LECTURE 4
Today I
should like first of all to call your attention to and place
before your mind's eye two pictures drawn from the evolution
of man during the last few thousand years. I shall first
direct your attention to something that occurred about the
middle and toward the end of the fifth century
B.C.
It is well known to all of you, but, as I said, we shall look
back at it with the eyes of our soul.
We see how
the Buddha had gathered a number of disciples and pupils
around him in the land of India, and how, from what took
place then between the Buddha and his disciples and pupils,
there arose the great and mighty movement that began and
flowed on for centuries in the East, throwing up mighty waves
and bringing to countless people inner salvation, inner
freedom of soul, and an uplifting of human consciousness. If
we wish to characterize what happened at that time we need
only envisage the main content of Buddha's teachings and
actions.
Life as it is
lived by man in his earthly incarnations is suffering because
through the sequence of his incarnations he is always subject
to the urge for ever new incarnations. To free oneself from
this yearning for reincarnation is a goal worth striving for.
This goal is to blot out of the soul everything that can call
forth the desire for physical incarnation, with the aim of at
last ascending to an existence in which the soul no longer
feels the desire to be connected with life through the
physical senses and physical organs, but to ascend and take
part in what is called Nirvana. This is the great teaching
that flowed from the lips of the Buddha, that life means
suffering and that man must find a means to free himself from
suffering so as to be able to share in Nirvana. If
we wish to picture to ourselves in precise but familiar
concepts the impulse contained in the wonderful teaching of
Buddha, we could perhaps say that the Buddha directed the
minds of his pupils through the strength and power of his
individuality to earth existence; while at the same time
through the infinite fullness of his compassion he tried also
to give them the means to raise their souls and all that was
within them from the earthly to the heavenly, to raise human
thinking and human philosophy from the human to the
divine.
We might
picture this as a formula if we wish to characterize clearly
and correctly the impulse that went out from the great sermon
of the Buddha at Benares. We see the Buddha gathering around
him his faithful pupils. What do we perceive in the souls of
these disciples? What will they eventually come to believe?
That all the striving of the human soul must be directed
toward becoming free from the yearning for rebirth, free from
the inclination toward sense existence, free to seek the
perfecting of the self by freeing it from everything that
binds it to sense existence, and connecting it with all that
links it to its divine spiritual origin. Such were the
feelings that lived in the disciples of the Buddha. They
sought to free themselves from all the temptations of life
and let their only link with the world be the perception of
the soul shining into the spiritual that is experienced in
compassion; to become absorbed in striving for spiritual
perfection, free from all earthly wants, with the aim of
having as little as possible to do with what binds the
external man to earthly existence. In this mood the pupils of
the Buddha wandered through the world, and it was in this
manner that they glimpsed the aims and objectives of Buddhist
discipleship.
And if we
follow up the centuries during which Buddhism was spreading
and ask ourselves what lived in the hearts and souls of the
Buddha's adherents and what it was that lived in the
dissemination of Buddhism, we receive the answer that these
men were devoted to lofty aims, but in the midst of all their
thinking, feeling, and perception the great figure of the
Buddha was living, together with everything that he had said
in such thrilling, significant words about the deliverance
from the sorrow of life. In the midst of all their thinking
and perception, the comprehensive, all-encompassing, mighty
authority of the Buddha lived in the hearts of his pupils and
successors down the centuries. Everything the Buddha had said
was looked upon by these pupils and successors as holy
writ.
Why was it
that the words of the Buddha sounded like a message from
heaven to his pupils and successors? It was because these
pupils and successors lived in the faith and belief that
during the event of the Bodhi-tree the true knowledge of
cosmic existence had flashed up in the soul of the Buddha,
and the light and sun of the universe shone into it, with the
consequence that everything that flowed from his lips had to
be thought of as if it was the utterance of the spirits of
the universe. It was this mood as it lived in the hearts of
the pupils and successors of the Buddha, the holiness and
uniqueness of this mood that was all-important. We wish to
place all this before our spiritual eye so that we may learn
to understand what happened there half a millennium before
the Mystery of Golgotha.
Now we turn
our gaze to another picture from world history. For in the
long ages of human evolution what is separated by about a
century may really be considered contemporary. In the
thousands and thousands of years of human evolution a single
century is of little importance. Therefore we can say that if
the picture we wish to place before our souls is historically
to be put a century later, as far as human evolution is
concerned it was almost contemporary with the event of Buddha
that we have just described.
In the fifth century
B.C.
we see another individuality gradually
gathering pupils and adherents around himself in ancient Greece.
Again this fact is well known. But if we are to come to an
understanding of the last centuries it is a good thing to
picture this individuality in our minds. We see Socrates
[ Note 10 ]
in ancient Greece gathering
pupils around himself, and indeed we need to mention Socrates
in this connection even if we only consider the picture drawn
of Socrates by the great philosopher Plato,
[ Note 10 ]
a picture which in its essentials seems to be confirmed by
the great philosopher Aristotle.
[ Note 10 ]
If we consider the
striking picture of Socrates as presented by Plato, then we
can also say that a movement began with Socrates that then
spread into the West. Anyone who visualizes the whole
character of Western cultural development is bound to
conclude that the Socratic element was a determining factor
for everything in the West. Although the Socratic element in
the West spreads through the waves of world history more
subtly than the Buddhistic element in the East, we are still
entitled to draw a parallel between Socrates and the Buddha.
[ Note 11 ]
But we must certainly make a
clear differentiation between the pupils and disciples of
Socrates and the pupils and disciples of the Buddha. When we
consider the fundamental difference between the Buddha and
Socrates we may indeed say that we are confronted with
everything that differentiates the East from the West.
Socrates
gathers his pupils around himself, but how does he feel in
relation to them? His manner of treating these pupils has
been called the art of a spiritual midwife because he wished
to draw out from the souls of his pupils what they themselves
knew, and what they were to learn. He put his questions in
such a manner that the fundamental inner mood of the souls of
his pupils was stirred to movement. He transmitted nothing
from himself to his pupils, but elicited everything from
them. The somewhat dry and prosaic aspect of Socrates' view
of the world and the way he presented it comes from the fact
that Socrates actually appealed to the independence and to
the innate reasoning power of every pupil. Though he wandered
through the streets of Athens in a rather different way from
the way the Buddha walked with his pupils, there is
nevertheless a similarity. On the one hand the Buddha
revealed to his pupils what he had received through his
enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, and by allowing what he
had thus received from the spiritual world to stream down to
his pupils he enabled what had lived in him to live on in his
pupils and remain active for centuries. On the other hand,
Socrates did not make the slightest claim to go on living as
Socrates in the hearts of his pupils. When he was talking
with his pupils Socrates did not wish to transmit anything at
all of himself into their souls. He wished to leave it to
them to draw out from themselves what they already possessed.
Nothing of Socrates was to pass over into his pupils' souls,
nothing at all.
We can think
of no greater contrast than that between the Buddha and
Socrates. The Buddha was to live on in the souls of his
pupils, whereas in the souls of the pupils of Socrates
nothing more was to live on than what the midwife has given
to the child who comes into the world. Thus the spiritual
element in the pupils of Socrates was to be drawn forth by
the spiritual midwifery of Socrates when he left each person
on his own, drawing forth from each one of them what was
already there within him. That was the intention of Socrates.
So we could characterize the difference between Socrates and
the Buddha in the following way. If a voice from heaven had
wished to state clearly what the disciples of Buddha were to
receive through the Buddha, it might well have said,
“Kindle within yourselves what lived in the Buddha, so
that through him you can find the path to existence in the
spirit.” If we wish to characterize in the same way
what Socrates wanted we should have to say, “Become
what you are!”
If we bring
these two pictures before our souls, ought we not to say to
ourselves that we are here confronted with two different
streams of development in human evolution, and that they are
polar opposites? They do meet again in a certain way, but
only in the farthest distance. We should not mix these things
together but rather characterize them in their
differentiation, and only then indicate that there is at the
same time a higher unity. If we think of the Buddha face to
face with one of his pupils we could say that he is trying to
kindle in the souls of his disciples what is necessary to
lead them upward to the spiritual worlds through what he
himself had experienced under the Bodhi tree. This may be
recognized in the form of his discourses, with their sublime
words and their endless repetitions, repetitions that should
not be omitted in translation. The words are chosen in such a
way that they sound like a heavenly proclamation from the
heavenly world coming from beyond the earth, spoken through
his lips out of the direct experience of what had happened
during his enlightenment, words which he wished to pass on to
his followers.
How then can
we picture Socrates with his pupils? They confront each other
in such a way that when Socrates is trying to make clear to
his pupils the relation of man to the divine using the
simplest rational considerations of everyday life, he shows
them the logical connection between these considerations. The
pupil is always directed to the most prosaic everyday
matters, and his task is then to apply ordinary logic to what
he has grasped as knowledge. Only once is Socrates shown as
having risen to the height at which he could, as we might
say, speak as Buddha spoke to his pupils. Only once does he
appear like this, and that is at the moment when he was
approaching death. When just before his death he spoke about
the immortality of the soul he was surely speaking then like
one of the highest of the enlightened ones. Yet at the same
time what he said could only be understood if one takes into
account his entire life experience. It is for this reason
that what he said then touches our heart and soul when we
listen to his Platonic discourse on immortality in which he
speaks somewhat as follows, “Have I not striven all my
life to attain through philosophy all that a man can in order
to become free from the world of sense? Now when my soul is
soon to be released from everything material, ought it not to
penetrate joyfully into the world of spirit? Should I not be
ready to penetrate with joy into that for which I have
inwardly striven through philosophy?”
Anyone who
can grasp the whole mood of this dialogue of Socrates in the
Phaedo finds himself experiencing a feeling similar
to that experienced by the pupils of the Buddha when they
listened to his sublime teachings, so that it is possible to
say that in spite of the difference, the polar difference
between these two individualities, at a particular moment
they are so sublime that even in this polar difference a
certain unity appears. If we direct our vision to the Buddha
we shall find that the discourses of Buddha as a whole are
such that they arouse a feeling which one has with Socrates
only in the case of the discourse on the immortality of the
soul. I am referring to the soul-mood, the spiritual tension
of this dialogue. But what is poured forth in the other
discourses of Socrates which are always directed to a man's
own reason is not often met with in the Buddha, although it
is occasionally to be found. It sometimes sounds through. One
can actually experience it as a kind of metamorphosed
Socratic dialogue when on one occasion the Buddha wishes to
make clear to his pupil Sona that it is not good to stay only
in the realm of the material and enmeshed in sense-existence,
nor yet to mortify the flesh and live like the old aescetics.
It is good to pursue a middle path. Here the Buddha confronts
his pupil Sona and speaks to him somewhat in the following
manner, “See here, Sona, would you be able to play well
on a lute whose strings are too loose?”
“No,” Sona is forced to reply, “I shall not
be able to play well on a lute whose strings are too
loose.” “Well, then, will you be able to play
well on a lute whose strings are too tight?”
“No,” Sona must answer, “I shall not be
able to play well on a lute whose strings are drawn too
tight.” “When will you be able to play well on
the lute?” Buddha then asks him. “When the
strings are drawn neither too loosely nor too tightly.”
“So it is also with man,” rejoined the Buddha.
“If he is too much attached to the life of the senses
he cannot wholly listen to the voice of reason. Nor will he
truly listen to reason if he spends his life mortifying
himself and withdrawing from earthly life. The middle path
which must be taken also when stringing the lute must
likewise be followed in relation to the mood of the human
soul.”
This is just
the way Socrates talks to his pupils, making an appeal to
their reason, so that this dialogue of the Buddha with his
pupil could equally well have been devised by Socrates. What
I have given you is a “Socratic dialogue” carried
on by the Buddha with his pupil Sona. But in just the same
way that the discourse of Socrates to his pupils just before
his death, a discourse that I have called Buddhistic, was
unusual for Socrates, so is a dialogue of this kind rare in
the case of the Buddha. We must never fail to emphasize the
fact that we can reach the truth only by making
characterizations of this kind. It would be easier to make a
characterization if we were to say something along these
lines, “It is through great leaders that humanity moves
forward. What these leaders say is essentially the same thing
though it takes different forms. All the individual leaders
of mankind proclaim in their teachings different aspects of
the same truth.” Such a statement is of course quite
true, but it could scarcely be more trivial. What is
important is that we should take the trouble to recognize
things in such a way that we look for both the
differentiations and the underlying unity; that we should
characterize things according to their differences, and only
afterward look for the higher unity to be perceived in these
differences.
I felt that
this remark about method was one that I had to make because
in spiritual studies it usually is in accord with reality. It
would be so easy to say that all religions contain the same
thing and then concentrate on this one thing and then
characterize it by saying, “All the various religious
founders have presented only the same one thing in different
forms.” But if we do make this characterization, it
will remain infinitely trivial, however beautiful the words
in which we express it. It would be just as unproductive as
if we wished from the beginning to characterize two such
figures as the Buddha and Socrates in the light of some
abstract unity without seeking to perceive the polar
difference between them. But if we trace them back to their
forms of thought the matter will quickly be understood.
Pepper and salt, sugar and paprika, are all put on the table
to add to the food — they are all one, that is to say
they are condiments. But because this can be said of them it
does not mean that we must say all these condiments are the
same and sugar our coffee by adding salt or pepper to it.
What is unacceptable in life should not be accepted in
spiritual matters. It would be unacceptable to say that
Krishna and Zarathustra, Orpheus and Hermes are fundamentally
only variations of the “one thing.” It is no more
useful to make a characterization like this than it would be
to say that pepper and salt, sugar and paprika are all
different variations of one essence, since they are all
equally condiments for food. It is important that we should
grasp this point about method, and that we should not accept
what is comfortable in preference to the truth.
If we
visualize these two figures, the Buddha and Socrates, they
will seem to us like two different, polar opposite
configurations of the evolutionary streams of mankind. And
when we now link these two within a higher unity as we have
done, we may add to them a third in whom we also have to do
with a great individuality around whom gather pupils and
disciples — Christ Jesus. If among those pupils and
disciples who gather around Him we fix our attention first on
the Twelve, then we find that the Gospel of Mark in
particular tells us with the utmost clarity something about
the relation of the master to his pupils, in the same way as
we characterized the relation with the greatest clarity we
could between Buddha and Socrates in a different domain. And
what was the clearest, the most striking and concise
expression of this relationship? It is when the Christ
— and this is indicated on several occasions —
faced the crowd that wished to hear Him. He speaks to this
crowd in parables and imagery. And the Gospel of Mark
pictures this in a simple and grandiose manner when it
describes how certain profound and significant facts about
world events and human evolution are indicated to the crowd
through parables and imagery. Then it is said that when He
was alone with his disciples He interpreted this imagery to
them. In the Gospel of Mark we are on one occasion given a
specific example of how the Christ spoke to the crowd in
imagery and then interpreted it to His pupils.
And He taught
them many things in parables, and said to them in His
teaching, “Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. And
it happened as he sowed that one part fell by the path and
the birds came and devoured it. And another part fell on
stony ground, where there was not much soil, and it
immediately shot up because it did not lie deep in the soil.
And when the sun rose it was scorched and withered because it
had no root.
“And
another part fell in thorns, and the thorns grew up and
choked it, and it yielded no fruit.
“And
another part fell in the good ground and brought forth
fruit, which sprang up and grew and yielded thirty-fold
and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”
And he
said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
And when he was alone, his company together with the Twelve
asked him about the parables.
(Mark 4:2-10.)
And to his
more intimate pupils he spoke as follows, “The sower
sows the word.
“But
in the case of those who heard the word that was sown by
the path, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word
that had been sown among them.
“Those who hear the word that was sown on stony
ground receive it immediately with joy. These have no root
in themselves but are children of the moment. Then when
they are afflicted or persecuted because of the word they
immediately are confused and stumble.
“When
by contrast it is sown among thorns some hear it, but then
worldly cares, the temptation of riches, and other kinds of
desires enter and choke the word, and it remains without
fruit.
“Where it is sown on good ground there are people who
hear and receive the word, and it yields fruit, thirty,
sixty and a hundredfold.”
(Mark 4:14-20.)
Here we have
a perfect example of how Christ Jesus taught. We are told how
Buddha taught, and how Socrates taught. Of the Buddha we can
say in our Western language that he carried earthly
experience up into the heavenly realm. It has often been said
of Socrates that the tendency of his teaching can best be
characterized by saying that he brought philosophy down from
the heavens to earth in appealing directly to human earthly
reason. In this way we can picture clearly the relation of
these two individualities to their pupils.
Now how did
Christ Jesus stand in relation to His pupils? His
relationship to the crowd was different from that toward His
own pupils. He taught the crowd in parable whereas for His
intimate pupils He interpreted the parables, telling them
what they were capable of understanding, of grasping clearly
through human reason. So if we want to characterize the way
Christ Jesus taught, we must speak of this in a more complex
manner. One characteristic feature is common to all the
Buddha's teaching; so the personal pupils of the Buddha are
all of one kind. Similarly the entire world can become pupils
of Socrates since Socrates wished only to elicit what lies
hidden in the human soul. His disciples are therefore all of
the same kind and Socrates has the same relationship to all.
Christ Jesus, however, has two different kinds of
relationships, one kind to His intimate pupils and another to
the crowd. How may this be understood?
If we wish to
understand the reason for this we must recognize clearly in
our souls that the whole turning point of evolution had been
reached at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. The end of
the period during which clairvoyance was the common
possession of humanity was approaching. The further we go
back in human evolution the more was the ancient clairvoyance
that enabled men to see into the spiritual worlds the common
possession of all mankind. How did they see into these
worlds? Their vision took the form of perceiving the secrets
of the cosmos in pictures, which were either conscious or
unconscious imaginations. It was a dreamlike clairvoyance in
the form of dreamlike imaginations, not in the rational
concepts that people today make use of in the pursuit of
knowledge. Both science and popular thinking which today make
use of prosaic reasoning power and judgment were absent in
those ancient times. In confronting the external world men
did indeed see it, but they did not analyze it conceptually.
They possessed no logic, nor did they make deductions in
their thinking. Actually it is difficult for a man of today
to imagine this because today one thinks about everything.
But ancient man did not think in this way. He passed by
objects and formed mental images of them; and in the
intermediate state between sleeping and waking when he looked
into his dreamlike imaginative world and saw pictures he was
able to understand his mental images.
Let us
envisage the matter more concretely. Picture to yourselves
how, many thousands of years ago, ancient man would have
observed his environment. He would have been struck by the
fact that a teacher was present who explained something to
his pupils. A man of former times would have stood there and
listened to the words the teacher was saying to his pupils.
And if there had been several pupils present he would have
heard how one receives the word with fervor, another takes it
up but soon lets it fall, while a third is so absorbed in his
own egoism that he does not listen. A man of former times
would not have been able, for example, to have compared these
three pupils in a rational manner. But when he was in the
intermediate state between waking and sleeping, then the
whole scene would have appeared again before his soul in the
form of a picture. And he would have seen something, for
example, like this: how a sower walks scattering seed; and
this he would have really seen as a clairvoyant picture. He
would have seen how one seed is thrown in good soil where it
comes up well, a second seed he throws on poorer soil, and
the third on stony soil. A smaller crop comes up from what
was sown on the poor soil and nothing at all from the stony
soil. Such a man of earlier times would not have said, as the
man of today would, “One pupil takes up the words,
another does not take them up at all,” and so on. But
in the intermediate state between sleeping and waking he saw
the imaginative picture, and with it the explanation. He
would never have spoken of it in any other way. If he had
been asked to explain the relation of the teacher to his
pupils he would have told about his clairvoyant vision. For
him that was the reality, and also the explanation. And that
is the way he would have talked.
Now the crowd
facing Christ Jesus possessed indeed only the last remnant of
ancient clairvoyance. But their souls were still well versed
at listening to what was told to them in the form of pictures
about the coming into being and the evolution of mankind.
When Christ Jesus spoke to the crowd He spoke as if He were
speaking to people who still retained the last heritage of
ancient clairvoyance and took it with them in their ordinary
life of soul.
Who, then,
were His intimate disciples? We have heard how the Twelve
consisted of the seven sons of the Maccabean mother and the
five sons of Mattathias. We have heard how throughout the
whole history of the Hebrew people they had advanced to the
point where they could vigorously assert their immortal ego.
They were indeed the first whom Christ Jesus could choose
Himself, appealing to that which lives in every human soul,
living in it in such a way that it can become the new
starting point for human development. To the crowd he spoke
on the assumption that they would understand what they had
preserved as a heritage from ancient clairvoyance. To His
disciples He spoke on the assumption that they were the first
who would be able to understand a little of what we today can
say to human beings about higher worlds. It was thus a
necessity for Christ Jesus during the whole of the turning
point of time to speak in a different way when He was
addressing the crowd from when He was speaking to His
intimate pupils. The Twelve whom He drew to Himself He placed
in the middle of the crowd. It was the task of Christ Jesus'
closer circle of pupils to acquire that understanding, that
rational understanding of things that belonged to the higher
worlds and of the secrets of human evolution that in later
times would become the common property of mankind. If we take
what He said as a whole when He interpreted the parables for
His pupils, we can say that He spoke also in a Socratic
manner. For He drew forth what He said from the souls of each
one of them, with the difference that Christ Jesus spoke of
spiritual matters while Socrates spoke rather about the
circumstances of earthly life and made use of ordinary logic.
When Christ spoke to His intimate pupils about spiritual
matters He did so in a Socratic manner. When the Buddha spoke
to his disciples and expounded spiritual matters he showed
how this was possible through illumination and through the
sojourn of the human soul in the spiritual world. When Christ
spoke to the crowd He spoke of the higher worlds in the way
in which they formerly were experienced by ordinary human
souls. He spoke to the crowd, as one might say, like a
popular Buddha; to His intimate disciples He spoke like a
higher Socrates, a spiritualized Socrates. Socrates drew
forth from the souls of his pupils the individual earthly
reason, whereas Christ drew forth heavenly reason from the
souls of His disciples. The Buddha gave heavenly
enlightenment to his pupils; Christ in His parables gave
earthly enlightenment to the crowd.
I would ask
you to give thought to these three pictures: Over there in
the land of the Ganges there is the Buddha with his
pupils — the antithesis of Socrates; over there in Greece
is Socrates with his pupils — the antithesis of the
Buddha. And then four or five centuries later there is this
remarkable synthesis, this remarkable combination. Here you
have before your souls one of the greatest examples of the
regular, lawful development of human evolution. Human
evolution proceeds step by step. Many of the things taught in
years past in the early stages of spiritual science may have
been thought by some people to be a kind of theory, a mere
doctrine as, for example, when it was explained that the
human soul should be thought of as the combined action of the
sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul. Some
people certainly make their judgments too quickly, indeed, a
good deal more quickly even than those who take something
that is merely a first draft and regard it as the finished
product, a draft that was still awaiting further development.
Such different judgments which we have actually experienced
are all right as long as it is drawn to the attention of
anthroposophists how they ought not to think. Sometimes we
are confronted with blatant examples of how not to think,
although many people believe we should indeed think like
that. For example, this morning someone gave me a fine
example of an odd kind of thinking which I am quoting here
only as an example, though it is one that we should very much
take to heart for the reason that we as anthroposophists
should not only take notice of the world's shortcomings but
should actually do something towards the consistent
perfecting of the soul. So if I take what was told me this
morning as an example, I do this not for a personal but for a
spiritual reason that has wide application.
I was told
that in a certain area of Europe a gentleman is living who at
one time a long time ago had printed some pointless
statements about the teachings that appear in Steiner's
Theosophy as well as about his general relationship to the
spiritual movement. Now it happened today that an
acquaintance of this gentleman was criticized because his
acquaintance, that is this particular gentleman, had
published something like this. To which the acquaintance
replied, “Why, my friend has just begun to study the
writings of Dr. Steiner in an intensive manner.” Yet
this friend years before had passed judgment on these
writings, and it is offered as an excuse that he is just
beginning now to study them! This is a way of thinking that
ought to be impossible within our movement. When some time in
the future people write historically about our movement the
question will certainly be asked, “Could it possibly be
true that it occurred to someone to propose as an excuse that
a man is only now beginning to acquaint himself with
something on which he passed judgment years ago?” Such
things are an integral part of anthroposophical education,
and we shall make no progress unless it becomes generally
accepted that such things must be unthinkable, absolutely
unthinkable in our anthroposophical movement. For it is a
necessary part of our inner honesty that we must be simply
unable to think in this way. We can make no step
forward in our search for truth if it is possible for us to
pass such a judgment. And it is a duty for anthroposophists
to take note of these things and not pass them by in an
unloving manner while at the same time talking about the
“universal love of mankind.” In a higher sense it
is indeed unloving toward a man if we forgive him something
of this kind because we thereby condemn him to karmic
meaninglessness and lack of existence after death. By drawing
his attention to the impossible nature of such judgments we
make easier his existence after death. This is the deeper
meaning of the matter.
So we should
not take it lightly when the truth is put forward in the
first place in a simple manner, namely, that the human soul
is composed of three members, the sentient soul, intellectual
soul, and consciousness soul. Already in the course of the
years it was emphasized how this fact has a much deeper
significance than a mere dividing of the soul into three
parts. It was pointed out how the various postAtlantean
cultures gradually developed: the ancient Indian, the
primeval Persian and the Egypto-Babylonian-Chaldean cultures,
the Greco-Latin culture and then ours. And it was shown how
the essential characteristic of the
EgyptianBabylonian-Chaldean cultural epoch is the specific
development of the true sentient soul of man. Similarly in
the Greco-Latin era there was the specific culture of the
intellectual soul, and in our era of the consciousness soul.
So we are confronted with these three cultural epochs, which
have their influence on the education and evolution of the
human soul itself. These three soul members are not something
that have been theoretically thought out, but are living
realities developing progressively through successive epochs
of time.
But
everything must be linked. The earlier must always be carried
over into the later, and in the same way the later must be
foreshadowed in the earlier. In what cultural epoch do
Socrates and the Buddha live? They live in the epoch of the
intellectual soul; both have their task and their mission in
that epoch.
The Buddha
has the task of preserving the culture of the sentient soul
from the previous, the third epoch, into the fourth. What the
Buddha announces and his pupils take up into their hearts, is
something destined to shine over from the third
post-Atlantean period — the period of the sentient soul
— into the era of the intellectual soul. In this way
the era of the intellectual soul, the fourth post-Atlantean
cultural period, could be warmed through by the glow and the
light of the teachings of Buddha, by what was brought forth
by the sentient soul, permeated as it was by clairvoyance.
The Buddha was the great preserver of the sentient soul
culture, bringing it forward right into the culture of the
intellectual soul. What then was the mission of Socrates, who
appeared somewhat later in time?
Socrates in
the same way stands in the midst of the era of the
intellectual soul. His appeal is made to the single human
individuality, to something that can truly emerge only in our
fifth cultural age. It was his task to foreshadow, though in
a still abstract form, the era of the consciousness soul in
the era of the intellectual soul. The Buddha preserves what
came from the past, so that his message appears like a
warming, shining light. Socrates anticipates what in his own
time lies in the future, the characteristics of the
consciousness soul era. So in his age it seemed to be
somewhat prosaic, merely rational, even arid. Thus the third,
fourth and fifth cultural epochs are telescoped in the
fourth. The third is preserved by the Buddha, the fifth is
anticipated by Socrates. West and East have the task of
pointing up these two different missions — the East
preserving the greatness of the past, while the West in an
earlier era is anticipating what is to appear in a later
one.
From the very
ancient times in human evolution when the Buddha appeared
time and again as the Boddhisattva, there is a straight path
until the time when the Bodhisattva ascended to Buddhahood.
There is a great and continuous development that comes to an
end with the Buddha, and this really is an end because the
Buddha undergoes his last incarnation on earth and never
again descends to it. It was a great age that came to an end
then, since it brought over from very ancient epochs what
constituted the culture of the sentient soul of the third
post-Atlantean cultural era and let it shine out again. If
you will read the discourses of the Buddha from this point of
view you will gain the right mood of soul and as a result the
era of the intellectual soul will be valued by you in a
different way. You will then return to the discourses of
Buddha and say, “Everything here is of such a nature
that it speaks directly to the human mind, but in the
background is something that escapes from this mind and
belongs to a higher world.” This is the reason for that
special rhythmic movement that ordinary rational men find
objectionable which we find in the repetition of Buddha's
discourses. This we can begin to understand only when we
leave the physical for the etheric, entering in this way the
first super-sensible element behind the material. Anyone here
who understands how much is active in the etheric body which
stands behind the physical will also understand why so much
in Buddha's discourses is repeated again and again. The
repetitions must not be deleted from the discourses since
such deletion takes away that special mood of soul that lives
in them. Abstract-minded persons have done this in the belief
that it is doing something helpful if they eliminate the
repetitions and stick to the content. But it is important
that they should be left just as the Buddha gave them.
If now we
consider Socrates as he was, without all the wealth of
material provided by the discoveries of natural science and
the humanities since his day, and observe how he approaches
the things of everyday life, we shall see how a man of the
present time, when fortified by all the material of natural
science, will find everywhere the Socratic method active in
it. We expect it and need it. So we have a clear line
beginning with Socrates and continuing into our own era, and
this will grow ever more perfect in the future.
Thus there is
one stream of human development that goes as far as the
Buddha and ends with him; and there is another stream that
begins with Socrates and goes on into the distant future.
Socrates and the Buddha stand next to one another like the
nuclei of two comets, if I may be allowed such an image. In
the case of the Buddha, the light-filled comet's tail
encircles the nucleus and points far back into the
indeterminate perspectives of the past; in the case of
Socrates the comet's tail of light encircles the nucleus in
the same way but points far, far into the indeterminate
distances of the future. Two diverging comets going in
succession in opposite directions whose nuclei shine at the
same time, this is the image I should like to use to
illustrate how Socrates and the Buddha stand side by
side.
Half a
millennium passes, and something like a uniting of these two
streams comes into being through Christ Jesus. We have
already characterized this by putting a number of facts
before our souls. Tomorrow we shall continue with this
characterization so that we can answer the question,
“How can we best characterize the mission of Christ
Jesus in relation to the human soul?”
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