Course I - Lecture I
The Eternal and the Transient
in the Human Being
GA 52
Berlin September 6, 1903
The object about which I will talk here is certainly
one in which all people are interested. Who could say that he is not
interested in the question of immortality with all his thoughts? We
need only to realise that the human being thinking of death feels a
horror. Even the few people who are weary of life and look for rest
in death cannot get through this horror completely. One has tried to
answer this question in the most different way. Remember, however, that
nobody can speak about anything impartially in which he is interested.
Will he be able to speak then impartially about this question which
is of the deepest interest for his whole life? And, besides, you must
take something else into consideration: how much does depend on it for
the culture. The development of our whole culture depends on it how
this question is answered. The standpoint of somebody to the cultural
questions is quite different if he believes in the eternal of the human
being.
One hears saying that it
was wrong to give the human being this hope of a next world. The poor
man would be put off until the next world and would be thereby prevented
from creating a better life here. Others say that only in this way existence
can generally be endured. If with such a matter the wishes of the human
beings are considered so strongly, all the reasons are looked out for
it. It would have mattered a little to the human being to prove that
two times two are not four if his happiness had depended on this proof.
Because the human being could not omit to let his wishes have a say
in this question of immortality, it had to be put over and over again.
Because the subjective feeling of happiness is involved in this question.
However, just this fact
has made this question so suspicious to the modern natural sciences.
And rightly so! Just the most significant men of this science expressed
themselves against the immortality of the human being. Ludwig
Feuerbach says: “one thought immortality first and then proved
it.” Thus he suggests that the human being tried to find arguments
because he wishes them. David Friedrich Strauss and
recently Ernst Haeckel in his World Riddles
express themselves in a similar way. If now I had to say something that
violates the modern natural sciences, I would not be able to speak about
this question. But just the admiration of Haeckel’s great achievements
in his fields and for Haeckel as one of the most monumental spirits
of the present time lets me take a stand in his sense against his conclusions.
Today, something else than fighting against the natural sciences is
my object.
Theosophy is not against
the natural sciences, but goes with them. But, besides, it does not
stop. It does not believe that we have gone so wonderfully far only
in the 19th century; while during all centuries before unreason and
superstition would have held sway, now truth has been brought to light
only by the science of our time. If truth stood on such weak feet, one
could have little confidence. However, we know that truth formed the
core in the teachings of wisdom of Buddha, of the Jewish priests et
cetera. It is the task of theosophy to search for this core in all different
theories. But it also does not spare the science of the 19th century.
Because this is in such a way, we are certainly allowed to deal with
the question also from the standpoint of science. It can form the basis
that way from which we start if we search for the eternal in the human
being.
Feuerbach is certainly right
with his remark quoted before if he turns against the method of the
science of the last fourteen centuries. However, he is wrong concerning
the wisdom of former times. Because the way to guide the human being
to the cognition of truth in the ancient schools of wisdom was totally
different. Only during the later centuries of Christianity the faith
was demanded to which then the scholars produced the proofs. That was
not the case in the mysteries of antiquity. That wisdom which was not
disseminated just like that, which remained a possession of few people,
which was delivered to the initiate by instructions of the priests in
holy temple sites, had another avenue to lead their pupils to truth.
They kept the knowledge secret to those who were not prepared. One would
have regarded it as profaned if one had informed anybody without selection.
One only regarded somebody as worthy who had developed his cultural
life by means of long exercise to understand the truth in higher sense.
One tells in the traditions
of Judaism that when once a rabbi pronounced something of the secret
knowledge his listeners reproached him: “O old man, had you been
quiet! What have you done! You bewilder the people.” — One
saw a big threat betraying the mysteries if they were in everybody’s
mouth and would be desecrated and distorted that way. Only in holy shyness
one approached them. The probation was strict which the pupils of the
mysteries had to go through. Our time can hardly imagine the severe
probations which were imposed on the pupil. We find with the Pythagoreans
that the pupils called themselves listeners. For years they are only
silent listeners, and it is according to the spirit of this time that
this silence extended up to five years. They are silent in this time.
Silence, that is in this case: renunciation of any discussion, of any
criticism. Today where the principle applies: “test everything
and keep the best” — where everybody believes to be able
to judge about everything where with the help of journalism everybody
forms his judgment quickly also about that which he does not understand
at all, one has no notion of that which one demanded from a pupil at
that time. Every judgment should be quiet; one had to make oneself able
only to take up everything in oneself. If anybody passes sentence without
this precondition, starts practicing criticism, he rebels against any
additional instruction. Somebody who understands something of it knows
that he has to learn for years only and to let a long period pass. Today
one does not want to believe this. But only somebody who has understood
the matters internally gets to a correct judgment of his own.
At that time, it was not
the task to teach faith to anybody by lessons; one led him up to the
nature of the things. The spiritual eye was given him to behold; if
he wanted, he could test it. Above all, the lessons were purifying ones;
the purifying virtues were required from the pupil. He had to take off
the sympathies and antipathies of the everyday life which are only justified
there. Every personal wish had to be eradicated before. Nobody was introduced
to the lessons who had also not taken off the wish of continual existence
of his soul. That is why the sentence of Feuerbach does not hold good
to this time. No, at first the confidence in the profane immortality
was eradicated in the pupils, before they could progress to the higher
problems. If you see it that way, you understand why the modern natural
sciences turn against the teaching of immortality with a certain right.
However, only so far.
David Friedrich Strauss
says that the appearance would be contradictory to the idea of immortality.
Now, a lot is contradictory to the appearance what an approved scientific
truth is. As long as one judged the movement of the earth and the sun
according to the appearance, one got no correct judgment about that.
One recognised them correctly when one did no longer trust to the eye
only. Perhaps, just the appearance is not at all this to which we have
to keep in this question.
We have to realise: is it
the eternal in the human being what we see being passed on or transforming
itself? Or do we find it outside? The single flower blossoms and passes,
but only that remains and lasts which leaves its stamp on every flower
of the genus again. Just as little we find the eternal outside in the
history of the states. What once constituted the external forms of the
state has passed, what presented itself as a leading idea has remained.
Let us test how transient
and eternal come to the fore in nature. You know that all substances
of your bodies were not in you seven or eight years ago. What formed
my body eight years ago is scattered in the world and has to fulfil
quite different tasks. Nevertheless, I stand before you, the same which
I was. If now you ask: what has remained of that which made an impression
on the eye? — Nothing. That has remained what you do not see and
what makes the human being a human being. What does remain of human
facilities, of the states? The individuals who created them disappeared,
the state has remained. Thus you see that we are wrong if we take the
eye for the essential part which only sees the changes, while the essential
part is the eternal. It is the task of the spiritual to understand this
eternal. What I was fulfils other tasks. Also the substances which today
form my body do not remain the same; they enter other connections and
are that which constitutes my physical body today. The spiritual holds
it together. If we retain this thought, we recognise the eternal in
the human being.
In a different way the eternal
appears in the animal realm, plant realm, and mineral realm. But also
there we can look at the permanent. If we crush a crystal to powder,
for example cooking salt, dissolve it in water and allow it to crystallise
again, the parts take on their characteristic shape again. The creative
power being inherent in them was the permanent; it has remained like
a germ to awake to new work if the cause is given to it. We also see
from the plant countless seeds originating, from which new plants arise
if they are sowed to the fields. The whole creative power rested invisibly
in the seed. This force was able to wake the plants to new life.
This goes up through the
animal and human realms. Also the human figure comes from a tiny cell.
However, it does not lead us to that which we call human immortality.
Nevertheless, if we look closer, we also find something similar. Life
develops from life; the invisible stream goes through. However, nobody
is probably content with the immortality of the type. The principle
of humanness goes in it from generation to generation. But it is only
one of the ways to preserve the permanent. There are still other types
where the interplay comes to the fore. We take an example from the plant
realm to illustrate this.
Hungarian wheat which was
brought to Moravia and sown there becomes soon similar to the indigenous
one there. The law of adaptation comes into force here. Now it also
keeps the once acquired qualities in future. We see how something new
happens: the concept of development. The complete world of organisms
is subordinate to this law. An idea of development forms the basis after
which the imperfect living beings transform themselves to more perfect
ones. They change their external constitutions; they receive other organs,
so that that which remains preserved develops progressively.
You see that we come to
a new kind of the permanent. If the naturalist explains a form of life
today, he does not give himself the answer of the naturalists of the
18th century who said: there are as many types of living beings as God
created once. — This was an easy answer. Everything that had originated
was brought to life by a creation miracle. The natural sciences of the
19th century freed us in their area of the concept of the miracle. The
physical forms owe their origin to the development. Today we understand
how the animals transformed themselves up to the monkey to higher forms
of life. If we consider the different animal forms as temporal sequence,
we recognise that they were not created as those, but came into being
developing apart. However, we see even more.
The flowers of some plants
possibly experience such substantial changes that one would not believe
that they belong to the same type. Nature simply makes jumps, and thus
it also lets arise one type from the other under given circumstances.
But in every type something remains that reminds of the preceding type;
we understand them only apart, not from themselves, but from their ancestors.
If one pursues the temporal development of the types, one understands
what stands in space before us. We see the development through millions
of years and know that in millions of years everything looks differently
again. The substances are exchanged perpetually; they change perpetually.
In thousands of years the monkey developed from the marsupial. But something
remains that connects the monkey with the marsupial. It is the same
that holds the human being together. It is the invisible principle that
we saw as something permanent in ourselves which was active millennia
ago and works on among us even today. The external resemblance of the
organisms corresponds to the principle of heredity.
Now, however, we also see
how the shapes of the living beings are not only hereditary, but also
change. We say: something is inherited, something changes; there is
something transient and something remains preserved in the change of
times.
You know that the human
being corresponds to the physical qualities of his ancestors. Figure,
face, temperament, also passions go back to the ancestors. I owe the
movement of the hand to an ancestor. Thus the law of heredity projects
from the plant and animal realms into the human world. Can this law
be applied now in the same way also to all fields of the human world?
We must search for own laws in every field. Would Haeckel have done
his great discoveries in biology, would he have limited himself to examine
the brains of the different animals only chemically?
The great laws exist everywhere,
but in every field in own way. Transfer this question to the human life,
to the field in which the human beings particularly believe in miracles
still today. Everybody knows today that the monkeys developed from more
imperfect forms of life. However, people have an exceptional belief
in miracles concerning the human soul. We see different human souls;
we know that it is impossible to explain the soul by means of physical
heredity. Who may explain, for example, the genius of Michelangelo from
his ancestors? Who may explain his head form, his figure? Who may get
good explanations from the pictures of his ancestors? What points in
them to the genius of Michelangelo? This does not only apply to the
genius, it applies to all human beings in the same way even if one chooses
the genius to prove clearly that his qualities are not to be owed to
the physical heredity. Goethe himself felt in such a way speaking in
the famous verses for what he has to thank his parents:
From the father I got the stature
And the serious way of life,
From mummy I got my cheerful nature
And the desire of telling stories.
These are, even the gift
of telling stories, basically external qualities. However, he could
not derive his genius from father or mother; otherwise one would have
to sense this also in the parents. We may have to thank our parents
for temperament, inclinations, and passions. We cannot search for that
which is the most essential of the human being which makes him his real
individuality with his bodily ancestors. Our natural sciences only know
the external qualities of the human being and try to investigate them.
Thus they come to the belief in miracles of the human soul. They investigate
the constitution of the human brain. Are they able to explain the human
soul from the physical constitution of the brain et cetera? Is that
the reason why Goethe’s soul is a miracle? Our aesthetics wanted
to regard this point of view as the only correct one which one is allowed
to take concerning the genius, and think that the genius would lose
all magic by explaining. But we cannot be content with this view.
Let us try to explain the
nature of the soul in the same way as we investigated the botanical
and animal species; that is to explain how the soul develops from lower
to higher levels. Goethe’s soul stems also from an ancestor like
his physical body. How did anybody want to explain, otherwise, the difference
between Goethe’s soul and that of a savage? Every human soul leads
back to its ancestors from which it develops. And it will have successors
who come into being from it. However, this advancement of souls does
not coincide with the law of physical heredity. Every soul is the forefather
of later soul successors. We will understand that the law of heredity
which holds sway in space cannot be applied to the soul in the same
way.
However, the lower principles
last beside the higher ones. The chemical-physical laws which hold sway
in space determine the external organism. Also we are spun in a web
with our bodies in this life. Being in the middle of the organic development,
we are subject to the same laws like animal and plant. Regardless of
that, the law of the psychic refining takes place. Thus Goethe’s
soul must have been there once in another form and has developed from
this soul form, regardless of the external form, as the seed develops
to another type, depending on the law of transformation. However, like
the plant has something remaining which outlasts the transformation,
also that which remained preserved in the soul has entered into a germinating
state, like the grain in the top soil to appear in a new form, when
the conditions have come. This is the teaching of reincarnation. Now
we understand the naturalists better.
How should that remain which
was not there once? But what is the remaining preserved? We cannot consider
that which constitutes the personality of the human being like his temperament,
his passions, as the remaining preserved; only the actually individual
which was before its physical appearance and remains preserved, hence,
also after death. The human soul moves into the body and leaves it again
to create a new body after the time of maturity again and to enter in
it. What has descended from physical causes passes with our personality
at death; we have to look at that for which we cannot find physical
causes as the effect of a former past. The permanent part of the human
being is his soul which works from the deepest inside and survives all
changes.
The human being is a citizen
of eternity because he carries something eternal in himself. The human
mind feeds itself from the eternal laws of the universe, and only thereby
the human being is able to understand the eternal laws of nature. He
would only recognise the transient in the world if he were not himself
a remaining preserved one. That remains from that which we are today
which we incorporate into our imperishable being. The plants are transformed
under given conditions. Also the soul has adapted itself; it has taken
up a lot in itself and has improved itself. We carry into another incarnation
what we experience as something eternal. However, if the soul enters
a body for the first time, it resembles a blank sheet, and we transfer
on it what we do and take up in ourselves. As true as the law of physical
heredity holds sway in nature, as true the law of mental heredity holds
sway in the spiritual realm. And as little the physical laws apply to
the spiritual realm, as little the laws of physical heredity holds sway
over the continued existence of the soul. The old sages, who did not
demand belief, before they had founded it by knowledge, were fully aware
of this fact.
How is the relationship
of the soul in its present condition to its former condition? —
This question, which could suggest itself upon you, I would like to
answer to you in the following way. The souls are in perpetual development.
Differences thereby arise between the single souls. A higher individuality
can only develop if it experiences many incarnations. In the usual state
of consciousness the human beings have no memory of the former conditions
of their souls, but because this memory is not yet attained. The possibility
of that is given. Nevertheless, Haeckel speaks of a kind of unaware
memory which goes through the world of the organisms and without which
some natural phenomena were inexplicable. Hence, this memory is only
a question of development. The human being thinks consciously and acts
accordingly, while the monkey acts unconsciously. As he has risen gradually
from the condition of consciousness of the monkey to conscious thinking,
in the same way he remembers the former incarnations later with progressive
perfection of his consciousness. As well as Buddha says of himself:
I look back at countless incarnations , it is true that in future every
human being has the memory of a number of former incarnations if this
ego-consciousness has developed with every individual human being, as
well as it is sure that it exists with single advancers already today.
Becoming more perfect in the course of time, more and more human beings
will have this ability.
This is the concept of immortality
as the theosophist understands it. This concept is new and old at the
same time. Once those have taught that way who did not want to teach
faith only but knowledge. We do not want to believe and then to prove,
but we want to make the human beings able to search for the proofs independently
and to find them. Only somebody who wants to co-operate in the development
of his soul attains it. He walks from life to life to perfection, because
neither the soul came into being at birth nor it disappears at death.
One of the objections which
are often made against this view is that it makes the human being unable
to cope with life. Let me still go into it with some words. No, theosophy
does not make unable to cope with life, but more capable, just because
we know what the permanent and what the transient is. Of course, somebody
who thinks that the body is a dress which the soul only puts on and
takes off again as it is sometimes said becomes unable to cope with
life. But this is a wrong picture which should be used by no researcher.
The body is not a dress, but a tool for the soul. A tool the soul uses
to work with it in the world. And he who knows the permanent and invigorates
it in himself uses the tool better than somebody who only knows the
transient. He strives for invigorating the eternal in himself by means
of constant activity. He carries this activity over to another life,
and he becomes more and more capable. This picture lets the thought
disappear to nothing that the human being becomes unfit to cope with
life because of knowledge. We are able to work even in a more competent
and more permanent way if we recognise that we work not only for this
one short life but for all future times.
The strength which arises
from this consciousness of eternity I may express using the words which
Lessing put on the end of his significant treatise
about The Education of the Human Race: “is not the whole
eternity mine?”
Notes:
Ludwig
Feuerbach (1804–1872), German philosopher
David
Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874), German theologian and writer
Ernst
Haeckel (1834–1919), German biologist, naturalist, philosopher
Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781), German writer, dramatist,
philosopher
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