V
Having spoken so often about the School of
Chartres and its great significance for the inner spiritual life of the
West, I have received a welcome gift during the last few days: a gift of
pictures, some of which have been put up here for you to see. Others
will be added next Tuesday. In these pictures you will see what
wonderful architectural works and works of sculpture in the mediaeval
sense, arose at the place where flourished that spiritual life of which
I have now spoken so often.
The personalities who were gathered in the
School of Chartres still had the impulse, even in the 12th century, to
enter as teachers or students into the living spiritual life that had
arisen in the turning-point of time — I mean in the epoch
of European evolution when humanity, inasmuch as they were seekers after
knowledge, still sought it in the living weaving and working of the
nature-beings, and not in the conception of void and abstract natural
laws.
Thus in the School of Chartres there was a
deep devotion to spiritual powers, notably to those that hold sway in
Nature. All this was cultivated there — no longer, it is
true, by Initiates into the ancient Mysteries — but by
personalities who had the heart and mind to receive from tradition much
that had once been direct spiritual experience. And I have told you of
the mysterious radiations of light from the School of Chartres which we
can truly recognise in the spirit of Brunetto Latini, the great teacher
of Dante. I tried to explain how the individualities of Chartres worked
on in the spiritual worlds in unison with those who afterwards came
down, more in the Dominican Order, as the bearers of Scholasticism. We
may put it thus. — The individualities of Chartres were obliged to
see, out of the signs of the times, that there would be no place for
them within the earthly life until the time when the element of Michael,
which was to begin at the end of the 19th century, should have been
working for a while on earth.
In a far-reaching sense these
individualities of Chartres took part in the super-sensible teachings of
which I spoke last time — teachings that were given under
the aegis of Michael himself, so as to pour forth impulses which were to
hold good for the spiritual life of coming centuries. And it may be said
indeed that anyone who would devote himself to the cultivation of
spiritual life to-day must necessarily stand under the influence of
those great impulses.
Broadly speaking we may say that there have
been very few reincarnations of the spirits of Chartres hitherto.
Nevertheless it was granted to me to look back upon the School of
Chartres through a certain stimulus, if I may describe it so, which came
to me out of the life of the present time.
There was a monk in the School of Chartres
who was altogether devoted to the life-element that existed in that
school. But in the School of Chartres, especially if one was truly
devoted to it, one felt as it were a twilight mood of the spiritual
life. All that was reminiscent still of the great and deep impulses of
the spiritual Platonism that had been handed down — all
this was living in Chartres. But it lived in such a way that the bearers
of the spiritual life of Chartres said to themselves: In the future,
alas, the civilisation of Europe will no longer be receptive for this
living, Platonic spirituality.
It is touching to see how the School of
Chartres preserves as it were the portraits of the inspiring genii of
the Seven Liberal Arts, as they were called: Grammatica,
Dialectica, Rhetorica, Arithmetica, Geometría, Astronomía and
Musica. Even in the reception of the Spiritual that was contained in the
Seven Liberal Arts, they still saw in them the living gifts of the gods,
coming to man through spiritual beings. They did not see the mere
communication of dead thoughts about dead laws of Nature. And they could
see that Europe in the future would no longer be receptive to these
things. Hence there was a feeling of evening twilight in the spiritual
life.
Now one of those monks who was especially
devoted to the teachings and the works of Chartres, was, after all,
reincarnated in our time. He was reincarnated, moreover, in such a way
that one could find in this case most wonderfully the echo and
reflection of the former life in the present. This personality lived in
our time as an authoress who was not only my acquaintance, but my friend.
[Marie Eugenie delle Grazie.]
She died a considerable time ago. She bore within her a strange mood of
soul, about which I should not have spoken until now, although I observed
it many years ago. To speak of these things has indeed only been possible
since the Christmas feeling came over our Anthroposophical Society. For
this has brought a peculiar illumination over these things, and it is
possible, as I have already said, to speak about such matters openly and
without embarrassment to-day.
When one was in conversation with that
authoress, she returned again and again to the theme that she would like
to die. But her desire to die did not spring from a sentimental or
hypochondriac, nay, not even from a melancholic mood of soul. If one had
the psychological vision to enter into such things, one found one's way
far, far back into her soul until at length one had to say: It is the
echo and reflection of a former life on earth. In a former life on earth
a seed was planted which now comes forth, I will not say in the longing
for death, but in this feeling that the soul, being now
incarnated, yet has nothing really to do with this present age.
Her writings, too, are of this nature. They
seem to be written out of a different world — not indeed as
to their facts and communications — but as to their mood and
feeling. And we can understand this mood only if we find the way from
the dim light of her writings, from the dim light that lived as a
fundamental disposition in her own soul, back to that monk of Chartres
who felt in Chartres the evening twilight mood of a living
Platonism.
In this authoress it was not a question of
temperament or melancholy or sentimentality; it was the raying-in of a
former life on earth. And her present soul was like a mirror into which
the life of Chartres really penetrated. Not indeed the content of
the teachings of Chartres, but their moods and feelings, had been
transmitted from the one life to the other in this personality.
Transplanting oneself into these moods, and looking back, one could
receive in them as it were spiritual photographs of the personalities
who are also to be found by direct spiritual research in the worlds
where they now are — the personalities who taught in Chartres.
Thus you see, life brings to one in many
ways the karmic possibilities to gaze into these matters. Last time, I
described my experiences with the Cistercian Order. To-day I would
supplement what I then said by referring to the evening twilight mood of
the School of Chartres which penetrated into the heart and soul of
an extraordinarily interesting personality, who lived again in
the present time. She has long ago found her way back into the worlds
for which she longed. She has found her way back to the Fathers of
Chartres. And if her whole soul-life had not been dominated by a kind of
weariness as the karmic outcome of the mood-of-soul of yonder monk of
Chartres, I could scarcely imagine a personality more fitted to behold
the spiritual life of the present day in connection with the traditional
life of the Middle Ages.
There is another thing which I would mention
here. When there are such karmic impulses working deep in the
foundations of the soul, we find what is otherwise a very rare
occurrence: we find in the physical expression of the countenance in a
later incarnation, a likeness to the former. The face of yonder monk and
of the authoress of the present time were indeed extraordinarily
alike.
Now in these connections I will gradually
pass on to the karma of the Anthroposophical Society, or of the
individualities of its members. For as I said last time, a large number
of the souls who stand sincerely within the Anthroposophical Movement
were connected somewhere and somewhen with that stream of Michael which
I must now characterise. You will remember all that I have said in this
connection about Alexander and Aristotle and about the events in
super-sensible worlds at the time when the 8th Council in Constantinople
took place here in this world of sense. You will remember what I said of
the continuation, in the spiritual and in the physical, of the life of
the Court of Haroun al Raschid, until at length I spoke of that
super-sensible School which stood under the aegis of Michael himself.
Deeply significant was the teaching of that School. On the one hand it
pointed again and again to the connections with the ancient Mysteries,
to all that must now come forth once more in a new form from the content
of the ancient Mysteries, to permeate modern civilisation with
spirituality. On the other hand it pointed to the impulses which souls,
devoted to the spiritual life, must have for their work into the future.
And we know that from an understanding of the spiritual stream we may
also come to understand how Anthroposophy, in its real essence,
signifies the impulse for a renewal, for a true and sincere
understanding of the Christ-Impulse.
For in the Anthroposophical Movement we find
two kinds of souls. A large number of them have partaken in those
currents which were, so to speak, the officially Christian ones in the
first centuries. They witnessed all that came into the world as
Christianity, notably in the times of Constantine, and immediately after
him. Many of those who approached Christianity with the very deepest
sincerity at that time and received it with inner depth and penetration,
many of them are found in the Anthroposophical Society to-day with the
deep impulse towards an understanding of Christianity. I do not mean so
much the Christians who followed such movements as that of Constantine
himself; I rather mean those Christians who claimed to be the true
Christians, who were distributed in different Christian sects. In those
Christian sects we find many of the souls who to-day approach the
Anthroposophical Movement sincerely, though often through subconscious
impulses which the surface consciousness may even largely
misinterpret.
But there are other souls: there are those
who did not partake directly in that development of Christianity. They
either partook in Christianity at a later stage of its
development when the deep inner life of the sects was no longer there,
or on the other hand — and this is the most important thing — they
still had, living and unextinguished in the depths of their souls, much
of what was experienced in pre-Christian time as the ancient wisdom of
the heathen Mysteries. They too often partook in Christianity; but it
did not make so deep an impression upon them as upon the other souls
described before. For there still remained alive in them the impression
of the teachings, the rituals and practices of ancient Mysteries. Now
among those who have entered the Anthroposophical Movement in this way
we find many who are seeking for the Christ in an abstract sense. The
other souls above described are happy, so to speak, to find Christianity
once more within the Anthroposophical Movement. But many of the souls I
now mean grasp with real inner understanding the Cosmic Christianity
which Anthroposophy contains. Christ as the Cosmic Spirit of the Sun is
taken hold of most especially by the souls (and they are very numerous
in the Anthroposophical Movement) in the depths of whom much is still
living of what they underwent in connection with ancient heathen
Mysteries.
Now all this is deeply connected with the
currents of the whole spiritual life of mankind in the present
time — I mean the present time in a wider sense, reaching
over decades and centuries.
Anthroposophy after all has grown out of the
spiritual life of the present time, and though in its contents it has
nothing directly in common with this spiritual life, karmically it has
grown out of it in many ways. We must turn our eyes to many things which
do not apparently belong to what works in Anthroposophy directly, if we
would include in our spiritual horizon all that partook in the different
streams I have mentioned. I said a little while ago that we only truly
understand what takes place outwardly on the physical plane if we see in
the background what is poured down from the fields of the spirit into
these events as they take place on the physical plane. We must regain
the courage to bring into our present life that feeling of the ancient
Mysteries. We must connect the physical events not merely abstractly
with a vaguely Pantheistic or Theistic or whatever spiritual life. We
must become able to trace the detailed events, nay more, the inner
experiences of men within these events, to the spiritual source and
background.
We are led to do so among other things by
something that belongs to the deepest tasks of the present time. For in
the present time we must seek again for a real knowledge of man in body,
soul and spirit — not a knowledge rooted in abstract ideas
or laws, but one that is able to look into the true foundation of the
human being as a whole. To gain such knowledge man must be searched
through and through in his conditions of health and sickness; and not in
a merely physical sense as is customary to-day, for then we should not
learn to know the human being. By merely physical knowledge we can never
learn to know what works so deeply into the life of man, determining his
destiny: his unhappiness, his sickness, his abilities or absence of
abilities. Karma in all its forms — this we can only know if from
the starting-point of the physical we can trace the spiritual life of a
man and his inner life of soul.
How do people work, in the ordinary
scientific striving of to-day? They study the human being quite
externally as to his organs and vessels, his nerves, the vessels of the
circulation of the blood and so forth. But when the health and sickness
of man are studied in this fashion one cannot find the spirit and soul
in all these things.
Indeed the anatomist or physiologist of
to-day may well speak in the words of a famous astronomer of the past,
who, in answer to a question which his sovereign had put to him,
replied:“I have
searched through the whole universe, through all the stars and all their
movements, but I have found no God!” So said the astronomer. And
the anatomist or physiologist of to-day could say: “I have
searched through them all — heart and kidneys, stomach and brain,
blood-vessels and nerves — but I have found neither soul nor
spirit.”
All the problems and difficulties of modern
medicine, for example, are subject to this influence. And all these
things must be dealt with in the Anthroposophical Movement today,
according to the tasks which are placed before it. In general terms
these questions must be unfolded before the Anthroposophical Society as
a whole; in detail they must be treated in an expert way within the
several groups. Thus, for example, I am now speaking on Pastoral
Medicine to a group who are prepared for it by training and profession.
Here we must seek the way into those great connections which proceed in
the last resort from the workings of the streams of karma. In time to
come it will be seen how pathology and therapeutics, how the observation
of man in sickness and disease, will make it absolutely necessary to
enter into the deep questions of the soul and spirit. As I have said
again and again, the external and physical — the physical
as presented by natural science — is to be respected in the
fullest sense. Yet men will find themselves compelled to take into
account the higher members of man's nature when considering disease and
health. This will be seen in the book
[
Fundamentals of Therapy; an Extension of the Art of Healing through Spiritual Knowledge,
by Rudolf Steiner, Ph.D. and Ita Wegman, M.D. (Zurich). English
translation by George Adams, M.A.]
on which my dear fellow-worker Frau Dr. Wegman and I are
working together, on the subject of man in health and in disease. Now
these researches especially, seeking the ways of entry from the physical
man into the spiritual, can only lead to good and promising results if
we set about them in the right way. For in such work we must not only
use the knowledge-forces of the present, but we must use the
knowledge-forces which arise by picking up the threads of karma —
the karmic threads proceeding from the history and evolution of mankind.
We must indeed work with the forces of karma in order to penetrate these
secrets.
In the first volume, only the
beginnings of our work will be published. The work will then be carried
forward and from the more elementary expositions we shall proceed to
unfold the particular knowledge of man which can arise from this
medical, therapeutic and pathological aspect of spiritual science. This
work has only been made possible through the presence in Frau Dr. Wegman
of a personality whose medical studies have entered into her in such a
way as to evolve quite naturally, as a matter of course, towards a
spiritual conception and perception of the human
being.
Now it is in the course of
these researches, when we behold in spiritual perspective all the
workings of the human organs, that those perceptions also arise which
lead us in turn to the deeper karmic connections. The same manner of
perception must be evolved to perceive the spiritual realities that
underlie, not the whole man, but his several organs. (For, if you will,
it is the Jupiter world that underlies one organ, the Venus world that
underlies another, and so forth.) The same insight which we must evolve
in this direction, leads also to the possibility of perceiving human
personalities in past earthly lives. For in the present earthly life man
stands before us within the limits of his skin. But when we become able
to gaze into his single organs, what was contained within the skin
expands and expands. Each of the single organs points us to a different
direction of the universe. The organs prepare the roads that lead us far
out into the macrocosm, until far out yonder the human being once again
appears as a complete and rounded whole. It is the human being built up
once more in the spirit, having transcended the present form, the form
that is enclosed within the skin — it is this that we need.
For the sum-total of the human organs — which even physically is
altogether different from what the present-day anatomist or physiologist
conceives — when we trace it out into the cosmos, leads to
perceptions which correspond in turn to the spiritual perception of the
former earthly lives of man. Then we experience the inner connections
that shed their light upon the evolution and history of mankind,
explaining what is physically there to-day. For in reality the whole
past of human beings lives in the present time. Yet the vague and
abstract saying by itself is of no avail. Materialists too will say the
same. The point is to perceive how the past is living in
the present.
And of this I would now give you an example,
an example which is in itself so wonderful that it called forth in me
the greatest imaginable wonder when I first came to it as a result of
spiritual research. And many things which I have said before must now be
rectified, or at any rate must be completed, by that which I shall now
set forth.
You see, for one who studies history with
feeling for its inner meaning, a certain event in the first centuries of
Christianity is wrapped in the atmosphere of a strange mystery. We see
on the one side a personality of whom we may well think that in his
inner life he was little fitted to take hold of Christianity or to make
it what it then became, the official Christianity of the West. I
mean the Emperor Constantine, of whom we have so often spoken. Then,
side by side with him (not literally of course, but gazing back into
that age from a considerable distance in time), side by side with
Constantine we see Julian the Apostate. Julian the Apostate, he of
a truth was one in whom the wisdom of the Mysteries was living, as we
may know. Julian the Apostate could speak of a Threefold Sun. Indeed he
lost his life through being regarded as a betrayer of the Mysteries,
because he spoke about the Threefold Sun. Of these things it was no
longer allowed to speak in his time; still less would it have been
allowed in earlier times. But Julian the Apostate stood in a peculiar
relation to Christianity. In a certain sense we must again and again be
surprised that the genius, the fine spirituality and intellect of Julian
was so little receptive to the greatness of Christianity. It was simply
due to the fact that in his environment he saw very little of what he
conceived as a true inner sincerity, whereas among those who introduced
him to the ancient Mysteries he found great sincerity — positive,
active sincerity. Such was the case with Julian the Apostate.
Yonder in Asia he was murdered. Many a fable
is told about the murder. The truth is that it took place because he was
regarded as a betrayer of the Mysteries. It was a murder altogether
pre-arranged.
Now if we make ourselves to some extent
acquainted with that which lived in Julian we cannot but be deeply
interested in the question: How did his individuality live on in later
times? For his was a peculiar individuality, one of whom it must
be said that he would have been better fitted than Constantine, better
than Clodvig and all the others, to make straight the ways of
Christianity. This lay inherent in his soul. If the time had been
favourable, if the conditions had existed, he could have brought about
out of the ancient Mysteries a straightforward continuation from the
pre-Christian Christ, the true macrocosmic Logos, to the Christ who was
to work on within mankind after the Mystery of Golgotha. He was indeed a
vessel well prepared. Strange as it may sound, we find it so, if we
enter into his true spirit. We find in the foundations of his soul the
true impulse to take hold of Christianity. But he did not let it emerge,
he suppressed it, misled by the stupidities which Celsus had written
about Jesus. It does indeed happen now and then that men of real genius
are led astray by the stupidest effusions of their fellow-men. Thus we
may have the feeling: Julian would really have been the soul to make
straight the ways of Christianity and to bring Christianity into its
true and proper channel.
We now leave the soul of Julian the Apostate
in that earthly life and follow the same individuality with the highest
interest through spiritual worlds. But there is always something vague
and unclear about it. Only the most intense spiritual striving can come
at length to a clear perception of his further course.
On many matters very adequate ideas existed
in the Middle Ages. They might be legendary, but they were adequate;
they corresponded to the real events. Legendary though they may be, how
adequate are the narratives that centred round the personality of
Alexander the Great. How vividly his life appears, as I already said, in
the description of Lamprecht the Priest!
But that which
lives on of Julian, lives on in such a way that we must say again and again:
It seeks to disappear from before the vision of mankind. And as we seek to
follow it we have the greatest difficulty, so to speak, in keeping it within
our spiritual field of vision. Again and again it escapes us. We trace it
through the centuries into the Middle Ages and it escapes us. But when
at length we do succeed in following it to the end, we land at a strange
place, which though it be not historic in the proper sense, is in
reality more than historic. We come at length to the figure of a woman,
in whom we find again the soul of Julian the Apostate. It was a woman
who accomplished an important deed in her life under the impression of
an essentially painful event. For she beheld, not in herself, but in the
person of another, an image of the fate of Julian the Apostate, inasmuch
as Julian the Apostate went on a campaign to the East and there lost his
life by treachery.
The woman whom I mean
is Herzeleide, the mother of Parsifal, who was an historic
character though history itself tells nothing of her. In Gamuret, whom
she married and who lost his life through treachery upon an Eastern
campaign, she was pointed to her own destiny in the former life as
Julian the Apostate. This went deep into her soul, and under this
impression she achieved what is told to us in a legendary way —
yet it is historic in the truest sense — of the education of
Parsifal by Herzeleide.
The soul of Julian the Apostate who had
remained thus in the depths and of whom one would believe that it should
have been his very mission to prepare the right way for
Christianity — this soul is found again in the Middle Ages
in the body of a woman who sent out Parsifal, to seek and to find the
esoteric paths for Christianity.
Mysterious like this, and full of riddles,
are the paths of mankind in the background, in the foundations of
existence. This example — and it is strangely interwoven
with the one which I already told you in connection with the School of
Chartres — this example may make you realise how wonderful are the
paths of the human soul and the paths of evolution for all mankind.
We shall continue speaking of it in the next
lecture, when I shall have more to say of the life of Herzeleide and of
what was then sent forth, physically, in Parsifal. I shall begin next
time at this point where we must break off to-day.
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