LECTURE 10
The Influence of the Backward Angels
Dornach, 20 October 1917
It cannot be said that our present age has
no ideals. On the contrary, it has a great many ideals which,
however, are not viable. Why is this so? Well, imagine
— please forgive the somewhat bizarre image, but it
does meet the case — a hen is about to hatch a chick
and we take the egg away and hatch it out in a warm place,
letting the chick emerge from the egg. So far so good; but if
we were to do the same thing under the receiving part of an
air pump and therefore in a vacuum, do you think the chick
emerging from the egg would thrive? We would have all the
developmental factors which evolution has given except for
one thing — somewhere to put the chick for it to have
the necessary conditions for life.
This is more or
less how it is with the beautiful ideals people talk about so
much today. Not only do they sound beautiful, but they are
indeed ideals of great value. But the people of today are not
inclined to face the realities of evolution, though the
present age demands this. And so it happens that the oddest
kinds of societies may evolve, representing and demanding all
kinds of ideals, and yet nothing comes of it. There were
certainly plenty of societies with ideals at the beginning of
the twentieth century, but it cannot be said that the last
three years have brought those ideals to realization. People
should learn something from this, however — as I have
said a number of times in these lectures.
Last Sunday (14
October) I sketched a diagram to show the spiritual
development of the last decades. I asked you to take into
account that anything which happens in the physical world has
been in preparation for some time in the spiritual world. I
was speaking of something quite concrete, namely the battle
which began in the 1840s in the spiritual world lying
immediately above our own. This was a metamorphosis of the
battles which are always given the ancient symbol of the
battle fought by St Michael against the dragon. I told you
that this battle continued until November 1879, and after
this Michael gained the victory — and the dragon, that
is the ahrimanic powers, were cast down into the human
sphere. Where are they now?
Now consider
this carefully — the powers from the school of Ahriman
which fought a decisive battle in the spiritual world between
1841 and 1879 were cast down into the human realm in 1879.
Since then their fortress, their field of activity, is in the
thinking, the inner responses and the will impulses of human
beings, and this is specifically the case in the epoch in
which we now are.
You must
realize that infinitely many of the thoughts in human minds
today are full of ahrimanic powers, as are their will
impulses and inner responses. Events like these which play
between the spiritual and the physical worlds are part of the
great scheme of things; they are concrete facts which have to
be reckoned with. What good is it to get bogged down in
abstractions over and over again and to say something as
abstract as: ‘Human beings must fight Ahriman.’ Such an
abstract formula will get us nowhere. At the present time
some people have not the least idea of the fact that they are
in an atmosphere full of spirits. This is something which has
to be considered in all its significance.
If you consider
just this — that as a member of the Anthroposophical
Society you are in a position to hear of these things and to
occupy your thoughts and feelings with them — you will
be aware of the full seriousness of the matter and that you
have a task today, depending on your particular place in this
present time, which is so full of riddles, so much open to
question and so confused. You have to bring to this the best
kinds of feelings and inner responses of which you are
capable. Let us take the following example. Suppose a handful
of people who have naturally come together and become
friends, know of the spiritual situation I have described and
of other, similar ones, whilst many other people do not know
of them. You can be sure that if this hypothetical group of
people were to decide to use the power they are able to gain
from such knowledge for a particular purpose, the group
— and its followers, though these would tend to be
unaware of this — would be extremely powerful compared
to people who have no idea of this and do not want to know of
such things.
Precisely such
a group existed in the eighteenth century and still continues
today. A certain group of people knew of the facts of which I
have spoken; they knew that the events I have described as
happening in the nineteenth and on into the twentieth century
would happen. In the eighteenth century this group decided to
pursue certain aims which were in their own interests and to
work towards certain impulses. This was done quite
systematically.
The masses of
humanity go through life as if asleep, without thought; they
are completely unaware of what is going on in groups, some of
them quite large, which may be right next door. Today, more
than ever, people are much given up to illusion. Just
consider the way in which many people keep saying today: ‘lt
is amazing how effective modern communications are and how
this brings people together! Everybody hears about everybody
else! This is totally different from the way it was in
earlier times.’ You will recall all the things people tend to
say on the subject. But we only need to take a cool, rational
view of some specific instances to find some very odd things
going on in modern times. Who would believe, for example
— I am merely giving an illustration — that the
Press, which understands everything and goes into everything,
would ever fail to make new literary works widely known? You
would not think, would you, that profound, significant,
epochmaking literary works would remain unknown? Surely we
must hear of them in some way or other? Well, in the second
half of the nineteenth century, ‘the Press’, as we call it
today — with due respect — was in the early
stages of becoming what it is today. A new literary work
appeared at that time which was more epoch-making and of more
radical importance than all the well-known authors taken
together, people like Spielhagen,
[ Note 1 ]
Gustav Freytag,
[ Note 2 ]
Paul Heyse
[ Note 3 ]
and many others whose works went through numerous editions.
The work in question was Dreizehnlinden by Wilhelm Weber,
[ Note 4 ]
and it really was more widely read in the last third
of the nineteenth century than any other work. But I ask you,
how many people in this room do not know of the existence of
Wilhelm Weber's Dreizehnlinden? You see how people live
alongside each other, in spite of the Press. Profoundly
radical ideas are presented in beautiful, poetic language in
Dreizehnlinden, and these are alive today in the hearts and
minds of thousands of people.
I have spoken
of this to show that it is entirely possible today for the
mass of people to know nothing of radically new developments
which are right on their doorstep. You may be sure, if there
is anyone here who has not read Dreizehnlinden — and I
assume there must be some among our friends — that
these individuals must nevertheless know three or four people
who have read it. The barriers separating people are such
that some of the most important things simply are not
discussed among friends. People do not talk to each other.
The instance I have given concerns only a minor matter in
terms of world history, but the same applies to major
matters. Things are going on in the world which many people
fail to see clearly.
Thus it also
happened that in the eighteenth century a society spread
certain views and ideas which were taking root in people's
minds and became effective in achieving the aims of such
societies. The ideas entered into the social sphere and
determined people's attitudes to others. People do not know
the sources of many things that live in their emotions, inner
responses and will impulses. Those who understand the
processes of evolution do know, however, how impulses and
emotions are produced. This was the case with a book
published by such a society in the eighteenth century —
perhaps not the book itself, but the ideas on which it was
based; the book shows the way in which Ahriman is involved in
different animals. The ahrimanic Spirit was, of course,
called the devil then, and it was shown how the devil
principle comes to expression in different ways in individual
animal species. The Age of
Enlightenment was at its height in the eighteenth century,
and, of course, enlightenment still flourishes today. Really
clever people, many of them to be found as members of the
Press, managed to turn it into a joke and say, ‘Once again,
some ... — I'm putting dot dot dot here — has
written a book to say that animals are devils!’ Ah, but to
spread ideas like these in such a way in the eighteenth
century that they would take root in the minds of many
people, and in doing so take account of the true laws of
human evolution — that really had an effect. For it was
important that the idea that animals were devils should exist
in many minds by the time Darwinism came along and the idea
would then arise in many nineteenth-century minds that people
had gradually evolved from animals. At the same time, large
numbers of other people had the idea that animals were
devils. A strange accord was thus produced. As this really
happened, it was perfectly real. People write histories about
all kinds of things, but the forces which are really at work
are not to be found in them.
We
need to consider the following: animals can only thrive if
they have air — not in the vacuum to be found under the
receiver of an air pump. In the same way, ideas and ideals
can only thrive if human beings enter into the real
atmosphere of spiritual life. This means, however, that
spiritual life must be encountered as a reality. Today,
people like generalities better than most other things. And
they easily fail to notice that since 1879 ahrimanic powers
have been forced to descend from the spiritual world into the
human realm — this is a fact. They had to penetrate
human intellectuality, human thinking, responses and
perceptions. And we will not find the right attitude to those
powers by simply using the abstract formula: ‘Those powers
must be fought.’ Well, what are people doing to fight them?
What they are doing is no different from asking the stove to
be nice and warm, yet failing to put in wood and light the
fire. The first thing we must know is that, seeing that these
powers have come down to earth, we must live with them; they
exist and we cannot close our eyes to them, for they will be
more powerful than ever if we do this. This is indeed the
point: The ahrimanic powers which have taken hold of the
human intellect become extremely powerful if we do not want
to know them or learn about them.
The
ideal of many people is to study science and then apply
the laws of science to the social sphere. They only want to
consider anything which is ‘real’, meaning anything which can
be perceived by the senses, and never give a thought to the
things of the spirit. If this ideal were to be achieved by a
large section of humanity the ahrimanic powers would have
gained their purpose, for people would then not know they
existed. A monistic religion similar to Haeckel's
materialistic monism
[ Note 5 ]
would be established and prove to be
the perfect field for the work of these powers. It would suit
them very well if people did not know they existed, for they
could then work in the subconscious.
One
way to help the ahrimanic powers, therefore, is to
establish an entirely naturalistic religion. If David
Friedrich Strauss
[ Note 6 ]
had fully achieved his ideal, which was to
establish the narrow-minded religion which prompted Nietzsche
to write an essay about him,
[ Note 7 ]
the ahrimanic powers would feel
even more at ease today than they do already. This is only
one way, however. The ahrimanic powers will also thrive if
people nurture the elements which they desire to spread among
people today: prejudice, ignorance and fear of the life of
the spirit. There is no better way of encouraging them.
Just
think how many people there are today who actually make
it their business to foster prejudice, ignorance and fear of
the spiritual powers. As I said in yesterday's public
lecture,
[ Note 8 ]
the decrees against Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and
others were not lifted until 1835. This means that until then
Catholics were forbidden to study anything relating to the
Copernican view, and so on. Ignorance in this respect was
actively promoted, and gave an enormous boost to the
ahrimanic powers. This was a real service given to those
powers, for it gave them the opportunity to make thorough
preparations for the campaign they would start in 1841.
A
second statement should really follow the one I have just
made to render it complete. However, this second statement
cannot yet be made public by anyone who is truly initiated
into these things. But if you get a feeling of what lies behind
the words I have spoken, you may perhaps gain an idea of what
is implied.
The
scientific view is entirely ahrimanic. We do not fight it
by refusing to know about it, however, but by being as
conscious of it as possible and really getting to know it.
You can do no better service for Ahriman than to ignore the
scientific view or to fight it out of ignorance. Uninformed
criticism of scientific views does not go against Ahriman,
but helps him to spread illusion and confusion in a field
which should really be shown in a clear light.
People
must gradually come to the realization that everything
has two sides. Modern people are so clever, are they not?
— infinitely clever; and these clever modern people say
the following: In the fourth post-Atlantean age, in the time
of ancient Greece and Rome, people superstitiously believed
that the future could be told from the way birds would be
flying, from the entrails of animals and all kinds of other
things. They were silly old fools, of course. The fact is
that none of these scornful modern people actually know how
the predictions were made. And everybody still talks just
like the individual whom I gave as an example the other day,
[ Note 9 ]
who had to admit that the prophesy given in a dream had come
true, but went on to say: Well, it was as chance would have it.
Yet
conditions were such in the fourth post-Atlantean age
that there really was a science which considered the future.
Then, people would not have been able to think that the kind
of principles which are applied today would achieve anything
in a developing social life. They could not have gained the
great perspectives of a social nature, which went far beyond
their own time, if they had not had a ‘science’, as it were,
of the future. Believe me, everything people achieve today in
the field of social life and politics is actually still based
on the fruits of that old science of the future. This,
however, cannot be gained by observing the things that
present themselves to the senses. It can never be gained by
using the modern scientific approach; for anything we observe
in the outside world with the senses makes a science of the
past. Let me tell you a most important
law of the universe: If you merely consider the world as it
presents itself to the senses, which is the modern scientific
approach, you observe past laws which are still continuing.
You are really only observing the corpse of a past world.
Science is looking at life that has died.
Imagine
this is our field of observation
(Fig. 10a, white circle),
shown in diagrammatic form; this is what we have
before our eyes, our ears and our other senses. Imagine this
(yellow circle) to be all the scientific laws capable of
being discovered. These laws do not relate to what is in
there now, but to what has been there, what has been and gone
and remains only in a hardened form. You need to find the
things that are outside those laws, things which eyes cannot
see and physical ears cannot hear: a second world with
different laws (mauve circle). This is present inside
reality, but it points to the future.
Figure 10a.
The
situation with the world is just like the situation you
get with a plant. The true plant is not the plant we see
today; something is mysteriously inside it which cannot yet
be seen and will only be visible to the eyes in the following
year — the primitive germ. It is present in the plant,
but it is invisible. In the same way the world which presents
itself to our eyes holds the whole future in it, though this
is not visible. It also holds the past, but this has withered
and dried up and is now a corpse. Everything naturalists
look at is merely the image of a ‘corpse, of something
past and gone. It is also true, of course, that this past
aspect would be missing if we considered the spiritual aspect
only. However, the invisible element must be included if we
are to have the complete reality. How can it be that people
on the one hand set up Laplace's
theory and on the other hand talk about the end of the world
in the way Professor Dewar
[ Note 10 ]
does — I spoke of
this in yesterday's public lecture. He construes that when
the world comes to an end, people will read their newspapers
at several hundred degrees below zero in the light of
luminous protein painted on the walls; milk will be solid. I
would love to know how people are going to milk such solid
milk! Those are completely untenable ideas, as is the whole
of Laplace's theory. All these theories come to nothing as
soon as one goes beyond the field of immediate observation,
and this is because they are theories of corpses, of things
which are dead.
Clever
people will say today that the priests of ancient
Greece and Rome were either scoundrels and swindlers or that
they were superstitious, for no one in their right mind can
believe it is possible to discover anything about the future
from the flight of birds and the entrails of animals. In time
to come, people will be able to look down on the ideas of
which people are so proud today; they will feel just as
clever then as the present generation does now in looking
down on the Roman priests conducting their sacrifices.
Speaking of Laplace's theory and of Dewar they will say:
Those were strange superstitions. People in the past observed
a few millennia in earth evolution and drew conclusions from
this as to the initial and final states of the earth. How
foolish those superstitions were! Imagine the way in which
those peculiar, superstitious people spoke of the sun and the
planets separating out from a nebula and everything beginning
to rotate. The things they will be saying about Laplace's
theory and Dewar's ideas concerning the end of the world will
be much worse than anything people are saying today about
finding out about the future from sacrificial animals, the
flight of birds and so on.
They
are so high and mighty, these people who have entered
fully into the Spirit and attitudes of scientific thinking
and look down on the old myths and tales. ‘Humanity was
childish then, with people taking dreams seriously! Just
think how far we have come since then: today we know that
everything is governed by a law of causality; we've certainly
come a long way.’ Everyone who thinks like this fails to
realize one thing: The whole of modern science would not
exist, especially where it has its justification, if people
had not earlier thought in myths. You cannot have modern
science unless it is preceded by myth; it has grown out of
the myths of old and you could no more have it today than you
could have a plant with only stems, leaves and flowers and no
root down below. People who talk of modern science as an
absolute, complete in itself, might as well talk of a plant
which is alive only in its upper part. Everything connected
with modern science has grown from myth; myth is its root.
There are elemental spirits which observe these things from
the other worlds and they howl with hell's own derision when
today's mighty clever professors look down on the mythologies
of old, and on all the media of ancient superstition, having
not the least idea that they and all their cleverness have
grown from those myths and that not a single justifiable idea
they hold today would be tenable if it were not for those
myths. Something else, too, causes those elemental spirits to
howl with hell's own derision — and we can say hell's
own, for it suits the ahrimanic powers very well to have
occasion for such derision — and this is to see
scientists believe that they now have the theories of
Copernicus, they have Galileo's ideas, they have this
splendiferous law of the conservation of energy and this will
never change and will be the same for ever and ever. A
shortsighted view! Myth relates to our ideas just as the
scientific ideas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
relate to what will be a few centuries later. They will be
overcome just as myth has been overcome. Do you think people
will think about the solar system in 2900 in the way people
think about it today? It may be the academics' superstition,
but it should never be a superstition held among
anthroposophists.
The
justifiable ideas people have today, ideas which do
indeed have some degree of greatness in the present time,
arose from the mythology which evolved in the time of ancient
Greece. Of course, nothing could possibly delight modern
people more than to think: Ah, if only the ancient Greeks had
been so fortunate as to have our modern science! But if the
Greeks had had our modern science, then there could have been
no knowledge of the Greek gods, no world of Homer, Sophocles,
Aeschylus, Plato or Aristotle. Dr Faust's servant Wagner
would be a veritable Dr Faust himself compared to the Wagners
we would have today!
[ Note 11 ]
Human thinking would be dry as dust,
empty and corrupt, for the vitality in our thinking has its
roots in Greek and altogether fourth post-Atlantean
mythology. Anyone who considers mythology to have been wrong
and modern thinking to be right, is like someone who cannot
see the need for roses to grow on bushes, making it necessary
for us to cut them if we want to have a bouquet. Why should
they not come into existence entirely on their own?
So
you see, the people who consider themselves to be the most
enlightened today are living with entirely unrealistic ideas.
The ideas evolved in the fourth post-Atlantean age seem like
dreams rather than clearly defined ideas to the people of our
present age; yet that particular way of thinking has provided
the basis for what we are today. The thoughts we are able to
evolve today will in turn provide the basis for the next age.
They can only do so, however, if they evolve not only in the
one direction, where they wither and dry up, but also in the
direction of life. The breath of life comes into our thinking
when we try and bring the things which exist to consciousness
and also when we perceive the element which gives us a
wideawake mind and makes us into people who are awake.
Since
1879 the situation is like this: people go to school
and acquire scientific attitudes and thinking; their
philosophy of life is then based on this scientific approach
and they believe only the things which can be perceived in
the world around us to be real, whilst everything else is
purely imaginary. When people think like this, and infinitely
many people do so today, Ahriman has the upper hand in the
game and the ahrimanic powers are doing well. Who are these
ahrimanic powers which have established their fortresses in
human minds since 1879? They
are certainly not human. They are angels, but they are
backward angels, angels who are not following their proper
course of evolution and therefore no longer know how to
perform their proper function in the spiritual world that is
next to our own. If they still knew how to do it, they would
not have been cast down in 1879. They now want to perform
their function with the aid of human brains. They are one
level lower in human brains than they should be. ‘Monistic’
thinking, as it is called today, is not really done by
humans. People often speak of the science of economics today,
a science in which it was said at the time when the war
started that it would be over in four months — I
mentioned this again yesterday. When these things are said by
scientists — it does not matter so much if people
merely repeat them — they are the thoughts of angels
who have made themselves at home in human heads. Yes, the
human intellect is to be taken over more and more by such
powers; they want to use it to bring their own lives to
fruition. We cannot stand up to this by putting our heads in
the sand like ostriches, but only by consciously entering
into the experience. We cannot deal with this by not knowing
what monists think, for example, but only by knowing it; we
must also know that it is Ahriman science, the science of
backward angels who infest human heads, and we must know
about the truth and the reality.
Of
course, it can be said like this here, using the
appropriate terms — ahrimanic powers — because we
take these things seriously. You know that you cannot speak
like this to people outside, for they are totally unprepared.
This is one of the barriers which divide us from others; but
it is, of course, possible to find ways and means of speaking
to them in such a way that the truth comes into what we say.
If there were not a place where the truth can be said, this
would also deprive us of the possibility of letting it enter
into the profane science outside these walls. There must be
at least some places where the truth can be presented in an
honest, straightforward way. Yet we must never forget that
even people who have made a connection with the science of
the spirit often have almost insuperable difficulties in
building the bridge to the realm of ahrimanic
science. I have met a number of people who were extremely
well informed in a particular field of ahrimanic science,
being good scientists, orientalists, etc., and had also made
the connection with our spiritual research. I have gone to a
great deal of trouble to encourage them to build bridges.
Think of what could have been achieved if a physiologist or a
biologist who had all the specialized knowledge which it is
possible to gain in such fields today had reconsidered
physiology or biology in the light of the spirit, not exactly
using our terminology, but considering those individual
sciences in our spirit! I have tried it with orientalists.
You see, people may be good followers of anthroposophy, and
on the other hand they are orientalists and work in the way
orientalists do. They are not prepared, however, to build the
bridge from one to the other. This, however, is the urgent
need in our time. For, as I said, the ahrimanic powers are
doing well if people believe that science gives a true image
of the world around us. If, on the other hand, we use
spiritual science and the inner attitude which arises from
it, the ahrimanic powers do not do so well. This spiritual
science takes hold of the whole human being. It makes you
into another person; you come to feel differently, to have
different will impulses, and to relate to the world in a
different way.
It
is indeed true, and initiates have always said so: ‘When
human beings are filled with spiritual wisdom, these are
great horrors of darkness for the ahrimanic powers and a
consuming fire. It feels good to the ahrimanic angels to
dwell in heads filled with ahrimanic science; but heads
filled with spiritual wisdom are like a consuming fire and
the horrors of darkness to them.’ If we consider this in all
seriousness we can feel: filled with spiritual wisdom we go
through the world in a way which allows us to establish the
right relationship with the ahrimanic powers; doing the
things we do in the light of this, we build a place for the
consuming fire of sacrifice for the salvation of the world,
the place where the terror of darkness radiates out over the
harmful ahrimanic element.
Let
those ideas and feelings enter into you! You will then be
awake and see the things that go on in the world. The
eighteenth century really saw the last remnants of the old
atavistic science die. The adherents of Saint-Martin, the
‘unknown philosopher,’ who was a student of Jacob Boehme,
had some of the old atavistic wisdom and also considerable
foreknowledge of what then was to come, and in our day has
come. In those circles it was often said that from the last
third of the nineteenth century and the first half of the
twentieth century a kind of knowledge would radiate out which
had its roots in the same sources, the same soil, where
certain human diseases have their roots — I spoke of
this last Sunday (14 October); people's views would then be
rooted in falsehood, and their inner feelings would come from
selfishness.
Let
your eyes become seeing eyes in the light of the inner
feelings of which we have spoken today and let them see what
is alive and active in the present time! It may well be that
your hearts grow sore with some of the things you find. This
does no harm, however, for clear perception, even if painful,
will bear good fruit today, fruit which is needed if we are
to get out of the Chaos into which humanity has entered.
The
first thing, or one of the first things, will have to be
a science of education. And one of the first principles to be
applied in this field is one which is much sinned against
today. More important than anything you can teach and
consciously give to boys and girls, or to young men and
women, are the things that enter unconsciously into their
souls whilst they are being educated. In a recent public
lecture I spoke of the way in which our memory develops as
though in the subconscious, and parallel to our conscious
inner life. This is something especiaily to be taken into
account in education. Educators must provide the soul not
only with what children understand but also with ideas they
do not yet understand, which enter mysteriously into their
souls and — this is important — are brought out
again later in life. We are coming closer and closer to a
time when people will need more and more memories of their
youth throughout the whole of their lives, memories they
like, memories which make them happy. Education must learn to
provide systematically for this. It will be poison in the
education of the future if later on in life people look back
on the toil and trouble of their schooldays, on the years of
education, and do not like
to think back to those days. It will be poison if the years
of education have not provided a source to which they can
return again and again to learn new things. On the other
hand, if one has learned everything there is to be learned on
a subject, nothing will be left for later on.
If
you think on this, you will see that principles of great
consequence will have to be the future guidelines for life,
and this in a very different way from what is considered to
be right today. It would be good for humanity if the hard
lessons to be learned in the present time were not slept
through by so many, and people would use them instead to
become really familiar with the thought that a great many
things will have to change. People have grown much too
complacent in recent times and this prevents them from
comprehending this thought in its full depth and, above all,
also in its full intensity.
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