Lecture I
Dornach 24th August, 1918
Should
anyone wish to understand the age in which he is actually living,
he must do so out of wider cosmic connections. The pettiness of
this age lies in man refusing, out of these wider
connections, to enlighten himself about the impulses, the
forces, working into the present time. And to understand what
is working anywhere nowadays it will become increasingly
necessary to hark back to the conditions through which
mankind's development passed at the time of the Mystery of
Golgotha — this Mystery of Golgotha — we have
presented it from the most various points of view, and have
seen how deeply and with what significance it has taken hold
of the whole course of evolution, the whole evolution of man.
We know how differently men perceived and experienced before
and after the Mystery of Golgotha. Naturally one condition
did not pass over immediately into the other. But when we
make a retrospective survey, we discover what has been stated
from so many points of view. Today, so that a certain basis
may be made for our further studies, there is one thing to
which I should particularly like to point.
If we
consider the mood, the condition of man's soul, before the
Mystery of Golgotha, we can say in general that in the
culture of mankind, the mankind from whom the present
cultural life has arisen, a certain capacity existed in the
soul to look into the secrets of the cosmic, spiritual world.
Before the Mystery of Golgotha it went without saying that
men did not look up to the starry heavens in the way they do
today. We know how men now look at the stars and say: other
planets are connected with our earth and with it revolve
around the sun, and there are innumerable other fixed stars
also having their planets. And if men notice what kind of
thoughts they are harboring in these reflections they have to
own that they are thinking of a great world machinery.
Present day man has very little idea that anything beyond the
forces of this great world machinery is ruling and working;
but for man before the Mystery of Golgotha this was more or
less self-evident. It was particularly natural for him to
regard the Sun, for example, quite differently from the way
in which the modern physicist regards it — roughly
speaking, simply as a kind of glowing ball in universal
space. Before the Mystery of Golgotha men knew that the Sun
thus spoken of in physics is only one element of the whole
Sun, at the basis of which lies what is of the soul and what
is of the spirit. And the Spiritual lying at the Sun's basis
the wise men of Greece called the universal good of the
world, the goodness of the world, the unity, the good
seething through the universe. That was to him the spirit of
the Sun. To this Greek sage it would have seemed crass
superstition to think as the modern physicist
thinks — that there outside in universal space a mere
glowing ball is floating. To him this glowing, floating ball
was the manifestation of unified goodness, the active centre
of the world. With this central good that is of a spiritual
nature there was united what was of a soul nature called by
the Greeks Helios. Then, third, there came the physical
expression of the Good and of Helios, the physical Sun. Thus,
where the Sun is, the man of that day saw what was threefold.
And with this three foldness then seen in the Sun, the men
who were thinking at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha,
prepared as the were by their knowledge of this Mystery of
Golgotha, and also of the ancient mysteries — united
the threefold Sun-mystery of the sages with the Christ
Mystery, with the Mystery of Golgotha itself. For those who
knew, veneration of the Sun was one with veneration of the
Christ; for them the Sun-wisdom was united with the
Christ-wisdom.
To feel all
this in accordance with nature, to experience it as a matter
of course, it was necessary to have the constitution of soul
existing at that time. But this constitution of soul
vanished. It was already vanishing by the eight pre-Christian
century, beginning in the year 747 before the Mystery of
Golgotha — 747 the actual date of the Foundation of Rome.
At the time of the Foundation of Rome the old possibility was
vanishing of seeing the spiritual outside in the Cosmos, and
as Rome enters history, what we may call the ‘prosaic
element' comes into human evolution. The Greeks, for
instance, preserved in the whole of their world-conception
the power of seeing the other two Suns behind the
Sun — the soul and the spirit of the Sun — and only
because the Mystery of Golgotha did not descend purely into
the wisdom and perception of Greece, but into the wisdom and
perception of Rome, has it happened that knowledge of the
connection of Christ with the spiritual Sun has been cut off.
Thus the Christian gathers and Teachers of the Church have
had particularly to concern themselves with shrouding the
Mystery of the Sun, making mankind forget this mystery, not
allowing it to become known. Throughout the further course of
the development of Christianity (as it is called) a veil was
destined to be spread over the deep, the significant and
all-embracing wisdom of Christ's connection with Sun-Mystery.
[Compare
The Threefold Sun and the Risen Christ
24.IV.22 Compare
An Occult Psychology Lecture. I 17.VIII.18.]
Should we
wish to define the task of the Church, the Church that owed
its origin to Christianity having come down into all that was
Roman, we should have to say that this Christian Church,
colored as it was by Rome, had the particular task of
shrouding as far as possible the Christ-Mystery, as far as
possible keeping people in ignorance of it. The organisation
the Church experienced through Romanism was especially suited
to keep men as far as possible from knowledge of the
Christ-Mystery. By this, the Church has become an institution
for holding back the mystery of Christ, an institution for
admitting the world as little as it could to the
Christ-Mystery. This is something that today must become ever
clearer to mankind, for the age must begin that is in the
position to work with other concepts than those of Rome.
Roman concepts are precisely those that have the hard
outlines, the hard form of the corpse. The concepts that are
developed to grasp, for example, the truth about man, as I
drew him on the blackboard for you a week ago, in what I
might call his normal aura, the concepts necessary for man's
true reality to be grasped again and through that the reality
of the world, these concepts must be flexible, they should
not have sharp outlines. For reality is not rigid, it is
something that is becoming. And should we want to understand
reality with our concepts and ideas, we have with these to
pursue the flow, the becoming of reality.
When this
fluidity of the concept is ignored there arises what to the
undoing of mankind can be observed today in countless places.
Take a phenomenon that forces itself on the attention of any
observer of the world who is wide awake and in earnest. It is
as follows: you will allow it to be true that we have among
us in the world men of learning in the most various spheres.
These learned ones are the champions, the keepers of
knowledge. Although modern man is not a believer in
authority, in spite of having rid the world of such
superstition, he takes on trust everything upheld in the
various spheres by the learned. And these among themselves,
always believe their brethren concerning a matter outside
their own sphere. Men today do not willingly see into these
connections for should they do so they would be shocked at
the disconnected and chaotic nature of our culture. We have,
however, experienced the following, for example. Let us
suppose some learned man — and we can always pick one out
of the various spheres has for his particular sphere, let us
say, Egyptology — I will take something exotic, so let it
be Egyptology. So, we will agree that his profession is to
instruct other men, unable to avail themselves of the sources
of such knowledge, concerning the particular qualities of the
Egyptian people. He gives these men instruction also
concerning the relations of the Egyptians to other peoples of
antiquity. It is the part of these men to take all this on
trust for the instructor is an authority on Egyptology. Now
something most unfortunate is a feature of our age — a
great number of these learned men who represent such special
subjects have not remained silent. It would have been better
had they kept silence but this they have not done; for
instance, they have today applied their way of thinking,
their thought structure, under the impression of these events
to their own people and its relation to other peoples. Here
we have a good opportunity of seeing what nonsense is talked.
Now from this we have to draw our conclusions, and
conclusions founded on reality in thought. We may say that
quite a number who are authorities in the domain of
Egyptology, and are thought to hold incontestable concepts in
regard to the particular qualities of the Egyptian people and
their relations to other peoples, now, suddenly at the
present time, are talking utter nonsense about their own
people and the relation of these to other folk: Do you really
believe that they are talking, have talked, more
intelligently about the Egyptians and their relations to
other peoples? When Balfour speaks today about the relation
of his people to the rest of the world, or when Houston
Stewart Chamberlain is continually uttering rubbish about the
connections between men, one can gather without much
reflection that they are simply talking nonsense — pure
nonsense: And now Chamberlain has written
The Foundation of Culture in the Nineteenth Century,
and a number of other books for which there has not been the
opportunity to verify the history. In these he will naturally
have talked exactly the same nonsense.
Already now
the time of testing has come, the time of trial, when we have
at last to see that it is not a matter simply of delivering
judgment that only has limited value by being right in a
certain sphere — that is true of almost every judgment,
the most false is right in some particular — but what
matters is to seek for that flexible, fluid judgment that
presses on to the reality, and only through spiritual science
can that be found.
How
remarkable it is what conflict today comes to the surface
between sound thinking and the thinking of the times.
Recently we have heard of a religious discussion that has
taken place in what was St. Petersburg.
[Leningrad.]
A religious discussion right in the midst of
Bolshevism: About a religion and its development there spoke
Socialists, Priests of the Greek Church, and it goes without
saying, all kinds of bourgeois folk who naturally were not
the most intelligent of the speakers. And from the discussion
that was carried on there — which was of course tinged
with modern colour, but throughout had recourse to the most
rigid and ancient concepts — from this discussion, as it
appears, it was possible to learn much. For instance, one
Priest brought forward something of the greatest interest. He
felt himself obliged, it seems, to speak as he was accustomed
to address his flock. Now formerly he had naturally told his
flock that everything in the world — including Czarism,
of course and indeed everything — was from God. And what
can this good Priest do now? Naturally he still has somehow
to follow the same theme that he used in speaking to his
flock — no longer now his flock — for he has no wish
to take on new concepts. So he says: The world is from God,
all comes from God. As we now have Soviet rule that is from
God too. Bolshevism is certainly sent man by God. Since
everything is from God, Bolshevism as well must come from
Him. — What else was he to say? I am quite sure that the
deduction could be pressed further; why should it not be made
beautifully plausible that the devil is from God? Naturally
the devil is appointed by God — according to the same
deduction. This is how things are — by getting deeper
light on what is necessity, it is natural that one should
meet on all sides with the strongest opposition. But no one
can go to sleep who has undertaken to play a part in the
remodeling of man's powers of conception.
Now concepts
worked out by materialism — concepts that pass current as
being incontestable belong to all that must be most
thoroughly overcome. Nothing meets us with more persistence
from the so-called authority of science than what is known as
the law of the conservation of energy and of matter, of force
and of substance. That has grown very near to man's heart. It
is true, is it not, that the world conception that has become
entirely mechanistic and physical, wants to be deaf in face
of the actual presence of the spirit. As it refuses to
recognise the spirit it cannot ascribe to it either duration
or eternity so it ascribes eternity to its little idol, the
atom, or anyhow to some matter or force. But the truth is, my
dear friends, that of all that is extended around you as what
you can look upon with your senses, what surrounds you in the
world as matter and forces — of all this in accordance
with normal laws there will be nothing left by the time of
the Venus age. We know that after the Earth evolution there
follows that of Jupiter, after the Jupiter evolution that of
Venus, and then that of Vulcan. As man finds himself again in
different incarnations, so the earth finds itself as Jupiter,
from the Jupiter evolution as Venus and then again as Vulcan.
What today from any experiment in physics is found as matter
and the structure of matter, will not be there after the
Venus existence. There is no conservation of matter and
force, the matter and force of which physicists speak, beyond
the existence of Venus. The whole law of the conservation of
matter and of force is pure superstition, and is something by
which all concepts in physics are governed. Something is
concealed, however, when the world is spoken of as consisting
of indestructible matter that is continuously being submitted
to different grouping, different arrangement. And what is
thus concealed is the answer to the question: what then
remains of all that is so widely spread out before our senses
when this is no longer there — when the Venus age has
come or when it is already half way through its term? What
then remains? Where is there anything? What is still
there?
Now, my dear
friends, direct your gaze outside into the vast circumference
that you can see. Look at everything, look at the whole of
the kingdoms of mineral, plant, animal and man; look at all
you can see in the way of stars, light-phenomena; see what
happens in air and water; look wherever you like, include
everything that can possibly be included in your external
sense perceptions — then ask yourselves: Where is
anything in which there will remain a vestige of our present
existence? And the answer is: In no animal, in no plant, in
no mineral, not in any air, or any water — nowhere but in
man: Of what you see today man himself alone contains
anything that in accordance with law continues beyond the
Venus existence — Nowhere else can you seek anything
permanent, anything that can be referred to by the concept of
eternity — nowhere save in man. That is to say, if we are
looking for the seeds of the real future of the world where
have we to seek? We must seek them in man. We cannot look for
them in any other creation or any other kingdom. But before
the Mystery of Golgotha, men of old naturally in
spirit — saw through the kingdoms the cosmic All. If we
take the representative, the Sun, they saw a glowing ball,
but through the glowing ball they saw Helios and the Good.
Nevertheless this glowing sphere of the Sun will not exist
beyond the Venus age; it will then disappear. And everything
through which man, in ancient times, saw in a veiled way, the
constituents of some spiritual existence will also disappear.
And of all that is here now there will remain for the future
only what is planted seedwise into man.
What then has
actually happened? Before the Mystery of Golgotha men used to
look out into the wide Cosmos; they saw stars upon stars,
they saw Sun and Moon, air and water, the various kingdoms.
But they did not see them in the same way as modern man, for
they saw them all with the divine spiritual being behind. And
behind all that, they saw the Christ who had not then
descended to earth. In those olden times Christ was seen to
be united with the cosmos; he was seen outside the earth.
There is nothing in which Christ was thus seen that will last
beyond the Venus age. Everything through which the spiritual
and also Christ in the cosmos were revealed to man before the
Mystery of Golgotha will last only to the Venus existence.
Before the Mystery of Golgotha men lived with the heavens,
but these heavens are so physical that they too will vanish
with the Venus existence. What will last longer than that has
its seed in man alone. The Christ had to come to man out of
the cosmos if He wished to tread with man the path to
eternity. Because all that I have described to you is so,
Christ descended from the cosmos in order henceforth to be
with what as seed in man, will last on into eternity.
That is the
great cosmic event that must be understood. Before the
Mystery of Golgotha men could worship the God, the Christ, in
the cosmos. Since the Mystery of Golgotha the time has come
when the seed for the eternal future of the world is
increasingly only in man; and the men who were to come after
had to have a Christ who is not outside in the cosmos which
will disintegrate, but be united with man, united with the
human organisation, with the human kingdom. It is literally
true that what are there for the senses in the whole wide
circumference as stars, as heavenly bodies, will pass away.
[See
Whitsuntide lecture Dornach 6-9-24 page 7.]
But the word will remain, the Logos, who has appeared in the
Christ and is united with the eternal essential being of man.
And this is literally true, as things in the real occult,
religious primal record are literal truth.
That is also
the reason why a double name has to be given — I have
already given indications of this — the double name
Christ-Jesus. It must not be forgotten that on the one hand
we must recognise the Christ who belongs to the cosmos beyond
the earth, the spiritual being who before the mystery of
Golgotha was not bound up with man on earth. Then He
descended and united Himself with human nature — with the
Jesus. In the twofold name Christ-Jesus there lies what it is
necessary to understand. In the Christ we have to see the
cosmic, the spiritual; in Jesus we must see that through
which this cosmic, spiritual being entered historic
evolution, binding Himself to mankind in such a way that He
can now live on with the seed of man into eternity.
And as the
centuries flowed on it was the task of the Church to conceal,
to misrepresent, this mystery of Christ which was connected
with the ancient mysteries. Just try really to study what
during all those early centuries was passed through by man,
try to see clearly how it was with the individual man who
really wanted to seek Christ-Jesus, who really wanted to find
the path to Him — it was a long path of martyrdom.
Christ-Jesus had always to be sought in defiance of
convention — as even today he must be sought against the
stream of those conventions that still persist.
One cannot,
however, come near the Christ-Mystery if one does not connect
it with the mystery of nature. For you see what we have
placed before our souls, namely, the necessity for the
descent of Christ from cosmic heights to the seed in man, the
mystery of Christ becoming Jesus, can be understood only when
the study of nature, the study of the world, cosmology, the
knowledge of man's becoming, and of the divine in
man — when all these form a unity. In a certain sphere it
is sought to prevent natural science becoming at the same
time spiritual science, or spiritual science becoming natural
science. That is what most theologians try to do, and, in
another domain, what most modern physicists try to
do — to erect a barrier between physical science, on the
one side, spiritual science on the other. On no account must
anything be said about Christ-Jesus that is connected at the
same time with the evolution of the earth; nor anything be
said about earth-evolution, that is, about its details, that
is connected with the great spiritual mystery.
Touching on
these things, one actually touches on what is of most
importance, of supreme importance in the life of modern man.
For confused chatter about all kinds of spiritual things,
that has indeed been brought to one's attention by our
friends, brought to one's attention ad nauseam —
this sort of confused chatter profits no
one. I am referring to how constantly people come to one
saying: Just listen: So and so has been speaking quite
theosophically — or anthroposophically he has said such
and such a thing: This facile looking around for support in
the present confusion is not what we are meant to be striving
for: we should stand on the firm ground that spiritual
science will surely give us. The time is too grave for
further compromise, particularly in this sphere. For to build
the bridge between the knowledge of nature, that is, the
knowledge of anything perceived, and the knowledge to which
belong sin and redemption, in short, the religious
truths — to set up a bridge between these two domains can
be done only when man finds the courage really to penetrate
to the spiritual. And what is more, should he not have this
same courage he will never be able to discover reason where
the truths of life are concerned. For penetrating spiritual
reality we need above all the possibility of being able to in
some measure look back to the threefold Sun-Mystery of olden
days, to look back, however, in the new way suitable for
present-day mankind. Precisely in the same way as the sun is
a trinity so also is man. But it is important that we should
really study this threefold man, and this study is of the
utmost importance at the present time. Today I should like to
give you diagrammatically something of a preparatory nature
that can guide you to the path that must really be sought for
the understanding of threefold man. Tomorrow and the day
after we shall bring this important subject to a close.
Just imagine
the following. What I am now sketching is only meant as a
diagram. (see diagram 1). Imagine you had a figure that was
merely a picture, an image, having no meaning in itself, in
fact an image. I shall draw it like this — in a simple
circle (see blue in diagram 1) a circular surface, that is, a
form that is the image of something else, but through being
an image has entirely consumed that something, of which it is
the image. It sounds strange when I say the following but
just consider it. In our cupola, in the small cupola, four
ladies are working. Let us suppose these four
ladies — two on either side — paint their own
portraits, and that this has a particular sequel. Imagine
these four ladies painting their own pictures in the small
cupola, portraying themselves there, imagine that this
self-portraiture has a quite definite sequel — the ladies
disappear, pass over into their image and cease to exist.
Having completed their work they no longer are there. Through
the coming into existence of their images they are no longer
there. Behind what I have here sketched, picture to
yourselves a figure like that, a figure that has originated
through being made by something of which it is the image but
this something being absorbed, sucked up by the existence of
the image. Now what is thus absorbed is not alone in the
world. Picture to yourselves that we have not finished with
these four ladies. Very good; these four ladies have
disappeared — they have painted their own portraits and
disappeared but the pictures are still there. And they are
not alone there in the cosmos, the cosmos is still there with
its forces besides. The ladies have vanished and have been as
it were sucked up by the pictures; but by the pictures being
there substance is assembled again out of the cosmos and the
ladies are built up anew, as children new, it is true, but
new; they gradually grow up again, grow up near by. And so,
by the side of this figure, its original image blossoms anew
(see yellow in diagram). I must make a little addition to the
drawing, put it by the side — this is the archetypal
image. It is the archetype, the prototype, but there is a
very loose connection between the image and its prototype, a
very loose connection indeed. The one has almost nothing to
do with the other. The image has definitely hardened and has
almost lost all connection with its prototype.
And now
imagine a second figure. I will sketch the second figure so
that I make it also as an image (see violet in centre
diagram), only the first is inside the second. Thus I boldly
draw the second over the first. This is again an image of the
same kind. Again an image resembling another that I will draw
here also (see red in diagram); but these have now to be more
closely connected. Therefore, as the matter stands, I cannot
use the same comparison as I did earlier with the four
ladies, but now when I want to make a comparison with regard
to this picture and its image I must say: The four ladies are
there: they are painting in the small cupola, and as they
paint something actually — goes out from them, is sucked
out. They are, however, only half sucked out, and finally
they are — no I will say something else that will not
call up an inartistic comparison — from one the left half
of the body is sucked up while the right projects out of the
picture; from the other the right side is sucked out, the
left still projecting. Thus they are partly sucked out and
partly still jut out. That is the second.
Diagram 1
Now picture a
third that again embraces the first and also the second (see
green in diagram.) This, however, is to a great extent
connected with its image, not yet separated from it. So that
if I want to keep strictly to the comparison I have to say:
The ladies are painting, but they are still there as ladies,
and everything I have before me as a whole is the ladies and
their images — that is there (see orange in diagram) and
the greatest part is also present in the prototype.
So you have
here drawn diagrammatically, first above, an image grown
hard, crystallized, that has as little as possible to do with
its prototype; the latter being by the side of it, newly
arising. That is indeed your head, the most material and the
hardest part of human nature. Its prototype has just nothing
to do with it, arises afresh. And when you reach twenty-eight
years of age, your head becomes so that out of itself nothing
is forthcoming, nothing is to be developed. In the
constitution of man the greatest materialist is the head.
A second
figure is breast and breathing and everything belonging to
these. I could almost use the second as a model. That is
rather more connected, spirit and matter depending more upon
each other; here it is more permeated with spirit. All that
is lung and breathing process is for the earth already more
spiritual.
And what
remains, the limb system in connection with all that has to
do with sex, there spiritual and physical are one, there they
are still together. This belongs to the third diagram. And
you have threefold man.
Today I have
been able to draw this only diagrammatically on the board.
This majestic and profound mystery, at the same time
wonderful and fearful, is connected with the Mystery of the
threefold Sun. This again is connected with all the truths
that we need, as we need the bread of life, for everything
that must be put in place of what is chaos, what has reached
a blind alley, and has led to the present human catastrophe.
We shall
speak of this further tomorrow.
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