LECTURE IV.
Dornach, 13th March 1921.
From the whole character of these presentations of
anthroposophical Spiritual Science you will see how essential
it is to understand that in the various spheres of existence
different Spiritual Beings have inserted themselves, taking
part in the work of those spheres, giving force and direction.
It is necessary that humanity in our present age should be
fully alive to the knowledge of this — that different
spheres of existence are guided and directed by different
spiritual Beings; for our civilisation has in the course of
recent years lost this consciousness of the presence of
concrete Spirit in life. In general, people will willingly talk
of the Divine permeating everything, but such talk does not
help to an understanding of the world which can provide a
sufficient basis for life. It is, of course, quite true that in
the last resort, every recognition of the spiritual must tend
towards a unity: but if one perceives that unity too soon, one
simply loses all real insight into the course of
world-happenings. It is necessary, therefore, to leave off
speaking in general in such an abstract way about the Divine,
and learn to know the concrete spiritual guiding Beings in
Nature and History, as we have done over and over again in the
course of time. It is from this point of view that I should
like to point today to certain really important and significant
things at the basis of the constitution of our world.
I
pointed out in the last lecture that certain Beings find
themselves together in the world for the purpose of building up
and animating man, but that they find themselves in conflict.
The old truth of the opposition coming from the Luciferic and
Ahrimanic spiritual forces — this we put before our souls
in the last lecture from a certain point of view, and now we
will look at the matter once more from another aspect.
If
we take our modern civilisation, which is now involved in such
catastrophic events and manifests in such decadent forces, we
shall find that what is essentially characteristic of it is the
extension of intellectual thinking throughout the whole
of humanity. One must really try to acquire an insight into the
quite different constitution of man's soul throughout civilised
Europe seven or eight centuries ago. It is intellectual thought
which today is so prevalent everywhere, which permeates
the entire soul-life of man and, from a certain aspect, will
still continue to permeate it. The point now is that one must
seek to unite with what is externally comprehensible
concepts that belong more to the soul and spirit; for it is
well if, from the aspect of the spirit, one really seeks to
grasp and permeate external and material existence itself.
That which underlies thought in our organism consists in purely
mineral processes that take place within us. Please understand
me aright; those processes in us which are specifically of a
human character, and those which we have in common with the
animal and plant-nature, these are all connected only
indirectly, and not directly, with the fact that we have become
intellectual thinking human beings according to the modern idea
of the development of nan. The fact that we have in us a firmly
consolidated mineral constitution gives us the capacity for
intellectual thought.
When we look at all those kingdoms of nature which are outside
us in cosmic space, and which are also within us, we must say:
Let us first of all contemplate the sphere of Warmth, of the
warmth-Ether; we carry the effect of this Warmth-Ether in our
own blood, and the activity of our blood consists essentially
in the fact that our blood, aa the carrier of warmth, guides
these warmth-processes through our entire organism. Now our
intellectual thinking does not depend in any way upon what
happens in the sphere of warmth. Thus, when we consider the
warmth-processes in the cosmos, we can say: These
warmth-processes are also continued within the skin of our
organism; but that which meets us in the cosmos as
warmth-processes — and specially meets one who is able to
regard the cosmos in the condition when it showed itself
exclusively in warmth processes, during the Saturn evolution
— none of that stimulates us to intellectual thinking.
Then if we look to the kingdom of the Air, there too we find
events taking place; these processes are continued in our
organism through our breathing process; but that again has
nothing directly to do with our intellectual
thinking.
As
a third sphere we can look to the phenomenon of water; we see
outside in the cosmos the processes in the fluid sphere. These
too are continued in our metabolism, in so far as it occurs in
the fluids. Outside in nature we see the circulation of fluids,
and in ourselves too we see a kind of circulation of fluids.
All that takes place in us in that way has again nothing to do
with what is our intellectual thinking. But when we look out
into the cosmos and see how water condenses to ice, how certain
mineral substances are deposited as sediments, how stones and
crystals take form — in short, when we consider the
processes of the mineral sphere and their corresponding
processes in our own organism, then we find that the mineral
processes in us have to do with all that finally culminates in
our intellectual thinking. We, therefore, as human beings, are
incorporated into the cosmos in these various spheres; but if
we were only incorporated in all these different spheres
without being involved in any special degree with the mineral
kingdom, with those forces which appear in crystallisation and
in the deposits of salts, and which meet us in these
manifestations in the external world, we should never have
become the thinking beings we have become, especially since the
middle of the fifteenth century. It is an absolute fact that
since the middle of the fifteenth century, it is this working
of the mineral forces in the human organism that has become
predominant. Previous to that, other forces, those of water,
air and so on, were dominant to a special degree in man. Hence
intellectual thinking was not then the most significant
element in human activity.
Now, in everything which surrounds us in the various realms in
which we live, the realm of solid earth, of flowing water, of
air and of warmth — for a moment we will disregard the
higher kinds of ether — in all these are working divine
spiritual beings. These realms consist not only in what we call
material world-forces and entities, but they are all permeated
by different spiritual beings. I will therefore make a diagram
to represent this important fact in our connection with the
cosmos. Suppose I sketch here (see diagram) the realm of the
mineral world (black); I will then here characterise the realm
of the water (red), the realm of the air here (blue), and then
finally the warmth-ether (reddish-violet).
Now
this is the characteristic of all those spiritual beings whom
the pre-Christian age — and especially pre-Christian
Judaism — conceived as standing under the guidance of
Jahve or Jehovah, and who were regarded by the Hebrew initiates
as belonging to the Realm of Jahve or Jehovah. They extended
their dominion essentially over the three first realms —
warmth, air, water. And so if I am to draw that region in the
cosmos that was under the rulership of Jehovah, I must say: It
is this region (the three upper layers). It was really the case
that the Jehovah rulership embraced the realms of Nature as we
have enumerated them, with the exception of the
physical-mineral realm. You must be quite clear that when in
the ancient Jewish writings, reference is made to the Divine,
this always refers to the Jehovah realm of warmth-ether, air
and water. That was a deep initiation-truth of the
pre-Christian age, and is very cleverly indicated in the story
of Creation. One has merely to understand the meaning of the
Bible words aright to see how this is plainly brought to
expression. Jehovah betook himself, so to speak, to the earth,
and formed man out of the dust of the earth. He took that which
was not his own kingdom, for the forming of external man. The
Bible expresses that fact quite clearly. As I have said, in the
pre-Christian Jewish initiation, it was known as an
initiation-truth that Jehovah did not form external man out of
his own sphere of power, but turned to the earth, and from out
of the earthly dust, which was foreign to him, he formed the
human sheath which could not come from his own kingdom. Then he
breathed into it that which comes from him — the animal
soul, the Nephesch. That it is which he gave forth from himself
and it came from the three realms over which he ruled. The
superficial Bible investigators really do not, for the most
part, understand what stands in the Bible at all. If one
understands the Bible, one sees that it speaks with
extraordinary exactitude, one only has to take its sentences
quite exactly. “Jehovah formed man out of the dust of the
earth,” that means out of the mineral kingdom foreign to
him, and then he gave to man out of his own sphere the breath
of the soul. Thus, what lives in man as an emanation from
Jehovah is indicated when it is said that Jehovah breathed the
living Odem into man.
Man
developed, and as he evolved further in the mineral kingdom, he
developed in an element foreign to Jehovah. And it was that
kingdom which then, in more modern times, since the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch, became especially dominant in man,
because it formed the basis for his intellectual civilisation.
We can say, therefore, that as long as the intellectual
civilisation was not predominant in man, so long could a
rulership prevail such as that of Jehovah. Then, however, the
mineral nature began to make itself felt, from the founding of
Christianity up to the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean
epoch. Humanity had then to be helped from another side. Now
you can see how necessary it was for man at the time when the
mineral nature became so important to him that he should
receive the Christ Impulse, because the old Jahve or
Jehovah-impulse was no longer sufficient.
You
must connect what I have just told you with certain
definite facts. Just consider the fact that man would not think
intellectually, with a fully waking consciousness, if he were
merely subject to the Jehovah influence, which has no influence
on his mineral nature. And so, if we wish chiefly to consider
the activity of Jehovah in man, we must not look to what is in
our external intellectual culture, but to what expresses itself
in our dreams. That which is dreamt, which does not pass
into sharply contoured intellectual concepts such as can be
grasped by the soul but is dreamt — that is our
Jehovah-life. Everything which moves in the fluidic elements of
the more fantastic or imaginative nature, everything which can
be compared externally with the Moon-influence on man, that is
his Jehovah-nature. Opposed to the Jehovah-nature is man's
clear-cut thinking; but that he owes to the circumstance that
there are salt deposits in him, that there is in him a mineral
activity.
Now
just consider the fact that, fundamentally, the old Jehovah
religion lost its significance with the Mystery of Golgotha. It
had lost its significance because the time had come in the
evolution of man when the mineral nature became predominant in
him. But when the Mystery of Golgotha appeared, there was still
enough left of the ancient Dream Wisdom through which it could
be understood. And those persons who had somewhat transcended
the ancient Dream-Wisdom and who through various kinds of
initiation had, like Saul (Paul), already attained some
intellectual culture — for them a special influence was
necessary, such as Paul received through the Event of Damascus,
in order to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha. It is of great and
deep significance, that in the Christian tradition we are told
that in order to understand the Mystery of Golgotha it
was necessary for Saul, who had in a certain sense been
initiated before the Mystery of Golgotha into the Hebraic
Mysteries — it was necessary for him that he should be
carried away into that knowledge which did not work in sharp
contours, but which expressed itself in the more flowing
element of the dream; for it was in this way that Paul
experienced the certainty that Christ had been present in Jesus
through the Mystery of Golgotha. With the old Dream Wisdom, it
was still possible to grasp something of the Event of Golgotha,
and if, through a special influence ouch as was the case with
Paul, a man was snatched into that Dream region, he could then
understand the Mystery of Golgotha. But now the old Dream
Wisdom more and more decreased; it only remained in man's
dreams, and even there in a completely decadent form. As the
fifteenth century approached, the culture of Europe was tending
increasingly to the purely intellectual element; and under the
influence of this intellectual element our modern natural
science has developed.
Now
consider the following. The old Jewish religion must not be
grasped merely with reference to the external words —
that would only be a materialistic understanding of religion;
we must grasp it in its inner spirit. As an historical
phenomenon the point that strikes us is that the Jehovah-God
was simply the God of one people, and outside the
borders of the Jewish people Jehovah was no longer the
Jehovah-God. That is the essence of the Jehovah Divinity; he
did not embrace the whole of humanity, but only one
portion of mankind. In fact, this perception of God has
passed over to our own age, and in particular one could, see it
again during the World War when every nation spoke of how
Divine Providence or, as many said, the Christ, was helping
them. Each nation wanted, so to say, to go forth under the
guidance of Christ against every other. But because one utters
the Name of `Christ', that does not mean that one has met, has
contacted, the Christ; for the Christ is only contacted
when in one's whole feeling one turns to that Being Who has the
Christ Nature. One may say a thousand times over: “We
will fight in the Name of Christ”; but as long as one is
fighting for one nation alone, one is giving a false name to
the Being of Whom one speaks; one calls the Being Christ, but
one means only the Jehovah-God. In the great catastrophe of the
War (1914-1918) all the peoples fell back into a Jehovah
religion — only, there were a great many Jehovahs; each
people worshipped a God who was honoured entirely in the
character of a Jehovah; Christ completely disappeared from the
consciousness of humanity. One could see in those catastrophic
events how utterly Christ had disappeared out of the
consciousness of man.
We
can see this also in other things. An altogether scientific
civilisation has now grown up. Our modern scientific
culture, how far does it extend? Fundamentally, it is limited
to what is mineral and physical. Just consider how
uncomfortable a modern scientist immediately becomes if one
asks him to speak of anything but what is mineral or physical.
As soon as the conversation turns to anything else — for
instance, to the principle of life — the modern scientist
asserts that one can only explain the mineral and chemical
processes in the living. He will not enter into the element of
life itself, and still less into the element of soul. Thus,
this modern science has developed entirely within just that
sphere which was not included in the Jehovah religion, in an
element foreign to Jehovah — the element of the mineral
physical. This science, in order that it might become an
element of civilisation had, as it were, to depend on
receiving the Divine Spiritual from another side.
When one spoke among the ancient Jews of any sort of knowledge,
it was always a dream-knowledge. The Prophets who had the very
highest knowledge are described as the Dreamers of prophetic
dreams. It is all connected with just this very fact. It was
through this Dream-Wisdom that men even comprehended the
Mystery of Golgotha itself. But this Dream-Wisdom disappeared.
The Mystery of Golgotha was indeed still transmitted
historically and spoken of in the traditional Church
communities, but a true understanding of it could no longer be
found. In place of it, modern science has grown up in the
element foreign to Jehovah, a spirit-less, God-less element;
and, because its understanding could not yet expand to the
Christ-element, it developed entirely within that physical
mineral element — utterly devoid of spirit.
Now
this science must, to its uttermost particle, again be
permeated by a spiritual element. It is empty of spirit because
it can no longer be Jehovistic. External civilisation has
attempted to carry on some sort of religious culture by
means of a religious `false coinage,' as when it gave the name
of Christ to Jehovah during the War. But science has turned
entirely away from the Spirit, it gives descriptions of the
physical-sensible alone, because man has not yet been able to
press forward to an understanding of the Christ. At most the
old Jehovah understanding still prevails when men storm against
each other as they did in the War; but not when they
investigate facts of nature, for then we have a spirit-less
science, an intellectual science devoid of spirit. Thus we are
surrounded by a sphere in which the Jehovah element still
rules. It permeates us; but we are not aware of it, because it
permeates us chiefly through those conditions which are our
sleeping conditions. If, when we withdraw into the element of
sleep, we could suddenly wake up outside our body, we should
clearly perceive around us a spiritual nature, under the
leadership of Jehovah. Then, as it were, on the waves of a
Jehovah-Sea, we should see our dreams coming to us out of this
Jehovah element.
Again in our Will — I have often told you that we are
asleep within it — there again the Jehovah nature rules.
In the whole metabolism of man, the Jehovah nature rules. As
feelings arise out of the metabolic system and permeate the
rhythmic system, so do certain feelings emerge, coming out of
the waves of the Jehovah-Sea — like our dreams. But when
we live in that realm which can only become comprehensible to
us through our intellect, our understanding, there Jehovah has
no share. When the Moon rises slowly in a dream-like light and
pours this dream-light over everything, one might say:
“Man has spread a Jehovah character over the fields of
the world.” When the Sun rises, shining clearly on every
stone, spreading over every object and giving it sharp
contours, so that we are able to grasp it with our
understanding, then the Sun-nature — which is not a
Jehovah-nature — expresses itself. We can only permeate
the world with spirit if we can perceive the Christ-Being, if
we so look into this world as to see the Christ-Being in it.
Modern science has had no eye for this Christ-Being. That which
is not Jehovistic but Sun-illumined and can be grasped in the
sharp contours of the intellect — this has been seen by
modern science as devoid of spirit. That is the deeper
connection.
What kind of a realm is it, then, which meets man in the
mineral? Now, I told you in the last lecture that on the one
side, within the realm of Jehovah, because they have remained
at an earlier stage of evolution, the Luciferic beings appear.
When we are present in the Jehovah sphere, let us say in sleep,
then the Luciferic beings make themselves felt in our feelings
and impulses of Will. That realm which we must dominate with
our intellect is spread out around us as the mineral kingdom.
That is a kingdom foreign to Jehovah, and into it those beings
have penetrated who belong to the Ahrimanic realm. The
Ahrimanic beings, however, because Jehovah could not, so to
speak, keep them away, have penetrated into that mineral
realm (see diagram — green). And so, when we turn our
gaze to this realm, we are every moment in danger of being
taken by surprise, to our confusion, because of the Ahrimanic
beings. These Ahrimanic beings — I have tried to present
an image of this in the carved wooden Group which is to stand
in our Goetheanum — these Ahrimanic beings can in reality
only feel at home in the realms which surround us in the
mineral world. They are predominantly
intellectually-gifted beings. The Mephistophelean figure
which you see below in our wooden Group, that
Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic figure is extremely clever, utterly
end wholly permeated with intellect. But with what is really
Jehovistic — with what lives in the human metabolic
system, in so far as it does not deposit salts or is of a
mineral nature but of a fluid nature, consisting in the
metabolism of fluids, with all that lives in our breathing and
in our warmth condition — with all this the Ahrimanic
element has no direct relationship.
These Ahrimanic beings strive, however, to get into man. Man
was created out of the dust of the earth. The mineral element
is the true sphere of Ahriman, he can enter that sphere, and
feel comfortable there; he feels very comfortable whenever he
can permeate us through whatever is mineral in us. You secrete
salts, and through this you are able to think; through the
deposit of salts, through all the mineral processes
prevailing in you, you become a thinking being. Ahriman seeks
to enter that sphere, but in reality he has a definite relation
only to the mineral. Therefore he is fighting to get a share
also in man's blood, in his breathing, and in his metabolism.
He can only do this if he can inject certain characteristics
into man's soul; if, for instance, he can inject into the human
soul a special tendency to a dry, barren understanding which
seeks an outlet in materialism and mocks all truths permeated
by feeling. If he can permeate man with intellectual pride,
then he can make the human blood, the breath and metabolism
also inclined to him, and then he can, as it were, slip out of
the salts and mineral in man and slip into his blood and
breathing.
That is the conflict in the world being fought on the part of
Ahriman through the very being of man. You see, when Jehovah
turned to the earth and created man out of the earth in order
to develop him further than he could have done within his own
realm, he created man out of an element foreign to himself, and
only implanted, breathed, his own element into him. But in so
doing, Jehovah had to take something to his aid, something to
which these Ahrimanic beings have access. Jehovah has thereby
become involved, as regards earthly evolution, in this conflict
with the Ahrimanic element which, with the help of man,
seeks to get the world for itself by means of the mineral
processes.
As
a matter of fact, much has been attained by the Ahrimanic
beings in this sphere, because when man is born into physical
existence, or is conceived, he descends from the worlds of soul
and spirit and surrounds himself with physical matter. But in
the present state of our civilisation and according to the
customs of the traditional Churches, man would like to forget
his existence in a sphere of soul and spirit before birth. He
does not wish to admit it; he would like, in a sense, to wipe
out of human life any prenatal existence. Pre-existence has
gradually been declared heretical in the traditional
Confessions. It is desired to restrict man to the belief that
he begins with physical birth or conception, and then to link
on to that what follows after death. If this belief in a mere
after-death condition were to be fully and finally forced on to
mankind, the Ahrimanic powers would then have won their
conflict; because if man regards only what he experiences from
his earthly nature between birth and death and does not look to
a pre-existence, to a life before birth, but only to a
continuance of life after death, the Ahrimanic element in his
mineral processes would gradually overpower him. Everything of
a Jehovistic nature would be thrown out of earthly evolution,
everything which has come over from Saturn, Sun and Moon would
be wiped away. A new creation would thus begin with the earth,
which would deny everything that had preceded it.
For
that reason, the perception which denies pre-existence must be
fought with all possible energy. Man must realise that he
existed before he was born or conceived into physical life. In
all veneration and holiness, he must receive that which was
allotted to him from divine spiritual worlds before his earthly
existence. If he adds to the belief of the after-death
condition a knowledge of pre-birth existence, he can prevent
his soul from being devoured by Ahriman. It follows therefore
from what I have said that we need gradually to take into our
speech a certain word which we have not yet got. Just as we
speak of immortality (deathlessness) when we think of the end
of our physical existence, so we must learn to speak of
un-bornness, for even as we are immortal, so also are we, as
human beings, in reality unborn, look where you will in the
language of civilised peoples for a practicable word for
“birthlessness!” We have the word
“immortal” everywhere, but “unborn” we
have not got. We need that word; it must be just as valid a
word in civilised languages as the word “immortal”
is today. It is just in this that the Ahrimanising of our
modern civilisation reveals itself; for it is one of the most
important symptoms of the Ahrimanising of modern civilisation
that we have no word for “not being born.” For as
we do not fall a prey to the earth with death, just as little
do we first originate with our birth or conception. We
must have a word which points clearly to
pre-existence.
One
must not undervalue the significance which lies in the word.
For no matter how much and how clearly one thinks, that is something
in yourself, something in man, of an intellectual nature. But the
moment the thought is expressed in a word, even the moment the word
as such is only thought, as in the words of a meditation, that same
moment the word is imprinted into the ether of the cosmos. Thought
as such does not imprint itself into the ether of the cosmos,
otherwise we could never become free beings in the sphere of pure
thought. We are bound, we are no longer free, the moment something
imprints itself into the ether. We are not made free through the
word, but through pure thought. You can read further about this in my
“Philosophy of Spiritual Activity”;
the word, however, imprints itself into the ether.
Now
consider this. Initiation science knows it to be true that
because in civilised languages there is no word for
“unbornness,” therefore this
“birthlessness,” which is so important for
humanity, is not imprinted into the cosmic ether. Now
everything which in great significant words is imprinted in the
cosmic ether referring to originating, to all that concerns man
in his childhood, youth, signifies for the Ahrimanic powers a
terrific fear. The word “immortality” the Ahrimanic
beings can very well bear to find inscribed in the world ether;
they are quite pleased, because immortality means that they can
start a new creation with man and carry it forward. It does not
irritate the Ahrimanic beings when they shoot through the ether
to play their game with man and find that from every pulpit
immortality is being spoken of; that thoroughly pleases them.
But it is a terrible shock for them if they find the word
“unbornness” inscribed in the world ether; it
entirely extinguishes the light in which these Ahrimanic beings
move. Then they can go no further, they lose their direction,
they feel as though they were falling into an abyss, a
bottomless pit. You can see by this that it is Ahrimanic action
that restrains humanity from speaking of unbornness. No matter
how paradoxical it may appear to modern humanity that one
should speak of these things, modern civilisation requires that
they should be spoken of. Just as meteorology describes the
wind, or geography the Gulf Stream, so one must describe what
is going on around us spiritually, and how these Ahrimanic
beings are moving through our environment; one must describe
how well they feel in everything connected with death, even
when dying is denied; and how they are filled with a terrible
fear of darkness when one speaks of anything connected with
being born, connected with growth and thriving. We must learn
to speak scientifically of these things, just as that
Jehovah-forsaken mineral sphere can be spoken of scientifically
in our modern science.
You
see, this is in reality nothing less than the conflict
with the Ahrimanic powers which we must take upon
ourselves. Ultimately, whether people like to know it or
not, that which is so often brought against Anthroposophical
Spiritual Science is at the same time the fight of Ahriman
against what must be repeated ever more emphatically by
Spiritual Science as necessary to modern humanity.
When one experiences such things as the recent attacks that
have been made upon Spiritual Science, is it not obvious that
these people themselves simply do not approach it? I have
spoken to you of the especially ruthless and hateful attack
which appeared recently in Germany, in the highly respected
paper “Frankfurter Zeitung,” when that paper took
up a really disgraceful attitude. It did indeed insert our
rejoinder, but only in order to put before it a whole column of
its own nonsensical remarks. These things are all
characteristic of those people who would like the science
of Anthroposophy to disappear, who are either too lazy to study
or not capable of it. These people seize upon such attacks as
the recent one in Germany in order to cast suspicions on what
they cannot refute.
When you consider the matter in the light of what I have told
you in connection with these Ahrimanic beings, you will see
through things a little. In scientific circles today there are
a great number of persons who can apparently think quite
clearly, and why? Because Ahriman permeates the mineral world;
and you therefore need not be surprised that these people
develop a great deal of intellect. That is Ahriman within them;
it is far more comfortable to allow Ahriman to think in one
than to think for oneself. A man can pass his examinations far
more easily, he can become a tutor or university professor with
far greater facility if he allows Ahriman to think for him. And
because so many people allow Ahriman to think in them, these
attacks naturally come from an Ahrimanic direction. These
things have an inner spiritual connection, which we must see
through. Therefore, people must not be so foolish as to blame
us over and over again if we are forced to strike back with
very cutting remarks at what would fain nullify Spiritual
Science from its very roots.
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