The
Self-Education of the Human Being
Berlin, 14 March 1912
The present cultural conditions and in
particular the perspective on the conditions of the next future
will certainly ascribe more and more importance to the human
self-education. This evening I would like to say something
about that, even if only by way of a hint. Expressly I would
like to stress from the start that this talk wants to speak on
the usual self-education and not on the education for spiritual
research. The usual self-education has to precede the education
for spiritual research; it is not only of importance for the
latter, but generally for every human being.
Everybody certainly feels already with the
word self-education that in a certain respect, this word
indicates, actually, something contradictory or at least
something whose execution causes big difficulties. Why this?
Simply because education requires the support of something
strange, of somebody outranking the child to be educated. But
if one speaks of self-education, one means, of course, that
education which the human being can grant to himself, that
means that education where the human being is educator and
pupil at the same time. With it, a big life difficulty is
certainly called.
Let us consider what one can say about the
education of the child, of the young human being, from the
viewpoint of spiritual science. You find it summarised in my booklet
The Education of the Child from the Viewpoint of Spiritual Science.
It is impossible, of
course, to state even introductorily
today, what I have written in that booklet. But I would like to
point to the fact that if we pursue the development of the
young human being we get around to accepting certain main
impulses of education as it were up to a certain degree of
maturity of this human being. There we realise that about up to
the seventh year of the child, up to the second dentition, the
education has to start from the imitative instinct of the
child. I have stressed in that writing that that is more
important than all rules of morality and all other instructions
for the education of the child in these first years which the
child sees and hears from the adults in its surroundings. If we
go on, we find that important period which begins with the
second dentition and lasts possibly until sexual
maturity.
There we find again if we get free from all
prejudices and look only at the real development of the human
being, at the real conditions of this development that
authority is the most significant impulse of education for
these years. A healthy education for these years comes about if
the child faces adults in whom he can trust, so that it can
form its principles, its rules of conduct based on authority of
these human beings without intervening with any pale
intellectual idea or any immature criticism. The authoritative
principle is the basic educational principle for these
years.
If we pursue the young human being up to
the twentieth, twenty-first years, we find as the essentials
the maturity of reason and in particular the view up to an
impersonal ideal, so to a purely spiritual educational impulse
that stands over him what the human being himself can be at
this age. This is just the being of the ideal for which we
strive and have the feeling any time, in particular as young
people, that our whole behaviour and being are not really
commensurate to the ideal that we can never really reach it.
Not before these periods are over, the human being arrives at
that epoch of his earth existence in which he can begin
self-education.
With the exception of the third educational
impulse which is also for the young human being in such a way
that he takes it as an ideal from the great impulses of world
history, and that other human ideals are given to him that he
takes over also from the outside, the other educational
impulses are founded upon an ideal, upon the relation to
something still strange, to something that is assumed to be
more perfect. That is why the pupil faces the educational
impulses as something strange, he looks up to them.
If one has really to speak of
self-education, it is a given that one cannot speak as one has
spoken of the educational impulses for the first years, and in
that is not only contained the logical-inconsistent, but the
ideal-inconsistent.
If the human being has to become his own
educator, one has to assume that the impulses of that are in
him. But if the human being has to become his own educator,
does it not at once suggest itself that he less improves
himself with this own education, or that he makes his living
conditions richer than rather to restrict them? Does it not
suggest itself at once that he undertakes the self-education
according to certain things which are already in him which he
has taken into his head or has accepted, and that he neglects
the rich possibilities which may come from his inside, so that
he could easily restrict himself by such a self-education
instead of increasing and perfecting it? Does this
contradiction not suggest itself?
Yes, we see — because of the
conditions of civilisation — that necessarily
self-education becomes more and more the object of
consideration that everywhere the views about self-education
appear. We can understand this. We do not want to go back to
the ancient India or Egypt and to
understand how there a certain caste classification put the
human being to a certain place of life from the start and made
it impossible to him to develop freely, and that the social
order dictated or even dictates today how he had or has to
behave.
We do not need going back to these old
times. We can go to those times, which still project in ours,
and we realise that the human being was or still is defined by
blood relationship, by the fact that he was or is affiliated to
a family, to a caste and so on. But we also realise on the
other side that from this social structure just in our present
something else forms that confronts the human being with the
other human being, so that human being and human being face
each other in the social order. Yes, we see even that not only
human being and human being face each other, but that the human
being is on his own more and more if he feels confronted to
nature and universe.
We realise that he depends on his own
judgement in the course of his life, on his convictions, on how
he can think about moral, aesthetic, religious relations. It is
quite natural that the human being who is more on his own must
have the requirement: I have to look into myself what
confronted me as a human being to the human being what puts me
generally as a human being adequately in the world. We can
understand that under these conditions more and more one calls
for self-education. How the human being has to behave if he has
to position himself in life and world according to particular
conventional rules, this can be put into the education of the
child. However, as our life develops and has to develop more
and more, because the conditions of this development cannot be
turned back, it turns out that the human being has to feel
called in every situation of life in which he faces another
human being, actually, to develop an unbiased judgement over
and over again.
There he has to work on himself his whole
life through to get a bigger and bigger perfection towards the
world. The most important impulses for it are not given,
actually, during our childhood, but when the human being has to
gain his own position in the world, so that he is on his own
according to his age. Then he has to begin becoming his own
educator when he does no longer feel the urge to submit to
other educators. Thus, we see our literature and our public
life flooded with all possible considerations about the
development of the personality, about the attempts to find the
harmony of life and so forth. This is comprehensible for our
time. However, someone who looks deeper into these things
notices soon that within such
contemporary attempts just that is often expressed which I have
characterised as an impulse which limits life instead of
improving and enriching it.
There we realise that one follows this or
that ideal to give instructions with which the human being is
able to work on his thinking. The other prefers physical
instructions, prescribes for all human beings what he himself
likes mostly maybe according to his palate and preference,
gives all kinds of outer physical education or prescribes this
or that diet, this or that daily organisation and so forth.
However, I would like to stress from the start that I do not
criticise these attempts completely; much good can be in them.
However, a lot can also work one-sidedly, as for example
the attempts which go back to the book
In Tune with the Infinite
(1897) by Ralph Waldo Trine (1866–1958). Somebody
who dedicates himself to such attempts and makes a narrow
concept of a harmonious life, develops and improves not so much
his vitality, but restricts and limits it even if he may
experience a feeling of well-being or inner satisfaction or
maybe even bliss because of such a restriction. However, one
can ignore that just with these attempts in the present the
strangest peculiarities appear and give everybody the
opportunity, without occupying himself very much with these
matters, to recommend that as something generally human for
which he has personal preferences.
One has to go deeper into the human nature
if one wants to speak spiritual-scientifically about
self-education. This is just the characteristic of spiritual
science that it avoids the one-sidedness of the other attempts.
It has as it were these other attempts as small circles around
itself, and it wants to be the big circle, which wants to
recognise the conditions for the single human life from the
devotion to the whole nature of the human being. It is always
more comfortable to dedicate yourself to one-sided directions
which promise to restore health possibly in short time or to
improve memory or to get practical results in life. The way of
spiritual science is more difficult and more uncomfortable, but
it is that which is based on the whole nature of the human
being.
Speaking of self-education we maybe can get
a tip thereby how self-education is to be managed favourably if
we consider that already at that time when the human being has
to be educated by others a certain self-education intervenes.
This may appear as an even bigger contradiction than the
earlier intimated one; but it is not. For spiritual science
shows that the human self is different from that which is
enclosed in the immediate personality. Yes, the whole
spiritual-scientific consideration is based on the fact that
the human being can exceed himself as it were without losing
himself. Do you already find any example of that which
spiritual science wants to represent in much more comprehensive
way in all areas of existence, actually?
Yes, two things in the usual life already show that the human
being gets beyond his personal and can stay, so to speak, with
himself, does not need to lose himself. One of them is
sympathy, shared joy, compassion, comprehensive love. What is
this love based on? It appears not so mysterious only as it is
because the human being accepts the habitual easily. As well as
the savage does not ask why the sun rises and sets, but accepts
the habitual, and the human being only begins thinking about
rising and setting if he is cultivated, the human being does
also not think about shared joy and compassion. Not before one
begins recognising the sense and the purpose of life, something
like shared joy and compassion become life riddles. We need
only to imagine one thing, and we will realise at once that
shared joy and compassion are extensions of the human self.
Joy and grief are the most intimate
experiences of the human being. If we face another human being,
and an impulse appears in us that reflects his grief or joy in
us we do not live only in ourselves but also in the other. But
any philosophical speculation that the sensory impression
anyhow releases something in us cannot belie the reality that
something active originates from the commiseration of joys and
sufferings of the other in us. Where we feel his joy, his grief
intimately, we have left ourselves and have penetrated into the
sanctum of the other human being. We need only to imagine,
because we cannot penetrate the consciousness of the other with
our consciousness: if we experienced a faint-like state in the
soul of the other when we feel compassion or shared joy in the
other soul, then we would be unable to go from the one to the
other personality without losing ourselves. As weird as it
sounds, as significant as it is for life: we leave ourselves
and penetrate into the other without becoming
unconscious.
Exactly after the same pattern, any
spiritual-scientific development takes place. As the human
being penetrates by shared joy and compassion into a foreign
being without losing himself, he penetrates
spiritual-scientifically recognising into foreign beings
without losing himself. In the normal life, this is not
possible, because if the human being leaves himself
recognising, perceiving, he just falls asleep, then he is no
longer aware of himself. In the normal life, the human being
does not do this what he does in the moral life just in the
case of shared joy and compassion. This is why the peculiar
behaviour of the human being with shared joy and compassion is
the exemplary picture of any spiritual-scientific activity; it
proceeds in such a way as the normal life proceeds in
compassion and shared joy. This is the one where the human
being exceeds his own personality and does not lose
himself.
The other thing that is also for the usual
life in the field of moral is the conscience. Someone who
investigates the conscience knows that it already exceeds the
personal sympathies and antipathies; yes, it can even correct
them powerfully. Again, our moral life is so organised that we
do not lose ourselves or faint if we exceed ourselves by such
judgements of conscience. Spiritual science is based on the
fact that the human being can enter an area which is beyond the
personality which he encompasses with his everyday
consciousness and in which he still does not lose himself. Is
that also not based on that with which we have dealt in these
talks repeatedly: the insight into the repeated lives on earth
and into the principle of causes and effects from one life to
the other? It is also based on it. The human being who
encompasses with the usual consciousness what is between birth
and death learns to recognise by spiritual science that he may
regard this as his personal self. He also learns to recognise
his higher self to which he ascends if he leaves his personal
self with thinking. He recognises that this self builds up the
body and lives not only between birth and death, but goes
through many births and deaths and appears
repeatedly.
If the human being cannot remember former
conditions of the earth and only theoretically convince himself
of the truth of reincarnation and karma, he can still assume that that which is in him which is
transpersonal does not exhaust itself in his personality, but
that it creates his personality first, becomes effective in it.
As we exceed ourselves in our conscience, in compassion and
shared joy by immediate experience, spiritual-scientific
research exceeds by experience to a higher area.
But the human being can never admit if he
knows spiritual science that he himself is lost in this higher
area, but there something prevails that is connected with him
to which he belongs and in which he does not lose himself at
all if he loses himself at first with his usual normal
consciousness there.
Thus, spiritual science is something that
appears as an exemplary image of a being enclosing a higher
self as we enclose other foreign beings in compassion and
shared joy without losing ourselves. If we know our enlarged
self by which we enter into foreign beings, we are allowed
already to speak with the education of the child that except
that with which we can comply as educators, which develops from
the normal consciousness, a higher being already works on the
child. If we consider this, we maybe find something in the
child where already a kind of education takes place, while we
can turn with our usual education only to the personal self of
the child.
Where do we find the higher self of the
child, which does not become conscious? It may seem weird;
still it is right, that it works in the child with the
rational, with the well-controlled playing. To the playing
child we can only give the conditions of education. But what is
done by playing is done by its self-activity, by everything
that we cannot formulate as strict rules. Yes, just the
essentials and the pedagogic of playing are based on the fact
that we stop with our rules, with our pedagogic arts, and leave
the child to its own forces. Since then the child tries playing
with outer objects whether this or that works by its own
activity. It puts his own will in motion, in activity. And by
the way in which the outer things behave under the effect of
its will, the child can educate itself in another way than by
the influence of a person or his educational principle, even if
only playing.
Hence, it is so important that we mingle as
little intellectual as possible into the play of the child. The
more the play operates in that what is not understood what is
looked in its living, the better the play is. If we give,
hence, the child toys which simulate the movements of human
beings or things by drawing threads or in any way, may it be in
a picture book with movable animals or human beings, or in
other toys, we educate it by the play better than giving it the
nicest boxes of building blocks. Since in this too much
intellectual activity interferes already what belongs to a more
personal principle than that experimenting around with the
alive-movable that is not grasped intellectually but is
observed in its full activity. The less defined and contrived
this is what appears in the play, the better it is because
something higher that cannot be forced into the human
consciousness can then enter because the child relates to life
trying and not intellectually. There we realise how something
educates the child already that exceeds the
personal.
In a way, playing remains an important
educational factor for the whole life. Of course, I do not mean
the card game here, because all games that are directed to the
intellect claim the personal of the human being that is bound
mostly to the instrument of the brain. Even if much favourable
is said about chess, it can never be a factor of self-education
because it depends on that which is bound mostly to the
instrument of the brain that has to infer. If the human being
is active with gymnastics where he has to set his muscles in
motion in such a way that he can infer nothing at all that he
does not strain his intellect, but directly develops with the
activities and not with intellectual understanding, then we
deal with a self-pedagogic play.
From it, we directly gain an important
principle of any self-education. This is that the human being
who has to educate himself by the education of his intellect
and in particular by the education of his will depends on the
care of the contact and interrelation with the outside world.
The human will can be educated not by inner intellectual
training, but it strengthened, so that the human being has a
firm hold inside if he maintains the will while the own will
and the outside world interact.
That is why the usual self-education is
almost injured if the human being tries to strengthen his will
for the outer life by inner means, by inner training. There we
get to various things which are downright recommended for
self-education today, and against which spiritual science
cannot enough warn. There one recommends how you can get a
confident manner how you develop the will, so that you can
position yourself in life and carry out such actions which
correspond to your intentions. There one recommends, for
example: do such exercises to avoid fear, curiosity, or other
passions and negative sensations. I know that someone who hears
that will say after, today he has spoken against the control of
fear, of passion and so forth. — But this is not the
case, I have said that the requirements that the human being
puts to himself in such a way can lead to no real will culture.
Since he should get this will culture which the human being
needs for the outer life by the interaction with the outer
life. It is much more appropriate if the human being needs a
strong will for life that he tries to get it by exerting outer
strength while he has to strain his body and to pay attention
with his eyes, so really leading off the fight with the
immediate sensory world. This harmonises us with the outer
world, with that outer world from which our whole physical
organisation is formed, admittedly, formed by the
spirit.
However, while we direct our self-education
in such a way, we also work on those parts of our spiritual
organism that harmonise us with that outside world. But if we
work only inside with concentration of thought and other
methods that are found in the bookstores today, we work
separated from the world in this restricted soul that is not
harmonised with the world, but just has its importance from the
fact that it secludes itself. It is quite correct that that who
exposes himself to outer dangers and tries to overcome them
practices a better self-education than that who buys some books
about self-education and carries out exercises to achieve
fearlessness, dispassion and the like.
Indeed, such things of easy kind can give
personal advantages, but always because the person concerned
develops what separates him from the world, while he positions
himself by the first characterised attitude unselfishly in the
world. I said, now someone could state, so you speak against
fearlessness, dispassion and against all things about which one
can say that it leads to self-education while overcoming
them. — Only in one case, this must be stressed if it concerns
the development of the will for the outer physical world if the
human being wants to strengthen the will in the outer world
because just these things cause only an inner work and are
applied wrongly to the education of the character, to the
education of the will. Rightly, you apply them to the education
of your knowledge.
Someone who wants to get knowledge who
wants to behold into the supersensible world and has no other
goal at first, can rightly do such exercises. Hence, if
anything is got out of spiritual science competently, the
instruction is not given:
How Does One Attain Forces to Develop the Will in the Everyday World?,
but there are instructions:
How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?
Where such instructions are given, one pays attention to such
terms exactly. These things, as they
are described in my book
How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?,
also lead to a culture of the will, not directly, but
indirectly, while that which aims at this development in the
higher worlds waits for that which comes then. The development
of the will must take place by itself, and then it works in the
right sense and takes healthy ways.
So we can say that will culture,
self-education of the will must be out to produce a healthy
relation to the outside, whether this relation refers more to
issues of the physical culture, whether that what is searched
here refers more to the development of character. There it is
much more important instead of brooding how one becomes
intrepid, without passion and the like to face life and the
human beings, and then to leave yourself to your impartial
feeling which is filled more or less with sympathy or
antipathy. While we go through life in such a way that we
develop our interest in life everywhere, we produce that
interplay with the outer world that can lead the will from step
to step. This develops our will, while we face life with all
sympathies and antipathies that it claims from us. To put it
another way: that forms our will, which leads us beyond us to
the world. Everything that leads us from the world into us
develops — and there it is necessary — our knowledge, this
just furthers our inner life if we want to develop own
knowledge. However, own knowledge is in the field of psychic
development. We have to confess that we become more harmonious
in relation to the philosophy of life, to the achievement of
life riddles, while we develop our cognitive faculties, while
we appropriate inner forces. Against it, the will is only
developed for life itself in the right way.
With it, we have shown where the teacher of
self-education is to be searched, actually, who would have to
be the human being himself. No, the human being must not be it
in his narrow personality, and in particular, he has not to be
it in relation to the self-education of will. If we assume with
spiritual science that the human being can leave his
personality without losing himself, then we educate if we open
ourselves to life, in particular in such a way as playing works
on the child —
the comparison must not be
misunderstood —
then we educate our will. But how? The
intellectual culture does not really further our development,
has no self-pedagogic value. That element must play the biggest
role with self-education that outreaches intellectuality,
reason, while we appropriate maturity of life. Just like
playing educates the child best of all that it is educated not
intellectually, but while it is trying, the human being
educates his will best of all with those experiences of life
which he understands not with his reason but facing them with
sympathy, with love, with the feeling that the things are lofty
or touch humour. This furthers us. Here is the self-education
of the will. Reason, intellectual culture cannot work on the
will at all. Observe how the immediate experience works on the
will.
A moral philosopher who does not stand on
the viewpoint of reincarnation — Carneri
(Bartholomäus C., 1821–1909, Austrian philosopher, poet,
politician) —
draws the attention to the fact that the
character of the child is something steady, but forms just with
those elements which emerge immediately from life. Then he
asks, what can the character of a human being change in short
time? He says, it can change radically, for example, by mighty
love or by a friendship where the human being suddenly unfolds
such a sympathy that does not examine but loses itself in the
human being. —
There the character can suddenly take
another turn simply because in those spheres where the
character is, that is where the will works, the frames of mind
are involved in the immediate life. If we face a human being
and recognise him as this or that excellent or bad person
working directly with our reason, our character does not
change; otherwise, the judges would often have to change within
one week. But if these or those feelings of friendship occur,
the whole configuration of the human character often changes.
This is evidence of the fact that the culture of will depends
on the development of the frames of mind. Because we can take
charge of our life, can change our frames of mind, in a way, so
to speak, we take charge of our will-education in certain
respect. But it is important to pay attention to life and that
we do not live chaotically and dedicate ourselves comfortably
to the stream of life, but just pay attention to it. Then we
realise that a human being can be more the educator of his self
if he can take charge of his frames of mind but that the worst
self-educator is that human being who never takes charge of his
moods, but perpetually loses himself in them.
If we want to be educators of our will, we
have to turn to our feelings and sensations and to investigate
in wise self-knowledge how we can work on our feelings and
sensations. If we have lost ourselves in sympathy or antipathy,
then it is not the time to work on us. Hence, we must pick out
the moments of will education where we especially are not
engaged with our moods, but can think about our life and our
sensations. That means that self-education must take place just
when the demanded moments require it in the least from us. But
then people do it in the least, because they are not concerned.
Someone who resorts to his moods after again notices only later
that he has omitted something. This is one of the most
important principles that the will must be educated in life,
while the human being wisely takes charge of the course of his
moods.
Against it, the will is always developed to
the selfish side when the human being wants to strengthen his
will from the intellect. Such exercises are good immediately
for our knowledge culture, for that what we want to get in the
spiritual or later even in the psychic fields. But then we can
do nothing but working on ourselves within our souls. Besides,
it is particularly important that the human being pays
attention above all to the big contrast which exists between
the self-education of the inner life and the self-education of
the outer life. In relation to both mistakes about mistake are
done, and we see one-sidedness about one-sidedness working.
What is not recommended for the body? It has become maybe rare,
but there also are even today people who wrap themselves
especially strongly and say, wrapping also protects against
heat. The other is more widespread that one recommends
one-sided toughening to protect against cold and the rigours of
weather, against it to expose oneself to aerial and solar
cures. These are not the essentials that the human being
exposes himself to solar heat so and so long what may be quite
useful for this or that purpose, but may not be a means of
education, or that he does cures with cold water repeatedly.
The essentials for the body are versatility which enables the
body to expose itself also once to the cold, without catching
cold, or to walk once in the boiling solar heat about a quite
unshaded place. Hence, one could say that a reasonable
self-education cannot agree as a rule with most things that one
recommends today, but will pay attention that something of all
works on us harmoniously.
Just the opposite that is good for our body
is good for the mind, for the soul. While the outer body needs
versatility, adaptation to the outer conditions, the soul needs
concentration for the intellectual culture, the possibility to
lead back the sum of thoughts, sensations and perceptions to
few basic ideas. That human being who does not endeavour for
his intellectual self-education to lead back his knowledge to
some basic ideas that can control everything else will see his
memory suffering, also his nervous system and the way, in which
he has to position himself in life. Someone who can lead back
certain things to main ideas will realise that he faces the
outer life quietly where it demands actions from him. However,
someone who goes through life only in such a way that he does
not lead back that to some basic ideas which life offers will
show that he hard remembers, that he faces life with a certain
disharmony. Because in our time the belief in the concentration
of the mind exists so little and is searched so little, also a
lot of other evil appears as defects of self-education, above
all nervousness. While one develops the will, while one lets
his muscles interact with the outer life, one has to develop
his nervous system by mental concentration. Briefly, everything
that works from the inside out and develops in the nervous
system is furthered by leading back our life to single ideas,
by recollection. The care of the nervous system and of that,
which forms its basis in the spiritual, is necessary if the
human being wants to face life internally
strengthened.
If we speak about these questions, a newer,
materialistic view can force itself on us in this respect, even
if the older one can be often disputed from the viewpoint of
modern humaneness. One confuses two things normally. The human
being cannot become nervous by education of his will, but by a
wrong education of his will. The will education can lead to
nervousness, while the human being searches it wrongly, if he
wants to get around to it with some inner means that work on
his mental pictures instead connecting himself with the outer
world and strengthening his will with its obstacles.
Thereby his will can easily become nervous.
Today this nervousness is already so understood that it has to
be treated rather leniently. Carneri tells an interesting case
of it. Once there was a landowner who, while he was, otherwise,
a good-natured person, had such a soul state sometimes that he
pummeled his people, and one called this a special case of
nervousness. His people had to suffer exceptionally much, but
those endlessly regretted who understand the most after the
present views that he had to pummel his people repeatedly. This
went well as long as he caught a Tartar once whom he also
wanted to pummel. However, the other man took a stick and
pummeled the landowner severely, so that he had to remain lying
in the bed for one week. Now something appeared, while once the
landowner was regretted because of his soul states, now one
stopped not only regretting him, but he was completely changed
after some time.
I do not want to recommend something with
it, but such a fact is exceptionally instructive. If we
check it, we can realise very well: if one had tried to
persuade the landowner, his nervousness would have remained. If
one had worked on his mind, he would not have interacted with
the outside world, he would not have changed. However, he
interacted with the outside, namely with the cane of the other.
With something that he would never have understood in the very
own sense he got to know the effect which he had produced from
his frame of mind, from his nervousness when he faced life.
Thus, the concept “will culture” must be corrected
first that the will can be only toughened by the contact with
the outside world even if we do not want to educate our will as
in the cited drastic case.
As to the intellectual life with
self-education, we have to be able to live internally in such a
way that we evoke this fruitful element that is in us, indeed,
but may lie idle. We develop it, while we hold together our
stock of perceptions, while we peruse it repeatedly, look back
at certain ideas, and survey what we have experienced in life
to put it repeatedly before us. In particular, it is important
that we can not only remember, think, imagine, but that we
learn to forget in right way. Oblivion should not be
recommended here as a special virtue, but if we face the one or
the other in life, we notice very soon that we cannot carry
that what we experience completely from one moment of the
experience to a later one. We can do it with mental pictures
sometimes, but we can do it in the least cases with sensations,
feelings, pains, and sufferings. How do these working on? They
grow pale, and in the hidden depths of the soul, they are
working on. That which one forgets there is a healthy element,
which descends in the hidden depths of our soul life. By this
descending of a healthy element, we have something that works
on us that can bring us again from step to step. It does not
concern that we stuff ourselves as it were with all kinds of
material, but it concerns to pursue the things carefully but to
keep back that which we need, and to sink that which we have
otherwise experienced in the depths of our soul. Thereby we
maintain attention in particular. Someone who does not believe
that this is something important will say, oh that does not
matter. — He does not take charge of his own personality.
However, somebody who knows that it matters what one forgets,
says to himself, I have to take charge of my life, I must not
let everything work on myself. If I go to this or that circle
where one chats silly stuff only, it can be that I forget it
because I am an intellectual person, but it matters whether I
forget this silly stuff or something reasonable. — Thus, it
matters which object you include in your oblivion. Since from
this forgotten something often ascends that now is the object
of our imagination, of our fancy. While the intellectual
element fatigues life, everything that sets our soul forces in
motion in such a way that we invent something, is a fruitful,
stimulating and life-supporting element. This is something that
we have to foster in a wise self-education in
particular.
Thus, we have also considered some moments
of self-education relating to the intellect and the inner soul
element. If we foster this inner soul element in particular and
appreciate it, we will realise that it flows into the will
automatically, into the character, while we rather weaken it
with all efforts that we undertake to influence the character
directly because we do not interact with the world.
Spiritual science can support all such
things that can serve for self-education with the principle of
reincarnation and karma. That means, what I experience in the
present life is the effect of former lives, and what I
experience now causes that which I face in the following
lives.
Thereby you learn if you introduce the
ideas of the repeated lives on earth and of karma in your life
to cause the right balance of resignation and desire of
activity. Concerning both, we can commit the biggest sins with
our self-education. People do just the opposite of that
resignation and desire of activity that
corresponds to a real wise self-education. An anthroposophist
will say to himself, what occurs to me in life as my destiny,
as pains or joys what brings me together with these or those
human beings and so on I have to consider it under the
viewpoint that I am that with my self which exceeds my narrow
personality who has caused all that.
Then we get to something that could appear
at first in such a way, as if it could lead to weakness, to the
resignation of fate because we know that we ourselves have
caused it. As well as the things occur to us, they must occur
because they have originated from us in such a way. If we have
this resignation, it strengthens our will because it is not
caused by an inner training of the will, but by a relation to
the outer destiny, to that what occurs to us. There is nothing
in the self-education that can make our will stronger but
resignation and the devotion to destiny, but serenity. Someone
weakens his will who is liverish at any opportunity and is
indignant at his destiny. Someone strengthens his will who is
able to submit to his destiny in wise self-education. Those
human beings have the weakest will who feel at any opportunity
in such a way, as if this and that occurs to them completely
undeservedly, as if they have simply to shake off it from
themselves.
The present human being does seldom like
this devotion. For it, he develops another devotion even more.
Everywhere we see the devotion to the inside
widespread, to the intellect, to the inner
forces. There the human being dedicates himself straight away
to his inner soul state and says, if you do not like this, it
is due to you, because you are not attentive enough.
— Today
just those people are dedicated to the inside in the most who
are indignant at the outer destiny.
How complacent is the human being. The human being is
especially complacent if he stresses repeatedly that nothing
must be developed, actually, but that is already in him today.
The today's doctrine of individuality is the purest doctrine of
devotion. The fact that the individuality must be led up and
that one has to let no opportunity unused for that is something
that argues tremendously against the feelings of devotion of
the modern active human beings.
One has to harmonise inner humility and
activity properly. But we are able to do this only if we are
open to life. This is a demand that we must put just to
ourselves self-education. So the
human being looking at the future can say to himself, that
which I develop will work on me in future, will enrich my
destiny. — If the human being extends his life beyond the present
embodiment and can look at the effect of his present existence,
the urge of activity will awake and the human being will rise
beyond his present nature, and his devotion will be active in
right way, if he understands that he himself has caused what he
experiences in the present.
Thus, just the ideas of reincarnation and
karma can deliver what we want for our destiny. The questions
of self-education no sooner get right answers before spiritual
science cannot merge into the inner longing of the searching
human beings. Spiritual science does not want to agitate, but
it wants to give that to the present, which corresponds to the
inner urge of the modern human being. It was always in such a
way that, indeed, truth had to serve to any age for which it
was determined in appropriate form but that at the same time
this age has always rejected truth. Hence, spiritual science
can also not escape from the destiny, as necessary as it is, to
be misjudged and faces the fact that today one says, it is an
empty pipe dream, daydreaming, unless anything worse. But just
if one considers such decisive questions, one sees the meaning
and the range of that what spiritual science can offer as an
elixir of life. Then one can also expect what it is, and what
it can be as an elixir of life. One can apply a saying to it
which can help somebody who realises its true depths and
significance get over any opposition and misunderstanding, a
saying which a man has spoken with whom one cannot agree
everywhere but who hit the nail right on the head in certain
respect. The saying of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860, German
philosopher) is applicable to the destiny of the
spiritual-scientific truth: “During all centuries, the
poor truth had to blush about the fact that it was paradoxical,
and, nevertheless, it is not its guilt. It cannot accept the
figure of the sitting enthroned general fallacy. There it looks
up sighing to its protective god, the time, which promises
victory and fame, but its strokes of wing are so big and slow,
that the individual dies in the meanwhile.”
Schopenhauer could not yet add what the
modern spiritual science can add. May the protective god do
such big strokes of wing that the individual cannot realise the
truth of the time, that the individual has to die before the
truth is victorious, spiritual science yet shows that in the
human being an everlasting essence lives which always comes
again and does not confine itself, but goes from life to
life.
Hence, we can say to ourselves, even if the time's strokes of
wing are so big that the single individual dies and does not
experience the victory of truth, — our
self, exceeding our personality, can still experience the
victory of truth, this victory and all victories, because the
always new life will defeat the old death. — The soul can
express that which the spiritual researcher has to say about
the enclosing nature of the human being as the deepest, most
significant force of its life while saying to itself with
Lessing: “Is not the whole eternity
mine?”
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