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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity
Schmidt Number: S-2700
On-line since: 5th July, 2002
FROM what has been said we can well see that the ascent into the
spiritual worlds depends upon the strengthening of the inner forces of
the soul-life, so that through the exercises which a person undertakes
for the purpose of penetrating into the higher worlds, he develops
forces in his soul which far surpass those needed in ordinary life.
This requirement is shown by the fact that when the soul becomes
independent of the physical body in ordinary life, i.e. in sleep, it
falls at once into unconsciousness. This means that in normal life the
individual lacks sufficient force to unfold inner activity and
maintain consciousness when, as in sleep, the physical and etheric
bodies are not helping him to do so. The other members of the human
organism, the ego and the astral body, must be worked upon and
illuminated through the exercises of meditation, concentration and
contemplation, so that they become capable of conscious experience
when they are separated from the physical and etheric bodies, as in
ordinary sleep. The stronger-than-ordinary soul-forces that a man
develops are what enable him to reach the stage we spoke of yesterday.
They give him the power, after he has confronted the Void, to enter a
new world which he can experience through the fact that as the
spider spins its web out of itself he pours out into space the
spiritually substantial content of his soul, and receives into it the
spiritual worlds which then present themselves to him.
So now, after having left behind him the physical sense-world in this
way, and gone through the stage of having stood over the abyss
for that is how it feels when one confronts the Void the
aspirant is in a new world. And in this new world he not only
experiences something different, but he experiences it in a quite new
way. We can begin from an ordinary experience on the physical plane.
There, events occur in two apparently quite separate domains. In one
domain the events are subject to the laws of nature; in the other they
are subject to moral laws. When in ordinary physical life we observe
the events of nature, even when we ascend to the animal kingdom, we
know that we are looking only for natural laws and that moral
standards are inapplicable there. We do not enquire, for example, why
a rock crystal has the form of a six-sided column ending in two
six-sided pyramids; we do not ask why this mineral substance
aggregates itself in such a way that this crystal form appears. We
expect no answer except that it obeys a natural law. We do not ask
what good thing the rock crystal has done that it should have become a
rock crystal. We do not ask what its intentions are, We do not apply
moral standards to the mineral world. Neither do we apply them to the
plant world. And only in a somewhat indirect sense and, one
might say, according to the sympathies of Darwinistically-inclined
persons do we apply moral concepts to the animal kingdom. What
interests us in the animal kingdom, first of all, is its conformity to
natural law. When we rise to the human kingdom, we feel obliged to
judge men according to the standards of goodwill, love, and so forth.
As already said, we regard the facts of the physical world as enmeshed
in the web of natural laws, while we judge human actions and soul
dispositions by the standard of moral laws; and we are indeed not
doing well in our estimate of the physical plane if we mix up these
two sets of facts. We are accustomed on the physical plane to judge
the world in this twofold way. Hence it is not very easy, after one
has sprung, as it were, over the abyss of the Void, to pass into the
spiritual world where a different kind of judgment is necessary;
where, in fact, there is no separation between something that could be
ascribed to natural laws, as with natural events on the physical
plane, and a purely moral happening, which likewise exists on the
physical plane. When, therefore, the point is reached of which we
spoke yesterday, one must accustom oneself to judge events in like
manner as we judge natural facts, but also as we judge moral facts in
the physical world. The world of natural law and the world of moral
law intermingle when one enters the spiritual world.
That shows itself at once, for example, when a man is confronted with
the realm that he inhabits between death and a new birth. When the
seer has in all earnestness come as far as we have already indicated,
he can and will meet those souls who, having passed through the Gate
of Death, are going through their development between death and a new
birth. He then learns to know the kind of experience these souls are
encountering, and if he is to form any judgment of what their
experience is, he must adopt quite different habits of thought. A few
examples will explain this.
In that realm we find souls which for a certain period between death
and a new birth have to undergo very hard conditions. The seer has at
first the impression that in the spiritual world these souls of
a certain category have become the servants of very terrible
beings, and that it was through their own lives before death that they
condemned themselves to this labour for the terrible spirits. As seer
he gradually learns to understand their hard fate, and he does so in
the following manner. He cultivates the thought of how a man lives in
his physical body from birth to death and how as has often been
described in the course of our lectures on spiritual science
so-called natural death is brought about through an inner conformity
to law, when a man has in old age expended his life-forces. We will
not speak of this death at present. But there are other deaths. There
are those deaths by which a man is snatched away, through accident or
illness, in the very flower of his life. We do not all die after
having fulfilled our measure of life. Men die at all ages, and we must
ask ourselves: Whence come the forces which are responsible for these
deaths at different ages? We understand that a man must die when his
measure of life is fulfilled. We have often seen how that is brought
about by the spiritual worlds. But everything that happens in the
physical world comes about through influences from the spiritual
worlds. Those deaths which are to a certain extent untimely also
happen through influences from the spiritual worlds; that is, they are
caused by forces and beings of the spiritual world.
There is something else in the physical world to which we must pay
attention if we want to understand the life between death and the next
birth. We see the physical world permeated by illnesses and diseases,
and in earlier times afflicted by well-known pestilences. One need but
recall those devastating visitations among earlier European peoples
when the plague, cholera, etc., swept through the land. In this
present age we are comparatively fortunate in regard to such things.
But already as indicated in the course of our lectures
certain epidemics are preparing. So we see what appears to be untimely
death pass over the Earth; we see disease and pestilence. And. the
seer sees souls living between death and a new birth who are helping
those spirits who bear from the super-sensible worlds into the
sense-world the forces which bring epidemics and illnesses, and
so-called untimely death.
It makes a terrifying impression to perceive how during certain
periods of their lives between death and a new birth human souls have
become servants of the evil spirits of illness and death, and have
condemned themselves to this servitude. If one tries to trace back the
lives of such persons to the time before they went through the Gate of
Death, one always finds that during their life on the physical plane
they were lacking in conscience, lacking in feelings of
responsibility. A fixed law is evident here. The seer perceives how
souls who were morally irresponsible in their dispositions in their
lives on Earth have to co-operate, for a period after death, in
bringing epidemics, illnesses and untimely deaths into the physical
sense-world. Here we see a natural ordinance to which these souls are
subject, but we cannot say of it that, like a crystallisation, or like
the concussion between two elastic balls, it has no connection with
morality. These souls show us how in the higher worlds there is an
interweaving of natural law with the moral world-order. The manner in
which things come about in the higher worlds is dependent on beings
whose fate is conditioned by their moral behaviour in the world.
To take another example, we can look at what the seer learns when he
turns his attention to a characteristic, the desire for ease and
comfort, that is very widespread among men more widespread than
is generally supposed. People indulge far more in indolence than one
realises. They are indolent in their thinking, indolent in their
manners and behaviour and particularly so when they are required to
alter their thinking or their habits. If men were not so ease-loving
in their innermost souls, they would not have so often resisted a
necessary change in their ideas. They struggled against it because to
have to unlearn anything is uncomfortable. After having thought so
long that the Earth stood still and that the
Sun and Stars went round it, it was tiresome to have to learn
something different when they suddenly heard through Copernicus about
the movement of the Earth! It was an uncomfortable thing when
theoretically, at least the ground was taken from under their
feet. All the resistance of those times against this new idea sprang
from indolence of thought, from the love of ease, for to unlearn
anything is tiresome. But one need merely consider the most ordinary
everyday life and one will find how widespread is the quality
really a vice of indolence. In recent times we have gained some
idea of the enormous extent of indolence, love of ease, among
humanity. This will be seen from the following example.
There are many theories of political economy. I need not speak about
them now. But there is one theory of political economy which is
somewhat out of date to-day but once played a great role. It was based
upon the idea that all men should be free to compete in the exchange
of commodities, etc.; and that the best social structure would be
obtained if completely free competition were allowed. Then other, more
socialistic theories took root. But latterly some political economists
have drawn attention to the fact that all these theories were in the
highest degree one-sided. For what takes place in the world of
commerce and in social life is much more dependent on the love of ease
than on the law of competition or the law of getting on in the world
yes, even more than on the laws of conscious egoism. Thus even
into political economy a knowledge of the law of slothfulness finds
entry which means that even in this realm one can discern good
sense, and a readiness to recognise facts that cannot be overlooked,
unless one adopts an ostrich policy towards life.
Love of ease is a general and widespread attribute of mankind. And if
one follows up after death the souls who were subject to it, one sees
how this love of ease persists, and how for a certain time after death
these souls have to live in a region where as a result of
indolence they become servants of the god or gods of
Opposition, those gods who place particular obstacles in the path of
evolution. And these again are spirits under the rule of Ahriman.
Ahriman has various things to do; one of his tasks, is to conduct out
of the spiritual worlds into the physical world the forces which call
forth opposition in physical life. Thus men are on the one hand
ease-loving, but on the other hand the fate of lovers of ease is such
that when they want to do anything they run up against a general
cosmic law. Obstacles are everywhere, and even if they are not in the
grotesque form once pictured by a German poet, they are there in the
most tragic guise. He called them the malice of things.
This malice of things is especially apparent when, for
instance, a preacher in the pulpit is in the midst of a tremendously
long tirade and a fly alights on his nose, causing him to sneeze
violently. That is the malice of things. But it appears
first in full force when persons who in this sense are the children of
misfortune are exposed to it at every step. Friedrich Theodor Vischer
once wrote a novel in which someone was continually exposed to this
malice of things.
In truth, these things rise from the grotesque to the tragic. All such
obstacles are directed from the spiritual worlds and the Lord of
Opposition is Ahriman. And souls that are lovers of ease make
themselves into servants of Ahriman for a certain time between death
and a new birth. On the whole it is not so terrible to see the
punishment of the devotees of ease as it is to see the souls who are
living in servitude to the spirits of illness and. death. But it shows
again how moral and natural law intermingle as soon as we come into
the higher worlds.
Such are the experiences that are gone through when one has come to
the point described yesterday; and a man has to go through these
experiences in order that he may also experience other necessary
conditions (we shall see later why necessary) and so may
advance still further in regard to higher experiences. This matter of
ascending into the higher worlds is not such that one can say: To-day
you are beginning your ascent into the higher worlds, and then you
will mount upwards stage by stage. For him who wants to become an
Initiate, things go forward unnoticed in relation to external
happenings amid the affairs and events of ordinary life. He does
indeed come stage by stage into the higher worlds, but from this
sojourn in the higher worlds he must again come forth and live in the
ordinary world. From the experiences in the spiritual worlds, however,
he brings with him something into the physical world. He realises,
after he has become an Initiate, that while moving around in the
physical world he is endowed with feelings and perceptions other than
those pertaining to anyone who is not a seer. He need only train
himself (and a correct schooling will see to this) not to be misled in
ordinary life through the alteration of his perceptions and feelings.
He must learn to be a seer only for the higher worlds, and not to
bring into the ordinary world the characteristics and attitude of soul
needed for the higher worlds. This must be strictly avoided. He should
be able to be a seer, while remaining as rational as anyone else in
the ordinary physical world.
Hence the least suitable persons for the development of seership are
those who from the outset are predisposed to be visionaries.
Enthusiasts and intellectual idealists, those who already experience
in the physical world that which has its justification in the
spiritual world; people who in the physical world hear the grass
grow, who see everywhere the visions of the dreamer, not the
realities perceived by a sober disposition; people who indulge their
imagination there are many more such than is generally supposed
such people are of no use for training in seership. Persons who
stand with both feet on solid ground, who understand something of
actuality and judge things as they are these are the people
best fitted for developing seership.
This will have indicated how a person should not let feelings and
perceptions necessary for the physical world be misled through what he
acquires for the ascent into the higher worlds. Quite definite
feelings and perceptions remain with him, once he has become a seer;
in the physical world he will be too, a different person. But in order
that this may do him no harm he must also apply these new feelings and
perceptions to things in the external physical world to which he had
previously paid no attention or had not noticed. Then he will find
not in a bad sense but emphatically in a good one that
his relations with nature are somewhat altered. For instance, he will
feel differently towards the plant world which spreads itself like a
carpet over the Earth. Formerly he looked at the plants and was
delighted with their greenery, with the wealth of flowers and their
colours, with everything that the plant world offered to him as it
grows out of the Earth and delights the eyes and perhaps the other
senses. Let us not think in this connection of some dull, prosaic
person, but of someone who can really enjoy to the full the effect
which the beauty of the Earth's plant-cover can evoke in the soul. And
do not let us imagine that anyone who has become a seer must forfeit
in the very least any part of his feeling for the plant-vesture of the
Earth. Something else, however, arises within him. When he looks at
the plant world he feels that a certain inner relationship links it
with Sun, Moon and Stars. In his feeling and perception the green
carpet of plants grows together with the out-there in the Cosmos.
Nowadays men build up plenty of abstract ideas on this subject.
Everyone with a mere smattering of learning knows how the Earth's
carpet of plants is connected with the activity of the light from the
Sun; how the plants cannot grow without the specific action of the
Sun's rays. And men have some inkling that not only the Sun's activity
has an influence on the plant world, but that the rest of the starry
world also has an influence. Certainly some people are incredulous
about this, but not so long ago there lived a great and significant
thinker who applied himself in a thoroughly scientific way to studying
the influence of the Moon on the weather, and so on the vegetation of
the Earth. I refer to Gustav Theodor Fechner. Not from the standpoint
of any superstition, but from that of quite empirical observation, he
tried to show that the influence of the new Moon on rainfall is
different from that of the full Moon, and so on. There were many
people who wanted to prove their scientific outlook by laughing at
Gustav Theodor Fechner and his studies of the Moon. One of those who
laughed loudest was the celebrated botanist, Schleiden, who voiced his
opinion that it certainly does not depend on the full Moon or the new
Moon whether for fourteen days we have more rain or less. Fechner
replied (conditions then were somewhat more patriarchal than they are
to-day): Let the matter be put to the test indirectly through
the women; learned men soon begin to quarrel. Now the two wives,
Frau Professor Schleiden and Frau Professor Fechner, always put out
tubs in their Leipzig backyards to catch rain-water for washing-day.
Fechner proposed that Frau Professor Schleiden should put out her tubs
at new Moon, while his own wife put out hers at full Moon, and they
would soon see in which period. the greater quantity of rain would
fall. And behold, Frau Professor Schleiden was by no means in
agreement with her husband, for she caught the smaller quantity of
rain-water!
Thus ironically, one might say a decision was reached,
though we would not want to attach any value to it now. Later on,
however, it will emerge that sunlight, sun-heat, and also the other
stellar influences, all have effects on the plant world. At first,
this is theoretical knowledge. But the seer has direct perception of
how influences from the Earth interact with those from stellar space.
He regards them ultimately as one, and he feels as a vital occurrence
the pouring out of the sunlight upon the vegetation of the Earth, and
again the withdrawal of the sunlight. He feels how it is with the
plants when the sunlight is withdrawn from them. As one feels sympathy
with a child that is very much attached to its mother when the mother
is removed from its sight for a while, so does the seer feel sympathy
when the sunlight is withdrawn from the plants? This sympathy with the
plant world is an experience that comes to the seer; so that when he
has reached the point spoken of in the preceding lecture, he acquires
perceptions of such a kind that he becomes a participant in the
relations between Earth-growth and plant-growth and the Sun and Stars.
Through the birth of this feeling he is adapted for feeling something
else besides. He can feel this something when he returns into the
physical world from the spiritual world and looks for instance, at a
waking or sleeping person. Also when he has, so to speak, laid aside
his seer's gift and sees only the physical world and the sleeping
person, then, too, comes the feeling that the sleeper has been
forsaken by something. This is very similar to the feeling one has
when, for example, in autumn the relation of the Sun's rays to the
Earth's vegetation changes in the usual way. Quite similar are the
feelings towards nature now forsaken by Sun and Stars to the feelings
towards the human organism forsaken by its ego and astral body. And
now one has the specific experience that in this respect man is
independent of his relation to the physical heavens, whereas the
plant-growth is dependent on this relationship. Concerning the plants
we know that they cannot go to sleep as they like, owing to their
inner constitution; they must wait until the Sun sets in the evening,
or until autumn comes. Concerning man we know that in our time, and
especially under our conditions of civilisation, he is no longer in
the least guided by the Sun. For instance, if we had to guide
ourselves by the Sun, as do the plants, we could not be assembled here
together. The transition, which for the plants is so strictly ruled by
the course of the Sun and Stars, has no influence on man. Certainly if
we come into primitive rural conditions and see how not only the fowls
but also the village folk go to sleep at a certain time and wake at a
certain time, we feel as if there were something of a plant-like
connection between human beings and the course of the Sun and Stars.
But we have to conclude that in the course of human evolution man has
emancipated himself from the cosmic course of events. With his
physical and etheric bodies he is able to come into the situation
which the plant comes to through the position of the Sun and Stars
he comes to it through inner conditions, I will not say by dint
of inner free will. A man can have his afternoon nap through his own
inner condition; that is he can come out of his physical and etheric
bodies. The plant cannot have an afternoon sleep at will; it has to
regulate itself entirely in accordance with the course of the stars.
But what is man when as physical and etheric body he lies asleep, with
his astral body and his ego outside? His physical and etheric bodies
then have the value of the plant. A physical and an etheric body are
what the plant has. Considering all this, you may say: A plant grows
gradually into connection with the Sun and the starry world, becomes
one with them. Hence we must direct our feeling from the plant to the
world of the Stars and Sun. This same direction of feeling applies to
the sleeping man, who also consists of physical body and etheric body,
and has the value of a plant in relation to his ego and astral body,
for these, quite independently of the Sun's position, are outside his
physical and etheric bodies when he sleeps, just as the physical Sun
is outside the physical body and etheric body of the plant.
What I have here explained to you is experienced by the seer. Now
when, proceeding from such perceptions, a man deliberately brings
about the independence of the ego and astral body from the etheric and
physical bodies; when he has got so far as deliberately to make the
physical body and the etheric body into a kind of plant by passing out
of them, then he comes to know something very strange it is as
if the Sun were speaking, as if it were looking down on the plants and
observing itself in relation to them, and then saying: Yes, this
physical and this etheric body of the plants belong to me, for they
need what I can send them! Exactly as the Sun might speak to the plant
growing below, so can the ego of a person say of his physical and
etheric bodies: They belong to me as the plant does to the Sun;
I am like a Sun to the physical and etheric bodies. A Sun to the
physical and etheric body so does a man learn of necessity to
speak of his ego. And just as he learns to speak of his ego with
reference to his physical and etheric bodies as the Sun would speak to
the plant, so does he learn to speak of his astral body as the Moon,
and also the planets, would have to speak to the plant. That is a
quite special and important experience in the Mysteries. It was
cultivated as a real and immediate experience, first in the Mysteries
of Zarathustra and then wherever the world was developing, right on to
the Mysteries of the Holy Grail.
This experience was always called Seeing the Sun at
midnight, because a man had it most clearly especially at
the time of the Egyptian Mysteries when in sleep he saw the Sun
spiritually at midnight and felt himself united with the forces of the
Sun in the manner described. It was an experiencing of the Sun-element
in one's own ego, as a Sun-force that shines upon the physical and
etheric bodies. This, then, was a third experience common to all the
different Mysteries. Common to them all were, and are, the
Pressing forward to the boundaries of Death, the
Experiencing of the Elementary World, and now Seeing
the Sun at midnight. But it must be clearly understood that at
the moment when the seer feels himself isolated and as though sun-like
or star-like in relation to his own etheric and physical bodies, he no
longer feels the Sun and Stars only in their physical substantiality
but becomes acquainted with the spiritual beings and worlds belonging
to them. The experiencing of the Cosmos is an experience in the
spiritual worlds one must be quite clear about that.
Now in order to grow up correctly into the higher worlds, and to have
the experiences which correspond with the spiritual realities, it is
important and necessary that one should first gain acquaintance with
the quite different nature of the spiritual world as compared with the
physical world. One learns enough of this when, as a seer, one can
test and observe the consequences of indolence, or of a lack of
conscience for the experience of the soul in the time between death
and a new birth, and much else besides. Through these things the seer
must, so to speak, open out his soul for conditions essentially
different from those on the physical plane. Only then is he ripe for
gaining living experience of the spiritual Cosmos, for recognising the
inner connection of the ego and the astral body with the Cosmos.
Directly one comes to the experience that man, in regard to the
highest members of his being, belongs not only to the Earth but is at
home in the whole Cosmos, then all previous theorising is seen as a
mere playing with words. One knows then that every person, when on
going to sleep in the evening he passes out of his physical and
etheric bodies, enters into participation with cosmic forces. He seeks
strength for himself out of the whole universe, and on reawaking
brings back the forces he has gathered during sleep in order to use
them in the physical world. The connection with the Cosmos is
experienced. at a quite definite stage of the Mysteries. From this
stage we will go on to-morrow.
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Last Modified: 23-Nov-2024
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