LECTURE
II
Yesterday
I tried to give you a picture of a form of Initiation which ought not
to exist, according to our valuation of human nature. This
Initiation, as we have seen it in Jesuitism, leads to the acquisition
of certain occult faculties, but if we bring a cleansed and purified
occult vision to bear upon these faculties, they cannot be considered
good. It will now be my task to show that the Rosicrucian way is
characterised by all that high regard for human nature which we
recognise as equally our own. But we must first be clear on certain
points.
From explanations
given previously in various forms, we know that the Rosicrucian
Initiation is essentially a development of the Christian Initiation,
so that we can speak of it as a Christian-Rosicrucian Initiation. In
earlier lecture-courses the purely Christian Initiation; with its
seven degrees, and the Rosicrucian Initiation, also with seven
degrees, have been compared. But now we must note that with regard to
Initiation the principle of the progress of the human soul must be
strictly maintained.
We know that the
Rosicrucian Initiation had its proper beginning somewhere about the
thirteenth century. At that time it was recognised by those
individualities who have to guide the deeper destinies of human
evolution as the right Initiation for the more advanced human souls.
This shows that the Initiation of the Rose-Cross takes full account
of the continuous progress of the human soul and must therefore pay
particular attention to the fact that since the thirteenth century
the human soul has developed further. Souls which are to be led to
Initiation in our day can no longer adopt the standpoint of the
thirteenth century. I want especially to point this out because in
our time there is such a strong desire to label everything with some
mark or other, with some catchword. From this bad habit, and not for
any justified reason, our anthroposophical movement has been given a
label which could lead gradually to something like a calamity.
It is true that
within our movement the principle of Rosicrucianism can be found in
all completeness, so that we can penetrate into the sources of
Rosicrucianism. So it is that persons who by means of our
anthroposophical training penetrate into these sources can properly
call themselves Rosicrucians. But it must be emphasised just as
strongly that outsiders have no right to designate as Rosicrucian the
anthroposophical stream we represent, simply because our movement has
been given — consciously or unconsciously — an entirely
false label. We are no longer standing where the Rosicrucians stood
in the thirteenth century and on through the following centuries, for
we take into account the progress of the human soul. Hence the way
indicated in my book,
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds,
as the way best adapted for gaining access to the Higher Worlds must not
without further explanation be equated with what may be called the
Rosicrucian way. Through our movement we can penetrate into true
Rosicrucianism, but our movement extends over a far wider domain, for
it embraces the whole of Theosophy; hence it should not be labeled
Rosicrucian. Our movement must be described simply as the spiritual
science of today, the anthroposophical spiritual science of the
twentieth century. Outsiders, particularly, will fall — more or
less unconsciously — into some kind of misunderstanding if they
describe our movement simply as Rosicrucian. But an outstanding
achievement of Rosicrucianism since the dawn of modern spiritual life
in the thirteenth century has been to establish a rule which must
also be ours: the rule that all modern Initiation in the deepest
sense of the word must recognise and treasure the independence of the
most holy element in man's inner life, his Will-centre, as
indicated yesterday. The occult methods there described are designed
to overcome and enslave the human will and to set it on a
predetermined course; hence a true occultism will rigorously avoid
them.
Before
characterising Rosicrucianism and present-day Initiation, we must
mention a decisively relevant point: the Rosicrucianism of the
thirteenth, fourteenth and even of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries has again had to be modified for our time. The
Rosicrucianism of those earlier centuries could not reckon with a
spiritual element which has since entered into human evolution.
Without this element today we can no longer understand rightly the
fundamentals of all those spiritual streams which arise from the
ground of occultism, including therefore any theosophical stream. For
reasons we shall see more exactly in the course of these lectures,
the teaching of reincarnation and karma, of repeated earth-lives, was
excluded for many centuries from the external, exoteric teachings of
Christianity. In the thirteenth century the teaching of reincarnation
and karma had not yet entered, in the highest sense, into the first
stages of Rosicrucian initiation. One could go far, up to the fourth
or fifth degree; one could go through what was called the Rosicrucian
studium — the acquiring of Imagination, the reading of the
occult script, the finding of the philosopher's stone —
and one could experience something of what is called the mystical
death. One could reach this stage and acquire exceptionally high
occult knowledge, but without needing to achieve full clarity
concerning the illuminating teachings of reincarnation and karma.
We must be clear
that human thinking progresses and now embraces forms of thought
which, if only we follow them out logically — and this can
easily be done on the external, exoteric level — lead
unconditionally to a recognition of repeated earth-lives and so to
the idea of karma. The words spoken through the lips of Strader in my
second Rosicrucian drama,
The Soul's Probation,
are absolutely true: namely that a logical thinker today, if he is not
to break with everything that the thought-forms of the last century have
brought in, must come finally to a recognition of karma and
reincarnation.
This is something
deeply rooted in present-day spiritual life. Just because this
knowledge has been slowly prepared and has these deep roots, it
emerges little by little, as though independently, in the West. It is
indeed remarkable how the necessity of recognising repeated
earth-lives has independently made itself felt — though
certainly only by outstanding individual thinkers. We need only call
attention to certain facts which are quite forgotten, intentionally
or unintentionally, in our present-day literature. Take, for example,
what comes out so wonderfully in Lessing's
Education of the Human Race.
We see how Lessing, that great mind of the eighteenth
century who at the zenith of his life gathered up his thoughts and
wrote the
Education of the Human Race,
came as though by inspiration to the thought of repeated earth-lives. So
does the idea of repeated earth-lives find its way, as though by inner
necessity, into modern life. It has to be taken into consideration, but
certainly not in the way that ideas of this kind are considered in
our history books or in cultured circles nowadays. For in such cases
resort is had to the familiar formula that when a clever man grows
old, excuses must be made for him. So it is said that although we may
appreciate Lessing in his earlier works, we must allow that in later
years, when he came to the idea of repeated earth-lives, he had
become somewhat feeble.
In more recent times
the idea occurs sporadically. Drossbach, a nineteenth-century
psychologist, spoke of it in the only way then possible. Without
occultism, simply by observing nature, he tried in his own way as a
psychologist to establish the idea of repeated earth-lives. Again, in
the middle of the last century, a small society offered a prize for
the best essay on the immortality of the soul. This was a remarkable
occurrence in German spiritual life, and is very little known.
Moreover, the prize went to an essay by Wiedenmann which tried to
prove the immortality of the soul in the sense of repeated
earth-lives: certainly an imperfect attempt, but it could not be
otherwise in the fifties of the last century, when the necessary
thought-forms had not developed far enough. One could quote various
other instances where the idea of repeated earth-lives springs up, as
though in response to a postulate, a demand, of the nineteenth
century. Hence in my little book,
Reincarnation and Karma,
and also in my book,
Theosophy,
the ideas of repeated earth-lives
and of karma could be worked out in relation to the thought-forms of
natural science, but with reference to human individuality in
contrast to the animal species.
We must, however, be
clear on one essential point: there is an immense difference between
the way in which Western men have come to this idea simply through
thinking, and the way in which it figures in Buddhism, for instance.
It is most interesting to see how Lessing came to the idea of
repeated earth-lives. The result can of course be compared with the
idea of repeated earth-lives in Buddhism, and even given the same
name; but the way taken by Lessing is very different and is not
generally known. How did he come to this idea?
We can see this
quite clearly if we go through the
Education of the Human Race.
There is no doubt that human evolution gives evidence of progress in
the strictest sense. Lessing argued that this progress is an
education of humanity by the Divine Powers. God gave into men's
hands a first elementary book, the Old Testament. Thereby a certain
stage of evolution was achieved. When the human race had gone
further, it was given the second elementary book, the New Testament.
And then Lessing sees in our time something that goes beyond the New
Testament: an independent feeling in the human soul for the true, the
good, and the beautiful. This marks for him a third stage in the
education of the human race. The thought of the education of mankind
by the Divine Powers is worked out in a lofty style.
Lessing then asks
himself: What is the one and only way to explain this progress? He
cannot explain it otherwise than by allowing every soul to
participate in each epoch of human evolution, if human progress is to
have any meaning at all. For it would have no meaning if one soul
lived only in the epoch of Old Testament civilisation and another
soul only in the New Testament epoch. It has meaning only if souls
are taken through all the epochs of civilisation and share in all the
stages of human education. In other words, if the soul lives through
repeated earth-lives, the progressive education of the human race
makes good sense. So the idea of repeated earth-lives springs up in
Lessing's mind as something that belongs to human destiny.
In a deeper sense
the following underlies his thinking. If a soul was incarnated at the
time of the Old Testament, it took into itself whatever it could
take; when it reappears in a later time it carries the fruits of its
previous life into the next life, and the fruits of that life into
the one following, and so on. Thus the successive stages of evolution
are interlocked. And whatever a soul achieves is achieved not only
for itself, but for all mankind. Humanity is a great organism, and
for Lessing reincarnation is necessary in order that the whole human
race can progress. Thus it is historical evolution, the concern of
humanity as a whole, that he takes as his starting-point, and from
there he is impelled to a recognition of reincarnation.
It is different if
we trace out the same idea in Buddhism. There, a person is concerned
merely with himself, with his own psyche. The individual says to
himself: I am placed in the world of maya; desire brought me into it,
and in the course of repeated incarnations I shall free myself as an
individual soul from the necessity of living again on earth. This
applies to the single individual; all the attention is centred on
him. That is the great difference.
Whether a person
looks at the process from within, as in Buddhism, or from without, as
Lessing does, his gaze takes in the whole of human evolution. In both
cases the same idea emerges, but in the West the path to it is quite
different. While the Buddhist limits himself to concern for the
individual, the man of the West is concerned with the whole of
humanity. He feels himself bound up with all men as a single
organism.
What is it that has
taught Western man the necessity of realising, above all, that his
concern is with all mankind? The reason is that into the sphere of
the heart, into his world of feeling, he has received the words of
Christ Jesus concerning human brotherhood: that it is beyond all
nationality, beyond all racial characteristics, and that humanity is
a great organism.
Hence it is
interesting to see how Drossbach, although his thinking is still
imperfect, because the scientific ideas of the first half of the
nineteenth century had not yet produced the corresponding
thought-forms, does not take the Buddhistic path, but a universal
cosmic one. Drossbach starts from the thoughts of natural science and
observes the soul in its cosmic aspect. He cannot think otherwise of
the soul than as a seed which goes through an external form and
reappears in other external forms, and so is reincarnated. With him,
this idea turns into fantasy, for he thinks that the world itself
must be transformed, whereas Lessing thought correctly of short
periods of time. Wiedenmann, too, in his prize essay, brings the
immortality of the soul into logical connection with the question of
reincarnation.
So we see that these
ideas appear quite sporadically, and it is right that in spite of
faulty modes of thinking they should spring up in minds such as
these, and in others also. The great evolutionary change which the
human soul has undergone from the eighteenth to the twentieth century
is such that everyone today who begins the study of world progress
must above all assimilate those thought-forms which lead quite
naturally to the acceptance and making credible of the ideas of
reincarnation and karma. Between the thirteenth and eighteenth
centuries human thought was not sufficiently advanced to come by
itself to a recognition of reincarnation. One has always to start
from the stage reached by the most highly developed thought of the
period. Today the starting point must be that form of thinking which,
on the basis of natural science, regards the idea of repeated
earth-lives as logical — which means hypothetically true. So do
the times advance.
Without describing
the Rosicrucian path in detail today, we will bring out what is
essential both to it and to the way of knowledge at the present time.
The characteristic of both is that everyone who gives advice and
guidance for Initiation will value in the deepest sense the
independence and inviolability of the sphere of the human Will. Hence
the essential point is that through a special kind of moral and
spiritual culture the ordinary interweaving of the physical body,
etheric body, astral body, and ego must be changed. And those
directions which are given for the training of the moral feelings, as
also those for concentration in thinking, for meditation — all
this makes finally for the one goal of loosening the spiritual
texture which binds together the physical and etheric bodies, so that
the etheric body does not remain so firmly fitted into the physical
body as it naturally is. All the exercises strive after this lifting
out, this loosening, of the etheric body. Thereby another union
between the astral body and the etheric body is brought about. It is
because in ordinary life the etheric body and the physical body are
so firmly united that the astral body cannot normally feel or
experience what is going on in the etheric body. Because the etheric
body has its seat within the physical body, our astral body, and our
ego perceive only what the physical body brings them from the world
and enables them to think of through the instrument of the brain. The
etheric body is too deeply embedded in the physical body for it to be
experienced in ordinary life as an independent entity, as an
independent instrument of cognition, or as an instrument of feeling
and willing.
The efforts in
concentrated thinking, according to the instructions given nowadays —
and given also by the Rosicrucians — the efforts in meditation,
the cleansing of the moral feelings: all these finally produce on the
etheric body the effect described in my book,
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.
As we use our eyes for seeing and our hands for
grasping, so eventually we shall use the etheric body with its
organs, but for looking into the spiritual, not the physical, world.
The way in which we gather together and concentrate our inner life
works for the independence of the etheric body.
It is necessary,
however, that we should first permeate ourselves, at least
tentatively, with the idea of karma. And we do this when we establish
a certain moral equilibrium, a balance of the soul-forces of feeling.
A person who cannot to a certain extent grasp the thought that ‘in
the long run I myself am to blame for my impulses’, will not be
able to make good progress. A certain equanimity and understanding
with regard to karma, even if only a purely hypothetical
understanding, are necessary as a starting-point. A person who never
gets away from his ego, who is so dependent upon his narrowly limited
ways of feeling and perception that when things go wrong he always
blames others and never himself; a person who is always filled with
the idea that the world, or a part of his environment, is against
him; a man who never gets beyond the results of applying ordinary
thinking to whatever can be learnt from exoteric Theosophy —
such a person will find progress particularly difficult. Hence it is
well that in order to develop equanimity and calmness of soul we
should make ourselves familiar with the idea that when something does
not succeed, particularly on the occult path, we must blame not
others but ourselves. This does most to help our progress. What helps
least is always wanting to lay the blame on the world outside, or
always wanting to change our training methods.
Our attitude in such
matters is more important than perhaps appears. It is better to test
carefully, at all times, how little we have learnt, and to seek the
fault in ourselves when progress is not made. It is a quite
significant advance when we can make up our minds always to seek the
fault in ourselves. Then we shall see that we are making progress not
only in farther off things but also in matters of external life.
Those who have some experience in this field will always be able to
testify that by accepting the blame for their own non-success, they
have found something that makes precisely their external life easy
and bearable. We shall get on much more easily with our environment
when we can truly grasp this fact. We shall rise above much grumbling
and hypochondria, above complaining and lamenting, and pursue our way
more calmly. For we should reflect that in every true modern
Initiation he who gives advice is under the strictest obligation not
to penetrate into the innermost sanctuary of the soul. With regard to
this most inward part of the soul, therefore, we have from the start
to undertake something for ourselves, and we should not complain that
we are perhaps not getting the right advice. The advice may be right
and yet the results may not be satisfactory, if we fail to make the
resolve I have indicated.
This equanimity,
this calmness, once we have made our choice — and the choice
should come only from a serious resolve — is a good ground for
meditation concerned with thoughts and feelings. In everything
founded on Rosicrucianism an important point is that in meditation
and concentration we are always directed not to dogma but to the
universally human. The deviation of which we spoke yesterday takes
its start from subject-matter that is first given to the aspirant for
holding in his mind. But what if this subject-matter had first to be
tested by occult cognition? What if it were not in any way firmly
established in advance? We must take our stand on Rosicrucian
principles, one of which is that we are not in a position to decide
about anything which is supported only by external documents, for
example, the accounts of what took place as the Event of Golgotha. We
must come to know these things first by the occult path; we may not
assume them beforehand. Hence we should start from the universally
human, from that which can be justified by every soul.
A glance into the
great world, marveling at the revelation of light in the sun, feeling
that what our eyes see of light is only the external veil of the
light, its external revelation, or, as is said in Christian
esotericism, the glory of light, and then yielding oneself up to the
thought that behind the external sensible light something quite
different is hidden — all this is fundamentally human. To think
of, to gaze on, the light spread out through infinite space, and then
clearly to feel that in this infinitely extended element of the light
something spiritual must live, something which weaves this web of
light in space; to concentrate upon these thoughts, to live in them —
here we have something universally human, presented not through dogma
but through universal feeling. Or again, to perceive the warmth of
nature, to feel how through the universe, along with the warmth,
something moves in which there is spirit. Then, out of certain
relationships in our own organism with the feeling of love, to
concentrate on the thought of how warmth can exist spiritually, how
it lives pulsing through the world. Then, to sink oneself into what
we can learn from intuitions given to us by modern occult teaching.
Then to take counsel with those who know something in this realm as
to concentrating in the right way upon world thoughts, cosmic
thoughts. And further, the ennobling, the cleansing, of moral
perceptions, whereby we come to understand that what we feel to be
moral is reality. So we rise above the prejudice that these moral
feelings are something transitory; we realise that they live on, are
stamped into us as moral realities. We learn to feel the
responsibility of being placed in the world as conscious beings,
together with our moral feelings. All esoteric life is fundamentally
directed towards universally human experiences of this kind.
I will now describe
how far we can go through exercises which take their start in this
way from human nature, if only we devote ourselves to a clear-sighted
examination of our own human nature. From this beginning we come to a
loosening of the connection between the physical body and the etheric
body, and to a new kind of knowledge. We give birth as it were, to a
second man within ourselves, so that we are no longer so firmly
connected with the physical body as before. And in the finest moments
of life we feel the etheric and astral bodies as though enclosed in
an external sheath, and thereby know ourselves to be free from the
instrument of the physical body. That is what we attain. We shall
then be led to see our physical body in its true being, and to
recognise how it affects us when we are within it. We become aware of
the whole working of the physical body upon us only when we have in a
certain sense come out of it, like the snake which after casting its
skin can look upon the skin from outside, though feeling it as a part
of itself. Through the first stages of Initiation we learn in like
manner to feel ourselves free from the physical body, and learn to
recognise it. At this moment quite special feelings will steal over
us, which may be described as follows. (There are so many different
experiences along the path of Initiation that it has not yet been
possible to describe them all. In
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
you will find much on the subject, but there is a great deal more.)
The first
experience, open to nearly everyone who turns from ordinary life to
pursue the path of knowledge, leads us to say, in accordance with our
feeling: ‘This physical body as it is, as it appears to me, has
not been formed by myself. Most certainly I have not made this
physical body, through which I have been brought to be what I am in
the world. Without this body, the Ego which I now regard as my great
ideal, would not have arisen within me. I have become what I am only
through having kept my physical body riveted upon me.’
At first all this
gives rise to something like resentment, bitterness, against the
Cosmic Powers. It is easy to say, ‘I will not cherish this
resentment.’ But when there arises before us in melancholy
majesty a picture of what we have become through being bound up with
the physical body, the effect is overwhelming. We feel something like
bitter hatred for the Cosmic Powers on this account. But now our
occult training must be so far advanced that we overcome this hatred
and on a higher level can say with our whole being, with our
individuality which has already come down into repeated incarnations,
that we ourselves are responsible for what our physical body has
become. When we have mastered the bitterness, we experience the
perception, already often described: ‘Now I know I am that very
thing which appears there as the changed form of my physical being.
That I am myself. But because my physical being was crushing me to
death, I knew nothing of it.’
We stand here before
the significant meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold. But if we
come so far, if through the strenuousness of our exercises we
experience what has just been said, then from out of what is common
to human nature we recognise that we are as we are in our present
form as the result of preceding incarnations. But we also recognise
that we can experience the deepest pain and must work our way out
beyond this pain to the overcoming of our present existence. And for
every man who is sufficiently far advanced and has experienced these
feelings in all their intensity, who has looked upon the Guardian of
the Threshold, there arises of necessity an Imaginative picture, a
picture not painted by constraint, as in Jesuitism, from passages in
the Bible but a picture that each man experiences through having
felt, in a general human sense, what he is. Through these experiences
he will quite naturally come to know the picture of the Divine
Ideal-Man, who like us lived in a physical body, and who like us in
this physical body felt all that a physical body can bring about. The
Temptation, and the picture of it as presented to us in the synoptic
Gospels, the leading of Christ Jesus to the mountain, the promise of
all external realities, the desire to cling to these outer realities,
the temptation to remain attached to matter: in short, the temptation
to remain with the Guardian of the Threshold and not to pass beyond
him appears to us in the great Imaginative picture of Christ Jesus
standing on the mountain, with the Tempter beside Him — a
picture that would have arisen before us even if we had never heard
of the Gospels. And then we know that he who wrote the story of the
Temptation depicted his own experience of seeing, in the spirit,
Christ Jesus and the Tempter. Then we know it is true in the Spirit
that the writer of the Gospel has described something that we
ourselves can experience even if we knew nothing of the Gospels. Thus
we shall be led to a picture which is similar to the picture in the
Gospels. We gain for ourselves what stands in the Gospels. Nothing is
forced upon us; everything is drawn forth from the depths of our own
nature. We proceed from the universally human and bring forth the
Gospels afresh through our occult life. We feel ourselves at one with
the writers of the Gospels.
Then there arises
within us another feeling, a next step along the occult path. We feel
how the Tempter has grown into a powerful Being who is behind all the
phenomena of the world. Yes, we learn indeed to know the Tempter, but
by degrees we learn in a certain way to value him. We learn to say:
‘The world spread out before us, whether it be Maya or
something else, has its right to exist; it has revealed something to
me.’ Then comes a second feeling, a quite definite one for
every person who fulfils the conditions of a Rosicrucian initiation.
The feeling arises: ‘We belong to the Spirit Who lives in all
things, and with Whom we have to reckon. We cannot in the least
comprehend the Spirit if we do not surrender ourselves to it.’
Then fear comes over us. We experience fear such as every real knower
must undergo; a feeling for the greatness of the Cosmic Spirit who
pervades the world. We are in the presence of this greatness and we
feel our own powerlessness. We feel also what we might have become in
the course of the earth's history, or in that of the Cosmos. We
feel our own impotent existence so far removed from Divine existence.
We feel fear in face of the ideal we must come to resemble, and of
the magnitude of the effort which should lead us to that ideal. As
through esotericism we must feel the whole magnitude of the effort,
so must we feel this fear as a struggle we take upon ourselves, a
wrestling with the Spirit of the Cosmos. When we feel our own
littleness, and the necessary struggle laid upon us to attain our
ideal, to become one with that which works and weaves in the world —
when we experience this with fear, then only may we lay fear aside
and betake ourselves to the path, to the paths which lead us to our
ideal. And if we feel this completely and rightly, there comes before
us yet another significant Imagination. If we had never read a
Gospel, if mankind had never had such an external book, a spiritual
picture would rise before our clairvoyant sight.
We are led out into
the solitude which stands clearly before the inner eye, and we are
brought before the picture of the Ideal Man who in a human body
experienced all the immeasurable fears and anguish that we ourselves
can taste in this moment. The picture of Christ in Gethsemane stands
before us, as He experienced fear to an overwhelmingly intensified
degree, the fear that we ourselves must feel on the path of
Initiation, the fear that wrung from His brow the Bloody Sweat. That
is the picture we encounter at a certain point on our occult path,
independently of all external documents. So we have, standing before
us like two great pillars on the occult path, the story of the
Temptation experienced spiritually, and the scene on the Mount of
Olives experienced spiritually. And then we understand the words:
Watch and pray, and live in prayer, so that you will never be tempted
to remain standing at any one point, but will continually stride
forward.
This means that
first of all we experience the Gospel; we experience everything so
that we could write it down just as the writers of the Gospels have
described it. For we do not need to take these two pictures from the
Gospel; we can take them out of our own inner consciousness; we can
bring them forth out of the Holy of Holies of the soul. No teacher is
needed to come and say: ‘You must place before yourself in
imagination the Temptation, and the scene on the Mount of Olives.’
We need only bring before ourselves that which can be developed in
our consciousness through meditation, purification of our common
human feelings, and so on. Then, without constraint from anyone, we
call forth the Imaginations which are contained in the Gospels.
In the Jesuit
spiritual movement the pupil had the Gospels given to him first, and
afterwards he experienced what the Gospels describe. The way we have
indicated today shows that when a man has taken the path of the
spiritual life, he experiences occultly that which is connected with
his own life, and thereby can experience through himself the
pictures, the Imaginations, of the Gospels.
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