Lecture II
Dornach, August 7, 1920
Yesterday, I
indicated in a certain context what it is that party opinions
here on the physical plane actually represent. Since life
today is actually ruled by party programs of all different
shadings, it is essential to become more aware of their
nature. I also mentioned that in this abstract age certain
people are inclined at least to profess the maxim: All the
phenomena that can be perceived with the senses or
comprehended with ordinary reasoning are Maya. Yet, when it
becomes a matter of comprehensively applying to life such a
general, abstract truth, which people claim to embrace, the
vital link connecting most persons' souls to life's realities
today tears apart, as it were. Party opinion, too, must be
regarded as a reflection of something that is of supersensory
nature, having its reality in the spiritual world. It only
has its image here in the physical world, just as natural
phenomena, for example, even the most complex ones, must be
acknowledged as such in regard to physical man. I already
explained yesterday that party opinions are formed because a
group of people flock to a more or less clearly defined
abstract party program. A number of demands are raised; they
are supposed to be fulfilled by one or another means; people
do one thing or another — mostly, they talk about this
or that — to help such programs, such party views, to
become reality. Groups of people gathering under the flag of
an abstract idea which they hope can be realized, that is
what constitutes a party.
One who
examines all this more closely, particularly from the
spiritual-scientific standpoint, is not so much concerned
with the nature of the programs, because he first has to
examine this aspect in its context with the world. His
primary concern is with the external phenomenon of people
forming into groups.
I said
yesterday that when ascending from the physical plane into
the higher worlds beyond the threshold, no abstractions
exist, no abstract demands exist as posed in party programs.
Instead, as soon as one has crossed the threshold, having
passed the Guardian of the Threshold without lingering there
as so many are inclined to do, one finds that only beings
exist beyond the threshold. It is not possible to follow a
program; one can only follow one or another being. One cannot
group around an abstract idea, only around this or that
being. While mankind is in great need of such knowledge, it
is precisely this insight that men are vehemently rebelling
against. At present, to gather under the umbrella of an
abstract idea and to yearn for the realization of abstract
programs is dear to people's hearts. To understand that
abstract programs can only exist in the physical world and
that something that can be grasped in abstract ideas can only
be subject to the physical realm is something that people do
not wish to comprehend, for it would be troublesome. I draw a
line here, denoting the threshold (see drawing). Here are the
party groups (blue circles) and here, their programs
(X). This illustrates how people gather under party programs.
Yet, since these programs correspond to certain beings in the
supersensory world (orange), all those adhering to a party
view link themselves with certain beings of the higher world.
What is merely an image in the physical world corresponds to
groupings around a being in the super-sensible world (red
circles).
It must be
emphasized that this knowledge is an absolute necessity for a
prosperous development in the future, because instinct must
be replaced increasingly by awareness, if humanity is to
progress in its evolution. A remnant of an old instinctive
group mentality causes men today to congregate under the
umbrella of party programs. They believe that by what they do
in such groupings, by massing together and professing to the
corresponding program, by actions or mostly words done or
spoken for the sake of realizing this, program, all possible
avenues have been explored. People claim to belong to a
certain party, a socialist, a liberal party, a women's
movement, or a party of a spiritualistic nature, and so on.
If I were to enumerate just a small segment of all the
parties existing today, my lecture this evening would become
much too drawn out. Because people nurture the belief that
the nature of their activities here on the physical plane is
fulfilled by what they do and say within a party, they
unconsciously follow a being in the supersensory world whom
they do not wish to know. Just because men do not know
something does not make it any less real. Even if neither the
liberal professing to liberal party views nor the one
belonging to a women's rights group knows that he follows
certain supersensory beings, this does not mean that he is
not actually doing so. In reality, he is part of their
entourage. Thereby, he counteracts the whole spirit of
progressive evolution in our age, for that spirit demands the
transformation of all instinctive, unconscious and
subconscious elements into fully conscious intentions, into
conscious action, word and thought.
Of course, we
are also familiar with older groupings of people, groups with
racial connections; and we know, too, of other groups,
leading even today an ephemeral, shadowy, but nevertheless
noisy and deluded existence — the groupings into
nations. We know them well! If you recall the lecture cycle
on the nature of folk souls which I gave in Kristiania in 1910,
[ Note 8 ]
you will find that one cannot remain on the physical plane if one
wishes to examine carefully these relationships of races and nations.
It becomes necessary to ascend into the higher worlds. We
outlined in those lectures how such groups of people are held
together and guided by beings from the hierarchy of
archangels. We saw also that in such groupings into nations,
super-sensible entities are present among human beings.
If we now
picture in our minds the difference between the relationship
of racial and national groups of people to their
super-sensible beings, and the relationship of parties to
their super-sensible beings, we find that the former are able
instinctively to manifest and transform into reality the
impulses given them by the beings belonging to them in the
higher world. In this case, it is fully justified that
instinctive observance of the impulses of these super-sensible
beings holds sway. Mankind had to struggle to rise above this
instinctive obedience to super-sensible beings. It goes
without saying that humanity could not consciously follow the
folk spirits, the archangels, from the beginning, but
instinctive forces instead had to permeate this allegiance.
In a sense, human beings could only be educated gradually to
a conscious state.
The farther
back one traces mankind's evolutionary history, the more one
discovers that ancient people had a clearly defined, albeit
instinctive, awareness in following such super-sensible beings
as a group, a nation or a race. Certainly, during the middle
epoch preceding our present age, Such awareness was partially
lost. More and more, men had to forgo their knowledge of the
super-sensible worlds, but the farther we go into ancient
history, the more we find that men instinctively interpreted
their sense of belonging together as a race by the fact that
they recognized a spiritual, super-sensible entity as their
leader. In former times, even if a human leader was
recognized by groups of men, the greatest part of his
followers clearly sensed that the folk spirit was embodied in
him. They felt that what they beheld as the external human
form was in a sense possessed by their super-sensible leader.
One may view this any way one likes, one may even consider it
an old superstition. Those, however, who think differently
about so-called superstitions need only wait and see whether,
by the year 3000, our zoology, chemistry and botany may not
also be viewed as a nineteenth- and twentieth-century
superstition by those whose mentality is on par with those
who speak of these other matters today as old
superstitions.
Now, what is
the difference between the way these groups stand in regard
to their spiritual guidance, and the Position party opinions
find themselves in with respect to their spiritual
counterpart? The ancients did not have party programs that
were derived by outlining abstract ideas. It would have ill
behooved a Ghengis Khan or a Timur Khan, and others like
them, to present their people with something like an abstract
party program such as the present Ghengis Khan, who is called
Lenin today, interposes between himself and his cohorts.
There is a significant contrast. The great khans of the
former Mongols were without programs, but those possessing
insight perceived in them the living incarnations of
super-sensible beings. The great khans of the present, Lenin
[ Note 9 ]
and Trotsky,
[ Note 9 ]
carry within their
souls an abstract party program, not an awareness of being
heralds of a higher being. This makes a considerable
difference because it indicates that the yes-men below the
leaders in the party affairs have only abstract ideas in
their minds and consciously deny to themselves that they are
part of the fellowship of a higher spiritual being.
Only a few
groups of men do not function on that level. I introduced one
of them, the Jesuits, to you yesterday. The Jesuits do not
get involved in childish nonsense such as party programs.
Read the series of lectures I delivered in Karlsruhe,
From Jesus to Christ,
[ Note 10 ]
a series that has somehow
come into the hands of the local clergy. There, you can read
about the exercises a Jesuit must subject himself to before
he can properly assume his post. The Jesuit is not charged
with any party program, no demands are dressed up for him in
abstract formulations. He is shown through exercises how to
follow his spiritual leader; he is trained to know himself to
be in the entourage of a super-sensible being. This is also
the case in a few other more or less secret modern groups. It
also holds true for those involved in the major political
activities of the West, political activities which are
literally, step by step, turning out just as these exponents
of certain Western occult politics have envisioned them for a
long time. What really matters, however, is that we pay heed
to the spirit of progress in our age, that an awareness is
regained of the link between man and the spiritual world and
of the relationship between all that man does here on earth
and events and living beings of that realm. We should seek
out those beings in the spiritual world who participate in
the constitution and guidance of our world so that we can
know into whose following we enter through our various
actions. Today one cannot do anything that benefits the
actual progress of mankind if, apart from becoming aware of
the connection to the spiritual world regarding egotistic
inner soul needs, one does not become fully aware that
through one's outward actions, expressed for example in party
opinions and the like, a connection with the higher worlds is
created as well. Spiritual science should not merely reassure
our souls, so to speak, concerning the narrowly confined
affairs of our individual personality; it is supposed to
produce impulses for shaping all of life. This was the
recurrent theme of my recent lectures. Humanity has arrived
at abstraction and must find its way out of it. We are deeply
enmeshed in abstraction, particularly in regard to the
so-called practical sides of life, especially in party
functions. We must shed this abstract nature if the recent
European debacle is not to become a total catastrophe. In all
areas, it is a matter of looking in the right direction.
We must above
all consider something I mentioned before my trip to
Stuttgart to a number of you sitting here. It is something
that I would like to repeat today for the sake of the
numerous foreign guests who are present, and also because
every opportunity must be seized to lend a voice to those
ideas that have to pervade human souls in our age. Yesterday
I said that what is practiced as spiritual science must be a
completely different form of knowledge from the one
customarily called knowledge. It must be knowledge that is
action. One must be conscious of the fact that in that one
strives after spiritual knowledge, one has to do with
realities, not mere logical schemes. I also said that people
today are used to saying: This person is an advocate of
materialism; materialism is wrong; hence, he must be refuted.
One believes that something has been proven by refutation. I
cited examples of how such concepts of right and wrong must
yield to the much more real concepts of healthy and sick in
the realm of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.
“Healthy” and “sick” indicate actual
conditions in human life. We do not merely recognize right or
wrong knowledge, we recognize healthy and sick knowledge. By
shedding the proclivity for abstraction we enter deeply into
the sphere of concrete reality.
We must
consider all this from a still higher perspective. We know
from the many books on anthroposophy that man is composed of
a soul-spiritual part (blue) and a physical part (red), as
illustrated in my sketch. We know that certain theoretical
materialists of the nineteenth century felt that it was
entirely unnecessary to speak of soul and spirit elements
because they had nothing to do with human knowledge. They
held that what dwells as thinking, feeling, and willing in
the so-called human soul is merely the result of the physical
nervous system and the brain. You know that we must
differentiate between this theoretical materialism and the
practical materialism which, to this day, still holds sway in
a particularly crass form. It differs entirely from
theoretical materialism which reached its peak in the
nineteenth century. A person who is only used to the ideas
prevalent today will disagree with the sort of materialism
which maintains that human thoughts, feelings and impulses of
will are merely the product of the nervous system and the
brain. He feels that this opinion must be refuted. Once he
has done so he believes that he has proven that man does not
merely consist of a physical body with a nervous system and
brain, but that he also has a soul and spirit. Spiritual
science, however, cannot be content merely with this
refutation, for it is not only a science bent on a logical
course, but one dealing with realities. All that lives in the
physical world is a replica of the world of soul and spirit,
but not only in the sense of a picture one paints upon a
wall. The physical world in all its activities and
expressions of life is also a reflection of the higher
world.
In the case of
the human being, we observe that man descends from the
soul-spiritual world through conception and birth into the
physical realm. The configuration of forces that he brings
along from the world of soul and spirit goes to work on the
physical body which is taken over from the hereditary stream.
This body with its entire configuration is developed by the
descending soul and spirit forces. Not only is it developed
in regard to its outer form but also in that of its inner
functions. Consequently, everything surrounding you in the
external sense world can be thought about very well simply
with the brain. For, in regard to its faculties, this brain
is also an image of soul and spirit. One who only confines
himself to the absorption of what the outer sense world or
modern science offers thinks only with the brain; he is
merely matter that thinks. No objection can be made about
this; he is just thinking-matter. Today, the time has come to
transcend the state of being merely thinking-matter. One can
accomplish this by thinking thoughts that have not been
acquired from the sense world, such as anthroposophically
oriented thoughts. Those who wish to adhere exclusively to
the sense world consider these anthroposophical thoughts to
be crazy, unreal and fantastic. This is because the moment
they are called upon to think these thoughts they have to
make a strenuous effort. They have to break free in their
thinking, but they wish to think these thoughts with their
brain. Yet, with the brain, one can only think the external
physical thoughts, thoughts about the physical realm. One can
think about atoms and molecules quite well with this brain in
the feebleminded manner I outlined yesterday. By means of
this brain, however, it is not possible to think the thoughts
presented in such a book as
Occult Science, an Outline.
[ Note 11 ]
Thus, anthroposophy is regarded as sheer fantasy. A considerable
effort of will must be made to free the soul-spiritual. Then,
one can think those thoughts and no longer finds them absurd
or fantastic, but in full harmony with life.
In the course
of the last centuries, however, since the middle of the
fifteenth century, mankind reached a point where, in a sense,
it increasingly sank down into itself. It permitted the
soul-spiritual aspects to fall asleep and allowed itself to
become immersed in the substantiality of the corporeal
element. People were content to think merely with the
physical brain, to set the brain on an automatic course, just
as the brain of the professor, sitting at his lectern,
functions automatically. The brain automaton above is
followed below by the brain automata of the students. Whole
groupings of human beings switched over to this merely
automatic materialistic functioning of the brain, namely,
physical thinking. They sank deeper and deeper into the
corporeality, and did not activate themselves from within to
quicken the comprehension for what is derived from the
super-sensible world. This has been the growing trend among
the people of the so-called civilized world since the middle
of the fifteenth century. And by the middle of the nineteenth
century, just that particular segment of humanity which is
called intellectual in the civilized parts of Europe and
America had turned into physical thinkers.
Now, when
Buechner, Moleschott or the weighty Vogt
[ Note 12 ]
appeared on the scene and
began to think a little, unaware of the fact that behind
their own thinking was something that should have given them
a jolt, they observed their contemporaries and, interpreting
them quite correctly, concluded: Individualism, spiritualism
— wrong; it is the brain that thinks! Indeed, it was
only brains that were thinking; materialism was quite
correct. This is just the secret; the theoretical
materialists of the nineteenth century stated nothing wrong;
on the contrary, they were right. It would even have been an
insult for colleague X to have claimed that colleague Y was
endowed with soul and spirit, because in all truth X could
only say concerning Y that a brain was thinking
automatically. Nineteenth century materialism was therefore
basically correct, for it referred to a certain stage of
human evolution characterized by the fact that human beings
have become body-bound and that their thinking, along with
feeling and willing, arises out of materiality. Then even
mystics came along who had steeped themselves in their inner
being, but these mystics actually only observed the inner
seething of substance within the skin until it became flames
and flared up into consciousness.
Spiritual
science would be in the wrong if it were now to take a merely
logical standpoint. It may not say that materialism is
incorrect and needs to be refuted. Such refutation is the
favorite pastime of our age of abstraction. Spiritual science
must do things by its knowledge. Hence, first of all, the
mere refutation of materialism does not hold true for people
who have become body-bound. Secondly, nothing is accomplished
by merely disproving materialism. Instead, it is a matter of
motivating people to shake themselves free of the Bonds of
materiality and to nurture and cultivate thoughts that follow
the course of super-sensible results of research. Materialism
is not to be disproved, it is to be overcome! Human beings
must once again become soul-spiritual by awakening their own
soul-spiritual being. It must be through action that real
materialism is overcome; not through some sort of erroneous
refutation. The sad fact is not that materialism is a
mistaken world-view, but that it has become right for the
recent cultural development. It therefore cannot be a matter
of contradicting a false world-view. Rather, it is a matter
of giving human beings the means whereby they may perform
soul deeds that overcome the body-bound condition of humanity
so that they Break free of materiality. The knowledge
referred to here must be action, not mere logic. This is the
issue.
However, people
have a hard time comprehending the difference between mere
bantering in negations or affirmations while remaining in the
sphere of abstract concepts, and the element of action that
flows directly from the well-spring of the spirit. Just try
to clarify to yourselves that it is one thing merely to
refute materialism logically because you are of the opinion
that it is wrong, and quite another to facilitate the healing
process through spirituality by overcoming the quite real
materialism which has gripped mankind as a disease. This
difference must be recognized, for what matters today is that
spiritual deeds are accomplished and carried into social life
as well. There is a fundamental difference between
self-satisfaction in a theoretical worldview and the active
involvement in knowledge that turns into action.
Attention must
be focused on this matter so that we become aware of the
difference between anthroposophically oriented spiritual
science and other similar endeavors; for this spiritual
science must be comprehended as something that actually
relates to the tangible forces of ascent and decline in
social life.
If we turn our
attention to Eastern Europe we can see how the Russian
character, concerning which Western and Central Europeans
hardly form any proper concepts, is being infiltrated by
something that Europeans can very well understand even though
they abhor the Leninism and Trotskyism that are spreading out
over Russia. There are many people who believe that this
Leninism and Trotskyism have something in common with what is
to arise eventually in the East. Far from it! These movements
only have something in common with the decline of the East
and its further ruin. They are purely destructive forces and
what is to arise in the East must develop in opposition to
these forces of annihilation. Let me illustrate this. Here,
in the East, we have something fundamental (see sketch,
green) which is given little attention today. During the past
few years, Bolshevism, Leninism and Trotskyism have spread
over the East as destructive forces (white). What I have
indicated here in green is trying to surface. Leninism and
Trotskyism are merely the continuation of the old czarism
and, as I have mentioned before, Lenin is the new czar, only
in different attire, but basically the same thing. Czarism
becomes Leninism, although as czarism it dies in Leninism. In
the East, elements opposing czarism have for centuries tried
to work their way to the surface. These elements only
misunderstand their own existence if they make concessions,
in any form, to Leninism and Trotskyism. This is happening
all the way into Asia. People have yet to realize the
magnitude of the coming upheavals; this is only a lull
between the last catastrophe and the next one. The souls
sleeping during this respite will have a rude awakening one
day; they will rub their eyes and pull off their sleeping
caps when the catastrophe continues on its course. Yet, what
will work its way to the surface despite all this is the
village community. Only a person who understands the nature
of the individual village communities comprehends what is
trying to emerge in the East as a social constitution. The
village community is the only reality in the East. All the
rest is but an institution that is perishing.
It will be the
task of people in the West to understand the means by which
this aggregate of the village community can be organized.
Indeed, it is only by the threefold social organism that the
crumbling web of Western opinions in single human
individualities can also be organized.
[ Note 13 ]
On the one hand, the
threefold social organism must incorporate the individual
members of the Eastern village communities. On the other
hand, it must save from ruin the crumbling Western organisms
that are becoming individualized and which, as aggregates,
are Splitting up into their separate components.
In regard to
the immediate future, the so-called civilized world faces
only two options: Bolshevism on one side, and the threefold
social order on the other. He who does not recognize that
only these two alternatives exist in the near future
understands nothing of the course of events on a grand scale.
Yet a real comprehension of these matters can only be
attained by trying to apply the inner training, acquired by
man through spiritual science, to the observation and the
management of public social conditions.
Nowadays, one
is always truly sorry when one sees people squander their
spiritual potential in antiquated party programs. It is sad
to see that people are so unwilling to understand that
something truly new is needed in order to overcome the last
remnant of the old, the ultrareactionism and conservatism,
namely, Bolshevism. It will certainly not be overcome through
the programs devised by today's statesmen from Middle and
Western Europe. For these programs contain nothing of the
element that must indwell any impulse of the future; nothing
of the new spirit lives in them. Yet, this new spirit is
needed. And if this new spirit is not present in the great
political and cultural endeavors, then these efforts only
serve to let mankind slide into further catastrophes.
Likewise, if this new spirit is not contained in the party
views, humanity will slip down into more calamities.
It is this that
must now be considered and thought over in all sorts of
forms. One is asked the following question again and again,
“Well, the threefold social order is fine, but how will
this or that turn out when this order has actually been
introduced into the social organism?” The grocer, for
instance, wonders how he will sell his wares when the
threefold order comes into being, and so on. Only a while
back, here in this auditorium, the question was raised how
ownership of a sewing machine would be affected by the
threefold social organism. If one is incapable of tackling
the questions on the grand scale and is unable to realize
that if they enter generally into the social life, the
details will arrange themselves accordingly and assume their
proper shape; if one is not in a Position to handle the major
questions on a grand scale, one will never reach the summit
of this age, which is a time of hard trials for mankind. For
this reason, it is necessary today to be able to envisage a
spiritual metamorphosis of the old cherished notions. In this
connection, it is probably still so that if one were to
examine the essay books of Middle European students at the
end of a school term to see what sort of essays they had
written, one would find among a large number of them the
following essay title: “Each one must choose his hero
in whose footsteps he works his way up to Olympus.”
[ Note 14 ]
Young ladies of
private schools, middle and high school students write
beautiful essays on this theme. In real life, however, people
run after abstract party programs. But even something poetic
like the above, which certainly has its justification in the
context of the poetic work from which it was taken, must also
be read here in a spiritual metamorphosis. We must discover
the way of looking into the spiritual world that leads to the
spiritual beings under whom we gather together.
What was
introduced as a conservative or a liberal program in earlier
years and is seen today as a social-democratic or an agrarian
program is all so much chitchat. It is all abstract
formulation, as are the programs of all women's clubs and
vegetarian organizations, etc. The really important thing is
that one knows how the world process pulsates through the
world's course and that one has an answer for what holds sway
in the super-sensible sphere above when, for example, a
certain group of people gathers together under some program
for women's rights and so forth. Today, everything must be
raised with the necessary earnestness to the vantage point of
the spiritual, super-sensible world, for only by viewing the
higher world together with the sense world is it possible to
find what it is that can truly bring about progress for us in
our age of great affliction and bitter trials.
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