No I. Vol. I.
“Goethe's Faust”
From the Standpoint of Spiritual Science
S-2149
Public Lecture — January 23, 1910
That which
strives to enter our modern culture under the name of
Spiritual Science claims to be nothing new and thereby
differs from various current world conceptions and other
spiritual movements which base the justification of their
existence upon their claim of being in a position to bring
something new regarding this or that question of spiritual
life. But this Spiritual Science aims at emphasizing that the
fountains of its knowledge and its life were available at all
times when humanity has thought and striven after a solution
of the sublime questions and problems of existence.
This I have often emphasized in this city, when I had the
pleasure of speaking to you in earlier lectures.
It must be
especially attractive for man not only to examine, from this
point of view, the many and various religious beliefs and
world conceptions as they appeared during human evolution,
but also to study personalities which have passed before us
in history. For, if Spiritual Science is true, at least the
nucleus of this truth must be present and discoverable in all
those personalities who honestly and energetically strove
after knowledge of the core of true human existence.
Whenever
today Spiritual Science is spoken of, a variety of opinions
are expressed from one side to the other, and anyone who has
not penetrated this field sufficiently or formed a merely
superficial idea of it from lecturers or brochures will
certainly judge it from his own standpoint, as the fantasy or
dreaming of a few people alienated from the world and its
affairs, who indulge in curious notions about life and its
foundations. It must be admitted that such a judgment is
perfectly comprehensible if one does not go deeper into the
subject; and though we cannot deal today with the deeper
facts — having a special theme to speak upon — I
nevertheless intended to bring to your notice several of the
principal facts of this Spiritual Science. And even when such
facts shall have been named and described, a feeling, quite
honest, may easily arise within the minds of our
contemporaries to the effect that all this is a most curious
viewpoint.
Spiritual
Science as a whole rests, in the first place, upon the
preconception that all that surrounds us in the world of
sense — all we can perceive through our senses and
understand with our intellect — which is bound to the senses
— is not the whole world, but that behind it all lies
a spiritual world. And this spiritual world lies not in some
undefined “beyond” but surrounds us here and now
in exactly the same way as color and light phenomena surround
a person born blind. But in order to perceive our environment
we need an organ of perception. And just as a blind man
cannot see color or light, so man of our age cannot, as a
rule, perceive the spiritual facts and beings surrounding
him here if he possesses only his normal powers of
perception. But when we are lucky enough to perform a
successful operation upon a blind person, there comes to him
the moment of and “awakening” of the eye, and
what previously did not exist for him — color and light, now
flows into him. A new world is now perceptible to him. In a
similar manner a higher awakening is possible on the
Spiritual plane — that awakening which leads to
initiation into the world of spirit. To use Goethe's
words: there are spiritual eyes and ears, but human souls are
not, as a rule, advanced far enough to use these. But when we
apply the means and methods calculated to develop these
powers, something happens within us similar to the new power
given to the man born blind through the operation. A man becomes
“awakened” when these new eyes and ears are
opened; a new world surrounds him — a world that was
always present, but remained invisible to him before his
awakening. And now, when he has advanced thus far he learns
to make his own the various sources of knowledge which
illuminate life, give him power and security for his work and
the ability to penetrate into the fundamentals of human
destiny and the secrets of it.
One of these
cognitions — one of those appearing to modern man, if
not crazy, at best chimerical — shall now be dealt
with, if only introductorily. It is the restoration or
revival of a primeval process of perception, it's
continuation upon a higher plane, pure truth which only
comparatively recently has been attained for a lower plane.
Humanity as a whole has a very short memory for great events
in the world of spirit; hence little is thought to-day of the
fact that in the 17th century not only the laity but also
scientists believed that from riverslime lower animals, even
worms and fishes, could develop. It was the great naturalist
Francesco Redi who first said that no worm nor fish issues
from riverslime unless a worm or fish germ has first been
deposited therein. He said that life can spring only from
life, and from this assertion we realize that it is only a
superficial, inexact observation which can conclude that from
lifeless slime can evolve life in the shape of fish or worm;
accurate examination shows that we must go back to the living
germ, and that this germ can only attract from out of its
environment the forces contained therein in order to bring to
the highest state of development all that reside as life
within the germ or seed.
Redi's
precept that life develops only from life is in modern
science recognized as self-evident. But when Redi, in his
day, gave utterance to it, he barely escaped the fate of
Giordano Bruno. It is the same with the evolution of man.
First, a truth pronounced thus brings accusation of heresy;
then it becomes self-evident and common knowledge of
humanity. What Redi did for natural science is to be done for
the spiritual man through Spiritual Science by transferring
Redi's precept through the cognition of the awakened
spiritual eye and ear to the psychic sphere. And then this
precept runs: the Psycho-Spiritual can develop only from the
Psycho-Spiritual, in other words, it is an inexact method of
observation that claims the genesis of a man being dependent
only upon father, mother and ancestors. As we must return
from the living worm to the living worm-germ, so we have to go
back in the case of man, who has evolved from the germ to a
definite being, to an earlier spiritual existence and realize
that this being, which enters life through birth, only
attracts from his physical ancestors the powers for his own
development, as does the worm from his lifeless surroundings.
And by corresponding extension of Redi's precept we get
another: The present life, entering existence through birth,
leads not only back to physical ancestors, but through the
centuries to an earlier, psycho-spiritual condition. And if
you delve yet deeper into this idea, you'll find it shown
quite scientifically that there are not only one, but
repeated earth lives; that that, which resides in us
as life between birth and death, is a repetition of a
psycho-spiritual condition already present in earlier stages
of existence, and that our present life is, in its turn, the
starting point for succeeding lives. The psycho-spiritual
comes from the psycho-spiritual, returns to the
psycho-spiritual which existed before birth and which
descends from the spiritual world to exist in a physical
incarnation. From this point of view we observe something
very different when we, for example, study a child from the
position of parent or teacher, and see the gradual
development of inner powers. At birth we are confronted by
something indefinite in its features; then we notice how
step-by-step something is developed from within, becoming
ever more and more definite — something not inherited,
but issuing from a former life. We see how, from birth
onwards, this psycho-spiritual center develops by degrees
through the talents.
That is the
message of Spiritual Science today in relation to repeated
earth lives. Today it may be considered as dreaming —
like the conviction uttered by Francesco Redi in the 17th
century — but tomorrow, in the not-too-distant future,
it will take its place as a self-evident truth, and the
sentence: the psycho-spiritual comes from the psycho-spiritual
will become the universal possession of humanity.
In our day
the heretic is not treated as he was formally. He is no
longer delivered to the stake, but looked upon as a dreamer
and fool speaking from some fantastic imagination. He is made
ridiculous by those who sit upon the lofty seat of science
saying that all this is irreconcilable with true science,
unaware that it is the true, pure science which is demanded
by this truth. We could give hundreds of such truths that would
show how Spiritual Science can illuminate life by
demonstrating that an immortal germ resides in man, a germ
which goes into the spiritual world at death, to return again
to physical existence when its task in the higher world has
been completed, so that new experiences may be gathered which
are once again carried into the realms of spirit through the
gates of death. We would see how the bond created between man
and man, from soul to soul in every walk of life, those
attractions of the heart uniting one soul with another — can be
explained by their earlier creation in former life
conditions; and how those new inner connections and sympathies
formed today do not cease to be when death passes over
physical life but are immortal like the human soul itself;
how these accompany us through the world of spirit and later
live again in future earthly conditions and new incarnations.
And it is only a matter of further evolution for man to remember
his former earth experiences — those psycho-spiritual
events of earlier lives and conditions of existence.
These truths
will, in a not very remote future, permeate, as necessary
concepts, human life, and man will gain power, hope and
confidence from these. Today we can only see that a few
people in the world are, through their healthy sense of
truth, attracted to what spiritual investigators can
communicate of their experiences in the spiritual world. But
true knowledge of the facts of spiritual science will become
universal among men as a result of earnest search for the
truth. And all those who have trodden the path of this
research in the past have always given to mankind the
profound wisdom and understanding which is today offered
again them by Spiritual Science.
Let's
consider an example taken from a time that lies very near to
our own — the example of Goethe, and also the work
which occupied him during his whole life as his greatest most
comprehensive: his “Faust”.
Where we thus
approach Goethe and try to illuminate his striving with the
insight given us a Spiritual Science, we can begin very
early. True it is, that from his predispositions one can
discern the state of his soul and spirit. Everything within
him which urged him to seek a spiritual background behind all
the phenomena of nature was an early predisposition. We see
the seven year old boy — Goethe — who could have
absorbed quite ordinary ideas from his environment as any
other boy would be able to do; but that did not satisfy him.
He himself tells us so in his “Poetry and Truth”.
There we see this boy begin something quite extraordinary in
order to express his longing for the Divine. He takes a music
stand from his father's effects and transforms it into an
altar by placing upon it all kinds of minerals and plants and
other products of nature from which the spirit of nature
speaks. With a certain premonition this boy-soul builds an
altar, places a candle upon it, takes a burning-glass, waits
for the first rays of the rising Sun, gathers these with his
glass and focuses them upon the candle 'til the smoke rises.
And in advanced age he remembers how he, as a boy, sends his
pious feelings to the great God of nature Who speaks through
plants and mineral and sends us His fire through the rays of
the Sun. All this develops further in Goethe. We see how it
comes to expression, at a more mature age, after he arrives
in Weimar and is called as advisor to the grand Duke —
in the beautiful prosahymn, in which he says: Nature, we are
surrounded and embraced by thee, unable to leave thee, and unable
to enter deeper into thee. Unwarned and unmasked she
takes us into the cycles of her dance, hurrying along with us
until we fall exhausted from her arms. Not we, but she has
done what is done; she thinks and meditates perpetually,
looks with 1000 eyes into the world. — And again, later,
he says in the book about Winckelmann “Antiques”:
“When the healthy nature of man acts as one whole; when
he feels himself in the world as in a great, beautiful,
majestic and worthy whole; when that harmonious ease endows
him with a pure, free rapture, then would this universe,
could it perceive itself, feel itself at its goal and admire,
joyfully, the culmination of its own being and
evolution”. In this manner did Goethe sense how
everything living and moving in outer nature celebrates a new
resurrection in the human soul, and how a higher nature
— a spiritual nature — is borne out of the soul
and spirit of man. But only gradually does Goethe fight his
way to full clarity of spiritual knowledge of nature. And in
nothing else do we see plainer and clearer how Goethe during
his entire life remained striving, with rest, to
transform his knowledge again and again and so to rise to a
higher stage than in his life's work — “Faust”.
In his
earliest youth he began to incorporate into his poem all
that filled his longing and feeling soul; and as aged man, in
his last years, shortly before his death, he completed this
work upon which he had spent fifty years of his life and laid
into it the best fruits of his existence. At his death the
second part lay there sealed, like the great testament to be
bestowed upon humanity. It is a significant document, which
we understand only if we follow Goethe in his efforts to win
through to cognition. We find him, for example, a student at
the University in Leipzig. He should have become a lawyer,
but this occupied him only as a secondary interest. An
unconquerable urge towards the secrets of the world —
toward the spiritual — already existed within this
young student, even in those days. He therefore absorbed all
that Leipzig had to offer on natural science, and to hearken
to the world for her problems of existence. But in order to
transform what natural science offered him, into that urge
which permeated all his inner forces, and aimed not at
abstract knowledge, but a warm perception of the heart, he
needed for its development a great experience — one
that leads man to that knowledge in reality — the gate
towards which we gaze with uncertain feelings and which shuts
away from the normal human being of today the super physical,
the invisible — the gate of death. Death passed him
by at the end of his studies in Leipzig. A severe illness
brought him near death's door. Hours, days, passed by where
he felt that that mysterious portal would open to him at any
moment and let him pass through. The exceptionally powerful
urge towards knowledge demanded the higher degree of
endeavor. And with this developed mood of perceptive he
returned to his native city Frankfurt. There he found a
circle of persons at whose head stood a woman of deep,
extensive ability: Suzanne von Klettenberg. Goethe has
erected a wonderful monument to her in the form of “The
Confessions of a Beautiful Soul”. In it he showed that
in this soul, which he at that time became spiritually
intimate, something lived that cannot be expressed in any
other way than to say: in Suzanne von Klettenberg lived a
soul that endeavored to contain within itself the Divine and
through this find the Divinity interpenetrating the world.
Through this circle Goethe was introduced to studies which,
were they applied today to any truly modern man, would appear
crazy. They were medieval writings, and Goethe absorbed their
contents. Anyone who today should study these could do
little or nothing with them. When one observes the remarkable
signs therein, one asks: what really is all this as compared
with today's striving after truth by our science? At that
time there was one book, The Golden Chain of Homer — Aurea
catena Homeri. When opening this, one finds a remarkable
symbolic drawing — a dragon full of life in the upper
half circle bordering on another dragon, one which is dried-up
and dying. Various signs are connected with this: symbolic
keys, two intersecting triangles and the planetary signs. All
this is mere fantasy for our contemporaries of a scientific
bent, because they know not what to do with them. Goethe
feels that they represent something. They do not express
directly something to be found here or there in our world.
But if these symbols are allowed to work upon us by, so to
speak, becoming blind and deaf to our physical environment,
letting only these signs act upon us, then we experience
something highly peculiar — we feel, that the soul
becomes aware of something that has been asleep — like
a spiritual eye which has opened. And if one has sufficient
perseverance, one takes to what is called meditation and
concentration which so develop the soul that, as an actual
fact, something like a spiritual eye operation is performed
and a new world makes its appearance. Such a new world could
not disclose itself to Goethe at that time, for he had not developed so
far. But in his soul arose a presentiment that there exist
keys for that spiritual world and that one can enter it. We
have to realize this mood of Goethe's: The living sensation
or feeling; something within me becomes active, compelling me to
the belief that something exists which leads into the world
of spirit. But simultaneously he feels his powerlessness to
enter that world. If at anytime Goethe had been identical
with Faust, we could say that he was in the same position as
Faust when we see him at the beginning of the first part,
where Faust, after studying the most varied departments of
science, opens books containing those signs and symbols,
feels himself encompassed by a spiritual world, but lacks the
means of entry. But Goethe never was identical with Faust in
that way; one part of him was Faust, but he
himself grew beyond that part of himself. And so developed
that which transcended Faust, through his disregard of any
inconvenience, more and more and his continuous striving
brought him to the conclusion that one cannot get behind the
secrets of existence at one bound, not through formula and
incantations, but through the patient and energetic effort to
penetrate all that surrounds us in the physical world —
gradually, step by step — with a true, psycho-spiritual
perception. It is easy to say: this higher knowledge must
arise in the soul. True, but it arises in its true form only
if we are striving with patience and endurance to recognize,
step-by-step, the real nature of the phenomena of the physical
world and then, behind them, seek the spiritual. But Goethe could
compress all this, could see it all in a different light, with
what he had gained in his Frankfurt period.
Goethe came
from Frankfurt to this city — Strassburg — we
could indicate much that has here led him higher. Especially
characteristic was the effect upon him of something that has
so great a significance for this city — the Cathedral.
The idea behind this building came to him and he understood
why each single line must be as it is. With spiritual
perception — gained during his Frankfurt meditations
— he observed each triangle, each angle of this
beautiful erection as part of the whole; and in his soul this
great idea of the architect celebrated a resurrection and he
believed he could recognize the thought, the idea, behind it.
And so we could mention many instances where, so to speak, a
marriage took place in his soul between his inner perception
and the things it absorbed from the outer world. It is therefore
not to be wondered at that, when later he returned to Weimar,
he began to take up natural science from a new angle —
botany, zoology, osteology, etc. and consider them all in the
light of letters which together produce the book of life and
lead into the secrets of existence. Thus originated his
studies of the development of plants, of the animal world, in
the same manner as he dealt with these subjects during his
student days, except that everywhere he sought the spirit
behind the sensual phenomena of existence. So we see him
during his Italian Journey consider, on the one side, art,
and nature's creations on the other, as he studied the plant
world so as to recognize the spirit ruling within. Great and
beautiful are the words he wrote to his friends who were
familiar with this kind of spiritualized natural science:
“Oh, everything here appears to me in a new guise; I
would like to travel to India and there study, in my own
way, what is already discovered ...” that is, study it in a
manner demanded of him by his development. We see how he
considers the works of art he meets with. He writes in one
letter: "This much is certain, the old artists possessed a
knowledge of nature and as sure a conception of what can be
presented and how it must be presented as had Homer.
Unfortunately is the number of works of art of first-class
value much too small. But when one sees them one has
nothing else to wish for as to understand them rightly and
pass on in peace. These sublime artistic creations are, like
the highest of man's natural works, built up in accordance
with true and natural laws; everything imaginary, arbitrary
collapses; there is only necessity — there is
God”. Just as the great Spirit of Nature spoke to the
boy of seven from his self constructed altar, so now did the
great Spirit of Existence in the world of Spirit speak to him
through the works of art which he looked upon as a unity.
Thus did Goethe advance more and more towards the
contemplation of the unity (of things) by energetic and
devoted work. He could now quietly await the moment when, out
of his observations, there should grow a real cognition of
the world of Spirit, a true Spiritual Science, which we meet -
transformed by the artistic treatment, in his
“Faust”.
The first
parts of “Faust” thus display the mood of a man
who suspects the mysteries of existence but cannot penetrate
them. We see then how Faust lets himself be influenced by
those signs which surround him with the spiritual, and also
that he is not yet ripe to really feel this spiritual
environment. This is shown by the lines where Faust is acted
upon by the symbolic signs of the macrocosm and the Earth
spirit and the latter appears before him. With wonderful
words Faust characterizes the Earth spirit. We perceive how
he suspects that the planet Earth is not simply that physical
globe which is described by natural science, but has within it
a soul, as our physical body contains a spirit.
“In the currents of life, and action's storm,
I float and wave
With billowy motion!
Birth and the grave,
A limitless ocean,
A constant weaving
With change still rife,
A restless heaving,
A glowing life —
Thus time's whirring loom unceasing I ply,
And weave the life-garment of deity.”
That is the
spirit residing in the Earth, as our spirit lives in us.
But Goethe presents to us Faust as unripe, his spirit as
incomplete. He must turn away from that fear-inspiring sign
like a crooked worm. The Earth spirit answers him:
“Thou'rt like the spirit thou dost comprehend, not
me!” Goethe's soul knew, if only surmisingly, that we
must not be satisfied with any of the steps we take, but
strive ever higher; that we cannot claim to have achieved
something but must go forward yet further. Goethe centers
upon these mysteries his assiduous studies, and we now see
him growing. The same spirit whom he first called and of whom
he could only say “Dreadful Shape”, Goethe
addresses through Faust after Goethe himself has attained a
step higher, subsequent to his Italian Journey, regarding
which I said that he endeavored to penetrate both nature and
art according to his lights. Faust is now of the same frame
of mind as Goethe himself. Faust now stands before the spirit
and says:
“Spirit sublime! Thou gav'st me,
gav'st me all.
For which I prayed! Not vainly hast thou turn'd
To me thy countenance in flaming fire:
Gavest me glorious nature for my realm,
And also power to feel her and enjoy;
Not merely with a cold and wondering glance,
Thou dost permit me in her depths profound,
As in the bosom of a friend to gaze.
Before me thou dost lead her living tribes
And dost in silent grove, in air and stream
Teach me to know my kindred. And when roars
The howling storm — blast through the groaning wood,
Wrenching the giant pine, which in its fall
Crashing sweeps down its neighbor trunks and boughs,
While with the hollow noise the hill resounds:
Then thou dost lead me to some shelter'd cave,
Dost there reveal me to myself, and show
Of my own bosom the mysterious depths,
And when, with soothing beam, the moons pale orb
Full in my view climbs up the pathless sky,
From crag to dewy grove, the silvery forms
Of bygone ages hover, and assuage
The joy austere of Contemplative Thought.”
Here we
see Goethe, and with him Faust, arrived at the height where he
will not again turn away from the Spirit whom he had wanted
to reach at one leap. Now this spirit faces him as one from
whom he does not need to turn. Now he recognizes him in
everything living, in all the kingdoms of nature, in the
forest and water, in the still bush, in the giant pine, in
storm and thunder. And not only in these. After his
appearance in the magnitude of nature he knows him also
within his own heart: his secret, profound wonders are
revealed.
That is a
step forward in Goethe's spiritual perception and he takes no
rest, but endeavors to make still further progress. We then
see how he, encouraged by Schiller, he tries to go still
deeper, especially during the nineties of the 18th century. These
years brought him the possibility of transcending that
indefinite characteristic of consciousness of the spirit
limited to the conception that in everything there is spirit.
He succeeded in grasping this spirit in the concrete. But
Goethe needed much preparation before he was able to present
the life of the human spirit in the sense that the
psycho-spiritual can arise only from the psycho-spiritual.
That Goethe never neglected the effort to enter still further
into this, is shown by various works created before the
completion of the second part of “Faust”; and the
degree of his progress in that direction is found in that
second part. Many turned away from Goethe when they came to
know him — an introspective Goethe — in the
“Pandora”. Even today we hear it uttered: the
first part of Faust is full of life, breathes direct naturalness; but
the second part is a product of Goethe's advanced age,
crammed with symbolisms and artificialities. Such people have
no idea of the eternal wisdom embodied in this second part, a
wisdom to which Goethe could attain only in the evening of
his life, and leave it as testament behind him. And, because
of this, we can understand Goethe, in connection with many
works which already breathe the spirit of Faust, writing
lines from which we see Faust presented as a contending soul
— a soul into which a new element has penetrated. We
realize it in his anger poured out over those who have called
"Faust" and inferior work of age. He says of them:
“My Faust some people praise
And what not else
That I in writings phrase
To their advantage tells.
The oldest tag-and-rag
Pleases the pit;
The rabble cannot see
There's more in it.”
(My Translation. P.S.)
Here Goethe
has for once clothed his opinion in words which he thought
justifiable in reference to those who believed that only
Goethe's more youthful accomplishments had any value; those
who would not ascend to the work of his maturer years.
After Goethe
has introduced his Faust to the life that closely surrounds
us, has had him experiencing that wonderful Gretchen-tragedy,
he leads him out into the great, exterior world — the
world of the Emperors Court. Goethe here will show that Faust
shall really enter in spirit into the secrets of this world.
And then he was to be led into the true spiritual world
— the Supersensual.
In the very
beginning of the second part we see how Goethe has Faust
surrounded by diverse spiritual beings in order to indicate
that he was not only to be introduced into an exterior
physical world, but should experience all that can be
experienced by one whose spiritual eye is opened and whose
spiritual ear sensitized. Hence does Goethe show us in the
second part the essence of the human soul — of human
evolution. What are Faust's experiences to be? The perception
of the super-physical world into whose mysteries he is to be
initiated. Where is this super-physical world?
Here is an
opportunity — if we consider the spiritual content of
Faust — in the first place to become occupied with
Mephistopheles — that spirit who environs Faust from
the beginning, who plays his part in everything Faust
undertakes. But only in the second part, where Faust is to be
introduced into the world of Spirit, can we realize the
actual role Mephistopheles plays. After Faust has passed
through the events in the Imperial Court, he begins to see
that which is no longer a part of the physical world —
the spirit of Helena, who lived many centuries ago. She has
to be found for Faust. But that is impossible in the physical
world; so Faust must descend into the spiritual world.
Mephistopheles has the key to that world, but cannot enter
there himself. He can describe it reasonably; he can say: you
will descend, or we may say — ascend; and he then actually
describes the world into which Faust is to submerge in order
to familiarize himself with it and therein find the spirit,
the immortal, the eternal, that remains of Helena. A word is
sounded — a wonderful word —: Faust shall descend
to the Mothers. Who or what are the “Mothers”?
One could speak for hours to explain what they are. Here we
need only say that the Mothers were for spiritual science at
all times that which man learns to know when his spiritual eye is
opened. When he looks into the physical world, he sees all
things limited, bounded; when he enters the world of spirit
he merges with something from which come all things physical,
as does the ice from a pond. Just as someone unable to see
water would say that there is nothing but ice which towers up
out of nothing, so can a man who is ignorant of the spirit,
claim that only physical things exist. He does not discern
the spirit within and behind the physical, out of which all
things physical are formed, as is ice out of water. There, at
the foundation of physical things, no more discernible by the
physical eye — there are the Mothers. Mephistopheles is
that being which is to represent the kind of intelligence
able to understand only the things formed in outer space,
though aware of the existence of a spiritual realm, but
unable to enter it. Mephistopheles stands at the side of
Faust as today the materialistic thinker stands by him, saying:
O, you Spiritual Scientist: you Theosophist: you want to look
into a spiritual world? Why, there is nothing in it; you
are only dreaming! And to this Materialist, who wants to
build upon what the microscope and the telescope disclose,
but denies all that lies behind physical appearance, the
Spiritual investigator calls: “In your nothing I hope
to find the All.” Thus the materialist thinker compared
with the spiritual man who hopes to discover the spirit where
the other perceives nothing. These two powers stand in
opposition eternally. And from the very beginning
Mephistopheles stands before Faust as the Spirit who can lead to
the door, but no further. The Theosophist or Spiritual
Scientist does not say that physical science is valueless and
unnecessary, and possesses the key only. Instead he
maintains: We must take this science earnestly and study it,
and although the key is in its hand, it leads us to where the
true spiritual life can finally be found.
Then Faust
descends into the realm of the Mothers — the spiritual
world; he succeeds in bringing up with him the spirit of Helena.
But he is not ripe enough to unite this spirit with his own
soul. Hence the scene where desire stirs in Faust, where he
wishes to embrace the archetype of Helena with sensual
passion. He is therefore thrust back. That is the fate of
everyone who seeks to approach the Spiritual World harboring
personal, egotistical feelings; he is repelled like Faust. He
must first mature; must learn the real relationship between
the three members of man's nature: the immortal spirit which
goes on from life to life, from incarnation to incarnation;
the body, commencing and ending its existence between birth
and death, and the soul between the two of them. Body, soul
and spirit — how they unite, how they mutually react
— that is the lesson Faust must learn. The archetype of
Helena, the immortal, the eternal, that passes from life to
life, from one incarnation to the other, Faust has already
tried to find, but was then immature. Now he is to become
ripe so that he is worthy to truly penetrate into the spirit
realm. For this purpose he had to learn that this immortality
comes to man only when he can be re-embodied repeatedly
within physical existence — have new lives extending
from birth to death. Therefore must Goethe show how the soul
lives between spirit and body, how the soul is placed between
the immortal spirit and the body which exists only between
birth and death. The second part of Faust shows us this.
Goethe
conceals the soul in that wonderful form about which
investigators of his Faust have little to say, while
spiritual investigators who are experienced perceive
therein the archetype of the soul. That form is nothing else
than the Homunculus — the little man. It is a picture
of the human soul. And what has this soul to do? It is the
mediator between body and spirit; it must attract all the
elements of the body out of all the kingdoms of nature in
order to ally itself with them. Only then can it become
united with the immortal spirit. In that way we can see how
Faust is led by the Homunculus to the classical Walpurgisnight
as far as the natural philosophers Anaxagoras and Thales who
have investigated the origin of nature and life.
And there is
given that true teaching of evolution which says, that not
only is the animal at the foundation of man's development
but a soul-element that gathers together the elements of
nature and with them gradually commences to build. Hence
Homunculus receives the counsel: You must begin with the
lowest kingdom and rise higher and higher. The human soul is,
in the first place, sent to the mineral kingdom. There man is
informed that he has to pass through the vegetable kingdom:
there the soul gathers all the natural elements so as to
develop further. It is expressly said: “And up to man
thou hast sufficient time.” There we see approaching the
spirit of love, Eros, after the soul has formed the body from
out of the kingdoms of nature. There the soul unites with
the spirit. Body, soul and spirit are united. That which is
the soul of the Homunculus, with its newly organized body,
comes into union with the spirit of Helena who now, in the
third act of the second part, can appear to us incarnate.
The teaching of reincarnation we see artistically and
practically interspersed in the second part of Faust. One
cannot unite with Helena by approaching her with stormy
passion, but must experience the mysteries of existence in
reality — pass through rebirth.
Goethe, in
his days, was as yet unable to express the idea of
reincarnation as we do today; but he inserted it into the
second part of Faust nevertheless. Hence he could say to
Eckermann: I have written my Faust in a way suitable for the
stage; and the illustrations presented are, exteriorly,
sensually interesting for him who will see only the exterior
— the sensual. But the initiated will at once perceive
that profound spiritual truth has been included in the second
part of Faust. And so has Goethe indicated that we can find
his life conception — his spiritual attitude — in
this work; and we can now understand that Goethe could
demonstrate in this reunion of Faust with Helena the nature
of true mysticism.
Faust unites
with the spiritual world. Not an ordinary child is the
result, but Euphorion who is just as true as he is poetic.
Just as truthfully does he show, what comes to life in our
soul when it unites with the spiritual world — when the
soul penetrates into the secrets of the world of spirit
— in it's evolution a moment arrives which is of
enormously profound meaning for the soul. Before the soul
progresses further, it experiences, only for short moments,
its unity with the spiritual world; it knows, for quite short
periods, what the spiritual world is. Then it is as if, from
out of this spiritual perception, were born a spiritual
child. But then again come the moments of ordinary life, when
this child vanishes into the spiritual world. This one has to
grasp vitally with one's whole heart, and one feels how
Euphorion, the spiritual child of the mystic, and despite all
poetic truths of life, sinks down into the realm of spirit
into which Faust cannot, as yet, quite enter; but how he also
draws across something else. It is an experience of the
spiritual investigator, the seeker, when our soul has her
hour of really feeling her relationship to the spiritual
world, and where the knowledge, or perception, appears like
the child of a marriage with the spiritual world. Then the
soul has the profound experience — when returning to
everyday life — of losing or leaving behind the best of
her possessions. It is as though our own soul might
altogether escape and remain in the spiritual world. If one
has felt this, one hears the echo of the spiritual words of
Euphorion who has descended and calls from out of the depths:
Leave me in realms forlorn,
Mother, not all alone!
This voice is
known to the true mystic — the voice of the spiritual
child calling to our soul as its Mother.
But this soul
must go on. She must be severed from all that is only
personal desire. Quite impersonally must we merge into the
spirit existence. As long as there remains one selfish aim,
one tinge of self-will, we will fail to perceive the
spiritual world. That is possible only when every personal
interest is eradicated. Only then can we really grasp the
world of spirit permanently. But even then come various
moments — after we have gone through the one that
forces us back into the physical world — moments which
deprive us of all mysticism for prolonged periods. They are
those moments of which we must say: Yes, when we have
overcome all that savours of selfishness and self-will,
something still remains, as it did in Faust after he had said that
“now I stand upon a free foundation; I will
endeavor to gain from nature everything that I can use for
the benefit of others.” But he has not advanced so far.
As he gazes upon the hut of Philemon and Baucis and the sight
attracts him, he shows that the egoism which wishes to
experience pleasure through this view is not yet
exterminated. He wanted, unselfishly, to create a place for
himself within that realm, but could not yet bear the sight
of what spoiled the view — the hut of Philemon and
Baucis. And once more the spirit of evil approaches him. The
hut is destroyed by fire. Now he sees what anyone sees who
passes through this development: the anxiety which meets
anyone still harboring selfish aspirations which present his
ascent into the spiritual world. Here it faces us —
this anxiety, here we learn to know it in its true form; and
simultaneously it is something which can really lead us to
the true spiritual perception. This does not mean that man
shall become alienated from this world — feel any
antagonisms towards it — but that he shall learn to
know what it is that will not allow him to sever himself from
it. Through wise self-knowledge we are to face this trouble
so that we may become freed from the egotism of the anxiety,
and not from the anxiety itself; from the feeling awakened and
it is said that it slips through the keyhole. When we
come to know this — trouble — not merely feel, but learn
to bear it — then we attain that degree of development
which opens our spiritual eye. This is presented to us by
Faust's blindness in advanced age; his physical site has
gone, but he can see the spiritual world. Night penetrates
deeper and deeper, but within is a bright light — a
light capable of illuminating the world in which lives the
soul between death and birth — the realm of the
Mothers. Only now can Faust commence his journey into the
spiritual world, so beautifully presented by his ascension.
Now can
Goethe compress all that Faust has achieved since the time of
premonitory striving, the time when he despaired of science
and turned away from it, till he gained his highest degree of
spiritual perception. This he does in the chorus mysticus
which, by its name alone, indicates that it contains
something very deep. Here, in this chorus, is to be condensed
in few words — paradigmatically — that which offers the key to all the world
mysteries: how everything temporal is only a symbolism for
the eternal. What the physical eye can see is only a symbol
for the spiritual, the immortal of which Goethe has shown
that he, when entering into this spiritual realm, even gains
the knowledge of reincarnation. He will finally show man's
entrance into the spiritual kingdom coincides with the
knowledge that what was premonition and hope in the physical
is truth in the spiritual; what was aspiration in the
physical becomes attainment in the spiritual world.
It may sound
almost pedantic if I mention something here which must be
known if the final words are to be understood.
Goethe spoke
rather indistinctly in his late years because of the absence
of teeth. He dictated the second part of his Faust to a
writer. As he still retained something of his Frankfurt
dialect, several words and sounds were not quite clearly
pronounced. Thus has a “G” been substituted for
several “Ch's”. For instance, for
“Erreichnis” (attainment) was written
“Ereignis” (event). Goethe, in his final lines of
Faust said “Erreichnis”. Here, the inadequate becomes
something attainable or “erreichbar” — to be
written with two “r”s and a “ch”.
Everywhere, in all Goethe publications, we find
“Ereignis”. So little can these Goethe-investigators
enter into the sense of the work. The
“inadequate” of the physical world becomes the
“attained” in the spiritual; what here cannot be
described, becomes there a living fact.
Finally we
touch that Great Fact, which Goethe incorporated into his
final words: the “ever-womanly.” It is a sin
against Goethe to say that here he means the female sex. He
refers to that profundity signifying the human soul as
related to the mystery of the world; that which deeply yearns
as the eternal in man, the ever-womanly which draws the soul
to the eternally immortal, the eternal wisdom, and which
gives itself to the “eternal masculine.” The
ever-womanly draws us towards the ever-masculine. It has
nothing to do with something feminine in the ordinary sense.
Therefore can we truly seek this ever-womanly in man and
woman: the ever-womanly which aspires to the union with the
ever-manly in the cosmos, to become one with the
Divine-Spiritual that inter-penetrates and permeates the
world towards which Faust strives. This mystery of man of all
ages pursued by Faust from the beginning, this secret to which
Spiritual Science is to lead us in a modern sense, is
expressed by Goethe paradigmatically and monumentally in
those five words at the conclusion of the second part of
Faust represented as a mystic Spirit Choir; that everything
physical surrounding us in the sense world is Maya, illusion;
a symbol only of the spiritual. But this spiritual we can
perceive if we penetrate that which covers it like a veil.
And in it we see attained what on earth was impossible of
attainment. We see that, which for ordinary intellect is
indescribable, transformed into action as soon as the human
spirit unites with the spiritual world. “The ineffable
wrought in love.” And we see the significance of the
moment when the soul becomes united with the eternal
masculine of the cosmic world. That is the great secret
expressed by Goethe in the words:
“All of mere transient date
As symbol showeth;
Here the inadequate
To fullness groweth;
Here the ineffable
Wrought is in love;
The ever-womanly
Draws us above ...”
How could
Goethe say: I have now completed my life's work. It is now
almost immaterial what I may do during the rest of my life on
Earth. — He sealed up the second part of Faust, and only after
his death was it given to humanity, and this humanity will
need to concentrate deeply upon Spiritual Science in order to
penetrate the mysteries of this powerful work.
It was
unfortunately impossible to do more than deal with this
subject in a sketchy manner today. One could illuminate by
all methods of Wisdom this testament of Goethe for hours and
weeks. May humanity enter more and more into its contents!
Seal after seal will fall if mankind has the will to
penetrate the secrets of this second part. Dumb will be the
voices that say: “you seek something which Goethe never
intended.” Those who speak thus, know nothing of the
depths of Goethe's soul. Only those realize these depths who
can see the highest in this work and in all that he condenses
in the mystic choir as meditations leading to the spirit.
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