Lecture VI
Berlin, July 10, 1917
Today I would
like to continue looking at certain elementary issues on
which to build the more comprehensive view to be discussed
today and in the next lecture.
It is natural
that a person, who during his life begins to sense his
I, begins as it were to awaken consciously in his
I, should want to reach insight and clarity about it
and its relation to the world. There is at the present time a
strong longing and also a widespread striving to attain such
insight. As people experience this longing for clarity about
their own self, they encounter the many pitfalls and hazards
bound up with the quest for self-knowledge. People tend to
assume that they are seeking a more or less simple entity.
The assumption that the human I is fairly
uncomplicated has caused much disillusionment and made people
turn to the kind of guidance to be found in the writings of
Ralph Waldo Trine and others, a guidance sought by many today
because of the belief that by delving into their inner being
they will come to know themselves better and gain more
insight and security in life.
[ Note 1 ]
What they actually experience is that self-knowledge is diminished
rather than enhanced by embarking on such a path. If they endure
this disillusionment which is already hard to bear, the pitfalls
and hazards become all the greater.
It is well to
be clear, at least in principle, why self-knowledge is so
difficult to attain. There is no simple straightforward path
along which self-knowledge can be sought. The self, the
I, can be discovered, or at least sought, through
thinking, through feeling, and through the will. In each case
something is discovered which one can claim as the
I. Whether the attempt is made to reach the
experience in the realm of thought, in the realm of feeling,
or else to attempt it through the will, one always gets the
impression that through these soul powers one must be
approaching one's inner being.
A person may at
first try a path by means of his life of thought, i.e.,
attempt to depict the I to himself. Especially
people who are philosophically inclined have in recent years
become convinced that this is a secure path. They will say:
That which I look upon as I remains from birth to
death the same entity. If I look back in memory over my life,
I find that I am always the same. However, this statement is
contradicted daily for every normal human being, as I have
often pointed out. Between going to sleep and waking the
ordinary person has no means of knowing how things concerning
the I really are. He has no external observation of
the I during sleep. The I he depicts to
himself he can only relate to the times he was awake; during
sleep the chain of his life's external events is broken. This
is easy enough to see. Therefore, he who believes that the
I lives in his thoughts, in such a way that he can
actually find it there, must recognize that it is blotted out
every time he sleeps, at least as far as his consciousness is
concerned. Something which plunges into darkness and becomes
imperceptible every night cannot be regarded as having a
secure existence.
Thus the person
who seeks his I along the path of thought may, in a
philosophical sense, have a clear enough picture of his
I, but it will not offer him much satisfaction. Even
if he fails, through simple reflection, to recognize that the
mental picture of his I vanishes every night, it
cannot give him any feeling of real security. His inner being
as a whole, appearing more substantial than mere ideation,
soon makes him aware of the unsatisfactory nature of the
merely depicted I. What is found along this path in
one's search for the I is, so to speak, too
rarefied. But why is that the case?
You must
realize that it is by no means easy to find the kind of ideas
that will truly express and illumine the facts of spiritual
life. The reason is simply that our speech, our language
causes the greatest difficulty. One often feels as if
entangled in a linguistic web when pondering and struggling
to find adequate words. The drawback of the merely
philosophical approach is the difficulty one has in getting
free of the restrictions imposed by language. And quite apart
from that struggle there is the feeling of dissatisfaction
with what speech is able to convey, particularly when seeking
the I through the mental activity of forming thought
pictures. You will soon experience this when you study
philosophers who have much to say about the I. You
get the feeling that their thoughts are too rarefied, too
thin, and you are left with a feeling of unreality and
insecurity. There are people who believe that because one is
able to think the I, this thought is in itself a
guarantee that the I will go through the portal of
death into the spiritual world. But one's life of feeling
tells one that if the I is extinguished every night,
then it is feasible that it is also extinguished at death.
This feeling is one of the pitfalls that leaves one feeling
insecure. But what causes it?
One learns to
know the true nature of the I that is merely glimpsed in
ordinary thought life when one becomes able to compare it
with the I that can be discovered through spiritual science.
This I is not extinguished in sleep even if ordinary
consciousness is. It must be conceded that from a certain
aspect — please note, only from a certain aspect
— there is a measure of truth in what is said by 'some
philosophers such as Ernst Mach: that the I cannot be saved
for it is something unreal.
[ Note 2 ]
They maintain that all the
many experiences we have our whole life long string together
like pearls, and because they do we derive from them the
picture of the I, but this is not a reality. Such
philosophers regard the I as a mere thought and see no reason
why a thought should be regarded as having real existence.
Yet in our mental life we know of no other I than the
rarefied entity which is extinguished every time we fall
asleep. This I is only like a picture in the mind. The
question we must ask is: In the light of spiritual science
just what is this mental picture of the I?
Spiritual
science reveals that the mental picture we commonly have of
our I is not at all identical with the one we find
through spiritual science. This discovery is of the greatest
significance. The I of which we form a mental
picture is deprived in the present incarnation of inner
effective life. Purely on the basis of this I we
could not in truth say, I exist now, at this moment in time.
The mental picture we have of our I is no guarantee
that we exist now, in the present. There is a constant danger
that somehow a combination of mental pictures is conjuring up
the I. That is the uncertainty; that is why we feel
that what we are faced with is a mere picture and no reality.
Why do we experience our inner self in this way? Because the
I of which we form a mental picture contains already
forces for our next incarnation. In this life it must
necessarily exist in the form in which we encounter it. When
we depict the I, we are dealing with a force
belonging not to this life, but a force that will only evolve
in our next incarnation. It is comparable to a plant which,
if it could sense the seed within would say, This seed is in
reality not me; it is the plant that will grow only next
spring. In a similar way there lives in what we depict as our
I the force that will evolve in our next
incarnation. It has to exist the way it does, for if we
wanted it to become more in the present incarnation, then it
would unfold too soon and could not remain seed-like till our
next life. Thus, the I we depict in thoughts must
remain weak; it cannot be active now, for it has to retain
the seed-like forces for the next incarnation.
You will
realize the significance of this fact. When spoken of in this
abstract manner, its immense importance may not be
immediately evident. What we are talking about is something
shadowy, belonging to the next incarnation. While it cannot
develop in this life, it can be enriched so that it loses its
shadowy character; otherwise it remains unsatisfactory and is
experienced as a mere point, as it were, beyond which no
progress is possible. However, the problem is how one sets
about enriching this I that is felt to be no more
than a point.
Nothing is
achieved by merely brooding within oneself, for all we arrive
at is what in this incarnation is a mere point, a seed for
the next life. No matter how forcefully, how mystically one
broods inwardly, or what beautiful precepts one sets oneself,
the I is not reached. In the way in which this
I that we depict in thought lives within us in this
incarnation, it does not really belong to us. For the
duration of this incarnation it actually belongs to the
world. From what we see inwardly as a thought picture of our
I, the world will prepare for our next incarnation
what will then be active within us. That is why this
I can become enriched only through our experiences
of the world. When asked by our friends to write something in
their album, I have often, in cases where it was appropriate,
written: “To find yourself, seek in the world; to find
the world, seek in yourself.”
In order to
find oneself; i.e., in order to provide one's thought life
with a richer, more living content than is possible in
ordinary life, one must widen one's observation, and deepen
one's experience of the world. However, in this respect
ordinary sensory observations are of no help, for they also
belong to the present incarnation. They are also dependent on
the physical body whiCh is laid aside at death. We must make
observations of a different kind, must become able to enter
into the. more subtle aspects of life. We can enrich the
thought picture of our I only by being aware of more
than the obvious aspects of life. We must cease to think in
the abstract manner so much preferred nowadays. To enrich the
I one must make efforts to seek out the more hidden
connections in life. I beg you not to misunderstand this
remark. To seek out life's hidden connections would today be
regarded as a useless pursuit because people are not striving
to enrich the I. All modern people are concerned
about are the kinds of thoughts that either depict external
events or are useful for some action. But these things have a
connection only with the present incarnation. In order to
enrich the I we must make it an end in itself to
seek out life's hidden connections. It must become an
intimate pursuit of which we expect no other result than that
it should enrich our inner life; i.e., enrich the thought
picture of our I.
Certain things
are expected of man at the present time and it is important
that he should concern himself with events in life which,
though seemingly remote and unconnected, nevertheless belong
together. It is important that we ponder the kind of deeper
connections that must be sought, as it were, beneath the
surface of life's events. To someone who is concerned only
with superficial aspects, such connections will seem strange.
Yet it will be found that we enrich the thought picture of
our I the more we succeed in discovering riddles in
life which, though remote, speak strongly to our life of
soul. Such connections are not as easy to explain or point
out as it is to point out and explain the obvious reason a
stone becomes warm when a sunbeam falls on it. But the more
we contemplate life's hidden connections, the stronger
becomes the feeling that we are growing together with the
thought picture of our I, that we are growing
together with the inner life that will carry it over to the
next incarnation.
What kind of
connections do I mean? I mean quite real, concrete ones,
except that we normally pay them no attention. I will give
you an example: A clergyman once met a gypsy woman with her
child, which was dirty and unkempt. Since the outbreak of the
World War gypsies have practically disappeared but those who
know them will also know that they are people who care very
little about many things, one of which is cleanliness. Gypsy
children are usually covered in layers of dirt, but apart
from cleanliness these children are deprived of a great many
other things. The clergyman, being a kind person, wanted to
save this forlorn child. He told the mother that he would set
aside a sum of money for the child's care and education so
that he could grow up into a respectable person. The
clergyman's intention was really the very best. The gypsy
woman, whose normal life was one of beggary, would naturally
gladly have accepted a gift. Nevertheless, her answer was not
only significant but a refusal. Her exact words were that she
would neither educate her child nor allow him to be educated,
because her way of life made for more happiness than all
scientific knowledge, all the repute and mutual esteem and
all other so-called advantages of culture. This incident was
reported by the man who met the gypsy woman himself, Fercher
von Steinwand.
[ Note 3 ]
You will know of him from my book
The Riddle of Man.
[ Note 4 ]
In his fine article about gypsies he describes the event. And it
is something which those who like myself know gypsies and how
they live can well believe. Many gypsies do hold such views.
They really are convinced, as the gypsy woman said, that all
culture, all education and learning, all the respect and
esteem sought by other people, make one far less happy than
the basic elementary life of the gypsy, the life of a child
of nature.
The gypsy
woman's answer is most revealing. One can, of course, accept
it as simply a fact of life; most people do. But one can also
discover in such opinions the kind of hidden connections in
life of which I spoke. It may occur to someone — as it
did to Fercher von Steinwand — that someone else's
opinion is in a strange way related to that of the gypsy
woman. This someone is a man from a background of culture and
learning who nevertheless posed the question whether culture
makes human beings happy or less happy in life. He submitted
his answer in a long, learned treatise, but in essence it was
the same as the one given by the gypsy. The man was Rousseau
and the treatise in which he voices the same opinion as the
gypsy was awarded a prize by the Academy of Science in Paris.
[ Note 5 ]
Here you see a strange connection between widely disparate phenomena.
The conviction felt by the gypsy Rousseau elaborates in a
scientific paper that made him famous and influential. The
sentiment, the viewpoint, was the same in both cases, the
only difference being that the gypsy woman did not write a
scientific treatise about it and was not awarded a prize by
the Academy of Science.
This kind of
thing happens quite often in life but is not noticed. If a
habit is made of examining, from different points of view,
issues normally looked at from one standpoint only, one
discovers surprising points of reference as in the case of
Rousseau and the gypsy. Life is extraordinarily many-sided,
and entering into its various aspects means enrichment and
strength for the I, in the sense that has been
explained. If one seeks out such connections which are not
normally noticed, then the I which we have only as a
picture grows stronger. To be aware of this fact is of
immense importance. In one's search for such hidden
connections in life one is contemplating the world rather
than brooding within oneself. Furthermore, it will be
discovered that one's thinking, i.e., forming mental pictures
— an activity connected with the I —
becomes more mobile, more alive. As a consequence many more
things occur to one than before, which is of great
importance, because much dissatisfaction with life, and even
ill health, is caused by the fact that so few things occur to
us. We draw our thoughts as it were into a rather narrow
circle, whereas if we attain the ability to view our
experiences in life from many vantage points, seeking
connecting threads between distant events, we strengthen our
I and become better able to cope with life. That is
why all education that introduces only one-sided thoughts and
views is harmful. I will give you an example which comes into
the same category as the previous one.
Many people
embrace so-called pantheism, which as you know I have always
rejected. Such people will say: We seek the spirit
everywhere. Spirit! Spirit! Everything is spirit and with
that they are satisfied. Nowadays this is often called
panpsychism because people will have nothing to do with
theism. I have often commented on it by pointing out that one
would not get very far if this approach was applied to the
physical world. It corresponds to someone walking through a
meadow and instead of naming the individual flowers as lilies
or tulips and so on, just saying “flowers,
flowers,” which is an abstraction of them all. So too
is it an abstraction to speak of nothing but spirit, spirit
and ever more spirit, and yet reject knowledge of real
individual spirits. When one speaks about Angels, Archangels
and Archai as of individual beings with their own defined
spiritual existence just as one speaks of individual beings
in the physical world, it is rejected. However, there is a
tendency in man to think in a pantheistic way, to simplify
everything, always to seek abstractions. That is why the
example connected with the gypsy is so interesting, for it
illustrates that looking everywhere for abstractions is in a
way a gypsy-like trait.
The person who
had the experience with the gypsy woman came across another
gypsy who, with good appetite, was eating meat from an animal
he had found lying dead in a field. Gypsies think nothing of
eating dead animals they happen to find, nor do they suffer
any ill effects. The person who found the gypsy eating,
wanted to impress upon him that one does not eat animals that
are found dead, only animals that have been slaughtered. And
here the gypsy showed his inclination for abstractions
saying: Well, the animal I am eating was slaughtered by God.
— So you see, like pantheists he applies the concept of
God to everything. Naturally if one's view, one's thinking is
pantheistic it must be assumed that an animal found dead must
have been slaughtered by God, and there can be no objection
to eating what God has slaughtered.
Wider, less
obvious connections can be found between one's experiences in
life; they vitalize the thought picture of our I.
There are, of course, those who will say: Surely, all that is
required is the ability to combine facts. Yet, that is very
abstract. What I mean is something much more alive, something
that relates to the ability to combine facts as a living
organism relates to a machine.
When we make
the effort to enrich our I by bringing together and
relating disparate events, we become aware of a force which
lives in us already but belongs to our next incarnation. It
is easy to be deluded into thinking that the I is
enriched by brooding within oneself. That is an illusion. We
enrich it by entering into aspects of life that lie beneath
the surface, and by truly fostering the ability to ponder and
reflect about life, instead of being merely engrossed in
ourselves. One must take hold of life lovingly and be willing
to seek out the relation between remote events for no other
purpose than to enrich the I and make it stronger.
The attempt can be made with the most ordinary situations in
life; opportunities are there all the time. Try to let
everyday experiences reverberate in such hidden connections.
One must of course remain realistic and not read into such
connections things they do not contain or try to become more
knowledgeable through them. That is not the purpose; what
matters is their effect on us, enabling us to experience a
force which lives in us in this life in the form of a
thought, whose reality will become evident only in our next
incarnation.
When we become
conscious of such hidden connections the possibility arises
for us to become aware not only of the fact that the thought
picture of our I is the foundation of our next incarnation,
but also of how it exists between death and new birth. This
requires a greater awareness of how we adapt to life, indeed
of how people in general adapt to and deal with life. Here
again, the more obvious aspects are not the most important
for the attainment of the inner sensitivity that enables us
to become aware of the way we exist between death and new
birth. The insight one seeks to attain of the beings and
events of the spiritual world must be sought in subtler ways
than is customary today. Life in the physical world is
completely different from life in the spiritual world. It is
not really surprising that, just as they are, our ordinary
thoughts, feelings and will impulses cannot be applied to the
spiritual world, which requires a much more delicate
approach.
To strengthen
and enrich our life of thought, efforts must be made to
discover hidden connections between events, as I have
described. But for the awareness of the I as it
lives between death and new birth; in fact, for awareness of
the realm in which we are between death and new birth, it is
necessary that these connections are related to human beings
themselves. Indeed, life provides plenty of opportunity for
such hidden connections to be discovered. And if they are
noticed and treated with the necessary sensitivity, one will
soon find one is on the right path. Unfortunately, because
the words one must of necessity use are too often taken in a
materialistic sense, a certain difficulty arises when the
attempt is made to explain things of this nature. I shall
illustrate what is meant by an example.
What I want to
explain can best be observed in the case of people who
through their whole disposition have what could be said to be
a dreamlike inner life; not that they are complete dreamers,
but their soul life has a dreamlike quality. This quality is
more pronounced in people living in countries towards the
eastern hemisphere. The further west one goes, the less do
human beings reveal in themselves those subtle connections
which point to the hidden spiritual realm I have indicated.
That is why the Western Europeans, who have to resort to
connections of a cruder nature, find it so extraordinarily
difficult to understand the soul characteristics of the
Russians. And such understanding is more essential now than
ever before. It could be said that Russians are a fraction
less awake than Western or even Central Europeans. That is
why what we are now speaking about is easier to relate to the
inner life of a Russian than to the inner life of a Western
European. It does of course relate to people in the West, but
it is not so easy to detect there.
[ Note 6 ]
A German
writer, Eduard Bernstein, has an interesting description of
an incident which I would like to use as an example of what I
want to illustrate.
[ Note 7 ]
He will surely not be pleased to know that I regard the
experience he describes as mystical. Nevertheless it is a
good example of those hidden connections in life which
materialists regard as mere chance. Eduard Bernstein relates
that, in London, he used to be a frequent guest at the house
of Engels, the friend of Karl Marx.
[ Note 8 ]
Engels' household was a
hospitable one, where many people often met, where in fact an
international group would frequently gather. It was here that
Bernstein met Sergius Kratschinsky, a writer who had adopted
the name Stepniak, by which he is quite well known.
Bernstein's description of Stepniak is most interesting; to
begin with, he mainly describes the more external aspects
saying that Stepniak was
a powerfully built man with an
impressive head; in looks he corresponded exactly to the
picture we normally have of a Slay. He was sensitive, of a
somewhat dreamy disposition. Yet in Russia he had been very
much a man of action, not only prominently involved in the
liberation from prison of Peter Krapotkius, but also in the
successful attack on Msenzow, the police dictator of St.
Petersburg. In England he was the soul of the society
“Free Russia,” founded for the purpose of
collecting money to support Russian freedom fighters. On
their behalf, he had repeatedly undertaken lecture tours in
England and one across America, where he had been
particularly befriended by the American humorist Mark
Twain. Stepniak was a respected figure in certain literary
circles in England having made a name also as a
novelist.
At Engels'
parties or at any other gathering he was usually quiet and
seldom spoke unless one addressed him directly. However, it
was obvious that he greatly appreciated his friendship with
Engels and like coming to his parties. A friendship also
sprang up between Stepniak and myself.
It so happened
that at a meeting of the society “Free Russia,”
attended by both Bernstein and Stepniak, a quarrel broke out.
It was one of those quarrels that easily breaks out among
people with a deep emotional commitment to life's greater
issues. The quarrel concerned the relationship between
Russians and Poles. In such a situation it is a safe bet that
the average Central European will side with the Poles. A
fierce disagreement ensued in which Bernstein and others
spoke up for the Poles, Bernstein defending them against the
Russians. As a consequence of this quarrel Stepniak no longer
came to the society. And for many years Bernstein heard
nothing of Stepniak, who had severed all connection with
people in the society. Then after a long time Bernstein
received a letter from someone not connected with the
society, inviting him to a party on one of the following
evenings. The writer of the invitation said he was aware that
Bernstein was not on good terms with Stepniak, so he was to
come only if he did not mind meeting the latter. Bernstein
did not mind; in fact, he welcomed the opportunity to meet
Stepniak again. And so the two men met once more.
One may, of
course, not find it so remarkable that two people who used to
like seeing one another meet again after several years. It
may be regarded as a mere chance meeting, and it is only
natural that materialists should do so. However, Bernstein's
whole description of the mood in which the meeting took place
that evening makes it clear that, especially for Stepniak, it
was an occasion of very great significance. They spent the
evening in a happy mood. Before parting Stepniak said how
pleased he was that they had found one another again and how
much he looked forward to them spending time together. Two
days later Bernstein read in the paper that Stepniak was
dead. It appeared that on the day after their meeting he had
been reading a book while out walking, had crossed a railway
line and been hit by a train. It was absolutely clear that it
was an accident; there was no question of suicide.
Thus another
chance! But you see, such events are in reality no mere
chance. I have chosen a striking example to illustrate the
kind of connection one must look for in life. If one is to
discover links that are less obvious, one must seek the kind
of event in which connections are hidden and which involved
the inner life of human beings. Once it has been recognized
that there is a deeper aspect of our life of soul which is
prophetic, then one can no longer consider such events as
mere chance. This aspect comes to expression chiefly in our
mental life when tinged with feeling, and when it is somewhat
dreamy. In such instances it points to the future to a
remarkable degree. All dreams are in fact prophetic; when you
dream you always dream the future. But because you cannot
formulate mental pictures of future events you clothe the
dream in pictures of past ones, and draw them like a veil
over the inner experience. There is a deep connection between
what we dream of the future and the clothes we put on it when
we awake. This is because of karma, and because the future is
linked to the past. What we become conscious of, we clothe in
pictures from the past, i.e., in images with which we are
familiar. Though we are aware of only a fraction of our
dreams, we dream the whole time between falling asleep and
waking. When someone is in a dreamy state during waking life,
it is not without effect on his karma.
Anyone who
really understands what I have indicated concerning life's
hidden connections will recognize in this incidence a
definite picture of how karma works. Had Stepniak not been
the sensitive and dreamy person he was, then the effect
produced by the connection between his conscious life and the
hidden current of his karma would have been less effective.
It would not have been strong enough to bring about, on the
last evening, practically at the last hour, the meeting I
have described. The more our ordinary abstract mental
pictures are obscured by a state of dreaminess the stronger
our power to attract karmic connections. Naturally, it is
also possible in ordinary life to take note of things and
adjust one's actions accordingly. But here we are concerned
with a person of a dreamy disposition who, not in full
consciousness, but while in a dreamy state brings about
— just before going through the portal of death —
the opportunity that enables him to meet the other person
once more.
Such fine, more
delicate connections must be recognized for what they are
— namely, a source of enrichment for man's inner life,
an enrichment that provides the striving human being with a
perspective on life between death and new birth. One must
become more attentive to finer details in the present life
and seek out threads between events in which human beings
themselves are involved. Certainly these things must not be
understood materialistically. What I have said must not be
taken to mean that Stepniak brought about the meeting with
Bernstein through some kind of inner force of attraction.
That would be a materialistic and completely wrong
interpretation. These things must not be regarded in such a
crude manner as though they could be proved by
natural-scientific means. When dealing with such delicate
issues one must not expect to be able to pin them down as if
they were something material, but be satisfied if one thing
or another becomes clearer through the description of such
hidden connections. To become accustomed to observe life in
accordance with such delicate relationships is to enrich the
life of soul. All relationships dealt with in spiritual
science are basically of this delicate nature. That is why
the study of spiritual science enriches life.
Thus, when we
seek out the kind of connections I described earlier, in
which human beings are less directly involved, we enrich and
strengthen the shadow-like I, which we bear within us as a
seed that will evolve only in our next incarnation, whereas
connections in which human beings are directly involved,
enrich life by awakening sensitivity and awareness for the
region we pass through between death and new birth. It is a
strange fact that many a person who is well able to seek out
such connections fails to notice them because they are
interpreted materialistically. Many important passages in
Goethe's works can be understood only if it is recognized
that Goethe does not want to be pinned down in a
materialistic sense. One has to realize that his style when
writing such passages was his way of describing events which,
as it were, take their course beneath the surface of
life.
It is a mistake
to believe that the I can be enriched in a way that
leads to enhanced self-knowledge by delving into oneself in
the crude manner described, for example, by Waldo Trine. The
opposite is true; to become strong one must strive to become
free from oneself. That is why those who advise people to
seek within themselves instead of leading them away from
themselves are basically bad guides to self-knowledge. The
aim should rather be to seek within the world those hidden
connections between events which must be sought with effort,
as they are not the kind one is apt to stumble across.
Just as one
encounters pitfalls in regard to the I that lives in us as
thought picture, so are there pitfalls in regard to the
I that lives in the will. In ordinary life we know
it no better than the I we depict in our thinking.
That such is the case is shown by the fact that people, for
example Theodor Ziehen, to whom I referred recently, simply
ignore the will.
[ Note 9 ]
They cannot discover the will in modern man, and this has a
certain justification in the sense I have indicated in public
lectures at various places. Franz Brentano ruled out the will
altogether and differentiated in the soul the activity of
forming mental pictures, the making of judgments, and the
feelings fluctuating between love and hate.
[ Note 10 ]
Consequently he did not
deal with the will, not even in his work on psychology. And
it is true to say that when one looks at the human being as
he is in his present incarnation, one does not find the will
as such. According to the modern view the will is what brings
man satisfaction or disappointment, pleasure or pain and so
on. In other words, all that one finds in place of the will
are moods and feelings; the will itself remains hidden.
Let us say you
lift your hand; you may be aware of a certain mental picture
or a feeling in so doing, but what actually occurs within the
body when the hand lifts, of that you are completely unaware.
Nowhere can one find the will in man today. But why? Because
the will is not in him. The I that lives in the will
is not within present-day man. What is effective in him is
something that works across from his previous incarnation.
What comes from the I of his previous life acts in
him now, as will. When I say, I am, I live within the seed of
my next incarnation; when I say, I will, I live in what acts
across from my previous incarnation.
It is of great
importance to become aware of these facts, not least because
they explain why it is so easy to be misled in this area.
When a person says, I will this or that, and carries out an
action, will flows into him from his previous incarnation,
whereas his satisfaction or dissatisfaction in life depend
upon himself as he is now, and the circumstances of his
present incarnation. You will realize what mysterious
connections we are dealing with. However, in ordinary life
they are felt as if they were jumbled together. People
believe the I is a kind of substantial something
hidden in their inner being and that they express this
something at different times variously as: “I
think,” “I was,” “I am,”
“I will.” But things are not like that. When I
say, “I am,” I rely on a force which I have
within me, the way this year's plant has within it the seed
that will develop only next year. Thus when I say, “I
am,” I am within a force which becomes a human being in
a future incarnation. When I say, “I will,” I act
out of a force that was in me in a former life on earth.
When this has
been grasped one realizes that it is only as far as our life
of feeling is concerned that we are — as the
philosophers express it — in modus praesens, in the
actual present. The only soul force that is fully real in our
present life is that of feeling. Our being is interwoven with
time in a threefold manner; there exists in us something that
works across from the previous incarnation, what we feel now,
and something whose effect carries over into the next
incarnation. Just as this year's plant grows from the dried
seed of the previous year, so does our will, which gradually
flows into the world, issue from the I that was the dried
seed in the previous incarnation, whereas the seed for the
incarnation to come is what we now think of as the I. That is
why I could write in the article that appeared in the April
1916 issue of the Bern periodical
The Realm:
“Our path through the spiritual world can be traversed
when we discover what thinking and willing encompass,”
because neither thinking nor willing live in us as something
belonging exclusively to the present life.
[ Note 11 ]
Rather, they point through
their spiritual connection from a former life on earth across
to a future one. Feeling, on the other hand, we experience
now directly in its spiritual reality, which is why feeling
cannot be developed through inner initiative; we can only
guide it, whereas thinking and will can be transformed
through concentration and meditation.
Many people
will ask: How do I attain a closer relationship with the
being we speak of as the Christ? One cannot give a simple
formula as answer. The whole of spiritual science deals with
issues which, through their very nature, lead to the realm in
which Christ lives. As you all know, only once, at the time
of the Mystery of Golgotha, did Christ walk on the earth as a
physical human being. Only then was it possible to know Him
as one can know a physical person in physical surroundings.
If today one wants to draw near to Christ one must seek Him
in the form in which He now lives within the earthly sphere.
He must be sought in life's finer, more intimate connections
like those of which we have spoken today. Schooling oneself
to seek out such delicate connections between remote events
enables one to raise oneself into that region of
consciousness in which the Christ can be truly experienced.
What I have just said can of course also be taken in a crude
materialistic sense. Someone could say I am implying that one
cannot comprehend the Christ with the ordinary thinking that
one applies to physical objects. People who speak like that
are really expressing the opinion that things only qualify if
they can be depicted in one's mind the way one depicts
natural objects. This is the attitude of the materialist; no
possibility exists to kindle in him awareness of the
spiritual.
Let us for a
moment imagine a being so constituted that it could be
detected only in dreams. No physical sense could perceive it,
nor could it be grasped by ordinary thinking. A person who
wanted to gain knowledge of such a being would have to
develop the art of dreaming, otherwise the being would not
exist for him. It would not be the being's fault if he could
not perceive it but his own, due to his inability to do so.
People make arbitrary demands concerning the qualities
something should possess, and if they are lacking, it is
dismissed as unreal. It must be realized that in order to be
able to be aware of and perceive things which are not of the
same nature as external objects, a different thinking must be
developed; in fact, an altogether different inner attitude.
The important thing is to recognize that we must adapt
ourselves to approach such beings, not the other way
round.
One could wish
that the words could be found which would enable people to
overcome their materialistic outlook and discover the subtler
aspect of life. Even the most worthwhile people do not find
it easy to enter into the kinds of things I have explained
today. Such matters are ridiculed and regarded as the product
of fantasy, to which we could reply, Very well, regard it as
fantasy, but the point is that the beings and things of which
we are talking are so constituted that, unless you have the
power of fantasy, you cannot become aware of them. They
reveal their true reality only to those who possess fantasy.
As I said one wishes the words could be found that make clear
how necessary it is, especially in our time, to entertain
such subtle thoughts in one's mind. Such concepts may be
subtle, but they make the soul strong, so strong that it
becomes able to comprehend the true essence of things. The
soul discovers that it can penetrate far deeper into the real
connections of things than is possible with a thinking that
is schooled solely on the mental pictures derived from
today's materialistic, natural-scientific outlook.
Today one finds
that even those with eminent minds have forgotten how to
engender the necessary subtlety. In the last lecture I made
it clear that I have the highest regard for Franz Brentano,
not least because he did, through his study of Aristotle,
develop subtlety of thinking up to a point. As I said he
could not accept spiritual science. This was due to many
things, but principally it was because he still lacked the
necessary mobility of thinking to penetrate to the spiritual
aspect of things. One must at least strive to attain it. When
people read my
Theosophy
or the second part of
Occult Science,
one can often discover from what
emerges just why their thinking stumbles.
[ Note 12 ]
[ Note 13 ]
The same can be said in
regard to Brentano. I would indeed have found it
incomprehensible that a sensitive and astute thinker like
Brentano should be unable to find the way, had I not
succeeded in discovering an exact instance that reveals just
where the difficulty lies. There are others, of course, but
let me give you an example.
Brentano said:
Whatever the soul consists of, as far as the substance in
which it lives is concerned, it must be capable of
individualization, for one can divide certain lower
creatures, and each part will continue life with the same
characteristics the creature had before being divided. You
will know that this is possible with certain lower worms;
they are unaffected if divided, and live on as two separate
worms. From this Brentano concluded that an independent soul
must be present in each separate piece. In other words, if a
worm is divided in two and both parts continue to live, there
must be a soul in each. He further concluded from this that
the soul and the body must be one unity. He made a comparison
which convinced him that his view was right. He compared the
event of the worm with a triangle saying that the triangle
divides into two triangles if a line is drawn through it. So
he compared two concepts: that of dividing a worm in two and
that of dividing a triangle in two, and let one explain the
other. He considered the two concepts to be of equal
simplicity and able to explain one another. But is it a valid
comparison? For Brentano it was an important issue. But does
it stand up to scrutiny? It does not. Let us say you have
here a triangle; if you draw a line through it in a certain
way, it does indeed divide into two triangles. Each half is a
triangle just as the worm when divided becomes two worms.
However, if you divide the, triangle differently, one of the
parts becomes not a triangle but a quadrangle. In other
words, only under certain circumstances do you get two
triangles.
An intelligent,
astute man makes a comparison, but it is invalid; his
thinking is not sufficiently mobile, not sufficiently alive
to find a valid one; he stumbles, with serious consequence.
Had he not been misled into thinking that dividing a worm in
two could be compared to dividing a triangle in two, he would
have stayed on the right course. Dividing a worm into two
parts has nothing whatever to do with two souls. One and the
same group is effective in both parts. One could compare it
with someone looking at his image in a mirror. If the mirror
is broken in two, he has two images; yet he himself remains
whole. Not the person but the mirror has become divided.
Likewise the worm soul cannot be divided; it endures as does
the person who sees two images of himself in the mirrors.
Thus one and the same soul is present in the two parts of the
worm; that is the true concept corresponding to the reality.
That concept Brentano could not reach; his thinking was not
mobile enough and had become deluded by a false comparison.
Had he made the comparison correctly, he would have noticed
as he divided the triangle that the mere act of dividing does
not guarantee that the result will be two triangles. In order
to get that result something else must be added, namely, the
concept triangle, which is to be applicable to both parts
after the division. Without the concept the result may
require two different concepts; i.e., that of quadrangle as
well as that of triangle. The comparison could have been
valid if it had occurred to him that he had to use one and
the same concept for both parts, and that it was this concept
that guaranteed the division would result in two triangles.
It did not occur to him, consequently he did not recognize
that one and the same worm soul was effective in both pieces
of worm, effective in the sense that it looked into the parts
from outside, like someone looking into two mirrors.
The need for
greater subtlety of thinking is evident in all spheres of
life. We shall not progress unless thinking becomes more
alive and mobile so that it will cease to cling to crude
externalities. There never have been more obstacles to making
thinking more alive. For that very reason it is all the more
necessary to promote science of one spirit. Only by working
with subtler concepts does thinking become active and mobile.
Through their very nature, the concepts of spiritual science
have the power to strengthen the human I. What is longed for
today may be satisfied by other means. But only spiritual
science can give the human being real inner strength by
awakening in him lucid concepts that are not so readily
available, concepts which, just because they do not depict
life's external aspects, make us inwardly strong, which means
capable of recognizing the reality, the essence of
things.
We shall
continue next time to look at important issues from a wider
perspective.
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