Lecture III
Thoughts about the Life Between Death
and Rebirth
Berlin, 2nd April, 1918
In the idea
which I developed here yesterday, I wished to point out that
it is necessary for the evolution of humanity to impress very
clearly upon ourselves certain ideas in Spiritual culture
which have not as yet appeared in the present era. This is
something that is of main importance, that certain ideas now
non-evident, or least not in current use, should again come
into the spiritual life of man. If we follow up the spiritual
life of modern times in its various ramifications, we see
that its characteristic is that in spite of all the
arrogance, all the self-conceit which comes to light at
times, the spiritual life does not contain any new
ideas. Although all sorts of world-conceptions have appeared,
of an ethical, artistic, and even philosophical or scientific
nature, they all deal with old ideas which have been in use
for a long time, and which are then mixed together, as in a
kaleidoscope. We need new conceptions, yes new
conceptions such as should rise are lacking. For that reason
certain old truths cannot be understood to-day, truths which
appeared among the Ancients and which are handed down
traditionally; for instance, ideas which appeared in Plato or
Aristotle as being the latest in this respect. In earlier
times they appeared with still more significance; but today
they are either not understood at all or else rejected, but
only because they are not understood. I will give you an
illustration of such a conception. When a man today sees
something, he thinks: “The object is outside, it sends
the light to me; the light comes into the eye, and in that
passive — one may not say mysterious — manner, is
produced with the soul experiences as the sensation of
color.” In Plato another conception is found. There
something appears which we cannot understand otherwise,
if we take it literally, than as if the eye sent forth
something to the object which grasps it in a mysterious
manner; as if the eye stretched out a feeler which grasps
the object. This can be found in Plato. The more recent ideas
of natural science can of course make nothing of this, can
understand nothing of it. It is the kind of idea which you
can find recorded in the ordinary textbooks — or even
in the ‘scholarly’ books — on the History
of Philosophy. But you cannot do much with such books either,
because such ideas rests upon something which existed in
ancient times in a certain atavistic second-sight or
second-feeling, which has gradually died out, but which must
be rediscovered in our time, in another way. Since olden
times certain ideas have been lost which must be
recovered.
These concepts
have been lost chiefly because what one may call the Latin or
Roman culture had to pour over Europe, especially over
Western Europe. The study of this Latin, Roman culture in its
expansion over Europe would yield very illuminating results,
if we observed it aright. We must be clear on the point that
as regards blood, nothing is left in Italy today of the race
which we call the “Ancient Roman.” The
present-day battalions, although they may be responsible for
many things in our time, are certainly not responsible for
what I'm about to relate now. What streamed forth from the
Roman Empire merely streamed forth into Europe in a cultural
way, but it had a parching, burning effect on certain
fundamental, basic ideas; ideas which must, as it were, again
be redeemed from their grave. We need only call to mind the
following fact. With the overthrow of Alesia, that town which
was destroyed in the last era before the birth of Christ and
is situated in what is now the province of the Côte d'Or
in France, a piece of old Celtic-Gaelic culture was entirely
rooted out by the Romans. (On the scene of the old ruined
Alesia, Napoleon III ordered a monument erected to
Vercingetorix!) Perhaps today Alesia would be called a
gigantic “Academy.” Ten-thousand Europeans studied
there in the way in which science and knowledge was studied
at that time. All that was done away with, and in its place
came what was spread abroad as the Roman culture. This is
only an historical observation, intended to show that in
Europe, also, older concepts existed in the old places of
culture which have since been destroyed.
Today I wish to
draw your attention to two ideas which must be
incorporated into science as well as into everyday life, in
order that a better understanding of the world may become
possible. One of these is that an idea exists that really the
perception of the world comes about through the senses. This
happens in the following way.
If we stand
opposite a color object it certainly impresses us; what takes
place between the colored object and the human organism is a
destructive process in the latter. I have often laid stress
on this. It is in a sense a death in miniature, and the
nervous system is the organ for continuous destructive
processes. These disturbances, which are continually being
brought about through the action of the outer world on our
own organism, and balanced again, however, by the action of
the blood. In the human organism there is a continual
counteracting process between blood and nerves. This process
comes about because the blood furnishes a quickening process
and the nerves a sort of death-process, a destructive one.
For instance if we stand opposite a colored object which
works on us from the outer world, a destructive process
takes place in our nervous system. Something is destroyed in
a physical body as well as in the etheric body, a sort of canal
is hollowed out in our organism through the destructive
process which runs along a definite course. Thus when we
“see” something, a canal is bored from the eye to
the edge of the brain. Not that something takes place that
has to be analysed and solved, from the brain-covering to the
eye; but, on the contrary, a hole is bored and through this
hole the astral body slips, so as to be able to see the
object. Plato was still able to see this. It could still be
perceived through atavistic clairvoyance, and we must
re-acquire it through learning really know the human organism
with the newer clairvoyance, learning to know this canal,
this hole which is bored, leading from the eye to the
brain-covering, through which the Ego unites itself with what
works from outside. Mankind must learn not to form
such concepts as are customary in the present-day theory of
knowledge or physiology, but must learn to say: “A
canal, a tunnel, is forward from the brain-covering to the
eye, and by this means a door opens through which the astral
body and the ego come into connection with the outer
world.” This is a concept of which the present day has
no idea! For that reason it does not know what physiological
facts result from this. Today students learn physiology at
the Universities, and learn very exactly the customary
concepts which I have just mentioned, but they do not learn
how things are really related, they learn just the opposite,
which has no sense. This is one such concept.
Another is very
frequently found today if we go into that sphere which is
called the sphere of learning and scholarship — of
course with full justification. It is they are described (and
this is of course unavoidable today) how man is born as an
undeveloped being; how then gradually his ‘soul’
and ‘spirit’ develop, and in this gradual
development of soul and spirit are produced through the
organism of the body becoming finer and more complicated. You
can find this idea introduced by psychologists and especially
by scholars, as also in all the popular books. Thus it
appears to man; but what appears to thus is Maya. In many
respects what we first encounter is the opposite of truth.
This idea too is the opposite of what is true. Instead of
this, we ought really to say (I may just remind you of what
you said in “The Education of the Child,” where
what I am about to say is expressed, though put somewhat
differently): “While the child is quite young, soul and
spirit are still ‘psychic’ and
‘spiritual,’ and as the child grows, his soul and
spirit are gradually transformed into the material, the
bodily. Soul and spirit gradually become of a bodily nature,
man gradually becomes a complete image of soul and
spirit.” It is very important that we should hold this
idea. For if we do, we shall no longer say that what runs
about on the ground on two legs is man; we shall become
conscious of the fact that that is only the image of man,
that man after being born in a super-sensible manner gradually
grows in unity with the body and creates a full image of
himself in his body. Spirit and soul disappear into the body,
and appear less and less in their own nature. Thus we must
adopt exactly the opposite concept to the customary one. We
must know why, for instance, we really become “20 years
old;” it is because spirit has descended into the body,
because it has transformed itself into the body, because
that which is body is an external image of the spirit. Then
we shall also understand that gradually, when we are growing
“old,” the reverse transformation is going on.
The body becomes chalky and salted, but the spirit becomes
more psychic and spiritual. Only man has not then the power
of holding on to it, because while here, he stands
face-to-face with the physical world and wishes to express
himself through the body. What thus becomes more and more
independent, only appears in its entirety after death. Thus
it is not the case that the soul and spirit becomea blunted
in old age; on the contrary, they become ever freer and
freer. Of course the materialistic thinker, when these things
are put before him, will frequently object that even Kant, for
instance, who was a very clever man, grew weak in his old
age; so that they are at any rate the soul and spirit could
not have made themselves free. Materialistic thinker only
makes that objection because he cannot observe the soul and
spirit nature, and see how it had already grown gradually
into the spiritual world. For very many people it will be a
hard nut to crack if they are told to believe that when men
grow old they do not become weak or even feeble-minded, but
more psychic and more spiritual. Only, when the body is worn
out, we can no longer express the psycho-spiritual which we
have cultivated, through the body. It is like the case of a
pianist: he might become a better and better player, but if
his piano is worn out we cannot perceive this. If you were
only to know his capabilities as a pianist from his plane,
you will not be able to gather much if the piano is out of
tune and has broken strings. So that Kant, when he was an old
man and “feeble-minded” was not weak minded as
regards the spiritual world; there he had become
glorious.
Thus when we
get the truth we have exactly to reverse certain conceptions. We
must take it quite seriously that in the world we have to do
with Maya, with the great illusion, for we must exactly
reverse many of our ideas. If we seriously consider that in
the external physical reality we are face to face with the
great illusion, we shall also be able to accept the fact that
external physical man when 70 years of age and apparently
weak has his spirit somewhere else than on the physical plane.
The obstacles in the way of understanding the teachings of
Spiritual Science to a great extent consist in the fact that we
are not able to form correct ideas as to what is happening on
the ordinary physical plane. We form false ideas about what
is happening on the physical plane, and the consequences is that
these separate us from the true and right world and do not
allow us to reach it. If we form such concepts as the second
one to which I referred, we shall then no longer be very far
from the knowledge which Spiritual Science is now giving out
from its investigations concerning man immediately after
death.
When man enters
physical life through birth, he gradually enters more and
more closely into relationship with his physical body. We
have now become acquainted with a correct idea of this
relationship. We do not always notice, because it would
require too much explanation, that something similar also
takes place between death and a new birth. The matter can
be presented in a similar manner as regards the time between
death and rebirth. We may say that man then gradually enters
into relation with something similar to this physical body
here on earth. Our physical bodily nature is not merely
physical; it embraces, as we know: the physical body, the
etheric body or body of formative-forces, and the astral
body, the outer psychic or soul-body. As we have to
appropriate these three ‘skins’ or
‘shells’ for physical life, so have we to put on
coverings between death and rebirth, indeed three such
coverings which, I will call: “Soul-Man,”
“Soul-Life” or “Life-Soul,” and
“Soul-Self.” As we take on the physical body here
for use in the physical world, so do we take on the
“Soul-Life” or the “Life-Soul.” Just
as we take on the astral body, the Soul-body for our life
Earth, so do we take on after death the “Individual
Soul” or “Soul-Self.” I select these
expressions for the reason that they should not be confused
with what men will appropriate in another way for the
Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan time; there is a resemblance, but,
because it belongs to another stage of being, it must in
consequence be differentiated. But names are not the
important thing in this matter. It is only necessary for us
to study a little how these coverings are appropriated.
When man enters
that life which runs its course between death and rebirth, the
first characteristic is that he finds himself surrounded by a
number of pictures. These pictures all proceed from
his experiences between his last birth and last death, or
even from earlier times; but we will first of all limit
ourselves to what happened in the last earth-life. Thus first
of all appear pictures which proceed from the last life; they
are to be found in the environment of man. The essential
point is that these are in the environment of the dead. The
remarkable thing is that at first he has a certain
difficulty in developing a consciousness that these pictures
are connected with himself. This world of pictures
is what is referred to in the book “Theosophy”
as the experiences in the Soul World; but this retrospect in
pictures is only a part of the collective picture-world which
surrounds him there. Other pictures besides these are
present; and the life of the dead consist in gradually
recognizing these pictures as belonging to himself.
Consciousness has to set to work to make them fully recognize
in the right way that these pictures belong to him. We can
only thoroughly understand what is here in question when we
become conscious that the life which we lead here between
birth and death is much richer than we are aware of. Suppose
you live in certain circumstances, in company with certain
people — what takes place consciously between you is
really only one part of what goes on. Things are continually
happening. You must recollect that life here so runs its
course that we observe but a small part of what we experience.
Take an ordinary occurrence for instance. You have gathered
together here this evening, each one of you present has
entered into some relationship with the others. Did you
probably consider how much of this you have carried over into
your consciousness, you will find it is indeed but very
little. For if you are three yards away from another person and
then approach him, this drawing three yards nearer to him
represents a whole sum of facial impressions; you see his
face differently the nearer you approach and so on. The
ordinary physical intellect is quite unable to grasp what we
are really always experiencing during physical life. What we
experienced consciously is but a quite small part of it;
by far the most important part remains subconscious. For
instance, if you read a letter; as a rule you become conscious
of the content, but in your subconsciousness much more than
that goes on; there is not only happens that you are always either
slightly vexed or pleased by the beautiful or ugly
handwriting, but with every feature of the handwriting
something passes from the writer into you which you do not
observe with your ordinary consciousness but which lives as a
dream, continuously through your whole life. We indeed find
it so difficult to really to understand dreams for the reason
that much appears in them which is not taken into
consideration at all in our waking consciousness. Suppose one
lady sits here and another there. If the one lady does not
particularly notice that another is sitting over there and does
not look at her very closely, it may occur that she does not
observe the other at all, does not become aware of her
gestures, or what she's doing. But all that remains in the
subconscious soul, and into our dreams may enter just that
which we hardly observed or noticed in our waking
consciousness. This may very easily happen when in waking
consciousness one directs one's attention to a particular
subject, for instance, if when walking along the street
plunged in thought and a friend passes by; perhaps one may
not even have noticed him, yet one may dream of him, in spite
of not knowing that he had passed one in the street. A great
deal happens in life, of which but very little enters the
waking consciousness. But all the enormous amount that goes
on in the life of man, especially what is concerned with the
soul and which remains in the subconsciousness, all this
becomes pictures around a man. The fact that you come here
today and will go away again causes the picture of the whole
room to remain bound up with you, and all the more so
inasmuch as it has all made a more psychic impression;
psychically it is not confined in rigid boundaries.
Thus
innumerable pictures are connected with human life. They are
all rolled up — I can find no other expression for it
— within the life of man. You carry millions of
pictures which are being rolled up all through your life; and
the first thing that happens after death is the
“unrolling of the pictures,” as one might call
it; the unrolling of posthumous imaginations. Around each man
a world of imaginations gradually forms; and his
consciousness consists in recognizing himself in
this imaginative world. This is described from somewhat
different point of view in the Vienna lectures of life
between death and rebirth; but one must observe things from
the most varied points of view. The unrolling of the
pictures: here we can draw a comparison with what we are, as
little children just born, when we still have a somewhat
unformed body. Many people (though not precisely the mothers
of the children concerned) say that every little child looks
like a frog; it is not yet quite human but gradually shapes
itself. Just as the child shapes itself, and that grows of
which we may say that we have it in us when we lived
materially, so does the growth take place in life which we
might call the “unrolling of life's pictures.”
For in this unrolling of the pictures the
“Soul-Man” is formed, one of the principles of man.
You must absolutely imagine that this, which is there after
death, spreads out, and that the Soul-Man, the picture-man,
the imaginative spiritual-body, forms itself thus; it first
of all develops in the imaginative images.
Herein we can
help the dead tremendously if we go through such ideas
together with him as are at the same time those of Spiritual
Science, or such ideas as we evolved yesterday of the
bluish-red Earth with the golden Jerusalem. These are concepts
for which the dead man longs, for he yearns for well-directed
and ordered Imaginations. By means of these we can help him,
and especially do we help him if we go through with him what
we have experienced together with him, for the pictures can
hold onto that they may wish to unroll. If we live call up
things which have passed unnoticed, and go through these with
the dead man, he gains enormously thereby. For instance, I
mean by this, if you call to mind the picture of him while he
was still alive, how he went through the door as he came out
of his office and reached home, how you greet him —
incidents wherein the Soul came to expression in a visible
pictorial manner. There may be loving memories connected with
these things — and of course it may also be otherwise.
You will by this means come together with the dead man in
thought. I have shown in many different ways how we can
mingle this picture-world, in which the dead man must
develop, and in which his consciousness must expand, with our
own concepts. Concepts and ideas which the dead man strove to
attain but could not fully reach and which make something
clear to him — these become his picture world. You must
work with him at the forming of his Soul-Man.
Of course, in
the time which follows on death, the other bodies, the
Soul-Life or the Life-Soul and also the Soul-Self, are
already formed in the dead. But these very principles form
themselves more and more definitely, in such a way that at
first, immediately after death, the dead feels them as
something for the future which he will only gradually
developed by and by. In this respect the deceased has the
feeling that he must work out the “Soul-Man,” he
must work upon that, but the “Life-Soul” he must
allow to develop, that must develop itself gradually. It is
of course already present, as is the intelligence in the
child; but it must develop gradually as the intelligence does
in the child. Thereby an inspirational force appears in
the dead man immediately after his death, but this develops
and becomes ever stronger and stronger; and when we help the
dead, we help them to develop this inspirational force. For
gradually something must speak to the deceased from out of
the pictures. They must become more than merely the
remembrance of life; they must tell him something
new, something which life could not yet tell him;
for what they now say to him must become the germ for what he
builds up as his next Earth-life.
Thus the
Soul-Life, the Life-Soul, begins to develop and the pictures
become more and more speaking. The dead man first of all
directs his attention chiefly to the Earth — if I may
express myself thus. As we here on Earth direct our thoughts
to the Spirit-world, so does the dead man turn his soul
downwards to the Earth, which is seen by him, for example, as
I described yesterday, as blue in the Eastern hemisphere and
reddish in the Western hemisphere; into this come these
pictures, they are interwoven in it. He always sees his
own life within the universal picture of the Earth;
he sees his life among us. Therefore we can help him to
understand these pictures aright. He certainly leaves the
Earth, but with the eye of his soul does not leave it. And as
inspiration develops more and more, gradually the Earth
begins to sound, the pictures gradually tell him more and
more.
The question is
often asked whether this help can only be given to the dead
soon after death or can it also be given after years
or tens of years. It never ceases! No one can live on Earth
long enough for it to have become unnecessary to help someone
who died before us. Even if a person has been dead for 30 or
40 years, the connection, if it was karmic, still exists. Of
course we must clearly realize that when the soul of the
friend who is still here is undeveloped, he may have a
clearer consciousness of disconnection at the
beginning. At the beginning the consciousness of the
connection with the dead friend may be felt and experienced
very strongly, because the pictures are still passive and
chiefly still contain what they contained on earth. Later
on, they begin to sound; the music of the spheres sounds
forth from them. That is something strange and unknown, and
we can only gain information about it from Spiritual Science,
through which we learn what will take place on the Earth in
the future epochs. But it is not very frequent that there is
such an active need to approach the dead man after decades,
as immediately after his departure. Gradually the inclination
towards the dead disappears in the living (experience proves
this) — the living feeling for them dies out . This is
too a reason why a later time the connection with the dead is
felt less actively. This calls our attention to the fact that
the first part of life between death and rebirth is chiefly
devoted to the formation of the “Soul-Man,” which
floats around man is a world of Imagination. Later on, his
time is devoted to the inspirational force of the soul: the
Life-Soul — though of course it was there from the
beginning. And before him, as an ideal, is what we may
call the Soul-Self. That too was there from the beginning,
fir the Soul-Self gives him individual
consciousness. As the intelligence of the child must be
cultivated, although present within him from the beginning,
so does man develop the Soul-Self in his life between death
and rebirth. The time when the soul is again slowly
approaching the earth life is chiefly devoted to the
cultivation of the Soul-Self. Between death and rebirth man's
Soul-Self reaches its highest development in the time when he
becomes, spiritually, blooming with youth. Here on Earth we
speak of growing old; in the spiritual world between death
and rebirth, we have to speak of growing young. Here
we speak of becoming gray with age, there we speak of one
becoming blooming with youth. These things were well known
not so very long ago. Let me remind you of Goethe's
“Faust;”, where it says: “He grew young in
the Land of the Mist,” which means: “He was born
in the Northern World.” In former times they did not
say: “someone was born,” but “he has become
young,” which referred to his life before birth. Goethe
still used this expression “become young in the Land of
the Mist.
Thus the last
part of the time between death and rebirth is that in which
the soul chiefly works out the intuitive side. The first part
of the time after death the imaginative part of the soul is
active; that is the Soul-Man. Then the inspirational part of
the soul, the Life-Soul, develops gradually to its full
height, and afterwords that which gives full individuality to
the soul is developed, the Soul-Self, the intuitive part, the
capacity of entering something different and other than
oneself and of finding one's way into it. Into what
does the soul find its way? From what do its intuitions
chiefly proceed?
At a certain
point of the life between death and rebirth the soul begins
to feel itself related to the succession of generations which
lead down to Father and Mother. It gradually feels itself
related to the ancestors, as they are brought together in
marriage and have children and so on. Immediately after
death, we feel the unrolling of the pictures and looking down
upon the Earth, we see these pictures grouped together in
their great imaginative connections. And as we turn again to
the Earth-life we become more and more intuitive, and the
pictures which I called forth yesterday appeared before the
soul in larger outlines: the sphere of the Earth gleaming
bluish over Asia, India and East Africa; and on the other
side where lies America (one circles around the earth)
glittering reddish; between these there is green and other
shades. The Earth also ‘sounds’ in manifold
tones: melodies, harmonies, courses of the music of the
spheres. Amidst all this, the pictures we had gradually began
to move — the pictures of the successive generations
which we had first of all. Gradually one learns no one's 36th
and 35th pair of ancestors, then the 34th, 33rd, 32nd and
31st, right down to one's own father and mother. One learns
to know this; it is interwoven into the imaginative images.
Intuition is impressed into it until one comes to father and
mother. This ‘impression’ is really an entering
into what lives through the generations. The second half of
life between death and rebirth is of such a nature that
during this time a man becomes quite accustomed to live in
what is below, to live in the outer world already in advance,
in that which then becomes his nearest as well as his less
near environment, to live not in himself but in this other
world. That living in the other is the first experience of
life after death. Then one is born again and that first one
still retains something of this other life. For this reason
we must say that in the first seven years the human being is
an “imitator,” he imitates everything that he
perceives. Read the book “The Education of the
Child” on this subject . Imitation is like the last
impression of this “living in the other”which
continues into physical life. It is the pre-eminent quality
when transformed into the spiritual element, between death
and rebirth, and it is the first quality which appears in the
child: to imitate everything it sees. This imitative faculty
of the child will never be understood unless we know that it
proceeds from the magnificent intuitive life in the
psycho-spiritual world during the latter part of the time
between death and rebirth.
Here is again a
concept which the spiritual development of the future must
grasp. In olden times — chiefly because men knew of the
Spirit through atavistic clairvoyance — the belief in
immortality, which has become doubtful to men who think
materialistically, was actuated by direct perception; men
knew that life continued. But in the future the thought of
immortality must be aroused from the other end. Men will
understand that life here is the continuation of the
spiritual life. As formally in conformity with the nature of
the times, men looked first to the continuation of life
after death, so in the future they will learn more
and more looked chiefly at all life here as a continuation of
the life between death and rebirth. Certainly the churches
have erected barriers against this. For nothing is considered
so great a heresy by the church as the thought of the
“pre-existence of the soul” and, as is well
known, the old Church Father Origen was looked at askance,
principally because he still knew of the pre-existence of the
soul. It was not only because — as I have already said
— the “spirit” was done away with in the
ninth century by the Church Council at Constantinople, by
setting up the dogma that man does not consist of body, soul
and spirit, but only of ‘body and soul,’ though
it conceded that the soul has something of a spiritual nature
in it. “It is forbidden to think,” said the
Council, “that man consists of body, soul and spirit;
he has a soul-like in the spirit-like soul, but he only
consists of body and soul.” That is of course still the
law of the church today. But something else is bound up with
this, which is at the same time “unprejudiced
science.” And this is the more interesting part. Among
philosophers you find men everywhere divided into body and
soul; a threefold division into body, soul and spirit is
still very little supporter. Read the “celebrated
Wundt” and you will see that it is
“unprejudiced science” to divide man into body
and soul. It is not unprejudiced science. It is the last
remnant of the dogma of the eighth Ecumenical Council! Only
the philosophers have forgotten that and look upon it as
unprejudiced science. That is the one barrier: the doing away
with the spirit. The other barrier which the church has
erected is the suppression of the believe in pre-existence. I
recall the celebrated philosophical theologian or theological
philosopher — whichever you like to call him —
Frohschammer in Munich. His books are on the Index. But that
has not prevented him, however, from turning against the
thought of a pre-existence of the soul, because, he says,
that if really the soul did not exist beforehand, if it were
not conceived at the same time as the body, then the parents
would only produce a “little animal”which later
receives the soul. That to him is an uncomfortable concept. (I
have introduced this as a note in my ”Riddles of the
Soul.”) But it is not so. When we know the fact that
man is connected for more than thirty generations with the blood
running through the generations, we cannot say that the
parents only produce a little animal; for the whole process
of the spirit which passes through more than thirty generations,
belongs to it. Only one must become conscious of this.
Thus in the
future men will not only turn their minds to the question of
whether this life lasts after death; they will be able to
say, if they study the physical earth-life correctly, that
this physical earth-life is the continuation of a spiritual
life! Close attention will be directed to this in the future.
It will be recognized that the spiritual life continues into
the mortal one, and the mortal into the immortal one; and
when men recognize the mortal in the immortal, they will have
therewith a sure foundation for the knowledge of the
immortal. If they understand this earth-life properly, they
will no longer try to explain it out of itself alone. Of
course it would then be necessary to acquire other ideas such
as I have just now set forth. It is indeed necessary to
correct many an idea. One acquires with much difficulty ideas
which count in life, and popular language is a great
hindrance in this respect. We must indeed reckon with popular
language first of all, because otherwise we should not be
understood at all. But it is a great hindrance to think that
we acquire a “likeness” direct from the parents.
That is nonsense. I have said in the public lecture that our
method of science is suffering very much because what is
acknowledged in regard to the science of the inorganic is not
also apply to the organic. No one will seek to refer the
magnetic power in the magnet to the horseshoe-shaped piece of
iron, but will explain the magnetism in the magnet or in the
magnetic needle by what pertains to the Cosmos; but the
origin of the egg in the hen or the embryo in man —
these are not explained from the Cosmos! The Cosmos, however,
works everywhere. And strange as it may appear, just as
though a sense-impression a canal is poured into the eye in
order to open the door for the Ego to come out, so does
propagation rest on the fact that in reality room is made for
it. What happened is that the organism of the mother is so
prepared that room is created and what originates therein is
derived from the Cosmos, from the whole Macrocosm. It is a
complicated process; but in the being of the mother the room
only is prepared; the organization of the mother is so far
disturbed as to provide a cavity into which the macrocosm can
enter. That is the essential point and even embryology will
grasp this before long. They will understand that the most
important part connected with embryo is where there is nothing,
where the substance of the mother is pushed back because the
macrocosm wishes to enter. But man is already united with and
beholds the forces which work from the Cosmos through this
macrocosmic element, which prepared itself ever since he was
intuitively bound up with his ancestors — in the
longest case from 32 to 35 generations ago. From the sphere
of his stars, to which he is assigned, man beholds the ray
fall upon the Earth, he beholds the place where he will be
incarnated. Then he gradually approaches the Earth.
These are
things which — as I think — can fill our minds
with a significant impression. We cannot take up Spiritual
Science as we might perhaps take up mathematics, but we shall
accept it as something deeply connected with our higher
feelings, which makes us in reality different beings, and
which deeply enriches human life and lays the foundation of a
real cosmic consciousness. This vivifying, in the best sense
of the word “quickening” effect of
spiritually-scientific knowledge is both essential and
important. We certainly should not fail to recognize that at
the present time we are to a certain extent in a state of
transition with regard to the things here meant. Our age must
take this on itself, as its Karma. Today people still say
lightly: “Must I indeed except such complicated ideas
in order to understand your teaching of the destiny of man?
Other teaching makes it easier for people.” the point is
that we are living in a time of transition and these ideas
are still strange to people; but you will have to become
accustomed to them. The time must come when these things will
even be taught to children and thereby the discovery will be
made that children will understand them surprisingly well.
They will understand much better than others what comes from
the pictures of Spiritual Science, for they bring much
imaginative faculty with them out of the spiritual world,
which we set to work to drive out of them, do not take into
account and sometimes brutally ignore; otherwise we should
admit that many a child says uncommonly clever things, much
cleverer than grown-up people. Sometimes what a child says is
much more interesting than what the professor says, because
it is more connected with the real being of the world. These
things should really be taken with a certain coloring, then
it will no longer be difficult to introduce things in a
suitable manner to the child-mind. The transition to this is
naturally not easy and therefore people very willingly
abandon the thought. But just from many questions of a
child-mind we can recognize, if we pay attention to the
direction and tone of the question, that reminiscences of a
former life are present in the child.
We must take
what is called Spiritual Science absolutely in earnest
and must be of the opinion that it must find its way into the
social life to which education and instruction also belong.
In this respect much more might be done today than is usually
considered possible. For what I recently remarked is
absolutely true: when those who wish to become teachers or
educators are examined today, attention is paid above all to
what they have acquired in the way of knowledge — which
really is quite unnecessary, for when they are preparing
themselves, they can always read up in a suitable compendium
what it is necessary for them to have for teaching purposes.
What is learnt on examination is very soon forgotten again.
We can see this best when we remember how our own school life
was carried on. I once had to go through an examination. At
the appointed time the professor was ill. I went to the
assistant who said: “Yes, the Professor is ill, and his
illness may last another week; I can sympathize with you; if
you have to go about in this grand condition for a week, you
will have forgotten everything, but there is no help for
it.” It is therefore reckoned that what one has to give
out in the examination will very soon be forgotten! It is
simply a comedy! But what will have to be taken into account
will be to consider what sort of man is being let loose on
the young. The question is to study the human being in each
one, not only what he has squeezed into the mechanism of his
life of ideas. The question is whether the real man is in a
position to establish that mysterious relationship to youth
which is necessary. It will then not be at all so difficult
really to bring to youth what Spiritual Science can evolve
for it.
I want chiefly
to draw your attention today to such facts of the human
collective life as can make clear to your consciousness that
we must not only preserve old ideas, but that man needs
new ideas, that our legacy of ideas must be enriched
by many things. You will see how it will be sought after when
once such a thing as Spiritual Science is spread abroad.
Mankind has been longing for it for a long time. Most people
wish to spare themselves from taking in too many ideas; for
that reason they go so willingly to lime-light lectures, or
other illustrative lectures, where they can look on and need
not take in many ideas. As a rule when something new is
offered to people they ask: “Now what does he really
want?”But what do these people themselves want when
they ask: “What is he really after?” they would
like the matter to be translated into what they already know!
But in the domain of Spiritual Science there can be no
question of that; there one must take up
new ideas which do not already exist, which once
in olden times were partly present in another form, but which
are not yet here today. One must resolve to penetrate into
new ideas. This is often very difficult, for if men would
really take up new ideas they would not ask: “What is
he really after?” but would accept it. In future a
much more useful question will be: “What ought
I really think?” and not “What does he
really want?” Then we should see how that which is
developed as “opinion,” also sets free
life-forces within us, so that we come to the truth; we
should see that although vision is certainly subtle, it is
not at all so far away. First, however, prejudices will have
to be overcome. There is, for example, a popular little book
called “Introduction to Philosophy.” In it are
ideas which I criticized both yesterday and today. But the
compiler is especially remarkable when he speaks about
“Supernaturalism.” He considers the supernatural,
the super-sensible as particularly harmful, for the reason
that he is of the opinion that “what is
natural”is something which every man can judge and test
for himself, but with the super-sensible, supernatural, the
danger would be in the fact that everybody would not be able
to judge for himself but would have to accept a thing on the
authority of others. Of course this is related to the other
statement, that the priesthood of all times had made use of
this and that men have become spoiled by supernaturalism,
because they thereby became dependent on the belief in
authority. If however we observe the true circumstances, we
can say that when the official philosophies of today come to
speak of the super-sensible, they simply become childish. For
it is a childish conception, and implies that the man had no
idea of how universally prevalent the belief in authority is,
just as in our present time, even though people wish to hold
themselves free from it. How many people are there who know
upon what the Copernican teaching is based? They learn it by
someone illustrating it to them by placing some spirit or
other on a chair as it were in the universe and showing from
there how the Sun moves and how the planets revolve around
it. All that is nonsense. If men were shown all that really
can be disclosed to them, they would have a quite different
concept and would see how uncertain all the hypotheses are.
But just think what an enormous amount men believe in
authority today! How happy they are today in another sphere
(to remind you of a side-phenomena) when secret acts are
discovered through a Bolshevik Government, upon which the
fate of countless people depend! There is a proof of the
matter as regards what is “natural,” everyone can
prove it; but as regards the supernatural, it is believed
that men would lose their independence! This is really
turning things upside down. And one of the tasks of Spiritual
Science will in many respects consistt in setting things on
their feet again. That things should have been turned upside
down is quite natural, for the Consciousness Soul had to be
developed. Now however they must again be set on their feet,
in a proper manner.
In the next
lecture we will follow this up and we shall see that this
picture of “setting things on their feet” is by no
means untrue, but has indeed an even deeper significance.
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