III
We should not underestimate the significance it once held for mankind
to focus the whole attention during the year on a festival-time.
Although in our time the celebration of religious festivals is largely
a matter of habit, it was not always so. There were times when people
united their consciousness with the course of the year; when, let us
say, at the beginning of the year, they felt themselves standing
within the course of time in such a way that they said to themselves:
There is such and such a degree of cold or warmth now; there are
certain relationships among the other weather conditions, certain
relationships also between the growth or non-growth in plants or
animals. People experienced along with Nature the gradual
changes and metamorphoses she went through. But they shared this
experience with Nature in such a way when their consciousness
was united with the natural phenomena that they oriented this
consciousness toward a specific festival. Let us say, at the beginning
of the year, through the various feeling perceptions associated with
the passing of winter, the consciousness was directed toward the
Easter time, or in the fall, with the fading away of life, toward
Christmas. Then men's souls were filled with feelings which found
expression in the way they related themselves to what the festivals
meant to them.
Thus people partook in the course of the year, and this participation
meant for the most part permeating with spirit not only what they saw
and heard around them but what they experienced with their whole human
being. They experienced the course of the year as an organic life
process, just as in the human being when he is a child we relate the
utterances of the childish soul with the awkward movements of a child,
or its imperfect way of speaking. As we connect specific
soul-experiences with the change of teeth, other soul experiences with
the later bodily changes, so men once saw the ruling and weaving of
the spiritual in the successive changes of outer nature, in growth and
decline, or in a waxing followed by a waning.
Now all this cannot help affecting the whole way man feels
himself as earthly man in the universe. Thus we can say that in
that period at the beginning of our reckoning of time, when the
remembrance of the Event of Golgotha began to be celebrated which
later became the Easter festival in that period in which the
Easter festival was livingly felt and perceived, when man still took
part in the turning of the year as I have just described it
then it was in essence so, that people felt their own lives
surrendered, given over to the outer spiritual-physical world. Their
feeling told them that in order to make their lives complete, they had
need of the vision of the Entombment and the Resurrection, of that
sublime image of the Mystery of Golgotha.
But it is from filling the consciousness in such a way that
inspirations arise for men. People are not always conscious of
these inspirations, but it is a secret of human evolution that from
these religious attitudes toward the phenomena of the world,
inspirations for the whole of life proceed.
First of all, we must understand clearly that during a certain epoch,
during the Middle Ages, the people who oriented the spiritual life
were priests, and those priests were concerned above all with the
ordering of the festivals. They set the tone for the celebration of
the festivals. The priesthood was that group of men who presented the
festivals before the rest of mankind, before the laity, and who gave
the festivals their content. In so doing the priests themselves felt
this content very deeply; and the entire soul-condition that resulted
from the inspiring effect of the festivals was expressed in the rest
of the soul-life.
The Middle Ages would not have produced what is called Scholasticism
the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus and the
other Scholastics if this philosophy, this world conception,
with all its social consequences, had not been inspired by the most
important thought of the Church, by the Easter thought. In the
vision of the descending Christ, Who lives for a time in man on Earth
and then goes through the Resurrection, that soul impulse was given
which led to the particular relation between faith and science,
between knowledge and revelation which was agreed upon by the
Scholastics. That out of man himself, only knowledge of the sensible
world can be acquired, whereas everything connected with the
super-sensible world has to be gained through revelation this
was determined basically by the way the Easter thought followed upon
the Christmas thought.
And if, in turn, the idea-world of natural science today is totally
the product of Scholasticism, as I have often explained to you, we
must then say: Although the natural science of the present is
not aware of it, its knowledge is essentially a direct imprint of the
Easter thought which prevailed in the early Middle Ages and then
became paralyzed in the later Middle Ages and in modern times.
Notice the way natural science applies in its ideas what is so popular
today and indeed dominates our culture: it devotes its ideas entirely
to dead nature; it considers itself incapable of rising above dead
nature. This is a result of that inspiration which was stimulated by
viewing the Laying in the Grave.
As long as people were able to add the Resurrection to the Entombment
as something to which they looked up, they then added also the
revelation concerning the super-sensible to mere outer
sense-knowledge. But as it became more and more common to view the
Resurrection as an inexplicable and therefore unjustifiable miracle,
revelation that is, the super-sensible world came to be
repudiated. The present-day natural scientific view is inspired solely
by the conception of Good Friday and lacks any conception of Easter
Sunday.
We need to recognize this inner connection: The inspired element is
always that which is experienced within all the festival moods in
relation to Nature. We must come to know the connection between this
inspiring element and all that comes to expression in human life. When
we once gain an insight into the intimate connection that exists
between this living-oneself-into the course of the year and what men
think, feel, and will, then we shall also recognize how significant it
would be if we were to succeed, for example, in making the Michael
festival in autumn a reality; if we were really to succeed, out of
spiritual foundations, out of esoteric foundations, in making the
autumn Michael festival something that would pass over into men's
consciousness and again work inspiringly.
If the Easter thought were to receive its coloration through the fact
that to the Easter thought He has been laid in the grave and is
arisen the other thought is added, the human thought, He
is arisen and may be laid in the grave without perishing
If this Michael thought could become living, what tremendous
significance just such an event could have for men's whole
perceiving (Empfindung), and feeling and willing and how
this could live itself into the whole social structure of
mankind!
My dear friends, all that people are hoping for from a renewal of the
social life will not come about from all the discussions and all the
institutions based on what is externally sensible. It will be able to
come about only when a mighty inspiration-thought goes through
mankind, when an inspiration-thought takes hold of mankind through
which the moral-spiritual element will once again he felt and
perceived along with the natural-sensible element.
People today are like earthworms, I might say, looking for sunlight
under the ground, while to find the sunlight they need to come forth
above the surface of the earth. Nothing in reality will be
accomplished by all of today's organizations and plans for reform;
something can be achieved only by the mighty impact of a
thought-impulse drawn out of the spirit. For it must be clear to us
that the Easter thought itself can only attain its new
nuance through being complemented by the Michael thought.
Let us consider this Michael thought somewhat more closely. If we look
at the Easter thought, we have to consider that Easter occurs at the
time of the bursting and sprouting life of spring. At this time the
Earth is breathing out her soul-forces, in order that these
soul-forces may be permeated again by the astral element surrounding
the Earth, the extra-earthly, cosmic element. The Earth is breathing
out her soul. What does this mean?
It means that certain elemental beings which are just as much in the
periphery of the Earth as the air is or as the forces of growth are
that these unite their own being with the out-breathed Earth
soul in those regions in which it is spring. These beings float and
merge with the out-breathed Earth soul. They become
dis-individualized; they lose their individuality and rise in the
general earthly soul element. We see countless elemental beings in
spring just around Easter time in the final stage of the individual
life which was theirs during the winter. We see them merging into the
general earth soul element and rising like a sort of cloud (red,
yellow, with green). I might say that during the wintertime these
elemental beings are within the soul element of the Earth, where they
had become individualized; before this Easter time they had a certain
individuality, flying and floating about as individual beings. During
Easter time we see them come together in a general cloud (red),
and form a common mass within the Earth soul (green). But
by so doing these elemental beings lose their consciousness to a
certain degree and enter into a sort of sleeping condition. Certain
animals sleep in the winter; these elemental beings sleep in summer.
This sleep is deepest during St. John's time, when they are completely
asleep. Then they begin once more to individualize, and when the Earth
breathes in again at Michaelmas, at the end of September, we can see
them already as separate beings again.
Man needs these elemental beings... This is not in his consciousness,
but man needs them nonetheless, in order to unite them with himself,
so that he can prepare his future. And man could unite these elemental
beings with himself, if at a certain festival time it would
have to be at the end of September he could perceive with a
special inner soul-filled liveliness how Nature herself changes toward
the autumn; if he could perceive how the animal and plant life
recedes, how certain animals begin to seek their shelters against the
winter; how the plant leaves get their autumn coloring; how all Nature
fades and withers.
It is true that spring is fair, and it is a fine capacity of the human
soul to perceive the beauty of the spring, the growing, sprouting,
burgeoning life. But to be able to perceive also when the leaves fade
and take on their fall coloring, when the animals creep away to
be able to feel how in the sensible which is dying away, the gleaming,
shining, soul-spiritual element arises to be able to perceive
how with the yellowing of the leaves there is a descent of the
springing and sprouting life, but how the sensible becomes yellow in
order that the spiritual can live in the yellowing as such
to be able to perceive how in the falling of the leaves the
ascent of the spirit takes place, how the spiritual is the
counter-manifestation of the fading sense-perceptible; this should as
a perceptive feeling for the spirit ensoul the human being in
autumn! Then he would prepare himself in the right way precisely for
Christmastide.
Man should become permeated, out of anthroposophical spiritual
science, by the truth that it is precisely the spiritual life
of man on Earth which depends on the declining physical life. Whenever
we think, the physical matter in our nerves is destroyed; the thought
struggles up out of the matter as it perishes. To feel the becoming of
the thought in one's self, the gleaming up of the idea in the human
soul, in the whole human organism of man to be akin to the yellowing
leaves, the withering foliage, the drying and shriveling of the plant
world in Nature; to feel the kinship of man's spiritual
being-ness with Nature's spiritual being-ness
this can give man that impulse which strengthens his will, that
impulse which points man to the permeation of his will with
spirituality.
In so doing, however, in permeating his will with spirituality, the
human being becomes an associate of the Michael activity on earth. And
when man lives with Nature in this way as autumn approaches and brings
this living-with-Nature to expression in an appropriate festival
content, then he will be able truly to perceive the completing
(Erganzung) of the Easter mood. But by means of this, something
else will become clear to him. You see, what man thinks, feels,
and wills today is really inspired by the Easter mood, which is
actually one-sided. This Easter mood is essentially a result of the
sprouting, burgeoning life, which causes everything to merge as in a
pantheistic unity. Man is surrendered to the unity of Nature, and to
the unity of the world generally. This is also the structure of our
spiritual life today. Man wants everything to revert to a unity, to a
monon; he is either a devotee of universal spirit or universal nature;
and he is accordingly either a spiritualistic Monist or a
materialistic Monist. Everything is included in an indefinite unity.
This is essentially the spring mood.
But when we look into the autumn mood, with the rising and becoming
free of the spiritual, and the dropping away and withering of the
sensible (red), then we have a view of the spiritual as such,
and the sensible as such.
The sprouting plant in the spring has the spiritual within its
sprouting and growing; the spiritual is mingled with the sensible; we
have essentially a unity. The withering plant lets the leaf fall, and
the spirit rises; we have the spirit, the invisible, super-sensible
spirit, and the material falling out of it. I would say that it is
just as if we had in a container, first, a uniform fluid in which
something is dissolved, and then by some process we should cause this
to separate from the fluid and fall to the bottom as sediment. We have
now separated the two which were united, which had formed a unity.
The spring tends to weave everything together, to blend everything
into a vague, undifferentiated unity. The view of the autumn, if we
only look at it in the right way, if we contrast it in the right way
with the view of the spring, calls attention to the way the spiritual
works on the one side and the physical-material on the other. The
Easter thought loses nothing of value if the Michaelmas thought is
added to it. We have on the one side the Easter thought, where
everything appears I might say as a pantheistic mixture,
a unity. Then we have what is differentiated; but the differentiation
does not occur in any irregular, chaotic fashion. We have regularity
throughout.
Think of the cyclic course: joining together, intermingling, unifying;
an intermediate state when the differentiating takes place; the
complete differentiation; then again the merging of what was
differentiated within the uniform, and so forth. There you see always
besides these two conditions yet a third: you see the rhythm
between the differentiated and the undifferentiated, in a certain
way, between the in-breathing of what was differentiated-out and the
out-breathing again, an intermediate condition. You see a
rhythm: a physical-material, a spiritual, a working-in-each-other of
the physical-material and the spiritual: a soul element.
But the important thing is this: not to stop with the common human
fancy that everything must be led back to a unity; thereby everything,
whether the unity is a spiritual or a material one, is led back to the
indefiniteness of the cosmic night. In the night all cows are gray; in
spiritual Monism all ideas are gray; in material Monism they are
likewise gray. These are only distinctions of perceiving; they are of
no concern for a higher view. What matters is this: that we as human
beings can so unite ourselves with the cosmic course that we are in a
position to follow the living transition from the unity into the
trinity, the return from trinity into unity. When, by complementing
the Easter thought with the Michael thought in this way we have become
able to perceive rightly the primordial trinity in all existence, then
we shall take it into our whole attitude of soul. Then we shall be in
a position to understand that actually all life depends upon the
activity and the interworking of primordial trinities. And when we
have the Michael festival inspiring such a view in the same way that
the one-sided Easter festival inspired the view now existing, then we
shall have an inspiration, a Nature/Spirit impulse, to introduce
threefoldness, the impulse of threefoldness into all the observing and
forming of life. And it depends finally and only upon the introduction
of this impulse, whether the destructive forces in human evolution can
be transformed once more into ascending forces.
One might say that when we spoke of the threefold impulse it was in a
certain sense a test of whether the Michael thought is already strong
enough so that it can be felt how such an impulse flows directly out
of the forces that shape the time. It was a test of the human soul, of
whether the Michael thought is strong enough as yet in a large number
of people. Well, the test yielded a negative result. The Michael
thought is not strong enough in even a small number of people for it
to be perceived truly in all its time-shaping power and forcefulness.
And it will indeed hardly be possible, for the sake of new forces of
ascent, to unite human souls with the original formative cosmic forces
in the way that is necessary, unless such an inspiring force as can
permeate a Michael festival unless, that is to say, a new
formative impulse can come forth from the depths of the
esoteric life.
If instead of the passive members of the Anthroposophical Society,
even only a few active members could be found, then it would become
possible to set up further deliberations to consider such a thought.
It is essential to the Anthroposophical Society that while stimuli
within the Society should of course be carried out, the members should
actually attach primary value, I might say, to participating in what
is coming to pass. They may perhaps focus the contemplative forces of
their souls on what is taking place, but the activity of their own
souls does not become united with what is passing through the time as
an impulse. Hence, with the present state of the Anthroposophical
Movement, there can of course be no question of considering as part of
its activity anything like what has just now been spoken of as an
esoteric impulse. But it must be understood how mankind's evolution
really moves, that the great sustaining forces of humanity's
world-evolution come not from what is propounded in superficial words,
but from entirely different quarters.
This has always been known in ancient times from primeval elementary
clairvoyance. In ancient times it was not the custom for the young
people to learn, for example, that there are so and so many chemical
elements; then another is discovered and there are then 75, then 76;
another is discovered and there are 77. One cannot anticipate how many
may still be discovered. Accidentally, one is added to 75, to 76, and
so on. In what is adduced here as number, there is no inner reality.
And so it is everywhere. Who is interested today in anything that
would bring to revelation, let us say, that a systematic threefoldness
or trinity prevails in plants! Order after order is discovered,
species after species; and they are counted just as though one were
counting a chance pile of sticks or stones. But the working of number
in the world rests on a real quality of being, and this quality must
be fathomed. Only think how short a time lies behind us since
knowledge of substance was led back to the trinity of the salty, the
mercurial, and the phosphoric; how in this a trinity of archetypal
forces was seen; how everything that appeared as individual had to be
fitted into one or another of the three archetypal forces.
And it is different again when we look back into still earlier times
in which it was easier for people to come to something like this
because of the very situation of their culture; for the Oriental
cultures lay nearer to the Torrid Zone, where such things were more
readily accessible to the ancient elementary clairvoyance. Today,
however, it is possible to come to these things in the Temperate Zone
through free, exact clairvoyance.... Yet people want to go back to the
ancient cultures! In those days people did not distinguish spring,
summer, autumn, winter. To distinguish spring, summer, autumn, winter
leads us to a mere succession because it contains the
four. It would have been quite impossible for the ancient
Indian culture, for example, to think of something like the course of
the year as ruled by the four, because this contains nothing of the
archetypal forms underlying all activity.
When I wrote my book,
Theosophy,
it was impossible simply to
list in succession physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego,
although we can summarize it this way once the matter is before us,
once it is inwardly understood. I had therefore to arrange them
according to the number three: physical body, ether body, astral body,
forming the first trinity. Then comes the trinity interwoven with it:
sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness soul; then the trinity
interwoven with this: spirit self, life spirit, spirit man
three times three interwoven with one another in such a way as to
become seven.
Only when we look at the present stage of mankind's evolution does the
four appear, which is really a secondary number. If we want to see the
inwardly active principle, if we want to see the formative process, we
must see forming and shaping as associated with threefoldness, with
trinity.
Hence, the ancient Indian view was of a year divided into a hot
season, which would approximate our months of April, May, June, July;
a wet season, comprising approximately our months, August, September,
October, November; and a cold season, which would include our months,
December, January, February, March. The boundaries do not need to be
rigidly fixed according to the months but are only approximate; they
can be thought of as shifting. But the course of the year was thought
of according to the principle of the three.
And thus man's whole state of soul would be imbued with the
predisposition to observe this primal trinity in all weaving and
working, and hence to interweave it also into all human creating and
shaping. We can even say that it is only possible to have true ideas
of the free spiritual life, the life of rights, the social-economic
life, when we perceive in the depths this triple pulse of cosmic
activity, which must also permeate human activity.
Any reference to this sort of thing today is regarded as some sort of
superstition, whereas it is considered great wisdom simply to count
one and again one, two,
three, and so on. But Nature does not take such a course.
If we look, however, only at a realm in which everything is
woven together, as is the case with Nature in springtime which
of course we must look at if we want to observe the interweaving of
things then we can never restore the pulse of three.
But when anyone follows the whole course of the year, when he sees how
the three is organized, how the spiritual and the
physical-material life are present as a duality, and the rhythmic
interweaving of the two as the third, then he perceives this
three-in-one, one-in-three, and learns to know how the human being can
place himself in this cosmic activity: three to one, one to three.
It would become the whole disposition of the human soul to permeate
the cosmos, to unite itself with cosmic worlds, if once the Michael
thought could awaken as a festival thought in such a way that we were
to place a Michael festival in the second half of September alongside
the Easter festival; if to the thought of the resurrection of the
God after death could be added the thought, produced by the
Michael force, of the resurrection of man from death, so that
man through the Resurrection of Christ would find the force to die in
Christ. This means, taking the risen Christ into one's soul during
earthly life, so as to be able to die in Him that is, to be
able to die, not at death but when one is living.
Such an inner consciousness as this would result from the inspiring
element that would come from a Michael service. We can realize full
well how far removed from any such idea is our materialistic time,
which is also a time grown narrow-minded and pedantic. Of course,
nothing can be expected of us, so long as it remains dead and
abstract. But if with the same enthusiasm with which festivals were
once introduced in the world when people had the force to form
festivals, if such a thing happens again, then it will work
inspiringly. Indeed it will work inspiringly for our whole spiritual
and our whole social life. Then that which we need will be present in
life: not abstract spirit on one hand and spirit-void nature on the
other, but Nature permeated with spirit, and spirit forming and
shaping naturally. For these are one, and they will once again weave
religion, science, and art into oneness, because they will understand
how to conceive the trinity in religion, science, and art in the sense
of the Michael thought, so that these three can then be united in the
right way in the Easter thought, in the anthroposophical shaping and
forming. This can work religiously, artistically, cognitionally, and
can also differentiate religiously, cognitionally. Then the
anthroposophical impulse would consist in perceiving in the Easter
season the unity of science, religion, and art; and then at Michaelmas
perceiving how the three who have one mother, the Easter
mother how the three become sisters and stand side
by side, but mutually complement one another. Then the Michael thought
which should become living as a festival in the course of the year,
would be able to work inspiringly on all domains of human life.
With such things as these, which belong to the truly esoteric, we
should permeate ourselves, at least in our cognition, to begin with.
If then the time could come when there are actively working
personalities, such a thing could actually become an impulse which
singly and alone would be able, in the present condition of humanity,
to replace the descending forces with ascending ones.
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