THE TEMPLARS
Lecture by
Rudolf Steiner.
Dornach, October 2, 1916
(GA171)
In the
lectures given here for some time it has been my task to draw attention to
certain impulses, certain forces which work in the souls of men and thence
into all that these souls bring to expression in earthly life. I have pointed
out how these impulses and forces developed at the dawn of modern spiritual
life. Today, because I want to call your attention to a particular kind of
modern spiritual striving, we will consider, once again, an important
starting point for modern spiritual life, which we have already considered
but which is one of the most, important and essential of all. When we inquire
into the forces that are at work in modern souls, we are compelled to
recognize the importance and significance of this event in history. I refer
to the whole destiny and development of the Order of the Knights
Templar.
I
should like, then, to put before you once more, the picture of the Order of
the Knights Templar in order to show how what proceeded from this Order
worked on in broad streams which flow even into the feelings and perceptions
of men of our own times.
We know
that the Order of the Templars was founded in connection with the Crusades.
It was, so to speak, an important accompanying phenomenon to that great event
in history whereby the peoples of Europe sought in their own way to come
nearer to the Mystery of Golgotha than they had previously been able to do.
The Order of the Templars was founded almost at the very beginning of the
Crusades. Leaving on one side all that is known externally about the founding
of the Order and the further course of its activity — you can easily
read it in history books — we find that this Order of the Knights
Templar, inwardly considered, expresses a specially deep approach to the
Mystery of Golgotha on the part of modern humanity. First of all, a small
number of souls who were faithful and devoted followers of Christianity
gathered together at a place that lay near to the ancient Temple of Solomon
in Jerusalem and established there a kind of spiritual order. As we have
already said, we will not consider now the more external side of the event,
but will look at it from a spiritual point of view and turn our attention to
what gradually began to live in the souls of the Templars.
In
their blood, as the representative of that which distinguishes earthly Man,
in their I, but also in all their feeling and thinking, in their very being
and existence, these souls were, in a sense, to forget their connection with
sensible physical existence; they were to live solely in what streams from
the Mystery of Golgotha, and fight for the continuance of the strongest
impulses that are connected with the Mystery of Golgotha.
The
blood of the Templars belonged to Christ Jesus — each one of them knew
this — their blood belonged to nothing else on earth than to Christ
Jesus. Every moment of their life was to be filled with the perpetual
consciousness of how in their own soul there dwelt, in the words of Paul,
“Not I, but Christ in me!” And in bloody and severe combats, in
devoted work such as the Crusades demanded, the Templars lived out in
practice what they had spiritually resolved. Words are impotent to describe
what lived in the souls of these men, who might never waver in their duty,
who, even if a three times stronger power confronted them on the physical
plane, might never flee, but must calmly await death, the death that they
were ready to endure in order to establish more firmly in earth existence the
impulse which went forth from the Mystery of Golgotha. It was an intense life
of the whole human being in union with the Mystery of
Golgotha.
And
now, when such an intense life is lived in the right rhythms, so that it can
take its place in the whole stream of cosmic and earthly forces, then
something of real significance develops out of such a life. I say advisedly
of real significance. For when such a consciousness as this is placed
inwardly, mystically, and with a certain rhythm into all that goes on in the
outside world, then Man can experience again and again how his own inner
being is brought into connection with the divine and spiritual. But something
else, something that has still greater effect is developed when this inner
experience is brought together with the course of external history and placed
into the service of the course of events. And it was intended that what lived
consciously in the souls of the Knights Templar should be in harmony with
what had to be done in the attempt to regain power over the sacred grave. A
deeply mystical life developed in this way among those who belonged to this
so-called Spiritual Order, an Order which on this very account could
accomplish more for the world than other Spiritual Orders. For when in this
way a life that is lived mystically is also in connection with the life going
on in the surrounding world, then what is experienced mystically streams into
the invisible and super-sensible forces of the surrounding world of that human
being. It becomes objective — it is not merely within his own soul, but
works on further in the course of history. Through a mysticism of this kind,
it comes about that an experience of the soul is not simply there for the
single human being, but turns into objective forces which were formerly not
there in the spiritual stream that carried and upholds humanity. These forces
come to birth and are there. When a person performs his daily task with his
hands or with implements, he places some external material thing into the
world. With a mysticism such as was unfolded by the Knights Templar,
something spiritual is added to the spiritual “effects” of the
world. And inasmuch as this took place, humanity was actually brought a stage
further in its evolution. Through this experience of the Templars, the
Mystery of Golgotha was understood, and also experienced, at a higher stage
than before. Something was now present in the world, in regard to this
Mystery of Golgotha, which was formerly not there.
The
souls of the Templars had however at the same time achieved something else.
Through this intense inward penetration into the Mystery of Golgotha, they
had gained the power actually to attain Christian initiation by means of the
historical event. Christian initiation may be attained in the manner
described in our books, but in this case it was attained in the following
way. Their external deeds and the enthusiasm that lived in these deeds drew
forth the souls of the Templars, so that these souls, apart from the body,
outside the body, lived with the spiritual progress of humanity and
penetrated in soul and spirit the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha. Many
and deep experiences were then undergone, and not for the individual soul
alone but for all humanity.
Then,
as we know, the Order of the Knights Templar increased and spread, and in
addition to the immensely powerful influence that it possessed spiritually
— more in a super-sensible manner than through external channels —
it acquired great wealth. And I have already described how the time came for
these external treasuries, which the Knights Templar amassed to greater and
greater extent, to be converted into temporal power. I have told you how,
through a kind of initiation with the evil principle of gold, Philippe le Bel
was chosen to be the instrument who should oppose the Templars. That is to
say, he wanted in the first place to possess their treasures. But Philippe le
Bel knew more than most men in the world. Through what he had experienced he
knew many of the secrets of the human soul. And so it came about that
Philippe le Bel could be a fitting instrument in the service of
Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic powers whose aim and object it was to render
ineffective the Templar Movement in the form it had first of all
taken.
Philippe le Bel was, as we have said, the instrument of
other, spiritual, Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic powers. Under the inspiration of
these powers Philippe le Bel knew what it would have meant if, into the
spiritual streams which flow through the world just as truly as do the
outwardly visible events, if into these streams had been allowed to flow what
the Templars had gained as knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha and as
feelings and impulses of will connected with that Mystery. What had thus
developed must therefore be torn away from the normally progressive
divine-spiritual powers; it must be turned into other paths. To this end it
had also to be brought about that something which could only live in the
souls of the Templars should be torn out of the individuality of the Templars
themselves. Just as that which the Templars had experienced in connection
with the Mystery of Golgotha did not remain with them as individuals, but was
placed out into the general evolution of humanity, so now something else was
also to be removed, as it were, from the individuality and embodied in the
objective spiritual stream. And this could only be accomplished by means of a
particularly cruel deed, by means of a terrible act of
cruelty.
The
Templars were committed for trial. Not only were they accused of external
crimes, of which they were most certainly innocent — as can be proved
on historical grounds, if one is but ready to see the truth — but they
were accused above all of blaspheming Christianity, of blaspheming the
Mystery of Golgotha itself, of worshiping idols, of introducing paganism into
the Mystery of Golgotha, of not using the right formula in the act of
consecration at the Transubstantiation, nay, even of desecrating the Cross.
Of all sorts of other crimes also, even unnatural crimes, were the Templars
accused. And hundreds and hundreds of them were subject to the cruel torture
of the rack.
Those
who committed them for trial knew what this torture on the rack meant. The
ordinary day consciousness of those who underwent this torture was
suppressed, so that during the torture they forgot, in their surface
consciousness, their connection with the Mystery of Golgotha. But they had
become acquainted — and this is the case with everyone who truly sees
into the spiritual world — they had become acquainted with all the
trials and temptations which beset a person when he really approaches the
good divine-spiritual powers. With all the enemies who work out of the lower
spiritual kingdoms and want to bring Man down and lead him into evil, who are
able to work in the impulses and desires and passions, and especially in
hatred and mocking and irony against the Good, with all these the Templars
had become familiar. In many an hour that was for them a sacred hour of their
life, they had gained those inner victories that Man can gain when with open
eyes he passes through the worlds that lie beyond the threshold of the world
of the senses; for these worlds must first be overcome before Man can enter
with strengthened powers into the spiritual worlds where he rightly
belongs.
During
their torture, the vision of the Templars that could look out over these
spiritual worlds to which they belonged, became clouded and dim; their
surface consciousness was dulled, and their inner gaze was directed entirely
and only to what they had experienced as something to be overcome, was
directed to the temptations over which they had gained victory after victory.
And thus it came about that, during the moments while they were actually
being tortured on the rack, they forgot their connection with the Mystery of
Golgotha, forgot how with their soul they were living in the spiritual and
eternal worlds. And the trials and temptations which they had resisted and
overcome stood before them, like a vision, whilst they lay stretched on the
rack, and they acknowledged the very thing that each one for himself had
overcome; they confessed it to be a custom within the Order. They confessed
themselves to be guilty of just that over which they had again and again won
the victory. Every one of these Templars was obliged to seem to be the man in
him over which he had inwardly gained the victory, over which he had to gain
the victory before, with higher forces, he could attain to the highest and
holiest of all. (I speak of all true Templars — abuses can of course be
found everywhere).
All
this the opponents knew. They knew that, just as on the one hand the Mystery
of Golgotha had been placed out into the evolution of humanity as an
influence for good, so now, in the same way, because the ordinary
consciousness had been dulled, therefore what lived in this evil
consciousness was by this means placed outside, objectified, and embodied in
the evolution of humanity. It had become a factor in history.
Two
streams were thus allowed to flow on into modern history: what the Templars
experienced in their holiest moments, what they had worked out and developed
within the progressing spiritual stream of humanity, but also what had been
wrested from them by Ahriman-Mephistopheles, fetched up out of their
consciousness in order to make it objective, in order to form it objectively
and make it effective in the further progress of the
centuries.
At this
point a simple-minded person might easily put the question: Why do the
divine-spiritual powers of providence allow such a thing to happen? Why do
they not guide humanity through the course of history without Man's
having to undergo such painful trials? Such a thought is “human,
all-too-human.” It arises in the mind of one who can believe that the
world would be better if it had been made, not by Gods, but by men. Many
people may think this; they may think that, with their intellect, they can
criticize the wisdom that works and weaves in the world. But such a way of
thinking leads also to the very extreme of intellectual
pride.
We
human beings are called upon to penetrate into the secrets of existence, not
to criticize the wisdom-filled guidance of the world. We must therefore also
gain insight into the place and significance of the evil currents which are
permitted by the wise guidance of the world. For if only the good were
allowed, if good impulses alone worked in history, human beings would never
be so guided in their historical evolution that they could develop freedom.
Only through the fact that evil holds sway in the spiritual course of human
history can humanity develop to freedom. And if the Gods were to turn away
Man's gaze from evil, he would have to remain forever an automaton
— he would never become free. Things are indeed so ordered in the
progress of humanity that even that which causes the deepest sorrow is led at
last to good. Pain is only a temporary thing — not that it is on that
account any less great and deep. We must not deceive ourselves as to pain and
fall a prey to some cheap mysticism that will not see the pain; we must be
ready to partake in it, ready to sink ourselves in it, ready to pour it out
over our own soul. But, at the same time, without criticizing the spiritual
purpose and will of existence, we must also learn to understand how the most
varied impulses of a positive and negative nature are introduced into the
evolution of humanity in order that human beings may become not only good,
but also free and possessors of their own impulses.
And so
in the evolution and destiny of the Templars we see an impulse that is
important for all the succeeding centuries of modern times. If it had been
possible for the purpose of the Order to continue to be lived out with the
intensity and strength with which it was at first lived out by the great
Templars, succeeding humanity would not have been able to bear it. The speed
of evolution had, as it were, to be checked; the stream had to be held back.
But in this way it was made more inward. And so we see how, in the two
streams we have indicated in modern history, deep inwardness of life
developed alongside external materialism. For the Mephistophelian impulse,
which Mephistopheles-Ahriman, through his instrument Philippe le Bel, dragged
out by force, lived on. It lived on, together with many other things, in the
materialistic thoughts and feelings of men and in all the materialistic
impulses which appeared among mankind from the 15th to the 19th century.
Hence it has come about that what we know as materialism has spread itself so
widely over the soul and spirit of Man and over all his social life and has
prepared the ground for the karma of our own time.
Had
things not gone in this way, had the stream of materialism not been allowed
to spread so far and wide, neither could, on the other hand, our connection
with the spiritual world have become so deep and intimate. For indeed, what
the Templars had accomplished by entering in a living spiritual sense into
the Mystery of Golgotha was not lost. It lived on. And the souls of the
Templars — after their terrible experiences on the rack, fifty-four of
them were put to death — the souls of the Templars who had, under these
circumstances, passed through the portal of death, were now able to send down
from the spiritual world streams of spiritual life for those who lived in the
succeeding centuries.
Fifty-four Templars were burned at the stake in 1314.
Fifty-four souls went up into the spiritual worlds. And from that time on,
supersensibly and invisibly, without its being outwardly perceptible to the
facts of history, there began in European humanity a spiritual development
that owed its origin to the fact that individual souls were continually being
inspired from the spiritual world with what these fifty-four souls carried
through the gate of death into the spiritual world.
Let me
give you an example of this. It is one I have mentioned before, but I will
now deal with it in more detail from another point of view.
Before
the tragedy broke out in the Order of the Templars — a whole century
before the year 1312 — Wolfram von Eschenbach composed his poem
Parzifal.
Working alone,
or in a very small circle, Wolfram von Eschenbach produced this song about a
soul who strives by means of inward purification to attain the life which the
Knights Templar also held before them continually as their ultimate goal. In
a wealth of picture and in wonderful imaginations, Wolfram von Eschenbach
unrolls before our view the inner life of Parzifal, who was for him the
representative of the Templar ideal. Now let us inquire: Do we see any
important external result of Parzifal — who was for him the
representative of the Templar ideal — in the historical development of
succeeding times? We do not. In the further history of European humanity it
was, as we know, Richard Wagner who first presented Parzifal again, and then
in quite another way. But the spiritual power, the spiritual impulse that was
able to flow into the soul of Wolfram von Eschenbach — at that time
still from the earth — became in succeeding centuries for many others
an inspiration from the spiritual world. And one who is able to perceive the
mysterious connections between the life on earth and the spiritual life,
knows that the impulses which were carried into the spiritual world through
the destiny of the Templars flowed also into the soul of Goethe. It was not
to no purpose that Goethe began in the eighties a poem which he never
finished. It is significant that he began it, and equally significant that
even he was not strong enough to bring to actual expression the mighty
thought of this poem. I refer to the poem
The Mysteries,
where the Brother Mark goes to the lonely castle of the Rosicrucians
and enters the circle of the Twelve. Goethe grasped — in his own
way, of course, the fundamental thought which is also contained in
Parzifal,
but he was not
able to complete it; and we may see in that very fact an indication of how
all of us are standing within the same spiritual development which Goethe
experienced in its beginnings, and at which we must work and work and work
that we may be able to give form to these beginnings and make further and
further progress in the penetration of the spiritual world. Goethe devoted to
the first beginnings of this spiritual development the best powers of his
existence; he let them flow into his
Faust
where he set out
to portray Man's connection with the forces of the spirit, which
include for him the Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian forces.
One who
observes history concretely in its spiritual development can see quite
clearly that into the soul of Goethe on earth there followed from the
spiritual world what the Templars — whose manner of death had been so
cruel and so significant — had carried up into the spiritual worlds;
and, just because they had gone through the gate of death in this way, could
pour down as inspiration into the souls of men. It flowed down, and if with
more significance into Goethe's soul, it was not into his soul alone
but into many others; and it continues to live, although but little noticed
by human beings. The spiritual element in
Faust
itself still
almost escapes notice in the outside world! It lives on however, and is
moving towards an ever richer life, and will have to become more and more
fruitful if humanity is not to drift into decadence instead of evolving in an
upward direction. But this lies in our own choice. In our age of time it is
given into Man's own hands. The choice is set before him — and
will be so more and more definitely — as to whether he will fall into
decadence and continue to hold to materialism, or strive upwards into the
spiritual worlds.
For we
human beings, as we live on earth, it is only in our physical body that we
live a life connected with the earth. The body that is woven of light and
sound and life and is within this physical body — the so-called ether
body — partakes not only in the life of earth, but in the life of the
cosmos. And when a human soul descends from the spiritual worlds to enter
existence through birth, then, already before the event, forces are directed
in the cosmos in a right way for the building up of the ether organism of the
human being, even as the physical body of Man is built up from the physical
forces and physical substances of earth.
In the
very simplest of Man's ideas lives pride and arrogance and this is
especially true in our materialistic age. In this materialistic age, parents
actually believe that they place their children into existence all by
themselves. And as materialism spreads, it will be more and more believed
that it is the parents alone who bring the children to existence. Seen
spiritually, it is different. Human beings here on earth only provide the
opportunity for something spiritual to come down to them. What a human being
can do as a part consists solely in this, he can make ready the place by
means of which an ether body that is being prepared from out of the far
spaces of the cosmos may be able to sink down to earth. This ether organism
of the human being is just as much an organized entity as is the physical
organism. The physical organism — we see how it has head, arms, hands,
trunk and all the parts that the anatomist and physiologist discover —
for spiritual vision, this physical organism is shone through and glowed by
the ether organism. The physical organism breathes in air, and breathes out
air. The ether organism breathes out light, and this light it gives to us.
And when it breathes out light and confers the light upon us, we live by
means of its light. And it also breathes in light. As we breathe in and out
air, so does our ether body breathe in and out. And when it breathes in
light, it uses up the light, just as we use up air physically. (You may read
of this in a passage in my
Mystery Dramas
where this secret of the ether world is unfolded dramatically.)
The ether body breathes in light, uses up the light and
changes it into darkness, and can then receive into this darkness the sound
of the worlds that lives in the Harmony of the Spheres, can receive into it
the impulses of life. As we receive physical nourishment so does the ether
being that lives in us breathe light in and out. As we use up in us the
oxygen of the air and make carbonic acid gas, so does the ether body use up
the light, shooting it through with darkness, so that it appears in colors,
so that the ether body shows itself to clairvoyant vision in waves of color.
And while the ether body prepares the light for the darkness and thereby
carries on an inner work of breathing, it lives, in that it receives this
sound of the worlds and changes the sound of the worlds into the life of the
worlds.
But now
what we receive in this way as our ether body, comes down to us from the wide
spaces of the cosmos, and it comes at certain times, from the far spaces of
the cosmos. It is today not yet possible to show in all detail how the human
ether body draws downwards on the paths of light when these paths are guided
in a particular manner through the constellation of the stars at the time.
For that to be possible, human beings will have to lift themselves to a
higher stage of morality. For today, this mystery of the in-drawing of the
human ether bodies on the paths of the light and on the paths of the sound of
the Harmony of the Spheres, would be misused by human beings in the most
terrible way. For what is contained in this mystery would, if people of lower
impulses wanted to acquire it, give parents unlimited power over the whole of
their descendants. You will accordingly understand that this mystery of how
the ether bodies come to the human beings who are incarnating — of how
they come on the paths of light and on the paths of sound from out of the
Harmony of the Spheres — will have to remain a mystery for a long time
to come. Only under certain quite definite conditions can one learn anything
of this mystery. For the failure to comply with the conditions would mean, as
I have said, that parents could acquire a hitherto unheard-of power over
their offspring, who might be completely deprived of all independence, of all
personality and of all individuality and have the will of their parents
thrust upon them. Wisely is this mystery hidden away for mankind in the
unconscious and takes its course there in a good and healthy way, working
through the will of the wise world-guidance.
Our
ether body travels quite a different path from our physical body. After we
have passed through the gate of death, we still carry, as you know, our ether
body for a few days; then we have to give it back to the cosmos. In the
spiritual, in the cosmos, our ether body remains only as a picture for our
own further life between death and new birth. It is incorporated into the
cosmos in the most varied manner — in one way in the case of people who
die early through some accident or otherwise, and in a different way in the
case of those who attain maturity. But when one looks across into the world
that lies beyond the threshold, one knows that both — the early death
as well as the later death — have great significance in the whole
cosmic connections. For our ether body that we give up continues to work on
spiritually.
Fundamentally speaking, seen from a deeper aspect, we all
grow old. Physically, one dies earlier and another later; seen from a
spiritual aspect, we all become old alike. If we die early, our physical body
comes to an end early; but our ether body continues to live on for the
cosmos, and just because we have died early, our ether body has other
functions in the cosmos than if we had died only later. When we count up the
years that we live in physical and in ether body as human beings — we
have the deeds on earth that we accomplish in the physical body, and we have
what we accomplish in the ether body also after death, and the life that we
live there not for ourselves but for others, for the world — when we
add up all this in its years, then we find that everyone lives to about the
same age.
But
now, when an event takes place such as happened with the Templars, something
different again comes about from when it is only a case of the individual
lives. The life that we lead as an individual remains within our own person;
but there is also the life that can be objectively separated from us —
as in the case of the Templars. On the one hand, what they were able to do
for the continuance and spread of the Mystery of Golgotha and, on the other
hand, what happened through the working of Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic forces
for the impulse of modern materialism, all this also continues to live on as
fragments of the ether body. But it is incorporated into the whole process of
history. So that some of the life Man lives in his ether body lives on
further with the human individuality, while some of it is incorporated into
the course of history — when it has been torn away from the human being
in the manner described. And the ether body is the means or medium whereby
what a person lives in his soul so objectively that it can go out of his soul
— whereby this may have, as it were, something to hold on to for its
further life — it is the ether body that provides for
this.
What
flowed into the etheric world from the spiritual impulses of the Templars
lived on etherically, and through this continued etheric life many souls were
prepared to receive the inspirations that I have described as coming out of
the spiritual world from the souls of the Templars themselves. That is what
has actually been taking place in modern times.
Into
what flowed from the souls of the Templars, however, there began to enter
more and more that which flows from the Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic impulses
and is steeped in the Mephistophelian element, and which was inaugurated on
the racks where the Templars were tortured, inasmuch as they were forced
under torture to speak untruths about themselves. This fact — not
alone, but as one of the spiritual grounds of modern materialism — has
to be understood if one would acquire an inner understanding of modern
materialistic evolution.
And so
it came about that in modern times, while certain individuals were inspired
with high spiritual truths, the general culture became more and more
materialistic in character; and the eye of the soul grew dim for what now
surrounds us spiritually and also for that whither we go when we pass through
the gate of death and whence we come when we pass through the gate of birth.
More and more was the gaze of Man turned away from beholding the spiritual,
and this was true in all the different spheres of life — the spiritual
sphere, the sphere of religion, the sphere of social life. More and more was
the gaze directed to the material world as it showed itself to his senses.
And the result has been that, since the rise of modern times, mankind has
fallen into a great many errors.
Again
let me say, I am not criticizing the fact, I am not passing judgment on it.
Through the fact that errors found their way into human evolution, human
beings have to experience these errors, and they will gradually come to see
them; and, in overcoming them, get stronger forces than they could have had
if the path to their goal had been implanted in them automatically. And now
the time has come when this insight must be developed and human beings must
see how, in all that is material, live impulses to error. Today Man is called
upon again and again to make up his mind to see through the errors and
overcome them.
It is
not our intention to lay blame on anything that has happened in history, what
we want to do is to look at history objectively. The events of modern times
have brought it about that Man's thoughts and feelings run their course
only in accordance with external physical reality, only in accordance with
what Man experiences between birth and death. Even the religious life has
gradually assumed a personal character, inasmuch as it aims merely at putting
into Man's hand a means whereby he may find blessing in his own soul.
The religious life of more modern times, that turns Man's gaze more and
more away from the concrete spiritual world, is really permeated with the
materialistic outlook. As has been said, we have no intention of casting
aspersion on any event in history; the events of history, must however be
described in such a way that they may be rightly understood — that is,
if the coming generation is not to fail into decadence but to take a turn,
and move upwards.
We see
the stream of materialism flow on and, side by side with it, the parallel
hidden stream; and then at the end of the 18th century we come to a
tremendous event, an event the influence of which was felt throughout the
whole of the 19th century and right on into the present time. At the end of
the 18th century, we see the French Revolution spreading its currents far and
wide over European civilization. Many things took their course in the French
Revolution as the historians have described them. But in addition to the
understanding one has already of the French Revolution, in addition to the
impulse one has recognized as proceeding from it and working on in European
history, we must also understand the spiritual effects of materialistic
Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic impulses. The French Revolution strove for a very
high ideal. (As I said before, we are not concerned with finding fault but
with understanding the events of history.) The French Revolution strove for a
very high ideal; and it strove for it in a time upon which still felt the
shadow of the event I have described today, the event which left
Mephistopheles-Ahriman mighty to send forth into European life the impulse of
materialism. And we may say of the best of those who were responsible for the
French Revolution that they believed in the physical plane alone. It may be
that in their consciousness they thought they believed in something else.
What people profess with words is however of little account; the important
thing is to have a live consciousness in one's soul of what is really
working in the world; and those who were responsible for the French
Revolution were conscious only of the physical plane.
They
strove, it is true, for a high ideal, but they knew nothing of the trinity in
Man, the body that works by means of the etheric principle in the human
being, the soul that works through the astral principle, and the spirit that
works in Man to begin with through the I. At the end of the 18th century, Man
was already regarded in the way that he is regarded — to his lasting
harm and loss — by modern materialistic physiology and biology. That is
to say, even if in a religious way men had some notion of a spiritual life
and perhaps also talked about it, their gaze was really only actually
directed upon what is lived out here in the physical world between birth and
death — what is lived out here, that one can understand. (Even that of
course is not yet entirely understood; nevertheless one can understand it
when one directs one's attention solely to the external physical body.)
What lives in the entire human being, that can only be understood when it is
known that with the external physical body are united an etheric principle,
an astral principle and an I-principle. For even while we stand here in the
physical world, there is living in us something that is of soul and spirit
and that belongs to the spiritual world. Body, soul and spirit are we here.
And when we have gone through the gates of death, we shall again be threefold
beings, only with another spiritual body. So that anyone who observes and
studies Man living out his life as physical Man between birth and death, is
not studying the whole human being, and is bound to fall into error in regard
to the whole human being.
The
events that happen in the world must not be looked upon as erroneous in
themselves. What makes itself manifest in the world is indeed truth; but the
way in which Man regards it and turns it into deed and action often causes
confusion. And confusion arose in the minds of men at the end of the 18th
century, because everything was applied to the body, and ideals which only
have meaning when Man is seen as a trinity were aspired to as the ideals for
a purely physical “monon.” And so it came about that lofty and
beautiful ideals were on everyone's lips in a time when men were not
capable of understanding them, but only confused and falsified them, because
they tried to comprehend them all together, believing as they did in the
physical body alone. As a matter of fact, of the threefold ideal,
Brotherhood, Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood is the only one that holds good
for the physical body of Man. Freedom only has meaning when it is referred to
the human soul, and Equality when it is referred to the spirit as it lives in
Man, in the I. Only when it is known that Man consists of body, soul and
spirit, and when the three ideals of the end of the 18th century are referred
Brotherhood, to the body; Freedom, to the soul; and Equality, to the I, only
then is one speaking in a sense and meaning that is in accord with the inner
meaning of the spiritual world.
Brotherhood we can develop, inasmuch as we are physical
human beings bearing physical bodies of the earth; and when we accept
Brotherhood into our social order, then for the social order on the physical
plane, Brotherhood is a right and true thing. Freedom Man can acquire only in
his soul, inasmuch as it is with the soul that he incarnates on earth. And
Freedom only prevails on earth, is only possible on earth, when it has
reference to the souls of men who live on the earth in their social
orderings, to the end that they acquire the faculty of holding the balance
between the lower and the higher forces. When we are able, as human beings,
to hold the balance between the lower and the higher forces in the human
soul, then we develop the forces that can live here between birth and death,
and the forces too that we shall need when we pass through the gate of death.
So that alongside of the social order, a soul order is necessary on earth,
wherein the souls of men may take their places individually and be able to
develop the forces of freedom, which they can carry with them through the
gates of death, but which they will only carry with them if, already here in
this life, they prepare themselves for the life after death. That a true
intercourse between souls shall be established on earth, that souls shall be
able to develop the forces of freedom, that all human events, great and
small, and all attempts to give form to human activity and creation shall
have as their aim, Man holding the balance in his soul in regard to what
lives and works spiritually — this must come to be an ideal. Man
becomes free when he is in a position to acquire these forces of the soul in
the external physical world, as he can acquire them, for example, when he is
able to follow the beautiful forms that live in an art that really has its
sources and beginning in the spirit. Man becomes free, when there is an
intercourse and communion between soul and soul of such a nature that the one
soul is able to follow the other with an ever-growing understanding and with
an ever-growing love. If it is a question of the bodies of men with which we
are concerned, then Brotherhood comes into consideration; if it is a question
of the soul, then we must look to forging those delicate and subtle links
that arise between soul and soul, and that must find their way right into the
structure of our life on earth and must always work in the direction of
engendering interest — deep interest in one soul for the other. For in
this way alone can souls become free, and it is only souls that can become
free.
Equality applied to the external physical world is
nonsense; for equality would be uniformity. Everything in the world is
undergoing change; everything in the world is compelled to be in number;
everything in the world is obliged to come to expression in multiplicity and
variety. To this very end is the physical world there, that the spiritual may
go through a multitude of forms. But in all the multiple and manifold life of
Man, one thing remains alike, because it is still in its beginning. The rest
of our human nature we have carried in us since the Saturn time, the Sun time
and the Moon time; the I we have for the first time in this life of earth.
The I is only in its beginning. During the whole of our life between birth
and death we come no further in the spiritual than to say to ourselves
“I,” and to take cognizance of this I. We can only behold the I,
either when through initiation we are outside the body here between birth and
death, or when we have passed through the gate of death and it is given us to
look back in memory on our earth body and behold the I spiritually. But
through this I all possible variety comes to expression here on earth. And
our life on earth must be so constructed as to give possibility for all the
variety that can enter earth life in human individuality to come to
expression. One human being manifests one individuality, a second another,
and a third a different one again. All these individualities in their several
workings are focused in a point, the point of the I. There we are alike, and
through this focus-point where we are alike can pass all that we communicate
to one another as spirits. The fact that we all have this I — point
where we are alike gives the possibility for the development of mankind of a
community life. That which is different in all of us passes through what is
alike. Consequently, it is not the establishment of what is contributed by
the single human individual to the whole stream of cosmic spiritual evolution
that is achieved in spiritual equality; rather it is so, that because what
has placed us each into a different kind of life passes through our I,
through the spiritual in us, it becomes something that can be shared by all,
it flows on as a common good in the stream of cosmic evolution. Equality
belongs properly to the spirit.
No
human generation will understand how the three ideals of Brotherhood, Freedom
and Equality can come to realization in the life of mankind, unless they
understand that Man carries in him this threefoldness of body, soul and
spirit. That people were unable in the 18th century and have continued to be
unable throughout the 19th century to understand this, was a result of the
strength of the Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian stream which entered modern
evolution in the way I have described. The 18th century mixed up Equality,
Freedom and Brotherhood, and applied all three to external physical life. In
the way it has been understood in the 19th century, it can only mean social
chaos. And mankind will have to drift further and further into this chaos, if
they do not receive spiritual science and spiritual life, which will lead to
an understanding of Man as a trinity and to a reconstruction of earth life
for threefold Man.
Man had
to go through materialism. His forces would have been too weak for the times
to follow, if he had not gone through materialism. For strange and amazing is
the evolution of mankind. Let us look back for a moment to an event of the
Lemurian epoch. We find there a certain moment in evolution — it lies
thousands and thousands of years back — when the mankind of the earth
was quite different from what it is now. You will know from the descriptions
I have given in
Occult Science
of human evolution
on the earth that the various impulses entered into Man only gradually. There
was a moment in evolution when what we today call magnetic and electric
forces established themselves within Man. For magnetic and electric forces
live in us in a mysterious manner. Before this time, Man lived on earth
without the magnetic and electric forces that have developed ever since,
spiritually, between the workings of the nerves and the blood. They were
incorporated into Man at that time. The forces of magnetism we will leave out
of consideration, and a portion of the forces of electricity. But the forces
which I will distinguish as the electrical forces in galvanism, voltaism,
etc. — forces that have taken deep hold in the culture and civilization
of our time — these forces found entry in that far-off time into the
human organism and united themselves with human life; and this very fact made
it possible for them to remain for a long time unknown to human
consciousness.
Man
carried them within him, and for that very reason they remained unknown to
him externally. The forces of magnetism and the other electrical forces we
learned to know earlier. Galvanism, the electricity of contact, which has a
much deeper determining influence on the karma of our age than is generally
realized, was, as you know, only discovered at the turn of the 18th and 19th
centuries, by Galvani and Volta. People give far too little thought to such
facts as these. Just consider for a moment! This Galvani was dealing with the
leg of a frog. “By chance,” as we say, he fastened it to the
window, and it came in contact with iron, and twitched. That was the
beginning of all the discoveries that rule the earth today by means of the
electric current. And it happened such a little while ago! People do not
generally stop to think how it is that mankind did not come to this knowledge
earlier. Suddenly this thought emerges in a human being, in a perfectly
miraculous way; he stumbles on it — as it were, perforce. In this
materialistic age of ours, we naturally never stop to think about such a
thing. And this is the reason why we can understand absolutely nothing at all
of the real becoming of the earth. The truth of the matter is as
follows:
After
mankind had passed the moment in the Lemurian time when it implanted into it,
or received implanted into it, the forces that go through the wire today in
electricity and work in an invisible manner in Man himself, after this time
had passed, electricity lived inside the human being. Now evolution does not
proceed in the simple, straightforward way in which people are inclined to
picture it. They imagine that time goes ever forward on and on into the
infinite. That is an altogether abstract conception. The truth is that time
moves and turns in such a way that evolution is constantly reversed and runs
back. It is not only in space that we find movements in curves as in a
lemniscate, but also in time.
During
the Lemurian epoch, Man was at the crossing point of the lemniscate movement,
and that was the time when he implanted into himself the principle of
electrical force. He traversed the returning path in the Atlantean time and,
in respect of certain forces, in the Post-Atlantean time, and arrived about
the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century exactly at the point in
the evolution of the worlds at which he was in the old Lemurian time when he
implanted into himself from the cosmos the principle of electricity. There
you have the explanation of how it came about that Galvani discovered
electricity at that particular time. Man always goes back again in later
times to what he experienced earlier. Life takes its course in cycles, in
rhythms. At the middle of the materialistic age which had been developing
ever since the 14th–15th century,
mankind was standing at that point in the world. All through which he had
passed long ago in the Lemurian epoch. And mankind as a whole in that moment
remembered the entry of electricity into the human being, and thereupon as a
result of this memory impregnated his whole civilization with electricity.
The soul and spirit in Man found again what it had once experienced long
ago.
Truths
like this must be clearly envisaged again, for it is only with truths like
this that we shall escape decadence in the future.
Under
the influence of the inspirations of which I have been speaking to you today,
certain minds came upon such truths. For the fact that people went on such
paths was the result of the fact that many and different currents work in
human evolution. If, for example, what the Templars wanted to attain had been
the sole influence working in history, quite a different evolution would have
resulted for Man. Through the fact that the other stream too — the
Mephistophelian — has been intermixed with it (the Mephistophelian
stream was of course also there from the beginning, but it was given new life
by the destiny of the Templars), Man has been brought, in our time, into
materialism just in the way that it has actually happened. These
Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic forces are needed in the evolution of mankind. And,
as I have said, certain great minds were led by the inspiration that comes
from the Rosicrucian Temples and has its source in the spiritual world to
recognize this principle of which I am here speaking.
Do not
imagine that a great poet, a really great poet who creates out of the
spiritual world, puts together his words in the superficial way that people
often imagine they are at liberty to take them! No, a poet like Goethe, for
instance, knows what is contained and implied in the Word; he knows that in
the Word we have something that lets spirit resound through the person
speaking. “Person,” did I say? Here we must remind ourselves that
“persona” is a word that comes from the Latin for the mask that
the actor carries and through which his voice sounds. “Personare”
means to sound through. All this is closely connected with the evolution of
the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and Divine was the Word.” The Word was not in Man; nevertheless human
personality is closely connected with it.
The
whole evolution, as we have said, is carried forward inasmuch as not merely
good forces are working, but others also. And a man like Goethe uttered in
his
Faust
— even though in
part unconsciously, nevertheless under inspiration — notable and great
truths. When the Lord is conversing with Mephistopheles in the
Prologue in Heaven,
he says at last
to Mephistopheles that He has no objection to his work and influence. He
recognizes him and allows him his place in the evolution of the worlds. It is
owing to him that there are such things as enticements and influences that
must needs create what is evil. But then the Lord turns and directs his word
to the true and genuine Sons of the Gods who bring forward normal evolution,
and with whose working the working of the other stream is united. And what
does He say to these true Sons of the Gods?
But
ye, the genuine Sons of Heaven, rejoice!
In the full living beauty still rejoice!
May that which works and lives, the ever-growing,
In bonds of love enfold you, mercy-fraught,
And seeming's changeful forms, around you flowing,
Do ye arrest, in ever-during thought!
The
Lord gives to His Sons the direct command to set in the world's places
enduring thoughts! Such an enduring thought was placed into the world when
the principle of electricity was implanted into Man, and Man was led back
again to the enduring thought when he discovered the principle of electricity
implanted it into his materialistic civilization. Of immeasurable depth is
the thought expressed in these lines:
May
that which works and lives, the ever-growing,
In bonds of love enfold you, mercy-fraught,
And seeming's changeful forms, around you flowing,
Do ye arrest, in ever-during thought!
And it
means a deep experience for the soul, to feel that mystery of the
“enduring thoughts.” For then we feel how in the world here and
there the Eternal stands at rest in the form of an enduring thought, and we
who belong to the world of movement are passing through what is being placed
into seeming's changeful forms as enduring thoughts, as the beauty that
weaves and works everlastingly, reveals itself in order that we may
comprehend it when the right moment comes.
And may
a right moment also come for mankind in the near future, even as it is
predestined to come if mankind is not to fall into decadence. May Man
understand that he has to pass through the next point, which reverses
materialism into its opposite, the point where the great thought of the
spiritual world can ray into mankind. Preparation is now being made for this
in those whose karma has allowed them to come to Spiritual Science. And it
will be the continually recurring task of Spiritual Science to turn its work
in this direction. For to the materialistic age that has found the enduring
thought which in its newest form Ahriman-Mephistopheles has placed into
modern evolution, to this materialistic age must be added what can be
experienced in passing through a spiritual enduring thought. Spiritual
Science must see to it that mankind does not omit to grasp this spiritual
thought. Therefore also must we not grow weary in warning Man again and
again, lest the moment of time for the comprehension of Spiritual Science
slip by and be lost.
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