In addressing a public audience today on the most important question
of our time, it makes a great difference if one speaks from a
knowledge of the deeper forces of world-historical evolution, that is,
from initiation-science, or if one speaks without such knowledge. It
is relatively easy to speak about modern questions if one relies upon
data of external knowledge which are considered scientific, practical,
and so on. It is, however, extraordinarily difficult to speak about
these questions from the standpoint of initiation-science from
which indeed everything is derived with which we have to deal at such
gatherings as ours today. For he who speaks from that standpoint about
problems of the time knows that he is opposed not only by the casual,
subjective opinions of those to whom he speaks. He knows too that a
great part of mankind today is already under the control, from one
side or another, of Ahrimanic forces of a cosmic nature which are
growing stronger and stronger. To explain what I mean by this, I must
give you a kind of historical survey of a fairly long period of human
history.
From various statements which have been made here and which you will
also find in some of my lecture-courses, you know that we have to
place the beginning of our modern age in the middle of the fifteenth
century. We have always called this period of which we are really
only at the beginning the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. It has
replaced the Greco-Latin Epoch, which we reckon from the middle of the
eighth century B.C. to the middle of the fifteenth century; and
further back still, we have the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch. I have merely
indicated this so that you may remember where, in human evolution as a
whole, we place the epoch in which we feel ourselves standing as
modern men.
Now you know that at the close of the first third of the Greco-Latin
Epoch, the Mystery of Golgotha took place. And from many different
aspects we have characterized what really came about for human
evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, in fact for the whole
evolution of the earth. Today, into this broad historical survey, we
will place various things concerning mankind which are connected with
this Mystery.
With this in view, let us glance back into far earlier times, let us
say, into the ages about the beginning of the third millennium B.C.
You are aware how little is said in external historical tradition
about this early evolution of the human race on earth. You know, too,
how external documents point over to Asia, to the Orient. From many
anthroposophical sources, you will know that the further we go back in
mankind's evolution, the more we find a different constitution of the
human soul, and something like an ancient, original wisdom underlying
the whole evolution of humanity. You know, further, that certain
traditions of an ancient wisdom of mankind were preserved in close,
secret circles, right into the nineteenth century. They have even been
preserved into our own time but not, for the most part, at all
faithfully.
When a man of today learns to know something of this original wisdom,
he is astounded at the depths of the realities to which it points. Yet
in the course of the studies we have been pursuing for many years, it
has been shown that this widespread wisdom-teaching of ancient times
must always be contrasted with the understanding of life and the world
that was possessed by the old Hebrew people and bore a completely
different character. With a certain justice the widespread original
wisdom is described as the heathen, pagan element, and to this is
opposed the Hebrew, Jewish element. From external traditions and
literature you are aware how the Christian element then arose out of
the Jewish.
You can already gather from these external facts something that I beg
you to bear in mind, namely, that it was essential in humanity's
evolution to confront the ancient heathen element and its wisdom with
the Jewish element out of which Christianity evolved partially, at all
events. The primeval heathen or pagan wisdom in its totality was not
destined to have the sole influence on the further evolution of
mankind. And now the question must arise: Why had the ancient pagan
wisdom, which is in many respects so wonderful, to experience a new
form, a transformation, through Judaism and Christianity? This
question inevitably arises.
The answer is supplied for Initiation-wisdom only through a very, very
weighty fact, through an event which took place far over in Asia at
the beginning of the third millennium of the pre-Christian era.
Clairvoyant vision finds in looking back that an incarnation of a
super-sensible Being in a human being had taken place there, just as in
the Event of Golgotha an incarnation of the super-sensible Christ Being
had taken place in the man Jesus of Nazareth. The incarnation that
took place at the beginning of the third millennium B.C. is
extraordinarily difficult to follow up, even with the science of
seership, of initiation. It gave humanity something of immense
brilliance, having an incisive effect. What it gave to humanity, in
fact, was the primeval wisdom.
Viewed externally, one can say that it was a wisdom penetrating deep
into reality; cold, based purely on ideas, permeated little by
feeling. The actual inner nature of this wisdom can be judged only by
going back to that incarnation which took place over in Asia at the
beginning of the third pre-Christian millennium. It is revealed to the
retrospective clairvoyant gaze that this was an actual human
incarnation of the Luciferic Power.
And this incarnation of Lucifer in humanity, which in a certain way
has been achieved, was the origin of the widely extended ancient
wisdom based on the Third Post-Atlantean civilization.
There was still an after-effect, even in Grecian times, of the
widespread cultural impulse that was derived from this Asiatic,
Luciferic human being. Luciferic wisdom was of the utmost benefit to
man in that epoch of evolution brilliant in a certain way,
graduated according to the different peoples and races among which it
was spread. It was plainly recognizable throughout the whole of Asia,
then in the Egyptian civilization, the Babylonian civilization and
even in the culture of Greece.
All that was possible to the humanity of that time in thought, in the
realm of poetry, in deeds, was in a certain way determined through the
entry of this Luciferic impulse into human civilization.
It would, of course, be extraordinarily philistine to wish to say:
That was an incarnation of Lucifer, hence we must flee from it! Such
philistinism could make one also flee from the beauty and greatness
that has come to mankind from this Luciferic stream, for the fruits of
Greek culture with all their beauty, proceeded, as already said, from
this stream of evolution. The whole of Gnostic thought existing at the
time of the Mystery of Golgotha, an impressive wisdom shedding light
deep into cosmic realities this whole Gnostic knowledge was
inspired by the impulse coming from Luciferic forces. One must not say
that Gnostic thought is therefore false; one is merely characterizing
it by saying that it is permeated by Luciferic forces.
Then, considerably more than two thousand years after the Luciferic
incarnation, came the Mystery of Golgotha. It may be said that the men
among whom the impulse of this Mystery spread were still fully imbued
in their thinking and feeling with what had come from the impulse of
Lucifer. And now there entered into the evolution of civilized
humanity an entirely different impulse, the impulse proceeding from
the Christ. We have often spoken of what this Christ Impulse signifies
within civilized humanity. The Christ-Impulse I will only touch on
this today was taken up by the hearts and minds that I have just
characterized. One might say that it shone into all the best that came
to man from Lucifer. And in the first Christian centuries, men
understood the Christ through what they had received from Lucifer.
These things must be faced without prejudice; otherwise it is not
really possible to understand the particular way in which the Christ
Impulse was received in the first centuries of our era.
As the Luciferic impulse began to fade more and more, men were also
increasingly unable to absorb the Christ Impulse in the right way.
Consider how much has become materialistic in the course of modern
times. But if you ask yourself what in particular has become
materialistic, you must receive the answer: a great part of modern
Christian theology. For it is simply the starkest materialism to which
a great part of modern Christian theology succumbs when it no longer
sees the Christ in the man Jesus of Nazareth. It sees only the human
being, the ‘simple man of Nazareth,’ the man whom one can understand
if one will only raise one's self a little to some sort of higher
understanding. The more the man Jesus of Nazareth could be regarded as
an ordinary human being, one belonging to the ranks of other noted
human personalities, the better it pleased a certain materialistic
trend of modern theology. Of the super-sensible element of the Event of
Golgotha, modern theology is willing to recognize little, very little.
The impulses entering humanity from a Luciferic source sank down
gradually into the soul. On the other hand, however, another impulse,
which we call the Ahrimanic, is growing stronger and stronger in
modern times. It will become increasingly strong in the near future
and on into future ages. The Ahrimanic impulse proceeds from a
super-sensible Being different from the Being of Christ or of Lucifer.
Equally with ‘super-sensible’ one can say ‘subsensible’ but that is
not the point here. The influence of this Being becomes especially
powerful in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. If we look at the confused
conditions of recent years we shall find that men have been brought to
such chaotic conditions mainly through the Ahrimanic powers.
Just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer at the beginning of the
third pre-Christian millennium, as there was the Christ Incarnation at
the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, so there will be a Western
incarnation of the Ahriman being some little time after our present
earthly existence, in fact, in the third post-Christian millennium. To
form a right conception of the historical evolution of mankind during
approximately 6000 years, one must grasp that at the one pole stands a
Luciferic incarnation, in the center, the incarnation of Christ, and
at the other pole the Ahrimanic incarnation. Lucifer is the power that
stirs up in man all fanatical, all falsely mystical forces, all that
physiologically tends to bring the blood into disorder and so lift man
above and outside himself. Ahriman is the power that makes man dry,
prosaic, philistine that ossifies him and brings him to the
superstition of materialism. And the true nature and being of man is
essentially the effort to hold the balance between the powers of
Lucifer and Ahriman; the Christ Impulse helps present humanity to
establish this equilibrium.
Thus these two poles the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic are
continuously present in man. Viewed historically, we find that the
Luciferic preponderated in certain currents of cultural development of
the pre-Christian age and continued into the first centuries of our
era. On the other hand the Ahrimanic influence has been at work since
the middle of the fifteenth century and will increase in strength
until an actual incarnation of Ahriman takes place among Western
humanity.
Now it is characteristic of such things that they are prepared long in
advance. Ahrimanic powers prepare the evolution of mankind in such a
way that it can fall a prey to Ahriman when he appears in human form
within Western civilization hardly then to be called ‘civilization’
in our sense as once Lucifer appeared in human form in China, as
once Christ appeared in human form in Asia Minor. It is of no avail to
give oneself illusions today about these things. Ahriman will appear
in human form and the only question is, how he will find humanity
prepared. Will his preparations have secured for him as followers the
whole of mankind that today calls itself civilized, or will he find a
humanity that can offer resistance. It does not help at all to give
oneself up to illusions. People nowadays flee the truth, and one
cannot give it to them in an unvarnished form because they would
ridicule it and scoff and jeer. But if one gives it to them through
the Threefold Social Organism as one now tries to do, then they
will not have it either not the majority, at any rate. The fact that
people reject these things is just one of the means which the
Ahrimanic powers can use and which will give Ahriman the greatest
possible following when he appears in human form on earth. This
disregard of the weightiest truths is precisely what will build
Ahriman the best bridge to the success of his incarnation. And nothing
will help us to find the right position in regard to the part played by
Ahriman in human evolution except an unprejudiced study of the forces
through which Ahriman's influence works, as well as learning to know
the forces through which mankind can arm itself against being tempted
and led astray. For this reason we will cast a brief glance today at
various things which would foster support of Ahriman and which
Ahrimanic powers, working out of super-sensible worlds through human
minds down here, will particularly employ in order to make his
following as numerous as possible.
One of the means is this that it is not realized what is the actual
significance for man of certain kinds of thought and conception which
predominate in modern times. You know, indeed, what a great difference
there is between the way a man felt himself to be within the whole
cosmos in the Egyptian age, let us say, and even in the time of
Greece, and how he feels since the beginning of the modern age, since
the close of the Middle Ages. Picture to yourselves a well-instructed
ancient Egyptian. He knew that his body was constituted not merely of
the ingredients which exist here on earth and are embodied in the
animal kingdom, plant kingdom, mineral kingdom. He knew that the
forces which he saw in the stars above, worked into his being as man;
he felt himself a member of the whole cosmos. He felt the whole cosmos
not only quick with life, but ensouled and imbued with spirit; in his
consciousness there lived something of the spiritual beings of the
cosmos, of the soul-nature of the cosmos and its life. All this has
been lost in the course of later human history. Today man gazes from
his earth up to the star-world and to him it is filled with fixed
stars, suns, planets, comets, and so on. But with what means does he
examine all that looks down to him out of cosmic space? He examines it
with mathematics, with the science of mechanics. What lies around the
earth is robbed of spirit, robbed of soul, even of life. It is a great
mechanism, in fact, only to be grasped by the aid of mathematical,
mechanistic laws. With the help of these mathematical, mechanistic
laws we grasp it magnificently! A student of spiritual science is
undoubtedly just the one to value the achievements of a
Galileo,
a
Kepler,
and others, but what penetrates human understanding and
consciousness through the tenets of these great spirits in human
evolution merely shows the universe as a great mechanism.
What this means is only revealed to one who is able to grasp man in
his whole nature. It is all very well for astronomers and
astro-physicists to present the universe as a mechanism which can be
understood and calculated by mathematical formulae. This indeed is
what a man will believe in the time from waking in the morning till
going to sleep again at night. But in those unconscious depths which
he does not reach with his waking consciousness but which yet belong
to his existence and in which he lives between going to sleep and
waking, something quite different concerning the universe flows into
his soul. There lives in the human soul a knowledge which, although
unknown to the waking consciousness, is yet present in the depths and
moulds the soul a knowledge of the spirit, of the life of the soul,
of the life of the cosmos. And although in his waking consciousness
man knows nothing of what goes on there in communion with the spirit,
soul and life of the universe while he sleeps in the soul the
things are there; they live within it. And much of the great discord
felt by modern man is derived from the disharmony between what the
soul experiences and what the waking consciousness acknowledges as its
world-conception.
And what does the whole spirit and purport of anthroposophical
spiritual science say about such things? It says: What the ideas of
Galileo, Copernicus, have brought to mankind is grand and mighty, but
not an absolute truth, by no means an absolute truth. It is one aspect
of the universe, one side from a certain standpoint. It is only
through the arrogance of modern man that people say today: Ptolemaic
world-system childishness; that is what men had when they were
still children. We have made such great strides right ‘to the
stars’ and that is what we now take as the absolute. It is just
as little an absolute as the Ptolemaic system was an absolute, it is
one aspect. The only right view according to spiritual science
is to realize that all that is accepted by way of mere
world-mathematics, mere world-schematism of a mechanical order, does not
furnish man with absolute truth about the universe, but with illusions. The
illusions are necessary because mankind goes through varied forms of education
in its different stages of evolution. For modern education we need
these illusions of a mathematical nature about the universe, we must
acquire them, but we must know that they are illusions. And most of
all they are illusions when we transpose them into our daily
environment, when, in accordance with the atomic or molecular
theories, we even endeavour to create a kind of astronomy for the
substances of the earth. A right attitude in regard to the whole of
modern science, insofar as it thinks along these lines, will recognize
that its knowledge is illusion.
Now, in order that his incarnation may take the most profitable form,
it is of the utmost interest to Ahriman that people should perfect
themselves in all our illusory modern science, but without knowing
that it is illusion. Ahriman has the greatest possible interest in
instructing men in mathematics, but not in instructing them that
mathematical-mechanistic concepts of the universe are merely illusions.
He is intensely interested in bringing men chemistry, physics, biology
and so on, as they are presented today in all their remarkable
effects, but he is interested in making men believe that these are
absolute truths, not that they are only points of view, like
photographs from one side. If you photograph a tree from one side, it
can be a correct photograph, yet it does not give a picture of the
whole tree. If you photograph it from four sides, you can in any case
get an idea of it. To conceal from mankind that in modern
intellectual, rationalistic science with its supplement of a
superstitious empiricism, one is dealing with a great illusion, a
deception that men should not recognize this is of the greatest
possible interest to Ahriman. It would be a triumphant experience for
him if the scientific superstition which grips all circles today and
by which men even want to organize their social science, should
prevail into the third millennium. He would have the greatest success
if he could then come as a human being into Western civilization and
find the scientific superstition.
But I ask you not to draw false conclusions from what I have just
said. It would be a false conclusion to avoid the science of the day;
that is the very falsest conclusion which could be drawn. We must get
to know science; we should get an exact knowledge of all that comes
from this direction but with the full consciousness that we are
receiving an illusory aspect, an illusion necessary for our education
as men. We do not safeguard ourselves against Ahriman by avoiding
modern science, but by learning to know its character. For modern
science gives us an external illusion of the universe, and we need
this illusion. Do not imagine that we do not need it. We must only
fill it in from quite another side with actual reality gained through
spiritual research, we must rise from the illusory character to the
true reality. You will find reference in many of my lecture-courses to
what I am telling you today, and you will see how everywhere it has
been sought to enter fully into the science of our time, but to lift
it all to the sphere where one can see its real value. You cannot wish
to get rid of the rainbow because you know it to be an illusion of
light and color! You will not understand it if you do not realize its
illusory character. But it is just the same with all that modern
science gives you for your imagination of the universe, it gives only
illusions and that must be recognized. It is by educating oneself
through these illusions that one arrives at the reality.
This, then, represents one of the means used by Ahriman to make his
incarnation as effective as possible this keeping of man back in
scientific superstition.
The second means that he employs is to stir up all the emotions that
split men up into small groups groups that mutually attack one
another. You need only look at all the conflicting parties that exist
today, and if you are unprejudiced you will recognize that the
explanation is not to be found merely in human nature. If men honestly
try to explain this so-called World War through human dis-harmonies,
they will realize that with what they find in physical humanity they
cannot explain it. It is precisely here that super-sensible powers,
Ahrimanic powers, have been at work.
These Ahrimanic powers are working, in fact, wherever dis-harmonies
arise between groups of men. Now the question arises on what
foundation is most of what we are considering based?
Let us proceed from a very characteristic example. The modern
proletariat has had its Karl Marx. Observe closely how the doctrines
of Karl Marx have been spread among the proletariat, with Marxist
literature reaching practically immeasurable proportions. You will
find all the methods of our present-day science used in the books;
everything is strictly proved, so strictly proved that many people, of
whom one would never have supposed it, have fallen victim to Marxism.
What was the actual destiny of Marxism? It spread at first, as you
know, among the proletariat and was firmly rejected by university
science. Today there are already a number of university scientists who
have veered round to acknowledging Marxist logic. They adhere to it
because its literature has proved that its conclusions are in
excellent accord, that from the standpoint of modern science Marxism
can be quite neatly proved. Middle-class circles have unfortunately
had no Karl Marx who could have proved the opposite for them; for just
as one can prove the ideological character of right, morality, and so
forth, the theory of surplus value and materialistic historical
research from the Marxist standpoint, so is it possible to prove their
exact opposite. A middle-class, bourgeois-Marx would be fully able to
prove the exact opposite by the same strict method. There is no sort
of swindle or humbug about it; the proof would work out right.
Whence does this come? It comes from the fact that present human
thinking, the present intellect, lies in a stratum of being where it
does not reach down to realities. One can therefore prove something
quite strictly, and also prove its opposite. It is possible today to
prove spiritualism on the one hand and materialism on the other. And
people may fight against each other from equally good standpoints
because present-day intellectualism is in an upper layer of reality
and does not go down into the depths of being. And it is the same with
party opinions. A man who does not look deeper but simply lets himself
be accepted into a certain party-circle by reason of his education,
heredity, circumstances of life and State quite honestly believes
or so he thinks in the possibility of proving the tenets of the
party into which he has slipped, as he says. And then then he
fights against someone else who has slipped into another party! And
the one is just as right as the other. This calls forth chaos and
confusion over mankind that will gradually become greater and greater
unless men see through it. Ahriman makes use of this confusion in
order to prepare the triumph of his incarnation and to drive men with
increasing force into what they find so difficult to realize
namely, that by intellectual or modern scientific reasoning today, one
can prove anything and equally well prove its opposite. The point is
for us to recognize that everything can be proved and for that reason
to examine the proofs put forward in science today. It is only in
natural science that reality is shown by the facts; in no other field
can one consider intellectual proofs valid. The only way to escape the
danger that threatens if one accepts the lures of Ahriman and his
desire to drive men deeper and deeper into these things, is to realize
through anthroposophical spiritual science that human knowledge must
be sought for in a stratum deeper than that in which the validity of
our proofs arises. And so, in order to create dissensions, Ahriman
also makes use of what develops from the old conditions of heredity
which man has really outgrown in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. The
Ahrimanic powers use all that is derived from old circumstances of
heredity in order to set men against each other in conflicting groups.
All that comes from old differences of family, race, tribe, peoples,
is used by Ahriman to create confusion. Freedom for every nation,
even the smallest ... These were fine-sounding words. But the
powers hostile to man always use fine words in order to bring
confusion and in order to attain the things that Ahriman wishes to
attain for his incarnation.
If we inquire: Who stirs up nations against each other? Who raises the
questions that are directing humanity today? the answer is: the
Ahrimanic deception which plays into human life. And in this field men
very easily let themselves be deceived. They are not willing to
descend to the lower strata where reality is to be found. For, you
see, Ahriman skillfully prepares his goal beforehand; ever since the
Reformation and the Renaissance, the economist has been emerging in
modern civilization as the representative governing type. That is an
actual historical fact. If you go back to ancient times, even to those
that I have characterized today as the Luciferic who were the
governing types then? Initiates. The Egyptian Pharaohs, the Babylonian
rulers, the Asiatic rulers they were initiates. Then the
priest-type emerged as ruler and the priest-type was really the ruler
right up to the Reformation and the Renaissance. Since that time the
economist has been in command. Rulers are in fact merely the handymen,
the understrappers of the economists. One must not imagine that the
rulers of modern times are anything but the understrappers of the
economists. And all that has resulted by way of law and justice one
should only study it carefully is simply a consequence of what
economically oriented men have thought. In the nineteenth century the
economical man is replaced for the first time by the man thinking
in terms of banking, and in the nineteenth century there is created for
the first time the organization of finance which swamps every other
relationship. One must only be able to look into these things and
follow them up empirically and practically.
All that I stated in the second public lecture here
(The Social Future,
October 25, 1919)
is profoundly true. One could only wish that it
were followed up in all details; it would then be seen how
fundamentally true these things are. But just because this rulership
of the mere ‘symbol for solid goods’ (that is to say, money
quotation from the lecture) has arisen, Ahriman has been given another
essential medium for the deception of mankind. If men do not realize
that the rights-state and the organism of the Spirit must be set
against the economic order called up through the economists and the
banks, then again, through this lack of awareness, Ahriman will find
an important instrument for preparing his incarnation. His incarnation
is undoubtedly coming, and this lack of insight will enable him to
prepare it triumphantly.
Such means can be used by Ahriman for a certain type of man. But there
is another type indeed the two are often mixed in one personality
and this also, from a different direction, provides Ahriman with an
easy way to success.
Now it is a fact that in real life, total errors are not so harmful as
half- or quarter-truths. Total errors are soon seen through, whereas
half- and quarter-truths mislead people. They live with them, these
partial truths become a pan of life and cause the most horrible
devastation.
There are people today who do not realize the one-sidedness of the
Galileo-Copernican world-conception, or who at least do not see its
illusory character, or are too easygoing to examine it. We have just
shown how wrong that is. But there are also people today, numberless
people who acknowledge a certain half-truth, a very significant
half-truth, and who do not go into the question of the purely
hypothetical justification of it. Strange as it may appear to many
people, it is just as one-sided to view the world solely through the
Gospel and reject any other search into true reality, as it is to view
the world from the standpoint of Galileo and Copernicus, or of
university materialistic science in general.
The Gospel was given to those who lived in the first centuries of
Christianity, and to believe that today the Gospel can give the whole
of Christianity is simply a half-truth. It is therefore also a
half-error which befogs people and thus furnishes Ahriman with the
best means of attaining the goal and the triumph of his incarnation.
How numerous are those who think they are speaking out of Christian
humility, but in reality out of dreadful arrogance, when they say:
Oh, we need no spiritual science! The homeliness, the simplicity of
the Gospels leads us to what men need of the eternal! A frightful
arrogance is expressed, for the most part, in this apparent humility,
which can very well be used by Ahriman in the sense I have indicated.
For do not forget what I explained at the beginning of today's
lecture, how in the time in which the Gospel falls, men were still
permeated by the Luciferic impulse in their thought, feeling and
general views, and that they could understand the Gospel by a certain
Luciferic Gnosis. But the grasp of the Gospel in this old sense is not
possible today. No real understanding of the Christ can be gained if
one relies merely on the Gospel, especially in the form in which it
has been handed down. There exists nowhere today a less true
understanding of Christ than in the various faiths and confessions.
The Gospel must be deepened by spiritual science if we wish to gain an
actual grasp of the Christ. It is then interesting to examine the
separate Gospels and arrive at their real content. To accept the
Gospel as it is and as numberless people accept it today, and
particularly as it is taught today, is not a path to Christ; it is a
path away from Christ. Hence the confessions are moving further and
further away from Christ. To what sort of Christ-conception does a man
come who will accept the Gospel and only the Gospel, without the depth
given by spiritual science? He comes ultimately to a Christ but
that is the utmost that he can reach through the Gospel alone. It is
not a reality of the Christ, for today only spiritual science can lead
to that. What the Gospel leads to is an hallucination of the Christ, a
real inner picture or vision, yet only a picture. The Gospel today
provides the way to come to a vision of the Christ, but not to the
reality of Christ. That is just the reason why modern theology has
become so materialistic. Theological commentators and expounders of
the Gospel have asked themselves: What is to be made of the Gospel?
They decide at length that in their view the result is similar to what
one gets when one examines the case of Paul before Damascus. And then
these theologians, who are supposed to confirm Christianity, but who
really undermine it, say: Paul was simply ill, suffering from nerves
and he had a vision before Damascus.
The point is that through the Gospel itself one can come only to
hallucinations, to visions, but not to realities; the Gospel does not
give us the real Christ, but only an hallucination of the Christ. The
real Christ must be sought today through all that can be gained from a
spiritual knowledge of the world.
These very people who swear by the Gospel alone and reject every kind
of real spiritual knowledge, form the beginning of a flock for Ahriman
when he appears in human shape in modern civilization. From these
circles, from these members of confessions and sects who repulse the
concrete knowledge brought by spiritual endeavor, whole hosts will
develop as adherents of Ahriman. Now this is all beginning to come
into existence. It is there, it is at work in present humanity and one
who speaks to men today with the knowledge of spiritual science speaks
into it, no matter whether he is speaking on social or other
questions. He knows where the hostile powers lie, that they live
supersensibly and that men are their poor misguided victims. This is
the call to humanity: Free yourselves from all these things that form
such a great temptation to contribute to Ahriman's triumph!
Many people have felt something of this sort. But there is not yet
courage everywhere to come to an understanding with the historical
impulses of the Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman in the urgent way that is
necessary and that is emphasized by Anthroposophy. Even those who have
an idea of what is necessary will not go far enough. For instance,
look at examples where there arises some knowledge that the secular
materialistic science with this Ahrimanic character must be permeated
with the Christ Impulse, and how, on the other hand, the Gospel must
be illuminated through the explanations of spiritual science. Consider
how many people struggle to the point of really shedding light in
either of these directions by means of spiritual-scientific knowledge!
Yet humanity will only acquire the right attitude to the earthly
incarnation of Ahriman if it sees through these things and has the
courage, will and energy to illumine both secular science and the
Gospel by the Spirit. Otherwise the result is always superficialities.
Think, for example, of how Cardinal Newman who, after all, was an
enlightened man, one who followed modern religious development at
the time of his investiture as Cardinal in Rome stated openly in his
address that if the Christian Catholic teaching was to survive, a new
revelation was necessary. We have no need, however, of a new
revelation; the time of revelations in the old sense is over. We need
a new science, one that is illumined by the Spirit. But men must have
the courage for such a new science.
Think of a literary phenomenon like the Lux Mundi movement that
originated with certain eminent theologians, members of the English
High Church, at the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties
of the last century. It consisted of a series of studies, imbued
throughout with the endeavor to build a bridge from secular science to
the contents of dogma. One might call it a floundering hither and
thither, never a bold grasping of secular science, never an
illumination of it with the spirit. There was no unprejudiced
examination of the Gospel with the knowledge that the Gospel of itself
is not enough today, that it must be elucidated and illumined. But
mankind must be courageous in both directions and say: secular science
by itself leads to illusion, the Gospel by itself leads to
hallucination. The middle way between illusion and hallucination is
found only by grasping reality through the Spirit. That is the point.
We must see through such things as these today. Purely mundane science
would make men entirely subject to illusion; in fact ultimately they
would commit only follies. Quite enough folly is perpetuated today
already, for surely the World War catastrophe was a great folly! Yet
many people were involved in it who were thoroughly saturated with the
official secular science of our time. And if you notice what
remarkable psychological phenomena at once crop up when some sect or
other places one of the four Gospels in the foreground, then you will
more easily understand what I have been saying about the Gospels
today. See how strongly inclined to all sorts of hallucinations are
sects that pay heed solely to the Gospel of St. John, or solely the
Gospel of St. Luke! Fortunately there are four Gospels, which
outwardly contradict one another, and this has so far prevented the
great harm which such one-sidedness would cause. By being faced with
four Gospels people do not go too far in the direction of the one, but
have the others beside it. One Gospel is read aloud on one Sunday and
another on another Sunday and so the illusory power of the one is
counterbalanced by that of another. A great wisdom lies in the fact
that these four Gospels have come down to the civilized world. In this
way man is protected from being caught up by some one stream, which
will take possession of him as in the case of so many members of
sects if he is influenced by one Gospel alone. When solely one
Gospel works upon him it is particularly clear how this leads at last
to hallucination.
In fact, it is essential today to give up much of one's subjective
inclination, much of what one is attached to and thinks pious or
clever.
Mankind must above all seek universality and the courage to
look at things from all sides.
I wished to say this to you today so that you may realize that what
one tries now to bring about within humanity has truly deeper grounds
than just some sort of subjective prejudice. In fact one can say that
it is read from the signs of the times and that it must be brought
about.
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