V
The
Activities of the Human Soul Forces and Their Connection with
Man's Eternal Being
Bern, 28 November 1917
Above all I ask you to consider both talks which I hold today
and the day after tomorrow here, as a related whole. Although I
will try to put any single talk across for itself,
nevertheless, something can only be attained just with
reference to the topic by the fact that the one talk lights up
the other in a way and both become a whole.
I
would like to compare the position of the anthroposophically
oriented spiritual science that forms the basis of these talks
in certain respect to an uninvited guest in a society. I
compare the invited guests to the scientific directions
approved presently, which are invited as it were already
because people invite these different sciences with their
needs, with that which the outer sense-perceptible world gives
which life demands. Spiritual science appears even today within
the cultural life in such a way, as if one had not just
demanded it. However, towards an uninvited guest one becomes
politer bit by bit if one notices that he has to bring
something that one has lost. One has not known this before, and
one notices this then only. This applies to anthroposophy, at
least according to the belief of those few people who can
become completely engrossed already today in what
anthroposophy, actually, intends compared with the big tasks of
humanity.
The
human beings have possessed that which anthroposophy wants to
bring to the culture of the present and the future for
millennia in another way and they should gain it again with
spiritual science. The human beings have owned this
instinctively, from a certain instinctive soul quality, a
sentient cognition of the soul and its secrets.
Only someone who is prejudiced to the history of mind can deny
that humanity had to lose this instinctive knowledge as it had
to lose the medieval view of the universe at a certain point of
the historical development after which the earth rests in the
centre and the sun and the stars move around it. As this
spatial worldview had to be substituted by the heliocentric
view, the old instinctive cognition of the everlasting in the
soul had to give way to the big progress of natural
sciences.
I
believe that just that can appreciate the deep meaning of
anthroposophy best of all who realises the big progress of
scientific cognition for the progress of humanity and does not
behave in a amateurish way to it, but recognises the scientific
up to a certain degree. But just because humanity grasped the
world with scientific methods and created a worldview from it,
it is no longer dependent to search the mental instinctively as
it used to be.
Scientifically one recognises only properly if one excludes any
mental aspect from that field of nature, which one wants to
investigate. In former times, the human being observed the
natural phenomena, and he felt instinctively how by the natural
phenomena something spiritual-mental spoke to him. He did not
separate the natural phenomena from the spiritual-mental. Thus,
he received something spiritual-mental with the facts and
beings of nature at the same time.
The
human being would never have reached the complete liberation of
his being if he had not ascended to the scientific cognition.
Natural sciences force the soul to get stronger forces from
itself to enter into the spiritual world in a new way.
However, something very important begins arising against
spiritual science straight away if the human being of the
present tries to approach what spiritual science asserts.
Nobody can understand it better than someone who lives just in
spiritual science that presently spiritual science must still
face all possible prejudices. What spiritual science wants to
investigate is the everlasting in the human soul, the workings
of the soul forces beyond birth and death what one summarises
with the concept of immortality and of freedom about which
every human being wants to know something.
The
human being wants to know something about the objects that form
the contents of spiritual science. However, at the same time if
one speaks about the research methods, about the things that
one has to carry out to penetrate into the referred area, one
has to expect opposition even reluctance necessarily because
one must not expect general understanding.
To
the right understanding of spiritual science is an obstacle
even today that those who would like to investigate that in the
human soul what is behind the usual consciousness that they
would prefer finding that with all kinds of unusual soul
phenomena to which, actually, spiritual science has to point.
That is why spiritual science is often confused with that what
indeed can deliver exceptionally interesting, in particular
scientific results, with that what gets out all kinds of
somnambulistic, mediumistic soul conditions of the unconscious
or subconscious life that escapes from the usual
consciousness.
This confusion is fateful. but it will still last long because
the human being can get by certain circumstances to
somnambulistic or mediumistic conditions of consciousness in
which the usual sense-perceptible world and the will do not
help from which he brings up all kinds of that which people
regard as strange and interesting. The strange is always
interesting, especially if one can believe that — what is
even right in a certain respect — thereby something
announces itself that exceeds the usual experience between
birth and death.
However, just true spiritual science shows that that which
appears by unusual soul conditions, by somnambulism, by
mediumship is much less significant to the human being than
that which he grasps with his usual senses, and that which he
can influence with his usual will. The latter is connected with
the human being between birth and death. That, however, what
appears by the intimated conditions is contained in a deeper,
lower layer of the human nature than even the sense-perceptible
world. This comes about because lower organic performances take
place by which that what covers itself to the sensory life and
the will comes to light. However, this cannot be the full,
whole human, but only something that exists beneath the surface
of the human, while true spiritual science wants to lead up the
human being above the surface of the usual life, above that at
which the human being aims in the everyday life and also in the
usual science.
Indeed, these unusual conditions have something bewitching;
since because the human being gets to conditions that are
connected even more with his bodily life than the sensory life,
and in particular because such things excite curiosity, he
experiences something in such conditions that can make him
happy. The attitude towards life that sticks then to the inner
organs also works on the observer; he believes that he faces
something real that he experiences with a human being whom he
himself has changed.
Against it, the spiritual researcher leads to the everlasting
that outreaches birth and death. Indeed, he has also to refer
to the change of the usual human nature. He has to refer to the
fact that one cannot investigate the everlasting with the
senses, also not within the usual will sphere while he
describes what the human soul has to experience so that it
disengages itself from the body, so that it can observe the
mental not only with the body but also with the soul. Then he
describes conditions, which the human being of the usual
consciousness feels as if standing before an abyss. Hence, he
seems dreamy, fantastic above all. However, if the spiritual
researcher speaks of his research results, he is dependent on
leading the soul itself. That is why that which he brings
forward has to take another way than if one discusses something
scientifically. If one discusses something scientific, one
describes first: this is done and that is done, or this is
there, that is there, and then one adds his intellectual
performance, his mental pictures, and combinations, tries to
find out laws of that what is there and so forth. One links
that which the soul has to do of its own accord to something
that already exists.
The
spiritual researcher has almost to reverse this way. This seems
so paradoxical at first that someone who cannot come on the
thing says, yes, the spiritual researcher states only that the
things are in such a way; but he delivers no proofs. —
Now, his proofs just consist of the fact that he shows how the
soul has first to go through the performances that are purely
mental, and then he can approach the spiritual process, the
objective. While the usual science has the process first and
adds afterwards what the soul does, the spiritual researcher
has to do that on his own terms, has to leave the soul alone to
its own resources.
Then the soul brings out such abilities with which this and
that appears as a spiritual fact to the human being. The most
substantial proofs arise while one shows the ways which
spiritual research has to take.
In
former years I have explained some details of the ways which
the soul has to take, so that it really awakes to the beholding
consciousness which one can also call spiritual eye, spiritual
ear with a Goethean term, so that one beholds the spiritual
really. I have explained that the human being evokes that with
pure soul exercises in his soul, which the body causes while
organising eyes, ears of its own accord, and how then one can
figure out the spiritual with such spiritual organs. For
details, I refer to my books: How Does One Attain Knowledge
of Higher Worlds? and Occult Science.. An Outline.
However, I would like to put forth something fundamental only
just with reference to the way of spiritual research and would
like to say something about how the spiritual researcher gets
his facts about which we will still have to speak then.
For
that who cannot deal intimately with those soul exercises to
find the everlasting in himself and in other beings that
comfort stops, admittedly, which one has if one simply puts the
human being in unusual, mediumistic, or somnambulistic
conditions. When the human being approaches unpreparedly what
is demanded in the soul exercises, his interest stops. So that
one may say that everybody is interested in the objects, which
spiritual research wants to recognise, but less in the
methods.
What the spiritual researcher has to do to penetrate into the
real spiritual world is not as interesting as the experiences
of a somnambulistic person or a medium for the outer observer
at first. No, one may already say, as paradoxical as it sounds:
that what the soul has to carry out investigating its
everlasting spiritual values causes indifference or aversion at
first. One will realise at first that the soul exercises are
performed maybe first because of curiosity by this or by that,
but then one regards them as simple and soon as boring. First,
it is fear of the strange — in particular, if the human
being notices that he comes to the edge of the spiritual world.
The human being gives up penetrating into this world because he
has fear of the strange. He does not become aware of this fear;
but the unaware fear is not less a fear. Then aversion and
hatred assert themselves. These are quite explicable phenomena.
Hence, overcoming is necessary. Someone has to experience an
own soul drama who really penetrates with his soul into the
spiritual world. One may say, if there are still human beings
who penetrate at first without further ado, if they are
interested in the boring of spiritual exercises, it is because
that what is quite boring becomes interesting because of its
boringness at last.
With such exercises — while one strengthens the thoughts
and gives the feelings and the will another direction than they
have in the usual life and the usual science — the soul
recognises really how it uses the body to cause the memories of
the usual consciousness to live in the usual existence. In
principle, I want today to emphasise something that can appear
as first with the spiritual researcher, as the way to the inner
mental experiment, which can then open the door into the
spiritual world. The further course of my discussions will
already show that that is more or less justified which I tell
there.
If
you live with your experience in the present moment or in the
present day, you are not at all able to approach the
everlasting of your soul. The spiritual researcher notices at
first that the soul can perceive independently of the body;
that means that the human being is always extremely dependent
in his everyday life on a certain present. You always use the
body to experience that what you experience. One may say, if
you experience something present, that what is in the present
round us, you are excluded from your mental experience, as well
as you are excluded from the experience of the day if you are
in the deep, dreamless sleep. As weird and paradoxical as it
sounds, the human being oversleeps the everlasting in his soul
in his usual sensory life and will. Sleep extends far into the
day life.
How
this? It is as follows: somebody who develops the ability of
introspection — it has to be developed first, it does not
exist in the usual consciousness just like that —
realises that he cannot generally bring that into the soul
which he has experienced today or yesterday so that he can
understand it in the light of the eternal. Our body is always
involved in our experiences. Not before an experience has
passed for two to three days, it has got such condition in the
soul that one recognises its real mental nature. Before, that
which grasps this mental is still interspersed in us with the
impulses originating from the inner body so that we are unable
to grasp any experience in such a way as it lives only in the
soul as a soul. Hence, we must renounce to check that which we
experience in the present for its mental content. But the
peculiar comes to light if now anything bodily is away and the
thing is memory only, we can no longer recall the real active
interest so directly which the soul has taken in the
experience.
We
can remember the experience, but we cannot have this experience
as a present one. However, without settling down in something
that has freed itself from us two to three days ago in such a
way that we experience it as vividly as a present event, we
cannot at all approach the everlasting. However, someone is
mistaken very much if he believes that something that dates
back two to three or more days or years and is remembered could
be experienced as a present event. It has not only faded, but
above all that immediate internal activity which the soul
unfolds at a present event, cannot develop if it faces the past
event. The soul oversleeps its own activity as regards the past
experience. The past experience emerges as a picture. However,
that what one experiences in the present does not emerge with
it. However, this must be woken. You can develop that which you
have to experience there towards any event or experience dating
far back if you succeed in doing that.
If
you are not a spiritual researcher by chance, you proceed best
of all in such a way that you do not consider the memories
dating far back, but those of the last two to three days
because you reach that most likely what is to be reached. It is
the best if you choose such an event, which you have
experienced to lead to the everlasting in the soul. The usual
experiences do not at all carry out this. Hence, the spiritual
researcher is obliged to carry out that what one calls
exercises of thinking, of feeling while he concentrates, for
example, upon a thought much longer than one does in the usual
experience. Thereby you are able to experience something mental
already in the beginning, sooner than, otherwise, people
experience it. Then you can look back at the events dating back
two to three days with the usual memory.
Hence, let us be clear of the matter: after some time the
spiritual researcher gets around to look at that what the last
two to three days have brought him as experiences to look like
at a tableau. This is necessary. What you have experienced
there during the last two to three days in which you will feel
everywhere if you have practised the necessary introspection
how there bodily organs still help. Indeed, the memories of
these two to three days can proceed like in a moment if you are
used to living in the mental, so that you face a picture of
these two to three days. However, during these two to three
days it is not in such a way that you have the soul detached
from the bodily before yourself, but the bodily experience
influences its everywhere. It is only like a quick active
memory that is spread about these two to three days.
It
becomes different with reference to the event that dates back
two to three days. If you have enabled yourself — after
you have surveyed the two to three days in such a way as I have
described it — to live through this event as a present
one, you live in something mental.
You
realise that I describe nothing abstract, no figments, but that
what the soul carries out with itself to get away at first for
a certain time from that what you cannot only experience
mentally and to come back to something that can be experienced
mentally now. However, you have to strengthen the soul life; so
that you can settle in something that dates back two to three
days.
Then you know what these two to three days signify in the inner
mental experience. Thereby you recognise something that you can
recognise only this way. You recognise that that which we go
through mentally in the present detaches itself from the body,
spiritualises itself and has been really spiritualised only
after two to three days.
However, then it rests for the usual consciousness in such
darkness that the human being oversleeps it if he has not
prepared himself to live in it. If he has prepared himself, he
knows that he is now with his creative soul, with that what his
soul has not experienced, otherwise: he lives in a purely
spiritual-mental experience.
Of
course, one can search that for experiences dating back even
farther; but then one has to survey everything with his memory
that has taken place up to this experience like in a tableau.
This is much more difficult of course. Not before one has
traced back this one by one and can retain so much strength in
the soul to experience that what appears then, one knows by
immediate experience: now you have seized in your soul what is
only mental what does not at all appear in the usual
consciousness. There even memory does not work in such a way
that something would appear so vivid that one experiences it
mentally. The body is always involved when the memories are
brought to light. The retentiveness is bound to the bodily at
first, even if one does not owe it to the bodily.
With it, I have shown that by a particular carefully prepared
experience the mental in the human being is discovered. If one
has discovered the mental, one knows: this mental is in you.
One knows: if one has the possibility to approach this same
mental again, then it is there. Since one knows that this
mental is independent of any sense-perceptible. The
sense-perceptible plays a part only until one discovers this
fact. Now this mental has become independent of the
sense-perceptible, also of the will.
Then you know: what you have grasped there has the quality of
duration; it is that what the human being carries through
death. This is the everlasting of the human being. Now you know
why this everlasting escapes from the usual consciousness
because this everyday consciousness experiences that only like
the deep sleep what does not develop with the help of the
body.
One
may say, such a thing is the first level of the life of the
mental that gives a direct view of the mental not only
conceptually. One faces the beholding consciousness that goes
through the gate of death. Then one knows that the human being
does not depend with this mental on the present; one knows that
this mental has permanence by itself and that it causes that
what the human being beholds now.
If
now the spiritual researcher describes that which happens with
death, he does not describe it out of imagination, but while he
continues that which I have explained just now. He knows: the
mental, while it gets rid of the bodily, needs two to three
days of retrospect, before it enters into its own being. Thus,
he gets to know in his soul what the human being experiences
mentally at death. The soul still has a two to three days
lasting retrospect, a life tableau; this retrospect disappears
and the soul enters into the real astral area after two to
three days, after it has become free of the bodily experience.
In this area lives also the spiritual researcher during these
two to three days if he carries out that inner experiment about
which I have spoken.
You
can find the suitable soul exercises in the cited writings
How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? and
Occult Science. An Outline. Everybody can carry out
these exercises, but that is not necessary. I have stressed
over and over again that the spiritual researcher describes
only what must be done to find the way to the spiritual-mental
world; but it is not necessary that you yourself carry out
these exercises if you want to convince yourself of the truth
of that what spiritual research brings to light. The spiritual
researcher himself has nothing for his everlasting from that
what he attains with his exercises, but he has something for
his everlasting if he transforms what he beholds into the usual
concepts of common sense. The common sense can understand that
what he has to say if he transforms what he beholds in the
spiritual world into concepts, into mental pictures.
That is why there must be such writings so that everybody can
check that what the spiritual researcher says. Indeed, the
objections that are made are very often not true. There one
possibly says, if a spiritual researcher speaks of the fact
that he can really behold into the spiritual world that he can
observe the spiritual-mental of another person, then he should
show that to us. We bring some persons to him who may know
nothing of that what goes forward in the mental-spiritual of
these persons, but he should observe these persons with his
vision. Then he should do his statements. If these are true, we
believe.
I
have discussed this objection in my book The Riddles of the
Soul. One has raised this objection repeatedly, although
spiritual research gives everybody the possibility to
investigate and says, this and that can be done; one can
convince himself of all that what the spiritual researcher
claims. Instead of convincing himself this way, one demands
what must destroy any spiritual research. Since that what one
should observe with the soul escapes constantly if any
compulsion is used if that what it unfolds in forces from its
own inside does not arise. One cannot do this with observing
outer experiments; everybody can do it only towards himself.
However, if he endeavours, he will come to the same to which
the spiritual researcher comes. The outer experiment drives the
abilities of the spiritual researcher away as life is driven
away if one cuts an organism.
As
odd as it sounds, it is in such a way. I have shown how the
mental can be experienced. Of course, that is only a beginning.
Such exercises must be repeated frequently.
One
advances further and further, until there is a spiritual area
with beings around you as before the sense-perceptible world is
spread out. However, this spiritual conception has just special
peculiarities. I still want to state some of them. One could
believe at first if the spiritual researcher has an experience
that it must relate to the human being as any other experience
of the outer sense-perceptible world relates to him.
This does not hold true. It becomes apparent that if the
spiritual researcher has such an experience he cannot bring it
into the usual memory. As well as one has to exceed the usual
memory, as I have shown it, for two to three days, one also
comes out of memory if you enter into the spiritual world. You
cannot incorporate something spiritual in your memory that you
have beheld, so that you remember this spiritual experience.
You have to elicit it always anew.
You
have to understand this properly: if the spiritual researcher
succeeds in transforming his experiences into mental pictures,
into concepts, he has the concepts as the usual ones are; he
can remember them, of course. Nevertheless, this is not the
spiritual experience; it is its conceptual image. You can
remember this. However, you cannot remember the spiritual
experience. Spiritual experiences are facts that exist in the
spiritual world. You can behold them, but they do not stick to
your memory.
If
the spiritual researcher wants to repeat such a spiritual
experience once again, then it is not enough that he simply
exerts the strength again which he uses, otherwise, for a
memory. But he has to induce the same internal soul
performances again in himself, he has to carry out the same
exactly that he has carried out to come to that experience. The
fact that a spiritual experience does not imprint itself in the
memory that one can experience it only again with those inner
soul performances, is a proof of the fact that that which
really lives in spirit has duration, cannot be destroyed by
death. It has duration.
Hence, the independence of the mental-spiritual from the bodily
is proved by how the spiritual researcher experiences. He would
have to be persuaded immediately, that — as his sense
perception ceases to be at death — also that would pass
away at death which he has of the mental experience if he could
remember it. Since also the forces of memory depend on the
mortal body. One encounters the immortal only if one is beyond
memory.
I
would still like to bring in an odd experience that astonishes
many people who practise soul exercises. If you carry out
something in the everyday life repeatedly, you get a certain
practice. You become able to do it better and better. Strangely
enough, this is reverse compared with the spiritual experience:
if one has a rather lively vision and one would want to get it
a second and a third time, it is difficult and more and more
difficult, and then one has to make stronger efforts. There is
nothing of practice, nothing of habits; one has to exert
himself stronger and stronger to get it again. The spiritual
experience flees from us as it were if we had it once.
This surprises many people: if anybody has a spiritual
experience for the first time, he has many reserve forces in
himself that have slept up to now and are woken to the vision.
He may possibly have a very lively spiritual experience. If he
is not yet sufficiently prepared, and wants immediately to
repeat it once again — before, he did it more with his
reserve forces, more subconsciously than fully consciously
—, then he is no longer able to do it, and he is maybe
very unhappy about that because he wants to have the
experience. He avoids the effort to get a bigger mental
activity to cause this experience again.
Hence, you realise that just the reverse is true of that what
is so important to us in the usual life. It cannot at all be
talk of the fact that you obtain knowledge to repeat things if
it concerns soul experiences. The soul experiences separate
themselves more and more from the bodily and show their
mental-spiritual characteristic.
Moreover, it is very necessary that you are prepared with your
concepts and mental pictures for these spiritual experiences if
you want to have them. You get into a certain spiritual
vagueness that is not pathological, but is only a mental lack
of clarity, which still leads to all kinds of illusions if you
have a spiritual experience that you cannot grasp with
concepts. You have to attempt everything to improve your
comprehension, before you approach the spiritual experience.
Exactly the same way as you need a developed eye to perceive
colours, you need a mature imaginative power to be able to
conceive what faces you spiritually.
The
common sense can understand in all details what the spiritual
researcher describes if one looks at life if one compares that
what the spiritual researcher has to say with that what life
presents every day.
You
do not need to be a researcher and the researcher himself has
only the fruits of his research if he can change his visions
into usual comprehensible mental pictures which he informs to
himself as he informs them to others. He has also to understand
these mental pictures with his common sense. Thus, others can
understand them too. The human being can have that which the
occultist has from the results of spiritual research, without
being himself a spiritual researcher. You need spiritual
research only to convince yourself that the things are
true.
However, one can argue a number of things against the practical
significance of the spiritual-scientific results. While I
discuss some spiritual-scientific results just with reference
to this fact, I have to emphasise, of course, that this other
way of spiritual research is taken into consideration. First,
the preparation of the soul has to be done, and then one gets
to the fact of the results. The researcher does not say, this
is one way or the other, but, if one prepares the soul
appropriately, one attains the spiritual facts that present
themselves this way or the other.
The
proofs are contained in the way of researching. Of course, I
cannot put forth all these things in one talk to a T. Hence, it
can be very comprehensible if one thinks that the spiritual
researcher indicates, indeed, elementarily how the way is,
then, however, he gives riddles that have nothing to do with
facts. However, that is not true, but if the way is properly
continued, one can do spiritual research with the same
precision as one applies it in the outer research.
At
first, I would like to refer to the statements of those people
who approximately say the following repeatedly: why
investigating that which is beyond death? Why investigating
this everlasting in the human soul? If I die, I realise how the
things are, I can quietly wait for this.
Nothing is wronger than this. Spiritual research shows if it
meets the souls after death that they live in such surroundings
as they have prepared them between birth and death for
themselves. Here in the sense-perceptible world we live in the
sensory surroundings. After death, we live in that spiritual of
which we have become aware between birth and death. That what
was not there for us between birth and death does not exist for
us as an outside world after death. Our inside world becomes
our outside world — this becomes a great law of spiritual
knowledge —, as far as we have consciously recognised it
not with vision but with that which our common sense has
accepted from vision. We have only that as an outside world
after death what we have had as an inside world between birth
and death.
If
we get mental pictures only between birth and death that are
associated with the outer sense-perceptible world, then such
mental pictures form our surroundings after death. Because I
would like to show that spiritual science attains concrete
results, I do not want to shy away from pronouncing what many
people regard as ridiculous even today, but the things must be
pronounced. If we have attained mental pictures of the outer
sense-perceptible world only, it is our inside world during the
physical life and then it will be our outside world after
death. This implicates that those souls, which have not
attempted to realise that behind the sense-perceptible world
the spiritual world is, are banished into the earthly-sensory
sphere after death until they give up the belief that there is
no spirit what is much more difficult after death. Hence, the
souls that do not acquire this consciousness will be retained
in the earth sphere after death. They can be found there by
those who have taken the way to them with spiritual
research.
What imprints even deeper on the soul is the following: one
learns to recognise if one finds these souls that they have a
beneficial effect in the earthly sphere only if they work on
this earthly sphere with the body. Here in the earthly sphere
the body puts us in the right relation to the surroundings. If
we remain in the same surroundings after death, we work
destroying. Then we are wrongly engaged. The real researcher
knows: if the human beings believe here that destructive forces
come by themselves and dissolve by themselves without any real
reason, then these are the souls of those who have found no
spiritual consciousness here and work then destroying into the
life on earth.
If
one has recognised once that the human being banishes himself
to the earth and works destroying on the earthly conditions,
then one has gained a concrete relationship of the human being
to the spiritual world again. Then it becomes a cosmic duty not
to confine himself on that what the outer physical life offers
but what one finds out in such a way that the human being is
convinced of the fact that he is connected with his everlasting
essence with the spiritual world, which is round us as the
sense-perceptible world is, save that the usual consciousness
does not perceive it. This world is there, and one can perceive
it if the consciousness awakes for this spiritual world.
I
would still like to add the following: one learns gradually how
that what is not accessible to natural sciences, like death,
has entered into the area of research. While strictly speaking
natural sciences have to do with that only what is advancing
development, the spiritual researcher recognises the
intervention of the declining development, the intervention of
death in the evolution. He gets to know the role of death based
on concrete facts.
We
take our starting point from an example: we suppose that death
has finished any human life by force, for example, by a boulder
or by a shot. This is something inexplicable for the human
being. If the spiritual researcher looks at this case and
advances on and on in knowledge, he learns to recognise that
not only this is the case what I have stated just now: in my
present life I have my whole life, from birth up to now, save
that that which dates back two to three days has already
spiritualised itself. If the researcher advances further, and
strengthens not only his thoughts with inner exercises but also
his emotional life, so that the feelings that appear in the
course of life are perceived so that he can compare the
spiritual experience to a musical experience, to a tone, a
sound, a noise.
If
one experiences musically, one must be able to recognise the
tone. Continuing such relations one learns to connect an
experience that dates back, as I have described it, two to
three days with another that maybe dates back seven to nine
years. One can feel that consonous what is experienced in time
what places itself as something mental beside duration, as I
have described it. The human being experiences this musically,
spoken comparatively, if he faces his experience this way. Then
he can also extend this — regardless of the time between
birth and death — not only to that which dates back two
to three days or years, but to that what has happened before
birth or conception. There he experiences himself as a
spiritual-mental being, before he has descended and has united
with a physical body. If he advances even further, he gets to a
cognition that I want to characterise in the following
description, he experiences himself in past lives on earth, and
he experiences things, working from past lives on earth. If the
human being has really attained the knowledge with which he
experiences the mental immediately with which he can know how
the mental lives in the duration, then a moment comes which
intervenes deeply in life where the human being can say to
himself, you have joined to the spiritual-mental. This is a
karmic event!
I
say much more with it than I can, actually, say. One does not
need to become indifferent towards the remaining life. On the
contrary, one can feel everything much subtler that can raise
the human being above the usual life to the highest bliss. One
can experience what ruins us deeply; one can participate in any
destiny. The moment can still arrive that you say to yourself,
stronger than any other stroke of fate works that in which the
knowledge comes to life for us in such a way that we grasp the
spiritual. Then this karmic experience of knowledge extends to
our whole life, and we understand the remaining destiny. We
understand that our former lives cause our present destiny. We
meet former lives on earth, not in a reminiscent way, because
one cannot directly remember spiritual experiences as such; but
something appears that is much higher than memory: the view of
the past.
This must happen if the human being wants to investigate
something like the violent death. You cannot investigate it if
you look only at one life of a person. In this life, it appears
like a chance. The violent death frightens. However, if one
surveys the totality of his lives that are between birth and
death and the intermediate times in the spiritual world that
last much longer, then you realise that a violent death is a
significant experience. The soul is snatched as it were from
the physical life at one moment; it is internally endowed by
the experience of something that comes from without with a
particular power.
It
is just a law of the spiritual world: the inside becomes
outside if the soul enters into the spiritual world. An outer
experience like a violent death becomes internal and appears as
a force in the next life on earth.
Hence, if we find in a life on earth of a person that he could
accomplish something special at a particular time that he gave
his life a new direction, then it originates from a violent
death in a former life. These forces that give life a new
direction are now much investigated and described how human
beings suddenly give their life a new direction. Such things
lead back to violent deaths that must not be caused anyhow
artificially, of course. Since a death which would be searched
as a violent death would not be caused from the outside. Of
course, one cannot wish that. The desire for such a violent
death would be similar to the usual death, which is caused by
the inside of the body. Nay, it would be not only similar but
it would even move the person into another relation than the
usual death.
The
usual death that is caused in any age by the inside brings that
with it for the next lives on earth what is more an evenly
proceeding life as it is originally inherent from childhood and
birth on. A violent death by suicide would impair the human
being in a way that he could not manage his life in the next
life. Already the desire must not appear in our life to look
for a violent death anyhow. Spiritual science is not at all
concerned with hostility towards life.
You
realise that — because the effect of the soul forces is
searched in specifically spiritual-scientific way — one
gets to real single results which make the human life
conceivable. Today I wanted to give some suggestions about that
at first. I know, just if one does not talk in the abstract,
one often encounters resistance, even mockery. This already
begins if one demonstrates the methods of spiritual research.
One evaluates these methods often as something that leads to no
facts. Well, I would like to know whether these are not
substantial facts intervening in life that I put forth only in
two talks today and the day after tomorrow. What could be more
substantial than this communication of the violent death and of
the fact that one is doomed to play a destructive role after
death if one has not assimilated certain spiritual images
between birth and death?
If
such things are stated, it does not need to be in such a way
that that who tells them does not put them forward as fully
valid facts, but that that who listens is not able to figure
them out maybe in their factuality, so that they remain phrases
to him.
Quite recently, I have held a talk about the same objects as
today in a Swiss city. After a few days I received a polite
letter from which I would like to bring something forward in
order to show how the usual consciousness behaves to spiritual
science.
At
first, the person concerned says that that which I have brought
forward did not at all work as a fact on him, but he writes,
according to my modest subjective opinion, there was no trace
of fact in this absurd teaching. In the centre of your
spiritual research, the doctrine of reincarnation seems to be.
If you have not yet found out with thirty years of study and
research how ridiculous it would be if a human mind, after it
has studied during its life on earth and has worked its way up,
had to regress again to childhood and concepts would have to be
explained again to it.
Such an objection is easily raised which is cancelled, however,
for someone who knows the state of the mental as I have
described it today. There one knows at the same time that the
soul, after it has gone through many incarnations, can
experience this life on earth repeatedly to enrich itself and
in such a way that one could not go through certain things in
old age that one realises in himself as lack if one discovers
the mental really, but one has just to work through again from
childhood on. Someone who surveys the human life knows how it
extends beyond deaths and births, knows that it is as
ridiculous to say, one does not want to go back again to
childhood as it would be ridiculous to say, I have learnt
French and German, why should I still learn Chinese in addition
if people demand it from me?
These objections just show that the will does not exist to go
along with these things. However, they would not be done unless
a certain reluctance appeared against spiritual research.
This aversion is due to the following. The soul has to notice
if one leads it to its own nature that it needs to go through
many lives on earth. Itt does not have those perfect qualities
in the later life on earth, because they originate from its
very own being, but it has them from its cultural surroundings,
they are not its real possession.
That is why the spiritual researcher has to describe this soul
in its nakedness and that it has to go through repeated lives
on earth. The human being gets angry if the things of the
spiritual research are described because he suspects that the
soul is not that what he would like to have.
The
fact that the human being gets angry if the spiritual
approaches him, I would like to link to a single phenomenon. I
estimate the philosopher Richard Wahle (1867-1937) very much. I
estimate Richard Wahle because he has succeeded in representing
everything that the human being perceives with big astuteness
uniquely in such a way that it completely appears as picture
that is completely free of any spiritual. We still mix
something spiritual in if we describe anything
sense-perceptible. Richard Wahle drives any spiritual away from
that what the senses perceive. This had to be done once, and it
is interesting that it has been done once. It relates to that
what we experience as world, in such a way, as if anybody faced
a miraculous painting and wanted to describe nothing of that
which it shows but the colour spots. If one does that with
great astuteness towards the world phenomena, it is also a
merit. Thus, the philosopher Richard Wahle achieved something
particular in his later life. I have never heard or read
someone more railing against philosophy and its futility
— and I know the philosophical literature of the world
quite well —, than Richard Wahle did in his books. If one
exerts himself ever so much as a philosopher, the human being
does not have more philosophy than an animal and differs only
thereby from the animal that he believes to have to run up
against the spiritual world anyhow and is not able to do that.
Wahle still recently writes this way.
Richard Wahle rails against philosophy because he has expelled
any spirit from the sense-perceptible, and has just approached
the spirit with this negative way. Actually, nobody
characterises certain things of the spiritual life better than
Richard Wahle does, the despiser of spirit. Thus, he says:
“How little space does the spirit assume in the universe!
It is only like a puddle in which stars are reflected. If the
combinations of the spirit formed a considerable part of the
world, it would have to be ashamed of them; this would
compromise the universe. Is it not funny that the universe is
thought in such a way, as if our miserable mind formed the
summit, because it would be better to forget it on the
whole?”
This attitude appears if one approaches the spirit that is the
most valuable to the human being. There are various reasons why
this is that way; they will still face us the day after
tomorrow. But I wanted to show the fact also with the help of a
strange phenomenon of the present that that must be overcome at
the border of the sense-perceptible world and spiritual world
what retains the human being as fear at first, then even as
hatred and as an aversion of penetrating this spiritual
world.
One
has still to add that many people who want to recognise the
spirit are content above all if they can say, yes, we admit the
spirit; the fact that there is spirit anyhow, we admit this
because the human being always faces something hidden,
something that he cannot investigate. — Indeed, people
forgive that one talks about the spirit; however, they do not
forgive the fact that one can penetrate into the spirit that
one describes concrete facts and beings of this spiritual
life.
All
sorts of people refer to those who were after the spirit. Thus,
we realise then that those who have rendered it impossible
mostly with often rather astute investigations to get to
spiritual science that they just refer to a spirit on whom that
is based what I have managed in decades of own spiritual
research. Since my spiritual research rests upon the healthy
bases built by Goethe's worldview.
Goethe himself was not yet a spiritual researcher; the time of
spiritual research had not yet come in those days. However,
someone who delves into Goethe's worldview finds the elementary
starting points in it on which one can build. If one builds on
them, one is directly led to spiritual research. Hence, I would
like to call spiritual research “Goetheanism” and
the Dornach building “Goetheanum.”
Thus, the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is the
direct continuation of Goetheanism. If some people refer to
Goethe because he rejected the spirit and called everything
nature, one may already point out that, indeed, Goethe called
the universe nature already in his young years in his famous
prose hymn Nature, but he also said: “she has
thought and is continuously reflecting.” If one says
about the world being, it is reflecting, it thinks, one gives
it spirit not only unconsciously but also consciously. Then it
is unnecessary to struggle for words.
Spiritual science does certainly not involve words. Whether one
calls that which one considers as universe nature or spirit, it
does not matter but the fact matters that one understands it in
its concreteness, in its inwardness. Besides, one can agree
with Goethe if he does not want to put the unfathomable only as
something unfathomable if he does not want to deny the human
being the ability of penetrating into the unfathomable. There
one needs only to point to that to which I have already pointed
here: towards a meritorious researcher, Goethe expressed
himself about this misunderstood Kantian principle of the
unfathomable in nature. A great researcher said:
“No created mind penetrates
Into
the being of nature.
Blissful is that to whom she shows
Her
appearance only!”
Goethe answers:
O
you Philistine!
Do
not remind me
And
my brothers and sisters
Of
such a word.
We
think: everywhere we are inside.
“Blissful is that to whom she shows
Her
appearance only!”
I
hear that repeatedly for sixty years,
I
grumble about it, but covertly,
I
say to myself thousand and thousand times:
She
gives everything plenty and with pleasure;
Nature has neither kernel nor shell,
She
is everything at the same time.
Examine yourself above all,
Whether you are kernel or shell.
Goethe pointed to the fact that the human being can be a kernel
of nature; that means that he can grasp himself as something
mental-spiritual to know himself in harmony with the
mental-spiritual of the whole world that way. To point to it is
the task of the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science
to give the human being the conviction that he is not
only spirit, but that he can recognise himself as
spirit, can consciously live in the spiritual world.
About that, I continue speaking the day after tomorrow.
|