Where and How Does One Find the Spirit?
Berlin, 15th October, 1908
We
have spoken about the facts of the spiritual life through
several years. Today a new series of talks begins. Who has
already taken a program knows that the objects of this year's
spiritual-scientific talks span a wide range. On one side, you
find talks deeply intervening in our spiritual life; however,
it should also be shown how just spiritual science is destined
to intervene deeply in the objects of practical life. However
— this should be expressly stressed in the introduction
— the point of view should be fixed today; we want to
orientate ourselves especially about the spirit as such today.
This talk should be introductory, orienting, and
programmatic.
If
the word “spirit” is pronounced, one points to
something that, as long as there is human longing and human
hope, is the aim of all human beings, of the primitive ones as
well as of the high developed ones. Nevertheless, one cannot
say that that which just the word spirit means attracts a
deeper understanding in our days.
Today the science of the spirit appears as the most popular and
the most bewildering at the same time, because the human being
cannot face the spiritual research indifferently and
objectively. This question stirs up the deepest affects, the
most intensive passions in our soul. The answers to these
questions are relevant from the start to the human beings. If
the human being looks only a little deeper into his soul, he
notices that he has an opinion — even if he does not
pronounce it — how the answer should turn out. All
questions belonging here touch the human being in such a way
that one can say, an answer can offend the one person in this
way, the other person in that way. The one may feel sore just
about a sober consideration; whereas the other thinks that the
freedom of research or science is attacked if anybody exceeds
the exact research only somewhat.
The
characteristic of the human development has brought with it
— especially since the boom of natural sciences —
that today the conceivably highest confusion prevails about the
view of the spirit, and especially in the circles which should
foster just such a thing like the science of the spirit. If one
wants to recognise something of the spirit, such a sum of fine
and intimate concepts is necessary that here a confusion of
ideas is extremely significant and detrimental. The modern
human being is right if he turns to the fundamental principles
of science first if he wants to know anything about the spirit.
Then he must turn to psychology at first. It should be
“the science of the soul.” It becomes soon clear
just to somebody who approaches unprejudiced what one calls the
science of the spirit what one understands today by the science
of the spirit. Today, there is hardly anybody who speaks about
these matters and does not confuse soul and mind. I want to go
back to real phenomena.
There a book Outline of Psychology appeared before some
time (1908) by a person (Hermann Ebbinghaus, 1850–1909,
psychologist) who one regards as a significant expert of his
discipline. It is an example how today the science of the soul
is pursued. However, this is not my starting point to show
which confusion of the concepts of soul and mind has happened.
We read there on one of the first pages: if hypoxaemia occurs
in the brain, the result is a faint, because then the mental
ability stops or is reduced at least. However, a mental effort
causes an influx of blood. Stimulants work on the brain via the
nervous system, et cetera. — Now at first one has to
point to the fact that someone who wants to bring,
nevertheless, a “science of the soul” uses the
expressions “soul” and “mind” or
“spirit” as substantially synonymous, and is not
aware of the fact that they are different things. Hence, there
comes just the evil. The spiritual scientist would say,
hypoxaemia and faint only paralyses the activity of the soul,
however, the spiritual activity does not decrease. In addition,
the activity of the soul causes influxes of the blood to the
brain. Here the saying of Goethe applies that no matter is
without spirit. — With faint, another spiritual activity
exists, so that the soul withdraws from the brain and leaves
the field to a spiritual activity different from that if the
soul is present.
Modern psychology does not differentiate soul and mind.
Therefore, it is important to form a clear concept of the mind
first. This is very difficult. Today, people — driven by
a power as it were — believe that everything is contained
in material processes and want to look at the spirit only as an
effect, as a consequence of the material. The spiritual
researcher looks for the spirit not only in the human being,
but also everywhere around us. It appears like an internal
physiognomy in everything. It is spread out everywhere in the
universe. No human being, no animal, no plant, no stone can be
without having the spirit as basis. I like to use a picture. We
imagine a water container in which the water is cooled bit by
bit. Thereby ice may originate, so that we see some lumps of
ice swimming in it. We imagine now that any being cannot
perceive water, but only ice. There the ice would appear just
only from the water; however, the being would deny the water.
Everywhere only ice exists, but no water, this being would
say.
Now
the human beings behave similarly to mind and matter. As well
as in our picture the ice originates from the water, there the
matter originates from the original, from the spirit. Matter is
nothing else than compressed spirit. It appears for the sighted
human being from the spirit, to somebody who cannot see from
nothing. Everything in the universe is compressed spirit. If
now the materialist comes and says, what you call spirit does
not exist, and then his logic is in a bad way, because he is
only allowed to admit, actually, that he cannot perceive the
spirit. Someone who has a healthy logic should talk with such a
man only about something whose existence he has admitted, so
about matter. If we speak of the soul, we are never allowed to
separate the concept of inwardness from it which we see best of
all in the soul of the human being.
An
example shows the difference of mind and soul best of all. We
imagine that we see an event before ourselves, which makes us
tremble, which frightens us, for example, shooting a gun to us.
A third person who sees this feeling of fear in us is able to
say only that the other had this face which is dependent,
however, on the state of the person. A human being who has
maybe forgotten fear would face the danger intrepidly. However,
that person faces the event with fear and fright. We call that
something mental that is stimulated in our inside by an
external perception that way. However, for the spiritual there
is no outside and no inside. What is outside is inside, too. If
you check your inside, you notice that there is a transition
from the mental to the spiritual that, however, a difference
exists between that which we call mental and which we call
spiritual. About the sensations, which rise in us, one cannot
argue, because they are different with the single human beings.
In the one, a world of feelings would arise at the sight of a
picture by Raphael, while a primitive human being feels
nothing. In between there are still all possible gradations.
Here we are concerned with something mental. However,
mathematics, for example, gives us something spiritual, for
example, in mathematics. Nobody can understand by experience
what a circle is. An inner view is necessary for it. This is so
easy, but people do not understand it. We know about that which
is something spiritual that everybody can experience it as we
do if he creates the necessary preconditions of it only. To the
same extent as we realise that we advance from an inner
experience to one which is accessible to all people, to the
same extent we should realise that we go over from something
mental to something spiritual.
If
we assume that the human being rises to such a height that he
is able to say something about a thing of the outside world
about which the human beings can agree, he rises to the
concept, to the idea of the thing. Then we should realise that
that is the same, which was there before the thing, according
to which the thing is created. Only someone can believe that he
can obtain something spiritual from a world in which no spirit
exists who supposes to obtain water from a glass in which no
water is. If we look at any being of the outside world, so that
we open ourselves not only to the uplifting, to the beautiful,
but also to the sad, if we open ourselves to the real being of
the things, we must understand that we let light up in
ourselves what was there before the thing, from which it has
originated. Thus, the physical appears to us like a compression
of the spiritual.
Many a prejudice has its origin in the habit to imagine the
outside world as something spiritless and to show the spiritual
as something that the human being adds. He can only have that
in his consciousness that is the effect of the outside world on
him. Remember that one often says on this occasion, we can only
know that a table exists, just the table in itself that has the
given effects on us. — The fact that one can judge in
such a way is an example that in wide circles is no
understanding of the nature of spirit.
A
simple picture can show us what the centuries-long research
simply slides over if one asserts that the human being knows
nothing about the thing in itself. If anybody says this, it
seems obvious. Physics, science generally, point repeatedly to
the fact that you do not at all perceive “yellow,”
for example, but only movements of the ether. They cause the
yellow colour in you, just as the movements of the air the
tone. You do not come out of yourself; you see only what is in
you. — A simple comparison extinguishes this whole
conclusion. Imagine, you have a seal and sealing wax. The name
Muller is imprinted. No trace of brass has gone over from the
seal to the sealing wax. However, the point is the name that
has been completely transferred into the sealing wax. Now the
sealing wax could also say, I know nothing about the seal,
because from the outside nothing can be transferred to me.
Thus, it is with science to a T. The name Muller has been
completely transferred onto the sealing wax. Who states that
such an effect would not be possible does not understand that
there is no border between the material and the spiritual. We
have to figure out more and more the fact that the spirit has
to do nothing with that which is in us, but that it is outside
and in us. We have to distinguish soul and mind from each
other. Then we have created a basis to know that all bases of
life are bases of the spirit. Psychology tries more and more to
lead back the spiritual to something purely physical. However,
we had to experience that the spiritual was derived from
physical and purely mechanical processes! The sciences that are
not intentionally materialistic today are unaware of it.
Let
us go back once again! Imagine how a faint originates from
hypoxemia in the brain and thereby the soul is immobilised. We
must approach this process with spiritual science. This shows
us that the human being is not only this material being, which
we can perceive with the external senses, but that he is a
complex being. The physical body is a compression, a coarsening
of something spiritual, of something finer, that there is a
coarsening of the etheric body or life body at first. We see
the human being literally as a water ball, which solidified
partially as ice, so that the ice lump swims in the water from
which it has formed like from a fine mother substance.
It
is with the physical and etheric bodies in such a way. Matter
is a form of spirit different from the spirit as such like the
ice is another form of water. However, the etheric body is not
yet the finest. It is the compression of the astral body. Now
we have the human being already as a tripartite being. He has
the physical body in common with all beings of the physical
world. One can recognize the etheric body purely logically at
first. If we take a rock crystal, it keeps its form, until it
is destroyed from the outside. These are the essentials of the
mineral. That does not apply to the plant, the animal, and the
human being. We probably have the same substances in the human
being, but these are so complex that the human body would break
up immediately if it did not bear a fighter against the decay
of the physical body in itself: this is the etheric body or
life body. If the etheric body is outside, like after death,
then only the physical body disintegrates. However, the etheric
body or life body prevents the decay between birth and death.
The human being has it in common with plant and animal, the
astral body only with the animal. Here with the astral body, we
have already arrived at finer and finer spiritual members, we
have already come to the soul.
Spiritual science could speak of three human members, of body,
soul, and mind. However, if we pursue this more exactly, we
separate into physical body, etheric body, and astral body. If
we have a human being before ourselves, we have the physical
body at first, as far as one can see it physically. However, we
also have the etheric body, the fighter against the decay.
However, this is not yet the whole human being. Already the
most primitive human being knows that joy and grief, desire and
pain live in him. We call the bearer of that “astral
body.” Materialists could argue that this is only an
effect of the physical processes, that it is nothing real.
If
this were the case, if these processes were only an outflow of
physical processes, for example, of the blood circulation, it
would be a mere quibble speaking of an astral body. However,
the astral is not a result of physical processes, but the
processes in the nerves are the results of the astral. That
which excites joy and grief, desire and pain was there sooner
than the physical body. We see how in us today, so to speak,
the last rests of the immediate effect of the spiritual on
physical processes express themselves. I have pointed to the
senses of shame and anxiety already earlier. A human being
turns pale because of fear. What has happened there? On the
other hand, if the human being feels: something is in me that I
would like to hide — and he blushes. The sense of shame
and anxiety are soul processes, soul experiences. However, they
express themselves in physical processes. If we are anxious, we
like to take together all forces inside, assert ourselves; the
blood contracts inside, as it were. It is almost corporeal: a
direction, which is unconsciously materialistic, has turned the
whole process upside down.
Pragmatism, which came from America, pronounced the view: if we
face a loaded gun, not the fear makes us tremble, but something
that goes out from the gun makes us tremble at first. The
result of it is the appearance of fear. The human being cries
not because he is sad, but he is sad because he cries.
Materialism plays such pranks to you. However, spiritual
science shows us that everything that happens, that trickling
of water, or a process which we examine under the microscope or
a human being, an animal, a plant, is also an outflow of
something spiritual as something mental-spiritual is the cause
of fear. Thus, we find the spirit everywhere round ourselves if
we are only accustomed to look at everything as a physiognomy
of the spirit. Everybody can attain the spirit in this way. On
the other hand, one could say, there the human being sees the
spirit through the veil of the material. Is it also possible,
however, to see the spirit immediately? The human being must
take the word “initiation” completely seriously.
Goethe made so many remarks important for spiritual science,
for example: “the eye forms in the light for the
light.” From indifferent organs the eyes of the human
being have gradually developed. Goethe has the certainty in
common with all spiritual scientists that the human being looks
back at a long, long development. If there had been no light,
eyes would never have come into existence. As the animals lose
the ocular light in dark caves, the light has formed the
eye.
As
true as without the eyes the world is dark and sinister for the
human being, it is also true that the eye is formed in the
light for the light, that there would be no eyes without light.
In addition, the tones conjure up the ability of hearing, the
smells the ability of smelling, and so on. It was in the past
that way and even now it is that way concerning the physical
organs of the human being. However, it is also for the
spiritual organs in such a way. One can speak only of light and
colour if the organs are there; but the light is there for a
long time before. In addition, it is with the spirit. It also
is there already before and is capable to wake up the
slumbering spiritual abilities in the human being, which then
perceive the spirit as the eyes perceive the light. The spirit
forms the spiritual organs as the light the eyes. Thus, the
human being can develop the spiritual organs, which the spirit
formed for the spirit.
If
anything appears to us as physiognomy of the spirit, we can
grow into a spiritual world there, if we have the patience to
develop and to form. So spiritual science speaks of the spirit
still in another way. As we get to know by the botanist, the
physicist, and others, what they fathom of the secrets of the
physical world, there is and there has always been spiritual
science. Today, the majority of the human beings know nothing
about the concealed worlds of this spiritual science. At first,
this science was fostered in the mysteries, unnoticed by the
remaining world. Spiritual science must come out today and
announce publicly what it has to say as the physical science
announces its results publicly.
Just as the physical science uses external tools, the spiritual
researcher must be his own tool. There have always been such
researchers. Only somebody who develops the organs can tell how
it is in the spiritual world. However, if it is pronounced,
then the simple, healthy human mind suffices to understand it.
Another development is only necessary to research. I would like
to give you an example how by intimate processes spiritual
development takes place. This way is not tumultuary. Many a
human being becomes a citizen of the spiritual world, without
his fellow men anticipating it. Nevertheless, large is the area
that reveals us how to work on ourselves if we want to gain an
insight of the spiritual world. I give an example how intimate
this work is.
There are three levels of knowledge: at first the knowledge of
the physical world, then imagination which, however, has
nothing to do with speculative fiction; it leads in a certain
way into the spiritual world. The inspired and intuitive worlds
form the third level. One attains the imaginative level doing
certain internal exercises patiently for a long time. These
exercises do not deduct you from the external world, but make
you more competent and more practical. However, at the same
time they lead into the higher worlds.
There, for example, is such an instruction of a teacher to his
pupil: have a look at a plant. It grows out of the ground,
develops leaves, blossoms, fruits; have a look at this whole
development of the plant how it develops chlorophyll, et
cetera. The plant can be a model for the human being. As well
as the plant is interspersed with the green colouring the human
being is interspersed with the red blood. Although the plant is
on a lower level than the human being is, nevertheless, it has
something over him. Its substance, its matter, its chlorophyll
is not interspersed with low desires and passions. The human
being is no longer chaste and pure, but he had to pay his
higher development with the fact that he took up desires and
passions in himself. The expression of it is the red blood.
Juxtapose both, and then think of the Goethean saying that is
the saying of all spiritual teachers at all times:
And
so long as you don't have it,
this: “Die and be transformed!”
you will only be a gloomy guest
on the dark earth.
(From
Blissful Longing in the West-Eastern Divan)
That is the substance, which is penetrated with desires and
passions and must be purified again, so that it is raised about
itself, although it is on a higher level, and becomes again
chaste and pure. The blood must be again the expression of this
chastity and purity. Imagine the red rose; you face the chaste
red plant sap. Admittedly, it is there still a plant sap, but
you may see something before yourself in the red plant sap that
can be to you like the dawn of a higher development of the
human being, a symbol shows this: the black cross with red
roses. Become engrossed in this symbol excluding any other
thought, experience in it how the human beings have to develop
up to the purity of the red rose petal. If you experience this,
you experience the first trace of the spirit.
Thus, always other pictures are added to this picture. These
pictures are there to conjure up the spiritual organs inside of
the soul. Then this comes true for the human being that he
finds any rest and help in the spiritual world. Therefore,
spiritual science is of such an immense significance to the
external world. It is true what Novalis says: the human being
is the perfect tool, if he only wants to be it. In addition:
the human being lives in a spiritual world that he can perceive
if he is only elastic enough to develop the necessary organs in
himself. In addition, true it is what Goethe lets Faust
say:
This spirit world is not sealed off;
your mind is closed, your heart is dead!
go,
neophyte, and boldly bathe
your mortal breast in roseate dawn!
Goethe spoke that way because he had recognised the spirit and
wanted to put it up as a motto for all spiritual
researchers.
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