Lecture 3 of 3
Dornach 25th August, 1918
Certain questions will increasingly
obtrude themselves upon those who really think, even though
in these times of overwhelming materialism these thinkers
would prefer to keep them more or leas at a distance. There
are many such questions, and today I should like, out of all
of them, to pick a few that arise from man, in spite of
resisting it, becoming aware of the spiritual world. To such
questions belong those, for instance, raised in the course of
everyday life; certain men die young, others in old age,
others again in middle life. Concerning the fact that on the
one hand young children die and on the other hand people grow
to old age and then die — concerning this fact questions
arise in man to which by the means today called scientific
the answer can never be found. Everyone has to own this after
inner reflection. Yet in human life these are burning
questions; and surely anyone can feel that infinitely much in
life must receive enlightenment when we can really get down
to these questions: why do some human beings die early, some
as children, some as adolescents, some in the middle of the
normal period of life? Why do other die old? What
significance has this in the whole cosmos?
Men still had
ideas, concepts, with which to answer these questions up to
that point of time described in these lectures, the time at
the beginning of the fourth post-Atlantean period, that is,
up to approximately the middle of the eighth pre-Christian
century. Men had concepts that came down out of ancient
wisdom. In those olden times before the eighth pre-Christian
century, ideas were in fact circulating everywhere in the
cultural life of the earth giving men, in conformity with the
mind of those times, the solution to such questions as are
here mentioned. What today we call science cannot connect the
right meaning with these questions and has no idea that there
is something in them for which men should be seeking a
possible answer. All this arises because since the point of
time indicated, all conceptions related to spiritual and
therefore to immortal man have actually been lost. Only these
conceptions remain that are connected with man's transitory
nature, man between his birth and his death. I have drawn
attention to how in all the old world-conceptions they spoke
of the Sun as being threefold; the same sun that is perceived
out there by the physical senses as a shining sphere in
cosmic space. But behind this sun the wise men of old saw the
soul-sun, according to the Greeks Helios, and behind this
soul-Sun again, the spiritual-Sun, still identified by Plato,
for example, with the Good. Modern men do not see any real
sense in speaking of Helios, the soul-Sun, or for that matter
of the spiritual-Sun, the Good. But as the physical sun
shines upon us here between birth and death, there shines
into our ego, if I may say so, during the time we pass
between death and a new birth, the spiritual sun identified
by Plato with the Good. And during this time between death
and a new birth, to speak of a shining sphere in the way it
is spoken of in our modern materialistic world-conception has
no meaning. Between death and a new birth there is only
meaning when we speak of the spiritual-Sun Plato still
referred to as the Good. A concept of this kind is just what
should show us something. It should lead us to reflect how
the matter really stands with regard to the physical
representation we form of the world. It is not taken
seriously in its full sense, at any rate not so seriously
that our outlook on life is actually permeated by it, that in
all our physical representations of the world, in what is
spread out perceptibly before us, we have to see a kind of
illusion, Maya.
It is indeed
fundamentally this kind of representation of the Sun that
anyone accepts when taking as his authority modern physics,
astrophysics, whatever you like to call it. If he were able
to travel to the place where the physicist places the sun, on
approaching it he would — now let us turn from the
conditions of human life and assume that absolute conditions
of life could prevail — he would become aware of
overpowering heat, this is how he would picture it. And when
he had arrived inside the space that the physicist considers
to be filled by the sun, he would find in this space red hot
gas or something of the kind. This is what the physicist
considers to be filled by the sun, he would find in this
space red hot gas or something of the kind. This is what the
physicist actually pictures — a ball of glowing gas or
something like it. But it is not so, my dear friends, that is
definitely maya, complete illusion. This representation
cannot hold water in face of true physical perception that is
possible, let alone what can actually be perceived
spiritually. Were it possible to get near the sun, to reach
where the sun is, we should find yes, indeed, an getting
near, we should find something that would have the same
effect as going through floods of light. But when we came
right inside, where the physicist supposes the sun to be, we
should find first what we could only call empty space. Where
the physical sun is supposed to be there is nothing at all,
absolutely nothing. I will draw it diagrammatically (blue
centre in yellow circle, diagram not available) but in
reality nothing is there; there is nothing, there is empty
space. But it is a strange kind of empty space: When I say
there is nothing there I am not speaking quite
accurately — there is less than nothing there. It is not
only empty space for there is less than nothing there. And
that is something that is an extraordinarily difficult idea
for the modern western man to picture. Even today men of the
east take this as a matter of course; for them there is
absolutely nothing strange or difficult to understand when
they are told that less than nothing is there. The man of the
west thinks to himself — especially when he is a hard and
fast follower of Kant, and there are far more followers of
Kant today than those who are consciously so — he thinks
to himself that if there is nothing in space then it is just
empty space! However this is not the case, there can also be
exhausted space. And if indeed you were to look right through
this corona of the sun, you would feel the empty space into
which you would then enter most uncomfortable — that is
to say it would tear you asunder. By that it would show its
nature, that it is more — or it is less, however we can
best express it, than empty space. You need only seek the
help of the simplest mathematical concept and when I say
empty space is less than just emptiness you will no longer
find my meaning so puzzling. Now let us assume you possess
some kind of property. It can also happen that you have given
away what you possess and have nothing. But we can have less
than nothing, we can have debts. Then we do actually have
less than nothing. If we pass from fullness of space to its
ever diminishing fullness, we can come to empty space; and we
can still go an beyond mere emptiness just as we can go
beyond having nothing to having debts. It is a great weakness
of the modern world outlook that it does not know this
particular kind of — if I may so express
it — negative materiality, that it only knows emptiness
or fullness and not what is less than emptiness. For because
knowledge today, the world outlook today is ignorant of what
is less than emptiness, this world outlook is more or less
held in the bonds of materialism, strictly confined by
materialism — I should like to say, under the ban of
materialism. For in man also there is a place that is emptier
than empty, not in the whole of him but where there are
layers of what is emptier than empty. As a whole, man,
physical man, is a being who materially fills a certain
space; but there is a certain member of man's nature, of the
three I have referred to, that actually has something in it
like the sun, emptier than empty. That is — yet, my dear
friends, you'll have to put up with it — it is the head.
And it is just because man is so organised that his head can
become empty and in certain parts more than empty, that this
head has the power to make room for the spiritual. Now just
picture the matter as it actually is.
Naturally we
have to picture things diagrammatically, but use your
imagination and picture that everything materially filling
your head I am going to draw in the following way. This is
the diagram of your head (see red in diagram 5). but now, if
I want to draw it properly, I shall have to leave empty
places in this head, these naturally are not very big; but
there inside are empty places. And into these empty places
can enter what I have recently been calling the young spirit.
In these spaces the young spirit with its rays, as it were,
is drawn (see yellow in diagram 5).
Diagram 5
Now, my dear
friends, the materialists say that the brain is the
instrument of the soul-life, of the thinking. The reverse is
the truth. The holes in the brain, what indeed is more than
holes, or one could just say as well less than holes, what
therefore is emptier than empty, that is the instrument of
the soul-life. And here where the soul-life is not, into
which the soul-life is continually pushing, where the space
in our skull is filled with brain substance here nothing is
thought, here is no soul-experience.
We do not
need our physical brain for our life of soul; we need it only
to lay hold of our soul-life, physically to lay hold of it.
And if the soul-life were not actually alive in the holes of
the brain, pushing up everywhere, it would vanish, it would
never reach our consciousness. But it lives in the holes of
our brain that are emptier than empty.
Thus we have
gradually to correct our concepts. When we stand in front of
a mirror we do not perceive ourselves but only our reflected
image. We could forget ourselves ... We see ourselves in
the mirror. In the same way man does not experience himself
by putting together with his brain what is lying in the holes
in that brain. He experiences the way in which his soul-life
is everywhere reflected by pushing up against the brain
substance. It is reflected everywhere, and man experiences
it; what he experiences is actually its reflected image. All
that has slipped into the holes, however, because it is then
permeated by consciousness in the contrary sense is what
makes man conscious when without the resistance of the brain
he goes through the gate of death. Now I should like to draw
another diagram. Take the following: forgive me if I am
rather drastic in portraying the brain and how the holes are
left (blue in diagram 6). Here is the brain substance and
here the brain leaves its holes and into these holes goes the
life of the soul. (yellow)
Diagram 6
This
soul-life, however, continues, just outside the holes. There
come to what naturally is only seen near man but projects
indefinitely — man's aura. Now let us think away the
brain and imagine we are looking at the soul-life of an
ordinary man between birth and death. We should then have to
say that seen in this way the condition of the real man
between birth and death is such that actually his face is
turned to his body thus (see lilac). It is true I shall have
to draw this diagram differently. He turns his soul-life to
the corporeal. And when we look at the brain the soul-life
stretches out like a feeler that creeps into the holes of the
brain. What there I made yellow here I make lilac, because
that is more appropriate for the view into the living man.
Thus, that would be what runs into the brain of the living
man.
If after this
I want to draw, let us say, physical man, I could best
indicate that by perhaps here drawing in for you the boundary
set to the faculty of memory. You would go outside there and
there you would have the outer boundary, the boundary of
cognition, of which I have also spoken to you. For that you
will just have to remember diagram 5 and diagram 3 drawn
yesterday).
But now this
is the reality — when man is looked at spiritually from
without, his soul-life stretches into him thus... so I will
draw the single elongation only where the brain is concerned
(diagram 7). But this soul-life in itself is also
differentiated. So to follow up this soul-life further I
should have to draw... another region here (red under the
lilac), here another region blue); thus all this would belong
to what constitutes man's aura. Then another region (green).
You see how this part I am now drawing lies beyond the
boundary of man's cognition. Then the region
(yellow) — in reality all this belongs to man — and
this region (orange.)
Diagram 7
When man is
asleep this moves more or less out of the body, as it was
drawn yesterday (diagram 2), but when man is awake it is more
or lass within the body. So that actually, perceived with the
soul, the aura is in the immediate vicinity of the body. And
if the physical man is described this is done by saying that
this physical man consists of lungs, heart, liver, gall and
so on; This is done in physical anatomy, this is done in
physiology. But you can do the same when describing the man
of soul and spirit who in this way actually stretches out
into the holes in man, in what is more than empty in man. You
can describe this in the same way — only then you must
mention of what this soul-and spirit man consists. just as in
physical man the organs are differentiated, here the
different currents must be separated. It can be said: in here
where it is red, physical man would stand thus in profile,
the face turned in this direction, for example, the eyes here
(diagram 7), and here would be the region of burning desire
(red). That would be part of the man of soul-and-spirit who
has taken his substance from the region known in my book
Theosophy
as the region of burning desire. Thus
something taken from burning desire and introduced into man
gives this part of him.
If I am
describing this in detail what I have here colored lilac I
should have to call soul-life. As you know, a certain part of
the soul-sphere, of the soul-land, has been given the name
soul-life. This substance of it would have this violet
color,this lilac, and forms in man a part of his
soul-spiritual being.
And if we
continue in this way the orange here would have to be called
active soul-force. So that you have to remember that your
soul-life is what during your life between birth and death
enters you with most intensity by way of your senses. And
behind, checking itself, not so well able to enter, held up
by the soul-life, there is the active soul-force.
Still further
behind there is what is called soul-light (yellow in diagram
8). To a certain extent attached to this soul-light, pressing
itself through, there would be what is taken from the region
of liking and disliking which I should have to give to the
green area. Wishes, we should ascribe to the sphere of what
is approximately blue. And now pushing up here, the real
blue, that is approaching blue red, this would be the region
of mobile susceptibility. These are auric currents that I
here call burning desire, mobile susceptibility, and wishes.
As you know, these auric currents, these auric streams,
constitute the world of soul, they also constitute the man of
soul and spirit who may be said to be built out
of the ingredients of this soul world.
Then when
death comes the physical body falls away, and man withdraws
what has projected into the holes in the body. He takes it
away and by so doing (we can now think away physical man) he
comes into a certain relation with the soul-world and then
with the spirit-land as you will find it described in
Theosophy.
He has this relationship by having in him
its ingredients, but during physical life these are bound up
with the physical body and then they become free. Becoming
free, however, as a whole it is gradually changed. During
physical life — if I leave out the differentiations and
draw the soul-life thus — the feelers (lilac in diagram
8) reach out into our holes; after death these feelers are
drawn back. By their being drawn back, however, the soul-life
itself becomes hollowed out and the life of the spirit coming
from the other side rises into the life of soul (yellow).
Diagram 8
In the same
degree as man ceases to dive into the physical, the
soul-spiritual lights up and, from the other side, penetrates
his aura with light. And just as man is able to acquires a
consciousness through the reflection caused by the continual
pushing of the soul-spiritual against the physical body, he
now acquires a consciousness by drawing himself back against
the light. This light is that of the Sun, the original light
that is the Good. Thus, whereas during his physical life as
man of soul and spirit he pushes against what is related to
the Sun, namely, against the more than empty holes in the
brain, after death when he withdraws himself he pushes
against the other Sun, the Good-Sun, the original sun.
You see, my
dear friends, how the possibility of receiving concepts of
life between death and a new birth is bound up with the basic
ideas of primeval mysteries. For we are placed into this
whole cosmic life in true way I have been picturing during
these last few days. It is true, however, that we have to go
more deeply into the framework of actual human evolution
throughout earthly time to come to correct concepts of these
matters. I think you will agree it might be possible that
someone through a special stroke of luck — if one might
so call it — were able to see clairvoyantly, the whole of
what I have been describing. This stroke of luck, however,
could only bring him to the point of seeing ever changing
images. It is something like this — a man through some
kind of miracle — but nowadays it would not happen
through a miracle — or let us say through clairvoyant
vision, super-sensible vision, a man might see something of
the nature of what I have been trying to picture, namely
man's life of soul and spirit. You will find it obvious that
this should look rather different from what a short time ago
I was describing as the normal aura, if you understand what I
was describing only a few days ago as the aura revealed when
the whole man is seen, that is, physical man with his
encircling aura. But now I have taken out the man of soul und
spirit, so that this man of soul and spirit has been
abstracted from the physical man.
From this you
recognise that in one case the colors have to be arranged in
one way, in another case in another way; you recognise also
that for super-sensible consciousness things look very
different. Try simply to see man's aura — as it is while
man is in the physical body — then look at this aura.
Turn your attention that is, from the man of soul and spirit,
and try to see the man why stretches out his organs into
physical man. But when you see the man during the time
between death and a new birth, then you also see how the
whole changes. Above all, the region that is red here
(Diagram 7) goes away, goes here, and the yellow goes below,
the whole gradually gets into disorder. These things can be
perceived but the percept has something confusing about it.
Therefore it will not be easily possible for modern man to
bring meaning and significance into this confusion if he does
not turn to other expedients.
Now we have
shown that man's head points to the past whereas the
extremities man points to the future. This is entirely a
polaric contrast, both the head and the extremities of man
(remember what was said yesterday) are actually one and the
same, only the head is a very old formation, it is
overformed. That is why it has the holes; so far the
extremities man has not these holes; on the surface he is
still full of matter. To have these holes is a sign of over
development. Development in a backward sense can be seen in
the head and much hangs on that. Much depends too on man
being able to understand that extremities man is a recent
metamorphosis — the head an old metamorphosis. And
because extremities man is a recent metamorphosis he has not
so far developed the capacity to think in physical life but
his consciousness remains unconscious; he does not open up to
the man of soul and spirit such holes as are in the
brain.
You see it is
infinitely important for spiritual culture, and will in
future become more and more so, for us to perceive that these
two things that outwardly, physically, are as totally
different from one another as the head man and extremities
man, are according to soul and spirit, one and the same, and
only differ because they are at different stages of
development in time. Many mysteries lie in this particular
fact that two equal physical things at different stages of
their development in time, can be really one and the same
that, though outwardly physically different, this is only due
to the conditions of their change, of their
metamorphosis.
Goethe with
his theory of metamorphosis began in an elementary way to
form concepts by which all this can be understood. Whereas
otherwise since ancient times there has been a deadlock in
the formation of concepts, with Goethe the faculty of forming
concepts once more arose. And these concepts are those of
living metamorphoses. Goethe, it is true, always began with
the most simple. He said: when we look at a plant we have its
green leaf; but the green leaf changes into the flower petal,
into the colorsome petal of the flower. Both are the same,
only one is the metamorphosis of the other. And as the green
leaf of the plant and the red petal of the rose are different
metamorphoses, the same thing at a different stage, man's
head and his extremities organism too are simply
metamorphoses of one another. When we take Goethe's thought
on the metamorphosis of the plant we have something
primitive, simple; but this thought can blossom into
something of the greatest and can serve to describe man's
passing from one incarnation to the next. We see the plant
with its green leaf and its blossom, and say: this blossom,
this red blossom of the rose is the metamorphosis of the
green leaf of the plant. We see a man standing before us and
say: that head you are carrying is the metamorphosis of arms,
hands, legs, feet of your previous incarnation, and what you
now have as arms, hands, legs and feet will be changed into
your head of the next incarnation.
Now, however,
will come an objection that evidently sits heavily on your
souls. You will say: good gracious but I leave my legs and
feet behind, my arms and hands too; I do not take them into
my next incarnation ... how then should my head be made out
of them? It is true, this objection can be made. But once
again you are coming here up against Maya. It is not true
that you actually leave behind your legs, feet, hands, arms.
It is indeed untrue. You say that because you still cling to
Maya, the great illusion.
What indeed
with the ordinary consciousness you refer to as your arms,
hands, legs and feet, are not your arms, hands, legs and feet
at all, but what as blood and other juices fills out the real
arms, hands, feet and legs. This again is a difficult idea
but it is true. Suppose that here you have arms, hands, feet
and legs, but that what is here is spiritual, spiritual
forces. Now please to think that your arms, hands, legs and
feet are forces — super-sensible forces. Had you these
alone you would not see them with your eyes; they are filled
out, these forces, with juices, with the blood, and you see
what as mineral substance, fluid or partly solid — the
smallest part solid — fills out what is invisible
(hatching in diagram 9). What you leave in the grave or what
is burnt is only what might be called the mineral enclosure.
Your arms and hands, legs and feet are not visible, they are
forces and you take them with you, you take the forms with
you. You say: I have hands and feet. Anyone who sees into the
spiritual world does not say: I have hands and feet, he says;
there are spirits of form, Elohim, they think cosmic
thoughts, and their thoughts are my arms and hands, my legs
and feet; and their thoughts are filled out with blood and
other fluids. But neither are blood and the other fluids what
they appear physically; these again are the ideas of spirits
of wisdom, and what the physicist calls matter is only outer
semblance. The physicist ought to say when he comes to
matter: here I come to the thoughts of the spirits of wisdom,
the Kyriotetes. And where you see arms, hands, feet, legs,
you cannot touch them but should say: here the spirits of
form are building into these shapes their cosmic
thoughts.
Diagram 9
In short, my
dear friends, strange as it sounds, there are no such things
as your bodies, but where your body is in space there
intermingled with one another live the cosmic thoughts of the
higher hierarchies. And were you able to see correctly and
not in accordance with Maya, you would say: into here there
project the cosmic thoughts of the Exusiai, the spirits of
form, the Elohim. These cosmic thoughts make themselves
visible to me by being filled out with the cosmic thoughts of
the spirits of wisdom. That gives us arms and hands, legs and
feet. Nothing, absolutely nothing, as it appears in Maya is
there before the spiritual vision, out there stand the cosmic
thoughts. And these cosmic thoughts crowd together, are
condensed, pushed into one another; for this reason they
appear to us as these shadow figures of ours that go around,
which we believe to have reality. Thus, as far as the
physical man is concerned, he does not exist at all.
With certain
justification we can say that in the hour of death the
spirits of form separate their cosmic thoughts from those of
the spirits of wisdom. The spirits of form take their
thoughts up into the air, the spirits of wisdom sink their
material thoughts into the earth. This brings it about that
in the corpse an aftershadow of the thoughts of the spirits
of wisdom still exists when the spirits of form have taken
back their thoughts into the air. That is physical
death — that is its reality.
In short,
when we begin to think about the reality we come to the
dissolution of what is commonly called the physical world.
For this physical world derives its existence from the
spirits of the higher hierarchies pushing in their
intermingled thoughts, and I beg you to imagine that finely
distributed quantities of water are introduced in some way
which form a thick mist. That is why your body appears as a
kind of shadow-form, because the thoughts of the spirits of
form penetrate those of the spirits of wisdom, the formative
thoughts enter the thoughts of substance. In face of this
conception the whole world dissolve into the spiritual. We
must, however, have the possibility of imagining the world to
be really spiritual, of knowing that it is only apparent that
my arms and hands, my feet and legs are given over to the
earth. That is what it seems; in reality the metamorphosis of
my arms and legs, hands and feet begins there and comes to
completion in the life between death and a new birth, when my
arms and legs, hands and feet become the head of my next
incarnation.
I have been
here telling you many things that perhaps at least in their
form may have struck you as something strange. But what is
all this ultimately of which we have been speaking but an
ascending from man as he appears, to man as he really is,
ascending from what lives externally in Maya to the
successive ranks of the hierarchies.
It is only
when we do this, my dear friends, that we are able to speak
in a form that is ripe today of how man is permitted to know
a so-called higher self. When we simply rant about a higher
self, when we simply say: I feel a higher self within me . .
. then this higher self is a mere empty abstraction with no
content; for the ordinary self is in the hands of Maya, is
itself Maya. The higher self has only one meaning when we
speak of it in connection with the world of the higher
hierarchies. To talk of the higher self without paying heed
to the world that consists of the spirits of form and the
angels, archangels and so on, to speak of the higher self
without reference to this world, means that we are speaking
of empty abstractions, and at the same time signifies that we
are not talking of what lives in man between death and a new
birth. For as here we live with animals, plants and minerals,
between death and a new birth we live with the kingdoms of
the higher hierarchies of whom we have so often spoken. Only
when we gradually come nearer to these ideas and concepts (in
a week, perhaps, we shall be speaking of them) shall we
approach what can answer the question: why do many human
beings die as mere children, many in old age, others in
middle age?
Now, my dear
friends, what I have just given you in outline are concrete
concepts of what is real in the world. Truly they are not
abstract concepts I have been describing, they are concrete
concepts of world reality. These concrete concepts were
given, for a more atavistic perception, it is true, in the
ancient mysteries. Since the eighth pre-Christian century
they have been lost to human perception, but through a
deepening of our comprehension of the Christ-Being they must
be found again. And this can only be realised on the path of
spiritual science.
Let us make
ourselves from a certain point of view another kind of
picture of human evolution. We will here keep before us
exceedingly important concepts. Now it can be said that when
we go back in the evolution of man we discover — and I
have often described this — that in ancient days men had
more of the group-soul, and that the individual souls were
membered into what was group-soul. You can read about this in
various cycles:
[For example:
Universe, Earth and Man,
and
Egyptian Myths and Mysteries.]
we can then diagrammatically represent human evolution and say:
in olden days there were group-souls and each of these split up
(it would appear thus to soul perception but different for
the perception of the spirit). But each of these souls
clothed itself with a body that here in this figure I
indicate with red strokes. (Diagram 10).
Up to the
time of the Pythagorean school this drawing, or something
like it, was always made and it was said: look at your body,
so far as that is concerned men are separated, each having
his own body (that is why the red strokes are isolated).
Where the souls are concerned however, mankind is a unity,
since we go back — it is true a long way back — to
the group-soul. There we have a unity. If you think away the
red, the while will form a unified figure (see diagram.)
Diagram 10
There is
sense in speaking of this figure only if we have first spoken
of the spiritual as has been done here today; for then we
know everything that is working together in these souls, how
the higher hierarchies are working together on these souls.
There is no sense in speaking of this figure if our gaze is
not fixed on the hierarchies. It was thus that they spoke up
to the time of the Pythagorean School; and it was from the
Pythagorean School that Apollonius learned what I spoke about
yesterday and about which I shall be talking further in these
next weeks. But then after the eighth pre-Christian century,
when the Pythagorean Schools were in their decadence, the
possibility of thus speaking was lost. And gradually the
concepts that are concrete, that have reality by being
related to the higher hierarchies — these concepts have
become confused and hazy to people. Thus there has come to
them in the place of Angels, Archangels, Archai, Spirits of
Form, Spirits of Movement, Spirits of Wisdom, Thrones,
instead of all this concrete weaving of the spirit, they
arrived at a concept that now played a certain part in the
perception of the Greeks — the concept of the pneuma.
Everything became hazily confused: Pneuma, universal spirit,
this indistinct concept still so loved today by the
Pantheists ... spirit, spirit, spirit ... I have often
spoken of how the Pantheists place spirit everywhere; that
goes back to Greek life. Again this figure is portrayed ...
but you can now see how what was once concrete, the fullness
of the Godhead, now became an abstract concept — Pneuma.
The white is Pneuma, the red physical matter (see diagram 10)
if we are considering the evolution of man. The Greeks,
however, at least still preserved some perception of this
Pneuma, for they always saw something of the aura. Thus, for
them, what you can picture in these white branches was always
of an auric nature, something really perceptible. There is
the great significance of the transition from that
constituted Greece to all that was Roman — that the
Greeks still in their perception experienced Pneuma as
something actual and spiritual, but that the Romans did so no
longer. Everything now becomes quite abstract with the
Romans, completely abstract; concepts and nothing more. The
Romans are the people of abstract concepts.
My dear
friends, in our days you find in science the same diagram!
You can come upon it today in materialistic books on science.
You will find the same diagram, exactly the same, as you
would have found in the old Mysteries, in the Pythagorean
Schools, where everything was still related to the
hierarchies. You have it with the Greeks where everything is
related to the Pneuma; again today you find it drawn, and we
shall see what it has now become. Today the scientist says as
he makes this same drawing on the blackboard for his
students: in the propagation of the human race the substance
of the parents' germ cells passes over to the children; but
part of this substance remains so that it can again pass over
to the children and and again there remains some of this to
pass over anew to the children. And another part of the germ
cell substance develops so that it can form the cells of the
physical body. You have exactly the same diagram, only the
modern scientist sees in the white (see diagram) the
continuity of the substance of the germ cell. He says; if we
go back to our old human ancestors and take this germ cell
substance of both male and female, and then go to present day
man and take his, it is still the same stream, the substance
is continuous. There always remains in this germ substance
something eternal — so the scientist imagines — and
only half of the germ plasma goes over into the new body. The
scientist has still the same figure but no longer has the
pneuma; the white is now for him the material germ
substance — nothing is left of soul and spirit, it is
just material substance. You can read this today in
scientific books, and it is taken as a great and significant
discovery. That is the materialising of a higher spiritual
perception that has passed through the process of
abstraction; in the midst stands the abstract concept. And it
is really amusing that a modern scientist has written a book
(for those whose thinking is sound, it is amusing) in which
he says right out: what the Greeks still represented as
Pneuma is today the continuity of the germ substance. Yes, it
is foolish, but today it counts for great wisdom.
From this you
can, however, see one thing, it is not the drawing that does
it! And you will therefore understand why to a certain extent
I have always been against drawing diagrams so long as we
were still trying to run our Anthroposophy within the
Theosophical Society. One had only to enter any theosophical
branch and the walls as a rule would be plastered with all
manner of diagrams; there were drawings of every possible
thing with words attached; there ware whole genealogical
trees and every possible kind of sketch. However, my dear
friends, these drawings are not important. What matters is
that we should really be able to have living conceptions; for
the same drawing can represent the soul-spiritual in the
flowing of hierarchies, the purely material in the continuous
germ-plasm. These things are seen very hazily by modern man.
Therefore it is so important to be clear that the Greeks
still knew something of the real self in man, of the real
spiritual and that it was the Romans who made the transition
to the abstract concept. You can see all this in what is
external. When the Greek talked about his Gods, he did so in
a way that made it quite evident that he was still picturing
concrete figures behind these Gods. For the Romans the Gods,
in reality, ware only names, only expressions, abstractions
and they became abstractions more and more. For Greek a
certain idea was ever present that in the man before him the
hierarchies were living, that in each man the hierarchies
were living a different life. Thus the hierarchies were
living differently in every man. The Greek knew the reality
of man, and when he said, that is Alcibiades, that is
Socrates, or that is Plato, he still had the concept that
there in Alcibiades, Socrates or Plato ware rising up, within
each in a different way, the cosmic thoughts of the
hierarchies. And because the cosmic thoughts arose
differently these figures appeared different.
All this was
entirely lacking in the Roman. For this reason he formed for
himself a system of concepts that reached its climax when
from the time of Augustus on and actually from an earlier
date, the Roman Caesar was held to be God. The Godhead
gradually became an abstraction and the Roman Caesar was
himself a God because the concept of God had become
completely abstract. This applies to the rest of their
concepts; and it was particularly the case with the concepts
that lived deeply in the Roman nature as concepts of rights,
moral concepts. Thus, in place of all that in olden days was
a living reality, there arose a number of abstractions. And
all these abstractions lasted on as a heritage throughout the
middle ages and descended to modern times, remaining as
heritage down to the nineteenth century — abstract
concepts carried into every sphere.
In the
nineteenth century there came something startling. Man
himself was entirely lost sight of among all these abstract
concepts! The Greeks still had a presentiment of the real man
who descends here after being formed and fashioned out of the
cosmos; in the time of the Roman empire all knowledge of him
was lost. The nineteenth century was needed to rediscover him
through all the connections I have been showing you and will
go on showing you even more exactly. The discovery of man
took place now from the opposite pole. Greece wanted to see
man as descending from the hierarchies, divine man; in place
of this the Romans set up a series of abstract concepts; the
nineteenth century — the eighteenth century too but
particularly the nineteenth — was needed to rediscover
man from the other side, from his animal side. And he could
not be grasped with abstract concepts; this was the great
shock. This was the great shock and the deep cleft that
arose; what is this actually that stands there on two legs
and fidgets with its hands, and eats and drinks all manner of
things; what is it? The Greeks still knew, then a change took
place when concepts became abstract. Now it comes as
something startling to men of the nineteenth century; it
stands there and there are no concepts with which to grasp
it. It is taken for simply a higher form of animal. On the
one hand, in science it produces Darwinism, on the other
hand, in the spiritual it brings about socialism which would
place man into society as a mere animal. Here is man standing
transfixed before himself — what is this thing? And he is
powerless to answer the question.
That is the
situation today; that is the situation that will produce not
only concepts that are right or wrong according as men will
them, but is called upon to create facts either catastrophic
or beneficial. And the situation is — the shock men have
when seeing themselves. We must find the elements once more
for te understanding of spiritual man. These elements will
not be found unless we turn to the theory of metamorphosis.
There lies the essential point. Goethe's concepts of
metamorphosis are alone able to grasp the ever changing
phenomena which offer themselves to the perception of the
reality.
Now one might
say that spiritual evolution has always moved in this
direction. Even at the time when the
Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz
in the seventeenth century was
being published in so wonderful a way — other writings
too — the endeavour was already there to provide for the
arising of a social structure for man compatible with his
true nature. (In Das Reich I have referred to this
in a series of articles concerning
The Chemical Wedding).
In this way the
Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz
by the so-called Valentin Andreae arose. On the other hand, however,
there also arose the book he called
Reformation des Ganzer Menschengeschlectes
(Reformation of the whole Human Race), where he
gives a great political survey of how social conditions ought
to be. Then, it was the thirty years war that swept the thing
away! Today, there is the possibility that the ordering of
the world either sweep things away once more ... or carry
them right into human evolution. With this we are touching an
the great fundamental questions of the day, with which men
should be occupying themselves instead of with all the
secondary matters that engross them. If only men concerned
themselves about basic questions they would find means and
ways of bringing fruitful concepts into modern reality —
then we could get away from abstract concepts.
It is not
very easy to distinguish reality from illusion. For that, we
must have the will to go right into life with all seriousness
and all good will, and not be bound down by programmes and
prejudices. I could tell many tales about this but now I will
refer to one fact only. In the beginning of the nineties of
the last century a number of people foregathered in various
towns of Europe and brought about something of an American
nature, namely, the Movement for Ethical Culture. At that
time it was the intellectuals who were connected with
founding these societies for Ethical Culture. These people
produced very beautiful things, and if today you read the
articles written at that time by the promoters of Societies
for Ethical Culture ... if you have a taste for butter, you
will probably even today be enchanted by all the beautiful,
wonderfully beautiful ideals, in which these people indulged.
And indeed it was no pleasant task to go against this
reveling in butter: However, I wrote an article at the time
in one of the first numbers of
Die Zunkunft (The Future),
against all this oiliness in “ethical
culture,” and denounced it in awful words. Naturally it
was a shameful deed — how should it not have been when
these people had set out to make the whole world ethical,
moral — how should it not have been disgraceful to turn
upon anything so good: At that time I was living in Weimar
but on paying a visit to Berlin I had a conversation with
Herman Grimm who said:
“What
is the matter with ‘ethical culture'? Go and see
the people themselves. You will find that here in Berlin
those who hold meetings about ethics are really thoroughly
nice kind people — one could not have any objection to
them. They can even be congenial and very pleasant.”
This was not to be denied and at the moment Herman Grimm had
just as much right on his side as I had. Outwardly and
momentarily, one of us was as right as the other, one could
be proved right just as well as the other. And I am not for
maintaining that from the point of view of pure logic my
grounds for opposing these ethical philosophers were any more
sound than those brought forward by them — I wouldn't be
sure. But, my dear friends, from all this highfalutin
idealism the present catastrophe has arisen! And only those
people were right, and have been justified by events, who
said at the time; with all your talking and luxuriating in
buttery ideals, by means of which you would bring universal
peace and universal morals to man, you have produced nothing
but what I then called social carcinoma that had to end in
this catastrophic present. Time has shown who was working
with concrete concepts, who with merely those that are
abstract. When they are simply abstract in character, there
is no distinguishing who is right and who is wrong. The only
thing that decides is whether a concept finds its right
setting in the course of actual events. A professor teaching
science in a university can naturally prove everything he
says to be right in a most beautiful and logical way. And all
this goes into the holes in the head (and this today I
naturally may be allowed to say with the very best
intention). But you see it is not a question of bringing
forward apparently good logical grounds; for when these
thoughts sink into a head such as Lenin's they become
Bolshevism. What matters is what a thought is in reality, not
what can be thought about it or felt about it in an abstract
way, but what force goes to the forming of it in its reality.
And if we test the world-conception that is chiefly talked of
today — for the others, specified yesterday, were more in
picture form — when one brings socialism to the test, it
is not a question today of sitting oneself down to cram (as
we say for ‘study') Karl Marx, or Lassalle, or
Bernstein, to study their books, to study these authors. No!
It is a question of having a feeling, a living experience for
what will become of human progress if a number of
men — the sort of men who stand at a machine — have
these thoughts. That is what matters, and not to have
thoughts about the social structure in the near future that
are learnt in the customary course of modern diplomatic
schooling, Now is the time when it is important to weigh
thoughts so as to be able to answer the question: what are
the times wanting for the coming decades? Today the time has
already come when it is not allowed to sit in comfort in the
various magisterial seats and to go on cherishing what is
old. The time has come when men must bear the shock of seeing
themselves, and when the thought must rise up in those
responsible anywhere for anything: How is this question to be
solved out of the spiritual life?
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