1
You
will remember our considering various views and statements
associated nowadays with the psycho-analysts.
[See
Psycho-Analysis in the Light of Anthroposophy
(published in U.S.A.).]
The essential point was to bring out clearly the
fact that the idea of the unconscious which prevails in
psychoanalysis is unfounded. As long as this idea —
a purely negative idea — persists, we are bound to say
that psychoanalysis is approaching with inadequate means
of knowledge a phenomenon of quite special importance for
our time. And because the psycho-analysts are trying to explore
the mind and soul and — as we have seen — to study
their implications for social life, we must say that their way
of approach is far more significant than anything academic
studies have to offer in the same field. On the other hand,
because psycho-analysis is trying, through pedagogy and
therapeutics, and soon, probably, through social and political
ideas, to carry its influence deeply into human living, so the
dangers bound up with such an approach must always be taken
very seriously.
Now
the question arises: What really is it that these modern
researchers cannot reach and do not want to reach? They
recognise that a soul-element exists outside consciousness;
they search for it outside consciousness; but they cannot bring
themselves to the point of recognising the spirit itself.
The spirit can never be grasped through the idea of the
unconscious, for unconscious spirit is like a man without a
head. I have indeed called your attention to the fact that
there are people, victims of certain hysterical conditions, who
when they walk about in the streets see people only as bodies,
minus their heads. That is a definite malady. So among
present-day researchers there are some who believe they
can discern the entire spirit, but as they suppose it to be
unconscious, they show that they are under the delusion that an
unconscious spirit, a spirit without consciousness, would be
found by anyone who crosses the threshold — whether in
the right sense, as described on the ground of
spiritual-scientific research, or because of the kind of
abnormal malady that comes to the attention of the
psycho-analysts.
When we cross the threshold of consciousness, we always come
into a realm of spirit; whether it is a subconscious or a
super-conscious realm makes no difference. We always enter a
realm where the spirit is in some sense conscious, where it
displays a consciousness of some kind. We have to find out the
conditions under which a given form of consciousness prevails;
we must even gain through Spiritual Science the possibility of
recognising which kind of consciousness a particular
spirituality has.
I
have told you of the case of the lady who leaves a party, runs
in front of a cab-horse, is restrained from jumping into the
river and taken back to the house she had just left, so that
she is again under the same roof as the host, with whom she is
subconsciously in love. In such a case it should not be said
that the spirit which is outside the lady's consciousness, the
spirit which urges and directs her, is an unconscious part of
the soul: it is highly conscious. The consciousness of
this demonic spirit (which led the lady back to her unlawful
lover) is even much cleverer than is the lady in her upper
storey — I should say, her consciousness. And these
spirits, which are encountered whenever the threshold of
consciousness is crossed in one way or another, and are active
and potent there, are not unconscious; they are very
effectively conscious for the purpose of their own activities.
The phrase, “unconscious spirit,” as used by
the psycho-analysts, makes no sense: I could just as well say,
if I wished to speak merely from my own point of view, that the
whole distinguished company seated here are my unconscious,
supposing I knew nothing of them. Just as little can one
describe as “unconscious spirits” those spiritual
beings who are all around us, and who may lay hold of a
personality, as in the case I told you about a week ago. They
are not unconscious; they are outside the range of our
normal consciousness, but they are fully conscious on their own
account.
It
is extraordinarily important — precisely in connection
with the task of Spiritual Science in our time — to be
aware of this, for knowledge of the spiritual realm that lies
beyond the threshold, which means a knowledge of real,
conscious individualities, is not simply a discovery of
present-day Spiritual Science; it is in fact a primordial
knowledge. In earlier times it came through old, atavistic
clairvoyance. To-day it has to be attained gradually, by other
methods. But knowledge of these spiritual beings, who live
outside our consciousness under conditions different from ours,
but have an enduring relationship with human beings and can lay
hold of a person's thinking, feeling and willing —
this knowledge has always been there. And within certain
brotherhoods, who always looked on this knowledge as their
secret property, it was treated as highly esoteric. Why was
this so? To discuss this question fully would take us too far
just now, but it must be said that particular brotherhoods were
honestly convinced that the great majority of people were not
ripe for this knowledge. And indeed this was true up to a
certain point. But many other brotherhoods, called those
of the left, tried to keep this knowledge for themselves,
because when it is possessed by a small group, it gives them
power over others who do not have it. And so endeavours were
always made by certain groups to assure them power over others.
Thus it could come about that a certain kind of knowledge was
regarded as an esoteric possession, but was in fact utilised in
order to gain power over one thing or another.
In
this present time it is particularly necessary to be really
clear about these things. For you know that since 1879 mankind
has been living in a very special spiritual situation. Quite
particularly powerful spirits of darkness were then cast down
from the spiritual world into the human realm, and those
persons who in a wrongful way keep the secrets connected with
this event in the possession of their small groups are
able to bring about everything possible by this means.
Now I will first of all show you how certain secrets which
concern present-day developments can be wrongfully made use of.
You must then take care to bring what I am going to say to-day,
rather on historical lines, into close connection with what I
shall be adding to-morrow.
As
you all know, attention has often been called within our
movement to the fact that this century should bring human
evolution into a special relationship with the Christ, in the
sense that during this century — and even during the
first half of it — the event indicated in my first
Mystery Play is to come about: the Christ will appear to an
increasing number of people as a Being truly and immediately
present in the etheric realm.
Now
we know that we are living in the age of materialism, and
that since the middle of the nineteenth century this
materialism has reached its peak. But in reality opposites
always occur together. Precisely the high-point of materialism
is necessarily accompanied by that inward development which
makes it possible for the Christ to be really seen in the
etheric realm. You can understand that a disclosure of this
secret, concerning the etheric manifestation of Christ
and the resulting new relationship of the Christ to human
evolution, gives rise to resentment and ill-will among those
members of certain brotherhoods who wished to make use of this
event, the appearance of the etheric Christ, for their own
purposes and did not want it to become the common property of
mankind. There are brotherhoods — and brotherhoods always
influence public opinion by disseminating this or that in
such a way that it will disturb people as little as possible
— who put out the idea that the time of materialism will
soon be over, or indeed that it is already at an end. The poor,
pitiable “clever people,” who to-day are promoting
through so many gatherings and books and societies the idea
that materialism is finished and that something of the spirit
is now within reach, but without ever being able to offer
people more than the word “spirit” and little
phrases of a similar kind — these people are all more or
less in the service of those who have an interest in declaring
what is not true: that materialism is in ruins. That is far
from true: on the contrary, a materialistic outlook makes
progress and prospers best when people are taught that
they are no longer materialists. The materialistic outlook is
fast making headway and will continue to advance for some four
or five hundred years.
The
essential thing, as has often been emphasised here, is to be
clearly conscious of the facts. Mankind will begin to recover
when, through work in the life of the spirit, people come to
know and to see in its true light the fact that the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch is intended to create a materialistic
state of being out of the general stream of human evolution.
But all the more, then, must a spiritual state of being be set
in opposition to this materialism. What people in our epoch
must learn is the need to wage a fully conscious fight against
the evil that is making its way into human evolution. Just as
in the fourth epoch the struggle was to come to terms with
birth and death, so now we have to come to terms with evil.
Therefore the point is to grasp spiritual teaching with full
consciousness, not to throw sand in the eyes of our
contemporaries, as though the devil of materialism were not
there. Those who handle these matters in an unrightful way know
as well as I do about the event of the Christ-appearance, but
they deal with it differently. And to understand this, we must
pay attention to the following.
Now
that we are living in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, it is
quite wrong to say, as many people are comfortably fond
of saying: “During this life between birth and death, the
best thing is to give oneself over to living; whether after
death we enter a spiritual world will be revealed soon enough
— we can wait for that. Here and now we will enjoy our
life, as though only a material world exists; if we do pass
beyond death into a spiritual world, then we shall know whether
a spiritual world is there!” That is about as clever as
if someone were to take an oath and say: “As truly as
there is a God in Heaven, I am an atheist!” Yet there are
many people who take the line: “After death we shall know
what things are like there. Until then, there is no need to
occupy oneself with any kind of spiritual knowledge.”
This way of thinking has been very tempting always, in all
epochs, but in our epoch it is particularly disastrous, because
the temptation to indulge in it comes very close to people
owing to the power and prevalence of evil. When under
present-day conditions of evolution a man goes through the
portal of death, he takes with him the modes of consciousness
he has developed between birth and death. If he has occupied
himself entirely with concepts and ideas and experiences drawn
from the material world, the world of the senses, he condemns
himself to dwell after death in an environment related to those
ideas. While a man who has absorbed spiritual concepts enters
the spiritual world in the right way, a man who has refused to
accept them will have to remain tied to earthly
relationships in a certain sense, until — and it
takes a long time — he has learnt over there to absorb
enough spiritual ideas to carry him into the spiritual world.
Accordingly, whether or not we have absorbed spiritual ideas in
this life determines our environment over there. Many of those
— one can say it only with sympathy — who resisted
spiritual ideas during this life, or were prevented from
absorbing them, are to be found wandering about the earth,
still bound to the earthly realm. And a soul in this situation,
no longer shut off from its surroundings by the body, and no
longer prevented by the body from working destructively
— such a soul, if it continues to dwell in the
earth-sphere, becomes a destructive centre.
Thus we see that in these cases — we might call them
normal nowadays — when the threshold of death is crossed
by souls who have not wanted to have anything at all to do with
spiritual ideas and feelings, the souls become
destructive centres, because they are held back in the
earth-sphere. Only those souls who in this life are permeated
by a certain connection with the spiritual world go through the
gate of death in such a way that they are accepted in the
spiritual world, set free from the earth-sphere, and are able
to weave the threads that can continually be woven from
themselves to those they have left behind. For we must be clear
about this: the spiritual threads between the dead and those of
us who were close to them are not severed by death; they remain
and are indeed much more intimate than they were during
life.
This that I have been saying must be taken as a very serious
and important truth. Once again, it is not something
known to me alone; others know that this is how things are at
the present time. But there are many who make use of this truth
in a very bad sense. For while there are misguided materialists
who believe that this life is the only life, there are also
initiates who are materialists and who disseminate
materialistic teachings through their brotherhoods. You must
not suppose that these materialists take the
feeble-minded view that there is no such thing as spirit, or
that men have no souls which can live independently of
the body. You can be sure that anyone who has been really
initiated into the spiritual world will never succumb to the
foolishness of believing only in matter. But there are many who
have a certain interest in spreading materialism and try
by all sorts of means to ensure that the majority of men will
believe only in materialism and will live wholly under its
influence. And there are brotherhoods led by initiates who have
this interest. It suits these materialists very well when it is
constantly said that materialism has already been overcome. For
anything can be promoted by talking about it in an opposing
sense; the necessary manoeuvres are often highly
complicated.
What then are the aims of these initiates, who in reality know
very well that the human soul is a purely spiritual entity,
independent of the body, and nevertheless cherish and cultivate
a materialistic outlook in other people? What they want is that
the largest possible number of souls should absorb only
materialistic ideas between birth and death. Thus these souls
are made ready to linger on in the earth-sphere, to be held
back there. And now observe that there are brotherhoods which
are equipped to know all about this. These brotherhoods prepare
certain human souls to remain after death in the realm of the
material; then they arrange things — and this is quite
possible for their infamous power — so that these souls
come under the aegis of their brotherhood, and from this the
brotherhood gains enormous strength. So these materialists are
not materialists, for they believe in the spirit — these
initiate-materialists are not so foolish as not to do that, and
indeed they know the truth about the spirit well enough —
but they compel human souls to remain bound to the material
realm after death, in order to be able to use these souls for
their own purposes. Thus these brotherhoods build up a sort of
clientele of souls from among the dead who remain in the
earth-sphere. These souls have in them certain forces which can
be guided in the most varied ways, and by this means it is
possible to achieve quite special opportunities for
exercising power over those who are not initiated into these
things.
Nothing less than that, you see, is the plan of certain
brotherhoods. And nobody will understand these matters clearly
unless he keeps the dust out of his eyes and refuses to be put
off by suggestions that either such brotherhoods do not exist
or that their activities are harmless. They are in fact
extremely harmful; the intention of these initiates is that men
should be led farther and farther into materialism, and
should come to believe that there are indeed spiritual forces,
but that these are no more than certain forces of nature.
Now
I would like to describe for you the ideal that these initiates
cherish. A certain effort is necessary to understand
these things. Picture a world of harmless people: they are a
little misled by the prevailing materialistic ideas, a little
led away from the old well-founded religious ideas. Picture
this — perhaps a diagram will be helpful.
Here (larger circle) is a realm of harmless human beings. They
are not very clear about the spiritual world; misled by
materialism, they are not sure what attitude to take towards
the spiritual world, and especially towards those who have
passed through the gate of death.
Now
consider this: here (smaller circle) we have the realm of such
a brotherhood as I have described. Its members are engaged in
spreading the doctrine of materialism; they are taking
care to see that these people shall think in purely
materialistic terms. In this way they are training souls to
remain in the earth-sphere after death. These souls will become
a clientele of the lodge; appropriate measures can be
taken to hold them within the lodge. Thus the brotherhood has
created a lodge which embraces both the living and the dead;
but the dead are those who are still related to the forces of
the earth.
It
was then arranged that seances should be held, as they were
during the second half of the nineteenth century. Then it
can come about — please note this carefully — that
what takes place in the seances is directed, with the help of
the dead, by the lodge. But the real intention of the Masters
who belong to lodges of that kind was that people should not
know that they were dealing with the dead, but should believe
that they were in touch simply with higher forces of nature.
They were to be convinced that these higher forces, psychic
forces and the like, do exist, but that they are higher forces
of nature and nothing more. They were to get the idea that just
as electricity and magnetism exist, so are there higher forces
of a similar kind. The fact that these forces come from souls
is precisely what the leaders of the lodge keep hidden.
In this way the “harmless” people gradually become
entirely dependent in their soul-life on the lodge, without
knowing that they are dependent or from what source they
are being guided.
The
only weapon against these procedures is to know about
them. If we know about them, we are protected; if we take them
seriously and believe in the truth of our knowledge, we are
safe. But we must not take too comfortably the task of
making this knowledge our own. It is not yet too late. I have
often insisted that these matters can be clarified only by
degrees, and that only by degrees can I bring together the
essential facts to complete the picture.
As
I have often told you, in the course of the nineteenth century
many brotherhoods introduced spiritualism in an experimental
way, in order to see if they had got as far with mankind as
they wished. Their expectation was that at the spiritualistic
seances people would take it that higher nature-forces were at
work. The brothers of the left were disappointed when most
people assumed, instead, that spirits of the dead were
manifesting. This was a bitter disappointment for these
initiates; it was just what they did not want. They wanted to
deprive mankind of belief in survival after death. The efficacy
of the dead and their forces was to remain, but the correct,
important idea that the manifestations came from the dead
— this was to be taken away. This is a higher form of
materialism; a materialism which not only belies the spirit but
tries to drag it down into the material realm. You see,
materialism can have forces which lead to a denial of itself.
People can say: “Materialism has gone — we are
already talking of the spirit.” But a person can remain a
thorough materialist if he treats the whole of nature as spirit
in such a way that psychism emerges. The only right way is to
learn how to see into the real spiritual world, the world of
actual spirituality.
Here we have the beginning of a trend which will gather force
throughout the next four or five hundred years. For the moment
the evil brotherhoods have put the brake on, but they will
continue their activities unless they are stopped — and
they can be stopped only if complacency regarding the
spiritual-scientific world-outlook is overcome.
Thus these brothers over-reached themselves in their
spiritualistic seances: instead of concealing themselves, they
were shown up. It made them realise that their enterprise
had not gone well. Therefore these same brotherhoods
endeavoured, from the nineties onwards, to discredit
spiritualism for a time. On this path, you see, very incisive
results are achieved by spiritual means. And the aim of it all
is to gain greater power and so to take advantage of certain
conditions which must come about in the course of human
evolution.
There is something that works against this materialising
of human souls, this exile of souls in the earthly sphere. The
lodges exist on earth, and if the souls are to manifest and to
be made use of in the lodges, they must be kept in this earthly
exile. The power that works against these endeavours to operate
through souls in the earthly realm is the impulse of the
Mystery of Golgotha. And this also is the healing impulse which
acts against the materialising of souls. Now the way
taken by the Christ is altogether outside the wills and
intentions of men. Hence there is no man anywhere, and no
initiate, whatever his knowledge, who can influence those
actions of the Christ which in the course of the twentieth
century will lead to that appearance of which I have often
spoken to you and which you can find indicated in the Mystery
Plays. That rests entirely with Christ alone. The Christ will
be present as an etheric Being within the earth-sphere. The
question for men is how they are to relate themselves to Him.
No one, not even the most powerful initiate, has any kind of
influence over this appearance. It will come! I beg you to keep
firm hold of that. But measures can be taken with the aim of
seeing to it that this Christ-Event is received in one way or
another and has this or that effect.
Indeed, the aim of those brotherhoods I have spoken of, who
wish to confine human souls in the material realm, is that the
Christ should pass by unobserved in the twentieth century; that
His coming as an etheric individuality should not be
noticed by men. And this endeavour takes shape under the
influence of a quite definite idea and a quite definite
purpose. These brotherhoods want to take over the Christ's
sphere of influence, which should spread out more and more
widely during the twentieth century, for another being (of whom
we will later speak more precisely). There are Western
brotherhoods who want to dispute the impulse of the Christ and
to set in His place another individuality who has never
appeared in the flesh — an etheric individuality, but a
strongly Ahrimanic one.
All
these methods I have told you about, this working with the dead
and so on, have finally one single purpose — to lead
people away from the Christ who has passed through the Mystery
of Golgotha, and to assign to another being dominion over the
earth. This is a very real battle, not an affair of abstract
concepts; a real battle which is concerned with setting another
being in place of the Christ-Being for the rest of the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch, for the sixth epoch and for the seventh.
One of the tasks of healthy, honest spiritual development will
be to destroy and make away with such endeavours, which are
anti-Christian in the highest degree. For this other being,
whom these brotherhoods want to set up as a ruler, will be
called “Christ” by them; yes, they will really call
him “Christ!” And it will be essential for people
to learn to distinguish between the true Christ, who will not
this time appear in the flesh, and this other being who is
marked off by the fact that he has never been embodied on the
earth. It is this etheric being whom these brotherhoods
want to set in the place of Christ, so that the Christ may pass
by unobserved.
Here is one side of the battle, which is concerned with
falsifying the appearance of Christ during the twentieth
century. Anyone who looks only at the surface of life, and pays
heed to all the external discussions about Christ and the
Jesus-question, and so on, knows nothing of the deeper facts.
All these discussions serve only to hide the real issues and to
lead people away from them. When the theologians discuss
“Christ” in this way, a spiritual influence
from somewhere is always at work, and these learned men are in
fact furthering aims and purposes quite different from those
they are aware of.
This is the danger of the idea of the unconscious: it leads to
unclear thinking about all such connections. While the evil
brotherhoods pursue their aims very consciously, these aims
never enter the consciousness of the people who engage in all
sorts of superficial discussions. We lose the truth of
these things by talking of the “unconscious,” for
this so-called unconscious is merely beyond the threshold of
ordinary consciousness, and is the very sphere in which someone
who knows about these things can manipulate them. Here we have
one side of the situation: a number of brotherhoods
actually do wish to substitute for the working of Christ the
working of another being and are ready to use any means to
bring this about.
On
the other side are certain Eastern brotherhoods, especially
Indian ones, who want to intervene no less significantly in the
evolution of mankind. But they have a different purpose: they
have never developed an esoteric method of achieving something
by drawing the souls of the dead into the purview of their
lodges: that is far removed from their aims. But in their own
way they also do not want the impulses of the Mystery of
Golgotha to work into the course of human evolution. Since the
dead are not at their disposal, as they are for some of the
Western brotherhoods I have mentioned, they do not wish to set
against the Christ, who is to appear as an etheric
individuality during the twentieth century, some other
individuality; for that they would need the dead. But they do
want to distract attention from the Christ; to prevent
Christianity from rising to supremacy; to obscure the truth
about the Christ, who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha
after His one and only incarnation of three years on earth, and
who cannot be incarnated again on earth. These brotherhoods do
not want to control the dead in their lodges: in place of the
dead they employ beings of another kind.
When a man dies, he gives up his etheric body, which separates
from the physical body, as you know, soon after death, and is
then normally taken up into the cosmos. This is a somewhat
complicated process; I have described it for you in various
ways. But before the Mystery of Golgotha something else was
possible, and even afterwards it was still possible, especially
in the East. When a man surrenders his etheric body after
death, certain beings can clothe themselves in it and become
etheric beings with the aid of these etheric bodies of dead
men. This is what happens in the East: demonic beings are
enticed to clothe themselves in the etheric bodies which men
have cast aside; and it is these spirits who are drawn into the
Eastern lodges.
The Western lodges, therefore, have the dead
who are banished into matter; the Eastern lodges of the left
have demonic spirits — spirits who do not belong to
earth-evolution but have insinuated themselves into it by
donning the discarded etheric bodies of dead men.
Esoterically, the procedure is to make this fact into an object
of worship. You know that the calling up of illusions
belongs to the arts of certain brotherhoods, because when men
are not aware of how far illusion is present in the midst of
reality, they can easily be taken in by skilfully produced
illusions. The immediate object is achieved by introducing a
certain form of worship.
Suppose I have a group of men with a common ancestry; then,
after as an “evil” brother I have made it possible
for the etheric body of a certain ancestor to be taken over by
a demonic spirit, I tell the people that this ancestor is to be
worshipped. The ancestor is simply the man whose cast-off
etheric body has been taken over, through the machinations of
the lodge, by a demonic spirit. So ancestor-worship is
introduced, but the ancestors who are worshipped are
simply whatever demonic beings have clothed themselves in the
etheric bodies of these ancestors.
The
Eastern peoples can be diverted from the Mystery of Golgotha by
methods such as these. The result will be that for Eastern
peoples — or perhaps for people generally, since that is
the ultimate aim — the coming manifestation of Christ in
our earthly world will pass unnoticed. These Eastern lodges do
not want to substitute another Christ; they want only that the
appearance of Christ Jesus shall not be noticed. There is thus
an attack from two sides against the Christ Impulse that is to
manifest in etheric form during the twentieth century; and this
is the situation in which we stand to-day. Particular
trends are always only an outcome of what the great impulses in
human evolution are bringing about. That is why it is so
saddening to hear it said continually that influences from the
unconscious, the so-called unconscious, are an effect of
suppressed love or the like, when in fact influences from a
highly conscious spirituality are at work on humanity from all
sides, while remaining relatively unconscious if no conscious
attention is paid to them.
We
must now bring in some further considerations. Men with good
intentions for the development of mankind have always
reckoned with the activities I have just described and have
done their best — and no man can or should be expected to
do more — to set things right.
A
particularly good home for spiritual life, protected against
all possible illusions, was Ireland, the island of Ireland, in
the first Christian centuries. More than any other spot on
earth it was sheltered from illusions; and that is why so many
missionaries of Christianity went out from Ireland in those
early times. But these missionaries had to have regard for the
simple folk among whom they worked — for the peoples of
Europe were very simple in those days — and also to
understand the great impulses behind human evolution. During
the fourth and fifth centuries Irish initiates were at work in
central Europe and they set themselves to prepare for the
demands of the future. They were in a certain way under the
influence of the initiate-knowledge that in the fifteenth
century — in 1413, as you know — the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch was to begin. Hence they knew that they
had to prepare for a quite new epoch, and at the same time to
protect a simple-minded people. What did they do in order to
keep the simple people of Europe sheltered and enclosed, so
that certain harmful influences could not reach them? The
course of events was guided, from well-instructed and
honourable sources, in such a way that gradually all the
voyages which had formerly been made from Northern lands to
America were brought to an end. Whereas in earlier times ships
had sailed to America from Norway for certain purposes (I will
say more of this to-morrow), it was gradually arranged that
America should be forgotten and the connection lost. By the
fifteenth century, indeed, the peoples of Europe knew nothing
of America. Especially from Rome was this change brought about,
because European humanity had to be shielded from American
influences. A leading part in it was played by Irish monks, who
as Irish initiates were engaged in the Christianising of
Europe.
In
earlier times quite definite impulses had been brought from
America, but in the period when the fifth post-Atlantean epoch
was beginning it was necessary that the peoples of Europe
should be uninfluenced by America — should know nothing
of it and should live in the belief that there was no such
country. Only when the fifth post-Atlantean epoch had begun was
America again “discovered,” as history says. But,
as you know very well, much of the history taught in schools is
fable convenue, and
one of these fables is that America was discovered for the
first time in 1492. In fact, it was only rediscovered.
The connection had been blotted out for a period, as destiny
required. But we must know the truth of these historical
circumstances and how it was that Europe was hedged in and
carefully sheltered from certain influences which were not to
come in.
These things show how necessary it is not to take the so-called
unconscious as actually unconscious, but to recognise it as
something that pursues its aims very consciously below the
threshold of ordinary consciousness. It is important to-day
that more people should come to know of certain secrets. That
is why I went as far as one can go publicly in my
Zürich lectures,
[Four public lectures given on 5th,
7th, 12th and 14th November, 1917, on the following subjects:
Anthroposophy and Psychology;
Anthroposophy and History;
Anthroposophy and Natural Science;
Anthroposophy and Social Science.
(Not yet translated.)]
when, as you know, I explained to what extent the history of mankind
is not known by ordinary consciousness, but is in fact dreamt through;
and when I said that only when people become aware of this, will they
come to see history in its true colours.
These are means by which consciousness is gradually awakened.
The facts and events confirm what I say; only they must not be
overlooked. People sleep their way blindly through events
— through tragic catastrophes such as the present one. I
would like first to impress on you the historical aspect of
these matters: we will speak of them in greater detail
to-morrow.
I
want to add one further point. You will have seen from my
explanations how great is the difference between West and East
in relation to the evolution of mankind. Now I would ask you to
observe the following. The psycho-analysts talk of the
subconscious, the subconscious soul-life, etc. To apply such
vague concepts to these things is useless. The point is to
grasp what there really is beyond the threshold of
consciousness. Certainly there is a great deal down below the
threshold, and on its own account it is highly conscious. We
must learn to understand what kind of spirituality exists down
there, beyond the threshold of consciousness. We must speak of
a conscious spirituality, not of unconscious mind. Yes,
we must be quite clear that we know nothing of a great deal
that goes on within us — it would indeed go badly with us
if we had normally to be aware of it all. Just imagine how we
should cope with eating and drinking if we had to acquaint
ourselves with all the physiological and biological
processes that go on from the moment when we swallow a piece of
food! All that proceeds unconsciously, and spiritual forces are
at work there, even in the purely physiological realm. But you
will agree that we cannot wait to eat and drink until we have
learnt all the details of it. It is the same with much else: by
far the greater part of our being is unconscious, or
— a better word — subconscious.
Now
the peculiar thing is that this subconscious within us is
invariably taken possession of by another being. Hence we are
not only a union of body, soul and spirit, carrying an
independent soul in our body through the world, but shortly
before birth another being takes possession of our subconscious
parts. This subconscious being goes with us all the way from
birth to death. We can to some extent describe this being by
saying that it is highly intelligent, and endowed with a will
which is closely related to the forces of nature. I must
emphasise a further peculiarity of this being — it would
incur the gravest danger if under present conditions it were to
accompany man through death. At present it cannot do so;
therefore it disappears shortly before death in order to save
itself; yet it retains the impulse to order human life in such
a way that it would be able to conquer death for its own
purposes. It would be terrible for human evolution if this
being which has taken hold of man were able to overcome death
and so, by dying with man, to pass over into the worlds which
man enters after death. This being must always take leave of
man before death, but in many cases this is very difficult for
it to do, and all sorts of complications result. For the moment
the important thing is that this being, which has its dominion
entirely within the subconscious, is extremely dependent upon
the earth as a whole organism.
The
earth is very different from what geologists or mineralogists
or palaeontologists say about it; the earth is a living being
through and through. These scientists deal only with its
mineral part, its skeleton, and its skeleton is all we normally
perceive. This is much the same as if you were to enter this
hall and through a special change of sight were to see only the
bones of the people assembled here. Just imagine that you came
in through the door and only skeletons were sitting on the
chairs: not that they were nothing but bones —
that would be going too far — but that you could
see only the bones, as though with an X-ray apparatus.
That is as much as geology sees of the earth — its
skeleton only. But the earth is more than a skeleton: it is a
living organism, and from its centre it sends out particular
forces to every point and region on its surface.
These outward-streaming forces belong to the earth as
a
living organism, and they affect a man differently according to
where he lives on the earth. His soul is not directly
influenced by these forces, for his immortal soul is very
largely independent of earth-conditions, and can be made
dependent on them only by such special arts as those I have
described to-day. But through the other being, which seizes
hold of man before birth and has to leave him before death,
these various earth-forces work with particular strength into
the racial and geographical varieties of mankind. So it is on
this “double”
(Doppelgänger), which man carries
within himself, that geographical and other diversities
exert special influence.
This is extraordinarily important. To-morrow we shall see how
the “double” is influenced from various points on
the earth and what the consequences are. I have already
indicated that you will need to bring what I have said to-day
into direct connection with what I shall be saying to-morrow,
for one lecture can scarcely be understood without the
other.
We
have to try to assimilate ideas which are most seriously
related to the total reality in which the human soul lives, in
accordance with its own nature. This reality goes through
various metamorphoses, but how these changes occur depends to a
great extent on human beings. And one significant change comes
about if people realise how human souls, according to whether
they absorb materialistic or spiritual concepts between birth
and death, are exiled to the earth or pass on to their rightful
spheres. The ideas on these matters that prevail among us must
become continually clearer, for only then shall we relate
ourselves truly to the world as a whole, which is what we must
do more and more, for we are concerned not merely with an
abstract spiritual movement, but with a very concrete one
which has to take account of the spiritual life of a certain
number of individuals.
It
is a great satisfaction to me that these discussions, which are
quite specially important for those of our friends who have
passed through the gate of death but are still faithful members
of our movement, can be carried on as a reality which unites us
more and more deeply with them. I say this to-day because it
behoves us to think with loving remembrance of
Fräulein Stinde. Yesterday was the anniversary of
her death, and with specially loving remembrance we think
of one who was so inwardly linked to our Building, [The first
Goetheanum, later destroyed by fire and replaced by the present
Goetheanum.] and whose impulses were so inwardly connected with
its impulses.
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