Lecture 2
Stuttgart,
March 7, 1920
It has been
said on a number of occasions, and also two days ago when
I presented the subject from a slightly different point
of view, that it is important for us to consider the
evolution of the human race in the light of spiritual
science and grow aware of the gravity of the present
moment. We shall then have to act out of our realization
of the gravity of the situation, irrespective of our
position in life.
Today I
should like to add some further building stones to an
edifice that seen in its entirety can show us the
present-day tenor of the human mind and spirit and how we
shall have to work for the further progress of humankind
by taking this state of mind and spirit as our basis. To
begin with let us refer to things which in the main are
already known to us.
We know
that the human race in its present state of civilization
has by and large descended from the human race that
evolved before disaster befell the continent of Atlantis.
It has been said on a number of occasions that Atlantis
occupied an area between present-day Europe, Africa and
America that is today covered by the Atlantic Ocean. We
know that under the influence of that disaster — in
the course of its preparation and later as it proceeded
— the peoples of that time migrated first in an
eastward direction, populating Europe and then Asia as
they moved on, and that the European and Asian peoples of
the present day are in fact the descendants of the
peoples of Atlantis. We also know that civilization then
took the opposite route and people coming to colonize
Europe brought civilization with them, as it were:
cultural contents that had first been achieved in Asia.
These then spread further from a number of centres in
Europe. Thus I would say that the physical basis for
modern civilization is provided by the peoples of Europe
and Asia, descendants of the ancient Atlantean race that
moved from the west to the east. Civilization itself
however moved from east to west. These two movements can
only be properly distinguished on the basis of
spiritual-scientific investigation. The two are confused
in conventional anthropology and it is not realized that
only the culture, the civilization, has been transplanted
from east to west, whilst the physical basis comes from
migrations that proceeded from west to east.
People
always have some relationship to the locality where they
live. We relate in some way to the soil under our feet,
to everything this soil produces, to the way the soil
comes to expression in climatic conditions and provides a
habitat. You can conclude from this — and spiritual
science fully confirms it — that the peoples who
went further into Asia in the course of those
post-Atlantean migrations inevitably had to develop in a
different way from those who had remained in Europe. In
ordinary terms this means that the soil of Europe had a
different effect on the descendants of the Atlanteans
than the soil of Asia. In a way, we can define the
difference between the populations of Asia and of Europe.
The difference is that particularly during the earliest
periods of post-Atlantean civilization, during the 9th,
8th, 7th and 6th millennium BC and the millennia that
followed, the people of Asia adopted intellectual
thinking, thinking as we know it, in a different way.
This type of thinking did not fully emerge until the 15th
century, as I said on the last occasion, but it was in
preparation for centuries and indeed millennia before
that.
This form
of thinking as we know it today only developed in very
recent times, assuming its true character in intellectual
thinking as the soul itself became inwardly active. But
the whole of our evolution, particularly in
post-Atlantean times, has been tending towards this
intellectual approach. It is significant that the
post-Atlantean population of Asia accepted all that we
may call intellectual more into its soul elements. We can
say that due to local conditions the peoples of Asia were
specifically predestined for the early stages of
intelligence to enter into their souls. The most
remarkable aspect of Asian civilization is that the soul
element as such became the instrument for adopting the
intellectual principle.
It was
different with the people who had remained in Europe.
Quite specifically the situation was that physical
development, the physical organization that later on was
to become the real instrument of intellectual
development, evolved in such a way that even at an
earlier stage it became the essential characteristic of
these peoples, constituting itself in a way that was
particularly suited to be the vehicle for the
intellectual principle. If we therefore wish to
characterize the descendants of the Atlanteans' earliest
descendants, that is ourselves, we have to say that the
Asian peoples got more into the habit of thinking with
their souls; the Europeans got into the habit of thinking
more with their bodies. That is in fact the major
difference between the civilizations of Asian and Europe.
If you want to show up the clear difference which exists
between the kind of intelligence apparent in the Vedic
writings or Vedantic philosophy and other cultural
streams in Asia compared to European culture you have to
say to yourselves: Asians are thinking more with their
souls, Europeans more with their bodies.
The people
of Asia may thus be said to have taken the intellectual
element into a higher aspect of their human nature, with
the result that an advanced civilization developed much
earlier. This however was a civilization of the soul that
had fewer abstract concepts, a culture that found its own
ways to higher things, using the human soul and spirit to
reach the soul and spirit of the world without resorting
to abstract concepts. That is where the spiritual nature
of Asian civilization lies — inasmuch as it is
essentially a civilization based on soul qualities. The
peoples of Asia largely left their bodies unused when it
came to thinking; they merely carried their bodies with
them through life on earth. The life of the mind was
nurtured entirely at soul level. You cannot understand
the peculiar nature of Asian culture unless you look at
it from this point of view.
Europeans
were basing their thinking more and more on the physical
body. That is also why the foundations were more strongly
laid among them than in Asia for a culture in which
freedom can be the central principle. The people of Asia,
endowed with intelligence at soul level, still were more
part of the whole cosmic organism. The human body
specifically isolates itself from the rest of the cosmic
organism. Using it as the instrument for our intellectual
life we become more independent, though this independence
is more bound up with the body than is the case with the
people of Asia who have developed intelligence within the
soul principle and are consequently less independent.
As the time
approached in the history of humankind that was to bring
the Mystery of Golgotha, an advanced culture of soul and
spirit had evolved in Asia. At the time of the Mystery of
Golgotha it had already reached its culmination and was
in the early stages of decline. Do not let us deceive
ourselves: European ideas do not make it easy to grasp
the great culture which had grown out of the soul and
spirit of the Asian peoples. When people who are
thoroughly European in their way of thinking, people for
whom the physical body is the instrument of thinking,
want to get Europeans to appreciate Asian ideas, as
Deussen [ Note 04 ] has
done, for example, the outcome in no way represents the
contents of Asian civilization of soul and spirit, for
everything alive in it has been translated into European
thought. It has even happened that interpretations of
certain spiritual streams in India caused a sensation in
Europe — those published by von Garbe [ Note 05 ] for instance, yet it was
nothing more than European materialism producing a
garbled translation of Asian soul and spirit culture.
Publications of this kind contain a trace of the real
spirit of ancient Asia. It is necessary to point this out
very firmly because, as I have said before, belief in
authority has reached an extreme degree and people really
have nothing in them that permits them to acknowledge the
validity of something, except the fact that it has been
written by university professors. There is of course no
real inner reason why Deussen's or Garbe's botchwork
should be considered important in any way, except that
there is this belief in authority in Europe which is
going sadly astray. People are no longer in a position
even to find any kind of inner reason; they merely
believe one thing or another to be right because some
outer authority says so. It does not help to avoid saying
the truth about these things — even if it means
making more enemies — for the gravity of the
present situation absolutely demands that there shall be
no compromise where certain things are concerned and that
the truth must be clearly stated.
The
advanced culture of the spirit in Asia was already to
some extent in decline when the event of Golgotha
occurred. This event of Golgotha — it cannot be
sufficiently stressed — was first of all taken in
and understood by minds that were the product of Asian
culture. It is important to distinguish between the
Mystery of Golgotha as a historical event that happened
in the Near East at the beginning of Christian era and
the notions people have of this Mystery of Golgotha. At
the time when the event occurred, Europe did not have the
capacity to grasp it fully, for it was an event that
could only be grasped in soul and spirit. European
civilization, however, had spread by using physical
matter as its instrument. The event which occurred at the
beginning of our Christian era could not be directly
grasped in a civilization based on physical and material
things. Asian civilization on the other hand had an
intellectual life based on soul and spirit and out of
this was able to find concepts with which to grasp the
event of Golgotha. The event that happened in Palestine
was thus poured into the conceptual world of the Orient.
In that form it travelled westward through Greece and
Italy and came to Europe as a tradition.
People can
be given something in an external way that they cannot
yet grasp in their hearts and minds. Things may come to
them in the form of a tradition or through the written
word. Europe initially was given the explanation, its
understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, out of the
oriental tradition. Christianity was understood in the
light of oriental wisdom, a wisdom of soul and spirit
that was truly great at a time when the Mystery of
Golgotha, and the way Christ related to the whole of
Earth evolution, were still perceived gnostically. It
dwindled more and more as Europeans were increasingly
blending their own unique characteristic into this
tradition. They had to bring their particular
characteristic of an intellectual life bound to the
physical body into the way they saw these things. The
following happened, particularly in Europe: In early
times the human bodies of Europeans were very much the
instrument of their kind of elementary intellectual
thinking, but then this body gradually began to die.
Physical evolution of European humanity until the 15th
century and even to this day consisted in the physical
body growing more and more dead. Our physical bodies are
growing denser and denser and more and more bony. We
cannot demonstrate this with the methods of ordinary
anatomy and physiology, but it is true. We no longer have
bodies as inwardly alive as those of people living in the
1st, 3rd and even the 10th and 11th centuries. Our
European bodies of today have grown bony, paralyzed,
compared to those ancient bodies that were inwardly
alive. Thus you have on the one hand a tradition designed
for the soul and spirit of Asian people who preserved the
ecclesiastical creeds, and on the other hand a more and
more European body that increasingly felt those Asian
traditions to be alien and in the end no longer found
itself able to take in the ideas coming from Asia.
From the
middle of the 15th century onwards the influence of the
bony European body has been such that in the end that old
tradition only survived in empty outer phrases among
religious communities. For many centuries the tradition
had been so much alive that little regard was paid to the
Gospels and people took their cue from life itself. As
the European body came to die off people felt impelled to
say: Let us cast off the old tradition; we want to put
our faith only in the Word, the Word as it is written.
People believe they have the Word when in fact they only
have a poor translation of it. It gradually came about
— though no one is willing to admit it — that
really all one had was the outer shell of the Word of old
that once held within it the tidings of the Mystery of
Golgotha in the garb of oriental wisdom, a wisdom of soul
and spirit.
This
oriental wisdom is little understood by the people who
generally interpret or translate the Gospels; they
understand little, if any of it. The point is that it is
necessary to see the Mystery of Golgotha in a new light.
However, unless we Europeans get beyond what a dying
physical body is able to give we will be unable to do so.
We must develop through spiritual science and come to
grasp the spiritual world in a way where we are
independent of this body. Our future salvation entirely
depends on our ability to grasp the spiritual world in
this way, independently of our physical bodies, going
straight for the spirit. It will have to be different in
essence from the oriental culture of soul and spirit,
which came as though of its own accord as human beings
evolved. Europeans of the present time will need to
achieve it by their own efforts. They will have to
nurture spiritual science. They will have to create an
educational system where from the bottom rung upwards
spiritual science is not presented as a theory but flows
into everything we do as we teach and train the children.
Spiritual science should also flow into higher education
and should be alive in everything connected with art,
literature and so on, everything that is our common
cultural life. This European culture must provide for the
nuturing of spiritual science itself. On the basis of
such a spiritual science the Mystery of Golgotha will
then be seen in a new light. We shall have to say that
those were the old times when the Mystery of Golgotha was
only interpreted in the light of the wisdom of spirit and
soul that belonged to the Orient. A new wisdom will have
to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha in a new and living
way.
We have
spoken about these things quite often and in many
respects. It is necessary, however, that they take hold
of our soul from all sides. It is necessary that we come
to experience a seriousness that absolutely fills our
hearts and minds with the realization that new insight
has to be gained into the Mystery of Golgotha. This is
something that makes the seriousness that is required
particularly in Central Europe even more austere.
Looking
with more profound insight at what has become cultural
life in the second half of the 18th and first half of the
19th century particularly in Central Europe you really
have to say this: The bodies of people in Central Europe
were already dying, but they still were so much alive
that the people were able to rise to a world of ideas
more alive than ever seen before in the evolution of
humankind. Nowhere else did human minds rise to abstract
ideas in such a way that whilst living in these abstract
ideas one was not in the sphere of death but in the
sphere of life. That was achieved in Goetheanism, for
instance, and by German idealist philosophers. It is not
something to be found anywhere else in human evolution.
It was also in a way a culmination, one merely has to get
this quite clear in one's mind. People today no longer
want to know how Schelling, for instance, to take just
one of the Goetheanists, moved in a sphere of abstract
thoughts and yet, whilst speaking in quite abstract
terms, was alive in the way he moved in the sphere of
abstract thoughts: as alive as people usually are when
they speak of food and drink. The same applies to Fichte.
This was an area of human evolution where we are
especially aware of an ability to descend into the sphere
of concepts and ideas in a way that was very much alive.
Something quite special exists therefore for this Central
European population, special in the whole context of
human evolution in more recent times. They have their own
characteristics that enable them in particular to take up
the vocation of humankind for the present day: namely, to
enter into spirituality again. These characteristics only
came to be submerged beneath other things in the second
half of the 19th century.
It is
terribly painful to be aware of a very sleepy human being
in Central Europe today walking over the graves of
Lessing and Goethe and Herder and Schelling. This human
being considers its role to be that of a soul asleep. If
we were to pick up the thread of the writings and
thoughts of those great minds, not in an external way but
entering into the spirit in which they wrote, we would
find the element that can raise Europe to the heights.
Europe cannot be made to rise to the heights by Gospel
words repeated parrot-fashion in the churches that no one
understands. Europe can only be made to rise if people
seek to grasp the spiritual worlds by developing further
what Herder, Goethe and others have been working towards.
There is however hardly any awareness of this at the
present time. It is a sad sign of the times for example
that in a cultural community which possesses treasures
like Fichte's ‘Goal and Purpose of the Human
Being’, Schelling's Bruno and Schiller's
Letters on Aesthetic Education [ Note 06, ] and there are many more
I could mention; that in such a cultural community people
could follow a trend that led to the inane and
superficial Americanisms of Ralph Waldo Trine [ Note 07 ] and the like. We have
things that are much more sublime but we let them sleep
and turn to other things.
The further
we penetrate into the actual life of the mind and spirit
the more it becomes apparent that something new is
emerging in the life of humankind today. Central
Europeans are far from understood by Western Europeans;
Western Europeans are far from understood by Central
Europeans, even in ordinary life. People are not aware of
this, however. They think they understand each other.
They do not realize that they are not communicating their
thoughts. I am not referring to the way Americans and
Europeans fail to communicate, but Central and Western
Europeans. You come across some odd things in this
respect.
The last
time I was here I told you that vilification is rife not
only within Germany but also outside its borders. [
Note 08 ] I told you about
this man Ferriére [ Note
09 ], for instance, who spread one of the strangest
tales in a Swiss-Belgian journal, saying that it was of
course generally known that I was ‘Rasputin’
to William II [ Note 10 ]
and had a major share in all the bad advice William II
was given in those terrible days. This slanderous story
came to be widely known particularly in French-speaking
Switzerland and I therefore defended myself by writing
down the truth of the matter, stating the bare facts. I
said that I had only ever seen the former emperor briefly
and from a distance, had never spoken with him at all and
never sought to contact him even through others. These
are the bare facts I stated in a letter to Dr Boos [
Note 11 ] who then gave Mr
Ferriére the necessary set-down. The matter was
published in the journal in question together with
Ferriére's reply. This went more or less as follows:
Once again the great difference between the Latin and the
Germanic mind is demonstrated. The Germanic mind takes
everything so seriously. ‘My readers’,
Ferriére wrote, ‘will of course not have been
deceived; they will have realized that what I wrote was
intended to be plaisanterie and not
méchanceté. [ Note 12 ] Apart from that let me
state that it is possible to learn that something we may
have heard from people whom we think we can believe need
nevertheless not be true, even if it is a widely believed
rumour. I am taking note of this.’ And so on.
That was
the elegant reply the ‘Latin mind’ was able
to give, with a plaisanterie concerning the
Germanic mind. At least one has the satisfaction that
these things have come to the fore; very often they are
not even noticed.
They assume
even greater significance where a more profound view is
taken of the world, at the point where they relate to
initiation knowledge and everything connected with this.
This is a sphere where it is indeed necessary to mention
these things just for once, though some people consider
it highly dangerous to touch on them even today. I want
to talk to you today about a matter that in the opinion
of representatives of initiation knowledge, Western
representatives in particular, should not be
discussed.
Western
representatives of initiation knowledge will tell you
again and again that it simply will not do for anyone to
spread initiation knowledge they have gained for
themselves. You will find that when genuine initiates in
the West present initiation knowledge in books available
to the public they always deny having personal experience
of the things of which they are writing. You will find
that it is quite typical — such things have
appeared particularly in America — to have a
preface, that is part of the whole technique, which says
the following: ‘None of these things are my own, of
course, for if they were just my own I would not mention
them’. Take a look, you will find this kind of
thing in many documents published particularly by Western
initiates. If you ask why it is done like this you will
be given an answer that within certain limits is
certainly true for Western initiation science. You will
be told that anyone learning something directly from the
spiritual world, who knows the secrets of the spiritual
world, cannot tell another person that he has it from
personal experience — these will be the words used
to answer the question — for if he betrays the fact
that he has initiation knowledge from personal experience
he becomes dependent for life on the person to whom he
betrayed his secret.
This
attitude has its roots in the essential nature of Western
initiation science. The effect is that anything to do
with initiation is discussed in a very superficial way
among Western initiates in their societies, and that
there are indeed initiates moving around among Western
humanity of whom nobody knows that they are initiates.
This is an attitude that has to be overcome in the new
age; it cannot hold true in Central Europe, and the
spirit which must arise in Central Europe will have to
fight this attitude. It will have to fight it by coming
to understand the Mystery of Golgotha in the new and
spiritual way I have talked about. It will have to come
to understand the presence of the Christ in huMan
life.
Here lies a
major secret. The usual initiation knowledge in Western
countries is far removed from Christianity; otherwise the
Theosophical Society would not have excluded or
caricatured the Christian faith and presented a purely
oriental, pre-Christian Indian wisdom as something new.
It is a peculiar characteristic of this Western
initiation knowledge that its initiates only have
something of their initiation if they have at least one
pupil who reiterates their ideas. There is no point
whatsoever in having initiation knowledge just for
oneself. If your eyes look straight ahead you will not
see a single object. In the same way you will not
encounter your own ideas of the spirit as a Western
initiate unless you can see your own ideas repeated by
someone else. There are all kinds of indications of this,
but it is not properly realized.
Indeed, if
this is the case then it is true that someone who betrays
to another person the fact that he is an initiate will be
in the power of that other person for the rest of his
life. The other could then refuse to serve him and say: I
am not going to repeat your ideas. That implies some
degree of dependence. That essentially is a
characteristic of the initiation knowledge I have
frequently referred to in other respects, referring to it
as the dominant initiation science in the West.
There is
only one way out of this dependence on one's followers
and that is to be in communion with Christ, who can truly
be found on earth since the Mystery of Golgotha. We are
not then in communion with a human being who is not
perceptible to the senses but with the first among
brothers who has come among men, with the living Christ
walking among us. If we are in a communion with Christ
the way we had to be in communion with other persons in
pre-Christian initiation, we need not be afraid to share
our own wisdom with our fellow human beings. There is no
other way in the present time in which original
initiation wisdom can be directly communicated than by
being in communion with Christ. There is no other way. A
genuine initiation wisdom of the present age will have to
look for such communion with Christ.
If this
initiation wisdom were not there to be found we could
make no progress in social understanding. It is no longer
possible to evolve social ideas nowadays unless we base
ourselves on initiation. Yet we have need of social
ideas. A social system born wholly out of Western
initiation wisdom would depend on that initiation wisdom
being kept secret even at its lowest levels —
certain higher levels cannot be made known today because
people must have the necessary preparation. Keeping
things secret in this way is not compatible however with
the principle of people being equal, a principle modern
Europeans and indeed the whole civilized world consider
important today. So you see that exactly when it comes to
initiation wisdom a colossal difference shows itself
between the Central European and the Western mind. The
difference becomes even more apparent in the case of
initiation wisdom than in the situation where people talk
above each others heads in the present time and believe
humankind can be brought to an abstract uniformity. That
cannot be done. Human beings are differentiated and this
differentiation shows itself particularly if one takes a
more profound look at initiation knowledge. This is an
important subject and it will no doubt be necessary for
me to explain it in more detail during the time I am
here. When it comes to genuine spiritual insight one
simply cannot be slipshod about things, and a lack of
seriousness concerning the truth is unacceptable. It
simply will not do. Truthfulness is of the essence.
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