2
We
have been considering the emergence of a search for knowledge
with inadequate means, and this has opened up wide historical
perspectives. Now with regard to these matters, and also to
what I said with the same intention when I last spoke here, I
must ask you to realise that we are concerned not with a theory
or with a system of ideas but with the communication of facts.
That is the point to keep in mind; otherwise these matters will
not be clearly understood. I am not setting out historical laws
or ideas, but stating facts — facts that are connected
with the plans and purposes both of certain personalities who
are held together in brotherhoods and of other beings who work
on these brotherhoods and whose influence is also sought. They
are beings who are not incarnated in the flesh, but are
embodied in the spiritual world. It is essential to keep this
in mind when you hear what I told you yesterday. For where
these brotherhoods are concerned, we have to do with various
parties (as indeed you will have learnt from explanations given
in earlier lectures, e.g.
The Occult Movement in the 19th Century
(See p. 71)).
Thus there is one
party which stands for keeping certain higher truths absolutely
secret; and again, allowing for various shades of opinion,
there are brothers, particularly since the middle of the
fifteenth century, who hold that certain truths, if only those
called for by the needs of the moment, should be carefully and
pertinently disclosed. Besides these two main parties there are
other variations; hence you will see that whatever influence is
finally exerted on human evolution from the side of these
brotherhoods will very often reflect some kind of
compromise.
Early in the 1840s, those brotherhoods who have knowledge of
the spiritual impulses that play into history saw coming on
that battle of certain spiritual beings with higher Spirits
which terminated in 1879, when certain Angel-beings, Spirits of
Darkness, were cast down, an event symbolised by the victory of
Michael over the dragon. When therefore, in the middle of the
nineteenth century, these brotherhoods felt that this event was
approaching, they had to decide what attitude to take towards
it and to consider what should be done.
Those brothers who wished above all to reckon with the demands
of the moment were actuated up to a certain point with the best
intentions, but they were mistaken in their approach to the
materialism of the time; they thought that men who were
prepared to accept only what could be known in physical terms
should be offered something from the spiritual world in a
materialistic form. So it was with good intentions that
Spiritualism was launched on the world in the 1840s.
Since at that time a critical mentality, concerned solely with
the external world, was due to prevail on earth, it was
necessary to give people at least some inkling, some
feeling, that a spiritual world existed around them. And
so now this compromise, as is the way with compromises, was put
into effect. Those brothers who were altogether against
communicating spiritual truths to mankind found themselves
outvoted, one might say; they had to give in and agree. Even
so, it was not their original intention to introduce the
phenomena connected with Spiritualism into the world. Where
collective groups of people are concerned one always gets
compromises, and naturally, when a collective decision has been
reached, not only those who favoured it will be looking for
results, but those who at first opposed it will be expecting
something or other from it.
Thus the well-meaning members of these brotherhoods took the
mistaken view that through the use of mediums people would be
convinced of the presence around them of a spiritual world;
then on the basis of this conviction it would be possible to
impart higher truths. This could indeed have happened if the
phenomena that came through the mediums had in fact been
interpreted in the intended way, as evidence for the presence
of an interpenetrating spiritual world. But — as I
explained yesterday — something quite different resulted.
The mediumistic phenomena were interpreted by those who took
part in the seances as coming from the dead. Hence the
experiment was a disappointment for all concerned. Those
brothers who had allowed themselves to be outvoted were very
grieved that the séance manifestations could be spoken of
— sometimes correctly — as coming from the spirits
of the dead. The well-intentioned progressive brothers had not
expected any mention of the dead, but rather of a general
elemental world, so they too were disappointed.
These activities, however, are pursued above all by persons who
have been in some way initiated. And besides the brotherhoods
already mentioned, we have to reckon with others, or with
sections of the same brotherhoods, wherein a minority of
members, or even a majority, consists of initiates who
within their brotherhoods are known as “brothers of the
left;” they are those who treat every impulse that enters
into human evolution as a question of power. Naturally, these
brothers expected all sorts of things from Spiritualism.
As
I told you yesterday, it was these brothers of the left who
were specially responsible for dealing in the way I described
with the souls of the dead. Their interest was centred on
observing what came out of the seances, and by degrees they got
control of the whole field. The well-intentioned initiates
gradually lost all interest in Spiritualism; they felt in
a certain sense ashamed, because those who had all along
opposed Spiritualism said they might have known from the start
that nothing would come of it. But the result was that
Spiritualism came under the power of the brothers of the left.
Yesterday I said that these brothers had been disappointed in
the following way. They saw that Spiritualism could bring to
light what they had set on foot, and they were above all
anxious that this should not happen. Since the persons
attending the seances believed they were in touch with the
dead, communications from the dead might reveal what the
brothers of the left were doing with the souls of the dead. The
very souls which they were misusing might manifest in the
course of a séance.
You
must please once more keep in mind that I am not expounding
theories but relating facts — facts that go back to
particular individuals. And when individuals are united in
brotherhoods, they will differ in what they expect from the
same event. When one speaks of facts that belong to the
spiritual world, it is always a question of looking for the
outcome of individual impulses. In ordinary life one action
will often contradict another. If theories are discussed,
the rule of contradiction must be observed. But when one is
speaking of facts, then — just because they are facts
— we shall very often find that facts in the spiritual
world agree just as little as do human actions on the physical
plane. Therefore I ask you to keep this in mind. One cannot
talk of realities in these matters unless one talks of
individual facts. That is the point. Therefore we must keep the
various streams apart and distinguish between them.
This is connected with something very important, which must be
kept clearly in view by anyone who hopes to arrive at a more or
less satisfying outlook on the world. It is a fundamental
point, and we must bring it before us, even though it is
somewhat abstract.
A
person who tries to build up a world-picture rightly endeavours
to bring its separate elements into harmony. He does this from
habit — a thoroughly justified habit, connected for many
centuries with the dearest possession of our souls: with
monotheism. He tries therefore to lead back the whole range of
his experience of the world to a unitary principle. This is
valid enough in its own way — not, however, in the sense
in which it is usually applied, but in quite another sense of
which we will speak next time. To-day I will deal only with the
essential principle.
If
we approach the world with the preconceived idea that
everything must be explicable without contradiction, as though
it came from a single source, we shall be disappointed
again and again when we look without prejudice at the world and
the experiences it affords. We have acquired the habit of
treating everything we perceive in the light of the didactic
concept which says that everything leads back to a unitary
divine origin — everything derives from God and so
must admit of a single mode of explanation.
But
this is not so. The experiences we encounter in the world do
not spring from a single ground, but from diverse spiritual
individualities, who all play a part in producing them. That is
the essential point. We will speak to-morrow of the sense in
which monotheism is justified. Up to a certain stage, and
indeed up to a high stage, we must think of independent
individualities as soon as we cross the threshold of the
spiritual world. And then we cannot expect to explain
everything we experience in unitary terms. Take any series of
events — let us say the experiences encountered from 1913
to 1918. A diagram will naturally show them taking their course
from two directions at once ...
An
historian will always try to reduce the whole process to the
working of a single principle, but that is not how things
happen. Directly we cross the threshold of the spiritual world,
whether downwards or upwards — it is one and the same
— we find that different individualities, relatively
independent of each other, are working into these events. We
shall never understand the course of events if we assume a
single source for them; we shall see them rightly only if in
the turbulence of events we reckon with the activities of
individualities who are working either with or against each
other.
This is something that belongs to the deepest secrets of human
evolution. For centuries, even for millennia, it has been
obscured by monotheistic feeling, but you must take it into
account. If to-day we are to come closer to ultimate questions,
we must above all not confuse logic with abstract freedom from
contradictions. In a world where independent individualities
are simultaneously at work, contradictions are bound to occur,
and to expect them not to occur leads to an impoverishment of
ideas; to ideas which cannot embrace the whole of reality. The
only adequate ideas will be those that are able to grasp a
world replete with contradictions, for that is the real
world.
The
realms of nature that lie around us come into being in a very
remarkable way. In all that we call nature, the nature we
approach through science on the one hand and through aesthetic
perception on the other, various individualities are at
work. But in the present phase of human evolution a wise
Providence has ordained an arrangement which is a great
blessing for mankind. We can lay hold of nature with ideas that
assume a monistic dispensation, because sense-perception allows
us normally to experience only as much of nature as is in
accord with that principle. Behind the tapestry of nature there
lies something different which is sustained from a quite
other direction; but sense-perception shuts it out, admitting
only as much of nature as can pass through its sieve.
Everything contradictory is strained out, and nature is
communicated to us in the guise of a monistic system. But
directly we cross the threshold and bring the true facts to
bear on the interpretation of nature — the facts
concerning the elemental spirits or the influence of human
souls, which can also act on nature — then we are no
longer able to speak of a monistic system applicable to nature.
Once again we see clearly that we have to do with the workings
of individualities who may either oppose or reinforce one
another.
In
the elemental world we find earth-spirits, gnomes;
water-spirits, undines; air-spirits, sylphs; fire-spirits,
salamanders. They are all there, but they do not form a single
united band. Each of the four kingdoms is in a certain sense
independent; they do not work only in rank and file as a single
system, but they oppose one another. Their purposes are, to
begin with, entirely distinct; the outcome reflects the
interactions of their purposes in the most varied ways. If we
know what these purposes are, we can discern in a given
phenomenon the working together, let us say, of fire-spirits
and undines. But we must never suppose that behind them is a
single authority which gives them definite orders. This way of
thinking is widespread to-day; and philosophers such as, for
example, Wilhelm Wundt (whom Fritz Mauthner described with some
justice as “an authority by the grace of his
publisher” — yet before the war he ranked as
an authority almost everywhere) — these philosophers are
out to force into a unity all the manifold life of the soul,
its concepts, its feeling, its willing, because they say that
the soul is a unity, and therefore all this must belong to a
unitary system. But that is not so, and the strongly
conflicting tendencies in human life, which psycho-analysis
indeed brings out, would not occur if our conceptual life did
not lead back beyond the threshold into regions where it is
influenced by individualities quite different from those that
influence our feeling and our willing.
Really it is strange! Here (drawing on blackboard) we
have in the human being a conceptual life, a life of feeling
and a life of willing — yet a systematiser such as Wundt
cannot get away from the idea that all this must form a single
system. In fact, the life of concepts leads into one world, the
life of feeling into another world, and the life of willing
into another again. The function of the human soul is precisely
to bring together into a unity activities which in the
pre-human world — and therefore in the still existing
pre-human world — are threefold.
All
these things must be taken into account as soon as we study the
impulses which have played into human evolution. I have already
said that each post-Atlantean epoch has a special task, and I
have described the task for mankind in the fifth post-Atlantean
epoch as that of coming to terms with evil as an impulse in
world-evolution. We have spoken of what this means from various
points of view. The indispensable need is that the forces which
manifest as evil when they appear in the wrong place shall be
overcome by human endeavour during this epoch, so that men can
begin to make out of these forces something favourable for the
whole future of cosmic evolution. Hence the task of this fifth
post-Atlantean epoch is quite specially arduous, and many
temptations lie ahead. And as the powers of evil make their
appearance in gradual stages, men are naturally much more
inclined to give way to them in all realms instead of battling
to place what appears as evil in the service of the rightful
course of world-development. This, nevertheless, is what has to
come about — up to a certain point evil must be turned to
good ends. Failing that, we shall not be able to go forward
into the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, which will have a quite
different task. Its task will be to enable men, while still
connected with the earth, to have the spiritual world
continually in view and to live in accordance with spiritual
impulses. It is precisely in connection with the task of
opposing evil during our own epoch that a certain darkening of
the human personality can occur.
We
know that since 1879 the Spirits of Darkness who are nearest to
man, belonging as they do to the realm of the Angels, have been
roaming about in the human world, because they were cast down
into it from the spiritual world. Hence they are present in
human impulses and work through them. Just because these
beings are able to work invisibly, so close to man, and by
their influence to hinder him from recognising the spiritual
with his reason — which is also a task for our epoch
— so in this epoch there are many opportunities for
surrendering to all sorts of errors and observations that
belong to the darkness of evil. During this epoch man has to
learn by degrees to grasp the spiritual with his reason; for
this possibility has been offered to him by the vanquishing of
the Spirits of Darkness in 1879, as a result of which more and
more spiritual wisdom has been able to flow down from the
spiritual worlds. Only if the Spirits of Darkness had remained
up there in spiritual realms would they have been able to
obstruct this flow. Henceforward they can do nothing to hinder
it; but they can continue to create confusion and to darken
human souls. We have already described in part the
opportunities they have for doing this, and the precautions
they have taken to prevent men from receiving spiritual
wisdom.
All
this, of course, gives no occasion for lamentation but for a
strengthening of human energy and aspiration towards the
spiritual. For if men achieve what can be achieved in this
epoch by taking hold of the forces of evil and turning them to
good ends, then they will at the same time achieve something
tremendous: this fifth post-Atlantean epoch will gain for human
evolution grander conceptions than those of any other
post-Atlantean epoch, or indeed of any previous epoch. For
example, the Christ appeared and passed through the Mystery of
Golgotha during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, but only in
our fifth epoch will it be possible for human reason to
encompass the meaning of this event. In the fourth epoch men
could comprehend that in the Christ Impulse they had something
which would carry their souls beyond death: this was made
sufficiently clear through Pauline Christianity. The fifth
epoch will bring an even more important development: men will
come to recognise the Christ as their helper in the task of
transforming the forces of evil into good. But connected
with this characteristic of the fifth epoch is a fact we must
inscribe daily in our souls and never forget, although we are
readily inclined to forget it. In this epoch we have to be
fighters for the spirit: we must realise that our forces grow
slack unless they are kept constantly in training for the
conquest of the spiritual world. In this fifth epoch man is in
the highest degree dependent upon his freedom, and he has to
experience it to the full. And the idea of human freedom should
be the criterion of whatever he encounters in this epoch. For
if human energies were to grow slack, everything might turn to
evil. Man is no longer in a condition to be guided like a
child. If the aim of certain brotherhoods is to treat him in
this way, as he was in the third and fourth epochs, they are
far from doing right and are not advancing human evolution.
Anyone who in this epoch speaks of the spiritual world must
constantly remind himself to do so in such a way that
acceptance or rejection of it is left to the freedom of the
individual. Therefore certain things can only be — said;
but the saying is just as important as any other way of
presenting them was in other epochs. I will give you an
example.
In
our time the communication of truths — or, if I may use a
trivial phrase, lecturing on them — is the most important
thing. People should then be left to a free choice of attitude.
One should go no further than the lecture, the communication of
truths; the rest should follow out of free decision, just as it
does when someone takes a decision on the physical plane. This
applies also to the things which can in a certain sense be
directed and guided only from the spiritual world.
We
shall understand one another better if we go into details.
During the fourth post-Atlantean epoch it was still necessary
to consider other things, not only the spoken word. What were
these other things? Let us take a definite instance. The island
of Ireland, to use its modern name, has quite special
characteristics which distinguish it from the rest of the
world. Every part of the earth has some distinguishing
characteristics — there is nothing unusual in that
— but the point here is that Ireland has them to an
exceptional degree.
You
know from my
Occult Science
that it is possible to look
back and discern various influences which have flowed from the
spiritual world into the evolution of the earth. You have heard
also what things were like in the Lemurian Age and of the
various evolutionary developments since then. Yesterday I
called attention to the fact that the whole earth must be
regarded as a living organism, and that the various
influences which radiate out to the inhabitants of particular
territories have a special effect on the “double,”
also mentioned yesterday. In ancient times people who knew of
Ireland gave expression to its peculiar characteristics in the
form of myths and legends. One could indeed speak of an
esoteric legend which indicated the nature of Ireland within
the whole earth-organism. Lucifer, it was said, had once
tempted mankind in Paradise, wherefore mankind was driven out
and scattered over the earth, which was already in
existence at that time. Thus a distinction was drawn
— so the legend tells us — between Paradise, with
Lucifer in it, and the rest of the earth. But with Ireland it
was different. Ireland did not belong in the same sense
to the rest of the earth, for Paradise, before Lucifer entered
it, had created an image of itself on earth, and that image
became Ireland.
Let
us understand this clearly. Ireland is that piece of the earth
which has no share in Lucifer, no connection with Lucifer. The
part of Paradise that had to be separated, so that an
earthly image of it might come into being, would have stood in
the way of Lucifer's entry into Paradise. According to this
legend, therefore, Ireland was conceived as having been first
of all that part of Paradise which would have kept Lucifer out.
Only when Ireland had been separated off, could Lucifer get
in.
This legend, of which I have given you a very incomplete
account, is a very beautiful one. For many people it explained
the quite individual task of Ireland through the centuries. In
the first of my Mystery Plays you will find what has been often
described: how Europe was Christianised by Irish monks.
After Patrick had introduced Christianity into Ireland, it came
about that Christianity there led to the highest spiritual
devotion. In further interpretation of the legend I have
just described, Ireland — Ierne for the Greeks and
Ivernia for the Romans — was even called the island of
the saints, because of the piety that prevailed in the
Christian monasteries there. This is connected with the fact
that the forces which radiate from the earth and lay hold of
the “double” are at their very best in the island
of Ireland.
You
will say: then the Irish should be the best of men. But that is
not how things work out in the world! People immigrate into
every region of the earth and have descendants, and so on.
Human beings are thus not merely a product of the patch of
earth where they live; their character may well contradict the
influences that come from the earth. We must not attribute
their development to the qualities found in a particular
part of the earth-organism; that would be merely to succumb to
illusions.
But
we can say, more or less as I have said to-day, that Ireland is
a quite special piece of land and this is one factor among many
from which should come a fruitful working out of
social-political ideas. Ireland is one such factor, and
all these factors must be taken account of in conjunction with
one another. In this way we must develop a science of human
relationships on the earth. Until that is done, there will be
no real health in the organisation of public affairs. That
which can be communicated from out of the spiritual world
must flow into any measures that are taken. For this reason I
have said in public lectures that statesmen and others
concerned with public affairs should acquaint themselves with
these communications, for only then will they be able to
control reality. But they do not do this, or at least they have
not done it so far; yet the necessity for it remains.
This speaking, this communication, is the important thing
to-day, in accordance with the tasks of the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch, for then, before speaking leads to
actions, decisions have to be taken just as they are taken in
relation to impulses on the physical plane. In earlier times it
was different; other methods could then be employed.
At
a particular time in the third post-Atlantean epoch a certain
brotherhood took occasion to send a large number of colonists
from Asia Minor to Ireland. These settlers came from the region
where much later, in the fourth epoch, the philosopher Thales
was born. It was from this same milieu and spiritual background
that the initiates sent colonists to Ireland — why?
Because they were aware of the special characteristics of a
land such as Ireland, as indicated by the esoteric legend I
have told you about. They knew that the forces which rise from
the earth through the soil of Ireland act in such a way that
people there are little influenced towards developing
intellectuality, or the ego, or towards a capacity for
taking decisions. The initiates who sent these colonists to
Ireland knew this very well, and they chose people who appeared
to be karmically suited to be exposed to such influences. In
Ireland there still exist descendants of the old
immigrants from Asia Minor who were intended to develop
no trace of intellectuality, or of reasoning power or of
decisiveness, but were on the other hand to manifest certain
special qualities of temperament to an outstanding degree.
So,
you see, preparations were made a very long time in advance for
the peaceful interpretation of Christianity which eventually
found scope in Ireland, and for the glorious developments which
led to the Christianising of Europe. The fellow-countrymen of
the later Thales sent to Ireland people who proved well suited
to become those monks who could work in the way I have
described. Such plans were often carried through in earlier
times, and when in external history written by historians who
lack understanding — though of course they may be
intelligent enough, for intelligence to-day can be picked up in
the street — you find accounts of ancient colonisations,
you must be clear that a far-reaching wisdom lay behind them.
They were guided and led in the light of what was to come about
in the future, and the local characteristics of earth-evolution
were always taken into account.
That was another way of introducing spiritual wisdom into the
world. It should not be adopted to-day by anyone who is
following the rightful path. To prescribe the movement of
people against their will, in order to partition parts of the
earth, would be wrong. The right way is to impart true facts
and to leave people to decide their actions for themselves.
Hence you can see that there has been a real advance from the
third and fourth post-Atlantean epochs up to the present; and
this is something we must grasp quite clearly. We must
recognise how this impulse for freedom must penetrate all the
dominating tendencies of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. For it
is precisely this freedom of the human mind that is opposed by
that adversary of whom I have told you — the
“double” who accompanies man from shortly before
birth until death, though just before death he has to depart.
If someone is under the influence which proceeds directly from
the “double,” he may bring about all sorts of
things which can appear in this epoch but are not in harmony
with it. It will then not be possible for him to fulfil his
task of fighting against evil in such a way that to a certain
extent the evil is changed into good.
Just think of all that really lies behind the situation of
humanity in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch! The detailed facts
must be seen in their true colours, and understood. For
wherever the “double” is strongly active, he will
be working against mankind. In this fifth post-Atlantean epoch
people have not reached the stage of being able to judge the
facts correctly; particularly during these last three sad years
they have not been at all inclined to form true judgments.
Take a fact which seems to be far removed from our immediate
subject. In a large ironworks, 10,000 tons of cast iron were to
be loaded into railway trucks. A definite number of workmen
— 75 — were assigned to the job, and it appeared
that each man could load 12½ tons a day.
There was a man named Taylor in whom the influence of the
“double” prevailed over the needs of the human soul
in our epoch. He first asked the managers if they did not think
a man could load a good deal more than 12½ tons a day.
They said that in their opinion a workman could load 18 tons a
day at the utmost. Taylor then called for some experiments.
So,
you see, Taylor proceeded to experiment with human beings!
Machine standards were to be carried over into social life.
Taylor wished to find out whether it was true, as the managers
believed, that 18 tons a day was the utmost a man could load.
He ordered rest-periods, calculated in physiological terms to
be just long enough for a man to make good the energy he had
previously expended. Naturally it turned out that the results
varied with individuals. This does not matter with machines
— you simply take the arithmetical mean — but it
cannot properly be done with human beings, for each individual
has his own justified capacity. All the same, Taylor did it
— that is, he chose those workmen whose need for rest
corresponded to the period he had calculated; the others were
simply thrown out. The outcome was that the selected workmen,
by dint of fully restoring their energies during the
rest-periods, were each able to load 47½ tons a day.
Here we have the mechanics of the Darwinian theory applied to
working life: the fit were kept on and the unfit discarded. The
fit in this case were those who, with the aid of the given
rest-periods, could load 47½ tons, instead of the 18 tons
previously regarded as the maximum. In this way the workmen
also could be satisfied, for such enormous economies were
effected that wages could be raised by 60 per cent. Thus the
chosen workmen, who had proved themselves fit in the struggle
for existence, were very well pleased. But — the unfit
could go hungry!
This is just the beginning of a far-reaching principle. Such
things are little noticed, because they are not seen — as
they must be seen — in the light of the great issues
involved. So far we have not gone beyond the application of
faulty scientific ideas to human life; but the underlying
impulse remains. The next step will be to make similar use of
the occult truths which will be disclosed in the course of the
fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Darwinism contains no occult
truths, but its application to direct experiments on human
beings would have horrible results. But if occult truths are
brought in, as and when they become available, it will be
possible to use them for obtaining enormous power over men
— if only by a continual selection of the
“fittest.” But things will not stop there. There
would be an endeavour to use a certain occult discovery for
making the fit ever fitter and fitter ... and by that means a
tremendous power for utilising human beings — a power
directly opposed to the good tendencies of the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch — would be achieved.
I
wished to give you these inter-related examples in order to
show you how such far-ranging intentions begin, and how
these matters must be illuminated from higher standpoints. Next
time we will turn our attention to the three or four great
truths which the fifth post-Atlantean epoch must arrive at, and
how they could be misused if, instead of being brought into
line with the rightful tendencies of the epoch, they were
placed in the service of the “double,” represented
by those brotherhoods who wish to set up another being in place
of the Christ.
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