I
Berne,
25th January, 1924
For his
present life on Earth man is beholden partly to the external world,
including in the wider sense not only the several kingdoms of Nature
immediately around him but also the influences coming from the stars
and the cosmic expanse. But this is only one part of the world to
which he is beholden for his present earthly life. He is beholden
above all to his previous lives on Earth, the results and effects of
which he brings with him inwardly. As you know from anthroposophical
literature, man is a fourfold being. Every time he goes to sleep his
astral body and ‘I’ separate from his physical and
etheric bodies. Of these members only the physical and etheric bodies
owe their character and composition to the external world lying
visibly — or also, as etheric world, invisibly — around
man. On the other hand, everything that he bears within him in
his astral body and Ego in his present earthly existence, he owes
entirely to what he experienced in the past, in earlier lives on Earth.
In the
outer physical world there are two portals, two gates, through which
the life of man, taken in its entirety, reaches out beyond this
world. We will begin to-day by considering this cosmic aspect and
conclude with a study very directly concerned with human life. For
inhabitants of the Earth, these two gates are the Moon and the Sun.
The fact
is that modern science knows very little indeed about the heavenly
bodies — actually only what can be
determined by calculation or observed by means of instruments.
Just think what an inhabitant of Mars would know about the Earth if,
from Mars or from some other star, he were to acquire his knowledge
by employing the same methods as those employed by the inhabitants of
the Earth! He would know no more than that the Earth is a luminous
body radiating into cosmic space the light it reflects from the Sun.
He might form all kinds of hypotheses, just as men do about Mars
— as to whether beings do or do not exist on the Earth. But an
inhabitant of the Earth knows that beings of his own rank and beings
of other kingdoms share his dwelling-place; and those whose knowledge
is derived from the inner, spiritual destinies of earthly humanity,
will be able to reach a deeper understanding of the significance of
the other heavenly bodies, for example, of the Sun and the Moon.
Let us
think about what may be said of this physical, psychic and spiritual
aspect of Moon existence. I must here remind you of many things to be
found in the book
Occult Science — an Outline,
and in several of the printed lecture-courses.
From this literature you know that the Moon was once united with the
Earth. It is accepted by orthodox modern science, at any rate by its
most important representatives, that the physical Moon once
separated from the Earth and, if I may put it so, chose its own
position in cosmic space.
But
Spiritual Science discloses that not only did the physical Moon
separate from the Earth but that certain Beings went with it, Beings
who had once inhabited the Earth together with men. They were of a
much higher spiritual rank than man in his physical embodiment; but
they were in close intercourse with men, although this intercourse
was altogether different from the relationships between human beings
to-day.
Anyone who
devotes even cursory study to the early history of the Earth and its
spiritual achievements will feel deep reverence for the different
civilisations. Certainly, our
forefathers — that is to say, we ourselves in
earlier incarnations — were not as ‘clever’
in the modern sense as we imagine ourselves to be to-day, but in
point of fact they knew a great deal more. Knowledge, after all, is
not acquired through cleverness only. Cleverness comes from
intellect, and intellect is only one of the human faculties, although
nowadays it is prized, especially by science, more highly than all
the others. Yet when we see how the world has developed in a moral
and social respect in this enlightened twentieth century, there
is really no cause to be so very proud of our intellectual culture
— which has come into being only in the course of time. Even if
with no other aid than external history we go back and consider, for
example, what originates from the ancient East, we cannot but feel
great reverence. The same may apply even to certain achievements of
so-called ‘uncivilised’ peoples, but we will think now
only of ancient India and Persia, of the wonderful wisdom
contained in the Vedas, in Vedanta or Yoga philosophy. If we
let these things work upon us, not superficially but with all their
deep intensity we shall feel an ever-increasing reverence for what
past ages created — not through cleverness as we know it, but
in a quite different way.
Spiritual
Science makes it clear that what has been preserved in
documentary records is only the residue of a wonderful, primeval
wisdom of mankind. It was expressed in a much more poetic, artistic
language than is used for our modern knowledge, but it was
nevertheless wonderful wisdom, imparted to men by Beings at a
stage of evolution far higher than that of humanity on Earth.
Intellectual thinking takes place, after all, through the
instrumentality of the physical body, and these Beings had no
physical body. This accounts for the fact that they conveyed their
primordial wisdom to mankind in an essentially poetic, artistic form.
These
Beings did not remain with the Earth; the majority of them to-day
actually inhabit the Moon in the heavens. What modern science can
discover has to do only with the external properties of the Moon. The
Moon is in truth the home of lofty spiritual Beings whose task once
was to inspire earthly humanity with the primeval wisdom. They then
withdrew to establish this Moon colony in the Cosmos. It is clear
from what I have said about these Beings who now inhabit the Moon
that our own human past is connected with them. In earlier lives we
were their terrestrial companions. And our connection with them
is immediately evident if we look beyond what external knowledge and
external life can give to man. When we contemplate all the factors by
which our existence is determined, which are not, however, dependent
upon our intellect but transcend the intellect and are related to our
deeper nature, we realise that these Moon Beings, although they no
longer have their habitation on the Earth, are still
deeply and inwardly connected with our very existence. For before
descending to the Earth and receiving a physical body from our
forefathers, we were in the spiritual world, in pre-earthly life; and
there, even to-day, we are in close contact with these Beings who
were our companions in Earth existence long ages ago. When we come
down from the spiritual worlds into earthly existence, we pass
through the Moon sphere, through the Moon existence. Once upon a
time, when these Moon Beings were on the Earth, they had a profound
effect upon mankind, and it is still so to-day, inasmuch as
they impress into the descending Ego and astral body what is then
carried over into the physical body on Earth.
Nobody can
himself decide to be a man of talent, or a genius, or even a good
man. Yet there are men of talent and genius and some who are innately
good. These are qualities which the intellect cannot produce; they
are connected with man's inmost nature, a great part of which comes
with him when he passes from pre-earthly existence through birth into
earthly life. To impress into his Ego and astral body what then makes
its way into his nerves and blood as genius or talent or the will to
do good or evil — this is the task of the Moon Beings
during the time when in a man's pre-earthly existence he is passing
through the Moon sphere. It is not only when, in poetic mood, lovers
go walking in the moonlight that the Moon has an effect upon
what is living and weaving in the deeper part of man's nature below
the level of consciousness; this Moon influence is active in
everything that rises from a level below that of the conscious
intellect and makes man what he really is in earthly life. And so
to-day these Moon Beings are still connected with our past, inasmuch
as it is they who after our earlier incarnations give us in
pre-earthly existence the stamp of individuality.
If we look
back over our life to the point where it runs out beyond the earthly
realm into the spiritual, whence our particular faculties, our
temperament, our inmost, essential character, are derived, we find in
the Moon the one gate which leads from the physical
into the spiritual world. It is the gate through which
the past makes its way into our life and gives
us individuality.
The other
gate is the Sun. We do not owe our individuality to
the Sun. The Sun shines alike on the good and on the evil, on men of
genius and on fools. As far as earthly life is concerned the Sun has
no direct connection with our individuality. In
one instance only has the Sun established connection with
earthly individuality and this was possible because at a certain
point of time in the Earth's evolution, a sublime Sun Being, the
Christ, did not remain on the Sun but came down from the Sun to the
Earth and became a Being of the Earth in the body of a man, thus
uniting His own cosmic destiny with the destiny of earthly humanity.
The other Sun Beings who remained in the Sun sphere have no access to
the single human individuality but only to what is common to all
mankind. Something of this remained in the Christ and is an infinite
blessing for earthly humanity: what had remained in Him was and is
that His power knows no differentiation among men. Christ is not the
Christ of this or that nation, of this or that rank or class. He is
the Christ for all men, without distinction of class, race or nation.
Nor is He the Christ of particular individualities, inasmuch as His
help is available alike to the genius and the fool. The Christ
Impulse has access to the individuality of man, but to become
effective it must take effect in the inmost depths of human nature.
It is not the forces of the intellect but the deepest forces of the
heart and soul which can receive the Christ Impulse; but once
received this Impulse works not for the benefit of the individual-human
but of the universal-human. This is because Christ is a Sun Being.
Looking
back into the past we feel ourselves connected with the Moon
existence and realise that we bear within us something not derived
from the present but from the cosmic
past — not merely from the earthly past. In
our present Earth existence we unite this fragment of the past with
the present. We do not, in the ordinary way, pay much attention to
what is contained in this fragment of the past; but in point of fact
we should not be of much account as human beings if it were not there
within us. What we acquire at the time of descending from pre-earthly
into earthly existence has something automatic about it — the
automatic element in our physical and etheric bodies. What makes us
into particular human individuals is inwardly connected with our past
and thus with the Moon existence. But just as we are connected with
the past through our Moon existence, so are we connected with
our future through the Sun existence. We were ready for
the Moon forces, especially in relation to the Beings who have
withdrawn to the Moon, even in earlier times; for the Sun which works
to-day as an impulse in the sphere of the universal-human only, we
shall not be ready until a very distant future, when evolution has
reached a much more advanced stage. The Sun to-day can reach only to
our external being; not until distant future ages will it be able to
reach our individuality, the inmost core of our being. When the Earth
is no longer Earth, when it has passed into quite another
metamorphosis, then and then only shall we be ready for the Sun
existence. Man is so proud of his intellect — but the intellect
in present humanity is purely a product of the Earth, since it is
tied to the brain, and the brain — despite current belief
— is the most physical structure in the human organism.
The Sun is
perpetually wresting us away from this bondage to the earthly,
for the Sun does not in reality work upon our brain ... if it did, we
should produce much cleverer thoughts! From the physical aspect the
Sun's influence is exerted on
the heart, and what streams out from the heart is
Sun-activity. Through the brain men are essentially egotistic,
through the heart they become free from egoism and rise to the level
of the universal-human. Thus through the Sun we are more than we
should be if we were left to our own resources in our present Earth
existence. Let me put it like this: if we can really find our way to
the Christ, He enables us, because He is a Sun Being, to be more than
we could otherwise be.
The Sun
stands in the heavens personifying the future, whereas the Moon
personifies the past. The Sun is the other gate into the spiritual
world, the gate leading to the future. Just as we are impelled into
earthly existence by the Moon Beings and Moon forces, so, through
death, we are impelled out of it by the Sun forces. These Sun forces
are connected with that part of our nature of which we are not yet
master, which the gods have given us so that we may not wilt in
earthly life but reach out beyond our own limitations. And so Moon
and Sun are in truth the two gates in the universe into the spiritual
life. The Moon is inhabited by Beings with whom we were once
connected in the way I have indicated. The Sun is inhabited by Beings
with whom — with the exception of the Christ
— we shall be united only in our future cosmic existence. The
Christ will lead us to those who were once His companions on the Sun.
But this, as far as man is concerned, belongs to the future.
We have
said that the influences of the Moon work upon us from the spiritual
world; the same is true of the influences working from the Sun upon
our physical and etheric bodies. Think, for example, of
the temperaments. There are
forces in the temperaments which play into the physical body, but
more particularly into the etheric body. This is regulated by the
interplay of Sun and Moon. A man with a strong vein of melancholy in
his temperament is strongly influenced by the Moon. Similarly, a man
with a markedly sanguine vein in his temperament is strongly
influenced by the Sun. A man in whom the quality of Sun and Moon are
in balance and neutralised, will be a phlegmatic type. When the
physical element as such plays into a man and comes to expression in
the life of soul, as in the temperaments, the Sun and Moon forces are
in play in the whole of his being. But to begin with, man is aware of
these forces only when they confront him in their external, physical
manifestation, when the Moon — and similarly the Sun —
announces its presence through the orb that is outwardly visible. Yet
forces far transcending the physical are taking effect; we must
always speak of the Sun and Moon as spiritual realities. And
that is easy enough to realise.
Think of a
human body. This body to-day no longer has within it the same
substances as it had ten years ago. You are perpetually casting
off these physical substances and replacing them
by new. What endures is
the spiritual form of man, the configuration of inner
forces. Suppose you had been sitting in this room ten years ago; you
do not bring with you now the flesh and blood that were within you
then as material substance. The physical is involved in a perpetual
stream from within outwards; it is being cast off all the time.
Although this is a known fact it is not always remembered. It is a
fact in the Cosmos too. People think that the Moon which shines down
upon the Earth to-day is the same Moon which shone upon Caesar or
Alcibiades or Buddha. Spiritually, yes, it is the same Moon,
but not in respect of physical substance. As for the Sun, the
physicists and astrophysicists calculate how long it will be
before it disintegrates in cosmic space. They know that it will
disintegrate but they reckon in terms of millions of years. The same
kind of results would be obtained if such calculations were applied
to the human being. The calculations are absolutely correct and
cannot be faulted — only they are
not true! They are dead correct, but just think of this
— if you examined a human heart today, then five days later and
then again after a further five days, you could calculate from the
minute changes what it was like three hundred years ago and what it
will be like three hundred years hence. In the same way geology can
calculate what the Earth looked like twenty million years ago and
what it will look like twenty million years hence. The calculations
may be perfectly correct, but the Earth was not in existence twenty
million years ago and will not be in existence twenty million years
from now. The calculations themselves are correct but they are not
true! Not even for the shortest periods does the Cosmos differ from
man in this respect. Although mineral substances last essentially
longer in that form than the configuration of substance in living
bodies, yet even the purely physical part of mineral substances is
transient. As I have said, the Moon in the sky to-day is in its
physical composition no longer the same Moon which shone upon Caesar
or Alcibiades or the Emperor Augustus, for its substance has changed,
just as the substance of a man's physical body has changed. What
endures out there in the Cosmos is the spiritual element, just as in
the case of a human being what endures from birth to death is
the spiritual entity, not the physical substance.
We shall
therefore only be viewing the world rightly when we say of man that
what endures between birth and death is his soul; what endures out
yonder in the celestial bodies is a multiplicity of Beings. And when
speaking of Moon and Sun we ought to be conscious that if we are to
speak truly we must speak of Beings of the Moon and Beings of the
Sun. The Beings of the Moon are connected with our past; the Beings
of the Sun will be connected with our future, but even now they work
into our present existence.
A sound
basis for the study of human karma and destiny can be established
only when man is given his real place within the Cosmos.
Try as we
will, we can never alter the past. For this reason, in the Moon
forces as they work into and lay hold of our human nature there is an
element of immutable necessity. Everything that comes to us from
the Moon has this character. In whatever comes from the Sun and points
to the future, there is something in which our will,
our freedom, can be a factor. So that we can say: when man
again apprehends the Divine in the Cosmos, and instead of vague,
sentimental generalisations is able to speak with precision and
definition about the Divine as revealed in the several heavenly
bodies, a special kind of language will take shape within him when he
contemplates the heavenly bodies with heart-knowledge and true human
understanding.
Now
suppose a human being were standing in front of us and looking at his
hands or his arms, his head, his chest, his legs, his feet, we were
to ask in each case, ‘what is that?,’ and were told in
reply, ‘that is something human.’ When no distinctions
are made but everything is labelled with the generalisation
‘human,’ we are without bearings or direction. The same
is true if we gaze out into the Cosmos, contemplate the Sun and
Moon and the stars and speak of the Divine as a generalisation. We
must acquire a definite, concretely real view of the Divine. And this
we do when we recognise, for example, the deep connection of the Moon
with our own past, indeed with the past of the whole Earth. Then,
when we look at the Moon in the heavens, we can say: “Thou
cosmic offspring of Necessity, when I contemplate that within
me over which my will has no sway, I feel inwardly united with
thee.” Our knowledge of the Moon then becomes feeling,
for we realise that every experience arising perceptibly out of inner
necessity is connected with the Moon.
If in the
same way we contemplate the inmost nature of the Sun, not merely
making calculations or observing it through instruments, we shall
feel its kinship with everything that lives in us as freedom, with
everything that we ourselves can achieve for the benefit of the future.
Such
experiences would enable us to find a link with the instinctive
wisdom of primeval humanity. For we cannot rightly understand what
radiates with such poetic beauty from ancient civilisations unless we
can still feel, when we gaze at the Moon, that there we are glimpsing
the past with its element of necessity and when we gaze at the Sun
that there we are glimpsing the freedom belonging to the future.
Necessity
and freedom interweave in our destiny. In terms of the terrestrial
and human we speak of Necessity and Freedom; in terms of the heavenly
and cosmic we speak of Moon existence and Sun existence.
Now let us
try to discover how the forces of the Sun and Moon work in the web of
our destiny. We meet some human being. As a rule the fact that we
have met him is enough in itself; we accept life as it comes without
being very observant or giving it much thought. But deeper
scrutiny of individual human life reveals that when two persons meet,
their paths have been guided in a remarkable way. Think of two
individuals, one aged twenty-five and the other aged twenty, who
meet; they can look back over the course of their lives hitherto and
it will be evident to each of them that every single happening in the
life of the one, say the
twenty-year-old, had impelled him from quite a
different part of the world to this meeting, at this particular
place, with the other. The same will be true of the
twenty-five-year-old. In the forming of destiny very much depends
upon the fact that human beings, starting from different parts of the
world, meet as though guided by an iron necessity directly to the
meeting-point. No thought is given to the wonders that can be
revealed by studies of this kind but human life is infinitely
enriched by insight into such situations and impoverished
without it. If we begin to think about our relationship to some human
being whom we seem to have met quite by accident, we shall have to
say to ourselves that we had been looking for him, seeking for him,
ever since we were born into this earthly existence ... and as a
matter of fact, even before then. But I do not want to go into that
at the moment. We need only remind ourselves that we should not have
come across this individual if at some earlier point in earthly life
we had taken only a slightly different direction to the left or to
the right and had not gone the way we did. As I said, people do not
give any thought to these matters. But it is sheer arrogance to
believe that something to which one pays no attention is
non-existent. It is a fact and will eventually reveal itself to
observation. There is, however, a significant difference between what
takes place before the actual meeting of two individuals and what
takes place from that moment onwards. Before they met in earthly
life, they had influenced each other without having any knowledge of
the other's existence. After the meeting the mutual influence
continues, but now they know each other. And this again is the
beginning of something extremely significant.
Naturally,
we also meet many individuals in life for whom we have not been
seeking. I will not say that we meet a great many people of whom we
might think that it would have been better not to have done so! I am
not suggesting any such thing ... but at all events we do meet many
individuals of whom we cannot say that we have deliberately set out
to find them.
If what I
have now been saying is viewed in the light of Spiritual Science, it
becomes clear that what has been in operation between two human
beings before they actually meet in earthly life is
determined by the Moon, whereas everything that takes place between
them after their meeting is determined by the Sun. Hence
what occurs between two human beings before they become acquainted
can only be regarded as the outcome of iron necessity and what
happens afterwards as the expression of freedom, of mutually free
relationship and behaviour. It is indeed true that when we get to
know a human being our soul subconsciously looks back and forward:
back to the spiritual Moon, forward to the spiritual Sun. And with
this is connected the weaving of our karma, our destiny.
Very few
people today have faculties for perceiving these things. But it is
precisely because these faculties are beginning to develop that so
much in our age is in a state of ferment. The faculties are already
present in numbers of human beings, only they are unaware of it and
ascribe the effects to all kinds of other causes. In reality these
faculties of perception are striving to function so that when human
beings become acquainted with one another they may realise how much
is due to iron necessity, to the forces of the Moon, and how their
relationship will go forward in the light of the Sun, in the light of
freedom. To experience destiny in this way is itself part of the
cosmic destiny of humanity today and on into the future. When we meet
a human being in the world we can distinguish quite clearly between
two kinds of relationship. In the case of one individual the
relationship proceeds from the will, in the case of another,
it proceeds more or less from the intellect, or even from the
aesthetic sense.
Think of
the subtle differences in the relationships between human beings even
in childhood or youth. We may love an individual or perhaps we hate
him. If our feelings do not reach this intensity, we shall feel
sympathy or antipathy; our feelings in this case do not go very
deep — we just pass him by or let him pass us by. It cannot
be denied that this was how we felt about most of our teachers at
school; and we should count ourselves fortunate if it was not so.
But a
quite different kind of relationship is possible, even in childhood.
It is when we are so inwardly affected by what we see a person do,
that we say: we must do it too! The relationship between us makes us
choose him as a hero, as one we must follow on the path to Olympus.
In short, some human beings have an effect upon our intellect, or at
best upon our aesthetic sympathy or antipathy; and others have a
direct effect upon our will.
Or think
of the other side of life. External circumstances may bring us into
very close contact with certain
individuals — yet we simply cannot dream about them.
We may meet others only once, yet we never seem to be free of them,
we are always dreaming about them. If a more intimate association is
not vouchsafed to us in this present earthly life, this will have to
be reserved for other incarnations. However that may be, our
relationship to a human being is deeper if, as soon as we meet him,
we begin to dream about him.
There is
also a sort of waking dreaming,
which in the case of most people to-day lacks
clear definition. But as you know, there are also initiated human
beings who experience life very differently. If we meet an individual
who makes an impression upon our will, he will also have an effect
upon our ‘inner speech:’ he will not only speak when he
is face to face with us; he will also speak out of us. If we are
initiated into the secret of cosmic existence we shall know that
there is a double relationship between individuals when they meet: we
may meet one person to whom we shall listen, and then go on our way;
we need never listen to him any more. Others we may meet to whom we
shall listen, but when we go away from them they still seem to be
speaking — but out of our own inner being: they are there and
they really do seem to speak in this way.
What
happens in the case of an Initiate is as I have just described: he
actually carries within him, in the very quality of his voice, those
who have made this impression on him. In those who are not initiated
this also takes place, but only in the realm of feeling; it is there
all the same, but subconsciously. Let us suppose that we meet
an individual and then come across other people who know him as well
and will remark what a splendid fellow he is. This means that they
have thought about the man and have formed a judgement based on the
intellect. But we do not call everyone we meet a splendid fellow or a
cad, as the case may be; there are individuals who have an effect
upon our will — which as I have said, leads a kind of
sleeping existence within us during our waking life. The effect is
that we feel we simply must follow or oppose them. In one who is not
initiated, these individuals, even if they do not speak within him,
live in his will. What then exactly is the difference between these
two kinds of relationship?
When we
meet other human beings who have no effect upon our will, but of whom
we do no more than form a judgement, then there is no strong karmic
connection between us; we have had little to do with them in
earlier earthly lives. Individuals who affect our very will, so that
they seem to be always with us, whose form is so strongly impressed
upon us that they are always in our thoughts, so that we dream of
them even in our waking
life — these are the individuals with whom we
have had a great deal to do in our past earthly lives, with whom we
are as it were cosmically connected through the gate of the Moon;
whereas in our present life we are connected through the Sun with
everything that lives in us without any element of the
necessity belonging to Moon existence.
Thus is
destiny woven. On the one side man has his
isolated ‘head-existence’ which has
considerable independence. Even physically this head-existence
raises itself all the time above the general conditions of man's
cosmic existence, and in the following way — the brain weighs
on average 1,500 grammes, and with this weight it would crush all the
underlying blood vessels. Just think of it — a weight of
1,500 grammes pressing on those delicate blood vessels! But this does
not happen. Why not? Simply because the brain is embedded in the
cerebral fluid. If you have learnt any physics, you will know that a
body in water loses as much of its weight as the weight of the volume
of water it displaces — this is the so-called principle of
Archimedes. The actual weight of the brain is therefore about 20
grammes, because the brain floats in the cerebral fluid. Hence the
brain in the body presses with a weight of only 20 grammes —
certainly not with its actual weight of 1,500 grammes. The brain is
isolated and has its own existence.
As we go
about the world, the brain is like a man sitting in his motor-car.
The man himself does not move; the car moves and he sits still. And
our brain as the bearer of intellect has an isolated existence. That
is why the intellect is so independent of our individuality. If each
of us had our own separate and distinct intellect this would augur
badly for any mutual understanding! We are able to understand one
another only because we all possess the same principle of intellect,
although naturally there are differences of degree. But intellect is
a universal principle. Human beings can understand one another
through the intellect which is independent of their individual
qualities. Whatever appears in human destiny as something belonging
to the immediate Present — such as the meeting of two people
— works upon the intellect and impulses of feeling associated
with the intellect. In these cases we speak of someone as a
‘splendid fellow’ in whom we have no further interest
than that he has had an effect upon our intellect. Everything that is
not part of our karma has an effect upon the intellect; everything
that is part of our karma and links us with other human beings as a
result of experiences once shared with the individuals we now meet
— all this works through those depths of human nature which lie
in the will. And so it is true that the will is working even before
we actually meet a human being with whom we are karmically connected.
The will is not always illumined by the intellect. Just think how
much in the working of the will is shrouded in darkness! The karma
which leads two human beings together is shrouded in the deepest
obscurity of all; they become dimly aware that karma is working from
the way in which their wills are involved. The moment they come face
to face the intellect begins to work; and what is then woven by the
intellect can become the basis for future karma. But in essentials
— not wholly, but in essentials — it would be true to say
that for two human beings who are karmically connected, their karma
has worked itself out when the meeting has taken place. Only what
they may do after that as a continuation of what lives in the
unconscious — that and that alone becomes part of the stream of
future karma. But a great deal is then woven into their destiny which
has an effect only on the intellect and its sympathies and
antipathies. Past and Future, Moon existence and Sun existence are
here intermingled. The thread of karma that reaches into the past is
interwoven with the thread that reaches into the future.
We can
actually gaze into cosmic existence. For if we watch the Sun rising
in the morning and look at the Moon at night, we can glimpse in their
mutual relationships a picture of how Necessity and Freedom are
interwoven in our own destiny. And if, with a concrete idea of the
mingling of Necessity and Freedom in human destiny, we again
contemplate the Sun and the Moon, they will begin to unveil
their spirituality to us. Then we shall not speak like the unwitting
physicists who when they look at the Moon merely say that it
reflects the light of the Sun ... but when we
see this light of the Moon which is the same as the light of the Sun,
we shall rather speak of the weaving of cosmic destiny.
Thus
contemplation of our own human destiny leads to a conception
of cosmic destiny. Then and only then are we able in the real
sense to knit our human existence with cosmic existence. Man must
learn to feel himself a living member of the Cosmos. Just as a finger
is a finger only while it is actually part of a human body — if
it is amputated it is no longer really a finger — so man
himself has real being only inasmuch as he is part of the Cosmos. But
man is arrogant, and the finger would probably be humbler if it had
the same kind of consciousness. ... Yet perhaps it would no longer be
humble if it could at any moment tear itself free and move around the
body... although it would have to remain in the sphere of a human
being in order to remain a finger at all! And man, as earthly man,
must remain in the Earth-sphere if he is to be man. He is a quite
different being, he is a being of eternity when he is outside the
Earth-sphere, either in pre-earthly or post-earthly existence. But
again, we can gain knowledge of these spheres of existence only when
we recognise that we ourselves are members of the Universe.
This recognition will never be achieved by fanciful speculation about
our connection with the Universe, but only when, as we have tried to
do to-day, we learn gradually to feel its concrete reality.
Then we feel that our destiny is in very truth an image of the world
of stars, of the Sun-nature and the Moon-nature. We learn to look out
into the Universe and read the scroll of our human life from the life
of the great Universe. Again, we learn to look into our own soul and
to understand the world through it. For nobody understands the Moon
who does not understand the element of Necessity in human
destiny; nobody understands the Sun who does not understand the
element of Freedom in human nature. Such are the interconnections of
Necessity and Freedom.
At the
Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum we tried
to give the impulses which would help us to make these facts of true
esoteric perception still more effective in the years to come. And I
hope that our Members will become more and more conscious of
what took place at Christmas. I would like particularly to draw your
attention to the fact that every Member can now receive the News
Sheet. Through this News Sheet and many other developments in the
Anthroposophical Society, the whole Society should in future be able
to share in that quickening life which can flow from Anthroposophy.
The isolation which has hitherto existed between the Groups must as
far as possible come to an end. The Anthroposophical Society can
become a real whole only when those who are members of a Group in New
Zealand know what is going on in a Group in Berne, and members of a
Berne Group know what is going on in New Zealand or New York or
Vienna. This should now be possible. And one of the many things we
are doing, or at least that we want to do in connection with the
Christmas Meeting is to make this News Sheet a medium for all
anthroposophical work in the world. It will be necessary to pay some
attention to the News Sheet, and then everyone will realise what he
can do to promote its aims.
While I am
speaking here the third number of the News Sheet is being issued in
Dornach; in it I have shown how every Member can co-operate in making
it a genuine reflection of anthroposophical achievements. Only
because I believe that to this end it is necessary for Anthroposophy
to be cultivated more intensively within the
Society — I do not mean in the sense of more
content, but with greater intensity, greater enthusiasm, greater love
— only for these reasons, although in the ordinary way I should
have every right at my age, to retire, I have decided, after having
given up the personal leadership of the Society in 1912, to begin
again and to imagine that I have regained my youth and am capable of
the work. I want this to be understood as a desire to stimulate
interest for a more active life in the Anthroposophical Society. My
hope — and anyone who was not at Dornach can read about it in
the Goetheanum Weekly and the News Sheet — is that whatever of
spiritual value was achieved at the Christmas Meeting shall in some
way reach every individual Member. Thereby the aim of bringing true
esoteric life into the Society will be achieved. The High School for
Spiritual Science was founded at Christmas with the aim that esoteric
life shall again flow into the Anthroposophical Society.
I hope
that the words I have spoken to you to-day will have expressed the
desire that this esoteric life may again unfold among us in the way
that will be made clearer and clearer to you. This aim can become
reality through what can go out in future from Dornach as the centre
where the General Anthroposophical Society was founded
at Christmas. May the Members of this Berne Group be able to
contribute effectively to what we should like to achieve in Dornach
for the whole Movement, to the extent that our forces permit.
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