Goethe's Secret Revelation — Esoteric
Berlin, 24th October, 1908
The
reproach can be easily made that a talk like this one forcedly
gives symbolic and allegorical interpretations of something
that a poet created in the free play of imagination. We have
predetermined the task for ourselves the day before yesterday
to investigate the deeper sense of Goethe's
Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.
Repeatedly, it will
happen that such an interpretation, an explanation — if
one wants to say so of a work of imagination is discounted with
the words: oh, there are searched all kinds of symbols and
meanings in the figures of this work which should allegedly be
profound. — Therefore, I would like to note from the
start that that which should be said today by me has to do
nothing with that which was often done just from theosophical
side concerning symbolic or allegorical interpretations of
fairy tales or poetic works. Because I know that one held over
and over again against similar explanations which I have given,
that one does not like to get involved in such symbolic
interpretations of poetic figures, I cannot stress sharply
enough that that which is to be said here must be entirely
understood in the following sense.
A
poetic work is a work of a comprising imagination penetrating
into the deepness of the matters:
Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.
The question may be
put: are we allowed to approach the work from any point of view
and to try to fathom the ideal, real contents of such a poetic
product? We see the plant before ourselves. The human being
moves up to the plant; he investigates the principles, the
inner lawfulness according to which the plant grows and
develops its being bit by bit. Does the botanist have the right
or anybody else who is no botanist, however, considers the
plant ideally? One may hold against him: the plant knows
nothing of the principles in it; it does not know the
principles of its growth and its development! — The
objection to such an explanation of Goethe's fairy tale would
have the same justification as a subjection to the lyricist who
expresses in his lyrical works what he feels with the plant. I
would not like to know the matters understood in such a way, as
if I said, there we have a snake, it signifies this or that,
there we have a golden, a silver and bronze king, and they mean
this or that. I would like to interpret the fairy tale not in
this symbolic-allegorical sense. I would like to interpret it
more in such a way: the plant grows according to the principles
about which it can know nothing in its unconsciousness;
however, the botanist has the right to find the principles of
the plant growth. Likewise, the poet Goethe did never need to
explain what is explained here in such a way. He did never need
to bring it before his external day consciousness. However, it
is also true that one has to consider the lawfulness, the real,
ideal contents of the fairy tale in the same sense as that
which we find as the principles of the plant growth. The plant
grows after the same lawfulness, after which it has originated,
but it is not aware of it because of its unconsciousness.
Hence, I ask you to comprehend what I say as if it shows the
sense and the spirit of the Goethean way of thinking and
ideation, and as if anybody who feels called, so to speak, is
justified to present you the ideal Goethean worldview —
that you can find the way to an understanding of the Goethean
worldview. That is why I want to explain this product of
Goethean imagination, to show the figures and the
interrelations between them, just as also the botanist shows
that the plant grows according to the principles he has
found.
Goethe's psychology or soul doctrine, that means what he
regards as determinative of the being of the soul is
illustrated to us in his nice
Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.
If we want to communicate with each
other about it, it is good if we bring up the spirit of his
soul world vividly in a preliminary consideration. Already in
the talk of the day before yesterday, I pointed to the fact
that the worldview represented here assumes that the human
knowledge is not to be considered as fixed for good and all.
There is often the opinion: as the human being is today, that
is the way he is, and as well as he is, he can decide on all
matters absolutely. He observes the world with his senses,
grasps it in its phenomena, combines with his intellect bound
to the senses, and what he brings out there with intellectual
activity adhering to observation is an absolute world knowledge
that must apply to everybody. — The spiritual-scientific
worldview that is represented here is in contrast to that, even
if in a certain way. It assumes that our knowledge is dependent
on our organs any time, on our abilities of knowledge, and that
we ourselves are able of development as human beings that we
are able to work on ourselves that we can develop those
abilities of knowledge higher, which we have on a certain level
of our existence.
It
assumes that we can develop them further in a similar way as
the human being developed from an imperfect state to his
present point of view, and that we must penetrate deeper into
the things rising to higher points of view, to a more correct
worldview. If I have to express myself even clearer, I would
like to say the following.
If
we completely refrain from a development of humanity and only
consider how the human beings are,
If
we then look at those human beings of primitive tribes in the
history of civilisation,
If
we ask ourselves, what they are able to recognise and know of
the principles of the world and compare it to that, which an
average European can know with some scientific concepts about
the world,
Then we see that the member of that primitive tribe differs
from the average European quite substantially.
If
we take, for example, the worldview of an Australian black and
that of a European monist which has reality because it has
absorbed a sum of scientific concepts of the present time,
these two worldviews differ absolutely. However, on the other
side, spiritual science is far away to disapprove the worldview
of the materialistic human being or to declare it as invalid.
These matters are rather considered in such a way that in every
case the worldview of a human being corresponds to a level of
human development, and that the human being is able to increase
the abilities contained in him and to experience other, new
abilities.
Spiritual science has the perspective that the human being
comes to higher and higher knowledge, that he develops, and
while he develops, is that which he experiences in himself
objective world contents which he had only not seen once when
he did not yet possess the ability to see it. Hence, spiritual
science differs substantially from other, one-sided worldviews
because it does not know infallible truth concluded for good
and all but always only the wisdom and truth of a certain
developmental level. Hence, it adheres to the Goethean saying:
actually, the human being has his own truth only, and,
nevertheless, it is always the same. — It is always the
same, because what we absorb by our power of cognition, the
objective, is always the same.
How
does the human being get around to developing the abilities and
forces lying in him? Spiritual science is as old, so to speak,
as the thinking humanity. Spiritual science always had the
point of view that the human being has the ideal to strive for
a certain perfection of cognition. One called the principle
that lies in it the principle of initiation. Initiation means
nothing else than to increase the abilities of the human being
to higher and higher levels of knowledge and thereby to attain
deeper insights into the being of the world round us. Goethe
stood completely — one is probably allowed to say his
whole life through — on this point of view of the
developing knowledge, on the point of view of initiation. Just
his fairy tale shows us this in the most remarkable sense.
We
understand each other the easiest if we start from the view
that is mostly represented today and is in a certain contrast
to the principle of initiation.
Today, one can hear those persons who think about such matters
or believe to have a judgment about such matters representing
the point of view more or less consciously that, actually, only
sensory observation or objects of sensory perception can decide
on truth, on objective reality. You can hear it repeatedly:
science can only be what is based on objective observation.
— One so often understands the sensory observation and
the application of the human intellect and power of imagination
on this sensory observation only. You all know that the ability
to develop ideas, concepts is a human soul quality among other
soul qualities, and you all know that this other soul qualities
are our feeling and our willing. Thus, one can already say in
case of a relatively superficial consideration, the human being
is not only a thinking, but also a feeling and a willing being.
Those who believe to have to represent the pure point of view
of science, say over and over again, only the power of
imagination is allowed to interfere in that which is science,
neither human feeling nor intentions, because thereby the
objective would be contaminated, thereby that would be impaired
which the power of imagination could attain impersonally.
It
is correct that — if the human being brings his feeling,
his sympathy or antipathy into that which should be an object
of science — he regards the things as repellent or
attractive, sympathetic or antipathic. Whereto would we come if
the human being considered his appetitive faculty as cognitive
faculty, so that he could say to the things, I want it, or: I
do not want it. — Whether it displeases or pleases you,
whether you desire it, this is very irrelevant to the thing. As
it is true that someone who believes to stand on the firm
ground of science can stick only to the external things, as it
is true that the thing itself compels you to say that it is red
that that which you gain as an idea of the being of the stone
is correct. However, it does not depend on the being of the
thing that it appears to you ugly or beautiful, that you desire
it or do not long for it. The fact that it appears to you red
has an objective reason, however, there is no objective reason
that you do not like it.
In
a certain respect modern psychology has gone, actually, beyond
the just characterised point of view. I do not talk for or
against that direction of modern psychology which says there,
if we consider the soul phenomena, we are not allowed to
restrict ourselves only to intellectualism, we are not allowed
to consider the human being only in relation to his imaginative
power, but must also regard the influence of the worlds of
emotions and intentions. — Perhaps some of you know that
this belongs to the system of Wundt's philosophy (Wilhelm W.,
1832–1920) which regards the will as an original soul activity.
The Russian psychologist Lossky (Nikolai L., 1870–1965) has
pointed to the will of the human soul life in his book with the title
The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge
(1906). I could
still say a lot to you if I wanted to show how psychology
endeavours to overcome the one-sided intellectualism, and if I
wanted also to show that in the human soul force also the other
forces are involved.
Someone who is able to think farther says to himself, we see
from that how impracticable the demand is that only the power
of imagination limited to observation can deliver objective
results of science. If science itself shows that this is not
possible, that, however, everywhere intention appears, where
from do you want to determine that anything is purely objective
observation?
Because your will played the above-mentioned trick on you and
you prefer to regard that as objective only which is material
and because you do not have the habitual ways of thinking and
feeling to accept the spiritual in the things as objective,
therefore, you ignore the latter in your theories. It does not
depend on our abstract ideals if we want to understand the
world, but it matters what we bring about in our soul, what we
are able to do.
Goethe belongs to those persons who reject the principle the
sharpest that one attains knowledge only by the one-sided
imaginative power, only by the intellectual faculty. This is
the prominent, important characteristic of Goethe's nature that
he always takes the view — more or less clearly expressed
— that the human soul must work with all its forces if
the human being wants to solve the world riddles.
However, we must not be one-sided and unfair. It is correct if
one objects concerning knowledge that the feeling and the will
of the human being are subjective properties and if one says:
whereto would we come if one considered not only that as
belonging to the things which the eyes see which the microscope
shows but what the feeling, the will say to the human being?
However, it is just this which we must say to ourselves to
understand anybody who stands like Goethe on the principle of
initiation and development: that the average human feeling and
will cannot be used today, indeed, to knowledge that they would
lead the human beings to an absolute disagreement in their
knowledge only. The one wants this, the other that, according
to the subjective needs of his feeling and will. However,
anybody who stands on the ground of initiation also gets clear
about the fact that of the human soul forces — thinking,
imagination, feeling and willing — in the development of
the present average human being the imaginative faculty, the
property of thinking is just farthest advanced and is inclined
to exclude the personal and to come to objectivity. For that
soul property that enjoys life in intellectualism is already so
far today that the human beings if they rely on this soul
property will argue the least, and come mostly to an agreement
about what they say. This is why today the human beings are far
developed concerning the imaginative and reasoning faculties,
whereas feeling and will could not yet be developed to such
objectivity.
We
could also find differences with reason, if we looked around on
the fields of the thought life. There are large fields of the
thought life which deliver completely objective truths to us,
truths which the human beings have recognised as those,
completely regardless of the external experience and it is no
matter whether a million human beings judges differently about
that. Who has experienced the reasons for it in himself is able
to affirm the truth, even if a million human beings mean
something else. Everybody can find the said confirmed, for
example, with such truths that refer to dimensions of number
and space. Everybody can understand and experience that 3 times
3 are 9, and it is right, even if a million of human beings
contradict him. Why is this the case? Because in relation to
such truths, as the mathematical ones are, most human beings
have brought about it to neutralise their preference and
aversion, their sympathy and antipathy, briefly, the personal
and let only speak the thing for itself. One has always called
the elimination of everything personal in relation to the
thinking and imaginative power the purification of the human
soul, and one considered this purification as the first step on
the path of initiation, or as one could say, on the road to
higher knowledge.
An
expert of these things says to himself, not only in relation to
the feeling and the will the human beings are not yet so far
that nothing personal is involved, but also in relation to
thinking most people are not yet so far. However, there are
methods to purify thinking so far that we do no longer think
personally, but let the thoughts think in us, as well as we let
the mathematical thoughts think in us. If we have purified the
thoughts from the influence of the personal, we speak of the
purification or catharsis as this was called in the old
Eleusinian mysteries. The human being has to purify his
thinking that gives him the possibility to grasp the things
with objective thoughts.
As
this is possible, it is also possible to blank out all personal
from the feeling, so that then also that of the things which
stimulates the feeling does no longer to do with person,
sympathy and antipathy, but appeals the being of the thing
solely, insofar it cannot speak to the mere imaginative power.
The experiences in our soul can also be purified from the
personal like thinking, so that the feeling provides such
objectivity as the thinking or the powers of imagination can
provide it. One calls this purification or development of the
feeling enlightenment in all esoteric schools.
Any
human being who is able of development and does not strive for
it arbitrarily must take care that he is stimulated only by
that which is contained in the being of the thing. If he has
come so far that the thing wakes no sympathy or antipathy in
him, then it lies in the being of the thing that the thinking
and acting of the human being run in this or that direction,
then this is a statement of the innermost being of the thing.
One called this development of the will esoterically the
completion.
If
the human being stands on the ground of spiritual science, he
says to himself, if I have a thing before myself, something
spiritual lives in this thing, and I can stimulate my powers of
imagination in such a way that the being of the things is
objectively represented by my concepts and ideas. That has
become present in me, as it were, which works outdoors, and I
have recognised the being of the thing by the powers of
imagination. However, what I have recognised is only a part of
the being. There is something in the things that cannot speak
to the idea, but only to the feeling, namely to the purified or
objective feeling.-
Someone who has not already developed such a part of the being
in himself in such an emotional culture cannot recognise the
being in this direction. However, for someone who says to
himself, the feeling can also be the basis of knowledge like
the powers of imagination it becomes clear gradually that there
are things that are deeper than the powers of imagination,
things that speak to the soul and to the feeling. There are
even things that reach down to the will.
Goethe got clear about the fact in particular that the human
being really has these possibilities of development. He stood
completely on the ground of the initiation principle. He
represented the initiation of the human being, which he can
attain developing his soul, developing three basic forces:
will, feeling and powers of imagination, while he lets the
representatives of these three initiations appear in his fairy
tale.
The
golden king is the representative of the initiation into the
powers of imagination, the silver king is the representative of
the initiation into the cognitive faculties of the objective
feeling, and the bronze king is the representative of the
initiation into the cognitive faculties of the will. At the
same time, Goethe has drawn our attention emphatically to the
fact that the human being has to overcome certain things if he
wants to get these three gifts. The young man whom we have got
to know in the fairy tale is nothing else than the
representative of the human being striving for the highest. As
well as Schiller represents the striving of the human being for
perfect humaneness in his
Aesthetic Letters,
Goethe shows in the young man the human being striving for the
highest. He wants to reach the beautiful lily at first; he
attains, however, the inner human perfection from the three
kings, the golden, silver and the bronze king.
It
is indicated how this takes place in the course of the fairy
tale. Remember that in the subterranean temple in which the
snake looks by the crystallising force of the earth one of the
kings was in each of the four corners. In the first was the
golden, in the second was the silver, and in the third was the
bronze king. In the fourth corner was a king who was mixed from
the three metals in whom these three components are so combined
that one cannot distinguish them from each other. This fourth
king is the representative of that human developmental level
where will, imaginative power, and emotional property are
mixed. He is, with other words, that representative of the
human soul who is controlled by will, image, and emotion
because he himself is not master of these three properties.
However, in the young man — after he had attained the
gift from each of the kings in particular, so that they are no
longer mixed chaotically — that level of knowledge is
represented which cannot longer be controlled by thinking,
feeling and willing but controls them. They control the human
being as long as they are confused in him, as long as they are
not pure in his soul, each working on its own. As long as the
human being has not separated them, he is also not able to work
with his three cognitive faculties.
However, if he has reached it, the chaos is no longer
controlling him, but he himself controls his imaginative power.
It is as pure as the golden king is, so that nothing else is
added to it. If his emotional property is in such a way that
nothing else is added to it that it stands there pure like the
silver king, and the will is as pure as the bronze king, so
that the images and feelings do not control him and he is able
to freely present himself in his nature. In other words, if he
can make individual use of willing, feeling, or thinking, then
he has advanced so far beyond himself that the complete pure
cognitive faculties, which face us in thinking, feeling, and
willing, lead him to deeper insight. He really immerses in the
flow of events, immerses in the inner being of the things. Of
course, only experience can teach us that one can immerse in
such a way.
It
is no longer difficult now to admit that we have to see another
spiritual constitution in the beautiful lily than in the young
man. He attains that spiritual constitution if he understands
the beings of the things and he raises his human existence by
the fact that the things coalesce in him with the beings of the
things in the outside world. Goethe shows representatively in
the union with the beautiful lily what the human being
experiences there because he outgrows himself and becomes
master of the soul forces, this inner bliss, this conjointness,
this mergence with the things. Beauty is here not only beauty
of art, but also generally a quality of the human being who is
perfect up to a certain degree. Thus, we find it also
comprehensible now why Goethe shows how the young man moves to
the beautiful lily, so that all forces disappear from him at
first. Why is this that way?
We
understand Goethe in the representation of such a picture if we
go back to a thought that he pronounced once: “Everything
that frees our mind without giving us self-control is
perishable.” The human being must become free and master
of his inner soul forces first, and then with real knowledge he
can attain the union with the highest soul condition, with the
beautiful lily. However, if he wants to attain it unpreparedly,
he loses his forces and makes his soul dry up. Hence, Goethe
calls attention to the fact that the young man searches that
relief which makes him master of his soul forces. When his soul
forces do no longer work chaotically in him, but are purified,
he is ripe to attain that soul condition which is characterised
or represented by the union with the beautiful lily.
Thus, we see Goethe forming these different figures in free
imagination, we see them working in the whole soul if we regard
them as soul forces. If we regard them in such a way, if we
feel how Goethe felt in a certain way with regard to these
figures, who is not content to say like a bad didactic poet
what this or that soul force means, but expresses his feeling,
then we recognise what such poetic figures express to him.
Hence, the different figures are in such a personal relation as
the soul forces of the human being interrelate.
One
cannot emphasise sharply enough that the figures do not mean
this or that. This is not at all the case. It is rather in such
a way that Goethe feels this or that with this or that soul
force, and that his feeling metamorphoses to this or that
figure. Thus, he created the process of the fairy tale that is
even more important than the figures. We see the
will-o'-the-wisps and the green snake. We see the
will-o'-the-wisps coming from the other river bank and showing
quite strange qualities. They absorb the gold eagerly, lick it
even from the walls of the room of the old man and cast it off
lavishly around them. The gold is worthless to the
will-o'-the-wisps. That is also suggested to us by the fact
that the ferryman has to reject the gold because the river
would rebel and accepts fruits as payment only. What does this
gold cause in the body of the green snake? The snake becomes
internally luminous, after it has absorbed it! The plants and
other things round it are illuminated. However, to the
will-o'-the-wisps a certain significance is also attributed.
You know that the old man asks just the will-o'-the-wisps at
determining hour to open the gate of the temple, so that the
whole group is able to proceed to the temple.
Just the same event that takes place here with the green snake
is found as experience in the human soul, which could face us
especially in such a way of thinking as we have found it the
day before yesterday in the conversation between Goethe and
Schiller. We have seen that Schiller was still of the opinion
at the moment when he spoke with Goethe about the method of the
observation of nature that that which Goethe drew with a few
lines as an archetypal plant was an idea, something abstract
that one receives if one ignores the distinctive features and
joins the common features. We have seen that Goethe said on it,
if this is an idea, I see my ideas with eyes. At this moment,
two completely different realities were confronted. Schiller
really worked his way up to Goethe's point of view, so that one
does not decrease the admiration of Schiller if one gives him
as an example of that human soul quality which hovers in
abstractions and lives preferably in the ideas of the things
grasped by the mere intellect. This is a particular disposition
of the soul which — if the human being wants to develop
higher — may play a rather bad role under certain
circumstances.
There are persons who have the advance preferably towards the
abstract. If they connect abstractness with anything that faces
them as a soul force, it is as a rule the concept of
unproductiveness. These persons are sometimes very astute, are
able to make exact differentiations, to connect this or that
concept wonderfully. However, just such a soul mood is often
connected with the fact that the spiritual influence, the
inspirations find no entrance.
The
soul condition that is marked by unproductiveness and
abstractness is represented to us in the will-o'-the-wisps.
They absorb the gold wherever they find it; they do not have
any ingenuity, are unproductive, and cannot grasp any idea.
These ideas are strange to them. They do not have the intention
to dedicate themselves unselfishly to the things, to keep to
the facts and to use concepts only as far as they interpret the
facts. They take the chance to choke up their intellect with
concepts and give these away lavishly. They resemble a human
being who sits down in libraries, collects and absorbs wisdom
and gives it away appropriately.
These will-o'-the-wisps are typical for that soul property
which is never able to grasp one single literary thought or
emotional content which is able, however, to grasp that very
well which is there as history of literature, which is able to
represent in nice forms what productive spirits have performed.
Here nothing should be said against this soul property. If the
human being did not have this soul property or did not
cultivate it, if it were bestowed on him insufficiently, he
would lack something that must inevitably exist concerning the
real cognitive faculty. With the image of the
will-o'-the-wisps, with the conditions in which Goethe lets
them appear he represents how such a soul property works in
relation to the other soul properties, how it is harmful, and
how it is useful. Truly, if someone did not have this soul
property and wanted to ascend to higher levels of knowledge,
nothing would be there that could unlock the temple to him.
Goethe arranges the advantages and disadvantages of this soul
property. What is given in the will-o'-the-wisps represents a
soul element. When it wants to lead an independent life to the
one or to the other side, it becomes detrimental.
A
critical property arises from the abstractness that develops
the human beings in such a way that they learn, indeed,
everything, however, cannot develop because they lack the
productive element. However, Goethe points quite clearly, to
what extent also something valuable is in the
will-o'-the-wisps. What they have in themselves can also become
something valuable: in the snake, the gold of the
will-o'-the-wisps becomes something valuable, as far as it
illuminates the objects that are round it. What lives in the
will-o'-the-wisps becomes extremely fertile if it is processed
in another way in the human soul. If the human being strives to
arrange that which he can experience in concepts and ideas not
as anything abstract for himself, but to look at it in such a
way that it becomes his guide and interpreter of the reality
round him, then he is with this soul force in the same case as
the green snake. Then he can shape light and wisdom from the
only abstract, from the mere concepts. Then it does not lead
him to the fact that he becomes the vertical line that loses
any connection and relation with the surface. The
will-o'-the-wisps are the relatives of the snake; however, they
are from the vertical line. The gold pieces fall between the
rocks, the snake takes them up and becomes internally luminous.
Somebody takes up wisdom who approaches the things with these
concepts.
Goethe also gives us an example how one should work on the
concepts. Goethe has the concept of the archetypal plant. What
is that at first? An abstraction. If he developed it in the
abstract, it would become an empty thing that kills any life as
the dispersed gold of the will-o'-the-wisps kills the pug.
Imagine, however, what Goethe does with the concept of the
archetypal plant. If we pursue him on his Italian journey, we
see how this concept is only the leitmotif to go from plant to
plant, from being to being. He takes the concept, goes over
from himself to the plant, and sees how it develops in this or
that form how it takes up quite different forms in lower or
higher regions and so on. Now he pursues gradually how the
spiritual reality or figure creeps into any sensuous form. He
himself crawls about like the snake in the abysses of the
earth. Thus, the world of concepts is to Goethe nothing else
than that which can be incorporated in the objective reality.
The snake is to him the representative of the soul force which
does not strive selfishly to the higher fields of existence and
tries to place itself above everything, but which patiently
allows the concept to prove perpetually by observation to be
true which goes patiently from experience to experience.
If
the human being does not only speculate, not only live in
concepts, but applies them to life, to experience, then he is
with this soul force in the position of the snake. This is
right in a quite comprising sense. Who does not take up
philosophy as a theory, but as that which it should be, who
considers the spiritual-scientific concepts as tasks of life
knows that just concepts — and may they be also the
highest ones — should be used in such a way that they can
flow into life and prove to be true in the daily experience.
However, for someone, who has learnt a few concepts but cannot
transfer them into life, a similar condition exists as for that
who has learnt a cookbook by heart, but cannot cook. As well as
the gold is the means to illuminate the things, Goethe
illuminates the things, which are round him, with his
concepts.
This is the instructive and great of Goethe's scientific nature
and of any Goethean striving that his concepts and ideas have
reality that they work like a light, become luminous, and
illuminate the objects round him. The universal of Goethe,
emphasised the day before yesterday, does never give us the
feeling that this or that is Goethe's “opinion.” He
stands there and if we see him, we think only that we
understand the things better which were not so comprehensible
to us before. That is why he could just become the point of
mutual consent of hostile brothers as we have seen the day
before yesterday. If we wanted to discuss any trait in the
fairy tale, to characterise any figure, then I would have to
speak about this fairy tale not for three hours but for three
weeks. I can only give the deeper principles of this fairy
tale. However, every trait points us to Goethe's imagination
and worldview.
Those soul forces that are shown in the will-o'-the-wisps, in
the green snake and in the kings are located on the one side of
the river. Over there on the other bank lives the beautiful
lily, the ideal of perfect knowledge and perfect life and
creating. We heard about the ferryman that he is able to lead
the figures of the bank on the other side, but he is not
allowed to lead anybody back again. Let us apply that to our
whole soul mood and its improvement.
We
human beings find ourselves as mental beings here on earth.
These or those soul forces work on us as dispositions, as more
or less qualified soul forces. They are in us. However, it
lives in us still something else. In us human beings — if
we grasp ourselves correctly — lives the feeling, the
knowledge that our soul forces which provide the being of the
things to us are intimately related to the basic spirits of the
world, to the creative, spiritual powers. While we long for
these creative powers, we long for the beautiful lily. Thus, we
know that everything that originates on the one hand from the
beautiful lily, on the other hand, strives to return to her.
The unknown forces that we do not master had brought us over
here. We know that certain forces have brought us from the
transcendent world over the border river to this world. These
forces, characterised by the ferryman, however, active in the
depths of the unconscious nature, cannot bring back us again,
because, otherwise, the human being would return to the divine
realm as the same without his work, without his assistance,
just as he has come over. The forces that brought us as unaware
natural forces into the realm of the striving human beings are
not allowed to lead us back again. Other forces are necessary
for that. Goethe knows this, too. However, Goethe also wants to
show how the human being has to act, so that he can unite with
the beautiful lily again.
There are two ways. The one leads about the green snake, we can
walk across it, there we find the realm of spirit gradually.
The other way leads about the shadow of the giant. It is shown
that the giant who is usually quite weak stretches his hand in
the twilight hour whose shadow extends then about the river.
The second way leads about this shadow. Who wants to walk with
bright daylight to the realm of spirit, must use the way, which
the snake provides. Who wants to come over in the dim light can
use the way, which leads, about the shadow of the giant. These
are two ways to come to a spiritual world picture. That who
does not strive for the spiritual world with human concepts,
human ideas, not with those powers which are characterised by
the worthless gold, by only sophistical spirits and by the
will-o'-the-wisps, but walks in patience and unselfishness from
experience to experience, reaches the other bank in the bright
sunshine.
Goethe knows that real research does not stick to the material,
but has to lead over the border, over the river that separates
us from the spiritual. However, there is a second way, a way
for more undeveloped human beings who do not want to go the way
of cognition, but the way that is represented by the giant.
This giant is weak, only his shadow has a certain strength.
What is weak now in the real sense? Take all states into which
the human being can come with reduced consciousness, like with
hypnotism, somnambulism, even with dream states: everything
belongs to the second way by which the bright day consciousness
is reduced by which the human being opens himself to lower soul
forces than the bright day consciousness. There the soul is led
into the real realm of spirit if it becomes feeble. However,
the soul itself does not become able to walk across in the
spiritual world, but it remains unconscious and is led like the
shadow into the spiritual world. Goethe still subsumes
everything that works unconsciously, without the soul forces
becoming effective with the bright day consciousness under the
forces that one has to imagine in the shadow of the giant.
Schiller, who was initiated into that which Goethe meant, wrote
at the time of the big storms in Western Europe once to Goethe:
I am glad that you have not been grabbed rudely by the shadow
of the giant. — What does Schiller mean with it? He meant
if Goethe had walked farther to the west, he would have been
seized by the revolutionary powers of the West.
Then we see that that which the human being should attain as a
summit of knowledge is shown in the temple. The temple
signifies a higher level of human development. Now, Goethe
would say, the temple is something concealed, it is beneath the
narrow abysses of the earth. Such a striving soul force, as the
snake represents it, can feel the figure of the temple only
indistinctly. Because it takes up ideals, the gold in itself,
it can illuminate this figure, but this temple can be there at
the present time only as a subterranean secret. However,
because Goethe makes this temple something subterranean for the
external culture, he also points to the fact that this secret
has to be disclosed to an advanced human being. He points with
it to the spiritual-scientific current that has already grasped
human masses today which tries to make popular in a comprising
sense what are the contents of spiritual science, of the
initiation principle, the contents of the temple secrets.
Hence, in this free Goethean sense one has to consider the
young man as a representative of the striving humanity. Hence,
the temple should rise about the river, so that not only a few
human beings that look for enlightenment can go over the bridge
back and forth, but also with it, all human beings can pass the
river over the bridge. Goethe arranged a future state in the
initiation temple above ground, which will be there if the
human being can walk from the sensuous realm to the spiritual
one and from the spiritual realm to the sensuous one.
In
what way was this attained in the fairy tale? By fulfilling the
secret of the fairy tale. Schiller says, you can read the
solution of the fairy tale in the fairy tale itself. However,
he also pointed to the fact that the word of the solution can
be found rather oddly. You remember the old man with the lamp
that only shines where already light is. Who is the old man?
What is this lamp? What a peculiar light does it have? The old
man is above the situation. His lamp has the strange quality
that it transforms the things, wood into silver, stone into
gold. It also has the quality that it shines where already a
susceptibility, a certain kind of light exists. As the old man
enters the subterranean temple, he is asked,
“How many secrets do you
know?”・
“Three,” he answers.
“Which is the most important?”・the
silver king asks.
“The obvious one,”・the old man
replies.
“Would you reveal it to us?”・the
bronze king asks.
“As soon as I know the
fourth.”・
Thereafter the snake whispers something in the ear of the old
man on which he says: “The time has come!” What the
snake said to the man is the solution of the riddle, and we
have to investigate what the snake said to the old man. It
would lead too far to say in detail what the three secrets
mean. I want only to suggest it.
There are three realms which are — so to speak —
static in their development today: the mineral, the plant and
the animal realms, which are concluded compared to the human
being who still keeps on developing. The inner development
which the human being experiences is so vehement and
significant that it cannot be compared with the development of
the other three physical realms. The fact that a physical realm
has thereby come to the present state that it has come to a
conclusion, it is that which is contained in the secret of the
old man It is this that which explains the principles of the
mineral, plant and animal realms. Now there comes the fourth
realm, the realm of the human being, the secret that should be
revealed in the human soul. This secret is such that must be
found by the old man only. How has he to experience it? He
knows its contents, but the snake must say it to him first.
This suggests that something particular has to happen to the
human being if he wants to reach the destination of his
development as the other three realms have reached it.
The
snake whispers in the old man's ear what is all up with the
human being in the core of his soul, and what must happen if he
should reach his destination. It says how a certain soul force
must develop if a higher level should be attained, it tells
that it has the intention to sacrifice itself for it, and it
sacrifices itself. Up to now it has formed a bridge only if now
and then a single human being wanted to walk across; now,
however, it becomes a permanent bridge, while the snake
disintegrates, so that the human being will have a permanent
connection between the life on earth and that on the other
side, between the spiritual and the sensuous.
The
fact that the snake has the intention to sacrifice itself is to
be considered as the condition of the revelation of the fourth
secret. At the moment when the old man hears that the snake
wants to sacrifice itself, he can also say, “The time has
come!” The soul force keeps to the outside. The way must
be entered because this soul force and inner science does not
become an end in itself, but sacrifices itself. This is really
a secret, even if it is an “obvious” secret. That
means that it can become obvious to everybody who wants it.
What is considered as an end in itself — everything that
we can learn in the natural sciences, in the cultural science,
in history, in mathematics and all other sciences — it
can never be an end in itself. We can never come to the true
insight into the depths of the world if we consider it as
anything for itself. Not before we are ready any time to take
up them in ourselves and to consider them as means that we
sacrifice as the bridge about which we are able to walk, then
we come to the real knowledge. We cut ourselves off from the
higher, from the real knowledge if we are not ready to
sacrifice ourselves. Only then, the human being gets a concept
of initiation, if he stops making a worldview from
exterior-sensuous concepts. He has completely to become
emotion, to become such a soul mood that corresponds to that
which Goethe characterises as the highest achievement of the
human being in his
West-Eastern Divan
(1819):
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.
Die
and be transformed! Get to know what life can offer, go through
it, but overcome it, go beyond yourself. Let it be the bridge,
and you revive in a higher life, you are one with the being of
the things if you do no longer live in the mania that you can
exhaust — separated from the higher ego — the being
of the things. Where Goethe speaks about the sacrifice of the
concepts and the soul material to revive in higher spheres, he
likes to remember the words of Jacob Boehme who knows this
experience of the sacrificing snake in himself. Perhaps, Jacob
Boehme pointed it out to him and caused that he took stock of
it in such a way that the human being is able to revive in a
world, which he enters usually after death only, already in the
physical body: in the world of the everlasting, of the
spiritual. Jacob Boehme also knew that it depends on the human
being whether he is able to enter the spiritual world in a
higher sense. He shows it in the saying: “Who does not
die, before he dies, is on the road to ruin if he dies.”
— A meaningful saying! The human being who does not die,
before he dies, that means who does not develop the
everlasting, the internal essence in himself, he is not able to
find the spiritual essence in himself again. The everlasting is
in us. We must develop it in the body, so that we can find it
outside the body. “Who does not die, before he dies, is
on the road to ruin if he dies.” This also applies to the
other saying: “And thus death is the root of all
life.”
Then we see that the soul can only illuminate where already
light is, the lamp of the old man can illuminate only what is
already illuminated. Again, we are pointed to soul forces of
the human being, to those soul forces that face us as something
particular, the soul forces of religious devotion that have
brought the message of spiritual worlds to the human beings for
centuries and millennia, to those who could not search the
light on the way of science or in any way. The light of the
various religious revelations is shown in the old man who has
this light. However, to anybody who does not give the religious
sense a light from the inside the lamp of religion does not
shine. It can shine only where light already meets with it. It
has transformed the human being; it has transformed everything
dead into something ensouled living.
Then we see that both worlds join due to the sacrifice of the
snake. After it experiences, so to speak, by symbolic processes
what the human being has to go through during his higher
esoteric development, we see the three soul forces bringing the
temple of knowledge across the river, we see the temple walking
up and each soul force performing its service. It is suggested
there that the soul forces have to be in harmony, while to us
is said: the single personality is capable of nothing. If,
however, all human beings co-operate at the good hour, if the
powerful ones and the weak ones work in the right relation with
each other, that can arise which enables the soul to attain the
highest state, the union with the beautiful lily.
Then the temple walks up from the concealed abysses to the
surface for all who strive in truth for knowledge and wisdom.
The young man receives the cognitive forces of thinking and
imagination from the golden king: “Recognise the
highest.” He receives the cognitive forces of feeling
from the silver king what Goethe suggests so nicely with the
words: “Pasture the sheep!” Art and religion are
rooted in the feeling, and as to Goethe, both were a unity,
when he already wrote in his
Italian Journey
(1786–1788) about the pieces of art of Italy:
“There is necessity, there is God!”
However, there is also the action — if the human being
does not use it in the struggle for existence, if it is the
means to win beauty and wisdom. This is included in the words
that the bronze king speaks to the young man: “The sword
to the left, the right free!” There a whole world is
comprised. The right is free to work out of the human nature of
the self.
What happens with the fourth king in whom all three elements
are mixed? This mixed king melts away to a grotesque figure.
The will-o'-the-wisps come and lick the still available gold
from him. The human soul forces still want to study there what
once existed in the human developmental states that are already
overcome. If we take another trait, namely when the giant comes
staggering, stands there like a statue, and shows the hours: if
the human being has harmonised his life, the subordinated bears
a meaning of that which should be methodical order. This should
develop like a habit. Then even the unconscious receives a
valuable sense. That is why the giant is shown as it were like
a clock.
The
old man with the lamp is married to the old woman. This old
woman shows nothing else than the healthy prudent human soul
force which does not penetrate into high regions of spiritual
abstraction, which handles, however, everything healthfully and
practically, as for example in the religion which is shown in
the old man with the lamp. Then just she can also bring the
payment to the ferryman: three cabbages, three onions, and
three artichokes. Such a developmental level has not yet
overcome temporality. The fact that she is treated in such a
way as it happens by the will-o'-the-wisps is probably a
likeness of how abstract spirits act superciliously on human
beings who comprehend the things with immediate instincts or
intuitions.
Any
trait, any turn in this fairy tale is of profound meaning, and
if one still explains it esoterically, one is only able to give
the method of explanation. Become engrossed in the fairy tale,
then you find that a whole world is to be found in it, far more
than I could suggest today.
How
much Goethe's spiritual worldview pervades his whole life, how
in the matters of the cognition of the spirit he is still in
harmony up to his latest age with that which he had created
once, I would like to show this to you using two examples. When
Goethe wrote the
Faust,
he had taken over a certain idea
that goes back to a symbol of a deeper developmental way of
nature. When Faust speaks about his father, who was an
alchemist and had accepted the old teachings faithfully, but
had misunderstood them, he says that his father also
accomplished that
“... the Red Lion, a mercurial suitor, would in a tepid
bath be married to the Lily.”
Faust says this without knowing the meaning of it. However,
such a word can become the ladder that leads up to high
developmental steps. Goethe shows the human being striving for
the highest bride in the young man in the fairy tale, and he
calls that with which he should be united the beautiful lily.
You see, you find this lily also already in the first part of
Faust.
We also find what is expressed in the fairy tale as a basic
nerve of the Goethean view in
Faust, in the
second part, in the Chorus mysticus, where Faust stands before
the entry into the spiritual world, where Goethe professes his
spiritual worldview with monumental words. He shows there how
in three successive steps the ascent on the path of knowledge
takes place, namely the purification of thinking, the
enlightenment of feeling, and the working out of the will to
pure action.
What the human being attains by the purification of thinking
makes him recognise the spiritual behind everything. The
sensuous becomes a symbol of the spiritual. He penetrates
deeper to grasp what is inaccessible to thinking. Then he
reaches a level on which he is no longer looking at the things
with the help of images, but is led to the thing itself, where
the being of the things and that which one cannot describe
becomes attainable. What one cannot describe what one has to
imagine in other way — as you will hear in the course of
the winter talks — he just calls the
“indescribable” whereby one has to advance to the
secrets of the will. If the human being has covered the triple
way through thinking, feeling and willing, he unites with that
which is called in the chorus mysticus the “eternally
female,” that which has gone through its development as a
human soul which is represented as the beautiful lily.
Thus, we realise that Goethe pronounces his deepest confession,
his secret revelation still there where he brings his great
confessional poem to an end, after he has pervaded thinking,
feeling and willing up to the union with the beautiful lily, up
to the state which finds its expression in the mentioned
passage of the Chorus mysticus that expresses the:
All
that is transitory
is
only a symbol;
what seems unachievable
here is seen done;*
what's indescribable
here becomes fact;
the eternally-female
shows us the way. **
*
German: „Hier wird's Ereignis.”
Steiner supposed that a hearing defect of Goethe's secretary
happened and/or that Goethe pronounced it indistinctly so
that the (nonce) word „Erreichnis”
(“achievement”) should be used instead of
„Ereignis” (“event” here translated
as “fact”).
** German: „Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns
hinan, ”literally: “The eternally-female draws
us upwards.”
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