The
Bridge between Morality and Nature
Birth
and Death as Revelations of Love and Freedom
From:
The search for the new Isis, the Divine Sophia.
(GA 202)
Lecture 7
Dornach,
11 December 1920
We
would like to point out something concerning human morality in
order to indicate tomorrow how this can be approached in the
human soul-moral aspect flowing over to the macrocosm. In
involves evaluating two human aspects in the right manner
towards arriving at a profound assessment of the human being as
a moral-soul being.
The
human being is to some extent hemmed in between two extremes,
two polar opposites. These opposites come to his awareness as
the law of nature and the order of the moral world. We have
pointed out how, during the last hundred years, every world
view which has become increasingly popular has failed to build
a bridge between nature's laws and the moral order in the
universe. Two aspects in the human being need to be scrutinized
when we want to approach life- and world riddles in connection
with these polarized opposites in nature and, let's say, the
spiritual or even the moral world laws. Nature is undeniably a
part of the human being; he or she is to a certain extent
dependent upon the laws of nature in relation to his or her
soul, but also upon their moral being. When wanting to
experience oneself as truly human, one has to rely on being
extracted from purely nature's laws, to sense oneself as
standing in the world order, not just rising out of nature.
Actually one needs the spiritual scientific approach to reach a
clear understanding of the actual basis of what we are talking
about. Let's point consequently to a, I might say, far-reaching
mistaken observation, which prevents people from discovering an
answer to the corresponding riddle lying hidden here.
Traditionally it is believed people could reach an
understanding of their own human reality (Wesenheit) by
searching, if I may say so, for a relationship between the
soul-spiritual and the bodily-physical within the human being
as if it is somehow present there. People imagine that somehow
within this bodily physical human existence the
spiritual-physical exists and then they search for how the two
are connected.
Much searching is done to find these connections, and a large
part of philosophic endeavours regarding humanity is directed
towards answering this question: which kind of connection
exists between the soul-spiritual and the physical body?
You
know of course, in spiritual science most questions arise in a
totally different manner than questions tossed up in the
popular fashion. In spiritual science the actual phrasing of a
question has to be quite different to the often trivial manner
in which they are composed today. It is extraordinary that in
the 19th century, theoretically, quite strong points
of view arose, and quite a firm idea was established that a
soul-spiritual element was nowhere to be found in the physical
bodily nature, and that the soul-spiritual could be regarded as
a kind of consequence of the physical body. This point of view
became something exceptionally fascinating for those
individuals who were familiar with natural scientific research.
We only need to be reminded of the utter dependency the human
being actually has in his or her life between birth and death
on physical origins, on the entire physical organisation.
Materialistic science stresses repeatedly that the same measure
is to be applied to the development of the outer body from the
first days of childhood, as to the development of the
soul-spiritual abilities; how the human being, when not cared
for physically, will accordingly be retarded in his or her
soul-spiritual nature. It is pointed out how with advanced age,
with physical bodily degeneration, likewise the spirit-soul
abilities will diminish. It is pointed out how the human being
with some kind of underlying injury will show a soul-spiritual
abnormality indicating that the human being is dependent on the
shape and manner of his or her existence within the physical
bodily nature. It is pointed out how the human being can imbibe
certain poisons which to some extent have a chemical effect on
him and despite this, can in specific cases have an effect on
his spiritual normality, stimulated by the soul-spiritual
paralysing conditions through physical substances administered
to his body, and so on. It was also shown, that whatever is
available as physical research, proves that in all acts of
violence the soul-spiritual element is basically only a
function of the physical bodily nature. Yes, those researchers
who developed an inclination for such phenomena, I might say,
also pointed to minute facts of this kind. One of these kinds
of phenomena, the degeneration of the thyroid influencing
soul-spiritual abilities, was an example of the researcher
Gley who said that the highest talents in human beings,
the soul-spiritual, are exclusively dependant on chemical
processes which develop from the thyroid. All these things are
somewhat captivating in the manner in which the scientific art
of thought had developed in the recent times. Actually one
can't say anything other than that the more people refer to
this scientific manner of thinking, concepts of soul-spiritual
nature are ever more pushed to the background; that the
spiritual-soul element would be increasingly seen as something
which has no substantial meaning. With intensity it creates so
to speak an opposition under the populations of civilised
regions: on the one side stand those who are more or less
infected by the scientific thought pattern present in the more
modern times, who consider it great progress for their
spiritual development, if they speak about such a thing at all,
declining reference to an individual spiritual soul. On the
other side stand the portion of the population who want to
continue living in the old religious wisdom, in old ideas of
the soul-spiritual, from a moral divine world order, which
actually under scrutiny has been handed down from ancient times
and is only surviving through keeping it away from those
mindsets which scientific thinking has brought about.
Thus we have on the one side numerous populations who are
regarded by others as retarded, as people who know nothing of
the laws of nature and therefore could remain with old
religious ideas. Certainly something else has appeared more and
more in the last while. This fascinating power of persuasion,
I'd like to say, which for the greatest part of mankind had as
the scientific ideas in the middle or beginning of the last
third of the nineteenth century, this fascinating power of
persuasion has gradually decreased. It has diminished with many
scientific a mindset and people have become more tolerant
towards that which had earlier been regarded as still contained
by retarded, uninformed people, and that it must disappear.
These latest phenomena are actually only referred back to
because of the general sleepiness of the modern soul. Basically
it is impossible to have on one side an almighty order of
nature and on the other side some kind of real moral spiritual
world order. Just as the order of nature was once regarded in
recent times, it doesn't tolerate a moral world order and now
only when mankind doesn't think efficiently, can one place
today's natural observation below that which has come out of
old traditional declarations. Consequently it is basically only
those people who lived in the middle of the nineteenth century
and the fifties and sixties who decidedly pointed out that the
human being is a physical bodily being, and out of the physical
body as precursor appeared the soul spiritual and that any
opposition to this idea should gradually be eradicated. I have
also remarked once in an open lecture in Basel and also other
places, that there are people who with great intensity have
repulsed the idea that one must be entitled to decline from a
moral mindset and that basically a criminal has just as much
right to run free as those who live according to a moral idea.
These were the consistent people on the one side. One can't
remain stuck with courage to this consistency. One would become
careless, sleepy and as a result give over that which I have
just characterized. The others are certainly also consistent
and act as if somewhat more Jesuit-minded in the catholic
church, who say: Away with all science who want to enforce
outer facts more than anything else — it dents people's belief
in a spirit soul world order and through all possible outer
force want to hang on to it. Both things cannot be maintained
in relation to the further evolution of mankind.
Whatever comes from unclear, confused concepts of olden times
cannot be maintained either. Above all it can't be maintained
that human beings are to be imagined as bodily physical beings
with a soul inside and that human beings can search for the
spirit-soul in relation to the body by only looking at the
present moment. Without expanding one's manner of observation,
without calling on the past in order to understand the human
being, will bring one no further. This scheme for humanity's
being is quite impossible. Solely and only by following the
next ideas could a clear conception be reached, which then, as
we will see, will go further to build the bridge between the
moral world view and the physical world view.
We
know that the human being, before he or she enters their
physical earthly existence, live in a spiritual world between
death and a new birth. Taking this line as characteristic
(arrow) depicting time, we get a spirit-soul life between death
and a new birth which moves evenly in the stream of time.
Now
something develops in connection with these things, which I
tried to explain yesterday, something within this soul
spiritual being of mankind in the course of time, during which
people developed without physical bodies through the previous
events in the spiritual world, something within them which we
can call a desire for physical birth. This self-development
becomes gradually a desire for physical birth (red = rot). Upon
really understanding these ideas of metamorphosed thought, one
arrives at this: the desire actually flows over into the
physical bodily (blue = blau) in order to, when one meets a
child, we must say: what appears to us in the child is the
fulfilment of a desire for physical incarnation, which the
spirit soul had before it entered the physical existence. — We
should not as it were see a duality between the physical body
and the soul spirit. We should not merely see in the physical
bodily so to speak the spirit soul dragged in, but we should
see something in the physical body which is actually being
transformed by the soul spiritual.
This of course gives problems for scientifically orientated
thought. The modern scientific way of thinking clings most
closely to how the point of germination develops in the
mother's body, in the belief that the human being simply grows
out of the mother's body after fertilisation because the
mother's body has the inherent forces to make the embryo grow.
But actually it is not like this. Such a solution only
considers the shortest route. The human is a being who stands
in the world in relation to the entire cosmos and who is in a
continuous interaction with the totality of the cosmos. How
would you respond if someone were to say: A particular quota of
air which is within you at a particular time, has grown out of
your body. It hasn't grown out of your body, you have breathed
it in, and as a result have it in you to create a whole out of
the entire environment. Only because one doesn't look
externally at the cooperation of the entire macrocosm, only
because the human embryo develops in the mother's body, only
because one sees that there is also an influence happening from
outside which surely connects a person to the entire cosmos,
does one believe that the embryo simply comes out of the
mother's body by itself. This human germ actually clearly comes
out of the spiritual world. It uses that place in which it can
gradually find a door to enter into the physical world. It is
within that which spreads itself out in space, where there is
no door for the human being who has lived between death and a
new birth, to enter into the physical world. It is only within
the human body itself where there is such a door. The forces
working there are not the forces of the father and mother, but
are cosmic forces which through the motherly body search after
the conception for entry into the physical world, after it had
developed a desire as a soul spiritual being.
So
a person develops into a physical being; but this physical
being is only the outer form of the spiritual. Observe how the
child has, I would like to call it undifferentiated traits
which develop more and more into the human form. We do the
right thing when we look back from the child to what happened
prenatally, what was happening for its arrival, and what still
works and now expresses itself. That in which we observe in the
child from day to day, from week to week, year to year, we see
as an influence of the past, in the experiences of the soul
spiritual being before his birth or before his conception. We
only do the right thing when we observe the child to say: Here
is the childlike organisation. We observe how the child
develops certain qualities. These we don't search for in his
inner being as it rays out to a certain extent, but to an
earlier time when he or she was allowing the rays to work
inwardly. Our reluctance to do this is the biggest disaster of
our modern mindset. To take time in search of that which has
gone before and how it works in our present thoughts, that is
what it all comes down to. As we develop or lives further into
time (blue, right) we are moving backwards again; what is
physicality, which we gradually enter, turns around again from
the physical-bodily into the soul spiritual (red, right).
In
the act of becoming physical individuals, our soul-spiritual
side has been transformed in the physical body and we transform
the physical body again back into the soul spiritual. You may
object by saying here we encounter a difficulty. One will soon
understand how the physical bodily nature can again be
transformed back into the soul spiritual, if it so gradually
happened when one could take the example of how a person,
reaching the age of thirty five, has become quite physical, but
from then onwards he or she gradually again becomes spiritual,
so much so that by the end of their life he or she has become
so spiritual that death is a gradual transition into the soul
spiritual. Inwardly this is the case, although outwardly not —
appearances are deceptive. It is namely so, that during the
descending half or our life — the somewhat older people who sit
here, may not give me credit for this awful truth — by becoming
older, our bodies seem like something to drag along and doesn't
feel as if it really belongs to us anymore. We slowly become a
body, and death is actually the reason due to this body
becoming heavy, its weight overpowering when we wake in the
morning and return to it with our soul. By focussing on outer
appearance the actual changes can't be observed as to how the
second half of one's life is actually a slow dying.
It
is not about considering the soul-spiritual on the one side and
the physical body on the other, but that we learn to understand
how, when we employ the concept of time in which the
soul-spiritual is transformed in the physical bodily nature,
that the physical bodily nature again is transformed back into
the soul-spiritual. Despite its apparent only exterior
expression in human development, this is connected with two
important human qualities. Through what can we develop
ourselves out of a spiritual-soul element gradually
metamorphosing into a physical-bodily form, into uniting with
the physical body? This one can grasp through learning to
understand the moral quality of love. A principal, important
truth is this: the human being goes into the world through
love, by pouring itself into the physical bodily nature. How
does a person exit? He or she takes their physical bodily
nature and metamorphoses back again, change backwards and no
other power gives them a greater possibility than freedom. That
we can say we develop further and go through death is possible
due to freedom. We are born through cosmic love, we go through
death's door into the soul-spiritual world through the power of
freedom which we have within us. If we develop love in the
world then this love is basically a resounding, an echo of our
soul spiritual being as we experienced it before our birth, or
we can say before our reception. By developing freedom in our
existence between birth and death, we develop the
soul-spiritual within us as that which prophetically appeared
as a power, our most important power, when we would leave the
body through death.
What do we mean by a free being, understood in a cosmic sense?
A free being is one who is able to revert out of its physical
bodily nature into the soul-spiritual, it means basically, to
be able to die; while love means to be able to develop out of
the soul-spiritual into the physical. To love could mean to be
able to live, understood cosmically.
Here we see how foregoing events without doubt may be grasped
quite naturally: to be born and be incorporated as a human
being, birth and death, can be understood by outer natural
science merely as acceptable precursors, manifestations,
revelations of love and freedom. By developing soul-spiritual
love out of our will forces, what are we actually
accomplishing? We are creating a soul-spiritual after-image in
us, within our skin, from which our entire being originates
before we are conceived. Before our conception we live in the
cosmos through the power of love. Gradually, in a kind of
feeling-will memory of this cosmic life, comes the unfolding of
love as a moral virtue during our life between birth and death.
Like a refinement in the microcosm appears the virtue of love,
which extends macrocosmically before our birth, and the
awareness of our freedom appears through this which we carry in
us as soul-spiritual during our lives between birth and death,
which will work like natural forces throughout the cosmos, when
we have gone through death's door. They are nothing other than
the human echoes of cosmic forces, because every birth is
connected with cosmic love, and all dying connected to cosmic
freedom. We talk about all kinds of natural forces like light,
warmth, electricity and so on, since natural science has
celebrated her triumph; we however don't talk about those
forces of nature or more adequately expressed, cosmic forces,
which we as people in a physical existence control and drive
out in the physical sensory existence again. The thing is, you
can take physics, chemistry, the biological sciences and take
that which are depicted as forces which constitutes the world.
Out of these forces which constitute the world, you will
understand everything which is not human, but people don't. For
human beings to exist there must be freedom and love, despite
what exists in the world like electricity, light, heat and so
on. You come, when you enter into such an examination to really
understand the human being, to concepts of nature beings, which
are simultaneously moral concepts and principles of nature, and
it doesn't go undecidedly to the one side without a relationship
to the nature of moral world order or to the other side without
a relationship with the morality of the order of nature.
During the world's development something happened to humanity,
which certainly had a deep inner lawfulness, which however in a
particular way still had to be conquered by humanity in the
course of their future earthly development, if humanity didn't
want to fall into decline. Humanity's development on earth
originated from the kind of spiritual development originated in
the East, having blossomed in the East, as we know in ancient
times, during the post Atlantean time, which was higher still
than the appearance of the later poems of the Vedas or the
philosophy of the Vedas. However this was an opinion which was
actually only targeted as moral-spiritual world order. This
moral-spiritual world order was great and brilliant in a
particular past age of evolution, but slowly it has fallen into
decadence in the East. It couldn't bring about an order of
nature.
In
recent times a new way of thinking has started regarding the
world's natural order. Originating from the West it is regarded
as emerging out of forces of external nature which can only be
perceived by our senses. There is — we have already examined
this from various points of view — the enormous contrast of the
East with the West. In the East mankind is inclined towards a
one-sided view of the soul-spiritual, in the West mankind turns
to the only concept of the physical bodily element. That is
applied to all human observation. Normally no one considers how
radically different concepts about mankind are all over the
world. The considerations real westerners enter into when
considering mankind, is something quite foreign to easterners.
When an easterner talks about mankind then the argument implies
something non-existent on earth. The easterner directs his
gaze, actually his soul glance on to that which basically is
untouched by the earth. If one has the prehistoric oriental
world view then no consideration would be given to anyone who
is born and anything which is regulated by evolution of mankind
or anything which has a physical sensory existence. A person is
entirely a spiritual soul being and doesn't develop any right
sense for a physical sensory existence. This has an important
influence on everything the oriental thinks about. Today this
has fallen into decadence but in olden times it was openly
expressed regarding the way oriental thought related to human
beings as social beings.
How
do westerners think? Let's take an outstanding, honest social
thinker of the West, for example Adam Smith. Just as
natural science of the West does not include people — they
include anything but humanity — so also social science doesn't
consider people. Just study Adam Smith: he doesn't speak about
people at all in his national economics but refers to a
particular piece of earth, what grows and what stands on it,
and then he talks about a machine which sows the seed, allows
germination and so on. So you have a piece of earth, and you
have a machine (a drawing is made) which only through its
automation must freely be able to alter this piece of earth.
Thus everything happening on this piece of earth must be
properly directed by this machine. Adam Smith mainly spoke
about these two elements and stressed that the principal
qualities of the machine would be called economic freedom, and
the piece of earth he called private property. Here we have the
actual original cell of the social being: a piece of private
property with an economic machine, which is independent from
other machines and other private properties. The concepts of
Adam Smith only dealt with cultivated land, with private
property and with such economic machines with economic freedom.
These are his actual concepts. If he comes across a person, he
sees him not as a human being but says: this represents a piece
of private property and an economic machine, and it is only
formed by having a head, a trunk in the middle and some limbs,
to which is added on top, a phantom. — However, one doesn't
think like this, no one understands it. This only appears on
the private property. By activating the economic machine it
externally takes on the form of the phantom's endowments of
head, trunk and limbs. Nowhere will you discover any kind of
understanding for the human being amongst Adam Smith's ideas.
Just try it out for once! You will find combinations of private
property with an economic machine, but you will never find a
concept of the human being. Gradually you will discover things
around the human being, but never the human being itself. What
is characterised regarding freedom is but a last shadow which
is transferred on to the machine. Human freedom is not spoken
about, what rises with spiritual content out of moral fantasy
to make people fully human is not mentioned — because one must
think like in my
“Philosophy
of Freedom>”
(Philosophy of Spiritual Activity)
— but instead the subject is the relationship
between private property and economic machines. We have on the
one side the wisdom which has remained behind from the East,
the inability of the human soul-spiritual to come out of the
physical world. We have from the lands of the West the ability
to say: Yes, here is something real in the world because
something is on earth and can be automated; his lordship has
great bounty, his Lordship has outer power through the
management and hunt of goods. Through this one sees the
Lordship has something. Yet, what rises from this is actually
only a human phantom.
You
see what has to be looked for: the human being as such. One
must enter into a soul frame of mind with lively observation to
regard the human being as such. We are in a western science
with its chart of animals. First we have simple animals then
ever more complicated animals up to the last most complicated
ones on four legs, then they stand up, become upright instead
of horizontal, and now we have the highest animal, the human
being. One only has a row of animals and the human being is the
highest member in this row. The human being is seldom
considered in natural science and also seldom from social
sciences, because here he or she is part of private property,
namely the economic machine. The human being falls out of the
social examination, out of the social examination of nature.
The extraordinary thing about modern people is that they don't
notice that there is nothing human here. There is absolutely
nothing human here. Out of this a specific need arises. Just
consider how people live in their outer social life. Let's
accept that they live in the way Adam Smith sees them, because
he has uttered the observation coming from that which he said,
originating from the thought tendencies of numerous people.
Just think of a person's outer social life. Let's accept they
exist as Adam Smith suggests, because his expression of this
observation does not come from there; he even expressed the
thought tendencies of numerous people. Think to yourself,
people see themselves as “Westerners” in their
social existence: they are actually not! Private property and
the economic unit exist; people do not exist here! How can one
find in this concept of mankind what lies on the other side of
birth and death? This must be handed over to what authorities
are allowed to say. As a result of such concepts receding
further and further from their flowering it has come about that
with reference to the spiritual everything gradually is placed
under an authority, instigating a certain aversion to even
think about spirituality. In the modern proletarian science
this has been taken up further. Only then seriousness took it
up and said: Yes, the middle class has thought about it but
actually it doesn't involve people; we have private property
and the economic machine. Therefore we will not consider this
trinket of special people, we are talking about pure scientific
forces; this produces everything. Let's be serious about this
point of view! The others are not serious; the entire week they
talk about private property and economic freedom which the
machine gives, and on Sunday they allow themselves to be also
preached at about an immortal soul.
This is something which must be grasped in total awareness. If
one doesn't have the courage to see things in complete
alertness then there can be no progress. It is understandable
that many powers exist at present which not everyone wants
thoroughly illuminated. It is unpleasant when it is pointed out
how social science should be understood in harmony with people,
but how it actually knows nothing about people, merely about
private property and about economic freedom through economic
machines.
I
have tried to show you a method of observation which is really
built on lively observation which goes through metamorphosis,
and how a method of observation can develop which does not want
to know about such a metamorphic observation. Tomorrow we will
consider deeper reasons which lead to something which people
hardly allow to approach them, the macrocosmic results arising
out of necessity. Tomorrow we will develop, I'd like to say,
the macrocosmic echo of today's presented facts and we will go
over to the human results of one and other world views.
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