The Heaven
Berlin, 14 May 1908
In an equally difficult position like
already last time, when I spoke about the concept of the
“hell,” I am today where I want to summarise the
different considerations and results of the winter talks in a
consideration of the concept “heaven.”
We face a concept there
the true meaning of which the faith of the different
confessions have already largely lost even if these adhere to
the concept due to an absolutely right and suitable spiritual
instinct. At the same time, however, we face a concept that
those people mock and reject in the strictest way who not only
want to be regarded as leading in the today's spiritual
currents but also are regarded as such by many people. The goal
and contents of the deepest longing is enclosed for many human
beings in the concept “heaven” even today; the
basis of this concept forms the contents of the devoted faith
of many souls. It is something that gives them comfort in the
most difficult problems of life, while many people understand
this concept as something in which the deepest superstition
expresses itself. We only need to call our attention, just in
our days, to spiritual phenomena much discussed in certain
circles and we see very soon which immense obstacles stand in
the way of understanding if people want to come to a pure,
unprejudiced view of that what shall occupy us
today.
Nobody needs to be
surprised, and at least that who speaks about these matters in
such a way as I want to speak today if a big part of that what
I say is regarded as the model of empty speculative fiction and
mystic daydreaming. In spite of that, just the today's
consideration will show that it is very necessary just in our
time to point again to the bases of such concepts as strongly
as possible.
Many of you know a man
with whose name some people connect the concept of real
enlightenment, a man whose works made a great stir within the
German cultural life just in the last time. Of course, it is
abstruse to disparage the great service even in the slightest
that this man has rendered to his narrower field of natural
sciences. You have also realised in the other talks that my
concern was just to talk about the spiritual-scientific
research in accordance with the scientific results of the
present and in full harmony with them. At different places one
could listen to August Forel's (Auguste-Henri F., 1848–1931,
Swiss myrmecologist, psychiatrist, philosopher) talk
about Life and Death
(1908). To someone who wants to inform
himself only a little about how one can misunderstand
thoroughly what spiritual science puts forth about these
matters, I can only recommend to study this talk by Forel
thoroughly. The viewpoints of spiritual science concerning such
phenomena are explained in my magazine
Lucifer-Gnosis
where you also find something about the relation between spiritual
science and natural sciences. Forel's talk about
Life and Death
is fulfilled with refusal, namely of a thorough refusal
of this concept which is the contents of our talk today.
Immediately at the
beginning of Forel's talk, our attention is called to the fact
how someone who wants to establish a worldview from the wholly
scientific facts gets to the following thoughts. There he says,
the natural sciences have brought big progress to the human
beings, they can illuminate the world edifice beyond the stars
that are next to us in space. The natural sciences are able to
look into the smallest parts of the cells of the living body,
at least up to a certain degree. The natural sciences have
succeeded in overcoming space and time in the field of
technology to a certain degree. They achieve the most
unbelievable things like wireless telegraphy and telephony over
almost all continents. They have succeeded in demonstrating the
components of the sun, of the moon, the stars etc. They have
succeeded in liquefying the air. They have succeeded in showing
how the single parts of the brain co-operate when the human
being thinks, feels, and wills. Of course, everything up to a
certain degree; but this degree is rightly called
admirable.
However, the author of
this talk continues: nevertheless, the natural sciences, in
spite of their admirable results, nowhere discovered anything
that one calls “paradise,” a spiritual world.
Everything that humanity has dreamt of a heaven or hell
originates from its imagination. The natural sciences have
discovered nothing of them, in spite of their admirable
results. — Then he boldly concludes as many people echo today:
because the natural sciences have not found them, we must
abandon all these concepts. We have to stand on the ground that
nothing at all can be true that once people dreamt of an
immortal essence in the human being that outlives the decay,
which the natural sciences experience in such a miraculous way.
— And then the consideration is attached like an outpour of
feelings that, nevertheless, it is much nicer, greater and more
tremendous to know that the human being, before he has come to
this personal, individual existence, has lived completely only
in his physical ancestors, and that he will keep on living in
his physical descendants only. The entire existence is
condensed in the physical world.
Then the author has a
real outpour of emotions and says, is it not nicer that that
which the human being has created is connected with his
physical ancestors and keeps on working in the physical
descendants, than that there is a world in which beings of all
kinds outranking the human being are, a world in which angelic
choirs are to be heard and the like? — He insinuates that it is
unworthy of a scientifically thinking human being to adhere to
a worldview that even in the least deals with such
concepts.
This talk can remind one
of that which I heard one of the leaders of the modern
progressive movement saying many years ago. This person said
almost the following. The human being speaks of any
supersensible heaven — and then he made clear that our earth is
a ball which freely hovers in the space, and that it also
applies to the other planets that the space is the heaven, and
that the soul does not need to be in another heaven, because we
are in heaven. Such persons do not understand much of the deep
feelings out of which Schiller (Friedrich Schiller, 1759–1805,
German poet) formed the all too justified dictum
To the Astronomers:
Do not chat so much of nebulae and suns to me!
Is nature only great, because she gives you something to count?
Indeed, your object is the most elated one in space,
But, friends, the elated does not live in space.
From all these remarks, someone can
recognise who has taken up something that was discussed in the
course of these winter talks here which deep misunderstanding
forms the basis of such things. It is a deep misunderstanding,
and we can express this deep misunderstanding best of all
saying: if spiritual science once spoke of that what these
persons declare as superstition, daydreaming, as speculative
fiction, then all these persons would be right. However, the
fact is that the modern spiritual science is young and that its
message has not yet come to a big part of humanity, above all
not to those who speak in such a way, as I have indicated.
These persons form mental pictures of the supersensible worlds
that are only the outflow of their fantasy and their own
daydreams. They fight against these things of their own
daydreaming, their own fantasy. However, they also know nothing
at all of that, what the true spiritual science has to say
about these things. Thus, a big part of the enlightened people
fights a battle against their self-created windmills like Don
Quixote. Someone who understands this thoroughly will find in
that what is said nothing but words, which are quite
appropriate to battle the phantasm that these people have in
mind. However, this has to do nothing with that what spiritual
science understands by it. We could prove a weird logic in the
course of these talks, namely where one refuses theosophy,
apparently on the ground of the natural sciences, although one
knows nothing of its contents. I want to inform of something
only.
You know how deeply I appreciate Haeckel's
(Ernst H., 1834–1919, German naturalist, philosopher)
scientific works. However, what he brings forth as refusal of
the ideas of heaven and hell that he himself has formed stands
on weak logical feet. One can easily prove this weakness. It is
rather nice for numerous persons who want to be enlightened if
Haeckel says: “There is a faith of the old time that
points to the heaven and asserts, there above lives God! Who
speaks in such a way does not know that this
“above” is somewhere else if the earth turns, and
if it has completely turned round, one would have to point
downward instead of upwards.” This seems to be rather
appropriate. If you still want to become engrossed somewhat
logically, his conclusions stand on no other feet, as if
anybody wanted to state that one goes with the head down and
not upwards if the earth has turned. The gentlemen start from
the fallacy that it concerns spatial things, and not the
relationship to the spiritual to the physical. I have to say
all that repeatedly because just the object of our today's
considerations is something very significant.
We go back to what I have
said in the last talk. If we imbue ourselves with the
spiritual-scientific attitude and turn to that what develops
gradually from the growing up child, then we have the sensation
that increases more and more to bright and clear knowledge that
something appears in the increase, in the transformation of the
childish body that gets its existence in this world,
coming from the supersensible worlds. We attain the mental
picture which spiritual science can completely ascertain that
the essence of the human being entering the physical existence
by conception and birth already existed before conception and
birth, and that the physical body is the dress of the
supersensible spiritual essence.
There we come to the
question: where is that what enters the physical existence only
by conception and birth? — We have also further explained the
thought, and this has made us recognise that this physical
existence of the human being is not the first, but that we have
to speak of repeated earth-lives that the human being enters
the physical existence repeatedly in the course of evolution.
We have recognised the thought that that what the human being
experiences in his life what he goes through in thinking,
feeling and enjoyment, in love and desire, wish and action has
not died down, but that the fruit remains and continues, and
that the next earthly existence takes up this fruit of the
former earth-life. If the child reveals its dispositions,
abilities, and actions gradually, this represents the result of
former earth-lives. The human being has struggled through many
stages of existence, and what he has gone through in the former
life has transformed itself into the germ and has become
contents, so that his new life is more perfect, seems to be
more complete than his preceding life.
This is the ascent of the
human being. We speak in spiritual science of the fact that
that of the human being entering by conception and birth in the
physical existence and leaving it at death again is in the
interim, between death and new birth, in a spiritual,
supersensible world. We have discussed a part of the spiritual,
supersensible world in the last talk about the
“hell.” We have to discuss a big part today under
the concept of the “heaven.” Thus, the heaven is in
spiritual science not anything that is far away and dreamt of,
anything transcendent, but it is something that is there where
we are also. We have to answer the question now, why can the
heaven, the supersensible existence be where we are also if the
human beings do not perceive it with their physical eyes if it
is true that the physical science that has achieved such big
and tremendous progress could discover this paradise, this
heaven nowhere?
However, I have also
drawn your attention to the fact that every human being can
really attain the full view of the supersensible world and the
heaven. In the essays
How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?,
I have pointed to the methods, by which the
human being penetrates into the supersensible world. Today it
should be indicated only briefly, what it depends on. You have
only to visualise repeatedly what it means to perceive this
sensuous-physical world around you. You have read certainly
that the completely developed human ear developed from an
indifferent organ. Look at the primitive organs of the animals,
consider that round these imperfect animals the world of the
tones, the physical harmonies, the melodies and the world of
the other sounds exist. Remember what was necessary for the
fine arrangement of a human organ up to its today's height, so
that the human being could become acquainted with the field of
the tones surrounding him. You can also look at the other
organs in the same way.
Look at the eye how it
developed gradually so far, that the wonderful world of the
light and the colours can light up. As much of our surroundings
exists as our organs are able to perceive these surroundings.
Would the organs of the human being be on a less perfect stage
— imagine the human auditory organ on an imperfect stage — what
would be a world of the sounds, the harmonies and melodies for
such beings with undeveloped hearing? A world that they could
not perceive, a “transcendent” world! As this
relates to the sensuous human being in the world, the spiritual
world relates to that what one usually calls world. And as well
as imperfect beings with imperfect senses have developed to
bigger perfection and have attained new fields of their
perception, the today's human being can also develop as the
human being of the prehistoric time was able. In all details
the methods are given by which the human forces and abilities
can be raised to a higher level. It occurs to nobody, to call
“heaven” what Forel refused. Spiritual science only
says this: if the human being has the renunciation, the energy,
and perseverance to develop the ability slumbering today in
him, he perceives the spiritual worlds. — One understands by
the spiritual world what lies inside of every human being. If
he develops the organs, the transcendent world also becomes his
surrounding world as the world of the tones becomes a
perceptible world. This happens to such an extent more and
more, the more the physical organ is perfected.
However, no one is
allowed to imagine that this development is something similar
as the present methods of development of a physical sense. This
would be a misunderstanding. One can be easily asked as a
spiritual scientist, how does this sixth sense form? — The
human beings possibly imagine that it must grow out like an eye
from the organism. However, the higher, supersensible senses
are not of that kind. They relate to our physical senses quite
different. I characterise briefly how these higher senses — the
word does not well meet their being, but never mind — relate to
the physical senses. The way of development by which the human
being raises himself to the supersensible worlds is not an
exterior, tumultuous, but an inner, intimate one. What the
human being has to experience, so that the spiritual world
shines into his present existence, happens in all silence and
subtlety. The three basic forces of the soul, thinking, feeling
and willing, are capable of a higher development. If we briefly
ask ourselves, what the human being has to do with thinking,
feeling and willing if he wants to become a citizen of the
supersensible world, the heavenly world, already within this
existence, we get the answer that this is a fine, subtle work.
You can read up in my magazine, starting from number thirteen,
how the human being settles in a world cultivating his world of
thinking, feeling, and willing in particular.
Remember everything that
penetrates our souls from the morning to the evening when our
consciousness sinks in an uncertain darkness. Consider how
different it would be in our soul if we lived not in our time
and at this place of Central Europe but hundred years ago and
at another place of our earth. Then we understand how much of
that what flows through the human soul from the morning to the
evening is the result of the outside world changing
permanently. Subtract what flows through the soul, try to
remove everything that is given by the age, by the place, and
all thoughts from the soul, which anyhow go back to place and
time, and ask how much then is left of such contents. All
thoughts, feelings, and will actions that flow through the soul
and are determined by place and time are inappropriate for a
higher spiritual development, for the experience of a
supersensible world. Do not understand these things in such a
way, as if I want to say anything against the life of the human
being at that place where he is positioned. However, he must
find so much time to tower completely above that what faces his
soul in the everyday life. He must dedicate himself, even if
only for minutes, to such thoughts and feelings that are
independent of place and time that are everlasting. Such
thoughts and feelings are given. They are there; they are
developed with that who has gone through the training of the
higher spiritual life. If the human being lets such thoughts of
eternity live in his soul repeatedly, then they are effective
forces in his soul that awake the slumbering
abilities.
Then read up the immense
transformation if the human being dedicates himself to the
thought of eternity with strictly prescribed methods if he
knows to live in subtle way with such eternity thoughts. I
describe this for the thought life at first. Who may deny that
there are such thoughts? The human thoughts, as they are today,
which special nature do they have? They have the nature that
the human being lives with them most intimately, since, what
lives more intimately in our soul than our thoughts and mental
pictures?
However, these thoughts
and mental pictures, as far as they refer to the external
world, are the most ineffective, the most passive in relation
to this “real” world of the trivial. But a deep
wisdom is concealed in it if one says, for example, may anybody
adhere to his figures ever so much which express the thought of
a bridge, the thought of a bridge in all details may be quite
correct — the thought may be right, however, the bridge
is not there. The thought is the most intimate that lives in
the soul. However, in this world in which we spend the physical
existence the thought is the most ineffective. It has an inner
existence. However, when the human being starts — he must start
with patience — dedicating a quite low part of his time at
least to the thoughts of eternity, he learns to come to know
something he would not have dreamt of. He gets to know a world
that is different concerning the thought from our physical
world. If in our physical world the thought is the most
intimate and, nevertheless, at the same time the most
ineffective, the most passive, we are introduced by a training
in thoughts of eternity which we experience in the physical
life, in a world in which the thought itself is creative. That
is the point. Then another world starts living around the human
being. He learns to know from his experience: if we see in the
physical world, we see the light; it flows from the sun; we see
the plants withering and dying if we take away the light from
them; we see the light working creatively on the plants. The
thought becomes such strength, which flows through the space,
which is reality, as only a sensuous thing can be reality, for
that who penetrates by the training into the supersensible
world. The thought that has an ineffective existence in the
darkness of the inside is recognised due to the training as
something that flows through the space creatively that is much
more real than the sunlight.
The human being notices
now if this light of the thought about which he then speaks as
a real world which spreads out around him, flows into his soul
that is animated by creative forces as the physical plant is
penetrated by the sunlight. Thereby we learn how the space that
is round us is filled with a reality that the human being, as
long as he does not have the necessary abilities, cannot
perceive, as well as somebody who has no ears does not perceive
tones. However, there are also certain feelings in the
supersensible world that originate different from the feelings
of the everyday, usual life. How do the feelings of the
everyday life come into being? The human being turns his
attention to an object. He likes it. The feeling of desire
ascends in him. The feeling of desire appears by means of the
external object. We feel elated because of the impression of a
nice outside world, we feel full with revulsion if we face
something ugly in the outside world. Thus, the feelings surge
up and down in the human soul. Spiritual science has to lead
the human being deeper into the true, real.
If the human being wants
to awake the inner abilities of the supersensible world, he
must make himself able for the feelings that are not stimulated
by the outside. By a method, he settles down into a feeling
world where the feelings surge up and down in him, without
needing the external sensation. The feelings that are
stimulated by the outside can be woken in the human being by
the perception of the outer things. If he learns to develop
particular feelings in himself, the excitement of such feelings
works as a force that awakes slumbering abilities again. He
knows now from experience what the initiate can see: the world
of the light is active in the spiritual world as in the
physical world. It tiers itself also in the spiritual in
manifold colours as the physical light; he knows that there is
a world in which the spiritual colour lives. We call it the
astral world. It puts itself in this physical world for the
human being who wakes the abilities and forces slumbering in
himself if he develops a feeling of a particular kind more and
more only by spiritual experience, which is not stimulated
within the sensuous world by any outer sensation. Who is able
to wake this feeling of love, an innermost experience, has
attained the connection with the spiritual world.
Then still another world
is added to the described element. To the colours, still
another world is added. The love that the physical objects
produce can never lead to the spiritual. That love which is
satisfied, even if the object of this love only exists in the
spiritual, that love which remains in the deep inner experience
is a creative force for a higher kind of elements which
penetrate the spiritual space. This love is the real love. The
preliminary stage of it is that which the artist feels in his
creating. He has it only if he produces spiritual works from
his soul. That love transforms the before dumb and
colour-filled spiritual space of light into a world of tones, a
world speaks to us in spiritual tones.
Thus, you see the human
being developing gradually to another world. Here is nothing
else than a real continuation of that what also exists in the
natural existence of the human being, in the natural events. As
the ears have arisen from indifferent vesicles and thereby the
world of the physical tones originated from the toneless, that
world arises from the uncertain which I have just described.
Those do not speak of these worlds who fight against wind mills
as I have mentioned at the beginning of the talk. He who says,
the heavens were nowhere found, does not know that he has to
search them not anywhere else; for the heaven is where we are.
It only matters that one does not adhere to the assertion: what
I cannot perceive does not exist, and if another states that
there is something that I cannot perceive, he is a fool, a
dreamer, or a swindler. — This sentence is the logically
wrongest sentence that there is at all, because nobody is
allowed to assert that the border of his percipience is also
the border of existence. Otherwise, the dumb one could regard
the entire world of tones, of harmonies and melodies as
daydreaming and fantasy.
If one speaks in
spiritual science of the heaven, one speaks of it in this way
as I have did. One has also not spoken different in the primary
sources of the confessions when one still understood them. In
this visible world, a non-sensuous world exists, as for the
dumb human being the world of the tones.
We ask ourselves now, why
does the human being not perceive this supersensible world in
his present developmental state? He does not perceive it,
because just the sense-perception which was a necessity of the
human development, spreads like a cover, a veil about the
supersensible world. I did not mean it different when I
described what someone has to experience who aims at the
supersensible world. He must lift out himself from the
sense-perceptible world; he has to quieten the sensuous world
for a while. Then he comes to that what is behind this sensuous
world, and then he perceives how the sensuous world spreads out
like a cover about the supersensible one. He who towers above
his body in the true sense can perceive what is behind this
veil.
We must know for what one
uses the forces in the usual human life, which can become
abilities to enter the supersensible world. One cannot
understand this different than if one considers the fact of the
matter: what is, actually, the physical world, what is the most
imperfect physical body, and what is the perfect physical body
which faces us as human body? All physical beings are creations
of the spirit. The spiritual forms the basis of any physical
thing. We have emphasised this in manifold way in the course of
these talks repeatedly. As the ice hardens from the water, any
physical hardens from the spiritual. It is as it were a
compression of the spirit. Look at the physical ear of the
present human being. What does form the basis of this physical
thing? Spiritual creativity forms the basis of it! The tone
that lives as a physical tone in our surroundings is something
that belongs to the physical world and has the spiritual tone
behind itself. In the same world that flows to our physical
ear, we hear the physical tone, and in the same world, the
supersensible spiritual tone lives. What is the spiritual tone?
This spiritual tone is the creator of our ear just as the
spiritual light, concealed in the physical light, is the
creator of our eye. Therefore, Goethe says who pronounced so
many deep spiritual truths: “The eye is formed in the
light for the light.” The force that flows out from the
sun to us, which enables our eye to see the objects in their
borders in the light-filled space also contains those beings
that have formed the wonderful construction of the eye. Thus,
what the eye sees and the ear hears would mean the same as
penetrating into what is behind them, rising to the spiritual
forces. In a certain case, we do it already, looking at the
young child developing its abilities gradually in the physical
body. We see these abilities appearing from a world concealed
behind the sensuous world, we see them dashing into matter and
creating an existence in the matter for themselves.
We go back to spiritual
science and ask ourselves, where was this being before it has
accepted a physical existence by conception and birth, where
was it between its last death and its last birth? It was not in
a dreamt spiritual world but in the same world in which we are
too. The only difference between this being, before it enters
the material existence by conception and birth consists of the
following. Before birth, this being consists of such elements
that one can only behold if the just described spiritual
abilities are developed. It is invisible, as long as this
supersensible ability is not developed. As for anybody the
water is not visible, as long as it is liquid, but becomes
visible, as soon as it freezes, the human being becomes
invisible if he becomes like water — and visible if he
“freezes,” that is he becomes physical.
Thus, we speak of two
conditions of the human being, of a state between death and new
birth, only visible to the spiritual senses, and of a state in
which he has woven a dress around himself, so that he is
visible for the physical senses. Thus, we realise that the
human being is connected in the interim between death and new
birth with the creative forces flowing through the space.
Someone who develops his supersensible abilities gets to know
them as the heavenly forces already here. The human being is
connected with these creative forces. Here in the physical
world he lives with the physical forces, with the physical
tones, with the physical light; in the spiritual world, he
lives in the spiritual-creative behind the tone, behind the
light. He lives in a world that is different from the physical
world. Here in the physical world, the eye sees by the light.
In the spiritual world, the human being perceives what has
created his eye.
He lives in the spiritual
light, he lives in the spiritual world of tones, he lives in
that what builds up his physical body with the help of birth
and conception, he lives where our physical world is built up
which spreads like a cover about the spiritual one. This cover
flows into the spiritual world itself. The human consciousness
flashes in another state. The only difference between the
disembodied and the embodied human being is that the
disembodied one lives in another state of consciousness, and
that he perceives the creative forces. Now we understand what
it means: the human being is taken up in a supersensible world
at death. It is no dream world, no world of lower reality than
our world; it is a world of denser and stronger intensity and
reality, because in it the creative beings are for our physical
world. Now we understand what works there between death and new
birth.
We saw last time when we
discussed the retarding forces that when the human being passes
the gate of death a memory tableau of the entire last life
appears before him. We saw that this tableau is taken up like
an essence and remains with the human being for all following
times. We saw him going through the kamaloka time, the time of
purification. After he has gone through this purification, he
becomes something that he has taken from the last life,
something particular, and something new. We know that the human
being going through the gate of death comes into the spiritual
supersensible world. Regard it as a field, as a fertile ground
and regard what he brings from the last life as a fruit of his
thinking, feeling and willing, the fruit of the last life as a
sprouting seedling. Thus, the fruit of the last life sprouts in
the spiritual ground, and the human consciousness notices and
perceives this sprouting, this developing of the germ of the
last life.
Everything that the human
beings have taken from the life of their time impregnates
itself in this last fruit of life. Everything that approached
the human being from the outside increases and grows like a
germ. This becomes the world of perception and consciousness
between death and new birth. One can make clear that to someone
who cannot perceive the supersensible only by a comparison.
With deeper contemplation, you understand the comparison. One
rightly calls bliss what the human being feels unfolding the
germ of the last life. It is the converse feeling of that what
the human being can perceive if he feels the objects. Now he
feels them unfolded, before they flow out; now, however, the
being flows out and he is penetrated by a feeling which one can
compare with that of a chicken hatching an egg. This bliss
causes that the human being develops that in the spiritual what
chains him to the physical birth what brings him in the
physical existence. Because he has collected new experiences
which he adds to the basic core, every life becomes — with the
exception of the ways going up and down which must also be —
more complete.
Thus, we must get clear
about the fact that the state of consciousness is different
from that in the supersensible world. By a comparison, we can
still bring to our mind how the state of consciousness is
different between the physical world and the supersensible
world. Imagine a human being who listens to a symphony. He lets
the tones approach him from the outside. He enjoys them.
Imagine now, it would be possible that a human being creates
this symphony spiritually without touching a text without
sounding an instrument, that he creatively composes tone by
tone of his own accord in spirit. As the perception of the
former relates to that in which the symphony budded, the
physical world relates to the perception in the supersensible.
Hence, we must say, in order to perceive the heaven, the human
being has to refrain from something that faces him spiritually
in the physical world. As long as he has not refrained from
that, he cannot behold.
However, the
spiritual world does not appear to us as a world to which also
the logical thinking could not rise. The human being normally
argues only that he cannot perceive it.
Thus, the concept of the
“heaven” gets a significance for the future human
being again. It is no concept of a dream world in which we
shall be. The creative consciousness is much brighter and more
intense than in the physical world. Hence, we have to imagine
the life, the consciousness of the human being in the creative
world also as more intense than in the physical
world.
How does the physical
world relate to the supersensible world? It is a matter of
course that the human being is interested in this relationship
first. I would like to express this with the counter question:
knows the human being anything in the supersensible world about
those who are near and dear to him? Will that what happened
here continue in any way? It will! You can understand this
properly if you contemplate what I have just said making clear
that an intimate coherence exists between the physical and the
supersensible worlds. That which is laid here as a germ rises
there and becomes fruit. Nothing in the world is without
spiritual background.
In the physical world,
the human being already works for the supraphysical world. An
example: we assume that a mother is attached to her child with
love. This love develops; one would like to say, on the
physical basis at first. Then, however, this love changes into
spiritual love. To such an extent, in which the love is
transformed into a spiritual motherly love, the human being
grows into the spiritual love. This love becomes truer in the
spiritual. As the earthly cover drops from the human being, the
physical-earthly drops from the spiritual being. The whole net
that is woven from human soul to human soul exists already in
the supersensible world. The spiritual, the essence of the
human being settles in the supersensible world, and everything
that the human being has tied on here in this physical world,
is continued as something spiritual in the spiritual world.
Everything that is connected here spiritually is found in full
consciousness, in an even brighter consciousness again in the
spiritual world. Depending on how it is found, a tie forms
again with a new life, so that those who meet in often strange
sympathy have to explain this to themselves that they
themselves have spun it in former lives.
Thus, we realise that our
entire sensuous world is embedded in this supersensible,
invisible world. As the human being is a citizen of the
sensuous world between birth and death, he is a citizen of the
supersensible world after death; he does only not know it in
our time between birth and death.
We have shown the concept
of the “hell” in the last consideration and the
concept of the “heaven” today which contain all
spiritual influence on the human being.
Last time we have gone into the hardening forces, while
that appears as the opposite what I have described today: the
principle of development. Life advances from existence to
existence, and the more is transformed by the last life into
creative forces, the higher rises the next existence. While the
human being wants to enjoy what he takes up in himself not
only, but enjoying it he also wants to penetrate to that what
transforms itself into spiritual forces, he is perpetually in
the heavenly world. All that can help the human being is
contents of the heavenly elements; all that restrains the
progress is the contents of the infernal worlds.
Someone who wants to
harmonise such a concept of the heaven with that what the
natural sciences have performed can easily do it. He can
harmonise it completely. Our contemporaries only do not want to
get involved in these higher worlds. Our age is tired of the
consideration of the supersensible world, and, hence, this age
is very gullible toward those who put up the sentence: what I
cannot perceive is not true, and if anybody asserts, it is
true, he is a poor devil or a fool. — Too many people become
believers of such an opinion in this age. Even if we also
realise which big and immense progress our age has performed
concerning the physical science, nevertheless, we also see on
the other side how little the predominating part of our
contemporaries is inclined to penetrate into the supersensible
world. One means that the penetration in the supersensible
world makes the human being weak and foreign towards the
sensuous world. This is a prejudice. If anybody has a piece of
iron and says: this iron has magnetic force; touch it with
another iron and you have a magnet — another may come and say,
nonsense! The piece of iron is good for hammering down
nails. — These are the true daydreamers who take the sensuous,
the practical only in such a way as that man who hammers down
nails only with the magnet.
The realists, the
monists, the utilitarians, and others are the true daydreamers.
They know the forces of the physical world only and triumph if
the immense progress is done by merely revealing the forces of
the physical world. Spiritual science has to argue nothing at
all against this physical world. However, it also knows that it
is high time that the human beings learn again that in the
physical the spiritual is concealed, and that just the human
beings become dreamy when they close their spiritual eye to the
spiritual world. Today true realists, apostles of reality are
those who point to the spiritual forces! What do these truthful
realists want? They want that the real forces slumbering behind
the sensuous are introduced in this world that they settle down
in our whole development that we do not only introduce the
telegraph, the telephone and the railway, the usual forces but
also the spiritual forces.
If anybody goes into
these matters, he is still twitted today; he does not care this
twitting. He knows that even the great naturalists found few
followers once; also, those who tell something of the spiritual
worlds have to find the ways just in the big world. Even if
only few people can create telegraphs, telephones and
railroads, the other can use them, nevertheless. However,
everybody must gain the spiritual world on his own
accord.
The great physicists
Thomson (William T., first Baron Kelvin, 1824–1907, British
physicist), Clausius (Robert C., 1822–1888, German physicist
and mathematician) and others have their successors who can
recognise the physical principles. One of the biggest physical
principles is at the same time that what the human being pushes
to the spiritual world. For those who have dealt a little with
physics I say nothing unknown if I draw the attention to the
fact that there is a principle of entropy, this is due to
Carnot (Nicolas Léonard Sadi C., 1796–1832), the uncle of
the French president (Marie François Sadi C.,
1837–1894).
What does it mean? It
pronounces one of the most certain principles, which we have in
the physical world, namely how the physical forces of the world
change into each other. Hit with the hand on the table and
measure the effect on the table with a sensitive thermometer.
You will find that the place has become warm. You see the heat
of the railroad engine being transformed into locomotion and
this again into heat. A big principle forms the basis of all
that, the principle of entropy. From the consideration of the
world, it becomes clear that this conversion of energy shows,
nevertheless, a certain guideline, a certain sense. The entropy
principle shows that all energy must change into heat at last,
and this heat scatters in the space. Today one has proved by
the physical principle that the earth, our physical world, once
experiences the heat death. This principle exists. That has to
deny this principle who asserts that in our world only physical
forces are; for this would have to say if he recognised the
principle: then everything is over.
Therefore, also Haeckel
takes the view that this principle of entropy is nonsense
because it contradicts his principle of matter. It is a
physical principle that the things are transformed perpetually.
A Russian physicist has proved in a writing how firmly founded
just this principle is which shows the physical end of our
present world. Just in this writing of Professor Chwolson
(Orest Ch., 1852–1934, Russian physicist), the “twelfth
commandment” was put up
(Hegel, Haeckel, Kossuth and the Twelfth Commandment, 1906).
You can realise there how competent a physicist can be in the physical
field, just as you can also realise how unknowing such scholars
can be concerning the spiritual fields. The “twelfth
commandment” is “you should never write about
anything that you do not understand.” Chwolson obeys it
in his field where he speaks about physics, but he does not
obey it in the spiritual field. Everything that he says
concerning the physical is excellent; however, what he says
concerning the spiritual matters is of little value and a big
sin against the principle: “you should never write about
anything that you do not understand.”
A passage follows that
the stenographer did not write down apparently in which Rudolf
Steiner probably explained that Chwolson did not understand
Hegel. However, Rudolf Steiner admits that Chwolson is correct
concerning his remarks about an article by Kossuth in a
scientific magazine. Kossuth claims that the law of mass
conservation is nothing else as the sentence: the whole is like
the sum of its parts, and the principle of energy conservation
is nothing else than the sentence: the cause is like the
effect. — With reference to the discoveries of Lavoisier Rudolf
Steiner continues:
Someone who knows
something of the spiritual research knows what it means that
one has shown that if substances combine chemically with each
other the weight is that of the sum of the parts. If one says
then: this law contains nothing else than the old mathematical
law: the whole is equal to the sum of its parts, one would
already have to get clear about the fact that it concerns only
the weight of the whole that is equal to the sum of the weight
of its parts. Kossuth just forgets that if one proceeds to the
spiritual the law does not apply at all there. So short is the
thinking. Chwolson says, Mr. Kossuth may only take his pocket
watch and crush it in the mortar; then he can see whether the
whole is equal to the sum of its parts. Goethe also already
pronounced the thought that is often repeated:
To understand some living thing and to describe it,
the student starts by ridding it of its spirit,
he then holds all its parts within his hand,
except, alas!, for the spirit that bound them together.
(Faust, Verses 1936–1939)
The fewest people who believe to stand on
the ground of certain facts know that the natural sciences are
often nothing else than taking no account of the spiritual tie.
On one side, we realise if we survey all the circumstances and
connect them with that what I have stated about the
supersensible world that in many human souls the longing lives
to penetrate into the supersensible world. However, they
suspect those details of which someone has to speak who really
knows something of these matters. We see the longing for the
supersensible world stirring; but we do not see the strength
and the energy to penetrate into these supersensible worlds
according to the instructions of spiritual science. On the
other side, we have the facts in our time. We have a competent
physical science in our time: Thomson, Clausius, and Carnot
have found good successors. If the development advances in
spiritual science in the same spirit, the researchers in the
spiritual field will find also capable successors like Thomson,
Clausius and Carnot have found. Then the result will be that
from this humanity which has almost shut itself off today from
the heavenly world, another arises which draws the strength of
the supersensible world into the sensuous one. Spiritual
science does not want to alienate the human being from the
world but to make him strong, energetic, and vigorous for
existence, while it enriches reality.
We only need to join two
things, and this will fit together: in the same strict way as
now in the physical science, a big part of the human beings
will have the possibility to satisfy the need of their hearts
out of the spiritual world. It is the task of spiritual science
as a cultural stream to bring together these two spiritual
streams, the satisfaction of the sensuous needs by the natural
sciences and the satisfaction of the longing for the
spiritual.
These talks are continued
in the same sense in the next winter. We shall further pursue
what has remained sketchy and penetrate deeper into it. The
most enclosing, the most significant concept should be the
object of the last talk. Indeed, a wisdom will once be there
which can be a religion again, which can satisfy the deepest
religious needs of the heart. There will come up a spiritual
current that satisfies all needs of the logical thinking like
the longing for the supersensible life. It is this longing to
which spiritual science talks. If the way is found to that what
exists in this anticipating, then wisdom flows out, it
introduces in this supersensible world and flows into the human
soul so that our culture experiences a spiritual rebirth that
goes back to the fire, which lives in many people and wants to
penetrate to the supersensible worlds. From this fire, the
spiritual-scientific wisdom will penetrate into the
supersensible world, because this is its true ideal.
It should be owed to the
great ideal that wants to spark the wisdom of this
supersensible by the fire of the enthusiasm for the
supersensible; since this will always be the course of the
spiritual culture that the light of wisdom develops from the
fire of love and enthusiasm.
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