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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-2707
On-line since: 5th July, 2002
IN THE last lecture we spoke of the experiences of the human soul in
relation to the Mystery-principles of ancient times, the Eastern and
Egyptian Mysteries. In a certain sense this brought us to the last
step in the stages of Initiation, for in the first lecture we
described as characteristic of the nature of all Mysteries these four
steps: Approach to the Boundary of Death; Becoming acquainted with the
Life of the Elementary World; Beholding the Sun at Midnight; Standing
before the Upper and the Lower Gods.
This Standing before the Upper and the Lower Gods comes about when the
aspirant has to apprehend the forces which rule everything that
belongs to the physical side of man, the part which remains behind in
sleep as physical and etheric body here we have to do with the
Lower Gods in the widest sense of the word. We have to speak of the
Upper Gods in relation to all the forces which are concerned with the
innermost being of man; with that which passes through the various
incarnations, the ego and the astral body.
In the preceding lectures I was able to describe the experiences of a
modern man, acquainted with the nature of the Mysteries, when he looks
back in the Akashic Record at the experiences undergone by human souls
within the Mysteries of ancient times. We had to point to the tragic
impression made on Egyptian souls when in the course of their
Initiation they came face to face with the changes that had affected
the Cosmic Power known as Isis in the Egyptian Mysteries. From the
Osiris legend we learn that the spouse of Isis was overcome by the
enemy and torn away from her. But we have also come to know the
results in the higher worlds of this changed situation in the life of
Isis. The soul which in later Egyptian times had raised itself into
spiritual worlds became a participant in the fate of Osiris, the God
who was dying to the higher worlds and descending into the earthly
region. For that is how it was experienced.
Now it is extraordinarily difficult to speak in ideas and concepts
concerning the further development of this fate of Gods.
But since we have become accustomed to bring in pictures as a help in
connection with the most intimate things of the higher worlds, where
our ordinary speech, which has already become so secular, fails us,
let us express in a readily understandable picture something that is
to form, as it were, the leit-motif of the exposition to be
given to-day.
Let us enter into the tragic mood of one about to be initiated during
the Egyptian epoch. We transpose ourselves into this mood and find.
that it originated from experiences that the aspirant could express
only by saying to himself: Formerly, when I entered the
spiritual worlds, I found Osiris permeating cosmic space with the
Creative Word and its meaning, which represent the ground-forces of
all being and development. Now the Word has become mute and silent.
The God who was called Osiris has forsaken these realms. He is
preparing to penetrate into other regions; he has descended into the
Earth-region in order to enter into the souls of men.
The Being who had been known spiritually to human souls in earlier
days first became manifest in physical life when Moses heard in the
physical world the Voice that in earlier ages had been heard only in
the spiritual worlds: Ejeh asher Ejeh! I AM
THE I AM, Who was, and is, and will be. And then this Being who,
as the Creative Word, had gradually become lost to the experience of
the candidate for Initiation, transferred His life into the
Earth-region so that He could gradually come to life again in the
souls of earthly men; and in this new life, rising to ever higher and
higher glory, would consist the further development of the Earth, even
to the end of the Earth-evolution.
Let us try to transport ourselves as vividly as we can into the frame
of mind of one of these candidates, and realise how in the spiritual
regions to which he could first attain he felt the Creative Word
disappearing, sinking down into the Earth-region and becoming lost to
spiritual sight. Let us follow the evolution of the Earth, and we
shall see that for spiritual sight this Creative Word now goes forward
somewhat as a stream which has been on the surface and then disappears
for a certain time below the Earth's surface, in order to reappear
later at another place. And so there reappeared That which the souls
who were being initiated in the later Egyptian Mysteries had seen
sinking tragically out of sight. It reappeared, and could be looked
upon by those in later times who were permitted to participate in the
Mysteries. And they had to bring into the picture what they could see
arising again, but arising now in such a way that henceforward it
belonged to Earth-evolution.
How did That reappear which had become submerged in ancient Egypt? It
reappeared in such a way that it became visible in the Holy Vessel
which is spoken of as the Holy Grail, guarded by the
Knights of the Holy Grail. In the rise of the Holy Grail can be found
That which had sunk down in ancient Egypt, and in this arising of the
Holy Grail there stands before us everything that went into the
post-Christian renewal of the principle of the ancient Mysteries.
Fundamentally speaking, the phrase the Holy Grail, with
all that belongs to it, involves a reappearing of the essence of the
Eastern Mysteries,
Everything that appears at a certain time in the evolution of
humanity, in order to bring this evolution forward, must include a
kind of repetition of what has gone before. In every later epoch the
earlier experiences of humanity must appear again, but in a fresh
form. We know that in the third post-Atlantean epoch the emphasis was
on the Sentient Soul; in the fourth, the Graeco-Latin epoch, it was on
the Intellectual Soul, and the development of the Consciousness Soul
is the special task of our own epoch, the fifth. For the candidate for
Initiation all these things are important, because in a given epoch
the most important forces of Initiation must proceed from the
soul-principle which is specially connected with that epoch. The
Egyptian Initiation was connected with the Sentient Soul; the
Graeco-Latin Initiation with the Intellectual Soul; and the Initiation
of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch must be connected with the
Consciousness Soul. But in the dawn of this fifth epoch there must
also be a repetition of what the Initiates once went through out of
the forces of the Sentient Soul; and equally a repetition of what was
gone through in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Then something is
added, something new which must come from the Consciousness Soul to
provide supporting forces for the candidate. Hence the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch, with its special emphasis on the arising of the
new Initiation, must have centres where there can be recalled to human
souls the secrets poured into human evolution through the
Egyptian-Chaldaic soul, and the secrets poured. out in the fourth
post-Atlantean epoch, the Graeco-Latin time, during which the Mystery
of Golgotha took place. And to that must be added a new element.
As in earlier ages, so also in this later age, that which was enacted
in the depths of the Mysteries finds expression in the most varied
legends, and these correspond more or less closely to secrets in which
the human soul has participated. Hence it was necessary that the
secrets of the Egyptian-Chaldaic period should appear as a kind of
repetition before the souls of the fifth epoch. They were secrets
related to the Cosmos, to the in-pouring of the forces of the Zodiac
and of the Planets, but particularly to the secrets connected with the
co-operation of the Sun and Moon, and to the shifting influences of
the Sun and Moon as they pass through the signs of the Zodiac. (I am
speaking of the apparent movements, because they sufficiently
characterise the processes involved.) But there had to be a difference
between the way in which these secrets had emerged in the third epoch
and the way in which they were presented in the fifth epoch.
Everything now had to work right into the Consciousness Soul, into
that which makes for and constitutes human personality. This took
place in a quite special way through the fact that those inspiring
forces which were seen when in the third epoch souls were transported
into spiritual regions of the Cosmos, and which simultaneously
streamed out of cosmic space into the Earth during the fifth
epoch these forces inspired certain individuals. In the dawn of the
fifth epoch, accordingly, there were persons who, not exactly through
their training but through certain mysterious influences, became the
instruments, the vehicles, of cosmic influences issuing from the Sun
and Moon during their passage through the signs of the Zodiac. The
secrets that could then be won for the human soul through these
individuals were a repetition of what had once been experienced
through the Sentient Soul. And the persons who expressed the transit
of the cosmic forces through the signs of the Zodiac were those called
The Knights of King Arthur's Round Table. Twelve in
number, they had around them a band of other men, but they were the
principal Knights. The others represented the starry host; into them
flowed the inspirations which were more distantly distributed in
cosmic space; and into the twelve Knights flowed the inspirations from
the twelve directions of the Zodiac. The inspirations which came from
the spiritual forces of the Sun and Moon were represented by King
Arthur and his wife Guinevere. Thus in King Arthur's Round Table we
have the humanised Cosmos. What we may call the pedagogical high
school for the Sentient Soul of the West proceeded from King Arthur's
Round Table. Hence we are told and the legend here refers in
pictures of external facts to inner mysteries which were taking place
in the dawn of that epoch in the human soul how the Knights of
King Arthur's Round Table journeyed far and wide and slew monsters and
giants. These external pictures point to the endeavours of human souls
who were to make progress in refining and. purifying those forces of
the astral body which expressed themselves for the seer in pictures of
monsters, giants and the like. Everything that the Sentient Soul was
to experience through the later Mysteries is bound up with the
pictorial concepts of King Arthur's Round Table.
What the Intellectual Soul was to experience in this later time has in
turn found legendary form in the saga of the Holy Grail. Everything
that had to be recapitulated from the epoch in which the Mystery of
Golgotha took place was concentrated in the influences that streamed
forth from the secrets of the Holy Grail. And these influences could
work on the Intellectual Soul in persons who had gained understanding
of the Holy Grail and wished to understand their own epoch. In the
present day also the human soul must be open to these influences if it
is to be initiated, if it is to have understanding for the spiritual
nature of our times. The Holy Grail is surrounded by many, many
mysteries. Today, naturally, we can give only a sketchy outline of
these mysteries; but it may provide a starting-point for more detailed
studies which may one day be undertaken regarding these mysteries of
the Holy Grail. In the Holy Grail, if understood in its true nature,
there was embraced everything which characterised the secrets of the
human soul in later times.
Let us take an Initiate of later times when, having freed his ego and
astral body from his physical and etheric bodies and come forth from
them, he looked down at them from outside, and let us picture what he
saw in them. He saw something which could be very disturbing, if he
had not learnt to understand it thoroughly. And he still sees it
today. The physical and etheric bodies have woven into them something
which flows through them like streams or strands running in various
directions. As the nerve fibres run through the physical body, so is
there woven into the physical body something finer than the nerves, of
which occult sight reports: That is dead so dead that there
really is something like a piece of dead substance in the human body.
It is now condemned to be dead throughout the time between birth and
death, but during the Eastern period of human evolution it was still
living. Yes, one has the experience that in human bodies there is
something dead which once was alive. And one sets out to discover what
it really is. Dead is to be understood here in a relative
sense; the dead part is indeed stimulated by its environment, but
there are tendencies and currents in the human body which, in
comparison with the life that animates it, have always a disposition
toward death. We investigate how this has come about, and we find that
the origin of it is as follows.
Once in ancient times men's souls possessed a certain faculty of
clairvoyance, and in the latter part of the Egyptian-Chaldaic
civilisation this clairvoyance still existed to such a degree that a
man, when gazing into the starry heavens, saw not merely the physical
stars but also the spiritual beings united with them. And so, when in
the intermediate state between waking and sleeping the human soul
looked out into the universe and saw something spiritual, the
impression received was different from the impressions made upon the
human soul to-day, when people study science in the modern way or are
living mostly in the ordinary consciousness of the times. But all the
souls living and embodied to-day were also incarnated in the
Egyptian-Chaldaic epoch. All the souls present here to-day once looked
out from their bodies into starry space, took part in the spiritual
life of the universe and received its impressions. This sank into our
souls and became an intrinsic part of them. All the souls of to-day
once looked out into the universe and received spiritual impressions
in the same way as they now receive impressions of colours and sounds.
It is all there still, in the depth of our souls, and the souls
created their bodies in accordance with it. But our souls have lost
remembrance of it! For modern consciousness it is no longer present in
the souls of men. And that which corresponds to the old up-building
forces which the souls used to receive, cannot now build upon the
body, with the result that the corresponding part of the physical and
etheric bodies remains lifeless. If nothing else were to happen, if
men went on living merely with those sciences which are concerned with
the outer physical world, then men would deteriorate more and more,
because their souls have forgotten those former impressions of the
spiritual world which go with the vivifying and building up of the
physical and etheric bodies.
That is what the candidate for Initiation sees to-day. And he can say
to himself: Souls are thirsting to vitalise something in the physical
and etheric bodies which they have to abandon as lifeless because the
impressions they once absorbed do not penetrate into modern
consciousness. This is the disturbing impression received to-day by
the candidate for Initiation.
Thus there is something in man that is withdrawn from the sovereignty
of the soul. I beg that you will take these words with all
earnestness; for a characteristic of modern man is that something in
his nature is withdrawn from the rule of the soul, something that is
dead in contrast with the life of the organism that surrounds it. And
by working upon this dead part, the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces
exercise on man a very great influence in a quite special way. While
on the one hand men can acquire more and more freedom, the Luciferic
and Ahrimanic forces insinuate themselves precisely into that part of
the organism which has been withdrawn from the sovereignty of the
soul. That is why so many people in modern times feel (and quite
rightly say they feel) as if there were two souls dwelling within
their breast, and as if one wanted to tear itself away from the other.
Much of what modern man finds so baffling in his inner experience lies
in what has just been said. The Holy Grail was and is nothing else
than that which can so nurture the living portion of the soul that it
can become master of the dead part. Montsalvat, the sanctuary of the
Holy Grail, is the school in which one has to learn, for the sake of
the living part of the human soul, something that there was naturally
no need to learn in the Eastern and Egyptian Mysteries. One needs to
learn what has to be poured into the still living part of the soul in
order to become master of the part of the physical body that has died,
and the part of the soul that has become unconscious. Hence, in these
secrets of the Grail, the Middle Ages saw something related to a
repetition of the Graeco-Latin period in the Intellectual or
Mind-soul, for in the Intellectual Soul are rooted mostly those parts
of the soul which are now forgotten and dead. Thus the secrets of the
Grail referred to the permeation of the Intellectual or Mind-soul with
new wisdom.
When the Initiate of the Middle Ages wanted to present in picture form
what he had to learn in order to permeate with the new wisdom the part
of his soul that had remained living, he spoke of the Castle of the
Holy Grail and of the new wisdom which is in fact the
Grail that flows out from it. And when he wanted to
indicate that which is hostile to this new wisdom, he pointed to
another domain, the domain wherein dwelt all the beings and. forces
which had made it their task to gain access to the part of the body
that had become dead, and to the part of the human soul that had
become unconscious. This domain, into which were justly transferred
(justly is here used in an occult sense) all the
successors of the evil spiritual beings of earlier times who had
preserved the worst forces of oriental magic (not the best forces,
which also had remained) the domain which was the most vicious
and hostile to the Grail was Castle Merveil, the gathering-place of
all the forces which attack man in this part of his body and soul and
have undergone a karmic fate such as has been indicated. Spiritual
wisdom can be carried anywhere to-day, because we have reached a
transition stage leading towards the Sixth Epoch and these things are
no longer tied to particular localities, but in the Middle Ages it had
to be sought in certain definite places, as I have shown in my book,
The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind. Hence when in
earlier times it was said that one had to travel to a particular
neighbourhood in order to receive a certain teaching, this was not
meant in any figurative sense. In our own time it must be said that
wisdom has less of a local character; for we are living in a time of
transition from life in space and time into more spiritual forms of
time.
Whereas it has been said that the Castle of the Grail is situated in
the West of Europe, the stronghold of hostility to the Grail must be
located in another place, a place where, on account of certain
spiritual forces there, a person can have just as great and powerful
and good an impression as he can have also of its opposite, through
other forces which have remained there to this present time like an
Akashic after effect from those opponents of the Grail of whom we have
been speaking. For at that place one can speak of the very worst
forces, and they are still perceptible in their after-effects. At one
time evil arts were practised in that place, arts which penetrated
right into physical life and thence launched their assaults on the
part of the human soul that had become unconscious and on the portion
of the human organism that had become dead.
All this is closely connected with a figure who glimmers across from
the Middle Ages as a legendary being, but is well known to anyone
acquainted with the nature of the Mysteries: a personality who was
quite real in the middle of the Middle Ages, Klingsor, the Duke of
Terra de Labur, a district we have to look for in what is now Southern
Calabria. From there were carried out the incursions of the enemy of
the Grail, especially over to Sicily. Even as to-day, if we tread
Sicilian soil and have occult sight, we are aware of the Akashic
after-effects of the great Empedocles still present in the atmosphere,
so we can still perceive there the evil after-effects of Klingsor, who
allied himself from his Duchy of Terra de Labur, across the Straits of
Messina, with those enemies of the Grail who occupied the fastness
known in occultism and in legend as Calot bobot.
In the middle of the Middle Ages, Calot bobot in Sicily was the seat
of the goddess called Iblis, the daughter of Eblis; and among all evil
unions which have taken place within the Earth's evolution between
beings in whose souls there were occult forces, the one known to
occultists as the worst of all was between Klingsor and Iblis, the
daughter of Eblis. Iblis, by her very name, is characterised as being
related to Eblis, and in Mohammedan tradition Eblis is the figure we
call Lucifer. Iblis is a kind of feminine aspect of Eblis, the
Mohammedan Lucifer, and with her the evil magician Klingsor united his
own evil arts, through which in the Middle Ages he worked against the
Grail. These things must needs find expression in pictures, but in
pictures that correspond to realities; they cannot be expressed in
abstract ideas. And the whole of the hostility to the Grail was
enacted in that fastness of Iblis, Calot bobot, whither
the remarkable Queen Sibylla had fled with her son William, in 1194,
under the rulership of the Emperor Henry VI.
Everything that was undertaken by a power hostile to the Grail, and
whereby also Amfortas was wounded, is finally to be traced back to the
alliance which Klingsor had contracted with the stronghold of Iblis,
Calot bobot; and all the misery and suffering which we see embodied in
the Grail legend through Amfortas is an expression of that pact. For
this reason the soul must still be strongly armed even to-day when it
comes into the neighbourhood of those places from which can emanate
all hostile influences related to the Mysteries of the Grail and the
advancing evolution of humanity.
Viewed thus, we have on the one hand the Kingdom of the Grail, and on
the other the evil Kingdom, Chastel Merveille, with all that came from
the pact between Klingsor and Iblis playing into it. And here we can
see, expressed in a wonderfully dramatic form, all that the most
independent and innermost of the soul-organs, the Intellectual or
Mind-soul, has had to endure in face of attacks from without. In the
fourth post-Atlantean period this soul-principle was not yet as inward
as it had to become in the fifth. It withdrew itself more from the
life in the external world that had prevailed in Greek and Roman
times, back into the inner part of man, and became freer, more
independent. But on that account (for reasons already given) it was
much more open to attack by all the powers than it had been in the
Graeco-Latin epoch. The whole of the change which had taken place in
the Intellectual or Mind-soul is portrayed haltingly, in a legendary
way, and yet it stands so dramatically before us in the antithesis
between Montsalvat and Chastel Merveille. We
feel an echo of all the sufferings and all the conquests of the
Intellectual Soul in the stories connected with the Holy Grail. All
that had to be changed in the human soul in more recent times is
revealed to him who has come to know the nature of the Mysteries. In
this connection we need only take a concrete case.
We often find that persons who have not gone far enough into the
matter will ask how a man such as Goethe can on the one hand bear
within him certain secrets of the human soul, and on the other hand be
so often torn by passion, as he is found to be by those who read his
life-story in a rather superficial way. In fact, there was in Goethe
something that can be called, in a crude sense, a double nature. To a
superficial view the two sides can hardly be brought into harmony. On
the one hand there is the great, high-minded soul who could bring
forth certain portions of the second part of Faust, and gave
expression to many deep secrets of human nature in the
Fairy-Story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily;
and one would like to forget everything one knows from biographies of
Goethe and pay homage only to the soul who was capable of such
achievements. On the other side, there appears in Goethe, tormenting
him and often causing him pangs of conscience, his other nature,
human, all-too-human, in many respects. In earlier times
the two natures of man were not so widely separate in their
development; they could not diverge in this way. A person with a
biography comparable with Goethe's could not rise to such heights as
are revealed in certain passages of the second part of Faust or
in the
Fairy-Story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,
and at the same time be so divided in his soul. That was not possible
in earlier times. It has become possible only in later days, because
there now exists in human nature something we have already spoken of
the part of the soul that has become unconscious, and the part
of the organism that has died. The part that has remained alive can be
so elevated and purified that the impulse which leads on to the
Fairy-Story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily;
can be nurtured there, while the other part may remain exposed to the
attacks of the outer world. And because the forces described are able
to make their abode there, circumstances may arise in which there is
very little agreement with the higher ego of the person. It should be
understood that the soul living in Goethe had once belonged to an
Egyptian Initiate, and had then lived in Greece as a sculptor and a
disciple of philosophy; then, between this Greek incarnation and the
one as Goethe, there comes an incarnation (probably only one) which I
have not yet been able to find. If we keep this in mind, we can see
how a soul who in former incarnations could rule the entire man can be
led downwards, and then has to relinquish a part of the total human
nature, which then lies open to the influence of evil forces.
That is what is mysterious and so hard to understand in a nature such
as Goethe's; but by the same token it brings to light many hidden
aspects of the human soul in modern times. Everything brought about by
the duality of human nature lays hold, in the first place, of the
Intellectual Soul, and the Intellectual Soul divides into those
two souls, whereof one can sink fairly deeply into matter
and the other can rise into the spiritual.
Thus in the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table we are
presented with a repetition of all that the candidate for Initiation
had in a certain sense to experience through the Sentient Soul. In all
that was grouped around the Holy Grail we are shown what can be
experienced in modern times by the Intellectual Soul. Everything that
a man must now go through, so that he may make one part of his double
nature strong enough to penetrate into the mysteries of the spiritual
worlds in modern times, must be enacted in the Consciousness Soul.
This is the new thing that has to be added. And that which has to be
enacted in the Consciousness Soul is crystallised in the figure of
Parsifal. All the legends connected with King Arthur and the Round
Table represent the repetition of the experiences of earlier ages in
the Sentient Soul; all the legends and narratives which are directly
connected with the Holy Grail, apart from Parsifal, represent what the
Intellectual Soul had to go through; and all that finds expression in
the figure of Parsifal, this ideal of the later Initiation in so far
as this later Initiation is dependent on the Consciousness Soul,
represents the forces which must especially be made our own through
the Consciousness Soul. So the interaction of the three
soul-principles in modern man is presented in a threefold legendary
form. And just as we can discern deep secrets of the human soul in old
legends, so can we now also sense in them deep secrets of the
Mysteries of the modern age.
It is false to suggest that the nature of Initiation has not changed
since olden times, as though a present-day Western man had to go
through the same stages as did a person belonging either to the
ancient or to the more modern East. Things are so that a
characteristic belonging to an earlier epoch will persist into a later
time for certain peoples. A much more important point is that the
whole nature of modern Initiation has a more inward character, makes
greater demands on the innermost part of the human soul; but in a
certain sense it cannot directly approach the external part of human
nature. Much more than in the old Initiation, therefore, the external
must be cleansed and purified through the strengthening of the inner,
so that this inner part becomes lord over the outer. Asceticism and
external training belong more to the character of the old Initiation;
a direct evolution of the soul itself, so that it develops strong
forces in its inner being, belongs more to the nature of the newer
Initiation. And because external circumstances are such that only in
the course of time will the lifeless elements of human nature be
overcome the elements which can so greatly disturb the Initiate
of today we must say that in our time and on into the far
future there will still be many natures similar to that of Goethe,
persons who with one part of their being rise up into the heights,
while with the other part they are connected with the human,
all-too-human. Persons who in earlier incarnations showed no
sign of these peculiarities, but on the contrary displayed a certain
harmony between the outer and the inner, may enter fresh incarnations
in which a deep disharmony can show itself between the external and
the inner organisation. Those who know the secrets of human
incarnations will not feel confused in face of this disharmony. For in
proportion as these things increase, the human faculty of judgment
grows also, so that the old principle of authority comes to an end.
Hence there will be an ever more insistent call to test the fruits of
the Mysteries. It would be more convenient to pay heed only to the
external characteristics of those who have to teach, for then one
would not need to ask whether the facts concerning them what
they have to say and teach and do in a spiritual sense are in
line with human understanding and impartial logic. The duality of
human nature is not in the very least to he defended; on the contrary,
we must insist in the strictest sense on the rule of the soul over
externals, but it must still be said that the facts which have been
indicated are absolutely true for modern evolution. For the
after-effects of Klingsor and Iblis are still always present, even
though in another form.
A special feature of our time is that these attacks from Klingsor and
Iblis, as they gradually lay hold of people, are insinuating
themselves into intellectual life, particularly the intellectual life
that bears on education, with its popularisation of modern science.
Consider what people have been learning for quite a long time now and
what they think it right to instill into children; consider what is
accepted as the basis of modern education all this should not
be judged in accordance with the views of someone who, believing he is
very clever, says he understands these things and knows they are
entirely correct. No, all this should be judged in accordance with how
it influences and fructifies the soul, and in terms of the impressions
it produces on the soul. And when a person becomes cleverer and
cleverer, in the sense in which it is fashionable to call people
clever to-day, he develops in his soul certain forces which in this
incarnation may make him very well able to dominate the conversation
in circles wedded to materialistic or monistic ideas; but then certain
vital forces necessary for the human organism are worn away. And when
such a person has taken into himself only these typical dregs of
modern education, in his next incarnation he will lack the forces that
are required for properly building up the human organism. The
cleverer a person is by the standards of the time we are
now facing and the closer his intellectual attunement to it, the more
of an imbecile will he be in a later incarnation. For those categories
and, concepts which relate only to the sense-perceptible outer world
and to the ideas which hold it together these concepts set up
in the soul a configuration which may be ever so fine intellectually
but lacks the force to work intensively on the brain and to make use
of it, And to be unable while in the physical body to make use of the
brain is to be an imbecile.
If it were true, as the materialists maintain, that the brain does the
thinking, then one could certainly give them some comfort. But this is
as false as the assertion that the speech-centre has
formed itself. It has acquired its form through human beings having
learnt to speak, and so the speech-centre is the result of speech.
Similarly, all cerebral activity, even in the historical past, is the
result of thinking not the other way about. The brain is
plastically modeled through thinking. If only such thoughts are
developed as are customary to-day, if the thoughts are not permeated
by the wisdom of the spirit, then the souls occupied with thinking
only about material things will find in later incarnations that they
are unable to use their brains properly; their brain-forces will be
too weak to lay hold of things. A soul which to-day is occupied merely
with calculating debit and credit, let us say, or with the usages of
commercial and industrial life, or absorbs only the ideas of
materialistic science, is filling itself with thought-pictures which
in later incarnations gradually darken the consciousness, because the
brain would be an unformed mass as to-day in cases of softening
of the brain and so no longer capable of being taken hold of by
the forces of thinking. Hence for anyone who looks into these deeper
forces of human evolution, everything that can live in the soul must
be permeated by a spiritual comprehension of the world.
So in this modern time the nature of man may still be twofold. The
forces belonging in particular to the Consciousness Soul must be
infused with inner spiritual knowledge. Man must overcome the two
regions through which Parsifal went; he must overcome apathy and
doubt in his own soul. For if he were to carry apathy and doubt
with him over to a later incarnation, he would not make a success of
it. Man must come to have knowledge of the spiritual worlds. Only
through the fact that life widens out in the human soul, the life
called Saelde by Wolfram von Eschenbach, the very life that
pours out spiritual knowledge over the Consciousness Soul only
by this means can human soul-development advance fruitfully from the
fifth epoch onwards into the sixth.
These are among the fruits of the newer Mysteries; they are the
important and significant results which must be drawn from these
Mysteries, which are an after-effect of the Grail Mystery. But, unlike
all ancient Mystery-wisdom, they can be understood by the generality
of people. For gradually the unconscious and dead forces of the soul
and of the organism must be overcome through a strong permeation of
the Consciousness Soul with spiritual knowledge; that is, with a
knowledge that has been understood and grasped spiritually, not a
knowledge built up on authority.
Even such things as have been said in these lectures if a
person takes into account all that modern knowledge and education are
able to give can, when they are heard, be thoroughly understood
and grasped; though they can be discovered only by one who gets to
know the Mysteries through occult sight. And they should be most
thoroughly grasped. Now it may perhaps be true of many a modern man
who is striving to attain to higher worlds that in the shape of his
outer life something will still be visible of the human,
all-too-human, or of his efforts to raise himself out of it.
Yes, it may well be that the fool's motley is still
discernible through the raiment of the spiritual, as with Parsifal.
But that is not the point. What matters is that there should be
present in the soul the impulse toward spiritual knowledge, spiritual
understanding that impulse which is inextinguishable in
Parsifal and brings him at last, in spite of everything, to the
stronghold of the Holy Grail. In the whole picture drawn of Parsifal,
if rightly understood, we can find all the different methods of
training the Consciousness Soul which are necessary to evoke from it
the right effects, so that the person can gain control of the forces
which whirl in confusion and strive against one another in the
Intellectual or Mind-Soul. The more present-day man looks into himself
and tries to exercise honest self-knowledge, the more will he find how
conflict is raging in his soul; it is a conflict within the
Intellectual or Mind-Soul. For self-knowledge is a harder thing than
many people suppose, and it will indeed become more and more
difficult. Someone tries to acquire self-knowledge, but even if he is
able to discipline himself in many respects and to build up his
character, he will very often notice at critical moments how in his
innermost depths the most deeply hidden passions and forces are
raging, and how they tear apart the domain of the Intellectual Soul.
And how is it with a modern man who devotes himself seriously to
knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge? The difficulties of the inner
life may perhaps never dawn on people who believe that real knowledge
is to be found in external scientific work and its fruits. But anyone
who takes the search for knowledge seriously and from worthy motives
will be in a different situation once he looks with real insight into
his inner being. He seeks in this or that field of knowledge, seeks
and seeks, and seeks also in life to come to terms with the diverse
aspects of human living. After searching for a while, he thinks he
knows something; but then he searches further. And the more he
searches with the means normally available to-day, the more does he
feel himself torn into pieces, the more does he feel drawn into doubt.
And. a person who, having acquired a present-day education, confesses
to himself that in spite of all this education he really knows
nothing, is often just the person who strives most earnestly and
worthily for spiritual knowledge.
In truth there can be no one with any depth of soul to-day who does
not experience this gnawing doubt. And it is something he ought to be
familiar with. For only then will he immerse himself in that spiritual
knowledge which is right for the Consciousness Soul and must pour
itself out into the Intellectual Soul in order to be master there.
Hence we must try to penetrate with rational understanding into what
is brought to the Consciousness Soul from out of occult knowledge. By
that means we shall draw into our inner being such a self as will be a
real lord and master there; and then, when we come to know the nature
of the modern Mysteries, we shall stand confronting ourselves.
Anyone who approaches the Mysteries to-day must. feel that he is
confronting himself in such a way that he will strive after the
virtues of Parsifal, while knowing that because of the modern
conditions already described and because he is a man of modern times
he is in fact someone else also, the wounded Amfortas. A man of
our time carries within him this double nature aspiring
Parsifal, wounded Amfortas. That is what his self-knowledge must lead
him to feel. Then from this recognition will flow the forces which out
of duality must make a unity, and so should bring man a little further
on in the course of world-evolution. In our Intellectual Soul, in the
depths of our inner life, there must be a meeting between Amfortas,
wounded in body and soul, and Parsifal, whose task is to cultivate the
Consciousness Soul. And it is entirely true to say that in order to
gain freedom for himself, a man must go through the
wounding of Amfortas and become acquainted with the
Amfortas within himself, so that he may also come to know Parsifal.
Just as it was right for Egyptian times that one should rise up into
the spiritual worlds in order to know Isis, so is it right for our
times to start with the spirituality, the spiritual nature, of this
world, and through it to rise into the higher spiritual worlds. A wish
to deny the Amfortas-nature is not a true characteristic of our time.
It is because modern man is so fond of surrounding himself with Maya
that he wants to deny Amfortas. For how delightful it sounds when we
hear it said: Humanity is always advancing! Yes, but this
advance follows a very tortuous path. And in order to
develop the forces of Parsifal in human nature, the Amfortas-nature in
man must be recognised.
So in this cycle of lectures, using legends from which I have tried to
call forth pictures of deep soul-processes, I have sought above all to
lead your deeper premonitions, at least in some degree, towards the
nature of the modern Mysteries. Perhaps one day we shall have
opportunity to speak in still clearer words, if that can be, of what
the nature of the modern Mysteries discloses concerning the dual
nature which man bears within himself: concerning Amfortas and
Parsifal.
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Last Modified: 02-Nov-2024
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