| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXIV
26 Oct 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
|---|
| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXIV
26 Oct 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
|---|
We are now living in the Fifth Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-Race. This Root-Race is usually called the Aryan Race and includes as the First Sub-Race the Ancient Indian, which developed in the region of Southern Asia. A primeval Southern Asiatic population dwelt there long, long before the coming into being of the Vedas. Everything we have in the Vedas is a faint echo of that infinitely profound religious wisdom which was taught by the Ancient Rishis. Later we find in the near East the Ancient Persian Race which received its religious teaching and its culture from Zarathustra.65 The later Zarathustrian cultures in Asia are but echoes of this teaching. Then as the Third Sub-Race, we find the Egyptian, Chaldean, Babylonian, Assyrian peoples, out of which the Semitic-Jewish civilisation gradually developed. There then arose the Fourth Sub-Race, the Graeco-Roman civilisation in Southern Europe, which lasted until the ascent of the Germanic peoples in Northern, Central and Western Europe. Two further civilisations are yet to follow. Seven Sub-Races together form a Root-Race. The preceding Root-Race inhabited Atlantis, that part of the Earth which later was flooded by the Atlantic Ocean. To this Root-Race belong the following Sub-Races: Firstly the Rmoahals, secondly the Tlavtlis, thirdly the Toltecs, fourthly the original Turanians, fifthly the original Semites, sixthly the Akkadians, seventhly the Mongols. Still further back we come to the continent of Lemuria, between Africa, Asia and Australia. There we come into times with quite other conditions. Then we go still further back to the Second Root-Race, the Hyperborean, and to the First Root-Race, the Polarian. Now therefore two Sub-Races and two Root-Races are still to follow. As we go back we come to a human being composed of an ever finer and finer substance. At the beginning of its evolution, the Earth consisted of fine etheric substance. At that time all beings were also made up of such substance. At the end of its evolution the Earth will again consist of this fine etheric substance. Such conditions through which the Earth passes, beginning with the finest etheric substance, then becoming densified and again returning to a condition of fine physical etheric substance, constitute a Globe. Thus the physical Globe develops out of a still finer condition than that of the finest physical ether. The etheric develops out of the astral and returns to the astral. On the preceding Globe all beings were in an astral condition. Today the astral Globe no longer floats somewhere or other in heavenly space but the beings which were upon it densified and the astral Globe densified with them. This Globe is the Earth itself. The transition from the astral Globe to the physical is a transformation of condition. On the astral Globe also seven successive conditions developed. One has become accustomed in theosophical literature to call these conditions Races; thus there were seven astral Races. The astral Globe also densified only gradually to astral substance. Earlier the astral Globe was still finer and indeed consisted of substance out of which our thoughts are woven today. For this reason it is called mental substance and the Globe a Mental-Globe. There on this Mental-Globe existed seven successive Mental-Races of humanity with all that was connected with them. Preceding this there was a still finer condition of development, of even finer substance; the Arupa Mental-Globe; ‘Arupa’ because no actual forms existed, but everything was only indicated. These one calls four Globes; in reality however, they are four successive forms of the Earth. Thus we have seven Rounds. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Now let us follow the course of the physical Earth until it reaches the end of its evolution. It again passes over into an etheric Earth, then into an astral Earth. On the previous astral Earth the beings were still indeterminate, receiving their form from forces outside themselves. When man is again on an astral Earth he will be able to give himself his own form. On the previous astral Earth Jehovah and his hosts had given man his form. On the plastic-astral Earth however man will give himself his form out of his inner force; hence this is called the ‘plastic’ Globe and in this respect the following Globes, a Rupa and an Arupa Globe will have similar conditions. Man must refine himself so completely that finally he will only be like a seed, in a germinal condition containing everything which he has absorbed into himself. All experiences are then within him, as though concentrated in a point as force. The seeds that were present on the First Globe did not yet contain this. On the Last Globe however the seeds contain everything that they experienced on the different Globes. Between the single material stages of these Globes there is no gradual differentiation, but a somewhat abrupt process. Just as one can take salt, dissolve it in water and let it crystallise again, so a Globe comes into a sleeping condition (Pralaya) and out of this emerges the following Globe. Between two waking conditions the Globes go through a short sleeping condition. When man arrives at the last, seventh stage he goes through a longer sleeping condition. He is enriched and can again proceed on his way at a higher stage. For this reason he must first go through a longer Pralaya. This longer Pralaya is however not an undifferentiated, uniform sleep condition but very differentiated. When someone has so far developed occult faculties that he sleeps consciously in dreamless sleep he has developed a Devachanic consciousness. This enables him to follow what takes place between death and a new birth. This consciousness can be enhanced. Then he has the faculty of observing what takes place between the Globes. As a third stage of consciousness he becomes able to observe what goes on between the Rounds. This third condition therefore corresponds to a consciousness between two Rounds. To be able to observe what takes place between two Earth lives is the first degree of higher consciousness; between two Globes the second, and between two Rounds the third degree. Conscious sleep, which leads to this awareness is of a quite different nature. Between the last Round of a Planetary condition and the first of the one which follows, five further conditions lie on the other side of consciousness. The seven Rounds and the five conditions of Pralaya are together called the twelve stages of the Cosmic Year. Then the whole thing is gone through again, but at a higher stage. We are now in the Fourth Round of the Earth and three others preceded it. Before the germs of man as he is today were there, the human being was already three times present in a seed-like condition; once in every Round. In each Round we have seven stage of development which are called Globes, and again seven on every Globe, which are called Races. Seven such Rounds together make up a Planetary condition or evolution. The First Round began with an Arupa condition and densified to the Earth. Four times already has our Earth become physical. Three times will it become so again. Every such densification and dissolution belongs to a Round. Seven such Rounds are called a Planetary System or Evolution. When the first Earth Round emerged, everything that had descended from what had developed on the Old Moon was there germinally. Between the last Moon-Round and the first Earth-Round there was a long Pralaya condition. At that time the Moon-men were the human forefathers, standing between present day man and present day animals, according to their lower nature. Present-day animals are Moon-men descended to a lower level and human beings are Moon-men who have ascended higher. But on the Moon the plants too are different from those of today. The plant kingdom stood between the present mineral and plant kingdoms, similar to a peat bog that is half mineral and half plant. The Old Moon was actually a great plant. Its ground consisted of intertwined plants. At that time rocks did not exist. The plant-like mineral kingdom first densified on the Earth to the present mineral kingdom. Our present quartz, malachite and so on have consolidated out of the Moon plants; the Dolomites have arisen out of primeval plants. Thus on the Moon there was a kingdom lying between the mineral and the plant. In this was rooted the Moon vegetation; it needed the Moon ground. The kinds of vegetation that on the Earth have not found a connection with the soil have become parasitic, they must still always grow on plants, for example the mistletoe. This grows on plants, just as on the Old Moon all vegetation grew on a half plant-like foundation. Loki, the Moon god, killed Baldur with the mistletoe, the Moon plant. So we find on the Moon:
These were the seeds which came over to the Earth. During the First Earth Round the human kingdom gradually separated itself off. Man became more human, the animal more animal. The external body of man became slowly more human. During the Second Round the animal kingdom separated itself off, during the Third the plant kingdom, during the Fourth the mineral kingdom. Then man made a further ascent. The first three Rounds were repetitions of earlier conditions and a preparation, in order in the Fourth Round, in the Lemurian Race, to take up something new. Now man works upon the mineral kingdom. A time will come when, as the product of his activity, he will have worked over and transformed the mineral kingdom, so that no particle will then remain whose nature has not been changed by the artifice of man. Then the whole can be transmuted into pure astral forms. That is the redemption of a kingdom. In the Fourth Round man will have redeemed the mineral kingdom, when he will have transformed it by his work upon it. Then everything goes into Pralaya; no mineral kingdom will be there, but the whole Earth will have become a plant. Man will then have been raised half a stage higher and everything else with him; for example in the Fifth Round, Cologne Cathedral will grow as a plant. One is not working in vain when one gives form to the mineral kingdom. The Cologne Cathedral will eventually grow as plant world out of what will then be the ground. In the atmosphere of the Fifth Round, we find in living cloud formations everything which today has been painted. There we have to do with a repetition at a higher stage where all our work in the mineral world around us grows. In the Fifth Round we redeem the plant world, in the Sixth the animal and in the Seventh Round the human kingdom. Then man will be mature enough to tread a new Planet. In order that he might develop upwards, the other kingdoms had to some extent to be pushed downwards and he must later redeem them. After the Seventh Round and a Pralaya he will go over to another Planet. Seven Rounds plus seven Globes, and added to each of the latter, seven Races, together make up three hundred and forty three conditions of the Earth. The entire Earth evolution has the purpose of creating in man waking day-consciousness, whereas the purpose of the entire Moon evolution had the purpose of developing in man picture consciousness. This was preceded by dreamless sleep consciousness on the Sun; at that time man was still a sleeping plant. A still earlier condition, that of deep trance, was present on Saturn, a condition which today still appears in certain pathological cases. Thus the purpose of single planetary evolutions is to develop successive conditions of consciousness.
|
| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXV
27 Oct 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
|---|
| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXV
27 Oct 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
|---|
When we consider the successive Planetary evolutions we find that each one is a stage of a particular condition of evolution, which has 7 Rounds, 7 x 7 Globes and 7 x 7 x 7 Races. The purpose of every such Planetary evolution is to lead one condition of consciousness through all its stages. In the different esoteric religions these stages are named in various ways. In Christian esotericism
When in Christian esotericism we speak of Power we mean ‘going through a condition of consciousness’. Going through a Round is going through a Kingdom. In the successive rounds man experiences seven Kingdoms:
Going through the seven conditions of Form or Globes is called Glory. Glory signifies what has external appearance, what takes on shape and form. The Lord's Prayer gives us in its final words: ‘For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory,’ a gazing upwards to Cosmic events. When once again this will be present in consciousness, a knowledge of God will be possible. Today all religions, exoteric religions in particular, have fallen away from the true knowledge of God. They are the bearers of egoism for they are not conceived in connection with the whole world, with the Power, the Kingdom and the Glory. When these words regain their meaning through living consciousness, then once more religions will be what they ought to be. The Saturn condition was there in order to develop in man a deep trance consciousness; this he hardly knows today. He only knows dreamless sleep like the plant and the dream filled sleep such as existed on the Moon—a picture consciousness. Man no longer knows deep trance consciousness for the following reason: When someone sleeps, only the astral body frees itself and the physical body and the etheric body remain lying in the bed. If in sleep he were able to take the etheric body with him as the Chela can, then the physical body alone would remain behind; a dull consciousness. In the case of mediums this comes about in an abnormal manner and quite remarkable things are brought to light in this way. Such people then can draw remarkable cosmic pictures. For example, a girl was put into a trance by a glassful of port wine and in this condition drew remarkable pictures, in which one could see caricatures of our cosmic system; she also found approximations of our names for them. Mediums have their visions because they are able to take the etheric body also out of the sleeping physical body and in the sleeping physical body to perceive consciously. They are then still able to make use of the physical body; the physical body becomes clairvoyant in a remarkable way. The Chela achieves this consciously, whereas the medium does so unconsciously. It is through such a clairvoyant consciousness that the planetary systems have been discovered. All the conditions into which the Chelas and Adepts are able to transpose themselves are nothing other than consciousness through the physical body; they experience all this in full consciousness. On the future Venus a complete consciousness in the etheric body will develop. Then, while man sleeps, he will gain a consciousness concerning the other side of the world. On Vulcan the spirit is completely detached; he has then taken the etheric body also with him. This condition endows man with an exact knowledge of the entire world. We distinguish:
Each one of such conditions of consciousness must go through all the Kingdoms, through seven Rounds or Kingdoms, in each Round gaining in complexity as it passes through the seven Globes. The lesser forces become further developed in the so-called Races. Thus gradually creation exteriorises from within outwards what was present as inner potential. Today it is the mineral kingdom that man knows best because he lives in it. Everything that takes place in the higher kingdoms is not understood by the intellect. This has been a necessary phase of evolution. Now however one can no longer be satisfied with mere science. Everything is understood to be in a continuous evolution. If we consider in the mineral kingdom any kind of stone—what we see there is a space with definite boundaries, a definite form. Of the mineral kingdom as such we see absolutely nothing, but we see only the reflected light. The rays of the sun are reflected in a certain form. If we strike a bell we hear a sound: an effect of a bell goes into our ear. All that we perceive in the world as mineral kingdom is a whole compressed together to a spatial form. If one takes away the colour of an object, the sound, the taste, nothing remains. It is due to the mineral kingdom that light and sound appear through such forms. Let us think of a world in which only the qualities of perception stream through space and are not perceived in connection with definite forms. Let us think of coloured clouds floating through the world, sounds resounding through the world, all our sense impressions filling space without being bound to a form; then we have the Third Elemental Kingdom. These are the elements light and fire, permeating space. Man himself in the Astral Kingdom is a coloured cloud. We will now take a further step forward. When we see a thought form, it is such a coloured cloud, a movement vibrating in itself. If one wishes to conjure up a thought, one must draw the figure in question into astral space. On this depends the conjurings of magicians. They draw the forms into space and then surround them with astral substance. They direct astral substance along these figures. The Third Elemental Kingdom is not arbitrary, but a flying hither and thither in interpenetrating lines: everything expressing beautiful forms having the power of light within themselves. They are like bodies of light flying hither and thither in space, shining from within. The tones that resound through space are ordered according to numbers. What one must specially bear in mind is that from the outset things stand in a definite relationship to one another. One figure could work upon another in such a way that it did no harm, or so that it was utterly destroyed. This was called the measure of things. Everything was ordered according to measure, number, form. It is possible to think away the qualities induced by the senses and the world filled with such thought-figures. This would then be the Second Elementary Kingdom which underlies the Third. Here we only have forms woven by thoughts, the World-Ether-Thoughts. The first Elementary Kingdom is difficult to describe. Let us assume for example that we conceive the thought of such a figure as a spiral, then the thought of a lemniscate. We now transfer ourselves into the intention before the form has actually arisen, thus first into the intention of a spiral and then into the intention of a lemniscate. One imagines a world filled with such thought-seeds. This formless world is the First Elementary Kingdom. The Fourth Elementary Kingdom is the mineral kingdom which reflects what it receives from outside. The plant kingdom not only reflects sense-qualities, but these reflections are inwardly endowed with life. The Second Elementary Kingdom is the formative element of the Third Elementary Kingdom. The mineral kingdom is condensed out of qualities belonging to the Third Elementary Kingdom. The plant reflects the form of the Second Elementary Kingdom and thus develops the form out of itself. The animal kingdom also reflects the intentions which lie in the First Elementary Kingdom. In the First Round man was in the First Elementary Kingdom. When at that time he became physical, he was in the first Round and in the First Elementary Kingdom at the stage of physical form. In the physical condition of the First Elementary Kingdom of the First Round, the thought-seeds became physical. At that time the Earth consisted only of physical globules, so small that one would not have been able to see them; they were simply points of force. These points of force gradually condensed; they were not yet differentiated. At that time the condensed Elementary Kingdom was already physical. When one imagines the human being as merely a being of thought, then one can easily go through such a being even though one does not see it, but even though one cannot see it, one cannot go through it when it has become physical. Later the physical points of force once more became astral and passed over to the following Round. In the Second Round the Earth consisted only of forms. The Earth was a very beautifully formed sphere in which all the things that developed out of it were present as types. It was the prophetic shaping of everything that emerges in the other Kingdoms. On the Earth the colours and forms were prototypes of present-day man. On the next Planet the colours and forms will be prototypes of what man will then be. In the Fifth Round, the plastic-astral man will no longer need to retain his hand. The hand will only be formed when it is needed. It will be something like a tendril, because then everything will have taken on the nature of a plant. Then too all that develops separate existence will be a plant-product. Likewise everything that proceeds from man will be plantlike. We shall then be living in the plant kingdom. In the Sixth Round we shall live in the animal kingdom. Then everything that proceeds from man, which streams out from him, will be a living product that has within it life and sensation. A word will then be a living being—a bird that one sends out into the world. In the Seventh Round man will create himself. He will then be able to duplicate, to reproduce himself. In the Seventh Round everyone will have reached the stage at which our Masters stand today. Then our ego will be the bearer of all earthly experiences. To begin with this will be concentrated in the Lodge of the Masters.67 The higher ego then will draw itself together, become atomic and form the atoms of (future) Jupiter. The White Lodge will be looked upon as a unity, an ego comprising everything. All human egos and all separateness will be given up and will flow together into the all-comprehensive universal consciousness; great circles, expanded from within, each having a special colour, all assembled together in one single circle. When one thinks of them as laid one upon the other the result is an all-inclusive colour. All the egos are within it, making a whole. This immense globe, contracted, constitutes the atom. This multiplies itself, creating itself out of itself. These then are the atoms which will form Jupiter.68 The Moon Adepts formed the atoms of the present-day Earth. One can study the atom when one studies the plan of the Adepts Lodge on the Moon. Summary: Each kingdom must go through seven Forms:
|
| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXVI
28 Oct 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
|---|
| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXVI
28 Oct 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Today we shall speak about the Fourth Earth Round. In the course of our whole evolution we have seven Planetary conditions: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan; and in connection with each Planet we must consider seven Rounds. The passing through a Round may also be called a Kingdom, and the Fourth Round on the Earth we call the Mineral Kingdom. We are now on the Fourth Planet, in the Fourth Round and within this Round in the Fourth Condition of Form or Globe. The Fourth Round is always physical. Thus we stand exactly in the middle of our Earthly evolution. This is frequently felt to be something extraordinarily important for man. We have behind us three Planets, three Rounds, three Globes and the same number still lie before us. But if we were standing on the Old Moon, we should see yet another Planetary condition before Saturn; if we were standing on future Jupiter we should no longer see Saturn, but in its place a Planet beyond Vulcan. The exact middle of our present evolution was with the Fourth Sub-Race of the Fourth Root-Race, with the original Turanians, the Fourth Atlantean Sub-Race. A kind of spiritual darkness came about at a certain moment of evolution. Humanity entered into a dark age. This dark age is called Kali Yuga. What man knows today he still knows from the standpoint that was his in earlier epochs of his development. At the end of the Fifth Round mankind will once again be able to see spiritually, having the capacity of looking both backwards and forwards. The Fourth Earth Round began with the emergence of the first Arupa Earth Globe from the darkness of Pralaya, in which everything had been dissolved. Then all that exists on the Earth today was present in a formless state as thoughts. We can gain a right concept of this when we limit ourselves as far as possible to what is physical and imagine this as thought seeds. The forms were not yet present, but only the thoughts preceding their manifestation. If we ask: Who then had these thoughts, we receive as answer: These were the thoughts of spiritual beings who are in connection with the Earth. Such spiritual beings as, for example, Jehovah and his hosts, who accomplished everything around us on the earth. At that time all thoughts were present as thoughts of the spiritual beings in the Arupa-Globe. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] What was it then that caused the Gods to have as their aim just this thought of man? What was it that gave them the model? It was the Monads which were already present, but not yet connected with human beings. Slowly men developed as thoughts of the Gods. Now the Arupa-Sphere densified; everything emerged as thought-forms. The whole Earth was filled with these; it was as though one were looking into a great model filled [with] small crystals. Present within it as models were all the forms of human beings, animals and plants. Spiritual beings worked on these as a master builder works on his models. They were put together from outside. The whole then passes over into astral substance. The astral Earth-Globe came into being. In between there were short Pralayas. Now again we have to do with the outwardly-working divine powers who poured forth the astral substance, filling the forms with light and colour. Here are to be found all the astral forms of human beings and animals, as well as the whole plant kingdom, in a great astral sea. This then densified ever more and more and the physical Earth arose as the Fourth Globe. Until then, until the beginning of the Fourth Round, Sun and Moon were still united with the Earth; they formed one body with the Earth. During the great Pralaya preceding the First Earth Round, they had again merged with the Earth; and during the first three Earth Rounds the three remained together. There then arose a kind of biscuit form. In the Third Earth Round, out of the Earth-Sun-Ball, on one side the Earth protruded like a swelling, on the other side the Moon. At that time the main body actually trailed around with it two such sacks. Only in the Fourth Earth Round did the body regain its spherical form; then however there again arose the sack-like formations in the ether, protruding from both sides. Thus here we have to do with an Earth that is still united with the Sun and also with the Moon. At that time most life was in the region between the Moon and the Earth. This has been correctly preserved in the Mohammedan Paradise saga. Now the following occurred. When the Second Root-Race of the Fourth Earth Round approached, the Sun separated itself off, and in the Third Root-Race the Moon did so also. Everything evolved physically which previously had only been present on the astral Globe. Now too man appeared physically, but organised in such a way that he could take the Monad into his progressively purified astral body. Had man taken the Monad into himself earlier, he would have received with it Manas, Buddhi and Atma. He would have become very wise, but the wisdom would have been a kind of dream wisdom. At first man had no power over the physical body and the etheric body. He could also do nothing about the lower passions coming over to him from the Moon; these appeared of necessity until the time when he entered upon the Earth epoch. If man had simply taken up the Monads into the ennobled animality he could not have fallen into error. He would have become what Jehovah had intended, endowed that is to say with all wisdom, but at the same time formed into a living statue. Then those beings intervened, who on the Moon had developed more quickly than in the ordinary course of Moon evolution. Lucifer is a power who has enthusiasm for wisdom which is as intense as the sense life of animals. He is equipped with all those things that come over from the Moon. If Lucifer alone had taken responsibility for evolution a battle would have arisen between him and the old Gods. Jehovah's aim was the perfection of form. Lucifer would have been able to develop in astral substance his passion for premature spirituality. The result would have been a violent battle between the Jehovah-spirits and the hosts of Lucifer. There was the danger that through Jehovah some human beings would become living statues and that others would be too quickly spiritualised through Lucifer. Means of bringing about equilibrium would have to be obtained elsewhere. In order to annul the battle between Jehovah and Lucifer, the White Lodge, which was just in its beginning, had to obtain material from one of the other planets. This differed essentially from the astral substance that had come over from the Moon, from the astral-kamic animal substance. The possibility arose of leading over substance from other planets: new passions, less vehement but conceived on the basis of independence. The new material was brought over from Mars.69 Thus in the first half of our Earth evolution astral substance from Mars was introduced. A great advance was brought about through the introduction of this astral substance from Mars. External civilisation on the Earth arose through the fact that hardening on the one side and spiritualisation on the other side were prevented. Lucifer made use of what had been given by the Mars forces. The new state of the Earth was given the name of Mars. Things continued in this way until the middle of the Atlantean Race. Then a new question arose. Man had absorbed wisdom, but in the future it would not be possible for wisdom alone to manifest in a form-creating way. One would have been able to build up the mineral kingdom through Lucifer, but Lucifer could not have given it life. Man could never have imparted life under the influence of the other powers. This was why a Sun God had to come, a higher being than Lucifer. There still existed what are known as the Solar Pitris. The most exalted among these is Christ. As Lucifer represents the Manas element, so the Buddhi element is represented by Christ. The human astral bodies had still to receive a third impact. This was brought down from Mercury. Christ united his sovereignty with that of Lucifer. If one has the will to ascend the heights in order to find the way to the Gods one needs Mercury, the Divine Messenger. He is the one who prepared the path of Christ from the middle of the Atlantean Root-Race onwards in order later to enter into the astral bodies, which had received the mercurial element. All our present metals have only gradually become what they are now. Gold, silver, platinum and so on all pass through certain conditions. When they are heated they become first hot, then liquid, then gaseous. This latter was once the condition of all metals in the gaseous Earth. Gold too first densified with the Earth: at one time it was entirely etheric gold. When we go back to the time when the Earth was still united with the Sun, there was as yet within it no solid gold. The particles of the white Sun-Ether became first fluid and then solid. These are the veins of gold which are now in the Earth. Gold is solidified sunlight. Silver is solidified moonlight. All mineral substances have gradually solidified. When human beings become ever more spiritualised, quicksilver will also become solid. At one time gold and silver formed drops just as water does now. The fact that mercury is still fluid is connected with the whole process of Earth evolution. It will become solid when the God Mercury has fulfilled his mission. In the middle of the Atlantean Root-Race quicksilver was brought down from Mercury in etheric form. Had we not had quicksilver we should not have had the Christ-Principle. In the drops of quicksilver we have to see what was incorporated in the Earth in the middle of the Atlantean epoch. When the Mars Principle (Kama-Manas) was incorporated into the Earth, iron was brought down to the Earth from Mars. Iron originates in Mars. It was at first in astral form and later densified. When we trace the Earth to that period of time we find ever fewer warm-blooded animals. It was only in the middle of the Lemurian Age that warm blood made its appearance together with the Mars impulse. Iron came into the blood at that time. It is iron that in all occult writings is brought into connection with Mars, quicksilver with Buddhi-Mercury. Certain people learned this from the Adepts. The Earth was therefore understood as Mars and Mercury. Everything that did not originate from Mars and Mercury has come over from the Moon. The days of the week are an image of planetary evolution. The sequence of the planets is inscribed in a wonderful way in the days of the week.
In the saying that Christ trod on and crushed the head of the serpent70 we find a profound expression of esotericism. The serpent's head is mere wisdom; this must be overcome. True wisdom lies in the heart; this is why the serpent's head must be trodden underfoot. In the Hercules-Saga71 the same truth has already been expressed. He kills the Lernaean Hydra, whose head always grows anew. Mere Manas will always come again. Hercules must keep the blood at a distance (Kama), then the Hydra will be conquered. Blood came into the Earth with the Mars-Wisdom (Kama-Manas). Deep meaning lies in many other things. The separation of the Moon preceded the Mars-Age. The Moon contains silver. Still earlier took place the separation of the Sun. Gold is condensed sunlight, hence the Golden Age; Moonlight and silver: the Silver Age; Mars and iron: the Bronze Age.72 We are now in the middle, in the Fourth Globe. On the Fifth Globe there will arise the faculty of organising oneself from within outwards. Then the Earth will be transformed into a sphere on which man will create his form from within outwards. The Earth will then be a “Plastic” Globe. The Sixth Globe is the one on which the human being not only works plastically on his form, but will be able to place his own thoughts into the form. On the Fifth Globe man will be able, for instance, to form a hand; on the Sixth Globe he will be able to send his thoughts out into the surrounding world. On the Seventh Globe everything will again become formless. Everything will pass over once more into the seed condition. We will now consider our present Ego. There are within it a multitude of mental images and concepts. When we observe the civilised world today we say: It is out of the Ego that the civilised world has arisen. All this was once within a human head; it was contained within the ego. From out of all this it was put together. All the things constructed by human skill have been born out of the Ego. In the middle of the Lemurian Age the Ego was still empty; man could as yet do nothing. Only gradually did he learn in the most primitive way to know the world from outside. His Ego was at that time like a hollow soap-bubble. When he saw a stone, it was reflected into him; perhaps he saw a sharp edge on it and with it he began to chip other stones. In this way he started to work formatively on the mineral world. What was in his surroundings reflected itself more and more into what was at first his empty Ego. At the end of the physical Globe everything will be present as reflected image in our Ego. When at last we have all this within us we will form it from within outwards. This will be the “plastic” condition on the next Globe. The master-builder of Cologne cathedral gathered his impressions into his ego. This content of his Ego will be vivified by Buddhi and later, on the Fifth Globe he will give all this form. On the Sixth Globe all this will be present as thought and on the Seventh Globe everything will be drawn together into the atom. In the next Round man will create the new plant kingdom out of the Ego. In the middle of the Lemurian Age the Ego was like a hole bored into matter. All our Egos were at that time such holes in matter which since then we have filled up. In the next Round their content will issue in plant form, for in this Fifth Round there will take place with the plant kingdom what is now taking place with the mineral kingdom. The whole Earth will then be an immense, single living Being. Man will have achieved a conscious life of feeling and perception, and will then give it form outside himself. In the Sixth Round there will no longer be a plant kingdom; man will then allow living thoughts filled with feeling and perception to go out from himself as pure intellectual formations. In this Sixth Round on the Sixth Globe, in its Sixth Stage of development, corresponding to the Sixth Race, an important decision will be taken. Everything will have reached the Devachanic condition that has been able to develop out of all the kingdoms. If anyone has not progressed to the point that he can be raised to the stage of Devachan, he will remain in the animal state. This will take place according to the number 666, the number of the Beast. In the Seventh Round humanity will be completely purified. The human kingdom will then attain its zenith. This Round is the quickest. The human being, when he emerges from it, will have become a God and will carry his development over to Jupiter. In every Round the first Globe, or condition of form, is of such a nature that in fact we have not yet to do with a form, but the form is only present as incipient plan. This is why esotericism does not reckon the Arupa-Globe among the conditions of form, but with the conditions of life; this is the case also with the Seventh Globe, the Archetypal. Thus we have only five conditions of form. The first and the last Globes of each Round are conditions of life. All the conditions of the Rounds are also called conditions of life, because passing through a Kingdom represents a condition of life. In the First Round life was in the First Elementary Kingdom, in the Second Round in the Second Elementary Kingdom, in the Third Round in the Third Elementary Kingdom, in the Fourth Round in the Mineral Kingdom. In the Fifth Round life will be in the Plant Kingdom, in the Sixth Round life will be in the Animal Kingdom and in the Seventh Round life will be in the Human Kingdom. When one considers life in the Human Kingdom in the Seventh Round, this sheds its light into the next Round when man will have passed over into another condition of consciousness. The purpose of a Round consists in achieving a new stage of life. The purpose of the Seventh Round is to lead over into a new stage of consciousness. Thus the esotericist only reckons six conditions of life, counting the Seventh Round as a new condition of consciousness. If we wish to write down in numbers the conditions of life, form and consciousness we get five Globes or conditions of form, six Rounds or conditions of life, ten Planets or conditions of consciousness. If we count the whole evolution from Saturn to Vulcan, we have expressed what we find with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky as the number of the Prajapatis 1065, that is to say, 10 – 6 – 5.
|
| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXVII
30 Oct 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
|---|
| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXVII
30 Oct 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
|---|
The course of evolution in the world appears to us on three levels: consciousness, life and form.73 Consciousness in its different manifestations finds its expression in the seven Planetary evolutions: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. On each Planet there are seven Kingdoms of Life and each Kingdom goes through seven Conditions of Form. Our physical Earth is such a Condition of Form, the fourth Condition of Form or Globe, in the fourth Kingdom of Life, of the fourth Planet, or Condition of Consciousness. We think of the Earth as it now is and ask ourselves: What are we doing here? We take things from outside in space, mainly from the mineral kingdom, and out of them construct artifacts. This is a process of combination; out of separate things we construct a whole, a creation within a form. Now there are other ways in which something new can arise, for instance in a way similar to that in which stalk, leaves and blossoms arise out of the root of a plant. A blossom cannot be put together like a machine, through combination, but it must grow out of what is already there. This is a process within the realm of life. Out of what is there something new is created. In the case of the third kind of production, out of consciousness, something arises in such a way that we can say: previously there was in fact nothing there—a nothingness. Let us transfer ourselves to the primal beginning of such a planetary evolution, at the very beginning of Saturn. What is to be observed there? There was as yet no physical planet, not even in the finest Arupa-form was a planet present, we are there even before the moment when Old Saturn entered into its first beginning. Nothing of our series of planets existed; certainly however there was the entire outcome of the preceding planetary chain, in much the same way as when we wake up in the morning, having as yet done nothing, and only the memory of what we did on the previous day is contained in our mind. So when we thus transfer ourselves completely into the beginning of the Saturn evolution, we have in the spiritual beings then in manifestation, the memory of a previous planetary chain and its happenings. Now let us transfer ourselves to the end of the planetary chain, to the time when the Vulcan evolution will have come to an end. Whereas the chain of planets has gradually come to manifestation as creation, the tendency to it was already there in the beginning as inherent consciousness. So we have to begin with an outpouring of consciousness; out of the content of the earlier, out of memory, consciousness creates the new. At the end therefore something is present which was not there at the beginning: that is, all experiences. What was there at the beginning has flowed out into astral things and beings. At the end a new consciousness has come about with a new content of consciousness. It is something which has come forth from nothingness, out of experiences. When we observe something new we must say to ourselves: to make this possible a seed had to be there. The new condition of consciousness however, at the end of a planetary evolution, has in fact come forth out of nothing, out of experiences; for this no foundations are necessary, something is created which arises out of nothing. When one personality looks at another, it cannot be said that he has taken something from the other one, when as a result he bears within him the memory of the other personality. This memory has come forth out of nothing. Thus the three ways of creating are as follows:
Here we have three definitions of Beings who bring about, who underlie a planetary chain. They are called the three Logoi. The Third Logos produces by means of combining. When out of one substance something else having new life comes into being, this is brought forth by the Second Logos. Everywhere, however, where we have to do with a coming forth out of nothing, we have the First Logos. This is why the First Logos is also often called the One who is immanent in things, the Second Logos the One who in the quiescent substance in things creates life out of the living, the Third Logos the One who combines everything existing, who puts the world together out of things. These three Logoi always manifest in the world in and through one another. The First Logos also experiences both the inner wisdom and the will. In the creative activity of the First Logos there is experience, that is to say, the gathering of thoughts out of nothing and then creating once more in accordance with these thoughts out of nothing. Creation out of nothing is however not meant in such a way as if nothing at all had been there. On the contrary, in the course of evolution experiences are made and in the course of becoming the new is created, so that what is there melts away and out of experience there is the creation of the new. This creation may be compared with the following: Somebody sees another person and observes his appearance. If he were creatively gifted like the First Logos he would be able to say: Yes, I have seen N and I also have a concept of the reversed N. I can also form a complementary picture of him, i.e. white where there is black and vice versa. In this way, out of the experience of the object and its negative, he has created a completely new form. This he could imbue with life. It would be a completely new creation that was not previously there. Let us assume that somebody did this with a number of people and that these people were to perish: then, from his experiences, the observer would be able to create a new world. In contemplating the world one continually sees the interaction of the three Logoi. Let us form within the framework of our planetary system, a mental picture of the working of the three Logoi in regard to man. Let us think of the very beginnings of the Saturn evolution, when as yet nothing at all was there. What is it that then happens? Then everything that was present previously drips down as it were. All the things that were there earlier stream out. What arises in this way is to become the very first outpouring of substance from the sum of earlier experiences. Therein is contained the substance out of which man developed later,. This substance is to begin with simply there as substance. This out streaming must then be continually worked upon and combined together. The combining of the out streaming substance is a new creation. This is above all a creative activity of the Third Logos. It happens after the out streaming of substance and therefore is a creative activity of the third Logos. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] What does this signify for man? For man it signifies that in the first place all the parts are combined which then form his physical body. At that time, on Saturn, the human being was a veritable automaton. If one had spoken a word into him, he would have spoken it out again. Forms of beings are fashioned. This is called the work of the Third Logos and it continues into the Sun epoch, when man also receives his etheric body and with it life. This is the work of the Second Logos. Now let us continue into the Earth Epoch. There man himself acquires a consciousness, that is to say, the possibility of gathering experiences out of nothingness. This is the work of the First Logos. On Saturn man received from the Third Logos what in him is form. On the Sun he received what in him is life from the Second Logos. On the Earth he received what in him is consciousness, from the First Logos. The concept of consciousness must become a little clearer to us. We must work out fully the concept of consciousness on a particular plane. Man is conscious, but we have to know where his consciousness is. Now he is conscious on the physical plane when we are speaking about waking consciousness. But waking consciousness could also be on the astral plane. When in the case of a creature, life is on the physical plane and consciousness is on the astral plane, then this creature is an animal. In human beings, thinking is localised in the head. With the animal, for instance the tiger, consciousness is on the astral plane. Outside the head what may be called a focal point is formed through which the tiger is affected. When the tiger feels pain this goes over on to the astral plane. With the tiger the organ for this is in front of the head, at the place where the brow is in the case of man. With man this place is already enclosed within the head and it is filled with the frontal brain; consciousness has been imprisoned through the brain and the front part of the skull and is therefore on the physical plane. In the case of the tiger, and indeed of all animals, the focal point of consciousness lies in front of the head, in the astral: from there it goes into the astral world. In the case of the plant things are again different. Could we follow its consciousness, going from above downwards, we would always come out at the tip of the root. If then we were to follow the line of growth, we would come to the centre of the earth. There is the collecting point of all the sensations, the suction point of the consciousness of the plant. It is in direct connection with the mental world. The entire plant world has its consciousness on the mental plane. The consciousness of the entire mineral world is in the highest regions of the Mental World, on the Arupa plane. The consciousness of stones is such that if we wished to seek its focus we should find it as a kind of Sun-atmosphere. When on the Earth we work upon the mineral world, when we break stones, each single action is in a certain relationship to this Sun-atmosphere. There one perceives the work that man does here. Thus we have a range of beings on the physical plane whose consciousness however lies on different planes. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Human beings and animals differ from each other through the fact that they have their consciousness on different planes. Now there are also other beings besides minerals, plants, animals and human beings. There are beings who have their consciousness on the physical plane and their body in the astral. Such a being is, as it were, an animal in reverse. Such beings actually exist; they are the elemental beings. In order to make their nature comprehensible let us be clear about what belongs to the physical plane. Physical is: Firstly the solid earth, secondly water, thirdly air, fourthly ether (warmth ether, light ether, chemical ether, life ether). Let us keep to the four lower forms of our physical plane and separate the etheric world from them. States of consciousness can lie in all four forms of the physical plane while the body of such a being lies in the astral. We must think of the consciousness in the solid Earth, the body in the astral; or a being that has its consciousness in the water and its body in the astral; then such a being with its consciousness in the air and its body in the astral and one with its consciousness in fire and its body in the astral. Present-day man knows but little of such beings; in our time it is only through poetry that they are known. Miners (of minerals) however know such beings very well. A gnome is only visible to someone who can see on the astral plane, but miners frequently possess such an astral vision; they know that gnomes are realities. Thus, on our Earth there exist various forms of consciousness, and what the natural scientist today calls laws of nature are the thoughts of beings who think on the physical plane but have their bodies on the astral plane. When in physics we have to do with laws of nature we can say: these are the thoughts of a being who has its body on the astral plane. The forces of nature are creative beings and natural laws are their thoughts. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] In the Middle Ages the alchemist tried to make use of these spirits. Goethe knew this very well; Faust wished to have fire air; this was to be produced by the salamanders which have their body on the astral plane. Thus we have around us beings who actually have their consciousness in fire, to whom we cause pain when fire is kindled, for by so doing we actually cause a certain alteration in the body of the being in question on the astral plane. When one kindles fire one alters this astral being. In the same way when one brings about alterations in other spheres of the elements and the forces of Nature one alters something in these astral beings. When we do this or that we are continuously peopling the astral plane. If we think these thoughts through clearly, we have the meaning of church ritual: that is, not to make use of any kind of substances on the physical plane, except such as have meaning, whereby meaningful beings arise on the astral plane. When for instance one kindles the smoke of incense one does something which has purpose; one burns a particular substance and creates beings of a particular kind. When one passes a sword through the air in four directions one creates a definite kind of being. It is the same with the priest, when he makes definite movements with his hands, to accompany definite sounds o, i, u, intensified by repetition: Dominus vobiscum. The sound is regular, the air is brought into definite vibrations intensified by definite movements of the hand, and a sylph is called into existence. Sign, grip and word of the freemasons also bring about definite forms which manifest in accordance with definite laws in the physical world. Through a purposeful use of these words a link is formed from one person to another, one is enwrapped in an astral substance which is created through sign, grip and word. Naturally man continually does all this in ordinary life, but he does it in an unsystematic way, creating contradictory beings. Art consists in working harmoniously upwards from the physical to higher planes. In rituals, through definite acts, the aim is to produce not contradictory but harmonious beings. At present man is not in a position to bring these things into harmony. But for everything man creates in this way on the astral plane there are certain directing beings. So we have a world of elemental beings around us with a king. Among the Indians the king of the gnomes is called Kshiti, the highest of the gnomes; the highest being among the undines: Varuna; the highest being among the sylphs: Vayu, and everything having its consciousness in fire is directed by the king of fire: Agni. In all activity connected with fire, water and so on we have to do with these particular Deva-beings. All the fire we have here on Earth is the substance that is woven out of the beings which belong to Agni. Ceremonial magic is the lowest kind of sorcery and consists in making use of certain specially devised tricks on the physical plane in order to create definite forms and beings on the astral plane. Schools exist today in which ceremonial magic is still exercised. Such usages cause great attraction towards the astral world and very frequently result in suicide, because then a person is almost exclusively active in the astral world and has become unaccustomed to using the physical world for its rightful purpose. He has developed a partiality for the other world and the physical body is often a hindrance. Now you will also comprehend the connection with fire worship which has appeared in the history of religion. The followers of Zarathustra sought, through the sacrificial fire of the priests, actually to create definite forms on the astral plane. On the Earth today everything takes place physically. But from what has been said, one can see that astral beings are continually created under the influence of our deeds. All deeds are accompanied by astral beings. These are our Skandas which bring about our Karma. But also all physical deeds leave astral beings behind on the astral plane. For instance Cologne cathedral corresponds to a definite being on the astral plane. Through everything that happens on the Earth, when all physical matter is worked over and the Earth has dissolved, through this the next astral Globe will arise of itself. It will simply be there as astral beings, as the effects of all the earlier physical processes. This is why man must continually work with Karma. In his next life he must put right again the grotesque astral beings that he has bungled, otherwise they would produce meaningless creatures for the next Globe. This is Karma that he must rectify. What takes place on a large scale on the Earth, takes place in a small way in man. Let us think of a child. He is wrongly brought up, spoiled with sweets and so on. This not only brings about processes in the physical body but continually imparts them to the astral, so that in fact the astral body also is changed. What one gives physically to the infant goes over into his astral body, it is present in the shape of definite forms. What is thus worked in, is however gradually worked out again. In advanced age the sins against the child take their revenge. These sins remain throughout the whole life and have great importance particularly in the final years. After the middle period a sort of reversal takes place; the astral then works into the physical plane. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] In childhood the foundation of what man will have in old age is implanted into the astral. When a person perceives how he has been sinned against and works upon himself with this in view, then he can eliminate the damage in the astral body, otherwise he will break down in old age under the weaknesses of his childhood. Only what man works into it consciously has a balancing effect on the astral body. If later in life the opposite qualities are not called up consciously, one cannot rid oneself of the failings.
|
| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXVIII
31 Oct 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
|---|
| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXVIII
31 Oct 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
|---|
We will give you yet another special example of how one can immerse oneself in the profundity of religious documents and gain an ever greater understanding of what they contain. If we study our sense organs as they are usually studied, we see that we have the possibility through the sense of smell of perceiving matter itself. Unless this fine substance were given off, man would be unable to smell. What takes place here is a connection with matter itself. The organ of taste is not connected with matter itself, but acts through a process of dissolving and perceiving its effect. Thus we can call taste a chemical sense, because it penetrates into the constitution of matter. The third sense that of sight, has nothing more to do with matter, for it only perceives pictures that are produced by matter. The fourth, the sense of touch, has still less to do with matter as such, for it only perceives attributes of the surroundings in connection with objects, such as warmth and cold; this is a state of matter which is no longer dependent on matter itself, but on what conditions surround it. Hearing is in no way dependent on the air, for we perceive only the oscillations, the vibrations of the air, something which stands in a quite external relationship to what is material. Matter, the air, is only the vehicle for the sound waves. The lowest perception of matter is smell, then comes taste, then sight, then touch and hearing. We can now ask: What is warmth and cold? It is what is contained in the warmth ether. So the sense of touch perceives the warmth ether, sight perceives the light ether, taste perceives the chemical ether, smell perceives the atomistic or life ether, hearing perceives the air. A sixth and a seventh sense74 which will only develop in the future, would perceive water and earth. We have therefore in our senses a sequence of stages in connection with what we call matter. We will first follow the development of our three lower senses. The sense of sight perceives by means of the light ether the objects around us. There was however a time when everything was dark. Let us go back to the moment of time when sight came into existence and the outer world as such became perceptible to us. Previously the eye was not yet opened to the outer world. We must imagine the same force which the eye receives from outside in the light ether, pouring outwards from within, streaming out through the eye in the opposite direction. If this were the case the being would illuminate the others around him. This was so at a certain time when human beings possessed eyes like the Cyclops. Illumination was brought about through the out streaming light; this light streamed from within outwards. Then man illuminated, as many sea creatures still do today, the objects around him and his own body. At that time he had no consciousness of his own, but he was solely an instrument for the corresponding divine being, in order to illuminate the world for him. The divine being had no means of seeing the surrounding objects other than human eyes. When as yet man had no intellect it was possible for the active light of the Godhead to pass through him and illuminate objects. The human being was the mediator for the Godhead. The latter wished by means of light to make the solid objects visible. Because the light passed through him, man himself was formed. Before the light had passed through the human being the Godhead had no need of light, because the objects were not yet solid, but fluid, so that no use could be made of light. That is the condition described in the Bible: ‘And darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God brooded on the face of the waters.’ At that time the world was simply water, even gold and silver and the other metals ran, were fluid. When within the water, like blocks of ice, solid objects arose, man separated his membered form and light became necessary. God said: ‘Let there be light and there was light.’ Then it was that man too first received his form. That is the moment when the Light Ether was introduced and the solid element separated off. God said: ‘Let the dry land appear.’ Before that everything was of a watery nature. In the same way as the Light Ether was incorporated into the solid element, so was the Chemical Ether incorporated into the water. Chemical relationships were worked into man when he was still fluid. The chemical relationships according to which today the different substances are combined, were imprinted into the individual. Then we come back into a condition when man and also the whole Earth was still aeriform; the life, or the atomistic ether flowed into him. The life ether was at that time introduced into the world through man. Now let us once more turn our attention to the condition which existed when God said: ‘Let there be Light.’ The Earth began to densify. Light shone upon it. This was also the time when man began to densify. The earlier forces however had to be retained. Now we have reached the condition when man let the light pass through himself. Then a complete reversal took place. Man began to perceive the light as something outside. Originally through him there had been introduced into this world:
Reversal:
Now man receives back the light from the world. (Reversal of the spiral.) Formerly he was a source of light, now the light streamed into him. He had become self-enclosed; thereby he acquired consciousness. The light shone into him; man began to let the surrounding world reflect itself in him. The next stage is that he learns to recognise objects with regard to their chemical constitution. He developed sympathy or antipathy for substances, a relationship to the world outside him. Then finally he also gained an inner perception of the atomistic or life-ether. Through the introduction of light into the world man acquired his solid form. Through the introduction of the chemical ether he acquired a relationship to the world. Through the introduction of the atomistic ether he acquired life. Thus through the eyes he acquired form; through the sense of taste, relationship to the world; through the sense of smell, the nose, life. Jehovah breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. When we approach religious writings with such ideas we find that the most profound truths have been placed into them. We shall see whether originally these truths were placed into the religious writings as we now have them. Let us take for example the builder of the Gotthard Tunnel and then a man who describes it. The builder, who actually constructed the Gotthard Tunnel did not need perhaps to possess such a high degree of engineering science in his conscious self, but he actually brought a thought into reality. Such is the relationship between the wise men of ancient times and those of today. At that time they possessed a creative wisdom. Now we have a wisdom based on observation. The creative wisdom is that wisdom which once made man, building up one after another those parts which today the anatomist takes out and describes. The creative wisdom is exactly the same as the wisdom which can be discovered today; it has been placed into the world. In the primeval wisdom man was concerned with the plan of the world. Now you can understand why the mystic has to withdraw into himself. The true mystic must be an investigator of the inner. He attempts to seek out those stages of evolution through which he has been created. If we were able completely to shut off all light from the eyes and then to create light within us, until the world appeared illumined from within outwards, then we should be able to immerse ourselves inwardly in the creative wisdom and penetrate into everything with inner vision. This has a practical value, for one can remember how in actual fact man has been built up by having passed through the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms: all this is also within him. What is outside in the world is the remains of what man himself once was. The human heart as it came into being was akin to what had taken place outside. The moment one sinks oneself into the heart, one creates for oneself the surroundings as they were when in the Lemurian Age the heart came into existence. If one concentrates on the activity of the heart, one can conjure up the entire environment of the Lemurian Age when the heart was formed. The Lemurian landscape rises up within us. Whoever concentrates on the heart sees the genesis of the human species. Through concentration on the interior of the brain, which developed gradually during the Atlantean Age, one sees the Atlantean landscape appear. If one concentrates on the solar plexus one is led to the Hyperboreans. So one travels back into the worlds as they once were. This is no brooding in oneself, but an actual perception of the various organs in their relationships with the world. This is the way in which Paracelsus found his remedies and achieved his cures. He knew that digitalis purpurea came into being at the same time as the human heart. Through concentration on a particular organ, corresponding remedies reveal themselves. Thus do the members of the macrocosm and the microcosmic nature of man stand in relationship to each other. Now the following is easy to understand. The human being receives warm red blood as do also the higher animals. That is to say, from then on man can separate himself from his surroundings, becoming independent, a whole enclosed within itself. This the fish is not. The fish has the same temperature as what surrounds it. With the warm red blood it became possible for man to develop warmth within himself. Then he was able to separate himself from his environment. Previously he was of the same temperature as his surroundings. What is it that actually occurred? Let us consider the undifferentiated human organism before the Lemurian Age. There was a uniform temperature over the whole Earth. The state of warmth within man was the same as the state of warmth outside. Then the inner warmth condition was heightened. This warmth condition signified individual warmth, warmth which was made use of in individualisation; and in the world outside the opposite came about: warmth, fire was distributed. Previously there was as yet no outer fire. To kindle fire in Nature first became possible when fire appeared within man. Since that time there was the beneficent fire distributed outside, and within man the egoistic fire. And now we have the point of time when fire was withdrawn from spiritual beings for the benefit of man. Human beings drew their warmth from a particular kind of spiritual being—the Agni. Because of this, what was previously there as Fire-Spirit in the world had to withdraw and from then on could only appear from time to time in the form of fire. The Promethean-Saga is based on this fact. The god had lost his previous body and created for himself a new one in the external fire. Here we have an outstanding example of how in a certain way man works destructively on the elemental forces of Nature. Man himself had called forth the element of fire in that he had become an individualised being. This underlies the occult saying that, fundamentally speaking, man works destructively where elemental beings are concerned. This is very far-reaching and makes clear to us how man still today continually creates new conditions, new forces of Nature in his world around him, while he himself progresses in his development. He shapes the structure of the Earth. Fire arose in the Lemurian Age; because of this Lemuria could meet its destruction through fire which man himself had created. The Atlantean Continent perished through water. The downfall of the Fifth Continent will be brought about through evil. We can observe a kind of retrogression in the following way: [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] The next stage—during the Atlantean Age—was the creative work of the human being on his own etheric body. There he had drawn air from his environment into himself. In this way he had so changed his ether body that the conditions of Atlantis had become quite different. During Atlantis the surface of the Earth was at one time only mist, an atmosphere of such a kind that a rainbow would have been impossible. At that time man worked upon the water. In the Lemurian Age he worked upon solid earth, this brought forth fire; in the Atlantean Age he worked upon the water; this brought about light. (it corresponded to the light of our intellect.) Then he worked upon the air. The Fifth Root-Race will bring man to his downfall through what must be called evil. Then comes the Sixth Root-Race. The Fifth Root-Race is that in which Manas develops on the physical plane. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] In the Old Indian civilisation man lived in a condition corresponding to Manas in a kind of deep trance-like state. There the primeval wisdom was revealed to the ancient Indians by the Rishis. The second revelation took place with the Persians in a condition similar to our deep sleep. In this condition man heard the Word. It was the condition of the Ancient Persian Sleep-trance. ‘Honover’ was the word used by the Persians. Third revelation: The peoples of the near East, Babylonians and Egyptians, perceived through Manas in picture-consciousness; they had visions or dream-sight. Fourth revelation: Clear waking-day consciousness was developed by the Semites, the Greeks and Romans. At that time Manas was perceived in clear day-consciousness, as incarnated man, Christ Jesus. So with the ancient Indians we find the trance of the physical body. With the ancient Persians we find the deep sleep of the etheric body. With the peoples of the Near East we find the picture consciousness of the astral body, with the Semites, Greek and Roman peoples the waking consciousness of the ego. Now in the Fifth Sub-Race man does not perceive the changing stages of Manas, but this Race sees as the highest stage the psychic experience of concepts as such. Our Sub-Race has developed the psychic Manas, the usual scientific knowledge. The Sixth Sub-Race will develop a Super-psychic Manas. What with human beings today is merely a kind of knowledge will become actual reality, a social force. The Sixth Sub-Race has the task of permeating society in a social way with everything which has been produced by the preceding stages of evolution. Then for the first time Christianity will come forth as shaper of the social order. The Sixth Sub-Race will be the one which is the germinal foundation for the Sixth Root-Race. The Fifth Root-Race is descended from the original Semites, from the Fifth Sub-Race of the Fourth Root-Race. This people developed the individual ego which produces egoism. Man owes his independence to the original Semites. Man must first find himself, but then again must also surrender himself He must surrender himself to what makes thought a reality. The Sixth Sub-Race is destined to replace blood relationship with Manas relationship, relationship in the spirit. Thinking which is altruistic will develop the predisposition to the overcoming of egoism. The Seventh Sub-Race will be a premature birth. It will make outwardly real too soon and too strongly what has come forth from Manas. In the Sixth Sub-Race the predisposition will be given for the overcoming of egoism, but in such a way that the balance is held between selfhood and selflessness. The man of the Sixth Sub-Race, will neither lose himself in what is outside, nor shut himself up in what is within. With the Seventh Sub-Race a kind of hypertrophy will come about. Man will then pour out what he now has within him: his egoism. On the other hand the members of the Sixth Sub-Race will hold the balance. The Seventh Sub-Race will harden egoism. Later the English-American people will be projected as something rigidified into the Sixth Root-Race, just as today the Chinese are a rigidified residue of the Atlantean Age, the Fourth Root-Race. World-egoism proceeds from the Anglo-American Race. From that direction the whole Earth will be overlaid with egoism. It is from England and America that all the discoveries come that will cover the Earth like a network of egoism. So it is from there that the whole Earth will be covered by a network of egotistic evil. But from a small colony in the East [The Slavonic peoples.] there will be developed, as though from a seed, new life for the future. The English-American civilisation consumes European culture. The sects in England and America represent nothing other than the most incredible conservation of what is old. But such Societies as the Salvation Army, the Theosophical Society and so on, come into existence just there, in order to rescue souls from decadence, for race evolution does not run parallel with soul evolution. But the race itself is going towards its destruction. Within it is the seed of the evil race.
The economic needs of existence will then be separated from work: there will be no more personal possession, everything will be owned in common. One will no longer work for one's personal existence, but will do everything as absolute offering for humanity.
|
| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXIX
03 Nov 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
|---|
| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXIX
03 Nov 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
|---|
We will now throw yet more light on the hidden working of Karma and consider the Karmic relationships between peoples and individuals. Those who take earnestly the principle of not looking at the world materialistically, but who seek for explanations out of the spirit will understand this. We have learned from history that illnesses which previously did not exist make their appearance in the course of evolution. So today, to begin with, we shall hear something about the origin of such illnesses as are connected with epochs and peoples. We shall understand this from out of the spirit. The explanation the doctor gives is that this or that illness is caused by bacilli. We must however ask: where do the bacilli come from? They are just as much incarnated living beings as man. Of those beings too which act as disturbers of human life we must ask: Where do they come from? What has brought them into their present material existence? What were they before they incarnated? Let us suppose, for example, that some nation or race is in its decline, is moving towards its downfall. It puts up a resistance. This resistance to its downfall is a spiritual expression of something that lives in the astral body of the nation in question. Were such a decline to concern only that which was to come to an end, then the feeling engendered would have no special effect upon others in the world. Let us assume however that it comes in conflict with another nation, plunging it into fear and anxiety and thus sets up a reaction in this other nation. Then we have a two-fold situation: the nation suffering decline, and what arises out of the confluence of the disturbance of the one people fighting against their own decline, and the fear and alarm of the other people. This is something lasting. Let us take a particular case: the Mongolian onslaughts of the Middle Ages, when the Mongols came into conflict with the Europeans, spreading among them fear and alarm. Such fear and such alarm are then present in the peoples in question. When one looks at these attacking hordes, of which the Mongolians are the last, placing oneself in the mood of all these mediaeval peoples, one sees how the desperation of the last branches of the Fourth Root-Race and the fear and alarm engendered in the Europeans created spiritual forms. If such an onslaught were to be met with courage and love, then the putrefying substance would be dissolved. But fear, hate and alarm conserve such decaying forms and these provide a source of nourishment for beings such as bacilli. Later they incarnate in those material forms suitable for such an incarnation. Thus the decaying substances embedded themselves in the fear and alarm of the European peoples as seeds of decay. These are minute living beings. In this way arose the mediaeval disease, leprosy. It arose out of the decaying substance of the declining Mongolian peoples. What then is the origin of those disturbers of human physical nature? They come from earlier spiritual causes, from sinfulness. This is Karma as it manifests in national communities. From this you can estimate how the moral life of a nation conditions the external life of the future. It lies in the power of a nation to care for its physical future through a corresponding moral life in the present. All the European esoteric schools say that all the bacterial illnesses of modern times have a similar origin. The illnesses caused by bacilli are traced back to their spiritual origin. This is an esoteric tradition among the Rosicrucians and in other esoteric schools where these things are taught. A fundamental teaching exists in small circles of esoteric schools, the content of which is that in the seventies quite definite battles took place in the astral world which caused things to take a better turn, even though ... [Gap in text ...]. These events are called the battle between the hosts of the archangel known to Christian esotericism as Michael and the hosts of the god Mammon.76 Mammon is, on the one hand, the god of hindrances, who places destructive, hindering things in the path of progress. On the other hand one sees in this god Mammon the creator of quite definite forms which work disturbingly in human life just in the sphere of infectious illnesses. Certain infectious illnesses, unknown in earlier times, are brought about by the god Mammon. We can estimate to what degree the esoteric schools must rouse a progressive thinking in the inmost depths of the human being when one realises that the actual source of these modern illnesses is nothing other than a retrogression, the longstanding conservatism of the so-called upper classes as opposed to the poverty-striken lower classes who are striving towards a new ... [Gap in text ...]. They are hindered, held back by what the god Mammon brings about. We find two forces confronting one another: the sentimental world of the declining upper classes, who like to preserve antiquated conditions, and the feeling of hatred in the lower classes—an astral life projected against the others by the masses. In this opposition esotericism again sees decaying substance and therein the cause of modern infectious illnesses. Whoever sees into these things will of course not take them as a reason for opposing modern medicine with its external remedies. But a real improvement will never come about through these external methods. What will come about later always reveals itself in advance through esoteric knowledge. This consists of rightly perceiving how the morality of the present day can lead to better health in the future. One can judge from this how profound was the perception of those who introduced the Theosophical Movement into the world. It arose out of the knowledge of such relationships. It was foreseen that the threat of the War of All against All would take on ever more menacing forms. The things that must come about fulfil themselves with an inner necessity, just as events in the East develop like a fire there where there is especially inflammable material.77 It would be senseless to wish to arrest such things. The appropriate and serviceable means to avert the War of All against All was sought by the Theosophical Movement through the spreading of the axiom of brotherhood. For brotherhood dissolves what streams into the world as means of decay, as hate. For as regards races we find ourselves on a downward path. If one were to believe that this downfall could be delayed and contained by hatred, not resolved by love, then naturally the very worst would follow. The Theosophical Movement would overcome this decline by love. Its founders know that the Theosophical Society is not only a remedy, but the source of the development of humanity as it goes into the future. So one sees how the physical is a result of what preceded it spiritually and how in particular circumstances people have it in their power, through knowledge of certain relationships, to connect the physical with its spiritual origin. For example, if one knows how a particular illness is connected with particular feelings and emotions, he knows that by calling up these feelings he can also call up the illness. The black magician can make use of this knowledge to destroy the people. The deep occult truths can therefore not be taught to everyone without due consideration, for it would immediately bring about a sharp demarcation between good and evil. This is the danger inherent in the spreading of occult teachings, for no-one can be taught how to make people well, without at the same time learning how to make people ill. Where occult teachings have penetrated more into certain peoples such things have happened. There are districts in the East where one can hear true reports that there are sects who make it their task to produce definite illnesses. Thus we penetrate to an ever greater degree into the understanding of the ways in which the material arises out of the spiritual. Now we will try to survey somewhat longer periods of time. We know that today there is a beautiful complementary interaction between everything that exists as animal life and the plant world. The plant makes use of carbon for itself and breathes out oxygen, thereby creating the source of life for all creatures in its surroundings who need to breathe. This source arises from the plant world. All that breathes today is there through the action of this mysterious workshop of the plant world. From this we can form a concept of how Worlds go under, how the World which preceded our Earth passed away. On the Old Moon breathing did not exist as it does now in human beings and animals. A quite different process took the place of the breathing process on the Old Moon. We can form a picture of the earlier process when we look at something remaining over from this time: the varying warmth of animals which develop the same temperature as their surroundings. On the Moon there was warmth or fire breathing. The inhaling and exhaling of fire or warmth corresponded at that time to the present day inhaling and exhaling of the air. In the middle of the Lemurian Age the breathing process began to take on the form it has today. The spiritual process of the embedding of the Monad in the lower man finds its material reflection in breathing. Breathing signifies the inhaling of the Monad. In Hatha Yoga therefore the pupil goes through a breathing process. He regulates rhythmically what man has today as a natural process in order to bring breathing under his control. Just as before man advanced to this process of breathing, he inhaled and exhaled warmth, transforming this into the circulation of the warm blood, so the pupil of Hatha Yoga seeks to form the breathing process into something inward, to bring it inwardly under his control. The Hatha Yoga rules signify the transformation of the breath into a process that does not go from within outwards, but is inwardly regulated, just as today the circulation of the blood is also inwardly regulated. In the case of animals with variable temperature the process of blood circulation has the same relationship to that of human beings as the breathing process of the Hatha Yoga pupil. Behind all these things lie deep thoughts concerning evolution which ought to be the foundation of real processes. What today is usually not understood is that in the air there is something spiritual. When there was still a consciousness of this, spirit was called: Air, Wind = Pneuma. Pneuma means a current of air and also the soul-spiritual. This terminology stems from times in which one still had a consciousness of the true connections. Let us now take the fact that on the predecessor of our Earth (the Old Moon) certain beings had evolved beyond the stage of the human evolution of that time. These were the Luciferic beings. When one considers these beings one must say: They did not live in an environment such as the Earth has today. They could not breathe air, thus they could not take in the spirit, for the taking in of spirit corresponds to the breathing of air. They were obliged to carry out in the warmth-principle what today takes place in the air. We differentiate on the Earth seven conditions of the physical: Firstly Life-ether, Secondly Chemical-ether, Thirdly Light-ether, Fourthly Warmth-ether, Fifthly Air, Sixthly Water, Seventhly Solid. Thus the Luciferic Beings had to carry out in warmth what man today carries out in air. Now you can understand that owing to this, these Beings who gave man his separate consciousness, his independence, are in a certain sense connected with fire. For this reason, when they make their appearance, it is connected with a certain craving for everything that manifests in man as heat, as fire. The craving attaches itself to man's individual warmth. So the donors of knowledge and freedom are bound up with something which seeks to incarnate in the element of warmth in man in a similar way to how this happened on the Old Moon. This is the connection between knowledge and birth and death, illness and so on in the world. With knowledge, birth, death and illness came into the world. This was the price man paid for knowledge. We see therefore also the connection between certain heat phenomena and illness, namely fever. This is the origin of fever. Traditions of this lingered on into the 19th century. In the earlier Planetary conditions, the forerunners of our Earth, we had not to do as yet with human beings, animals, plants and minerals as they are today. At that time beings existed who had not yet descended so deeply as present-day animals, nor yet ascended so high as present-day man. At that time plants did not exhale oxygen. Oxygen, this breath of life, did not as yet exist. Only with the coming into being of our plant kingdom did nitrogen become mingled with oxygen. The Moon was surrounded by an atmosphere of nitrogen. In the second half of this previous Planet the beings did certainly already strive towards such forms as could breathe, which were endowed with lungs and so on; but only in our present Earth-Cycle did the plant kingdom evolve as it is now. The animal beings then developed the organs of breathing. They pushed the plant kingdom a stage lower, in order that it should provide oxygen for breathing. These processes on the predecessor of our Earth had to be followed by a condition where life in the same form was no longer possible. The form had developed into something else and needed a new Planet. The preceding Planet had to meet its end; everything living suffocated. Thus do the Planets with their life perish, and from what has been prepared a new life evolves in the body of the Mother Planet. This is how the decline and uprising of Planetary evolution is to be understood. Just as man previously had the other kingdoms within himself, so today he still has the evil in his Karma within him. This he is now working out of himself. In the future good and evil will be there in external forms, a race of the good and a kingdom of the evil side by side. At that future time the human countenance will appear in transfigured form out of the separated, downward-thrust evil of animality. Let us think of the transfigured human countenance that today slumbers like a riddle in animal matter, separated from the animal evil and represented symbolically. You can represent it to yourselves in no better way than in the great intuition of the Egyptian Sphinx. This not only points back to the past, but it also points towards the future. Not for nothing did the old Egyptians place the Sphinx in front of the Temple of Initiation. Initiation is the implanting of the secret of the future into human souls. At the entrance to the Temple it was through the Sphinx that the milieu for initiation was already created. What outwardly is the body of oxygen is inwardly the Monad. As soon as oxygen appeared on the Earth the Monad had the possibility of incarnating. It is an attempt to possess the Monad when the pupil breathes in much oxygen and endeavours to retain it. Oxygen is not only something externally material. One must examine oxygen in the light of its spirit. Thus outwardly we have oxygen and inwardly the Monad. Oxygen therefore in the Lemurian Age formed the body for the descending sons of Manas.
|
| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXX
04 Nov 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
|---|
| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXX
04 Nov 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
|---|
Today in connection with the previous lecture some aphoristic remarks will follow concerning the different races. First however attention will be drawn to certain things, the reasons for which only appear in a few books. The so-called laws of nutrition in the various civilisations appear at first to be very arbitrary. This is not so however, they are born out of knowledge and wisdom, but we must strictly bear in mind that our present-day humanity is not at all in a position to be able to follow such matters as we now wish to deal with. They will nevertheless provide a basis for certain laws of social life. Of course no one should believe that one immediately becomes an adept simply by going over to vegetarianism and so on. Among oriental peoples there is a certain way of practising the art of healing in which the doctors attach the greatest importance to the nourishing of their own physical body.78 In places where the old spiritual life still exists, there are those who have become healers by following a diet consisting exclusively of milk. They are quite clear that because they exclude everything else they gain certain healing forces within themselves, especially in the treatment of so-called mental illnesses. They have their special methods. They know for certain that when they only take milk they then develop quite definite forces.79 Let us be clear about the intuition upon which this depends. This profound intuition can be understood in the following way. We know of a definite happening in human evolution. In the middle of the Lemurian Age the original human element divided into an ascending humanity and an animal kingdom. With this is bound up the fact that the forces which the Earth still had when it was united with the Moon also divided and a part of the same separated with the Moon from the Earth. Let us think of the time when the Earth was still united with the Moon. Man then stood at quite a different stage of development. He already had warm blood, but was not yet divided into two sexes. It was with the separation of the Moon that this division is to be observed, so that when today you look up at the Moon you can say: It is your separation from the Earth that has brought it about that the power of human reproduction has divided into two parts. There was also a time on the Earth in which humanity was directly connected, was merged together with what was animal, and was also nourished by the animal. This kind of nourishment cannot be easily understood by those lacking the power of clairvoyance. We can however form a conception of this when we observe the normal manner of nourishment of mammals, which feed their young with their own milk. With the division of the power of reproduction this kind of nutrition also appeared. Earlier human beings could absorb food substance just as today the lungs take in the air. At that time threads of suction connected man with the whole of Nature around him, somewhat in the manner in which today the embryo is nourished in the body of the mother. This was the old form of nourishment on the Earth. A relic of this is the suckling of mammals, and milk is like the nourishment mankind took in Pre-Lemurian times. It is the old food of the Gods, the first form of nourishment on the Earth. At that time the nature of the Earth was such that everywhere this nourishment could be sucked from it. Thus milk is a product of the first form of human food. When the physical constitution of man was nearer to the divine he sucked milk out of his surroundings. Occultists know how man is connected with Nature. The taking of milk is a transformation of a primeval form of nourishment. Man's first food was always milk. In the saying: ‘The milk of human kindness,’ this expression is used intentionally. We must ask: How was it originally brought about that milk, as it then was, could be sucked out of the Earth? The Moon forces in the Earth made this possible; like an all-pervading bloodstream they permeated the entire Earth. But when the Moon departed these forces could only be concentrated in special organs of living beings. The occultist calls milk: the Moon-food. Sons of the Moon are those who nourish themselves on milk. The Moon brought about milk. It has been verified that the Oriental healers, who only live on milk, again absorb the original forces which were on the Earth when milk still flowed in streams. They said: These are the forces which brought mankind into existence. These productive forces must also be health bringing, so we ourselves gain the power to further health, when we only take milk and exclude everything else. Let us transfer ourselves into the pre-Lemurian Age. Then the condition prevailed when milk was sucked out from the surroundings. A condition arose when milk became the general nourishment for mankind, and then the condition when nourishment was provided by the mother's milk. Before the time when milk was imbibed from Nature, there was an Age in which the Earth was still united with the Sun. There then existed a Sun nourishment. Just as milk has remained over from the Moon, products have also remained over which gained their maturity from the Sun. Everything irradiated with sunlight, blossoms and fruits of the plants, belongs to the Sun. Formerly their growth inclined towards the centre of the Earth when it was united with the Sun. They planted themselves into the Sun with their blossoms. When the Earth separated from the Sun they retained their old character: they again turned their blossoms towards the Sun. Man is the plant in reverse. That part of the plant which grows above the Earth has the same relationship to the Sun as milk has to the Moon, is therefore Sun-food. Side by side with milk nourishment there arose a kind of plant nourishment, namely from the upper parts of the plant. This was the second form of human food. Thus when the Lemurian Age was approaching its end two human types faced each other: the one kind, the Sons of the Moon, who bred animals and nourished themselves from what the animals produced, from their milk; and a second kind who fed on plants, on the produce of the Earth. This fact is portrayed in the story of Cain and Abel.80 Abel is a shepherd, Cain a tiller of the soil; Abel represented the Moon race and Cain the Sun race. This allegory is very profound. Occult teaching reveals this in a somewhat concealed way. That divine being who gave man the possibility of becoming a Moon-being, nourishing himself with the transformed Moon food, was called by the Jewish people ‘Jehovah’. He was the nourishing force of Nature; this flowed towards Abel and he took it from his flocks. It was a falling away from Jehovah when man went over to the Sun-food. This is why Jehovah would not accept Cain's offering, because it was the offering of a Sun-food. When we go back into the most ancient times we find no nourishment at all except milk, the food which man receives from living animals. This is the first form of nourishment as it still is now in the first weeks of life, and the Eastern healer relates this form of nourishment to the saying: ‘If you do not become as little children, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ All these things have their significance. Now we come from the Lemurian to the Atlantean Age, to the peoples who lived in the region of the present Atlantic Ocean. With the Atlanteans something new appears. They began for the first time to eat food that was not taken from what is living, but which came from what was dead. They consumed what had yielded up life. This is a very important transition in human evolution. Through the fact that human beings nourished themselves from the lifeless it became possible to make the transition to ego-hood. This feeding on what is dead is rightly connected with the desire for the ego. Man became independent through eating what is dead. He took the lifeless into himself in various forms, at first in the case of the developing hunting peoples who killed animals. Later, peoples arose who ate, not only what was ripened by the sun, but what ripened below the surface of the earth. This is just as lifeless as the dead animal. Everything living in the lowest part of animal nature, what is saturated with, blood, has turned away from the Moon-force. The Moon-force itself is still in milk, which is connected with the life-process, whereas man absorbs the forces of what is dying when he eats what is dead. Equally dead is that part of the plant that grows below the surface of the Earth, that is not shone upon and warmed through by the life principle of the Sun. Thus there is a correspondence between the root and the blood-saturated body of the animal. Later another form of food was added which did not exist earlier. Man introduced into his food what was purely mineral, what he took out of the Earth, salt and so on. In his food therefore he passed through the three kingdoms. This is approximately the course which the Atlantean civilisation passed through in regard to nourishment. Firstly came the hunting peoples, then the farming peoples and thirdly the development of mining, which brought to light what is under the Earth. All these things represent a turning away from the actual force of life or production. The dead animal is separated from life. That part of the plant which is in the soil is also separated from life. Everything of the nature of salt is the dead nature of the mineral kingdom, that remains over from the past. Now we come to the fifth human race. The drinking of milk and the eating of fruit continued; other things were added as something new. In the Fifth Root-Race the most outstanding addition is what was gained from minerals, that is to say, by means of a chemical process. This is indicated in Genesis. What is it that was gained by means of a chemical process? There is an ascent in evolution, chemistry is applied to plants, to fruit. Out of this wine arose. This did not exist on Atlantis. Therefore the Bible tells us that Noah, the original ancestor of the post-diluvian race, became intoxicated by wine. By means of a mineral-chemical process something was produced from the plant kingdom. Wine then played a special role in the whole of the Fifth Root-Race. All initiates from the beginning of the Fifth Root-Race had taken over their traditions from the time of the Atlantean Race, when there was as yet no wine. The Indian, Persian and Egyptian initiates had no need of wine. What played a part in the sacred rituals was exclusively water. With the Fifth Root-Race wine made its appearance, in which the mineral treatment of the plant had to play its part. The first three Sub-Races were repetitions of what came earlier. The Fourth Sub-Race was the first to develop the new, which was to appear in the Fifth Root-Race. A certain sacredness was claimed for wine. In this connection cults emerged in which wine played a part (the cult of Dionysos). A wine-god even appeared. This had gradually been prepared for in the development of humanity. Wine had first made its appearance with the Persians. Here however wine was still something quite secular. Only gradually did it find its way into ritual, into the Dionysos-Cult. The Fourth Sub-Race is the one which first brought forth Christianity and also the one which seven hundred years earlier announced its mission through the Dionysian dramas. These first took wine into the sphere of the cult. This fact was portrayed in the most wonderful way by that evangelist who knew most about Christianity: St. John. He describes at the very beginning the transformation of water into wine, for Christianity came at first for the Fourth Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-Race. A teaching was needed which makes sacred what had to come about on the physical plane. Wine cuts human beings off from everything spiritual. Whoever takes wine cannot attain the spiritual. He can know nothing of Atma, Buddhi and Manas, of what is lasting, of what reincarnates. This had to be. The whole course of human evolution is a descent and a re-ascent. Man had to descend to the lowest point. And it was in order that he should come right down onto the physical plane that the Dionysian Cult made its appearance. The human body had to be prepared for materialism through the Dionysian cult; this was why a religion had to appear that changed water into wine. Formerly wine was strictly forbidden to the priests, they could experience Atma, Buddhi and Manas. Now a religion had to come about which led right down onto the physical plane, otherwise human beings would not have completely descended. This religion which led them downwards had to have an outer manifestation, a manifestation that was turned away from Atma, Buddhi and Manas, from reincarnation, and only drew attention to what was of a general nature. The next thing will be that wine is again turned into water. If at an earlier time water had not changed into wine, man would not have received everything which is in this earthly vale. At the beginning of St. John's Gospel in the description of the changing of water into wine at the marriage in Cana, we are shown how Christ took into account what was there. But he also reckoned with the future, through the fact that for his part He inaugurated the Sacrament of the Last Supper. The Last Supper is the greatest symbol of the One who began this stream of civilisation with the Fourth Sub-Race. Being indeed the true ‘Son of Man’, who descended to the greatest depths in order to rise again with the greatest power, He had to hold to what was there and show mankind how the physical constitution of the race was connected with His mission. If humanity were to ascend again it was necessary for them to have a symbol leading once more from the dead to the living: Bread and Wine. In the occult sense, bread is what only comes about when the plant has been killed. Again, wine comes about when the plant has been killed, but then further treated with mineral substance. When one bakes the plant one does the same as when one kills the animal. When we draw wine from the plant kingdom in a certain sense we do the same as when we bleed the animal. Bread and wine are there as the symbol of the Fourth Race. What should develop in the future is a further ascent from plant to mineral nourishment. Bread and Wine must again be sacrificed, must be given up. Thus as Christ appeared in the Fourth Sub-Race he pointed to Bread and Wine: ‘This is my Body; this is my Blood.’ Here He wished to create a transition from animal nourishment to plant nourishment, the transition to something higher. At that time there were two classes of human beings: Firstly those whose nourishment was flesh and blood; these are the pre-Christian people with whom Christ in no way concerned himself. Secondly those who only killed plants, who drew from plants their blood: people who drank wine and ate bread. With these He was still concerned; they are the forerunners of that humanity which will exist in the future. The significance of the Last Supper is the transition from nourishment taken from the dead animal to nourishment taken from the dead plant. When our Fifth Sub-Race will have reached its end, in the Sixth Sub-Race, the Last Supper will be understood. Even before this it will be possible for the third form of nourishment to begin to make its appearance, the purely mineral. Man himself will then be able to create his nourishment. Now he takes what the Gods have created for him. Later he will advance and will himself prepare in the chemical laboratory the substances he will require. So you see that all these things arise out of deep intuitions. When with the old Eastern peoples we find all kinds of instructions about what should be eaten, these are not actually laws, but stories: You should not expect the effect of substance to be other than they are. That which Christ killed, which was actually sacrificed after he had partaken of the Last Supper, is the physical body. This dies. For the whole of humanity this will die. Towards the middle of the Sixth Root-Race, in the last third, there will no longer be a physical body. Then the entire human being will again be etheric. It will pass over into the finer substance. But this will not happen if man himself does not bring it about. For this he must first pass over to the nourishment which he prepares in the laboratory. So that man, in so far as he no longer takes his nourishment from Nature, but gains it from his own wisdom, from the God within him, so far does he also hasten. towards his own deification. When man begins to nourish himself, the foundation will also be laid for something higher, that is, self-propagation. He will gradually create life for himself out of the mineral world. This is the great progression of human evolution. What the natural scientist knows today is only a fraction of the great cycle. With Saturn we come into the Mineral Age. In the Atlantean Epoch, through consuming what was dead, preparation was made for what was to bring about egoism. From the original Semites up to the Fifth Sub-Race, the human ego was very gradually developed. In the Sixth Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-Race the ‘I’ will again reach a higher stage of development. This means that we stand before a new so-called spiral of existence. The previous spiral began in the time when the original Semites laid the foundation for the present Root-Race. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] It is to the original Semite civilisation that we owe everything that has existed up till the present time. But now there begins a new impact with the Slavonic Peoples which will lead into the future. A kind of break with the past will be brought about by a people who will introduce a new impulse into the world. This is working as hidden spirituality out of the Russian peasantry. It will form the second part of the coming spiral. At the present time a certain culture is in process of destruction and a new one is being prepared. It is being prepared in the West and will come to fruition in the East. But the Old must activate the New. Wherever in our time we have new impulses these are germinal, awkward, unskillful. On the contrary the Old is clear-cut, but has a critical, destructive character. It was the Semitic Race which gave birth to the bearers of the Old Culture, who are the bearers of what spirals within the spiral. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] All these have something Semitic about them. Examples: Lassalle, Marx. The spiral turns inwards. A continuation from here is not possible. Now a leap must be made as though from one shore to another, to the spirituality of the future culture of the East. This is a completely new impulse. What belongs to the future is as yet unformed and naturally infiltrated by the old. Haeckel is a man who swims in midstream and is pulled by both spirals. The first part of Haeckel's ‘Weltritsel’ (Riddles of the World)81 is positive, elementary Theosophy: the second part is negative and altogether destructive. This is a double spiral (Wirbel). We can also observe these contradictions in the Socialism of the East and the West. The Socialism of the West is a Socialism of production; that of the East is a Socialism of consumption. One who orders the social life in the direction of production reckons with possessiveness, with egoism. He who reckons with consumption turns his attention to what others require from him; he bears in mind his fellow men, reckons with brotherhood. The socialism of production—Marx, Lassalle—only bears the worker in mind, in so far as he is the producer. In the East the consumer is placed in the foreground, as for instance with Kropotkin, Bakunin, Herzen. You can see things building up to a climax if you follow Kropotkin. He had an immediate understanding of the principle of helpful interaction in the case of animals. The socialism of the West is entirely built up on strife. Thus do the currents of World evolution play into one another.
|
| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXXI
05 Nov 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
|---|
| 93a. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture XXXI
05 Nov 1905, Berlin Translated by Vera Compton-Burnett, Judith Compton-Burnett |
|---|
Our Fifth Root-Race, the present Post-Atlantean humanity, was preceded by that of Atlantis, on the now submerged continent between Europe and America. The Atlanteans can in no way be compared with the human beings who today inhabit our Earth Globe. For even the remnants of that old race have learnt a variety of things from the later inhabitants of the Fifth Continent and we are therefore unable to reconstruct from them the conditions of that civilisation. At the beginning of the Atlantean civilisation there were no tools. By means of clairvoyant forces it was possible for the Atlantean to make the earth serve his needs. The preparation of metals for such uses only appeared towards the end of the Atlantean Epoch. A small group was separated off from the population of Atlantis, just as now in the Theosophical Society a separation should once again take place. It was their task to carry over a new civilisation into the Fifth Root-Race. You would find the place where those who were chosen lived, a small colony, in present England and Ireland. At that time this was where the original Semites lived. They were the first people who were in a position to think with their intellect. All the ideas of the Atlanteans were still of the nature of pictures. The rounded shape of the front of the brow, the formation of the part of the brain on which thought depends, first appears with the population of the original Semites, who were in no way similar to the present Semitic race. This original Semitic people who, one can say, discovered thinking, journeyed through Europe into Asia and there founded a civilisation. They formed the Fifth Sub-Race of the Atlanteans. The seven Sub-races of the Atlantean RootRace were as follows: Firstly the Rmoahals, secondly the Tlavatlis, thirdly the original Toltecs, fourthly the original Turanians, fifthly the original Semites, sixthly the original Accadians, seventhly the original Mongolians. The Fifth Root-Race therefore arose from the Fifth Sub-Race of the Atlanteans. When we look towards Asia we find there as, the First Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-Race, the Ancient Indian race, that people who later journeyed in a more Southern direction and there became the ancestors of the later Indians. The most essential characteristic of this ancestral race, who had travelled towards the north of India, was that it developed no real sense for material culture. It possessed spiritual vision of the highest order combined with a completely undeveloped sense for the material. The ancient Indians were turned away from the world; their souls were completely similar to the Atlanteans, in that they were able to develop a superlative, glorious picture world. Through the practise of Yoga, working from within outwards, they later evolved what today seems to us a learned conception of the world. Of this, what has been handed down as external tradition, only fragments remain. The Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita no longer give any real picture of the mighty conceptions of the Indians, but only echoes. In the Vedanta philosophy also there is only an abstract remainder of the original teaching of the Indians, which was handed down by word of mouth. Think of the faculty which appeared in the later Kabbalistic teaching in a form which elaborated matters in minute detail with subtle intricacy, think of this faculty applied to lofty cosmic thoughts. When later the Jew was able to apply thought to such things in the Kabbalistic teachings, it followed that the later Jewish occult teaching was only a decadent reflection, an echo of that finely articulated thought system of the primeval Indians. And what the teaching of the Brahmans became is by no means only religion in the sense of later systems, but knowledge, poetry and religion in a single great whole. All this was, as it were the finest flower, the extracted essence of what had developed in the old Atlantean civilisation. The Europeans also came over from Atlantis to Western and Central Europe and here there developed a quite different teaching. Groups of people settled who were not yet advanced enough to be chosen to found new civilisations, but yet possessed in germinal form what in India came to expression in so magnificent a way, but which here remained at a much earlier stage. What had its start in Europe moved ever further and further towards Asia. A common teaching formed its foundation, but in Europe this remained at a somewhat primitive level. The Indian teaching was expressed in the Vedas. ‘Veda’ means the same as ‘Edda’, only the content of the Vedas is more finely developed than that which remained here in Europe in a more primitive form as the Edda, which was only written down at the end of the Middle Ages. We must realise that this great primal spiritual teaching underwent a certain modification brought about by the migrating peoples. Its original greatness consisted in grasping the mighty divine unity which was recognised by the spiritual vision of the (ancient) Indians. This was no longer so with the next, the (ancient) Persian Race. In the wisdom arising from this primeval Indian vision the concept of time was almost entirely absent. It was with the Second Sub-Race, the ancient Persian, that the concept of time made its appearance. Time, it is true, was recognised by the Indian but was more uniform; the concept of history, the progression from the imperfect to what is more perfected, was lacking. Thinking was governed by the idea that everything has emanated from divine perfection. Persian thinking was governed by the concept of time. Zervan Akarana is one of the most important Divinities of the Persians and this is in fact Time. How did one arrive at the concept of time? Whoever seeks above all the primal unity of the Godhead, as in the case of the ancient Indians, must conceive it as the absolute Good. Evil, the imperfect in the world, was for the ancient Indian nothing but illusion; ‘illusion’ was a very important concept. These ancient people said: Nothing whatever exists in the world that is imperfect and evil. If you believe that something evil exists, you have not looked at the world in a way sufficiently free from illusion. Rust, for instance, which eats into iron, is elsewhere very beneficial: you must only consider where it is. When you look at a criminal through the veil of illusion, he will appear to you as such; if however you turn away from illusion you will realise that there is no such thing as evil.—This teaching is inwardly connected with a turning away from the world. It was otherwise with the Second Sub-Race. There, with the earliest of the Persian peoples, the Good was given a particular place in the World-process, was regarded as the goal. It was said: The Good must be sought for. The world is good and evil, Ormuzd and Ahriman; and what conquers the evil is Zervan Akarana, Time. This is how good and evil came into the early Persian world-conception as the principle of evolution. The Zarathustran teaching rests on the placing of evil in the world, and on the time-concept. Man is placed into life in order to conquer evil. This conception is connected with the fact that the Second Sub-Race was not one that was estranged from the world, but worked within it. Active, productive in various branches of human work, attention directed to the outer world, concerned as to how someone could himself create good out of the world: this was the Second Sub-Race. With the Persians therefore a whole company of Gods makes it appearance; not characteristics of one God, but a plurality of Gods; because the world, if not regarded as illusion, but as reality, presents a plurality, a multiplicity. The Gods which were venerated there were more or less personal-spiritual Divinities. The earliest initiates, who founded the ancient Indian teaching, were also the teachers of the Second Sub-Race, the ancient Persian Race. Here they adapted the whole teaching to a working people. They created that religion which was brought to fruition by the various Zarathustras.82 A further initiation advanced towards the Near East: to Egypt, to the Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, these forefathers of the Arabs. There the Third Sub-Race was developed. This Third Sub-Race was such that it now sought to bring both directions—the inner nature of man and the outer world—into harmony with each other. Whether you look for the fundamental conception of this Third Sub-Race in Chaldea or Egypt, everywhere you will find a pronounced awareness of the connection between human work and the forces of Nature. This is an essential difference when compared with the Persian Race. In Persia you have two powers, the good and the evil, which do battle with one another. Now man tries to bring the different nature forces or beings into his service. What developed as Persian religion was mainly built up on human morality and industry. Now in the Third Sub-Race the consciousness developed that one does not master nature only by means of bodily strength and moral behaviour, but best of all through knowledge. In those lands where a skillful agriculture was pursued as in Egypt and Chaldea, there developed a co-ordination of heavenly-spiritual powers with what was carried out by human work. Knowledge of the meteorological environment and the heavenly bodies evolved there. Strength for work was sought for in the knowledge of Nature. So it came about that man directed his gaze to the stars, and astronomy was brought into connection with humanity on the Earth. Man's origin was sought for in the stars. Thus, in this sense we have for the first time to do with science. Now in the Third Sub-Race, instead of inner perception, we have practical knowledge. So we hear of great initiates who taught geometry, the practice of surveying, technical skills. The fructification of human activity with cosmic wisdom brought down from the spiritual world makes its appearance in the Third Sub-Race. With this, something was given which translated the whole conception of human life into a kind of heavenly science. With the different peoples this found expression in various ways. In the case of the Egyptians, Osiris, Isis and Horus were conceived of as representatives of astronomical phenomena. Three different Sub-Races developed in Asia. Taking their start from Atlantis, a colony led by initiates traveled over to Asia. A special result of this was the ancient Indian civilisation, a second, the ancient Persian; the third result was the Egyptian-Chaldean civilisation: they all had a common initiation-source. In Europe however groups always remained behind which fell away from what culminated with such magnificence in the three great civilisations. These separate cultural streams were distributed in Europe in the most varied way. In Europe too there were initiates who formed Mystery Schools towards the end of the period of which we are speaking: they were called Druids: Drys means Oak. The strong oak was the symbol of the early European priest-teachers, for what dominated the peoples in the North was the thought that their old form of culture would necessarily have to decline. There the Twilight of the Gods was taught and the future of Christianity came to magnificent expression through these Northern prophets in what later became the Siegfried Saga.83a This may be compared with the Achilles Saga.83b Achilles is invulnerable in his whole body with the exception of the heel, Siegfried with the exception of the spot between the shoulders. To be invulnerable in such a way signifies to have been initiated. In Achilles you have the initiate of the Fourth Sub-Race which lies on the ascending curve of man's cultural development: therefore all the upper parts of Achilles are invulnerable; only the heel the lower nature is vulnerable, just as Hephaistos is lame. The German Siegfried was also an initiate of the Fourth Sub-Race, but vulnerable between the shoulder blades. This is his vulnerable spot, first made invulnerable by the One who bore the cross. With Siegfried the Gods reach their downfall, the Northern Gods approach their end (Twilight of the Gods). This gives the Northern saga its tragic note, for it not only points to the past, but to the Twilight of the Gods, to the time which is to come. The Druids gave to man the teaching of the declining Northern Gods. Thus in what was still symbolic form, the battle of St. Boniface84 with the Oak represents the battle of the Druids with the old Priesthood. Everywhere in the North one can point to the traces of what came to expression over in Asia. For instance Muspelheim and Niflheim are a counterpart of Ormuzd and Ahriman. The giant Ymir, out of whom the whole world is made, corresponds to the cutting into pieces of Osiris. In the most detailed way one can follow the connection between the European peoples of the North and the other civilisations. When in the South of Europe the Fourth Sub-Race was developing, the Northern tribes had also made the transition into the Fourth Stage so that in the Germanic peoples Tacitus85 found much that was related to the Southern culture. Irmin86 for example is the same figure as Hercules. Tacitus also tells us of a kind of Isis worship there in the North. So the older stages of civilisations progressed towards what was to come as Christianity. So think of Europe, Central Asia and Egypt as sown with the seed of what had developed under the influence of the Initiation Schools. These Initiation Schools sent out from their midst the founder of the Fifth [Fourth] Sub-Race, who had long been prepared in the shelter of the Mysteries. This is the personality who in the Bible is called Abraham. He came from Ur in Chaldaea and developed as an extract of the three older civilisations. The task which was represented in Abraham was to carry into the human realm all that had been held in veneration in the outside world; to create initiates who laid great value on what was human, in order to found the cult of the personality. This brought about personal attributes in the Jewish patriarchs. Here we have to do with duplicity and cunning. Jacob gains his inheritance by employing ruse and cunning in order to take what he wants from his brother. This is the reality out of which our present-day civilisation developed: it is founded on intelligence and possessiveness. In the stories of the Old Testament this is magnificently expressed as a kind of dawning of the new. It would be impossible to present this origin in a more powerful way. Esau is still a hairy man, that means he represents the human type which is still more enmeshed in the physical; Jacob represents one who relies on his intelligence and guile and thereby achieves what is now actually developing in human nature. The overcoming of physical force through intelligence is here inaugurated. The initiators do not always introduce something great into the world, but what must of necessity come about. ‘Israel’ means: He who leads man to the invisible God, who dwells within. Isra-el: El means the goal; Isra = the invisible God. Until then God was visible, whether it was the one who gave the urge towards Good and Evil as with the Persians, whether the God who had his body in the stars, in the Universe: This God was experienced as something visible. And now we have the Jewish initiation portrayed in Joseph and his twelve brethren. It is a beautiful and powerful allegory. The allegorical now makes its appearance: the intellect, when it wishes to be effective, becomes the recounter of allegories. How Joseph was initiated was first recounted. He was removed from his normal surroundings, sold for twenty pieces of silver and cast into a pit, where he remained for three days. This indicates an initiation. Then he comes to Egypt where his activities bring new life. And now we have finally indicated the transition which began at that time from the knowledge of God in the stars to the knowledge of man. Joseph was rejected because he had dreams. He had the following dream: Sun, Moon and eleven stars bowed down before him. The eleven stars are the eleven signs of the Zodiac. He felt himself to be the twelfth. The symbolism of the Star-Religion was now led over into the human. In the twelve brothers, the starting point of the twelve tribes' the knowledge of God in the stars was led over into the personal. “Now you surely do not wish to assert,” said his father—“that your brothers will bow down to you.” Here the change is given us. The divine knowledge of the stars is replaced by a knowledge attached to the personal human. This finds its form in the Mosaic law. Out of the three Ancient Civilisations, through the initiation of the Jewish Patriarchs, this Fourth Civilisation, the primal Jewish, was derived. This we have as the Fourth Sub-Race, for there belong to it also the civilisations of Ancient Greece and Rome. The civilisations of Greece and Rome (Roman law) both become great just through this personal element, until eventually this thought incarnated, reaching its culmination in Christianity. So it is in this lesser racial branch that the actual stream of the Fourth Sub-Race makes its appearance. The Graeco-Latin stream is a higher form of the Judaic; here the cult of the personal is intensified. There is no contradiction between this descent to the deepest point and then the ascent. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Everywhere [within the Fourth Sub-Race] we can observe this. The personal had actually to come to expression in the way described in the Esau and Jacob Saga in order to find its purification in the beauty of the human culture of the Greeks and the greatness of the human culture of the Romans. In the Odysseus Saga the ancient civilisation of the priests was conquered by cunning. It was out of the civilisations that arose from this that Christianity could first develop, which in truth contains all the ancient cultures in itself and can therefore also absorb them. In accordance with his parentage Jesus Christ was a native of Galilee ... ‘Galilean’ means: ‘The Stranger’, someone who does not really belong; ‘Galilee’ means a small isolated territory where someone could be brought up who, in his native milieu had to take into himself, not only the Jewish, but also all the ancient forms of culture. Out of the impact between the Romans and the Northern peoples there now developed the Fifth Sub-Race in which we ourselves live. It has still kept an impulse from the old Initiation Schools in the Moorish, and Arabian influence which came over from Asia. It is always the same influence, the same Initiation School. We can trace how the Irish monks, as also those who work in scientific fields, are essentially inspired by the Moorish-Arabian science. This gives the same fundamental character in a new-form, in a way in which it could now be received. It is here that Christianity first finds its real expression. It has merely passed through the ancient Greek civilisation for as long as the Fifth Period of Culture was being prepared; and then finds here firm ground, embodying itself in a whole range of nations. Everything at that time was permeated and inspired by Christianity. Our present time with its materialistic culture is the last radical expression of what was then inaugurated. The birth of this new culture is symbolically presented in the Lohengrin Saga. Lohengrin is the initiator of the ‘city-state’, and the city life which leads up to a new cultural stage is symbolised by Elsa of Brabant. Into all these streams others penetrate, for instance the Mongolian tribes. What originally came over from the West was related to what came with the Huns from the East. So from East and West something came together that was related: the Mongolian and Germanic tribes. Those who originated from the West were left-behind descendants of the Atlanteans, as were also the Mongolians from the East. Fundamentally both streams were related. It is always one stream which crosses another. Both, however, have a common native ground since they both originated from Atlantis. Now here in the North, everything that has remained from earlier times took on a more established form. At the same time as the epoch of the Jewish Prophets, in the centuries before Christ, we find here indications of a great, primeval, Atlantean initiate. Wod-Wodha-Odin.87 This is a modernised Atlantis, in a new form, an atavism, a throwback into the Atlantean Age. And this happens everywhere, over in Asia also. In Asia W, the sound V, becomes B, Wodha = Bodha = Buddha. Buddhism appears as a throwback into the Atlantean Age. This is why we find Buddhism most widespread with what has remained over from the Atlanteans in the Mongolian peoples. And where the very pillars of its greatness make their appearance in Tibet, there we have a modern, monumental expression of Atlantean culture. One must get to know such relationships between peoples, then one will also understand history. When Attila,88 the fighter for monotheism, appears in Europe, it was Christianity which first halted him, because there he was confronted with something greater than anything the Huns possessed. The monotheism of the Huns was, as the outcome of an Atlantean civilisation, of a magnitude which they found in no other peoples that they encountered on their way. Christianity alone made a forceful impression on them. Many things in historical development are to be understood in the light of these great considerations. The well-known traveler, Peters,89 certainly feels that the old Bodhism and the Wotanism can flow together, but he does not know that we in Europe have not only to be representatives of what comes from the ancient past, but something new, a new spiral. Into the old part of the spiral there strikes the very newest, the wisdom pointing to the future. This is related to the old wisdom as clear day consciousness is related to trance consciousness. With completely clear day consciousness future peoples will develop a spiritual culture which will be different from the old. For this reason Theosophy must not be only what is carried over from the old, from Buddhism and Hinduism; this would certainly collapse. Something new must arise out of the seeds which slumber in the East of Europe, coming together with everything that is being worked out there. The inherent culture of the future lies in the unfolding of what is now in a seed condition in the Folk-elements of Eastern Europe. We ourselves in Central Europe are the advance post. Eastern Europe must provide the means, the human material for what is here being founded in advance. The Rosicrucian Schools always taught that Central and Western Europe are only advance posts of what will develop in the European East, what will proceed from the fructification of the Folk element and European knowledge. With Tolstoi everything is fructified through the West European culture, but in a way different from that of others before him. With powerful simplicity he utters what no Kant and no Spencer could have expressed. What there appears over-ripe appears in him as something still unfulfilled. But it is always so with what is in a seed condition. Not out of the fine perfected plant, but out of the seedling does the new, future plant grow. Whatever one may experience, one can look with complete trust towards the future. For just as the crystal first develops out of an alkaline solution only after it has been vigorously stirred, so also something new can only develop after great upheavals.
|
| 80a. The Essence of Anthroposophy: Anthroposophy and Spiritual Science
19 Nov 1921, Berlin |
|---|
| 80a. The Essence of Anthroposophy: Anthroposophy and Spiritual Science
19 Nov 1921, Berlin |
|---|
| Dear attendees! Anthroposophy aims to lead human knowledge to those areas in which the great questions of life and soul lie, the questions that deal with human destiny on a large scale, with the question of the eternity of the human soul, with that which comes from the world beyond birth and death and has an effect on human life and so on. But this anthroposophy, as it is meant here, wants to conduct its research in complete harmony with the current spirit of science. If this scientific spirit still regards it today in many ways as the result of some kind of phantasms, then anthroposophy must believe that these things are still based on complete misunderstanding. But anthroposophy must go beyond the results that can be found today by recognized science. Nevertheless, anthroposophy has the greatest esteem and fullest recognition for modern science. Over the past three to four centuries, this natural science has achieved an incredible amount in the overall education of humanity. For anthroposophy, these achievements are primarily significant in terms of the state of mind that a person can achieve by fully penetrating the discipline of this scientific spirit and its research method, by permeating the attitude that prevails within this modern natural science. I would like to say that modern natural science has actually only brought to light the full significance of what we call our sensory knowledge. And anyone who wants to speak — as is to be done this evening — of supersensible knowledge must, above all, be completely clear about the nature of sensory knowledge, without any dilettantism. By systematically applying the methods of observation, by developing the way experiments are conducted, and by mathematically and otherwise rationally treating observations and experiments, modern natural science has gradually raised itself to the ideal of arriving at something through the contemplation of the sensory world that something that approximates more and more to an objective reality, an objective reality into which nothing may be mixed from the subjective, personal arbitrariness of man, nothing from any phantasms or illusions. In this respect, supersensible knowledge must also emulate natural science. If we use the human mind merely – and as mathematicians we do this particularly – to order and systematize the phenomena of the senses and thereby to divine their laws, then we gradually come to realize that the senses and their explanations are basically the great educators of the human mind, that mind which is nevertheless dependent in a certain respect on the inner organic constitution of the human being. We know how dependent we are — and modern science, physiology and pathology, can still substantiate this — in our judgments and in forming our ideas of what our physical and mental constitution is. But by devoting ourselves to sense perception in a scientific way, we are constantly compelled to rectify in an objective sense that which wants to leave us as illusions, as phantasms. This – I say this again – must absolutely be emulated by supersensible knowledge. However, the modern scientific method comes up against a certain limit in its efforts to understand the external world, and important naturalists have clearly spoken about these “limits of natural knowledge” based on the nature of scientific knowledge. We cannot get beyond the order of sense phenomena. At the moment we want to go further, to go beyond the sensory tapestry that spreads around us through intellectual speculation, we must either state the limits of knowledge of nature, or we must, as it were, let go of the intellect and extend the concepts, speculate, build hypotheses into the void, into the indefinite. And there have been enough of these hypotheses. Many a person has cautiously tried to venture beyond the realm of sense perception with concepts and ideas. But in the end, all such efforts leave the person unsatisfied, for he can never give himself an explanation as to what justification there can be for extending the ideas gained from the sense world into the realm beyond the senses. And so all philosophies and speculations that want to go beyond the sensory world are completely unsatisfactory for the serious thinker, especially for the thinker accustomed to scientific concepts, and we see the consequences of this in the various world view endeavors of the present. The human heart and soul cannot remain with what the external senses can tell it. The human soul knows that the merely temporary fate, which is bound to this sensory world from it, cannot affect its ultimate nature, and so deeper natures, more serious souls, often take refuge in all kinds of mystical endeavors. These mystical endeavors are directed towards turning one's attention away from the external sense world, and also more or less away from the intellectualistic penetration of this sense world, and instead to look into the inner being of the human being. Just as it is impossible to arrive at a truly satisfactory understanding of the nature of the human soul through external natural science or through speculation based on it, so it is equally impossible to arrive at a satisfactory knowledge of the human soul through ordinary “mystical immersion”. For what does it profit us, no matter how much we develop this mystical absorption? What comes to the surface of our consciousness from the depths of the human soul? Some people may believe that they can exclude all subjective arbitrariness by quietly and meditatively devoting themselves to what an objective inner upwelling from the soul can tell us about our own human nature. But anyone who can truly dissect the human soul, who can examine how, in this human soul life, there is nothing but the external impressions that we have taken into our soul from the external world since our birth, who can examine how, in this human soul life, there is nothing but the external impressions that we have taken into our soul from the external world since our birth, and who can examine how, in this human soul life, there is nothing but the external impressions that we have taken into our soul from the external world since our birth, will ultimately always discover that the mystic, who often believes he has found his divine origin, something eternal, in his own soul, is ultimately dealing with nothing other than reminiscences of experiences to which the human being was exposed, especially in those times of childhood when one is not yet fully aware of the relationship between the human being and the outside world. And if, in addition, one is able, through a sound knowledge of the human soul, to see how the inner state of mind, what one might call a certain inner pleasure, or also all kinds of inner fears, can cloud one's judgment of the mystical content and make it appear as something quite different from what it is, then one becomes particularly cautious in this area. An everyday experience over many years can metamorphose in the soul so that a trivial experience can emerge from the soul decades later as something connected with the ground of the world. He who knows how not only the soul-condition, which is after all more easily observed, affects man's general feeling, but even the human organism, he alone can see clearly in this field, and he will come to reject much mystical striving, which is taken seriously from this or that side. Whoever can analyze the human soul will see the reasons for some doubtfulness, for some skepticism, which appear as a world view, but in a disturbed digestion, and will have to look for the reasons for some mystical ecstasy in organic excitement, sometimes of a very questionable nature. In short, anyone seeking serious anthroposophical spiritual science must avoid the two pitfalls: the limited natural science on the one hand and the mysticism that lives so richly in illusions on the other. He must seek a sure method, one that is modeled on the certainty of natural science, imbued with the same attitude with which one lives as a scientist when experimenting in the laboratory or studying physiology or pathology at the dissecting table. Not only must anthroposophy arrive at different results from those of recognized science, but it must also develop its own method. Now you will understand that in this short lecture one evening, I can only give you guidelines, just a few suggestions, regarding the results of this anthroposophical spiritual science, as well as its method and evidence. I will be able to show how the evidence is found. But what I am thinking of giving a brief outline of here is already the subject of a great deal of literature, and so in the context of a lecture I can only make suggestions, not present anything conclusive. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must go beyond the ordinary scientific method! Why is science limited? Why does mysticism not lead to the real core of human nature? Because both natural science and mysticism are limited to those cognitive abilities that a person develops in normal life, whether through natural growth, organic development, or the education that is common today. Thus we only develop the scientific method. Anthroposophy must now draw attention to the fact that the human being can become aware of other abilities that lie deeper in his soul, that lie dormant in this soul for ordinary life and for ordinary science, and that he can also consciously apply such abilities to genuine scientific knowledge. In order to develop these abilities, however, we should not resort to some kind of mystic darkness, but we should start from what is available in ordinary science and in ordinary human life. Here we have what mysticism presents to us with so many illusions: the human capacity for memory at the one limit of our ordinary pole. This capacity for memory is, of course, entirely dependent on the organic constitution of the human being. Yet it is this capacity for memory that gives us, as human beings, our coherent consciousness, our coherent self. One need only think of the terrible mental state of those people in whom the continuous memory into childhood is clouded. There are conditions in which long periods of time are missing from the memory. Such people have, so to speak, pushed a part of their own soul life out of themselves. They no longer feel and experience their whole being. They show us how important coherent memory is for a healthy soul life. What is the nature of this memory? It consists in our being able to conjure up images in our consciousness of experiences we have had in our ordinary life between birth and the present moment. We carry images within us that we can conjure up before our soul in our ordinary life, more or less faithfully. The anthroposophical method initially ties in with this soul ability and, by transforming this ability to remember, trains so-called imaginative knowledge. This is not a sum of imaginations, of illusions, but something that can be gained through strict inner self-education alone and that corresponds to an objectivity, albeit a spiritual objectivity, just as the memory corresponds to an objectivity, not to mere fantasy. I will briefly indicate the principle of how to arrive at this first step of supersensible knowledge, at imaginative knowledge. The point is to allow representations to be present in one's consciousness in a manner similar to that which otherwise obtains in memory. However, since we are not dealing with training but with a transformation of the ability to remember, these must not be images that one simply retrieves from the treasure trove of one's memories. Such images are, after all, modified by the emotional life and even by the organic constitution of the person, and a person can never know what is being conjured up when he simply allows memories to be present in his consciousness. In order to bring about what I would call meditation — I have called it that in my writings — either you have to have some kind of idea of an experienced anthroposophist , or one must try to form an idea or a complex of ideas oneself that is easily comprehensible, that one can survey, as for example a triangle in geometry can be surveyed, where one can be quite certain: what is present in consciousness is all that is present. Nothing from the world of the emotions, from the constitution of the organs, comes up; you really have everything in view. But it is not the content that is important, but rather that the soul now draws together all its powers to allow this content to be present in its consciousness for a shorter or longer while – some need a longer time for this, others a shorter time, it depends on the disposition of the person –. For what matters is the development of these forces slumbering in the soul, not what we bring into our consciousness in the form of thoughts, but what we do with what we have thought about. If, by way of comparison, we exert our arm muscles particularly through some kind of work, they become stronger and stronger, developing more and more strength. This physical strength develops through work and practice. It is exactly the same when, after years of practice, we make ideas present in our consciousness in the way indicated and then hold them in our consciousness for some time. What the soul has to do here strengthens the soul forces that one does not have in ordinary life. I would like to make it very clear that what I have described here is easy to explain but difficult to carry out. It is no easier to make progress in the methods of spiritual science than in the methods of a laboratory or an observatory. Of course, there are people who are particularly predisposed to developing such inner soul powers; they may make very rapid progress. But in general, without needing a lot of time every day (each individual exercise can be short; its effect depends on the power of the exercise, not on the length of time, which only puts one to sleep), one needs repetition , repetitive practice, to finally get to the point of noticing something very specific in oneself; namely, that one has brought something out of the depths of one's soul that one previously did not use either for ordinary life or for ordinary science. To make ourselves understood, I would like to use a comparison. We remember ourselves as human beings with an ordinary consciousness up to a certain point in our childhood. What lies before this point eludes ordinary memory. Why is that? Well, during this time, what the child experiences psychically works through impressions of the outside world, through combinations of the outside world and through the penetration of the emotional side of his soul with will impulses. This is not yet working with the ideas that only emerge with the development of speech. Rather, what the child ignites in the outside world is imprinted in the still plastic, malleable brain, and it is an interesting study to see how malleable a child's physical brain is, how resiliently it develops according to what the child experiences in the outside world. But it can also be said that this physical human brain stiffens, and precisely at the moment when it has stiffened particularly, the formation of the brain stops, and those forces are released that used to work on the brain. They now provide the child's imaginative life. This is mainly sparked by language. The human being continues to develop this, and through careful education he or she continues to develop what he or she is able to produce through the formation of his or her brain in the first years of life. In a wonderful intuition, a man like Jean Paul spoke of education in such a way that he said: Man learns more in the first three years of life than later in three academic years. Actually, this is absolutely true, because in the first three years of life our organism is formed, and we can basically shape and be shaped in our whole later education only in the sense that our physical brain is formed in the very first years of life. With these abilities, which develop in this way, the human being today stops both in accepted science and in ordinary life. The anthroposophical method would now like to take up in a higher sense — which again is not for physical education, but for soul education — what has been achieved for the human organization in the first years of childhood. If we carry out such meditations as I have suggested, and allow the images to be present in our consciousness for a sufficiently long time, depending on our individual abilities, we will notice that something similar to what happened in early childhood now occurs, and this occurs in the full consciousness something similar to what happened in early childhood, only that in a properly guided meditation one does not intervene in the physical organization, but in the finer organization that underlies the physical organism and that is only now being discovered. In the course of meditation, one must absolutely come to it, after first honestly admitting to one's imagination: there you have the limits of your knowledge. So you have to be able to stand there quite honestly on the ground of scientific research and say to yourself, in the sense of a du Bois-Reymond, who in the early seventies of the nineteenth century gave his famous lecture “On the Limits of Natural Knowledge” in Leipzig. For ordinary thinking, there are limits to knowledge that cannot be transcended. But if you live this meditative life, you will find that, just as a child, through development, weaves itself deeper and deeper into the outer secrets of the world, certain limits are now practically overcome. You can then honestly admit to yourself: Before, you had these limits because you did not use certain abilities. Now you have developed these abilities and can cross these boundaries. In this way, anthroposophy transforms knowledge, which is otherwise only an intellectual-formal one, into a practical one. Before certain boundaries of knowledge are crossed, the ability to cross them and, above all, the consciousness that can understand inwardly is first developed: Now you are capable of something different than you were before. And it is particularly the one inner experience that one has: as one advances in meditation, one comes to realize that, without perceiving with the senses, one enters into an inner activity that proceeds with the same vividness with which a sensory perception proceeds. What one experiences inwardly in meditation are images, such images that are more vivid than the memories, as vivid as the sensory perceptions, but do not have the same content as the sensory perceptions. Just as one otherwise experiences only when one sees colors with one's eyes and hears sounds with one's ears, whereas mere imagining, even remembering, is something pale, so one experiences something new with the same input through the whole person, as one also otherwise experiences with the whole person in sensory perception: a world of imaginations that is there for consciousness, that was not there before, a thoroughly new world. And we have conquered the objectivity of this world by making the efforts I have mentioned. I could not go into this in detail, only hint at the principle. In some of my writings — for example, in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and also in the second part of “Occult Science, an Outline of Its Methods” — you will find the details of this meditative practice described. Here it is sufficient to have hinted at the principle by which one comes to imaginative knowledge. When speaking of this imaginative knowledge to those who today often believe that they are fully grounded in a scientific attitude, they say: It may seem to be laboriously acquired, but it is nothing more than something acquired through autosuggestion, something that, just like any visions or hallucinations, is brought up from repressed nervous strength to the surface of consciousness. Therefore, it must be emphasized again and again that what anthroposophy develops in this way is quite the opposite of the pathological experiences of the soul, of illusion, hallucination or mediumship. One need only be reminded of one thing: anyone who, for example, examines what I have written about meditation exercises in the book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' will see that particular care is taken to maintain the soul life of the human being completely healthy and intact alongside the development of this higher knowledge, that is, let us say, of the imaginative life. In the case of a diseased soul life, the diseased soul life drowns out the healthy one, as it were extinguishing it. In the case of the soul life that is sought for the purpose of higher knowledge of anthroposophy, the healthy soul life remains completely intact alongside what is now also sought as imagination. Imagination appears as something quite different from ordinary mental life, but at no moment is the person who has attained it in a different inner state of mind, so that all his other memories and insights remain healthy alongside the imagination. Imagination, as I said, is transformed memory. This is also expressed in its very essence. Some beginners on this path develop this imagination. They are then delighted when they have arrived at the first elementary results, that they can develop a pictorial, objectively given life of ideas that now already, at least suggestively, points them to a supersensible world. But they lose it again. This is due to the essential nature of imaginative cognition, as well as that of all higher knowledge. The knowledge that we otherwise acquire in the external world through ordinary consciousness leads to memory; we can bring it forth again from memory. What arises in the imaginative life is there, alive, like a sense experience, like sounds or colors. But it does not imprint itself on memory. This is precisely what surprises the beginner the most. He believes that he can have a supersensible insight and that he can carry it with him through life like an ordinary memory. Just as we, when we have looked at a color, then turn away from it and no longer have it, so we no longer have the supersensible experience if we have forgotten it in our soul. All this must be taken into account. Anyone who speaks about this supersensible world never speaks from memory; he speaks from an immediate experience of the supersensible world. Let me make a brief personal comment. Even when one gives a lecture such as today's, in which one speaks about the supersensible world in an orienting way, one does not prepare for it in the same way as for other lectures on knowledge. Rather, one has to direct one's preparation in such a way that one's organism and soul life are enabled to let the supersensible knowledge approach them. For if I have a supersensible insight today, as soon as I have had it I forget it, and if I want to have it again, I have to bring it about again. I cannot simply remember it; I can only bring about what I did in meditation and concentration to bring about that supersensible experience at the time. So already in the imagination, the supersensible worlds are such that they do not imprint themselves on memory. Why is that? The reason for this is that supersensible knowledge, as it is meant here, is not something formal at all, but, in contrast, really brings about the supersensible world for us. We can recall knowledge that merely gives us images of the external material world over and over again. Once we have acquired them, it is good to be able to recall them from memory. This kind of knowledge is based only on pictorial processes, on mirroring processes in relation to the external world. It is basically not a sum of real processes. Real processes take place in such a way that they are subject to repetition, to rhythmic repetition, not to memory. It is a very trivial but accurate statement when I say that our organism needs food. What we take in as food is processed by it in some way that does not need to be explained further here. But once it has been processed, the corresponding process is over, so to speak. But the next day we must eat again, and no one can claim that he ate yesterday; nor will he. We are not dealing with a formal process of reflection, but with a real process. Such real processes are those that occur in the supersensible knowledge meant here. What has once been brought about as the content of the soul must be brought about again and again by taking the same measures again. One can remember the measures that formed the preparation for certain supersensible experiences at the time. But only by taking the same measures can one arrive at the same results. Once you have entered this imaginative world, however, you are fully aware that you once had a world of imaginations. The way you experience these imaginations is an inner grasping of the whole human being. But you also know that you have not grasped an external world with consciousness, but that you have actually only brought up from your own inner being everything that you have brought out of consciousness. A hallucinator who surrenders to some kind of vision mistakes the images that arise in his mind for reality. Someone who lives in the imagination and is trained in anthroposophy knows that at first he has only himself in the imagination. There is already a certain development of strength in this awareness of having only oneself, because everything that arises in the form of vivid images, as vivid as any external sensory perception, tempts one to mistake it for an external world. It is also objective, but our own objective inner world. One must apply a certain inner power of consciousness in order to become fully aware that you are dealing with your own inner being. But this imagination can progress to the point where you really only get this own inner being in front of you, and in such a way that you now, with the help of this imaginative knowledge, have the first, albeit now — I would like to say — subjective-objective supersensible experience. That one has something like a tableau of one's life — I cannot say spatial, nor temporal, it is something temporal-spatial, something where one has something temporal before one, but as if quite side by side — that one has such a tableau of one's life before one, one that extends back to the vicinity of one's birth, that one has gone through oneself in this earthly life up to the moment of one's birth. (This is what appears before the soul in such a temporal-spatial image.) At the same time, one can see what has happened to us over the course of a long time. Otherwise, memory is such that one or the other emerges from the stream of experiences. But now, not as a memory, but as an image, and indeed as an inner, thoroughly worked through image, one has one's entire life before one, as it is described by people who study nature and who are conscientious enough in such matters that one can recognize it as truth. Just as someone who is about to drown sees his life before him in a clear way, so the person who has advanced to imaginative knowledge in this way has his life before him in a clear tableau. This is the first experience one has. It is the kind of experience that can already lead one to see that The person who presents himself as a spiritual researcher in the anthroposophical sense must also get to know all the inner experiences that accompany such supersensible experiences. What he shares serves to strengthen and calm life. It gives life security and shows the eternal essence of the human being, as we shall see. But the research and the experience itself is something that not every person would desire from the outset. One must already have developed a full and healthy soul life, for which the books mentioned above give comprehensive instructions, in order to be able to face what is necessary to understand and receive messages about the supersensible world, but is also necessary for research in these areas, with an open mind and strength. The vision of this tableau of life gives rise to an inner experience that I would call “oppressive”; something like an anxiety attack settles over life. And herein lies progress: that the anthroposophical researcher confronts and overcomes these things with strong soul power, that he has first developed a healthy soul life to such an extent that he can endure in a healthy way what he encounters as side effects of knowing the supersensible worlds. Further progress lies in the development of such powers. For this must indeed go so far that the human being not only transforms the faculty of memory, as I have described, in order to attain imaginative knowledge. Rather, further progress consists in developing the art of forgetting, the suppression of perceptions, and in this suppression of perceptions, to the point where one can now suppress the entire life tableau, removing it from consciousness. One develops this artful forgetting by repeatedly and completely arbitrarily removing the manageable ideas described, after having allowed them to be present in one's consciousness, while they actually want to occupy our consciousness. While a person who merely surrenders to his nature develops the tendency to hold on to these images, someone who wants to become a true spiritual researcher in the anthroposophical sense must develop the ability to suppress these images with full awareness of will and to make the consciousness completely empty without — allow me this remark — falling asleep in the process. Most people, when they want to empty their consciousness, are only able to doze off gently. But that is what the spiritual scientific researcher must develop with all his strength, indeed with increased strength: to bring ideas into his consciousness and then to bring them out again, so that he is able to remain with an empty consciousness, for a shorter or longer period of time. The significance of the anthroposophical method is that one must bring the will into the whole life of imagination, that one lets ideas be present in consciousness in a completely manageable way, conjures them out of consciousness again, and thus pushes the will into imagining, into forming thoughts. While otherwise one develops one's thoughts only in the continuous outer life, passively devoted to it, one has now, for some time, gained an inner strength from suppressing perceptions. When one has transformed one's forgetting in this way, one is then able to extinguish the entire life tableau, so that one no longer merely removes a single image from one's consciousness, but the entire inner life that has arisen before the soul from birth to this moment like a tableau. One feels oppressed when faced with this tableau because now one is not just confronted with pictorial representations as usual, but with forces that are themselves inner pictorial representations. One experiences that by grasping this tableau of life, one has grasped not just something intellectual and formal, but the same forces that are our inner forces of growth. One beholds what has shaped the organism since childhood as formative forces or, if I may say so, as purely etheric forces. What has shaped us is what one first calls into consciousness and what one now brings out of consciousness again. Once this has been achieved, the next step is the other stage of supersensible knowledge, which I have called inspired knowledge in my books. This is not meant in any old superstitious way, but only in the sense in which I describe it. This inspiration consists in clearing away what has arisen in the previous way, in bringing about the conditions that empty the consciousness. But consciousness does not remain empty. Because we have had the formative forces of the human being in consciousness – the forces that develop the liver, lungs, heart and so on, we perceive this in them – and by now removing these forces from consciousness, it does not remain empty. Rather, what now arises in consciousness is a real spiritual life, a real supersensible world. For in that we remove these formative forces from our consciousness, we take leave, as it were, as we otherwise take leave of an experience, initially for the moment of realization, so to speak, of the outer sense world with which the life experiences are connected that are reflected in the life tableau. We are in a different world at this moment. We are in the world in which not only the forces that have been forming us since birth lie, but which have formed us before birth or conception. We now become aware, through developed knowledge, that before we, as spiritual beings, incorporated what the inheritance of the physical-material world can give us, were in another, spiritual world from which we descended and incorporated ourselves into what, materially, surrounds us like an outer covering, like an outer instrument during physical life on earth. In this way, through a real practice of knowledge, we come to perceive what cannot be perceived by the ordinary powers of knowledge. We come to perceive a world even when we have taken leave of the sensory world in the way described. We perceive a human power of being when we have not only extinguished the view for the sensory world, but have also extinguished our experiences with the life tableau just described. But for one who has thus attained knowledge, a healthy soul condition always remains. He who ascends to inspired knowledge in this way is never in a position to have something within him, as in the case of the hallucinator or the psychopath, that extinguishes his healthy soul life and takes its place. And just as in the imagination, the healthy soul life stands alongside the imagination, so it is now that there is a rhythmic alternation: prenatal life, life in the spiritual-soul, then the human being who stands here on earth on his two legs and thinks with us. And we swing back and forth in rhythm, in rhythm between the supersensible and the sensual world. We breathe in, we breathe out. It is almost experienced: what we were before we integrated ourselves into the earthly world, and we live back to what we are as earthly human beings. We experience a rhythm like the rhythm of breathing. And if all rhythms in the world are related, one rhythm is always the image of the other, then at least in the breathing rhythm something can be seen that forms an analogy to what I have just described as a rhythm. Therefore, there is a method that is no longer useful for Westerners today: the ancient Indian yoga method, which also speaks of these things. But it is no longer useful for today's people because they cannot do ordinary yoga exercises like the ancient Indian or the modern Indian, but the Westerner needs exercises today as I described them. But how are the yoga exercises performed? It is briefly stated here for clarification. The yogi devotes himself not to unconscious breathing, but to a regulated, conscious breathing process. He consciously experiences what otherwise occurs unconsciously. In this way, he lives into the rhythm of the world through an altered, regulated breathing process and in a corresponding inhalation and exhalation. And in fact, through his special constitution, he is able to see the supersensible life before birth when he performs his exercises for a long time, where it sometimes appears as a spiritual soul, the other time here in earthly life. One sees that there is already an authorization through the analogy to speak of “breathing” here. For just as we draw in our breath and then push it out again, so the physical part of man, given by the material current of heredity, unites with the spiritual-soul, breathing into it, as it were. The breath lasts only as long as one earth-life. And in the same way, at death, the spiritual-soul is breathed out again. This process of birth and death is what is now, in the process of realization, being recreated by the inspired realization. However strange and paradoxical it may sound, what is otherwise only experienced once in the process of being born and dying, this uniting of the physical body with the spiritual-soul, and then the emergence of the spiritual-soul, is what is formed in the imitation of knowledge, which is anthroposophical knowledge. In this way, not through speculation, not through philosophy, nor through some kind of mysticism, which can only be based on illusions, but through a real practice of knowledge, one enters into the experience of the world in which man was before birth and in which he will be when he has crossed the threshold of death. It is certainly still strange for modern man when, as for example in “Occult Science: An Outline”, the worlds that man experiences before birth and after death are described in such detail, as are otherwise described by the naturalist, the botanist, mineralogist or geologist, the details of plant life or other things in our sensual world. But humanity will have to get used to the idea that it is possible to make people aware of their inner powers, their formative powers, which are soul-imbuing powers, but which are already supersensible sense powers — let me use the paradoxical word — and which therefore bring the human being as a spiritual-soul being into a reciprocal relationship with the spiritual-soul worlds, by which he is surrounded before birth and after death. It is not logical reasoning that underlies the anthroposophical spiritual science referred to here when speaking of supersensible worlds, when speaking of the eternal nature of man, but a leading of practical knowledge to the of that in the human being which is truly of a spiritual-soul nature, which is creative, not created by the organism, which transforms the organism of its own accord and thus has the guarantee of eternity, of passing through birth and death. It is only the unusual nature of such a method of knowledge that still gives rise to the many misunderstandings surrounding anthroposophical spiritual science today. And it is perfectly understandable that even well-meaning scientists, when they set out to study what anthroposophy offers and what is so rigorously described as a genuine method of knowledge, as is usually the case with mathematics, for example, first create a and then, when they do not understand it, they say: This is nothing more than a sum of illusions, hallucinations and fantasies, when they first present their distorted image and then criticize their own construct. But, dear ladies and gentlemen, if anthroposophy were what some of today's scholars make of it, then I would criticize it much more severely and much more disparagingly than some scholars do. But anthroposophy is developing the healthy paths in the face of all the pathological paths attributed to it by those who misunderstand its methods. But I don't want to dwell on the many misunderstandings, I just want to draw attention to one more. It is indeed the case that the practical powers of knowledge that I have described are strengthened by everything one goes through. At first, one has gained strength by letting one's life tableau sink, but then it is filled with a spiritual power. Now the researcher is faced with a new experience, which many are unconsciously afraid of and for which reason they would not even want to approach this spiritual knowledge if they were to become acquainted with it. Anyone who views the spiritual world in this way, as I have described it, actually feels something like a painful deprivation in his soul throughout the time that he has exposed his consciousness to this spiritual world. If it is not experienced with a fully healthy soul, it can give rise to a very pessimistic view of life. However, since all preparation in anthroposophy must be undertaken in such a way that the human being is thoroughly healthy in his soul, he knows that he would say of this pessimism, which lies before his soul if he were to surrender to it, The whole world is permeated with pain and sighs in pain. But this pessimism arises as something that belongs to the necessities of the world. One experiences it, one experiences something quite painful, while one is devoted to the supersensible world in inspiration. But why do we experience this pain? One realizes that this pain is only the repetition of that painful longing which forms the power of the soul, through which the soul feels drawn from spiritual-soul worlds into material physical embodiment. This longing of the soul must be relived in knowledge at precisely this stage. And what appears in the pessimists as world-weariness is a ray of this feeling that reaches only into the consciousness of imagination. It is felt in a very different way by those who want to attain supersensible knowledge, and who, when they have reached the highest degree of supersensible knowledge, experience it as a kind of life-weariness. We must indeed be clear about the fact that the seeking of knowledge cannot always be a pleasurable matter. Anyone who has attained a few, perhaps modest, extrasensory insights or even real, true insights into life will always say: “I gratefully accept from the Powers that Be the good fortune I have experienced. But the painful experiences and bitterness I have gone through have been a good preparation for me to reach the state of mind that really leads to a deeper understanding of the secrets of life. Therefore, even the most ordinary painful experiences are a good preparation, if they are lived through in good health and one does not allow oneself to be completely depressed by them, also physically, for what one has to experience as a side effect of inspired knowledge. But through everything one goes through, one now comes to carry that imagination, which is immediately lost to man when he descends into the emotional life or into his own will, into all that I have described as being above the sensual world. That is the essential thing, that one does not surrender to nebulous soul content, but that one takes with one on the entire further path what one has first developed in the imagination as a strong pictorial image. Our emotional life rises, like dreams, from dark depths of the soul. We become aware of our feelings in our imagination. As people of the present day, we can only truly live in our imagination when we are actually awake. Our emotional life always has something dream-like about it in comparison to our imaginative life. And our life of will is usually dormant even during the day. We do perceive that we move our arms through our will, for example. But what lives in him as volitional forces is actually just as hidden from him as what he experiences in his soul from falling asleep to waking up. Thus, for the ordinary state of mind with the emotional life, we get a dreamy element into life, but with our life of will, we even get a sleeping one. It is interesting to see how psychologists such as Theodor Ziehen struggle with the fact that in ordinary life, experiences of the will are only present in the imagination. But with the soul life that I have just described, the human being takes his life of ideas everywhere with him and permeates it with fully conscious will. Just as he otherwise combines the individual ideas in fully conscious judgment, willfully, so he pursues everything I have just described — although it may seem paradoxical to some — through anthroposophical knowledge with a fully conscious, alert life of ideas. As a result, he ultimately develops an inner strength that does not cause him to lose his self within the enriched inner life, but on the contrary, allows him to see his self in a form that is never presented in ordinary consciousness. This is because our ordinary consciousness is guided inwardly in such a way that we look at the same thing and designate it with the word “I”. But if we can see what is expressed in this little word “I”, we are aware that it is based on a reality, but in our ordinary consciousness we do not have this reality. When we say “I am”, we are actually pointing to something that we only have as an image, just as we only have our impulses of will as images. For this I points deep down into the sleeping depths of the soul and of organic life in general, where the sleeping will is also rooted. Only an image rises up. But now we have descended down there ourselves, now we have carried our consciousness down to the reality of consciousness through supersensible knowledge of imagination and inspiration, now our true being has been given to us in a third stage of supersensible knowledge: In intuition — whereby this word is not used in its usual sense, but rather to refer to that which can be based on the two other preliminary stages — in this intuitive consciousness, the idea of repeated earthly lives takes on meaning. Through inspired realization, one looks back at the spiritual and soul life before birth. In this self-knowledge, which appears as intuition, one sees one's self in that enriched form in which it is not exhausted in one earth life, but in which it brings the results of earlier earth lives over into the present one, and in which it shows the results of this life as the foundations for later earth lives. I just wanted to briefly explain that when the anthroposophical spiritual researcher speaks of repeated earthly lives, it is not a hypothetical way of talking, but rather a very systematic search for those powers of knowledge that lead people beyond the ordinary sense world. This systematic search now also leads them to recognize repeated earthly lives. But with that, he also sees through how what appears as a necessary fate and places us in a certain way in life is connected with these repeated earth lives, while everything that develops as our ordinary, conscious thinking between birth and death is precisely the basis of the human freedom developed in this earth life. At this level of knowledge, one gains an understanding of how that which is necessary in us, which constitutes our destiny, is connected with our repeated lives on earth. In contrast, in the individual life on earth, through his fully developed individual, personal thinking, which breaks away from repeated lives on earth and develops personally in the individual life, the human being places himself as a free being precisely in that life on earth. That is why the person speaking to you today not only developed anthroposophy, but also wrote his “Philosophy of Freedom” as early as the beginning of the 1890s, in which he examines the real foundations of human freedom. The necessity in which man is placed through repeated earthly lives is built on what lies below the threshold of what flows from our free thoughts. A “philosophy of freedom” is entirely compatible with anthroposophical spiritual science. In this lecture, I have only been able to sketch out the guidelines needed to gain an orientation in anthroposophical spiritual science. Anything beyond the scope of this lecture must be sought in the relevant literature. In conclusion, I would just like to hint at a few points concerning the impact of anthroposophy on the individual sciences. Through the kind of insight that is gained through imaginative knowledge, one gets to know the whole of the human formative forces. One is then able to get to know not only what human formation is on the dissection table through autopsy, and thereby establish physiology, therapy and pathology, but also how one learns through ordinary knowledge how the mathematical dominates the outer world. In this way, one comes to know the qualitative aspect of external beings through an inner realization, through a realization that is inspired like mathematics, only that it is qualitative, not only quantitative and formal like mathematics, but immersed in the reality of beings. In this way, one comes to know the human being inwardly. And in the moment when one comes to the inner formative forces of the human being — in that tableau as I have described it — one also gets to know the inner formative forces of mineral, plant and animal beings and the formative forces of the world. This then opens our eyes to the sense of belonging that is found in everything that is spread out in nature, in the inner formative forces of the human being and in their consequences in the human organs. One gets to know the organs of the human being in both a healthy and diseased state. Anyone who, with this knowledge, observes the human heart, for example, knows that a heart is not just a form that can be grasped in an external view, but that the heart process is one that can only be understood from the knowledge of the whole human being, because otherwise one would only view it one-sidedly. It is similar to the magnetic needle, which one also looks at one-sidedly if one were to say of it: It points its one tip to the north, the other to the south. No, to explain the magnet needle, we use the whole Earth and say: the Earth's North Pole attracts one half of the magnet needle through its forces, the South Pole the other. But especially with humans, we only want to look at what lies within the skin, individually. But even with humans, we have to go beyond what lies within the skin, just as we go beyond the magnet needle itself. You have to know the whole person if you want to study both the healthy and the sick person. Spiritual science opens up the possibility of this, and we have been able to develop a medicine based on anthroposophical spiritual science. In Stuttgart, there is also a medical-therapeutic institute among the “Kommenden Tages” institutions, with doctors who work with the whole of anthroposophy. I myself was able to hold two medical courses for doctors and show what anthroposophy is capable of achieving by adding what underlies the spiritual entity of the sensory world to the other, and how it can thus enrich a science that is merely regarded as empirical, such as medicine. Contemporary humanity will have to become accustomed to the idea that reality is not only material but also imbued with spirituality. Just as medicine can be enriched by anthroposophy, so can, for example, external social life, as can other sciences. We have already tried to provide practical proof of this in one area in particular, namely in the Waldorf School founded by Emil Molt in Stuttgart, which is intended to be a comprehensive school in the best sense of the word and is headed by me. This Waldorf School does not practice any kind of worldview in the anthroposophical sense; only those who want to create all kinds of misunderstandings about anthroposophy say that. In this Waldorf school, the human being is educated and taught on the basis of real knowledge of the human being, including the child, which not only looks at the human being's exterior and puts it into pedagogical, didactic and so on formulas; but on the basis of real knowledge of the child, so that the person who is a teacher at this school must above all observe what is working its way to the surface in the child's body, soul and spiritually, and what is working its way through the features and speech, through thinking, feeling and will, so that with an eye trained by anthroposophy in this respect, the teacher can educate the person in such a way that the education itself is an organic one, through what he encounters from week to week, even from day to day, in the developing human being. Nowadays, education in most cases proceeds in such a way that we are taught certain things in childhood, some of them quite well. This is not to decry the existing education system, but it must be said that in the developing human being, some things are brought up that are introduced to the child with far too sharply defined contours, and then later do not develop further with the human being, but simply remain in him. In contrast to this, the method of the Waldorf school is to give the child ideas, feelings and impulses of will, without claiming that they will remain by definition as the child receives them, but that they are transmitted to him in an entirely organic way, that is, in moving contours, so that what the child receives as instruction is itself something that grows, just as the child's limbs themselves grow. In this way, the various areas of social life can be modeled on the processes of the world, those world processes that are not only permeated by matter but also by spirit. And it seemed to me a significant achievement that at the last congress of the Anthroposophical Movement in Stuttgart (from August 28 to September 7, 1921), Dr. Caroline von Heydebrand, a Waldorf school teacher, was able to give a lecture on the topic “Against Experimental Psychology and Experimental Pedagogy”. I do not wish to say anything here against the great merits of experimental psychology and pedagogy. But precisely when one recognizes such merits, one cannot ignore how, in the fields of pedagogy and psychology, the human being has actually become inwardly alien to the human being, and thus also to the child. One must first experiment externally, how the human being perceives, how he retains things, because one is not inwardly connected to the child. An important lecture was delivered by Dr. Caroline von Heydebrand at the Stuttgart Congress, and deserves to be known everywhere. Emil Leinhas gave another lecture that should also be made known. In it he characterized present-day political economy with all its contradictions. This lecture could be a real breakthrough for a renewal of the scientific and practical treatment of the social question, to be drawn from spiritual science, as I have tried to present it myself in my “Key Points of the Social Question” from the necessities of life in the present and the near future. Thus, through what it attains in direct spiritual vision, spiritual science can not only give man certainty about his eternal essence and thus give him an inner center that he needs if he is not to become unfit for life through perceiving, for example, his supposed nothingness, but anthroposophy can generally fertilize life very much, just as it can penetrate art. Goethe said, in that he sensed such things from his comprehensive world view — I tried to show this in the 1880s in my Goethe writings, from which it can be seen how anthroposophy can also emerge from Goethe's world view, you just have to take it further. At one point, Goethe said that art is based on a certain manifestation of secret laws of nature that would never become apparent without it. Or at another point he once said: He to whom nature reveals its secret is longing for its most worthy interpreter, art. And when he traveled in Italy, he wrote to his friends in Weimar after seeing artistic creations that particularly interested him: “The great works of art, as the greatest works of nature, are produced by people according to true and natural laws. All that is arbitrary and imaginary collapses; there is necessity, there is God. And: “I have the suspicion that the Greeks proceeded according to the laws by which nature itself proceeds, and which I am on the trail of. But we can only see this creative power of nature if we behold the spiritual that lies behind the sensual facts and natural essences through anthroposophical knowledge. Therefore, what confronts us sensually in art, but in such a way that the sensual always speaks to our spirit and soul, can be thoroughly fertilized through imaginative and inspired beholding. Only those who have no inkling of spiritual science as it is meant here, but have only ordinary intellectual knowledge in mind, talk about the fact that one can only come to a straw-like allegorical art through creation from the spirit. But you will find nothing allegorical or symbolic, for example, in the School of Spiritual Science building in Dornach, which was built there for anthroposophical spiritual science and which was created in all its forms from the vision of the spiritual world, from the vision of of forms and color harmonies that can be so secretly interwoven into the outer material that what is fulfilled is what Goethe expressed with the words: Art is a manifestation of secret natural laws that would never be revealed without it. — So art too can be fertilized by anthroposophy. And in eurythmy, we are now bringing an art of human movement to the world that has already been widely studied, in which what is inside the human being in terms of measure, harmony, meaning and inner stylization is brought out and expressed in the movement of individuals or groups of people, so that not just mimic dances are created, but something completely different, something that is a real visible language and therefore expresses the inner soul life as necessarily as audible language or singing. And religious life must also be enriched by leading man up into those supersensible worlds in which he must have the home of his spirit and soul, especially for religious feeling. It is therefore actually grotesque when, in a recent publication dealing with religious experiments in the present day, and including a section on anthroposophy, which does not in any way seek to found a religion but, as I have described today, — as I have described it today — scientific knowledge, when it is judged in such a way that one says: the truly religious person could not actually tolerate it, because it is a rival to religion, it could perhaps even become a substitute for religion. A substitute for religion — the most terrible of horrors! The person appointed to officially care for religious life today already thinks about anthroposophy in a very economic and commercial way. A competitor is emerging for him, and he continues to speak from the feeling of the competitor: “The creation of anthroposophy means the death of religion.” Now, dear audience, one should indeed believe with a sound mind and a straight mind that precisely religious life could feel encouraged by the fact that a science that takes it as strictly as any other scientific knowledge opens up the supersensible worlds to human observation in such a way that the presentation given by a spiritual researcher can also be understood by the non-researcher. For this can be the case with spiritual science, which, in addition to material knowledge, simply brings the knowledge of the spiritual life that permeates the material processes of the world. But today there is already some fear of this knowledge. A philosopher who is highly regarded today once said a few years ago: He wanted to talk about the relationship between the spirit and the body of man. One could do that, because one need not know the spirit or the body, but only study the relationship between the two. To illustrate this, he then told a parable, saying, speaking to his audience, I do not need to know each and every one of you and be introduced to each one individually, but there is a certain relationship between us even without us knowing each other. Just by being in the same room, there is a certain relationship between you and me. So, today in the circles where one talks about world view, one is afraid of a real spiritual knowledge, but one needs this knowledge if one wants to talk about spirit and body, because one has talked oneself so much into an agnostic way of knowing that only wants to see limits everywhere, and one does not want to develop the practice of knowledge that goes beyond the limits of knowledge. Of course, spiritual science has to be slowly developed, like any other science. But the practice is such that, like the other sciences, it leads into the existence of nature. And spiritual science does not lead people into a dreamed-up cloud-cuckoo-land, but into the real spiritual world. Therefore, it permeates the material world with spiritual impulses that can enable people to intervene in all material circumstances, so that they do not become brooders about the spiritual life, but rather people who are imbued with real spiritual activity and can thus recognize and work in the great world. For only he is truly cognizant who does not dream himself away into a cloud-cuckoo-land, but who is aware that the spirit must intervene practically and creatively in material life through man. In this sense, anthroposophy does not make people impractical, but rather practical for ordinary life on earth, placing them in their duties and in the ordinary tasks of life. It prepares them for eternity, but it prepares them in such a way that they can carry the eternal into the temporal. It does not reject the honest study of material phenomena and material entities, but seeks the spirit that permeates matter everywhere. It seeks the spiritual above all in human knowledge itself, thereby freeing knowledge, which otherwise can only slavishly attach itself to the material world, and thereby creating such impulses for action that the human being can practically intervene in life. Therefore, it can be said of anthroposophy that it at least strives to spiritualize matter through the human being itself, but that the human being does not lose himself in the context of material processes, but that he can find himself through free knowledge as a free human being in the whole scope of life. |
| 71b. The Human Being as a Spirit and Soul Being: Life in Art and Art in Life from the Point of View of Spiritual Science
28 Mar 1918, Berlin |
|---|
| 71b. The Human Being as a Spirit and Soul Being: Life in Art and Art in Life from the Point of View of Spiritual Science
28 Mar 1918, Berlin |
|---|
From an awareness that was as much borne of rich experience as of deep artistic experience, Goethe coined the eloquent word:
A true understanding of what is meant by such a statement makes it difficult to want to talk about art. Goethe also said that art is the mediator of nature's secrets, but that one should not talk about it through words. On the other hand, one must talk about what can flow from the artistic. I don't want to talk about it the way official science talks about it, but rather like one talks about a dear friend, where one has the need to say what one has to say out of sympathy, out of love. The artist has an aversion to art history or even to art criticism. When you try to penetrate it, it becomes all too understandable that the artist is afraid to have what he experienced with art burned or singed. If you assume a moral original sin, then you have to assume two original evils for art. One is the taste to create in art only for the senses. Those who do this will reject the spiritual in art. The other is that an equally unrefined taste wants to represent the abstract, the merely conceptual. This symbolic art is no more supported by the artistic than the sensual is. The art of ideas leads to a straw-like, papery representation of the ideal. Both are aberrations from true art. What leads to true art must be grounded in something in the human being. It must also be something that arises from human freedom in human will. Many see art only as a luxury, not as a condition of daily existence. I would like to recall what I said about the dream life eight days ago, about the relationship between the dream life and the imagination. During sleep, the soul is separated from the body. Through spiritual science, the otherwise dormant consciousness can become so strong that the person perceives the spiritual world, that he not only experiences dull things during sleep, but also undergoes the most diverse entities and experiences. One can say that the dream life comes from the soul approaching the waking life, but not absorbing it. The polar opposite of the dream life is the soul's inclination towards artistic imagination and artistic creation. It is incorrect to assume a direct relationship between the two, but one can point from one to the other. In the dream it is the soul removed from the body, in artistic creation the soul is in the body – thus the other way round. Here the soul seeks a relationship with the spiritual; it wants to reach out to the spiritual, to the eternal, the imperishable, as in a dream to the corporeal, the temporal. These are two polar opposites. Just as the soul half awakens to the physical body in a dream, so too to the spiritual in artistic fantasy. Just as sleep can be without dreams, so the artistic element can be added to ordinary life out of freedom, but it can also be left out. There are moods in life. You visit a friend, are received in a red room, he does not come right away, you expect something; then he comes, tells all sorts of banal stuff, you are disappointed because you were expecting something solemn; that's how it is in the subconscious. Or in a blue room, you are disappointed in the deepest sense of the word because you find that he talks like a wheel. In your subconscious, you expect him to leave you alone in a blue or violet room. But he talks. I'm deliberately choosing grotesque examples. Or at a banquet where the dishes have a reddish tint, you expect that when people eat, they are not only hungry but also gourmets. If the dishes are blue, you expect them not only to eat, but also to have a pleasant conversation. Or you meet a lady on the street who has a frizzy head and are disappointed if you find that she is not snappish. From a lady in a pleasant blue dress, you expect her to be measured; if she is not, you feel lied to. These are inner secret moods, undertones that permeate life. There is a sensual, supersensible element that, in our emotional life, is comparable to dreams and remains hidden from our consciousness, just as the activity of the sleeping person's will includes the element of will. A supersensible essence is integrated here, and it does not matter whether it is called the connective tissue or the etheric body. The individual organs differentiate the human being in such a way that the supersensible connecting element no longer resonates so uniformly. The human being experiences as a whole human being what is only seen through the eye. This does not come to light in ordinary consciousness. We can give it nourishment, which satisfies it, like the senses. This is particularly evident in music. I have shown that the life of imagination is bound up with the nervous system, but the life of feeling is bound up with the whole rhythmic experience. This is more closely related to the sense of hearing than to the other senses, to the sense of feeling, even to the sense of imagination, to thinking. There is an inclination in man to keep focusing on the sense of hearing. In every healthy, complete human nature, there is a constant urge to bring up in a healthy way what leads to vision, not to physical vision. The vision wants to come up, it appeals to free will, it does not exert any force, but it is there. The artist has a constant tendency towards the visionary, which wants to be satisfied. But it remains latent. What can satisfy it? It is always present, even if a person has only sensory perceptions. But it cannot be satisfied with that. When the musical element strikes the ear, the whole supersensible person takes it in, and so the visionary urge is satisfied. The same applies to Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, which can lead one into deep, natural secrets: the green leaf transforming itself into the petals of a flower and so on. When we look at the human being, we can see it falling apart in different ways, for example into the head and the rest of the organism. This can become the head. Just as Goethe sees the whole in the leaf, we can see the whole in every part of the human being; the whole can emerge from every part. The moving life in nature wants to be grasped by the visionary power. Music cannot recall anything that is in external life; everything must be demystified by music. In the other arts, everything that belongs to the senses must be accounted for, but music does not need that. The whole person must first be demystified. All artistic creation is like a demystification. You have to get life out of the surface, you have to bend once or twice what is otherwise dead in the surface, as in life only demarcates itself, [in the painterly the color], for example the red-yellow. A barbarian says: How does it remind us of what is, when the blue-violet merges into the line? But that's how you get into the form, through the red-yellow into the movement, also into the movement in the limbs. Red and blue are not just colors, they desire something. All barbaric taste says: What does it represent? But the artist only reveals something that was in the soul. Everything artistic has an expressionistic element in it. What stands before us as nature we cannot achieve by imitation; it stands before us only as a larva. Critics are like someone standing behind us as we eat and saying how the food tastes. The “Group” in Dornach is the artistic expression of the theory of metamorphosis. Here, the attempt has been made to depict the representative of humanity asymmetrically, and to show how the rest of the organism wants to become entirely head. This cannot be achieved by merely caricaturing a head, but only by doing so from the inside out. Another approach has been tried, in which the head seeks to become the rest of the organism, in which the head pours itself out over the whole organism, a dissolution, a harmonization. Such things evoke a slight horror today, as the Copernican worldview did until 1827 among an influential authority. But that cannot stop the course of development. A change has taken place with regard to art, for example, in relation to the position of the works of art by Raphael and Michelangelo. One no longer tries to resonate with them, one has a kind of awareness that they must be related to a bygone era and a different consciousness. What one does with regard to today's artists is more closely related to the soul. One would like to accompany Raphael and Michelangelo back to other times, where they were different as artists; one would like to accompany today's artists directly. Such artists have a feeling, as Goethe had, that if one seeks truth, one must seek it in art. If you want to paint a lady today as she is, she will look like a lady in a state of trismus, which is what every photograph looks like. You have to kill and then recreate with what you might call humor, an inner drama; you not only have to kill a pretty woman, you have to abuse her. Perhaps it is part of the artistic essence that the pedant is appalled, that the philistine condemns it as unnecessary. It already sounds so terrible when one says, as if in a civil servant's office, that art should be put in the service of life. Art is so integrated into the education of life that art is not a servant of life, but is meant to beautify it, and since it is the path to the spiritual, it also imbues life with reality. One is only able to intervene correctly in social life if one approaches it as the artist approaches his material. New forces constantly want to be incorporated into life; an artistic element should live in everything. When deficiencies arise somewhere, it is because the artistic element in man has been lost. People believe they have found program points and consider them to be the most divine ideals. But all this social talk is of no use, has no foundation, cannot fertilize. Nowadays, people found associations, give them statutes, take up excellent program points, and believe that they can master life with them. But it is all abstract. It is much more important to put the right person in the right place, only then one must not always think that the nephew is the right person. What wants to gain strength in life is what is in the underground, that wants to be demystified. You can't do that in the abstract. Art can only fertilize life if you strive to find life in art. A sensual-supernatural lies in art. A person who does not dream does not know about the connection. A life without art resembles pedantry and philistinism. Art must not correspond to necessity, but to human freedom. People do not take into account that the human being has a say in this, that there is a freedom. Man must say: Nothing external can push me towards art, but I myself declare that it is necessary. |