Lecture
VIII
We
come now to the end of this cycle of lectures, during which thoughts
about the so-called “culture” of the present day may well
have occurred to you. We have had to direct our attention in some
detail to the remarkable way the ahrimanic and luciferic forces
penetrate this culture. A discerning person who has some
understanding of the insights of spiritual science will look
objectively at modern life and surely perceive all its confusion and
chaos. For many years it has been my custom to point to this as
little as possible and instead, by helping to open up the spiritual
world, to use our time together in a more positive way. But it must
be emphasized, now as always, that a good many misunderstandings have
crept into our work, into our active efforts, through this
self-imposed moderation — the word is indeed not chosen
arrogantly; even so, we shall not deviate greatly from this custom of
ours. And in consideration of this, two things are essential: first,
a clear, objective understanding that evolution, the development of
the post-Atlantean world, has led far and wide to the chaotic,
complex, to some extent inferior, second-rate condition of modern
civilization, but that for this there is a certain valid necessity.
It is not enough merely to criticize; a clear, objective
understanding is needed.
On the other hand, we have to oppose the chaos and
confusion of modern intellectual life with clarity of vision, as long
as we are supported by the perspectives revealed by spiritual
science. Ever and again we have well-meaning, good-natured friends
exclaiming that here or there something quite anthroposophical has
appeared; then we have to recognize the deficiency of these so-called
anthroposophical things. I have said I would not deviate from my
custom, but now, at the end of this cycle, I would like to refer to
at least one especially grotesque example of this tendency. There are
those nowadays who like to blow themselves up into a professional
stance without the least understanding of anything — and people
who don't practice discrimination can very easily be carried away,
given the chance, by high-sounding phrases. This must really
disappear from our circles. We must acquire, each one for himself,
the power of clear, objective discrimination. Then we would have a
better idea than has been the case up to now of the relationship of
second-rate movements and individuals to our own movement.
Tendencies of this kind come up in many
different ways. I would like to mention just one of them, not to
criticize or to lay before you a case of specific hostility toward
our work but merely to characterize the problem. A publisher in Berlin
( 25 )
has brought out an edition of
The Chymical Wedding
and other writings of Christian Rosenkreuz. Many of our friends and
others interested in occult movements will obviously snap up this new
reprint of works that have never been easy to find. But now there is an
Introduction to the Chymical Wedding
that really outdoes everything imaginable in grotesque erudition —
I won't give it a more exact name. Let me read you a few lines of this
Introduction, on page 2, without going any further into the
rest of the article.
“When we approach the occult sciences
with precise critical methods” — with these words, many
people will be misled — “one will soon be aware that from
this point on, one can get in touch with the two poles mentioned
above.” I shall not discuss what these poles are, for it is all
merely ...; I will forego any description. “For this the newly
formulated concept of Allomatics is especially valuable, as under its
guidance one easily masters difficulties coming from both sides.”
Allomatics is something that will impress many people. “Allomatics
is the study, the science and the philosophy of the Other (the word
is derived from Greek allos, the other, in contrast to autos,
self). Allomatics teaches the nothingness and nonexistence of the
Ego. Everything is and comes from the non-Ego, from outside, from
above, from below, in short, from the Other.”
All this erudition continues throughout the
article, in order to prepare the reading public for
The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz.
I would call it — and I am not speaking from animosity but with
objective logic — absolutely the same thing as originating a
“Pearology” or “Pearomatics” in the place of
xenology or allomatics.
With exactly the same logic that this remarkable duffer derives the
world from I and non-I, we could also derive the world from a pear
and everything not a pear, that is, the Other of the pear. We could
use the same words and concepts in order to explain the whole world
as pear and non-pear. Nothing is missing from the world and its
phenomena, according to this gentleman, if we explain it by means of
Pearomatics, the doctrine of pear and non-pear instead of the
doctrine of Ego and the Other.
Allomatics is presented as a work of great learning,
with parallels to embryology in order to appear erudite. Its tone is
that of many academic works that are taken seriously and are often
honestly received by our friends — I say this again not with
animosity but in fact in a spirit of brotherliness — as though
they were important works and not merely the products of our inferior
age. This points up a lack of discrimination between what has inner
value and what is pure nonsense at a low level of literature. Since
the author of this introduction is also one of the people who
originated or repeated the foolish Jesuit tale,
( 26 )
it can be said quite objectively that we can estimate from this the kind
of opposition springing up lately from all sides against our movement.
It is important to achieve the right attitude to everything in
occultism that, creeping out of so many corners of the world, is
regarded by many as of equal significance to profound, scrupulous
spiritual science. Another important thing to acquire, if you wish to
profess honestly your allegiance to spiritual science, is the right
sensitivity to these various gentlemen and their writings; this
sensitivity will lead to ignoring them instead of kowtowing and
hailing everything they bring out. One should actually suggest to
them that instead of taking the time to produce such writing, they
could make themselves more useful to humanity in other ways, for
instance by taking up fretsaw work.
We really must look at such things with complete
objectivity; we must get used to sizing up correctly and turning our
backs on very many ingredients of modern culture. For this we need
only the right kind of thinking and the sensitivity to such people
and their work. One thing we have to be clear about: the phenomena of
our time are perfectly comprehensible if we remember how the
ahrimanic and luciferic forces have thrust themselves into human
development.
Every impulse and tendency of human evolution changes
from age to age; in the same way, as I have often pointed out, the
ahrimanic and luciferic influences also change. Our epoch is to some
degree a sort of reversed repetition of the Egyptian-Chaldean age,
but as a reversed repetition the luciferic and ahrimanic forces
generally play a different role today in the external culture. During
the ancient Egyptian-Chaldean age the human soul, looking out on what
was happening, could say: From one side the ahrimanic influence is
coming; from another, the luciferic. In this ancient civilization the
distinction, outwardly, could still be made. However, by the
Greco-Roman age one can say that Lucifer and Ahriman confront the
human soul directly and hold themselves in balance there. Anyone who
enters deeply into the fundamental nature of the Greco-Roman
civilization will be able to observe the state of balance between
Lucifer and Ahriman. But in our time it has changed again. Lucifer
and Ahriman now are in league together in a kind of partnership in
the outer world. Before these forces reach the human soul, they are
knotted together externally. In ancient times the skeins of influence
from Ahriman and Lucifer were quite separate, but nowadays we have
them tangled and knotted together within the development of our
civilization. It is extremely difficult for a human being to unravel
the entanglement and find a way out of it. Everywhere in our cultural
happenings we find luciferic and ahrimanic threads interwoven in a
higgledy-piggledy mixture, stirring up a great deal of violent
political agitation and even playing into many of the abstract ideas
and superficial proceedings in full swing now and in times to come;
until we are clear about this, we will not be able to form a sound
judgment of the conditions around us.
We need to be watchful of the chaotic entanglement of
luciferic and ahrimanic threads. For no one today is more challenged
to come to terms with these forces than he who is on the path of
spiritual knowledge, he who is trying to arm his soul with
clairvoyant capacities in order to discover something he cannot know
with his ordinary consciousness: the real being of man. This must
always be the true goal of spiritual science. From the descriptions
already given, it is evident that as soon as a person approaches the
higher worlds, he has to step across a threshold. As an earth-being
who has made his soul clairvoyant, he must go back and forth across
that threshold and know how to conduct himself rightly in the
spiritual world on the far side, as well as on this side in the
physical world. Both in lectures and now repeatedly in our Mystery
Dramas, this important threshold experience has been referred to as
the meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold.
A person can actually ascend into the
spiritual worlds — this has often been said — and have
quite a few experiences there without having a meeting with the
Guardian, something that is partly terrifying but on the other hand
highly significant, indeed of infinite importance for the sake of a
clear, objective perception of those worlds. I have pointed to this
and everything connected with it in my book,
The Threshold of the Spiritual World,
at least as far as I could while treating the
material in an aphoristic way. I have gone further in the course of
these lectures, and now I should like to add only a few details to
characterize the Guardian of the Threshold. Should I try to describe
everything about the meeting with the Guardian, I would indeed have
to hold another long cycle of lectures.
May I point out again that when a human being leaves his
physical body in which he lives with the physical world around him,
he enters the elemental world and lives in his etheric body, just as
in the physical world he lives in the physical body. Then when he
leaves the etheric body clairvoyantly, he lives in the astral body
surrounded by the spiritual world. We have pointed out that on
leaving the astral body the human being can then be within his true
ego. Around him will be the supra-spiritual world. When he enters
this world, he has finally attained what he has always possessed in
the depths of his soul, his true ego. He reaches now the spiritual
world in such a way that his true ego, his other self, is revealed,
actually enveloped in the element of living thought-being.
All of us walking about on the physical plane have this
other self within us, but our ordinary consciousness not only is not
aware of it but cannot know that we will not perceive it until we
ascend into the spiritual and supra-spiritual worlds. Our true ego is
actually our constant companion within us, but when we meet it on the
threshold of the spiritual world, it is there in a remarkable way, in
fact one can say, decked out quite peculiarly. There on the threshold
our true ego is able to clothe itself in all our weaknesses, all our
failings, everything that induces us to cling with our whole being
either to the physical sense world or at least to the elemental
world. Thus we confront our own true ego on the threshold.
Abstract Theosophy can simply say: that is oneself, the
other self, the true ego. But in the face of the actual reality, we
won't find much meaning in the phrase: it is oneself. Of course, we
all move about in the spiritual world in the form of our other self,
but there we are entirely another. When we dwell consciously in the
physical world, our other self is actually very much another, a
stranger to us, a being that is much more foreign to us than any
other person on earth. And this other self, this true ego, decks
itself out in our weaknesses, in everything we should really forsake
but don't wish to forsake, habits of the physical sense existence
that we still hang on to when we wish to cross the threshold. And
there on the threshold we actually meet a spirit being different from
all other spiritual beings we could meet in the super-sensible worlds.
The other beings appear to us in coverings more appropriate to their
nature than those of the Guardian of the Threshold. He arrays himself
in everything that arouses in us not only anxiety and distress but
also disgust and loathing. He clothes himself in our weaknesses, in
things that bring us to admit: Our fear of separating from him makes
us shudder, or it makes us blush, overcome with shame, to have to
look at what we are, at what the Guardian has wrapped himself in.
While indeed this is a meeting with oneself, it is more truly the
meeting with another entity.
To get past the Guardian of the Threshold is not at all
easy. Actually it is much easier to behold the spiritual world than
it is to behold it rightly and truthfully. To catch a few impressions
of the spiritual world, especially in our modern time, is not all
that difficult. To enter that world, however, in such a way that we
behold it in its full reality, we must be well prepared for the
meeting with the Guardian, however long it delays in coming to us;
then we will experience the spiritual world correctly. Most people,
or at least very many of them, get as far as the Guardian. The
important point is that we should come consciously to him. Every
night we stand unconsciously before the Guardian. Certainly he is a
great benefactor of mankind in not allowing himself to be seen, for
very few human beings could endure it. To bring into consciousness
what we experience every night unconsciously is to meet the Guardian
of the Threshold. People usually get just to the edge of the boundary
where, one can say, the Guardian stands. But at that moment,
something very peculiar happens to the soul: it perceives this moment
in a twilight state between consciousness and unconsciousness and
will not allow it to come to full consciousness. On that borderline
the soul has the impulse to see itself as it really is, clinging to
the physical world with all its weaknesses and faults, but this is
unbearable. Before the event can become fully conscious, the soul —
through its utter loathing — deadens, as it were, its
awareness. Such moments of the soul's obliterating its consciousness
are the best points of attack for the ahrimanic beings.
We come indeed to the Guardian of the Threshold by
developing a sense of self that is especially strong and forceful. We
have to strengthen our sense of self, if we wish to rise into the
spiritual world. But in the process of strengthening our sense of
self, we also strengthen all the tendencies, habits, weaknesses and
prejudices that are held back and limited in the external world
through our education, through custom and through the outward
culture. On the threshold, the luciferic impulses assert themselves
strongly from within, and when the human soul tends to deaden its
awareness, Lucifer immediately unites with Ahriman, with the result
that the entrance to the spiritual world is barred.
If a person with a healthy inner life searches out the
insights of spiritual science without dwelling in a state of morbid
craving for spiritual experiences, nothing particularly harmful will
happen at the boundary line. If he attends to everything that should
be attended to in the form of rightful, genuine spiritual science,
nothing more will happen than that Lucifer and Ahriman balance each
other for the striving soul at the threshold and the soul simply does
not enter the spiritual world. But when the person has a special
craving to get in, a so-called “nibbling at the spiritual
world” can take place.
( 27 )
Ahriman then, condensing what the
soul has “nibbled,” pushes into the soul's consciousness
what otherwise couldn't enter it. With this, the person experiences
in condensed form what he has taken from the spiritual world, so that
it looks exactly like the reproduction of physical impressions. In
short, he will be the victim of hallucinations and illusions; he will
believe he has approached a spiritual world, because he has come as
far as the Guardian of the Threshold. However, he has not passed the
Guardian but has been thrown back because of his nibbling at the
spiritual world. Everything he took in has condensed to what could
contain genuine pictures of that world but does not contain the most
important element, the one that will guarantee the soul a clear
perception of the truth and the value of what he sees.
In order to pass the Guardian of the Threshold in the
right way, it is absolutely necessary to develop self-knowledge:
truly genuine, unsparing self-knowledge. It is a neglect of one's
duty to the progress of evolution if one refuses to rise into the
spiritual worlds, should karma make it possible in this present
incarnation. It would indeed be wrong to say to oneself, “I
shall not enter the spiritual worlds for fear of going astray.”
We should strive as intensely as we can to enter them. On the other
hand, we must clearly understand that we may not shrink from what the
human being is most apt and most willing to shrink back from:
genuine, truthful self-knowledge. Nothing is actually so difficult in
life as plain, honest self-knowledge. What a lot of queer things one
can find in this regard! One meets people who continually emphasize
out of their ordinary consciousness that they're doing this or that
with complete selflessness, that they desire simply nothing at all
for themselves. In trying to understand such souls, we often find
that they really believe it's so, and yet, in their subconscious they
are thoroughgoing egoists and want only what suits themselves. Oh, we
can also find people who out of their upper consciousness, let's say,
make speeches, lay down the law, publish things and in a few short
pages put down words such as love and tolerance eighteen to
twenty-five times, actually without having the very slightest trace
of love or tolerance in their make-up. There is nothing we can be so
easily deceived about as ourselves, if we fail to watch continually
the practicing of honest, sterling self-knowledge. However it is
difficult indeed to practice self-knowledge in a direct way. People
have shut their eyes to it so completely that instead of
acknowledging what they are at the present time, it has happened that
they prefer to admit to being apes during the Moon epoch
( 28 )
— actually prefer that to acknowledging what they are today, so great
can be our delusions in contrast to the moral obligation of genuine,
honest self-knowledge.
A good exercise for someone striving in the spiritual
sphere would be to say every so often something like this: “I
will think back over the last three or four weeks — or better
still, months — letting all the important happenings in which I
was involved pass before my inner eye. I will deliberately disregard
whatever injustice may have been done to me. I will omit all the
excuses for my difficulties that I've expressed so frequently, such
as, for instance: it was someone else's fault. I will not for a
moment consider that any other person could have been to blame but I
myself.” When we reflect on how constantly we are inclined to
make others and not ourselves responsible for what we don't like, we
will be able to judge how valuable such a review of our life can be,
in which we knowingly eliminate thoughts of injustice done to us and
in which we do not allow criticism or blame of another person to
arise. If you undertake such an exercise, you will discover that you
are gaining a totally new relationship to the spiritual world. Such
an effort will bring about a great change in the disposition and mood
of one's soul.
In seeking the path to clairvoyance, the
extreme difficulty of entering the higher worlds without danger, as
we have said repeatedly, shows how essential it is not to come apart,
not to fall to pieces, when we have to “put our head into the
ant hill.” We need then an immensely strengthened consciousness
of self, such as a person may not develop in the physical world if he
is not to be a rank egoist. In higher worlds, however, if he wants to
maintain himself, stay aware of himself, realize himself, he must
enter those worlds with an intensified feeling of self. Then, on
coming back to the sense world, he must also have the ability to do
away with this consciousness of self, in order not to be a
thoroughgoing egoist. Thus, two contrasting statements can be made:
in the higher worlds of spiritualities, man needs a strengthened
consciousness of self; but in contrast, despite the strong feeling of
self that one must find in the spirit world, what one must find in
the physical world is that the spirit must come to life in a
particular way: in all that one can describe as love in the
physical world, the capacity for love, for sympathy and compassion,
for the sharing of joys and sorrows.
Those who enter clairvoyantly into the
higher worlds, know that what Maria says in
The Souls' Awakening
is true,
( 29 )
that really the ordinary sense-consciousness we have on
the physical plane is a kind of sleep when compared to what we feel
and experience in higher worlds; our entrance there is an awakening.
That human beings living in the physical world are asleep in relation
to the experience of higher worlds, is absolutely true. It is only
because they are always asleep that they are not aware of sleeping.
What the clairvoyant soul crossing the threshold experiences in the
spiritual world is an awakening into a strengthened feeling of self.
In the physical world, on the other hand, there can be an awakening
of the self through love, the kind of love characterized in
one of our first lectures here as “the love for another
person's disposition and qualities, for him and for his sake.”
That kind of love is protected from the luciferic and ahrimanic
influences and in the physical sense-world is actually under the sway
of the, good, progressive powers of the universe. The character of
love is most clearly evident in the experiences of clairvoyant
consciousness. The egoism we develop in the physical world, without
being willing to acquire self-knowledge, shows up when it is carried
into spiritual worlds. Nothing is so disturbing, nothing can be so
bitter and disheartening as to experience the result of our failure
to develop love and compassion in the physical world. Ascending into
the spiritual world, we are filled with anguish by the selfishness
and lack of love we have achieved in the physical-sense world. When
we cross the threshold, everything is revealed, not only the obvious
but also the hidden egoism that rages in the depths of men's souls.
Someone who with outward egoism frankly insists that he wants this or
that for himself is perhaps much less egoistic than those who indulge
in the dream that they are selfless, or those who assume a certain
egoistic self-effacement out of theosophical abstractions in their
upper consciousness. This is especially the case when the latter
declaim their selflessness in all sorts of repetitions of the words
“love” and “tolerance.” What a person carries
up into higher worlds in the form of an unloving lack of compassion
is transformed into hideous, often terrifying figures he meets on
entering the spiritual worlds, figures that are extremely disturbing
for the soul.
At this point comes one of the very significant moments
that should be taken into account when we speak about the kinds of
knowledge and experience we meet in higher worlds. As soon as a
person comes into those worlds and finds himself in a region of
loathsome things, it would then be best for him to face them boldly,
with courage, while admitting to himself, “Yes, I have indeed
carried all this egoism up into the higher worlds ... it would truly
be best for me to face this egoism boldly and honestly.” But
the human soul usually tends to shake off these repulsive things
before becoming thoroughly conscious of them, and gives a kick, one
can say, just as horses do, to get rid of these disagreeable forms.
And then, at the very moment when we get rid of the results of our
egoism, Lucifer and Ahriman have an easy game with the soul: in
partnership, it is not at all difficult for them to lead the human
soul into their special kingdom where they can produce all sorts of
spiritual worlds, which the human being will take for the truly
genuine one grounded in the cosmic order. We can say that developing
truly genuine love and thoughtful, honest compassion are the right
preparation for the soul that wants to find its way clairvoyantly
into the spiritual worlds. When you reflect a little on how hard it
is to acquire true compassion and the true capacity for love in this
world of ours, you will not find these words completely unimportant.
We should be clear that these descriptions,
characterizing our crossing the threshold into the spiritual world,
will lead to a truly genuine knowledge of the being of man. It is
only through such descriptions that we will discover what man really
is, and discover too our relationship to the way the human being
approaches the higher, spiritual worlds, this time between death and
a new birth, in a somewhat different but still natural way.
Here I must say a few words about something
I pointed out in the last chapter of
The Threshold of the Spiritual World.
From earlier descriptions in
Theosophy
and
Occult Science
we know that when we step through the
portal of death and lay aside our physical body, we still have the
etheric body for a short time, perhaps only a few days; then we put
this aside as well. Now we can say that after putting aside the
etheric body, we are at first within the astral body; in the astral
body the soul goes on a sort of further journeying. The etheric body
is laid aside; its destiny depends on the world which it now enters,
the elemental world. You remember that we discussed how the force of
transformation holds sway in this elemental world. Everything is in
continual change. The etheric body, separated now from the human
soul, is delivered up to the elemental world and there goes through
its destined transformations. In the following years, for some a
shorter time, for others longer, we live within the astral body in
what from the standpoint of clairvoyant consciousness can be called
the elemental world. However, in the period immediately after death
we find that the soul has a quite definite impulse. In the physical
world we are not apt to look continually at our own liver, spleen or
stomach — for this would be impossible. We simply cannot see
inside the body. People on the physical plane are not in the habit of
turning their eyes inward into the body; they look instead at the
world around them. But just the opposite is the case after we have
passed through the portal of death and live in the world that is
called the Soul World in my
Theosophy.
There the
characteristic tendency of the soul is to direct its particular
attention to the destinies of its own etheric body. The soul's outer
world, its environment, consists of the transformations our etheric
body passes through during the whole kamaloka time. We observe how
the elemental world takes our etheric body into itself. If one has
been “a decent sort” here on the physical plane, one will
see how the “decentness” gets on well with the laws of
the elemental world. If one has been “a bad sort,” one
will see how poorly the etheric body (for it has had its share in
being “a bad sort”) gets on with the laws of this world;
it is everywhere rejected. Even though our etheric body has been laid
aside, we direct our whole attention to it. By looking at the
ever-changing fate of our etheric body, we are made aware of what we
once were: this is our kamaloka experience.
People should not criticize anthroposophy
for saying all this. Aristotle and others taught quite differently:
for example, that this looking back on one's own destiny after death
would last a whole eternity; a man might live to be eighty or ninety
years old and then would have to look eternally at what he had done
to his own etheric body. Anthroposophy teaches the truth, that this
looking back on the etheric body and on the destinies we have brought
about in it by what we have been, lasts one or two or three decades.
And this is our environment in the elemental world, an environment
formed by beings similar to the human etheric body and by the
transformations of these beings as well as by the transformations of
the human etheric body itself. One can describe this pictorially and
come to the same characterization that I have given in my book
Theosophy
as the passage of the soul through the soul world.
In order to describe the spiritual world in
the right way, one cannot keep pedantically to the hard and fast
concepts so useful in the physical world. We should be clear that our
whole environment during the kamaloka time is dependent on our mood
of soul, dependent in such a way that the elemental world we have
just described gradually adapts itself to the soul world. In the
elemental world more than anything else one sees a dispersing, little
by little, of etheric substance, which as it evanesces can be
described from stage to stage as has been done in my
Theosophy
The time comes, in this period between death and a new
birth, when there takes place what the clairvoyant consciousness has
to bring about somewhat less naturally, as we have discussed earlier.
After laying aside his etheric body, the human being lives in his
astral body, until the time comes when this astral body detaches
itself from the true ego; it is in the ego that he will live from
that point onwards. This detaching of the astral body is quite
unique; it is not like a snake slipping off its skin but rather a
loosening on every side, a growing larger and larger until the astral
body becomes one with the whole cosmic sphere. In doing this, it
becomes ever thinner, while being absorbed by the whole surrounding
world. At first one stands, in a sense, in the very center of one's
own spiritual environment. On every side the astral body loosens
itself and is absorbed in all directions, so that the environment we
have about us after death, after this loosening, consists of the
spiritual world and also of all that has been absorbed into it from
our own astral body. We see this astral body of ours gradually go
forth, becoming less and less distinct, of course, as it grows
larger. We feel ourselves within the astral body — as has been
described in many lectures — and nevertheless separate from it.
These things are extremely difficult to describe. To picture it, just
imagine a great swarm of gnats. From a distance it looks like a
dark-colored ball, but when the gnats fly off in all directions,
there's no longer anything to be seen. It is just the same with the
astral body. While being absorbed by the whole cosmic sphere, it
becomes less and less distinct. We watch it gradually drifting away
until it is lost. What is lost is the astral body that is always with
us when we pass through the gate of death; one can call it our past,
what we once were. It was our link with the experiences we had in the
physical world, living in our physical and etheric bodies. We see our
own being, as it were, disappearing into the spiritual world, and
this experience is very similar to the one created voluntarily by a
human being seeking the discovery of his true ego in the spiritual
world. The harrowing and significant impression that someone can have
who is journeying on the path to a clairvoyant consciousness takes
place naturally after death as just described. After death, however,
a real forgetting takes place, all the sooner the less the soul
proves to have been prepared and strengthened. Selfless, unegoistic
souls, often criticized as weak in physical life, are precisely the
strong ones after death; for a long time they will be able to watch
the memories that had urged them on from physical existence towards
the spiritual world. The so-called strong egoists are the puny souls
after death; their astrality, dispersing gradually as a sphere,
leaves them very quickly.
And now the time has come when everything one can
remember disappears. It returns, but in an altered manner. Everything
lost is brought back to us again. In the way it gathers together, it
shows — as a consequence of what has departed — what it
should become: A befitting new life must be constructed according to
karma on the foundation of the old earth life. Thus there thrusts in
from infinity towards a central point what must return to our
consciousness from oblivion and be given back to us; with this we can
become carpenters of a new life shaped by karma. In this sense an
experiencing of nothing but oneself within the true ego, which is a
kind of forgetting, takes place at the middle point between death and
a new birth.
Today most human souls are still so little
prepared for this forgetting that they experience it in a sort of
spiritual soul-sleep. Those who are ready for it, however, experience
just at this moment of forgetting, which is the transition from the
preceding earth life to the preparation of the coming one, what is
called the Cosmic Midnight in
The Souls' Awakening.
The scene of the Cosmic Midnight, in which one can enter deeply into the
necessities of existence, is indeed connected with the most profound
mysteries of human existence. We can say that the mystery of the
human being, his true nature in which he lives between death and a
new birth, is something the ordinary consciousness can never
discover, although it discloses itself to the clairvoyant soul. We
have described here, from the standpoint of the clairvoyant
consciousness, the experience of having one's astrality
absorbed by the spiritual world; it has also been described exactly,
step by step, as the actual spirit-land in my
Theosophy
and
Occult Science.
What comes naturally to the soul after death
can be brought about voluntarily for the clairvoyant consciousness;
this has been described in
Theosophy.
The same terms are used
here as in
Theosophy
and
Occult Science.
We have tried in both this lecture cycle
and in the drama cycle to characterize the nature of the cosmos and
the entity of man, who has a share in the cosmos. After such a
discussion, it may perhaps be permissible to add for any person
setting out on the path here described that he will need to continue
it to some extent on his own. On trying to penetrate ever more deeply into
The Souls' Awakening,
you will notice that so many answers to the mysteries of life are dawning
on you that you realize, the dramas are there to unveil and reveal the
mysteries.
I can point out an example to you. Try to
experience further in meditation what is shown in
The Souls' Awakening
and what I have said here about Ahriman as the Lord
of Death in the world. Beginning with Scene Three this appears
clearly, but it was already hinted at in Scene One with the words
Strader says to the Business Manager, “And yet will come what
has to come about.” The Manager hears in these few words
something like a gentle whisper from the spiritual world; it gives
rise to the beginning of his spiritual discipleship. There it is more
or less hinted at, but gradually, from Scene Three onwards, we see
more and more clearly how the moods and forces preparing the death of
Strader are coming closer. We shall not understand why Theodora
appears and tells Strader what she will do for him in the
spirit-land, unless we get the feeling — though a somewhat
vague one, as it has to be at this point — that something
important can be expected. In the same scene, we shall not perceive
rightly what Benedictus means when he describes his clairvoyance as
being impaired unless we can feel how the forces of Strader's
approaching death are influencing this clairvoyance. In Scene Eleven,
a simple, straightforward but very significant scene, we shall not
get the right impression of the dialogue between Benedictus and
Strader unless we connect Strader's visionary picture with his
presentiment that everything he is using to strengthen his soul will
turn its destructive, power at some time on himself; unless, too, we
connect this with the repetition of Benedictus's speech about his
spirit vision being impaired, so that we have a premonition of what
is looming ahead. The mood of the approaching death of Strader is
diffused over the whole, development of even the other persons in
this play from Scene Three onwards. When you bring this together with
what has been said about Ahriman as the Lord of Death, you will enter
more and more deeply into knowledge that leads to the mysteries of
the spirit, especially by considering also how Ahriman takes a hand
in the mood of the drama, which is dominated by Strader's death
impulse.
Again, the last meeting of Benedictus and Strader, a
meeting intended to be of real significance towards the end of the
drama, as well as the final monologue of Benedictus, cannot be
understood unless we bear in mind both the rightful and the unlawful
interference of Ahriman in the world of the human soul and in the
Word of cosmic realms. These things were not intended merely to pass
through your minds, but in order for you to immerse yourselves more
and more deeply in them.
It is an objective fact rather than
criticism to point out how clearly it can be shown that the published
writings and lecture-cycles of the last three or four years have
really not been read as they could have been read in order to grasp
what was implied or even what was stated quite obviously. This is not
meant as a reproof — far from it. No, it is said because almost
every year at the close of the Munich lecture course, through
everything having to do with it, thoughts stand before the soul that
sound an alert concerning the presence of our Anthroposophical
Movement in the modern world. One has to consider what should be the
rightful place of the Movement within the chaotic happenings of our
present so-called culture. Clear, awakened thinking about this
rightful place of the movement will not be reached unless we keep one
thing in mind: that our present-day life will most
certainly stagnate and become sclerotic unless it receives
refreshment and healing from the flowing springs of serious,
genuine occultism. On the other hand, just such a series of
lectures that makes us aware perhaps of the need to turn to spiritual
science could also stress something important to everyone of us: the
feeling of responsibility.
In the deepest layers of our souls is imprinted
everything connected with our feeling of responsibility, as are our
efforts to understand how this movement of ours can make itself felt,
the movement that is so urgently needed today, even with all its
faults and darker sides. There, too, in those deepest layers we
perceive in various ways the kind of movement ours should be and
what, quite understandably, it only can be at present. This can
hardly be expressed in words, and the one who bears it rooted deeply
in his heart will preferably not put it into words. For sometimes
this responsibility weighs so heavily on one's soul that it seems
thoroughly disheartening. Disheartening, because the occultists are
turning up on every side today and so little of the necessary feeling
of responsibility is at hand.
Certainly for the healing and development of humanity we
would welcome the blossoming of anthroposophical wisdom as the finest
and greatest thing that could happen now and in the near future; at
the same time, we would also like to welcome, as the best and often
the most satisfying addition to it, the feeling of responsibility
streaming into and awakening every individual who is taken hold of by
spiritual science. Still more highly should one value the emergence
of a feeling of responsibility.
In truth, we would consider our movement especially
fortunate if we could see it flowing out into the world with this
feeling of responsibility as a lovely echo on all sides. Many of
those who are sensitive to the meaning of responsibility would be
able to bear things more easily if they could observe an abundance of
such echoes. Still, there are many things that one can only hope for
and await in the future; one must have faith while waiting, and have
confidence that the human soul through its own integrity will grasp
what is right and trustworthy, and that what ought to happen will
really happen. As we now separate after this course of lectures, we
can clearly feel all this. Actually, one would so much like to leave
in each soul something that could awaken it and radiate as warm
enthusiasm for our movement but also as a feeling of responsibility
for it.
The most splendid sign and seal on our spiritual
scientific striving would be for us all to be able to feel how
strongly linked together we are — even when we are far apart —
in a true spirit community of souls having a similar warm enthusiasm
for our movement, a similar love and devotion to it, and at the same
time with a feeling of responsibility for it.
And now let these be my parting words to you as we go
our separate ways after the time we have spent here together: May the
reality and truth of the spiritual life grow ever stronger through
our heart's participation in it, so that we are still together, even
when we are separated in space. Let us be united by the reality of
the warm enthusiasm alive in us, radiating from an open-hearted,
devoted participation in the truth. And let us combine with it a
genuine, upright awareness of responsibility, or at least an effort
to attain it, for all that is sacred to us and so urgently needed for
the world. Such a feeling brings us immediately together in the
spirit. Whether our destiny brings us together in space, whether our
destiny scatters us apart to our various tasks and occupations in
life, our hearts will certainly be united by our enthusiasm and our
feeling of responsibility. Joined together in this way, we are
entitled to hopeful trust and confidence in the future of our
movement, for it will then make its way into our culture, into the
spiritual development of humanity, as it must do. It will find its
way and find its home, so that we discern our anthroposophy like a
gentle sounding from the spiritual world that brings warmth to our
hearts.
What ought to happen will happen — and it must
happen. Let us try to be so equal to this spiritual community of ours
that insofar as it lies in us, what ought to happen, what must
happen, shall happen through us.
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