled. It is the case that the superficial Bible investigator really does not for the most part, understand what stands in the Bible at all. If one understands the Bible, one sees that it speaks with extraordinary exactitude, one only has to take those sentences quite exactly: “Jehovah formed man out of the dust of the Earth.”—That means out of the mineral sphere foreign to Him, and then He gave to that form from out of His own sphere, the breath of the soul. And so, that which lives in man as the Jehovah Outflow, is what is indicated when it is said that Jehovah breathed the living breath into man. And so man developed, and while he developed himself further in the mineral kingdom, he developed an element foreign to Jehovah. That kingdom then, in the recent age, since the 5th Post Atlantean epoch, became especially dominant in man, because it formed the basis for his intellectual civilisation. So that we can say: As long as the intellectual civilisation was not predominant in man, so long could a rulership prevail such as that of Jehovah. Then, however, the mineral nature began to make itself felt, from the founding of Christianity up to the beginning of the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch. Humanity had then to be helped from another side. Now you can see how necessary it was for humanity at the time when the mineral Nature became essential, that it should receive the Christ Impulse; because the old Jahve Jehovah-impulse was no longer sufficient. You must connect what I have just told you with certain definite facts. Just consider the fact that man would not think intellectually, with a fully waking consciousness, if he were merely subject to the Jehovah-influence, which has no influence on the mineral nature. And so, if we wish chiefly to consider the activity of Jehovah in man, we must not look to what is in our external intellectual culture, but simply to what expresses itself in our dreams. That which is dreamt, which does not pass into sharply contoured intellectual concepts which can be grasped by our soul but is dreamt,—that is our Jehovah-life. Everything which moves in the fluidic elements of the more fantastic or imaginative side, everything which can be compared externally with the Moon-influence on man, that is the, Jehovah-nature in man. Opposed to the Jehovah-nature is man's acute thinking; but that he owes to the circumstances that there are salt deposits in him; that there is in man, a mineral activity. Now just consider the fact that, fundamentally, the old Jehovah religion lost its significance with the Mystery of Golgotha. It had lost its significance because the time had come in the evolution of man, when the mineral nature became predominant in him. But when the Mystery of Golgotha appeared there was still sufficient left of the ancient Dream-Wisdom wherewith to understand it. And those persons who had somewhat transcended the ancient Dream-Wisdom, and who through various kinds of Initiations had, like Saul-Paul, already attained some intellectual culture, for them a special influence was necessary, such as Paul received through the Event of Damascus, in order to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha. It is of a great and deep significance, that in the Christian tradition we are told that, in order to understand the Mystery of Golgotha it was necessary for Saul-Paul, who had in a certain sense been initiated before the Mystery of Golgotha, into the Hebraic Mysteries, for him it was necessary that he should be snatched into that knowledge which did not work in sharp contours, but which expressed itself in the more flowing element of the dream; and thus Paul experienced the certainty that Christ had been present in Jesus through the Mystery of Golgotha. With the old Dream-Wisdom it was still possible to grasp something of the Event of Golgotha, and if, through a special influence such as was the case with Paul, a man was snatched into that Dream-region, he could then understand the Mystery of Golgotha. But now the old Dream Wisdom decreased ever more and more; it only remained in man's dreams, and even there is found in utter decadence. As the I5th Century approached, the culture in Europe was tending more and more to the purely intellectual element; and, under the influence of this intellectual element, our modern natural Science developed. Now, consider the following:—The old Jewish religion must not be grasped merely with reference to external worlds, that would only be a materialistic religious understanding; we must grasp it in its inner spirit. As an historical phenomenon—the point that strikes us is, that the Jehovah-god was simply the God of one tribe, and outside the limits of the Jewish race Jehovah was no longer the Jehovah-God. That is the essence of the Jehovah Divinity; he did not embrace the whole of humanity, but only one portion of mankind. Fundamentally this feeling of Divinity has passed over to our own age, and in particular one could see it again during the World-War, when every Nation spoke of how Divine Providence or, as many said, the Christ, was helping them! Each Nation wanted so to say, to go forth under the guidance of Christ, against every other Race. But because one utters the Name of `Christ,' that does not mean that one has met, contacted the Christ; for the Christ is only contacted when in one's whole feeling one turns to that Being Who has the Christ Nature. One may say a thousand times over: “We will fight in the name of Christ;” but as long as one is fighting for one Nation alone, one is giving a false name to that being of whom one speaks, one may call him Christ, but it is a false name. In calling that being Christ, one only means the Jehovah-God. In that War-Catastrophe all the Races fell back into a Jehovah-religion, only, there were a great many Jehovahs; every Race worshipped a God who was honoured quite in the character of a Jehovah; Christ completely disappeared from the consciousness of humanity. One could see in those catastrophic events how utterly Christ had disappeared out of the consciousness of man. We can also see this in other things. A quite modern scientific civilisation has now grown up. Our modern scientific culture, how far does it extend? Fundamentally, it is limited to what is mineral-physical. Just consider how uncomfortable a modern scientist immediately becomes, if one asks him to speak of anything but what is mineral or physical. As soon as the conversation turns to anything else—for instance, to the principle of life, the modern scientist asserts that one can only explain the mineral and chemical processes in the living. He will not enter into the element of life itself and still less into the element of soul. Thus this modern Science has altogether developed within just that sphere which was not included in the Jehovah religion, in an element foreign to Jehovah,—that of the mineral—physical life. This Science, in order that it might become an element of civilisation, had, as it were, to depend on receiving the Divine Spiritual from quite another side. In the old Jewish religion when man spoke of any sort of cognition, it was always a Dream-cognition. These prophets who had the very highest knowledge, are described as the Dreamers of prophetic dreams. That is all connected with just this very fact. It was through this Dream-Wisdom that men even comprehended the Mystery of Golgotha itself. But this Dream-Wisdom disappeared. The Mystery of Golgotha was indeed transmitted historically and spoken of in the traditional Church Communities, but a true understanding of it could no longer be found. In place of it, Modern Science grew up into an element which knew not Jehovah, a spiritual-less, God-less element; and, because its understanding could not yet expand to the Christ-element, it developed into that physical mineral element, utterly devoid of spirit. Now this Science, must to its uttermost particle, again be permeated by a Spiritual element. It is spiritless because it can no longer be Jehovistic. External civilisation has attempted to carry on some sort of religious culture, by means of a religious `false coinage,' as when it gave the name of Christ to Jehovah during the War; but this religious element has been carried on through a sort of religious, `false coinage.' But Science has turned entirely away from the Spiritual; it only gives descriptions of the physical-sensible, because man has not yet been able to press forward to an understanding of the Christ, and at most the old Jehovah understanding still prevails, when men storm against each other as they did in the War; but not when they investigate facts of Nature, for then we have a Spiritless Science, and intellectual Science, devoid of spirit. Thus we are surrounded by a sphere in which the Jehovah element still rules. It permeates us; but we are not aware of it, because it permeates us chiefly through those conditions which are our sleeping-conditions. If, when we withdraw into the element of sleep, we could suddenly wake up outside our bodies, we should clearly perceive around us the spirit-nature under the leadership of Jehovah. Then, as it were, on the waves of a Jehovah-Sea, we should see our dreams coming to us out of this Jehovah element. Again in our Will, of which I have often told you that we are asleep within it, there again the Jehovah Nature rules. In the whole assimilatory system of man, the Jehovah Nature rules, whereas the feelings arise out of the assimilatory system and permeates the rhythmic system, in like manner do certain feelings emerge, coming out of the Jehovah Sea on the waves like our dreams. But, when we live in that sphere which can become comprehensible to us through our understanding and reason, there Jehovah has no share. When the Moon slowly arises in a dream-like light and pours this dream-light over everything, one might say:—“Man has spread a Jehovah character over the fields of the world.” When however, the Sun arises, shining clearly on every stone, spreading itself outwardly on every object and giving it sharp contours, so that we are able to grasp it with our understanding, then the Sun-nature,—which is not a Jehovah-nature, expresses itself, and we can only permeate that with spirit if we can perceive the Christ-Being, if we so look into this world as to see the Christ-Being in it. Modern Science has had no eye for this Christ-Being, and that which is Not Jehovistic but Sun-illumined, and can be grasped in the sharp contours of the intellect, it has taken up and beheld as devoid of spirit. Now see, that is the deeper connection. What kind of a sphere is it then, which meets man in the mineral? Now, I told you in the last lecture that on the one side within the sphere of Jehovah, because they have remained at an earthly stage of evolution, Luciferic beings appear when we are present in the Jehovah sphere let us say in sleep, then the Luciferic beings make themselves felt in our feelings and impulses of Will. That sphere which we must dominate with our intellect and which is spread out around us as the mineral spheres, that is a sphere foreign to Jehovah and into that those beings have penetrated, who belong to the Ahrimanic sphere. The Ahrimanic beings however, because Jehovah could not, so to speak, keep them away from Him, have penetrated into that mineral sphere. (lower part of Diagram, blue on white) And so, when we turn our gaze to this sphere, we are every moment in danger of being taken by surprise, to our confusion, because of the Ahrimanic beings. These Ahrimanic beings—I have tried to present an image of this in the wooden group which will stand in our Goetheanum—these Ahrimanic beings can in reality only feel at home in the sphere which surrounds us in the mineral world. These Ahrimanic beings are specially intellectually-gifted beings. That Mephistophelian figure which you see below in our wooden group, that Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic figure is extremely clever, utterly and wholly permeated with intellect. But that which is really Jehovistic, and which lives in the human metabolic system, in so far as it is not affected by the salts or altogether mineral,—with all that is of a fluid-nature, which lives in our breathing in our warmth condition, with all that, these Ahrimanic beings have no direct relationship. Now, these Ahrimanic beings strive to get into man. Man was created of the dust of the Earth. The mineral element is the true sphere of Ahriman, he can enter that sphere, and feel comfortable there; he feels very comfortable whenever he can permeate us through that which is mineral in us. You secrete salts in your body, and thereby you are able to think; through the deposit of salt, through all the mineral processes valid and operative in you,—you become thinking-beings. Ahriman seeks to enter that sphere, but in reality he has only a part in the mineral. Therefore, he is fighting to get a share also in man's blood, in his breathing, and in his assimilation. He can only do this if he can inject certain characteristics into the soul of man; if for instance, he can inject into the human soul a tendency to a dry, barren understanding which seeks an outlet in materialism, and mocks all truths permeated by feeling. If he can permeate man with intellectual pride, then he can approach man's blood, his breath, his assimilation; then he can, as it were creep out of the salts and mineral in man and creep into his blood breathing and digestion. That is the conflict being fought from the side of Ahriman in the world, through the very being of man. You see, when Jehovah turned to the Earth and created man out of the Earth in order to evolve him further than he could have done within His own body. He had to create man out of an element foreign to Himself, and only to inoculate, to inspire, his own element into him. In so doing, Jehovah had to take something to His aid, something to which these Ahrimanic beings have access; and Jehovah has thereby become involved, as regards earthly evolution, in this conflict with the Ahrimanic element, which with the help of man, seeks to get the world for itself by means of the mineral processes. As a matter of fact, much has been attained by the Ahrimanic beings in this sphere; because, when man is born into physical existence, or is conceived, he descends, he comes down from the Spiritual psychic worlds and surrounds himself with physical matter. But in the present state of our civilisation and according to the customs of all the traditional Churches, man would like to forget his existence in a Spiritual psychic sphere before Birth. He does not wish to admit it. He would like, in a sense, to wipe out of human life any pre-birthly existence. Pre-Existence is being gradually declared heretical in the traditional Confessions. It is wished to limit man to starting with physical birth or conception, and then to link on to that, what follows after death. If this belief in a mere post-mortem condition, in an after-death condition, were to be finally forced on man, the Ahrimanic powers would then win their conflict; because if man only regards what he experiences between birth and death, and does not look to a pre-existence, to a life before birth, the Ahrimanic element would gradually overpower man from out of his mineral processes. Thereby everything of a Jehovistic nature would be thrown out of earthly evolution, everything which has come over from Saturn, Sun, and Moon, would be wiped away. A new creation would thus begin with the Earth, which would deny everything which had preceded it. For that reason, the perception which denies pre-existence must be fought with all possible energy. Man must realise that he existed before he was born or conceived into physical life. In all veneration and holiness, he must receive that which was allotted to him from Divine Spiritual worlds before his earthly existence. If he adds to the belief of the after-death condition a knowledge of pre-birthly existence, he can thereby prevent his soul from being devoured by Ahriman. It follows therefore, from what I have said, that (it is necessary that we should gradually take into our speech, a certain word which we have not yet got:—Just as we speak of immortality (Deathlessness) when we think of the end of our physical existence, so we must speak of un-bornness (ungeborenheit) for even as we are immortal, so also we, as human beings, are in reality unborn. But just seek everywhere in civilised language for a practicable word for “Birthlessness.” We have the word Immortal, everywhere, but “unborn” we have not got. We need that word;—it must be just as valid a word as the word immortal to-day. It is just in this that the Ahrimanising of our modern civilisation reveals itself; it is one of the most important symptoms of the Ahrimanising of modern civilisation, that we have no word for this “not-being born.” For, just as we do not fall a prey to death when we `die' as it is called neither do we first come into our so-called `birth.' We must have a word which points clearly to pre-existence. One must not undervalue the significance which lays in the word. You see, my dear friends, no matter how acutely one thinks, there is something in you, something in man, of an intellectual nature, but the moment the thought is expressed in a word, even the moment the word as such in only thought, as in the words of a meditation, that same moment one word is imprinted into the ether of the Cosmos. Thought, as such, does not imprint itself into the ether of the Cosmos, otherwise we could never become free beings in the sphere of pure thought. We are bound the moment something imprints itself. We are not made free through the word, but through pure thought. You can read now about this in my “Philosophy of Freedom.” The word imprints itself into the ether. Now just consider this. The Science of Initiation knows that it is true that in the whole Ether of the Earth, because in the civilised language there is no word for “Un-bornness” (ungeborenheit), this “Birthlessness,” which is so important for humanity, is not imprinted into the Cosmic ether. Now everything which in such important words is imprinted in the Cosmic ether, signifies for the Ahrimanic beings a terrific fear. The word immortality the Ahrimanic beings can very well bear to find inscribed in the World-ether; they are quite pleased, because immortality means that they can start a new creation, with man, and wander forth with humanity. It does not irritate Ahrimanic beings when they shoot through the Cosmic ether, to play their game with man, and they find that from all pulpits immortality is being spoken of; that does not irritate them, it pleases them. But it is a terrible shock for them if they find the word Un-bornness inscribed in the World ether; it extinguishes the light in which these Ahrimanic being move. Then they can go no further, they lose their direction, they feel as though they were falling into an abyss, a bottomless pit. You can see by this that it is an Ahrimanic deed which restrains humanity from speaking of un-bornness. No matter how paradoxical it may appear to modern humanity that one should speak of these things, modern civilization requires that these things should be spoken of. Just as Meteorology describes the Wind, or Geography the Gulf Stream, so one must describe what is going on around us Spiritually, and how these Ahrimanic beings are permeating our environment; and one must describe how well they feel in everything connected; and with dying, even a negation of death itself is not admitted; and how they are filled with a terrible fear of darkness when one speaks of anything connected with the negation of Birth, with growth and thriving. He must learn to speak scientifically of these things, just as that Jehovah-forsaken mineral-sphere can be spoken of scientifically in our modern Science. You see, this is in reality, neither more nor less than the conflict with the Ahrimanic powers, which we ourselves must take upon us and finally, whether people like to know it or not, that which is so often brought against Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, is at the same time the fight of Ahriman against that which as Spiritual Science, must ever repeat more and more emphatically what is now necessary for modern humanity. Of course, my dear friends, when one experiences such things as the recent attacks, is it not obvious that these people themselves do not approach Spiritual Science? I have spoken to you recently of the especially ruthless and ugly attack which appeared recently in Germany, in the decent paper, “Frankfurter Zeitung,” in which that paper indeed took up a really disgraceful attitude. It did indeed accept our rejoinder, but only in order to put before it a whole column of its own nonsensical remarks. These things are all part of those which it is either too lazy or not capable of studying. You see, my dear friends, if you consider such attacks in the light of what I have told you, in connection with these Ahrimanic beings, you will see through them a little. In scientific circles to-day there are a great number of persons who can apparently think quite clearly. And why, my dear friends? Because Ahriman, who permeates the mineral world, permeates them; therefore, you need not be surprised that these people develop a great deal of intellect and power. That is Ahriman within them, it is far more comfortable to allow Ahriman to think in one, than to think for oneself. A man can pass his exams far more easily, he can become a tutor or University Professor with far greater facility if he allows Ahriman to think for him. And because so many people allow Ahriman to think in them, these attacks naturally come from an Ahrimanic side. These things have an inner Spiritual connection, which we must see through. Therefore, people must not be so foolish as to blame us over and over again, if we are forced with sharp words to beat back that which would fain nullify Spiritual Science from its very roots. |
| 203. The Responsibility of Man for World Evolution: Lecture II
30 Jan 1921, Dornach Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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| He has studied the stages in the animal kingdom, has founded his evolutionary theory on this, and believes that he understands how the different orders have evolved from the most elementary to the more perfect. He then adds man to the sequence, applying to the human being all that he has learnt about the animals. |
| He no longer knows anything of himself, he cannot understand the being of man. But on the other hand there has arisen in him the greatest strain and tension, the great demand upon his being to act from his own original impulse, for man is to act as a free being. |
| What must be grasped today out of the very depth of human and cosmic existence, you will understand when you think over the two pictures which I have set before you, purely as pictures. They are meant as pictures, but as pictures that point to true realities. |
| 203. The Responsibility of Man for World Evolution: Lecture II
30 Jan 1921, Dornach Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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The ideas which we have drawn from various sources concerning man's inclination to the Luciferic nature on the one hand, and to the Ahrimanic on the other hand, have shown us how essential it is for him to find a balance between them. Both tendencies, the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic, are false paths and man must find the equilibrium. Now a question may arise which is a difficult problem of knowledge and conscience for modern humanity. The question is this: how does one find this equilibrium, this state of balance, so that one need not succumb to the Luciferic danger or to the Ahrimanic? The answer to this question must be given in different ways for the differing periods of human evolution; for we must know how in a particular epoch men are drawn more to the one or the other side. We have a general idea of what attracts man to the Luciferic tendency or the Ahrimanic, but we must bring it once more definitely to mind in relation to our own age. Since the beginning of the Fifth post-Atlantean period, that is, since the fifteenth century, both the intellectual life and the social life among civilised peoples have essentially changed in comparison with earlier times. Intellectual life has increasingly acquired a character where the human being himself is definitely excluded from a world-conception. Man examines nature, and the greatest progress has been made by modern mankind in natural science. But the characteristic element is this, namely, that the actual knowledge of the human being has not only made no advance through the knowledge of nature, but has in a certain sense been cast out of human knowledge. Man has an excellent knowledge of everything else in the world, but he no longer knows himself. He has studied the stages in the animal kingdom, has founded his evolutionary theory on this, and believes that he understands how the different orders have evolved from the most elementary to the more perfect. He then adds man to the sequence, applying to the human being all that he has learnt about the animals. People arrive at nothing new that would explain the being of man, they seek the elements of explanation within the animal world and simply say: Man is just the highest stage. Nothing particular is said about the human being; he is just the highest stage. And this includes all human characteristics and is said with an instinctive obviousness. The result is that there is absolutely no real knowledge of man. This particular sort of knowledge prevails not only in the various sciences but has already become accepted in the widest circles throughout the world. It has become something that the man of today absorbs with his newspaper reading. And if he does not absorb it with his newspaper, then in some other way, for in fact it is already inoculated into children at school. This character of modern science has more and more become general property and it fills people with ideas and concepts that constitute their general state of mind. Man reaches a certain consciousness of the world but in this consciousness he himself is omitted, That is the one thing. The other is modern social life. You need only study the social life that obtained in times that preceded the fifteenth century. The world was filled, so to say, with judgments that were derived from an ancient and honoured social wisdom, and were the property of all men in common. One did not judge for oneself what was good or bad. Nor had one any doubt about it, for one grew up in a social order that possessed a common judgment on good and bad, whether it had reference to the people or to religion. Man decided whether he should do this or that out of this common judgment, out of something hovering authoritatively over the social order. Much of what was at one time far more intensely established in the social order of humanity, we have today merely in our language, and since our language has in many respects become phrases we have it in the phrase. Just recollect in how many cases and to what an extent people are accustomed to use the little word “one”—“one” thinks so, “one” does this, “one” says this, and so on, although in most cases it is merely a phrase and means nothing at all. The little pronoun “one” really has meaning only in the speech which still belongs to a people in which the separate member has not become such a strong individuality as in our time, in which the words of a single person express with a certain right a common judgment. The contents of the human soul which are gradually being given by the character of modern science and which have led man to forget himself in his world-conception, lead to the Ahrimanising of mankind in our age. And in social life that which leads man out of a life in common, which, for example, in industry has led him from the old interdependent life of the Guilds to the modern free economy, this leads to the Luciferising of man. Yet both are entirely necessary; both had to arise in the evolution of humanity. For in the earlier knowledge which man gained and which formed the constitution of his soul, man himself was always contained. In earlier times one could not gain knowledge of nature, for example, without at the same time gaining knowledge of man. One could not gain knowledge about Mars without at the same time getting to know in what way Mars has significance for human life. One could not gain knowledge about gold without gaining certain facts about man. All that was human at that time has been thrust out. In this way one came to a pure concept of nature, freed from everything pertaining to man. This concept of nature had then to be the foundation for modern technics. Modern technics can only furnish the great triumphs of recent times when it contains nothing but what a man can survey with his pure intellect. Look at any machine, look at any organisation of modern technical life, apart from the actual social life, and you will see that everything is organised in such a way as to exclude the human being from what is actually involved. Modern technology had therefore to have recourse to the expedient, although not conscious of it, of using merely the corpse of nature. When we construct a machine, we break up the material that will form it, just as nature breaks up the human being when it makes a corpse out of the still animated organism. Everywhere in our mechanism we have the corpses of nature's existence. But man is not born from this corpse of nature of which our mechanical world consists, the world we have gradually produced as technics. He is born out of the nature that lives, that is alive even to the mineral kingdom. To this nature we have added in modern technics another nature, a corpse of nature, After the geological strata of the earth have been formed (see diagram, blue, orange) we have, as it were, superimposed a topmost geological stratum (green) over them, which consists of our machines and no longer contains anything of living nature. We work in the dead part of nature inasmuch as we have added modern technics to what was formerly there.  This is something that makes a shattering impression on a man who considers it in its full extent, particularly when he realises how detached modern mankind has made life, not only through external mechanical technics, but through the technical mode of thought. Consider something like the end of the war which took place between China and Japan towards the close of the nineteenth century. What took place after the conclusion of peace as the necessary settlement? The Chinese Minister wrote an immense sum in millions on a cheque. This cheque was taken to a bank. Some subordinate official accepted it and purely through Banking procedure the cheque was the occasion by which the Japanese envoy in China received the vast sum of millions which the Chinese Minister wrote upon the cheque. Something took place there in a corpse-like—externally of course—one might say, in a shadowy corpse-like manner. Nothing else has been brought about by it except that the credit of millions which the Chinese Empire up to then had had at the Bank of England had passed over to Japan through the writing and delivering of the cheque. What would it have meant if one had wanted by old procedure to pay these millions of war-damages which were simply credited to Japan through a cheque from China? I will even take the mildest form—paying in cash. What would it have meant if the whole of this money, supposing Chinese money to be what it is now, or was a short time ago, had had to be sent over from China to Japan? Thus, where one still has to do with realities the simplest form shows one what modern life has become relatively rapidly in the last third of the nineteenth century. Man's whole mode of thinking has been taken hold of by such things and has familiarised itself quite naturally. Intellectualism, which in fact Ahrimanises humanity, has become a matter of course.  On the other hand, man has had to experience in social life what has been experienced. Just as he could not have come to pure natural science without intellectualism, he would not have come to the consciousness of his freedom without what he has gone through in the social life. Man has been hollowed out through the nature of modern science. He no longer knows anything of himself, he cannot understand the being of man. But on the other hand there has arisen in him the greatest strain and tension, the great demand upon his being to act from his own original impulse, for man is to act as a free being. If one wants a symbol for what has really come about one can only say this: Man has increasingly lost the fulness of his being and become a total cipher, a blank in his own eyes. For modern natural science contains nothing of man. He has become gradually a total cipher and now in the cipher the impulse of freedom must stream out (see diagram). That is the discord in modern man. He is to be free, that is, find the impulses of his nature and his actions within himself, but when he tries to penetrate to where these impulses are to arise and understand them, he finds a blank, a cipher, he is inwardly hollowed out. It is necessary for this to have come about, but it is also a necessity for modern humanity to come out beyond it again. For in this freedom lies the Luciferic danger unless one finds the equilibrium, and in the modern scientific life lies the Ahrimanic danger if one does not reach the state of balance. How does one come to the state of balance? Here we must indicate something that might be called “the Golden Rule” of modern Spiritual Science—that is good. Science had to arise in modern evolution, but it must be widened. It needs a knowledge of the human being, and this can alone be brought through Spiritual Science. It is no knowledge of man to dissect him and take the brain and the liver and the stomach and the heart, for then one only gets what is also to be found in the animal kingdom but in a somewhat other form. All that is of no real value for the knowledge of man as such. Only the knowledge of man gained from Spiritual Science has value. The moment one knows that the human being with his actual ego is rooted in the will, that his will-filled ego represents his actual earthly spirituality and that this in the earthly realm makes use of the metabolism, one has an essential fact from which one can proceed to study the human metabolism and its specification throughout the organism. One comes from the spiritual element to an understanding of the human bodily nature. One must learn to know the rhythmic system and how it is expressed in the shaping of the course of the breath, the course of the blood, and one must break with the superstition that the heart is a pump which somehow drives the blood through the organism like a flood. One must learn that the Spirit is at work in the blood-circulation and that therefore rhythm there lays hold of the metabolism, causes the blood-circulation and then, in the course of human development, in the very embryo, plastically moulds the heart out of the blood-circulation, so that the heart is formed out of the blood-circulation, out of the spiritual. If one then learns to know how in the nerves-senses-system the life of concepts breaks down again the metabolic process, if one recognises the nerve as something that is left behind from the conceptual life, then one sees into the human being in a way in which one cannot penetrate the animal, for in the animal all these things are quite different.  The materialist imagines that here is a nerve (see diagram, red) and this nerve produces something as a picture. No, that is not the reality. In reality the conceptual life proceeds, and while it proceeds it destroys the organic matter, creates, as it were, a groove of waste matter within the nerve (black). That is a deposit created by the life of concepts, something excreted from the organism. And the nerve is the excretory organ for the conceptual life. In the materialistic age people have used a materialistic comparison—that the brain excretes thoughts as the liver excretes gall. That is nonsense, for the reverse is true. The brain is excreted by the thoughts, separated off continually and continually replaced by the metabolic organism. A modern scientific man will not be able to find anything right in such an idea; he will say that it all refers equally to the animal, the animal has a brain and such and such organs, and so on. This shows. however, an ignorance of himself; anyone who speaks like this of man and animal makes the same mistake as a legislator would make if he had all the razors to be found at all the barbers of a town carried to the restaurants, since he connected with a knife solely the idea of eating and concluded that an instrument formed in a certain way could only have one purpose. The important point is to recognise that the organ in man does not fulfil the same service as in the animal; moreover the whole mode of observation which I have just employed in its most elementary elements has not at all a similar meaning in the case of the animal. It is precisely the knowledge of what man possesses out of the spiritual as material organs that is so immensely important; this concrete self-knowledge is the essential point. All the idle talk and chatter of the various mysticisms of today which proclaim that man must grasp himself inwardly, all this dreaming is nothing; it leads not to a real self-knowledge but only to an inner pleasant feeling of wellbeing. Man must study with patience and industry how his different organs are plastically formed out of the spirit. Genuine science must be based on the spiritual. One must take man as he stands before us and imitatively model him plastically, as it were, out of the spirit. That is the one thing. While humanity lives today as it does, letting authoritative sciences issue from the various establishments, there exists in the spiritual worlds a sacred decree; external science must be supplemented by the science of the knowledge of man' It will be disastrous for mankind if it receives only external science, The Mysteries existed in ancient times in order not to let anything harmful approach man, but that is not compatible with the modern spirit. Mankind therefore in its conscious members must care for what was formerly cared for by outside powers. Those personalities who have come to understand something of these things must take care that the different sciences cannot cast their shadows, by confronting the shadows, which would darken humanity, with the light of a real, genuine, concrete self- knowledge of man. Sciences without this self-knowledge are harmful, for they Ahrimanise humanity-, Sciences with the counterpart of human self-knowledge are beneficial, for they lead mankind in reality to what it must reach in the immediate future. There should be no science which in one respect or another is not brought back to the human being. There should be no science which is not followed up right into the inmost being of man, where, if it is thus followed up, it first acquires its true meaning. Thus, through this actually concrete self-knowledge one arrives at the equilibrium that the sciences have destroyed. Present-day man is for the most part not in the least interested in what sort of being he is in the world. If he wants to be particularly profound he lets himself “prattle” about being some sort of little god or the like—without having any real idea of the god. It is of little interest to him, however, how his individual human form is formed out of the whole universe. The social life becomes Luciferic if it leads purely to the promotion of freedom inside that which has become nil, blank. Man will not be a nil to himself if he comes to a real self-knowledge, for then he will know how the whole structure of the universe creates an image of itself in what is within his skin, how every human being carries inside his skin a product of the whole world, The impulse of freedom is brought to equilibrium in the social life if we learn what underlies the world as spirit, if we get beyond the merely material view of the world which is characteristic of the development of knowledge during recent centuries. Man has been lost. The outer world has become empty of man. In external astronomy we observe the sun, the planets, the fixed stars, the comets; they seem to pass through space as some kind of objective bodies. We seek their laws of motion. There is nothing there of man. Read my “Occult Science” and bring before your mind the description given there of world evolution. Directly you read of Old Saturn you are reading nothing described by modern astronomy, but at once you read of what appears as the first rudiments of the human being. In the description of Saturn is contained all that existed as the first rudiments of humanity during the Saturn evolution. With the history of world evolution you follow at the same time the whole of human evolution. Nowhere do you find there a world devoid of man. What you yourselves are is to be found described stage for stage in the evolution of the world itself. What is the consequence? If you go into what modern science gives you about some sort of ancient mist which then conglomerated into a ball from which our present world is supposed to have arisen, but in which the human being cannot be found, you have nothing human in it at all, it all remains purely intellectual. You find something there that can interest your head, but it does not grip your whole nature. Your whole human being can only he gripped by a knowledge which contains this human being. In fact it is only the indolence of modern man, who, when he takes in something, is not at all accustomed to develop feelings and will-impulse as well. If someone reads this evolution of Saturn, Sun, Moon to the Earth and then further reads the perspective for the future, it is indolence if, in spite of its all being given in pure concepts, he does not feel stimulated in his feelings, if he does not feel; There I stand in the world, there I am together with this whole world, there I know myself to be one with this whole world! This knowledge of oneself as being one with the world distinguishes the knowledge of the world given through Spiritual Science from the view of the world that obtains today. But let that permeate the men of today in whom it is lacking, let men be filled with the consciousness of belonging to the whole world, then a social spirit can emerge that can lead men forward. Whereas what has arisen and could indeed lead to the claiming of freedom, but gives no feeling of responsibility, this has only brought men to the point of producing the chaos in which we are now living. Luciferising can only be prevented if men recognise their position in the cosmos, if they penetrate not only the physical nature of the cosmos, that which is given to the senses, but the spiritual element as well, feel themselves as spirit in the spirit of the universe. This realisation of man's connection with the spiritual world gives rise to real social feeling, it enables man to fructify the social life on earth. What the feeling of freedom has produced in man's social life has led above all to Luciferising, though modern men may feel nothing of it. But in the spiritual world in which we are all the time rooted, there stands again a sacred decree which proclaims to man: You must not allow the impulse of freedom to remain without a feeling of the cosmos! Just as the knowledge of man must be added to the external sciences, so must cosmic feeling be added to what has evolved as social life in our time. These two, knowledge of humanity and feeling with the whole universe, give man equilibrium. And this he can find if in the most modern sense he really grasps the Christ-Mystery, grasps it as Spiritual Science can give it to him. For there we speak of the Christ as a cosmic Being Who has descended to earth out of the infinities of the universe. We learn to feel cosmically and must only seek to give this feeling a content. This we can do only through Anthroposophy, otherwise the Christ-concept too is empty for us. The Christ-concept becomes phrase unless it becomes something through which we understand the cosmos itself, humanly. Just feel how from a universe that contains the Sun described by modern Astronomy and the spectral-analysis described by modern Physics—feel how from such a universe the Christ could not have descended to earth. One who adheres merely to this description of the cosmos as knowledge, can attach no meaning at all to any true, real Christ-Being. Such a Christ remains empty or becomes such as Harnack imagines. To learn to know and to feel the Christ today as Cosmic Being one needs the history of evolution that looks for man through the Saturn, Sun, Moon periods. There, where the human element is within the cosmos, one finds also the knowledge which permits the Christ to come forth from the cosmos. And if one learns to know how man's material part, what lies within his skin, is created out of the spiritual, then one learns to know him in such a way that one learns to know the Mystery of Golgotha, the incarnating of the Cosmic Christ in the individual man. Such a human being as modern science—from mathematics to psychology—can describe would find it impossible to imagine that the Christ had in any way incorporated in him. In order to understand this one must come to real self-knowledge. There is no Christianity today which can be accepted by the modern mind except through the self-knowledge and the cosmic knowledge of man which are given by Spiritual Science. The nature of these connections can be discovered throughout our anthroposophical literature, and they should be compared with what is essential in our time for the progress of mankind. What people have received up to now in various ways from education and custom, they like to have on the one hand as a sort of shadowy abstract knowledge for Sunday, but would then prefer to regard the rest of life as quite apart from this knowledge—not basing their life on it. Any deeper need of the soul is met by the Sunday pulpit, any external requirements, by the State. Both are accepted traditionally and no thought is given as to where one must come if this traditional acquiescence were to continue. I have constantly and from very many aspects pointed out the gravity of our time. Today I wished to indicate how the whole course of scientific life must not be pursued further unless every science is illumined by self-knowledge, and how social development must not be tolerated unless a cosmic feeling is introduced, a conception of the universe in which the human being is present in the conception itself. It is characteristic of Anthroposophy that when we study it we perceive the whole universe in the single human being and when we contemplate the world we find that everywhere it contains man. Such things are no doubt reminiscent of Inspirations and Imaginations which humanity has had in the past, but they are not renewals of an external kind, they are drawn forth from the consciousness to which mankind is actually summoned today out of the spiritual world itself. What man sees around him in this physical world does not simply happen of itself. Man is standing within the spiritual world just as he stands as physical organism within the physical world. And something is happening, something is going on in this spiritual world in which he stands. According to what man is has he a meaning for the events of the spiritual worlds. Let us suppose that someone only considers what goes on around him in the physical world; at most he pays a certain heed to a traditional faith which, however, has no relation to the world and only talks abstractions, and that this man now engages in traditional science, He can pursue this science, empty as it is of man, he can fill his soul with it as millions and millions today cram themselves with it more or less consciously. In this way, however, men stand likewise in a world of the Spirit, for cramming ourselves full with this science is of significance too for the spiritual world. What significance has it for the spiritual world? If that goes on in the same way then Ahriman reaps his reward. For he is the spirit who slinks eagerly round modern educational establishments and would like to keep them as they are; for that serves his interests. The Ahrimanic being, this cold ossified, bald-pated Ahriman—to speak figuratively—slinks round our modern educational centres and would like them to remain as they are. He will certainly lend his assistance if it is a matter of destroying something like this Goetheanum. On the other hand, in the social life in which men establish their earthly claims without a feeling of the cosmos, and inasmuch as they only speak of these earthly claims without being penetrated, inflamed and inspired with the cosmic consciousness—here actually the Luciferic beings come into their own. There we see how Lucifer lives. I cannot here use the picture, which is a picture but yet is born actually from genuine Ahrimanic concepts, the picture of the ossified, slinking, bald-pated Ahriman, who slinks round educational institutes and wants to preserve them as they are. This picture would not apply to the nature of Lucifer. But another picture would apply: Let opinions be expressed out of mere egoism, with no feeling of the cosmos, even with good will and well-meant social intentions, then the true nature of Lucifer breaks out from what is being expressed. With the social demands that are promoted in the world without cosmic feeling, man spits out of himself what then becomes the beautiful Lucifer. He lives in men themselves, in their stomachs, ruined through the social mis-instincts—understood spiritually—in their ruined lungs, there lives the Luciferic source. It wrests itself free, man spits it out of his whole being and hence our spiritual atmosphere is filled with this Luciferic nature—filled with social instincts that do not feel the connection of man with the cosmos. The bald Ahriman, lanky, skeleton-like, haggard, slinking round our abstract culture on the one hand, on the other hand that which extricates itself slimily out of man himself and assumes the semblance of beauty by which man is deluded, these are pictures—but they are the realities of our time. And only through self-knowledge and only through a feeling of the connection of man with the cosmos does man find the balance between the ossified and the semblance of beauty, between the bony Being and the slimy Being, between that which slinks round him and that which wants to extricate itself out of him. And this equilibrium must be found. The fruit of the culture, the civilisation of modern times, is, in fact, nothing else than what one could call the marriage between the bony and the slimy. Man is living his life in such a way that civilisation is entering on the Spengler-prophesied downfall. As a matter of fact, Spengler could only describe the world in the way he does, for he has before him the world that has arisen out of the marriage of the bony with the one covered with slime. But man must find the equilibrium. The times are grave, for man must become man. He must learn how to get rid of the bony as well as the slimy and become man, become man in such a way that the intellect is permeated by the heart and the heart warmed through by the intellect. Then he will find the equilibrium. And then in fact man will neither sink into—speaking spiritually—slimy mysticism nor bald-pated science, but will open himself to what is man, what I perhaps may call, after having characterised it, the Anthroposophical. That stands in the middle, the truly human, the Anthroposophical, it stands really in the midst between these two opposites into which civilisation has gradually come. The Anthropos is in truth when he really manifests his being, neither the ossified nor the slimy; he is the one who holds the balance between the intellect and the heart. That must be sought for. What must be grasped today out of the very depth of human and cosmic existence, you will understand when you think over the two pictures which I have set before you, purely as pictures. They are meant as pictures, but as pictures that point to true realities. We will speak further of this. |