Lecture III
When it is a question of understanding the Event of
Golgotha in the sense of the Christmas Mystery we may look in two
directions: Towards the starry heavens with all their secrets on the
one side and towards the inner being of man with all its secrets on
the other. During these lectures I have spoken of how the Magi from
the East recognised, from the starry heavens, the Coming of Christ
Jesus upon the earth and of how from the visions arising out of man's
inner being the simple shepherds in the field received the
proclamation of this Saviour of mankind. And once again today we
will turn our attention to these two directions whence, in reality,
all knowledge comes to man — whence the highest knowledge of
all, the knowledge of the very meaning of the earth, had to come.
In the epochs which preceded the Mystery of Golgotha the
attitude of the human soul to the universe and to itself was quite
different from what it was after the Mystery of Golgotha. This fact,
of course, is not very vividly apparent to an external study of
history because the ancient form of knowledge belongs to ages lying
long, long before, thousands of years before the Mystery of Golgotha.
By the time the Mystery of Golgotha was drawing near, this form of
knowledge had already become feebler, and truth to tell it was only
individual, very outstanding men like the three Magi from the East
who possessed such far-reaching knowledge as was then manifest. And
on the other side it was only possible for men particularly sensitive
to inner things like the shepherds — men of the people —
to bring such visions out of sleep as these shepherds brought. But in
both the Magi and the shepherds it was a legacy of that ancient
knowledge through which men had once been related to the universe.
Even in our time we could not say, especially not in regard to the
actual present, that men give very clear expression to that form of
knowledge which has entered into the evolution of humanity since the
Mystery of Golgotha. Speaking generally, however, what we are going
to speak about this evening, holds good. The pre-Christian attitude
to the starry heavens was such that men did not regard the stars in
the prosaic, abstract way that is current nowadays. The fact that
these men of olden times spoke of the stars as if they were living
Beings was not due, as an imperfect science believes, to mere
fantasy, but to a spiritual, although instinctive, atavistic
perception of the starry heavens. Looking at the starry heavens in
olden times men did not merely see points or surfaces of light but
something spiritual, something that made them able to describe
the constellations as they did, for to them the several planets of
our system were ensouled by living beings. Men beheld the spiritual
in the wide heaven of the stars. They saw the starry heavens as well
as the mineral and plant kingdoms in their spiritual reality. It was
with one and the same faculty of knowledge that men of old
beheld these three regions of existence. They spoke of the stars as
beings endowed with soul and also of the minerals and the plants as
beings endowed with soul.
We must not think that the faculties of knowledge in
olden times were similar to ours. A little while ago I spoke to you
about a stage of knowledge which, although it was not so very
different from our own, is nevertheless difficult for many people
today to picture. I said that the Greeks, in the earliest period of
their culture, did not see the colour blue, that the heavens were not
blue to them. They perceived the colours that lie more towards the
active side, towards the side of red-yellow. Nor did they paint in
the shades of blue known to us. Blue came only later into the range
of human perception.
Think of all shades of blue being absent from the world,
and therefore of green looking different from what it does today, and
you will realise that the world around the Greek did not appear to
him as it appears to humanity today. For the men of much earlier
times the surrounding world differed still more. And then from the
world seen by men of old, the spiritual withdrew — withdrew
from the worlds of stars, of minerals, of plants. The vivid active
colours became duller and out of the depths there appeared what is
experienced as blue. As the faculty for the perception of blue, of
the darker colours arose, what the men of old experienced in the
astrology which spoke to them in a living language, active and full
of colour, changed into the grey, colourless geometry and mechanics
which, drawing it as we do from our inner being, no longer enables us
to read from the environment the secrets of the starry worlds. The
ancient astrology was transformed into the world we picture today in
the sense of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, into the world of celestial
mechanics, of mathematics.
That is the one side. The other side is that in those
olden times men possessed a deep, inner faculty for perceiving what
was streaming around them out of the earth — the fluids of the
earth. The fluids of the earth, the qualities of earth announced
themselves as the counterpart of the starry heavens to certain inner
faculties of perception. Man in olden times was highly sensitive
to the characteristics of the climate of his country, of the soil on
which he lived. A chalk or granite soil was experienced as different
radiations from the Earth. But this was not a dim feeling or
experience; it arose like colours or clouds inwardly felt, inwardly
experienced. Thus man experienced the earth's depths; thus, too, the
soul in his fellow-man and the life of animals. The experiences were
more living, more intense. It was with a faculty of external
knowledge that man gazed into the spirituality of the starry heavens,
into the spirituality of the minerals and plants, with his atavistic,
instinctive clairvoyance; and it was with instinctive inner vision
that he perceived what was living spiritually in the earth's depths.
He spoke not merely of chalk soil but he experienced specific
elemental beings: one kind from chalk soil, other kinds from granite
or gneiss. He felt what was living in other human beings as an aura
but an aura bestowed upon man from the earth; particularly did he
feel the animals with their aura as beings of the earth. It was as
though the ground, soil and the inner warmth of the earth continued
on in the whole animal world. When a man of old saw the butterflies
over the plants he saw them drawing along with them what was rising
from the earth; as in an auric cloud he saw animal life flowing over
the earth.
All this gradually withdrew and the prosaic world
remained for man's faculty of perception which now became external He
began now to behold the world around him as we behold it, in its
colours and so forth — without perceiving the spiritual. And
what man had once seen through faculties of inner perception was
transformed into our modern knowledge of nature; what he had seen
spiritually through faculties of external knowledge was transformed
into our modern mathematics and mechanics.
Thus out of the qualities which the simple shepherds in
the field brought to their inner vision we have developed the modern
view of nature; and out of what the Magi from the East brought to
their faculty of perceiving the Star, we have developed our dry
mathematics and mechanics. The faculties of outer and inner
perception were still so rich in individual men at that time that the
mystery of the birth of Jesus could announce itself from these two
sides.
What really underlay this faculty of perception? During
the period between death and a new birth, during the time through
which we lived before entering through birth into earthly existence
we have literally passed through the cosmic expanses. Our
individuality was not then bound to the space enclosed by the skin;
our existence was spread over cosmic expanses. And the faculty of
magical vision still possessed by the wise men from the East was
essentially a faculty which entered strongly into the human being
from the period between death and birth — that is to say,
it was a ‘pre-natal’ faculty. What the soul lived through
before birth within the world of stars awakened to become a special
faculty in those who were pupils of the Magi. And when the pupils of
the Magi developed this particular faculty they were able to say:
“Before I came down to this earth I had definite experiences
with Mercury, with Sun, with Moon, with Saturn, with Jupiter.”
And this cosmic memory enabled them to behold the spiritual in the
whole external world as well, to see the destiny of man on earth.
They saw it out of their memory of existence before birth within the
world of stars.
The faculties by means of which the earth's depths, the
mysteries of the souls of men and of the nature of the animals were
perceived, were faculties which at first developed in germinal form
in the human being and which manifested for the first time after
death — but they were youthful faculties, potentially germinal.
Although it is after death that these faculties become particularly
creative, in earthly life they arise as potentially germinal forces
during the first period of earthly life, in the child. The
forces of growth in the child which bud and sprout forth from the
spiritual, these forces of the child withdraw in later life from the
human being. They withdraw and we are then filled more with those
forces which were there before birth. But after death these child
forces appear again. It was only specially gifted men who retained
them on into old age. I have already said here that such faculties of
genius as we have in the later years of life are due to the fact that
we have remained more childlike than those who do not have these
faculties or have them in a lesser degree. The maintenance of
childlike faculties on into later life equips us with inventive
faculties and the like. The more we can retain childlike
faculties in mature years, the more creative we are. But these
creative forces appear again more particularly after death.
Among individual peoples of pre-Christian times it had
been possible for the after-death faculties to be fructified by those
that had remained from before birth. Because such men allowed the
kind of knowledge possessed by the Magi from the East to withdraw and
the after-death knowledge to come more to the fore, and because
the pre-birth faculties were able to fructify the after-death
faculties, the gift of prophecy developed in these men, the gift of
foretelling the future prophetically with the after-death faculties.
Those whom we call the Jewish Prophets were men in whom the
after-death faculties were particularly developed; but these
faculties did not remain merely in the instinctive life as in the
simple shepherds in the field to whom the annunciation was made,
they were penetrated by those other faculties which had developed to
greater intensity among such people as the Magi from the East, and
which led to special knowledge relating to the secrets of the stars
and the happenings in the heavens.
Starry heavens ................................
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Earth's depths
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Mineral world .................................
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Human soul
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Plant world ...................................
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Animal life
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Pre-birth faculties ...........................
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After-death faculties
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It will now be clear to you that the proclamation to the
shepherds in the field and the knowledge of the Magi from the
East were necessarily in agreement. The knowledge possessed by the
Magi from the East was such that they were able to behold deep
secrets of the starry heavens. Out of those worlds in which man lives
between death and a new birth, out of those worlds whence came the
faculties enabling them to penetrate the starry heavens, out of an
enhancement of this knowledge this vision came to them: From
that world which does not primarily belong to life between birth and
death but to the life between death and a new birth — from that
world a Being, the Christ, is coming down to the earth. The approach
of Christ was revealed to the Magi out of their knowledge of the
stars.
And what was the revelation to the shepherds in the
field whose special faculty was to experience the Earth's depths? —
The Earth became something different when the Christ was
drawing near. The Earth felt this approach of Christ, bore in herself
new forces because of Christ's approach. The pure-hearted shepherds
in the field felt, from out of the depths, what the Earth was
reflecting, the way in which the Earth was reacting to the approach
of Christ. Thus the cosmic expanses proclaimed to the Magi from the
East the same as the earth's depths proclaimed to the shepherds.
This happened at a time when remains of the old
knowledge were still in existence. We are concerned here with men who
were exceptional, even in those days, with men like the three. Magi
from the East and these particular shepherds in the field. Both had
retained, each in their own way, what had more or less
disappeared from humanity in general. This was the reason why the
Mystery of Golgotha, when its time was drawing near, could be
proclaimed to them as it was.
In studying these things we must add to the ordinary,
historical view, the knowledge that comes from Spiritual Science. We
must try, as it were, to fathom the expanses of space and the depths
of the life of the soul. And if we fathom the expanses of space in
the right way we begin to understand how the wise men from the East
experienced the approach of the Mystery of Golgotha. If we try to
plumb the depths of the life of soul we begin to understand how the
shepherds received the tidings of what was coming so near to the
earth that the earth herself became aware of the approach of these
forces. The faculties connected with existence before birth, which
were manifested in the Magi, correspond more to an intellectual
element — different, of course, in those times from what it is
today; they correspond more to knowledge. What worked in the
shepherds corresponds more to will, and it is the will that
represents the forces of growth in the universe. The shepherds were
united in their will with the Christ Being Who was approaching the
earth. We feel, too, how the stories of the wise men from the East —
although they are so inadequately recorded in the modern Bible —
we feel how they express the kind of knowledge with which the wise
men approached the Mystery of Golgotha; it came from their
consciousness to the external universe. We feel that the story of the
proclamation to the shepherds points to the will, to the heart, to
the life of inner emotion. “Revelation of the God from the
heavens and Peace to those men on Earth who are of good will.”
We feel the streaming of the will in the proclamation to the
shepherds. The light-filled knowledge possessed by the Magi is of a
quite different character.
We realise the profundity and significance of the
knowledge in the Magi and the proclamation to the shepherds as
narrated in the New Testament when we try to fathom the nature
of human knowledge and of human will — faculties connected with
existence before birth and after death.
Starry heavens
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Earth's depths
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Mineral world
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Human soul
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Plant world
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Animal life
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Pre-birth
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After-death
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faculties
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faculties
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Intellect
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Will
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I have said that what was a world of spirit to the men
of old — the stars, the minerals, the plants — I have
said that this has become for us the tapestry of the sense-world;
what was formerly inner knowledge has drawn to the surface. If
we picture to ourselves the knowledge in the shepherds as being
inward and what manifested in the Magi as being outward, it was this
outward external knowledge in the Magi which reached out into space
and there perceived the spirit The inner life leads to perception of
the earth's depths.
The inner kind of knowledge manifested in the shepherds
(red in diagram) grows, during the further evolution of humanity,
more and more outwards and becomes the external perception of today,
becomes what we call empirical perception. What gave the Magi their
knowledge of the world of stars draws inwards, more backwards towards
the brain and becomes our mathematical, mechanistic world (green
in diagram). A crossing took place; what was inner knowledge,
pictorial, naive, instinctive imagination in pre-Christian times
becomes our external knowledge, perception through the senses. What
was once external knowledge encompassing the world of stars draws
inwards and becomes the dry, geometrical-mathematical, mechanistic
world which we now draw forth from within us.
| Diagram 1 Click image for large view | |
Through inner enlightenment man of today experiences a
mathematical, mechanistic world. It is only outstanding persons like
Novalis who were able to feel and give expression to the poetry and
deep imagination of this inner, mathematical world. This world of
which Novalis sings the praises in such beautiful language is, for
the ordinary man of today, the dry world of triangles and
quadrangles, of squares and — sums and differences. The
ordinary human being is prosaic enough to feel this world to be
barren, dry; he has no love for it. Novalis, who was an outstanding
person, sings its praises because there was still alive in him an
echo of what this world was before it had drawn inwards. In those
times it was the world out of which the Jupiter Spirit, the Saturn
Spirit, the Spirit of Aries, of Taurus, of Gemini was perceived. It
was the ancient light-filled world of stars which has withdrawn and
in the first stage of its withdrawal becomes the world which
seems to us to be dry, mathematical, mechanistic.
The faculty that intensified in a different form in the
shepherds in the field to a perception of the voice of the Angel
in the heights has become dry, barren and feeble in us — it has
become our perception of the external world of sense; with it today
we perceive minerals and plants, whereas with the old faculty,
although it was hardly articulate, men perceived the earth's depths
or the world of men and animals.
What today has faded into the mathematical-mechanistic
universe, what was once astrology, contained such a power that the
Christ was revealed to the Magi as a Being of the Heavens. What today
is our ordinary knowledge through the senses, with which we see
nothing but the green surface of grass, the brown skins of animals
and the like — to this kind of knowledge when it was still
inward, when it had not yet drawn outwards to the eyes, to the skin,
there was revealed to the shepherds in the field the deep influence
on the earth, the power with which the Christ would work in the
earth, what the Christ was to be for the earth.
We, my dear friends, must find the way whereby the inner
faculty that is now dry mathematics may intensify pictorially to
Imagination. We must learn to grasp the Imagination given us by
Initiation Science. What is contained in these Imaginations? They are
in truth a continuation of the faculty with which the Magi from the
East recognised the approach of Christ. The Imaginations are the
budding, the offspring of what the men of old saw in the starry
constellations, the star-imaginations, the mineral imaginations,
in gold, silver, copper. The men of old perceived in Imaginations,
and their offspring are the mathematical faculties of today. The
mathematical faculties of today will become those faculties which
understand the Imaginations. Thus by the development of the inner
faculties men will have to seek for the understanding of the Christ
Being.
But external perception must also be deepened, become
more profound. External perception has itself descended from what was
once the life of inner experiences, of instinct in man. The power
which among the shepherds in the field was still inward, in their
hearts, is today only in eyes and ears; it has shifted entirely to
the external part of man and therefore perceives only the outer
tapestry of the sense-world. This power must go still further
outwards. To this end man must be able to leave his body and attain
Inspiration. This Inspiration — a faculty of perception which
can be attained today — will then, out of Initiation Science,
be able to give the same as was given in the proclamation to the
naive, inner knowledge of the shepherds in the field.
Astrology as it was to the Magi, heart-vision as it was
in the shepherds. With the knowledge that comes from Initiation
Science through Imagination and Inspiration modern man will rise to
the spiritual realisation to the living Christ. Men must learn to
understand how Isis, the living, divine Sophia, had to disappear
when the time came for the development which has driven astrology
into mathematics, into geometry, into the science of mechanics. But
it will also be understood that when living Imagination resurrects
from mathematics, phoronomy and geometry, this means the finding of
Isis, of the new Isis, of the divine Sophia whom man must find if the
Christ Power that is his since the Mystery of Golgotha is to become
alive, completely alive, that is to say, filled with light within
him.
We are standing before this very point of time, my dear
friends. The outer earth will not provide man with those things which
he has become accustomed to desire in modern times. The conflicts
called into being by the terrible catastrophes of recent years have
already changed a large part of the earth into a field where culture
lies in ruins. Further conflicts will follow. Men are preparing for
the next great world war. Culture will be wrecked in more ways. There
will be nothing gained directly from what seems to modern humanity to
be of most value for knowledge and the will External earth life,
insofar as it is a product of earlier times, will pass away —
and it is an entirely vain hope to believe that the old habits of
thought and will can continue. What must arise is a new kind of
knowledge, a new kind of willing in all domains. We must familiarise
ourselves with the thought of the vanishing of a civilisation;
but we must look into the human heart, into the spirit dwelling in
man; we must have faith in the heart and the spirit of man in order
that through all we are able to do within the wreckage of the old
civilisation, new forms may arise, forms that are truly new.
Nor will these forms arise if we do not bear in mind
with all seriousness what it is that must happen for the sake of
humanity. Read in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and
you will find it said that a man when he desires to attain higher
knowledge must understand what is there called the meeting with the
Guardian of the Threshold. It is said that this meeting with the
Guardian of the Threshold means that willing, feeling, thinking
separate in a certain way, that a trinity must arise out of the
chaotic unity in man. The understanding that must come to the pupil
of Spiritual Science through his knowledge of what the Guardian of
the Threshold is, must come to the whole of modern mankind in regard
to the course of civilisation. In inner experience, though not in
outer consciousness, humanity is passing through the region that
can also be called a region of the Guardian of the Threshold.
It is so indeed, my dear friends; modern humanity is
passing over a threshold at which stands a Guardian, a Guardian full
of meaning, and grave. And this grave Guardian speaks: “Cling
not to what has come as a transplant from olden times; look into your
hearts, into your souls, that you may be capable of creating new
forms. You can only create these new forms when you have faith that
the powers of knowledge and of will for this spiritual creation can
come out of the spiritual world.” What is an event of great
intensity for the individual who enters the worlds of higher
knowledge, proceeds unconsciously in present-day mankind as a whole.
And those who have linked themselves together as the anthroposophical
community must realise that it is one of the most needed of all
things in our days to bring men to understand this passing through
the region which is a threshold.
Just as man, the knower, must realise that his thinking,
feeling and willing separate in a certain sense and must be held
together in a higher way, so it must be made intelligible to modern
humanity that the spiritual life, the life of rights, and the
economic life must separate from one another and a higher form of
union created than the State as it has been up to now. No programmes,
ideas, ideologies can bring individuals to recognise the necessity of
this threefoldness of the social organism. It is only profound
knowledge of the onward development of mankind that reveals this
development to have reached a threshold where a grave Guardian
stands. This Guardian demands of an individual who is advancing to
higher knowledge: Submit to the separation in thinking, feeling and
willing. He demands of humanity as a whole: Separate what has up
to now been interwoven in a chaotic unity in the State idol; separate
this into a Spiritual Life, an Equity State, and an Economic State
... otherwise there is no progress possible for humanity, and the old
chaos will burst asunder. If this happens it will not take the form
that is necessary to humanity but an ahrimanic or luciferic form. It
is only through spiritual-scientific knowledge of the passing of the
threshold in our present day that can give the Christ-form to this
chaos.
This, my dear friends, is something that we must say to
ourselves at the time of Christmas too, if we rightly understand
Anthroposophy. The little child in the crib must be the child
representing the spiritual development towards man's future. Just as
the shepherds in the field and the Magi from the East went after the
proclamation to see how that which was to bring humanity forward
appeared as a little child, so must modern man make his way to
Initiation Science in order to perceive, in the form of a little
child, what must be done for the future by the Threefold Social
Organism based on Spiritual Science. If the old form of the state is
not made threefold it will have to burst — and burst in such a
way that it would develop on the one side a wholly chaotic spiritual
life, completely ahrimanic and luciferic in character, and on the
other side an economic life again luciferic-ahrimanic in character.
And both the one and the other would drag the state in rags after
them. In the Orient there will take place the development more
of ahrimanic-luciferic spiritual states; in the West there will be
the development more of ahrimanic-luciferic economic life — if
man does not realise through the permeation of his being by Christ
how he can avoid this, how out of his knowledge and out of his will
he can proceed to bring about the ‘threefolding’ of what
is striving to separate.
This will be human knowledge permeated by Christ; it
will be human willing permeated by Christ. And it will express itself
in no other way than that the idol of the unitary state will become
threefold. And those who stand properly in the spiritual life
will recognise, as did the shepherds in the field, what it is that
the earth experiences through the Christ. And those who stand rightly
within the economic life, within the economic associations will
unfold, in the true sense, a will that brings a Christ-filled social
order.
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