Spiritual
Science as a Treasure for Life
Berlin,
23 April 1914
I would like to finish the course of these
winter talks today with a consideration about the significance
of the spiritual science for the human life.
I have pointed many a time to the fact that
spiritual science does not want to be only a theory of the
world that one accepts or refuses like other theories. No,
spiritual science hopes to be able to be a real new element of
life, something that can penetrate into the whole human being,
and that the human being thereby gets a real treasure for life.
What I have suggested in this respect already at the suitable
places of the single talks I do summarise not only today, but I
will also explain it somewhat more in detail.
In the course of these talks, I have
pointed repeatedly to the fact that spiritual research is based
on something quite different from any other research in our
time. I have mentioned that with any other research it matters,
above all, that the human being unfolds his faculty of
judgement, his willpower, as well as he has them, and that he
applies them immediately. If we face life, we are forced to
appeal to our judgement immediately to make a decision in this
or that sense. On the other hand, we face life in such a way
that our will should be used, we can only seek to apply that
willpower which we have unfolded with our normal
education.
Briefly, we are forced at any moment of the
usual life, but also in the usual science, to accept ourselves
as we are anyway.
On the other hand, the position of
spiritual science is quite different, actually. Just this fact
brings it adversaries and opponents in abundance. The spiritual
researcher cannot take himself in such a way as he is. With the
portrayal of the life between death and a new birth, I have
especially emphasised this. What we apply, otherwise, in life
directly to the outer world the spiritual researchers uses it
first as preparation for the level of knowledge which he should
attain only after this preparation. The maturity of judgment
and willpower are not applied to the outside, not in such a way
that we make decisions directly or put acts of volition in
scene. Nevertheless, they are applied in a spiritual process so
that the spiritual researcher uses the techniques, the inner
handling of the faculty of judgement to further his soul to
make it riper and riper. The will is practiced in such a way
that a development of the soul from another viewpoint is
possible than that he has already.
That is why one could say: what one applies
usually directly to the world — one applies in
spiritual research for the preparation of that what one should
only attain after this preparation. That is the point that the
soul transforms itself into another instrument of knowledge and
willing than it is at first. Hence, that mood also comes which
the spiritual researcher has compared with knowledge that he
has, actually, always the feeling: what you have applied
usually directly to judge the things — now you must
withdraw it from the outer world to further yourself; now you
must wait, until your soul has become ripe to let the knowledge
of truth approach you. What flows out, otherwise, from our soul
is used first to the work on the soul. However, thereby the
human being experiences a mood of inner activity, not that mood
of simply accepting the world.
Then we have realised that all outer sense
perceptions or thoughts and mental pictures, bound to the
brain, cannot supply any cognitive force to spiritual research,
but that it must appeal to the stimulation of forces that are
slumbering, otherwise, in the soul. I draw your attention to
the fact that the real clairvoyant knowledge is based on the
fact that at every moment the spiritual-scientific researcher
must submerge in the processes and things which he wants to
recognise, and that that which he wants to perceive and
recognise is extinguished at once if he does not submerge with
his whole active soul. We abandon ourselves to an outer colour
or an outer tone passively; they have an effect on us. We have
to be active if we want to recognise anything in the spiritual
world. If we faced the things and beings passively in the
spiritual world, the recognised would be extinguished or would
change into hallucinations or illusions if it is still there.
No moment the soul is allowed to rest in the spiritual
world.
If we consider that the soul can ascend to
the levels of Imaginative, Inspirative, and Intuitive knowledge
only, while it is internally active continuously, then we
realise that the spiritual-scientific research can deliver
knowledge to the human beings only, which also necessitates a
particular kind of understanding. I have pointed already
repeatedly to the fact that one has not to be a spiritual
researcher to understand what the spiritual researcher explores
in the spiritual worlds. Since there is in every soul an
immediate, secret language by which it can understand, what the
spiritual researcher says, even if it cannot be active
spiritual-scientifically, as one can understand a picture, even
if one is not a painter. However, the human being of the
present has also to fight for it; since nothing is more obvious
to him to say: truth must get at me; I must behave passively to
it, it has to be given to me! One feels insecure if one shall
do anything if one shall first develop the soul to recognise
truth. Hence, one can object to the spiritual researcher very
easily: you put up concepts of truth which are not in such a
way, as the concepts of truth of the outer life or the outer
science; and these truth concepts say: I believe what is
confirmed to me by facts what can be revealed, so to speak, by
facts.
Many years ago, I called this attitude
concerning knowledge and life facts fanaticism, on one side. On
the other side, one dedicates himself to a certain dogmatism of
facts. It signifies the same like any other dogmatism for the
soul. One feels, so to speak, that one has no inner power to
grasp truth if one is no longer kept to the apron strings of
the outer facts or the outer science. However, spiritual
science necessitates —
because it has to speak about matters and
processes which do not belong to the field of usual life
— that you
bring yourself to an understanding that is not kept tied to the
apron strings of the outer facts and that also does not submit
to any dogmatism of facts, but feels the light of truth shining
in an inner, mental experience. The modern human being must get
used only to the inner conception of the living truth. One can
almost say, the modern soul is not able to bring itself to
develop those strong inner forces that are necessary not to let
dictate the truth, but to experience it immediately. However,
this feeling is necessary if the human beings should check and
understand the spiritual-scientific results. If one brings
himself to experience truth in such a way, spiritual science is
clear for any soul immediately. Since that does not speak
against spiritual science what some people argue that anywhere
in the field of the natural sciences or history anything would
be that could persuade anybody that the so-called
spiritual-scientific truths would be errors or pipe
dreams.
Not a single scientific or historical truth
contradicts the knowledge of spiritual science. I have often
emphasised this in these talks. Nevertheless, those who get
used to the scientific thinking at first absorb prejudice with
it that one only must overcome. The opposition does not arise
from the judgements of science, but from the prejudice against
spiritual science. Spiritual science creates cognitive forces
that have to become active if the soul wants to penetrate into
the spiritual world. Therefore, one understands spiritual
science only if the human beings get used gradually to bringing
up the active forces from their soul depths that must be
animated as free inner activities in the soul.
I have almost avoided out of this attitude
using illustrations or photos for these talks. The modern human
being is inclined very much to look at something passively.
However, one has to grasp internally what spiritual science
brings to light; one has to think, to feel, and often to want
with it. While spiritual science appeals to this what exists,
indeed, in any soul, but slumbers in the souls, it calls forces
in the soul for the spiritual life which — if they are used for
it — represent a high treasure for life which the human
beings need more and more.
Only somebody who is short-sighted can deny that
this human life becomes more and more complex, that our
development runs in such a way that inner forces of orientation
will be more and more necessary to cope with life in any
direction. Except various other reasons that speak for the
emergence of spiritual science in the present culture, it is
also valid above all that the human souls must use these
stronger forces to orientate themselves in the outer life, the
more we settle in the future. Life itself requires these
stronger forces from the human souls.
Of course, we cannot bring everything
forward in a short talk that spiritual science
— I do not
say spiritual research now — has to offer as
treasures for life by the living understanding of that what
spiritual research brings to light. We can only characterise
the single categories, overall. There I would like to start
from that what is connected directly with the single human
being.
I have repeatedly pointed in other contexts
to the rhythmical change that happens in the human life in the
course of 24 hours, waking and sleeping. I have partly
mentioned in the various talks what is one can say about it
from the spiritual-scientific point of view. I want only to
suggest today that the human being has the sleep as a means of
recovery of particular kind beside that what he has for his
immediate mood from sleep and can feel immediately
subjectively. Today you have only to listen to the outer
medical science; it is of the opinion that the healthy sleep is
a remedy. Since sleep unfolds such forces in the human being
which compensate a certain daily consumption of forces. Whereas
the awake life weakens the body in a way, we are mainly
concerned with the development of the forces of recovery. In
sleep, healthy forces have an effect on the human being. One of
the best remedies for some illnesses is that one causes a
healthy sleep. I cannot speak, of course, in this talk how one
causes a healthy sleep. I explain on a separate occasion
whether spiritual science has to say anything particular about
that.
Now the human being can recover by that
what develops in sleep only what we have consumed. In sleep the
soul withdraws from the physical body; the spiritual-mental is
in its own world, in the spiritual world. This different
relation of the soul to the body when it is awake is connected
with the stimulation of recovering forces. Now spiritual
research appeals —
as we have seen — the spiritual-mental
of the human being to become free from the bodily, from the
physical — for one cannot investigate the spiritual-mental in
another way. Everything that the spiritual researcher
investigates he investigates outside of his physical body. If
he expresses the investigated in concepts and words, and if the
human soul attains an understanding of this what he has to say,
then that makes a particular influence on this human being who
is no spiritual researcher, but only faces the communications
with understanding. This soul takes care to develop
understanding forces for the results of spiritual research.
These forces are more or less independent of the physical body.
While we understand that what the senses and the reason offer,
we remain dependent with this understanding on our physical
body, we wear out it, let our activity run in the whole sphere
from which diseases come. If we put ourselves with our lively
understanding in that what spiritual science offers, we live in
the sphere of the healthy forces.
One can deny this easily, saying that one
knows many people who deal with the results of spiritual
science and do not at all make such an impression, as if they
live in the field of the recovering forces. This may be
completely entitled. However, if one deals with the results of
spiritual science in the same way, as one deals with other
sciences or the usual life, one does not penetrate into it.
What I have called “Homunculism” in the last talk,
one can unfold as well as in other sciences in spiritual
science.
If one wants to understand spiritual
science in the same way as one wants to understand the results
of the usual sciences, then one is not correctly related to it.
Spiritual science comes from spiritual research, from the
spiritual life of the spiritual researcher, from a perpetual
activity; and the understanding, which it gets, appeals at
least to tiring the physical body, that means to what the
common cognitive forces of the usual life appeal.
However, truth itself must thereby become
something like a living being for the spiritual researcher as
well as for the supporter of spiritual science. It will also
become this. While one receives the truth, otherwise, like a
sum of judgements, like something that one just thinks only,
one receives spiritual science like something that pulsates
through the soul like spiritual blood that animates it
internally. One receives the truth like a sum of spiritual
living beings; one feels penetrated with living existence by
spiritual science if one meets it with understanding. Then,
however, it has a recovering effect up into the physical body.
As sleep, during which the soul is also beyond the physical
body, is a remedy against some illnesses in the true sense of
the word, spiritual science can also be such a remedy. However,
only those can regard it as a remedy who want to understand the
following important matter. It is comprehensible that one
approaches spiritual science as one approaches the outer
medicine or art because one maintains the same habitual ways of
thinking. If one wants to penetrate into it, one often asks,
which remedy do you have for this illness, which for that? The
information of remedies is often demanded from spiritual
science. Indeed, spiritual science will also give real concrete
remedies; but one has to understand that it wants to give not
only this or that remedy, but that it presents itself, above
all. Nevertheless, one does not always accept it with
understanding. Spiritual science can answer if one asks for a
remedial method, take me, and then you feel my curative forces!
However, this is uncomfortable for some people who often look
for something completely different.
Of course, it is trivial to object that
spiritual science could not help somebody who dealt with
spiritual science and died early or fell ill by this or that
disease. Since one would have to issue a rebuttal first whether
somebody who has survived with the help of spiritual science up
to his forty-fifth year had become without it maybe thirty-five
or forty years old only. The methods of disproof are not often
so simple.
Above all, I must draw your attention to
the fact that sleep can compensate only what is used in the
physical body, can take forces only from the spiritual worlds
as far as the borders of the spiritual predisposition reach
which the human being brings by birth in his existence.
Spiritual science gets its forces from that world with which
the human being is connected spiritually. Therefore, one can
say that sleep is a remedy in this respect that it can
compensate spent forces. Spiritual science supplies forces to
the human being, which he has not yet in himself, either by
what it is as such, or by what it can give. It opens a higher
source of recovery for the human being as the usual life can
also supply to him with the best sleep. One can compare what
can work recovering from the soul by lively acceptance of
spiritual science with that of which usual medical art is
capable. Since also the usual medical art is able only to call
those healing forces for the recovery of the human being that
are already in him that are only suppressed by opposing forces.
Spiritual science, however, brings new forces in the human
being to effectiveness, which only develop, which are not
innate. It appeals not only to the human being as a microcosm
but also to the connection of the human being as a microcosm
with the big spiritual world.
In order to make this clearer, I would like
to point to something that already is on the border of physical
and spiritual. Although it is correct that spiritual science
gives the human being a treasure for life by which he can
prevent illnesses in a certain respect, a much more important
treasure for life strikes us for the life of the soul itself; I
mean the memory. Who has not to complain of decline in memory
when he becomes older? The forces with which we are equipped
for our memory become exhausted. One could live ever so
healthily, nevertheless, they become exhausted; even if with
some outer means something may be
improved, the innate forces become
exhausted.
However, if one grasps spiritual science
internally and if one appropriates habitual ways of thinking
and imagining that are quite different from the usual ones, one
notes that, indeed, the retentive power decreases that
it is substituted, however, with something that is a much
better memory. This appears gradually from the spiritual
undergrounds of the soul what one can call retrospect of
events. As we look, otherwise, at the things in space, we learn
gradually to look at the things in time. The forces which
memory does not develop, otherwise, because it has a reserve
usually in the bodily which remain hidden, until this
slumbering retentiveness is brought out of the soul and becomes
retrospective forces of the past. With
correctly settling in spiritual science, we instil something in the
course of life that continues our usual, instilled memory by
which a human being, who grasps spiritual science vividly, can
survey the past much longer than someone who does not want to
get involved with spiritual science. These forces become also
forces directing to the future. Someone who goes into such
things and their subtler differentiations notes that memory
becomes something different, but something that works more
reliably than that memory which is innate by the bodily
forces.
This shows us with a careful observation of
life how refreshing and strengthening the treasures for life
are which spiritual science can give beside other things. Of
course, spiritual science cannot heal spiritually what is
destroyed physically in the body. Spiritual science never turns
in a fanatical opposition against the outer scientific medicine
as it happens with similar directions in these fields
sometimes; it draws attention to the fact that that what one
has to cure physically one has to cure physically. What the
forces of a reinforced spiritual life can pour into us gives an
inexhaustible treasure for life.
How has that become gradually mere dry
knowledge with the materialistic attitude what is good for
health or furthers life! Not in order to prove something, but
only in order to explain something, I would like to show how we
can observe the remedial instincts with animals. However, we
can find the tendency with the human being to leave the healthy
life more and more, and thereby he would want to change
everything that is good for him into outer, dry knowledge.
Today one already sees people who can no longer develop their
instincts completely which say to them while eating: now you
have enough. Beside their plate are scales and now they weigh
how much the piece of meat weighs they eat. I expressed that
only somewhat radically; but he who pursues the things realises
that the sensations of life change slowly more and more into
abstract knowledge. This also expresses itself in the fact that
people cannot act out of their feeling concerning health or
illness, but like to hand over the care for it to
others.
In this respect spiritual science will be
an exceptionally significant treasure for life, while it
strives for penetrating a world from which the human being,
indeed, only seems to be descended in which he stands, however,
still inside. Since in truth his mental and physical being have
arisen from the spirit. While someone goes away from the life
instincts with that part of his being that is bound to the
brain and nervous system, he approaches the active life again
by understanding settling in spiritual science. Therefore, he
does not return, indeed, to the animal desires. He will
penetrate them from the mind in such a way that an abstract
knowledge cannot dictate what he has to eat and to drink, how
long he has to walk, to do gymnastics and so on. However, it
will happen that he spiritualises his desires immediately that
he lets the spiritual treasure he got from spiritual science
flow into his desires and thereby knows: you should do this so
and so in life. One could almost say, the human being has gone
away from life by that knowledge which is bound to the brain
and nervous system; however, he penetrates life again with new
contents by spiritual science, and thereby he knows again
immediately what is good for him, what is advantageous to him,
what is not good for him. He will go with certainty through
life; he will firmly stand in life because he builds a bridge
between the deepest grounds of life and his existence. This
will apply not only to health and illness, but also to the
whole life.
It is necessary if we want to be healthy to
appeal to spiritual forces that are active that ascend in
lively direction. If we judge, otherwise, in life, it happens
in the way that we make our judgement dependent on that what we
have seen; we remain quite passive with our own soul. Just the
usual science is proud if it should make judgements without
taking the forces of judging from the own soul. This is the one
treasure for life that spiritual science enlivens the forces of
truth, of judgement. The soul has to get used more and more not
to accepting judgements but to judging actively, to opening an
inner source of judging. Thereby it attains skill of judging,
inner freedom to handle the power of judgement, presence of
mind that arises directly from the soul if it has to orientate
itself in the world or to deal with the world. One could
foresee a treasure for life of spiritual science that one can
characterise in the following way.
Let us suppose that we have to educate, and
we perform the development of the young human being
spiritual-scientifically. The human being thereby grows up in
such a way that he is inclined more and more to appeal to the
power of inner judgement, to develop presence of mind, to
experience truth. The human beings who were educated in the
sense of spiritual science stand up in life quite different
from those who have experienced another education. They feel
instinctively because their thinking will not be an abstract
one, but goes into the feelings that it is good to begin this
or that. How some people stand there today within our
materialistic civilisation with their lives, with their
thinking and judgments and do not know what they are good for
and what they should do. This will happen less and less if the
souls known with spiritual science come in situations where
they must decide. They will feel in such a way that their
spiritualised instincts give pleasure to them. This pleasure
will not deceive them; it will be the right one, and they
properly familiarise themselves with life.
Somebody who represents spiritual science
today relates to it in another way than one relates to another
spiritual current. However, thereby one does not have the right
attitude to it that one is inspired by the results of spiritual
science subjectively, and that one feels the urge to inform
these results to his fellow. There many a man would maybe
restrain with this or that today, because it does not belong to
the conveniences of life to represent spiritual science, if one
arrived at the aims of spiritual science in such a way as one
arrives at the aims of other sciences. However, one arrives at
that what induces one to talk about the knowledge of spiritual
science if one recognises that a civilisation which has become
materialistic penetrates into the souls and makes them more and
more passive and that spiritual science is necessary for the
progressive life while the human being learns more and more to
orient himself in life. If one recognises that those forces
must die down, which put the human beings firmly in life in
natural way, then one is urged to proclaim the
spiritual-scientific knowledge. Then one would like to have
more than the human language — unmanageable in
certain respects —
offers to show how necessary the treasure
for life is in the further human progress which spiritual
science can only give in our time.
If one notes less what it means to be
completely subject to a dogmatism of facts, to the
specialisation in science caused by fact fanaticism, one maybe
understands why spiritual science can only induce that human
being to become internally free and to get inner mobility who
can put himself in life in such a way that he understands the
basic source of life, because his soul is connected with the
primordial forces of existence. More and more humanity will
need to develop inner elasticity of the power of judgement in
subtle activity. Spiritual science has to bring this as a
treasure for life to humanity. A thinking that bears the force
of truth in itself that the human being needs in the more
complex future is a treasure for life which spiritual science
can give humanity.
One will have to get used to developing
understanding for what one can grasp only internally, because
one allies with the internally living truth by spiritual
science that cannot be forced to judging from the outside. As
the organism is invigorated with the living force of blood and
breathes in the right relation to the outside world, spiritual
science invigorates us with the internally living truth. It is
like a spiritual-mental heart that breathes in the surroundings
where one has to inhale something spiritual to make the soul
healthy so that it can oppose the inner breathing air what it
makes a free inner organic force.
One would like to say that one cannot
believe in this spiritual breathing today. In the future one
will be able to believe in the inner heart of spiritual
breathing. The soul thereby develops human freedom. As the
human being can develop as a living being only because he can
inhale not only the breathing air vividly, but transforms it
vividly and develops a separate living physical organism in a
subtle way, he will spiritually develop inner mental blood more
and more which enlivens him and makes him a really free being,
while he is active and transforms the outer
knowledge.
If we go from knowledge to will, we have to
remember that spiritual science brings the human beings mental
pictures,, concepts, ideas, and results of spiritual research
which live as it were so freely in the soul that they are
independent of the mental, of the externally bodily, also of
desires and outer impressions.
How does the human being act under usual
circumstances? He acts based on outer impressions or impulses.
Spiritual science is not concerned with that what is connected
with the outer organism. It fulfils the human being with that
what only lives in the organism what comes from the spiritual
world and not directly from the organism. More and more the
possibility is omitted for the human being to act from outer
impulses and sensations; but what comes up to him from
spiritual science supplies inner forces to him, so that he
comes to action from the inside. This gives a significant
impact for the human life.
Which force comes up to action if the outer
world does not supply the impulses? Which impulses can work
then?
One will realise by a simple consideration
that it must be a comprehensive impulse, so that it fulfils the
soul with a comprehensively working force. This is the impulse
of love which pours out of the soul directly, but only if it is
driven by inner impulses. Spiritual science supplies a treasure
for life to the human being that is of unlimited value: a freer
and freer incline to his action what can invigorate the power
of action if the impulses are spiritual and with it to the
power of love.
I have pronounced in these talks more often
that spiritual science is the big school of love for life. That
does not mean that spiritual science wants to talk about love
at every opportunity. This talking of love reminds of a saying
of Schopenhauer: “preaching morality is easy, founding
morality is hard,” but still of something else. If one
always hears talking love, love, love, then it is similar as
with the good Gothamites who wanted to catch the light in bags
and to empty them in their houses. One cannot empty love in the
soul that way. It is with the human soul similar as with an
oven that one has not to persuade to make the room warm,
because this is its task as an oven. It does it by itself if we
put wood into it and kindle it. Somebody maybe could say that
the wood does not look at all that it delivers warmth.
Nevertheless, there is warmth! While we put the quite different
looking wood into the oven and kindle it, we bring warmth in
our house. While we get used to the spiritual-scientific
concepts, we get used to a free judgement, to a free
orientation in the world. While we thereby fertilise our
memory, we bring the impulses of the human ability of love in
our souls and we get used to them. As certain it is that warmth
originates in a house if the wood is properly used, it is as
certain that active love that can really help is kindled by
those impulses, which enter with spiritual science in the
souls. Spiritual-scientific concepts are the heating material
of the soul for love.
Indeed, one can also object much. Above
all, it one could object that some do not find enough love with
those who deal with spiritual science. However, the human being
has to finally manage to regard something that seems to be
unloving there or there is perhaps rather loving. For example,
if anybody causes this or that less nice thing from a wrong
instinct or from pure egoism, and one bawls him out of a
healthy instinct, that can be a better activity of love than
some words which could be quite “loving” at such
moment, but would aggravate the condition from which the person
concerned made this or that mistake. — The right, true
experience will show that nobody who penetrates himself with
spiritual science remains without its influence concerning the
development of love.
Spiritual science will work as a strange
treasure for life just in moral fields. It will not work like
outer means, which should deter from doing this or that. It
will work quietly in the soul of any human being, so that he
finds the right ways of the activity of love. Spiritual science
works as the inner voice of conscience which does not punish
outwardly but is a more certain leader of the soul. Someone who
settles in the spiritual-scientific concepts experiences that
where he does wrong spiritual science has put a force in him
which works like a strengthening of conscience, like
correcting, giving life a direction. Thus, spiritual science
will not work best by programs and outer associations in moral
fields; but it will work, while it incorporates itself in the
civilisation, as the moral conscience developing in humanity.
With the increase of moral conscientiousness, a treasure for
life is given to the modern civilisation if spiritual science
finds understanding.
If one considers it in such a way, one can
get a concept of that what it can be for the physical and moral
healthy stimulation of the human soul. One will no longer deny
that it can be an unlimited treasure for life in physical and
moral respect. It can be a treasure for life which one needs
very much in the future which can invigorate the human being
because it wants to be recognised because it does not approach
the human being from without but unites internally with his soul. Internally,
one realises
this: spiritual science arouses
hostility much
less. Today one can still understand
if people come with their materialistically coloured knowledge
and say that one attains knowledge which invigorates the human
being also if one looks at the outside world; there one attains
right knowledge. This is indeed right. However, we look once,
now not only in theory, but lively, and we realise that
spiritual science just gives lively knowledge everywhere; and
we compare that with what a materialistically coloured
worldview gives the human being.
Those persons who still build up such
materialistic atomistic world edifice who are still, so to
speak, at its origin are still active with their
souls. Haeckel (Ernst H.,
1834-1919, German naturalist) himself,
Ostwald (Wilhelm O.,
1854-1932, chemist, philosopher), his next pupils and
others, they are still involved actively; they can still
develop inner forces, and one could still compare that what
they work with their science internally with that what
spiritual science attains appealing to the inner soul
forces.
With those, however, who are not in the
first row with the realisation of the materialistic worldviews,
or where one absorbs such a worldview passively the
materialistic worldview corresponds to a food that one does not
digest which cannot develop the forces for what the soul really
starve. One can expel hunger, without eating really. It is
possible. However, what the hunger indicates cannot be expelled
for the outer organism without food. Thus, one can also
suppress the hunger of the soul for the spiritual treasure for
life, while one ruins the appetite for the spiritual life by a
materialistic worldview. Nevertheless, the human does not stand
that in the long run.
I would not like to speak here about truth
and error of spiritualism. Indeed, it contains some grains of
truth, not only error or fraud and the like. I would only like
to point out that those who stand on the ground of a
materialistic worldview do not approve spiritualism apparently.
If one thinks about it with a thinking that does not invigorate
itself internally, one can only say that the materialistic
worldview is the same far away from spiritualism as from
spiritual science. However, if one really looks into the
becoming of the world, one knows something quite different.
Then one knows that the hunger of the soul for a spiritual
treasure for life cannot be suppressed, and that the
materialists themselves produce spiritualism! One fights from
materialistic side against spiritual science. However, one will
realise that everywhere where spiritual science does not
succeed spiritualistic associations and circles form. The
representatives of a materialist worldview are the fathers of
spiritualism. With an abstract thinking, one does not figure
this connection out. There one makes the same error in
reasoning as that who says, I plan to build up a rather good
son from the child that has been born now; I prepare everything
for it. However, the son does not always turn out as the father
has supposed; he may become possibly a rather bad brat. That
has nothing to do with lively life which ideas the materialists
have of the world connections. Thus, it can happen that they
produce the “son,” the brat, which they do not
recognise as their son. For spiritualism is the son of
materialism. Why that? Because the appetite of the soul cannot
satisfy the hunger for spiritual life, and it finally happens
as the physicist or chemist does that the outer events of life
are demonstrated where the “spirit” is presented
without inner cooperation. This is more comfortable than to
have to exert oneself internally at every moment when one
should climb up to the spirit. Nevertheless, this is also
nothing but searching for the same worldview which materialism
produces.
I want to bring in this only as an example
how an abstract thinking positions itself in life. Such
thinking will regard it as natural that materialism cannot
produce spiritualism. How should it do it! However, a thinking
that has inner power in the sphere of truth will figure the
world out in quite different sense, and with such thinking the
human being can position himself quite different than with an
abstract, dead thinking which is “Homunculism”
too.
Thus, we can regard spiritual science as a
sum of life goods. Indeed, someone does not regard the said as
especially valuable who thinks that life consists of outer
goods only. Indeed, someone who knows that even the outer goods
are dependent on the inner sense of direction in the world and
on the recovering forces of the soul does not regard the idea
as bold — with reference to all social conditions and what is
today an occasion for so many “cures”
— that
such conditions can be seen correctly and that one can find the
right remedies only if the human beings soar up towards
spiritual science. One must really say that something is
included in all that what pushes the words onto the lips of
someone speaking about spiritual science.
Spiritual science finds much opposition
still today. I have repeatedly pointed in the course of this
winter to the fact that there must be such opponents. Their
reasons are apparently striking because one can find them so
easily, and because they are so extremely evident. One can
understand any opponent of spiritual science very well, and,
besides, he does not say something wrong; he may even say
something completely right. Let me mention finally that he may
say something right.
Suppose that a quite clever human being
says, a spiritual researcher comes here and talks about all
kinds of wrong stuff that Kant disproved for a long time,
because Kant proved that the faculty of the human being is not
sufficient to penetrate into the spiritual world. If this
spiritual researcher had studied Kant, he would soon be quiet
about that.
It is not quite wrong what the clever man
says. It can be quite right. If anybody said in the time when
there was not yet a microscope so that one could find
macroscopic things only because the human eye cannot look into
smaller things, this was quite astute. Nevertheless, what does
it benefit the further progress of human thinking and life?
Although it is right that the human eye cannot see down into
the cells of organisms because the eyesight is limited, the
human beings constructed the microscope, and the telescope and
see now where the eyesight of the human eye does not
reach.
As it can be very astute that somebody
proves that the human eye can see no cells and the like, it can
be very right what those human beings argue who speak of the
limitations of the human cognitive faculties. However, does it
matter whether it is right or not? As it is right that the
human eye can see no cells, but that civilisation led to
sharpening the eye, there are spiritual methods that strengthen
the soul life, so that the human being can behold into the
spiritual world. One has to understand this and other things
that somebody states as an opponent of spiritual.
Actually not to boast but to inform
something, I would like to mention that, nevertheless, more and
more human beings note the fertile impulse of spiritual science
also in the present. One can prove this by the fact that we are
able to build a college of spiritual science in Dornach near
Basel. One does not intend to concentrate spiritual science
upon one place; I would like to stress this. However, we want
to prove that we can show how spiritual science can be creative
in the fields of architecture, sculpture, and painting. With
this building, only a model should be given that spiritual
science is able to deal with life directly. The fact that
friends of spiritual science were found who donated the
relatively big means that were necessary to create this college
building is already a proof that this spiritual science is
partly rooted in the souls of the present.
Only by the way, I would like to mention
that about this building for spiritual science in Dornach all
possible fairy tales are put in the world. For example, in the
newest fairy tale that was put to me on the table you can read
that the college that should be once built, indeed, in Munich,
could not be built because we would have been rejected there.
In truth, we were not rejected but certain circles in Munich,
which must be asked, could not cope with their expert
judgement. They let us wait for ten years; however, we could
not wait with the building for ten years!
Another fairy tale tells that because of
the building among various cities a kind of competition had
originated, and that these would have triumphed over Munich. I
would not like to say anything against the artistic Munich.
Even if the inhabitants of Munich regret that the college of
spiritual science is built now somewhere else, nevertheless,
not so many cities scrambled to get it! Besides, the concerning
newspaper is not informed especially well if it writes that
Basel seems to emerge as the most favourable city from this
competition.
I want to mention this only because now
also more opponents appear due to this building. For it can be
an outer sign that spiritual science finds already
understanding that the building can be started, that such an
artistic landmark can show the significance of spiritual
science in the world. The opponents always ask, who are these
supporters of spiritual science? They must be people without
judgement, people who easily listen in good faith! However,
usually those who talk in such a way would prefer that one
listens to their authority or to that what they regard as
authority. Those people are opponents because the supporters of
spiritual science do not do this and have advanced to be
unbiased in a way. However, being unbiased of a
materialistically coloured or any dogmatic worldview is
necessary if one wants to understand spiritual science. With
this understanding one calls the life goods in the soul
— as I
have suggested it today — with those who get
involved with spiritual science more intimately.
Someone who notes and understands their
lively life, realises more and more, that this spiritual
science is connected with that what must give the necessary new
spiritual life blood to the future of humanity. Even if that
what is connected with spiritual science may cause some
childhood diseases, not everything should be justified that
appears where one believes that it works correctly. I allow
myself to express something just today at the end. Something
that could entice us from the outside that could induce us
internally in the same way to present spiritual science does
not exist. But it is solely the knowledge that with spiritual
science the true and fertile life goods for which any soul must
be hungry enter in this human soul, and that this soul, even if
it does not know it today, craves these life goods if it should
not become empty. This sensation forces itself on the
representative of spiritual science that lives in him, while he
represents it. With this confession, I would like to close
these winter talks:
This science faces the representative of
spiritual science as if the real of a fertile future culture
demands from him that he represents it. What gives him hope and
confidence for life and for the salutary of spiritual science
in future crowds together in a sensation of something real. He
must develop the confidence that comes from true knowledge,
which also knows in a certain respect that spiritual science
has to work, even if so many opponents arise; it must be
victorious. As it appears to the supporter who has a real
attitude, it is the real of the future development of
humanity.
I finish these winter talks expressing
confidence in spiritual science.
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