Lecture
II
You
will have seen that the soul experiences of those who appear in
The Souls' Awakening
take place on the boundary between the physical
sense world and the super-sensible spiritual worlds. It is of great
significance to the science of the spirit to seize this border region
with the inner eye, for it is only natural that at first everything
of the super-sensible world that the human soul can experience is an
unknown territory from the viewpoint of our faculties and soul
experiences in the physical sense world.
When a person has become familiar with the spiritual
world by means of the various methods we have apprehended, that is,
when the soul has learned to observe, explore and perceive outside
the physical body, then such existence and perception in the
spiritual world makes it necessary for the soul to develop quite
special capacities, special strengths. When during its earth
existence the soul is striving towards clairvoyant consciousness,
whether already clairvoyant or wishing to become so, it should of
course be able to stay outside the body in the spiritual world and
then as an earth being come back again into the physical body, living
as a human earth person, a normal sense-being within the sense world.
We may therefore say that the soul in becoming
clairvoyant must be able to move in the spiritual world according to
its laws, and it must ever and again be able to step back over the
threshold into the physical sense world, behaving here — to put
it in plain terms — correctly and sensibly. Since the faculties
of the soul for the spiritual world must be and are different from
those the soul employs for the physical senses and the rest of the
physical body, the soul has definitely to acquire mobility, if it
wants to become clairvoyant. Then it can perceive and take in the
spiritual world with the necessary faculties for it, returning across
the border and now experiencing the sense world with what is
necessary here. The gaining of this adaptability, the capacity of
transformation, is never easy. If we are to estimate correctly,
however, the differences between the spiritual and physical sense
world, we must keep clearly within our mind's eye precisely this
border region between the two worlds and the threshold itself over
which the soul must pass when it wants to leave one world and enter
the other. We shall see in the course of these lectures how injurious
it can be for the soul in many different ways to carry the habits of
one world into the other, when — in one or the other direction
— the threshold has to be crossed.
Our conduct when passing over this
threshold is made especially difficult by the presence of beings
within the world order that play a certain role in the happenings
shown in
The Souls' Awakening
and the other dramas: the
luciferic and the ahrimanic beings. Indeed, in order to gain the
right relationship to the transition between one and the other world
that we've been speaking about, it is necessary to know how to
conduct ourselves in the right way towards both kinds of beings, the
luciferic and the ahrimanic. Now it would certainly be convenient —
and this solution is chosen at least theoretically by very many souls
— to say: “Yes, indeed, Ahriman seems to be a dangerous
fellow. If he has such an influence on the world and on human
affairs, the simplest thing to do is to banish from the human soul
all the impulses that come from him.” This might seem to be the
most convenient solution, but to the spiritual world it would be
about as sensible as if someone, in order to restore the balance to a
pair of scales, were to take off whatever was weighing down the lower
one. These beings we call Ahriman and Lucifer are right here in the
world, they have their task in the universal order, and one cannot
sweep them away. Besides, it is not a question of annihilating them,
but — as in the case of the weights on both sides of the scales
— the ahrimanic and luciferic forces must balance each other in
their influence on human beings and on other beings. We do not bring
about the true activity of any of the various forces by removing it
but by placing ourselves in the right relationship to it. We have the
wrong attitude to these luciferic and ahrimanic beings if we simply
say that they are bad and harmful. Although these powers rebel in a
certain sense against the general order of the universe — which
had already been designed before they entered it — this does
not stem from the fact that they invariably have to exercise a
harmful activity, but rather that — like the others whom we
have met as lawful members of the higher worlds — they have a
definite sphere of activity in the sum total of the universe. Their
opposition to and rebellion against the cosmic order consists in
their going beyond their own sphere; they exert beyond this sphere
the forces they should employ only within their lawful domain. From
this standpoint let us consider Ahriman or the ahrimanic beings.
We can best characterize Ahriman by saying: he is the
Lord of Death, far and wide the ruler of all the powers that have to
bring about in the physical sense world what this world has to have,
the annihilation and death of its entities. Death in the sense world
is a necessary part of its organization, for otherwise the beings in
it would accumulate to excess, if destruction of life were not at
hand. The task of regulating this in a lawful way fell to Ahriman
from the spiritual world; he is the ruler of the ordering of death.
His sovereign domain is the mineral world, a world that is utterly
dead. One can say that death is poured out over the whole of the
mineral world. Furthermore, because our earth world is constituted as
it is, the mineral world and its laws pervade all the other kingdoms
of nature. Plants, animals, human beings — all are permeated,
as far as they belong to the earth, by the mineral; they absorb the
mineral substances and, with them, all the forces and laws of the
mineral kingdom; they are subject to these laws insofar as they are
part of the being of the earth. Therefore whatever belongs
justifiably to death extends also into the higher regions of the
lawful rule of Ahriman. In what surrounds us as external nature,
Ahriman is the rightful Lord of Death and should not be regarded as
an evil power but as one whose influence in the general world order
is fully legitimate. We will enter into a right relationship with the
sense world only when we bring a creditable interest to bear upon it,
when our interest in the sense world is so reasonable that we can see
everything in it without greedily demanding eternal life for any of
its physical forms; on the contrary, that we can do without them when
they meet their natural death. To be able to rejoice rightly in the
things of the sense world but not to be so dependent on them as to
contradict the laws of death and decay — this is the right
relationship of the human being to the sense world. To bring about
this right relationship to growth and decay, the human being has the
impulses of Ahriman within himself; for this reason they pulsate in
him.
Ahriman, however, can overstep his bounds. In the first
place, he can so far overdo that he sets to work on human thinking. A
man who does not see into the spiritual world and has no
understanding of it will not believe that Ahriman can put his fingers
upon human thinking in a very real way — nevertheless, he does!
Insofar as human thinking lives in the sense world, it is bound to
the brain, which according to universal law is subject to decay.
Ahriman has to regulate the passage of the human brain towards decay,
but when he oversteps his territory, he develops the tendency to
loosen this human thinking from its mortal instrument, the brain, in
order to make it independent. He tries to detach the physical
thinking directed to the sense world from the physical brain, into
whose current of decay this thinking should merge when the human
being passes through the gate of death. Ahriman has the tendency,
when he admits man as a physical being into the stream of death, to
snatch his thinking out of the current of decay. Throughout a man's
whole life Ahriman is always fastening his claws into this thinking
activity and working on the human being so that his thinking will
tear itself away from destruction. Because Ahriman is active in this
way in human thinking and because men bound to the sense world
naturally perceive only the effects of the spiritual beings, those
who are thus in the clutches of Ahriman feel the impulse to wrench
their thinking out of its place in the great cosmic order. The result
is the materialistic frame of mind; this is the reason men want to
apply their thinking only to the sense world, and the people who
refuse to believe in a spiritual world are the ones particularly
obsessed by Ahriman: it is he who enters their thinking and prevails
upon its remaining in the sense world. First of all, if a person has
not become a practical occultist, the result for his inner attitude
will be that he becomes a rank, coarse-grained materialist who wants
to know nothing about spiritual matters. It is Ahriman who has
enticed him into this, only he doesn't notice it. For Ahriman,
however, the process is the following: when he succeeds in severing
the physical thinking from its brain-bound foundation, he throws
shadows and phantoms out into the world which swarm then through the
physical world; with these, Ahriman is continually trying to
establish a special ahrimanic kingdom.
Unremittingly he lies in wait when man's thinking is
about to pass into the stream wherein man himself will journey
through the gate of death; there Ahriman lurks, on the watch to
snatch away and hold back as much of this thinking as possible, and
to form out of it, to tear from its mother-soil, shadows and phantoms
that will people the physical world. Occultly observed, these
phantoms drift around in the physical world disturbing the universal
order; they are creations that Ahriman brings about in the way just
described. We will have the right feeling for Ahriman when we
appreciate his lawful impulses, for when he lets them enter our
souls, we have a correct relationship to the sense world. However, we
must be watchful that he does not tempt us in the way I have
indicated. Certainly the policy some people choose is more convenient
when they say: “Very well, we shall push every ahrimanic
impulse out of our souls.” But nothing will be accomplished
with this dislodgment except that the other side of the scales will
be brought right down — and whoever through mistaken theories
succeeds in driving ahrimanic impulses out of his soul falls prey to
those of Lucifer.
This shows itself particularly when people,
shying away from the right relationship to the ahrimanic powers,
despise the sense world and root out their joy in it. Then they
reject their former good relationship and in order not to become
attached to it, they crush all their interest in the physical world.
With this comes a false asceticism, which in its turn offers
the most powerful handle to the entrance of the unlawful luciferic
impulses. The history of asceticism could very well be written by
presenting it as a continuous allurement of Lucifer. In false
asceticism a person exposes himself to this kind of seduction because
instead of rightly balancing the scales, using thus the polarity of
forces, he does away with one side altogether.
However, when the human being makes a correct estimate
of the physical sense world, Ahriman is fully justified. The mineral
world is his very own kingdom, the kingdom over which death is poured
out continuously. In the higher kingdoms of nature Ahriman is the
regulator of death insofar as he affects the course of events and the
creatures lawfully. What we can trace as super-sensible in the
external world, we call for certain reasons spiritual; what is more
active inwardly within the human being, we assign to the soul.
Ahriman is a more spiritual being; Lucifer is more soul nature.
Ahriman can be called the lord of all that takes place in external
nature; Lucifer penetrates with his impulses into the inner nature of
man.
Now there is also a lawful task belonging to Lucifer,
one quite in accordance with the universal cosmic order. In a certain
way Lucifer's task is to tear man and everything in the world
pertaining to the soul away from living and being absorbed in the
physical-sensory alone. If there were no luciferic power in the
world, we would dream along in the perceptions streaming into us from
the external world and in what comes to us from that world through
the intellect. That would be a kind of dreaming away of human soul
existence within the sense world. There are indeed impulses which
will not tear our souls away from the sense world as long as they are
bound temporarily to it but which raise our souls to a different sort
of living, feeling and rejoicing from the kind the sense world can
offer. We need merely to think of what humanity has been seeking as
artistic development. Wherever the human being creates something
through his imagination and his soul life of feeling, no longer
clinging dully to the sense world but rising above it, Lucifer is the
power that tears him out of that world. A large part of what is
uplifting and liberating in the artistic development of mankind is
inspired by Lucifer. We can designate something else as the
inspiration of Lucifer: the human being has the chance through
luciferic powers to free his thinking from a mere photograph-like
copying of the sense world; he can raise himself above this in
freedom, which he does, for instance, in his philosophy. From this
point of view, all philosophizing is the inspiration of Lucifer. One
could even write a history of the philosophical development of
mankind, insofar as this is not pure positivism — that is, does
not keep to the external materialistic — and could say: the
history of the development of philosophy is a continual testimony to
the inspiration of Lucifer. All creative work, in fact, that rises
above the sense world we owe to Lucifer's rightful activities and
powers.
However, Lucifer too can overstep his domain, and the
rebellion of the luciferic beings against the cosmic order is due to
their overstepping their place. Lucifer has the tendency continually
to do this by contaminating the feeling life of the soul. Ahriman has
more to do with our thinking, Lucifer with the feelings, with the
life of the emotions, passions, impulses and desires. Lucifer is lord
over everything of soul feeling in the physical sense world. He has
the tendency to detach and separate this feeling life of the soul
from the physical world, to spiritualize it, and to set up, one can
say, on a specially isolated island of spiritual existence a
luciferic kingdom composed of all the soul feeling he can seize and
carry off from the sense world. Whereas Ahriman wants to hold back
thinking to the physical sense world and make shadows and phantoms of
it, visible to elementary clairvoyance as floating, wafting shadows,
Lucifer does the opposite: he takes what is soul feeling in the
physical sense world, tears it out and puts it in a special luciferic
kingdom set up as an isolated kingdom similar to his own nature, in
opposition to the general cosmic order.
We can form an idea about how Lucifer can get at human
beings in this way by considering with all our heart and soul a
phenomenon in human life that we will speak about later in more
detail: the phenomenon of love in the widest sense of the word, the
foundation of a true moral life in the world order of humanity.
Concerning love in its widest sense, the following has to be said:
when love appears in the physical sense world and has its effect on
human life, it is absolutely protected from every unlawful luciferic
attack if the love is for another person and for that other person's
own sake. When we are met by some other human being or by one
belonging to another kingdom of nature in the physical world, that
being meets us with certain qualities. If we are freely receptive to
these qualities, if we are capable of being moved by them, they then
command our love and we cannot help loving that other being. We are
moved by the other being to love it.
Where the cause of love lies not in the one who loves
but in the object of love, this form and kind of love in the sense
world is absolute proof against every luciferic influence. But now if
you observe human life, you will soon see that another kind of love
is playing its part, in which a person loves because he himself has
certain qualities that feel satisfied, or charmed, or delighted, when
he can love this or that other being. Here he loves for his own sake;
he loves because his disposition is thus or so, and this particular
disposition finds its satisfaction in loving someone else.
This love, which one can call egoistic
love, must also exist. It really has to be present in mankind.
Everything we can love in the spiritual world, all the spiritual
facts, everything that love can cause to live in us as a longing for
and an impulse upwards into the spiritual world, to comprehend the
beings of the spiritual world, to perceive the spiritual world: all
this springs naturally from a sentient love for that world. This love
for the spiritual, however, must — not may but must
— come about necessarily for our own sake. We are beings whose
roots are in the spiritual world. It is our duty to make ourselves as
perfect as we can. For our own sake we must love the spiritual world
in order to draw as many forces as possible out of it into our own
being. In spiritual love a personal, individual element — we
can call it egoistic — is fully justified, for it detaches man
from the sense world; it leads him upwards into the spiritual world;
it leads him on to fulfill the necessary duty of continually bringing
himself further and further towards perfection.
Now Lucifer has the tendency to interchange the two
worlds with each other. In human love whenever a person loves in the
physical sense world for himself with a trace of egoism, it occurs
because Lucifer wants to make physical love similar to spiritual
love. He can then root it out of the physical sense world and lead it
into his own special kingdom. This means that all love that can be
called egoistic and is not there for the sake of the beloved but for
the sake of the one who loves, is exposed to Lucifer's impulses.
If we consider what has been said, we will see that in
this modern materialistic culture there is every reason to point out
these luciferic allurements in regard to love, for a great part of
our present-day outlook and literature, especially that of medicine,
is permeated by the luciferic conception of love. We would have to
touch on a rather offensive subject if we were to treat this in
greater detail. The luciferic element in love is actually cherished
by a large section of our medical science; men are told again and
again — for it is the male world especially pandered to in this
— that they must cultivate a certain sphere of love as
necessary for their health, that is, necessary for their own sake. A
great deal of advice is given in this direction and certain
experiences in love recommended that do not spring from a love for
the other being but because they are presumed indispensable in the
life of the male. Such arguments — even when they are clothed
in the robes of science — are nothing but inspirations of the
luciferic element in the world; a large portion of science is
penetrated simply by luciferic points of view. Lucifer finds the best
recruits for his kingdom among those who allow such advice to be
given to them and who believe that it is imperative for the
well-being of their person. It is absolutely necessary for us to know
such things. Those words I quoted yesterday must be emphasized again
and again: People never notice the devil, either in luciferic or
ahrimanic form, even when he has them by the collar! People do not
see that the materialistic scientist who gives the advice just
mentioned is under the yoke of Lucifer. They deny Lucifer because
they deny all the spiritual worlds.
We see therefore that what is great and sublime on the
one hand, what carries and uplifts the evolution of humanity depends
on Lucifer. Mankind must understand how to keep the impulses that
come from him in their rightful place. Wherever Lucifer makes his
appearance as the guardian of beauty and glory, as the patron of
artistic impulses, there arises in humanity from his activity great
and sublime power. But there is also a shadow-side to Lucifer's
activity. He tries everywhere to tear the emotional side of the soul
away from the sense organism and make it independent, permeated with
egoism and egotism. Thus there enters into the emotional soul nature
the element of self-will and other such tendencies. A person can then
form for himself in freewheeling activity — with a generous
hand, one can say — all sorts of ideas about the universe. How
many people indulge in philosophizing, shake it out of their sleeves,
without troubling themselves in the least as to whether their
speculations are in accord with the general course of universal
order! These eccentric philosophers are actually found in great
numbers all over the world. In love with their own ideas, they fail
to counterbalance the luciferic element with the ahrimanic one that
always asks whether everything man acquires by his thinking in the
physical sense world actually squares with the laws of the physical
world. So we see these people running around with their opinions,
which are just a lot of fanatic enthusiasms incompatible with the
cosmic order. It is from the shadow side of the luciferic impulse
that all these fanatic enthusiasms, the egoistic and confused
opinions, the eccentric ideas and false, extravagant idealism arise.
Most significantly, however, it is on the borderland or threshold
between the sensible and the super-sensible that these luciferic and
ahrimanic elements confront us, when we look with the eyes of
clairvoyant consciousness.
When the human soul takes on the task of making itself
capable of looking into the spiritual world and gaining insight
there, it takes on itself, more than anything else, a task that
otherwise is carried out by the subconscious guidance of soul life.
Nature and its laws take care that in everyday life man does not
often transfer the customs and regulations of one kingdom into
another; the natural order would be entirely out of control if the
separate worlds were to get mixed up together. We emphasized a moment
ago that love for the spiritual world must evolve in such a way that
the human being develops in himself first and foremost an
all-pervasive inner strength, as well as a craving for
self-improvement. He has to fix his eye on himself when he nurtures
his love for the spiritual world. If, however, he transfers to the
senses the kind of ardour that can guide him in the spiritual world
to what is most sublime, it will lead him into what is most
detestable. There are people who have in their outward physical
experience and in their everyday activities no special interest in
the spiritual world. It is said such people today are not uncommon.
But nature does not permit us to use the ostrich strategy in her
affairs. The ostrich strategy, as you know, consists in the bird
sticking his head in the sand and believing that the things he
doesn't see are not there. Materialistic minds believe that the
spiritual world is not there; they do not see it. They are true
ostriches.
Nevertheless, in the depths of their souls, the craving
for the spiritual world does not cease to exist merely because they
deaden themselves and deny its reality. It is actually there. In
every human soul, however materialistic, the desire and love for the
spiritual world is alive, but people who deaden their soul nature are
unconscious of the craving.
There is a law that something repressed and deadened at
one point will break out at another. The consequence of the
repression of the egoistic impulse towards the spiritual world is
that it thrusts itself into the sensual desires. The kind of love due
the spiritual world hurls itself away from there into the sensual
impulses, passions and desires, and these impulses become perverse.
The perversity of the sensual impulses and their repellent
abnormalities are the mirror image of what could be noble virtues in
the spiritual world, were human beings to use for the spiritual world
all the forces poured out into the physical world. We must consider
this seriously: what finds expression in the sense world as loathsome
impulses could — if they were used in the spiritual world —
accomplish there something of the most sublime character. This is
immensely significant.
You see how in this regard the sublime is changed into
the horrible when the boundary between the physical sense world and
the super-sensible world is not observed or valued in the right way.
Clairvoyant consciousness should develop so that the clairvoyant soul
can live in the super-sensible worlds according to the laws of those
worlds; then it must be able to return to its life in the body
without letting itself be led astray in the everyday physical sense
world by the laws of the super-sensible worlds.
Suppose a soul could not do this — then the
following would take place. We shall see that the soul in passing the
boundary region between one world and the other learns most of all
how to conduct itself in the right way through meeting the Guardian
of the Threshold. But suppose a soul, having made itself clairvoyant
(this can very well happen) had through various circumstances become
clairvoyant without rightfully meeting with the Guardian of the
Threshold. Such a soul could see into the super-sensible worlds
clairvoyantly and have perceptions there, but it would return then to
the physical sense world after entering wrongfully the spiritual
world and merely nibbling at dainties there. Such eaters of sweet
things in the spiritual world are numerous and it can truly be said
that nibbling there is far more serious than it is in the sense
world. After nibbling at the spiritual world, it happens very often
that a person takes back into the sense world what he has
experienced, but the experience shrinks and condenses. A clairvoyant
of this kind, one who does not conduct himself according to the laws
of the universal order, returns to the physical sense world bringing
with him the condensed pictures and impressions of the super-sensible
worlds. He will no longer merely look out and ponder the physical
world but while he lives within his physical body he will have before
him the after-effects of the spiritual world in pictures quite
similar to those of sense except that they have no relation to
reality, are only illusions, hallucinations, dream pictures.
A person who is able to look in the right
way into the spiritual world will never again confuse reality and the
fantastic. In this the philosophy of Schopenhauer, in so far as it is
erroneous, refutes itself. In the case of its greatest mistake —
that our whole environment is nothing but our mental picture —
it refutes itself even in the sense world. If you press
Schopenhauer's statement, it will show itself up as a fallacy,
for you will be guided by life itself to distinguish between iron
heated to 900 degrees that is actually perceptible and the imagined
iron of 900 degrees that will cause no pain. Life itself reveals the
difference between reality and fancy when one lives in the real world
with the capacities belonging to it. Even Kant's statement by which
he formulated his so-called proof of God, that is, that a hundred
imagined dollars are just as valuable as a hundred real ones —
that, too, will be contradicted by life. Certainly a hundred imagined
dollars contain just as many pennies as a hundred real ones, but for
all that there is a difference that comes strongly to the fore in
real life. I would recommend anyone who considers Kant's statement to
be correct to try to pay a hundred dollar debt with imagined
currency; he will notice the difference at once.
If this is the case in the physical sense world when one
really stands firmly in it and observes its laws, it is the same for
the super-sensible worlds. If one only nibbles at the latter, one will
have no protection against mistaking illusion for truth; when the
pictures shrink and condense, one takes what should be merely picture
for reality. The sweets, too, that such a person carries within
himself out of the spiritual world are a special booty for Ahriman to
pounce on. From what he can pull out of ordinary human thinking he
gets only airy shadows, but — to put it plainly — he gets
well padded shadows and plump phantoms when he presses out of human
body-individualities (as well as he can) the false illusory pictures
created by nibbling on the sly in the spiritual world. In this
ahrimanic fashion the physical sense world is populated by spiritual
shades and phantoms that offer serious resistance to the general
cosmic order.
From all this, we see how the ahrimanic influence can
encroach most strongly when it oversteps its boundaries and works
against the general cosmic order; it turns to evil, especially in the
perversion of its lawful activity.
There is no essential evil. Everything
evil arises from this, something that is good in one direction is put
to use in the world in another direction and thereby turned into
evil. In a somewhat similar way the luciferic influence, the
inducement to so much that is noble and sublime, may become
dangerous, exceedingly dangerous, particularly to the soul that has
become clairvoyant. This happens in just the opposite situation. We
looked before at what happens when a soul nibbles at the spiritual
world, that is, perceives something there, but then on returning to
the physical sense world does not tell itself: “Here you may
not use the same kind of thought pictures that are right for the
spiritual world.” In this case the soul is exposed in the
physical world to the influence of Ahriman. But the opposite can take
place. The human soul can carry into the spiritual world what should
belong only to the physical sense world, namely the kinds of
perception, feeling, and passion that the soul must necessarily
develop to a certain degree for the physical world. None of the
emotions cultivated here, however, should be carried into the
spiritual world if the soul is not to fall victim to the temptations
and allurements of Lucifer to an unusual degree.
This is what was attempted to some extent in Scene Nine of
The Souls' Awakening
in presenting Maria's inmost soul attitude.
It would be quite wrong for anyone to require
in this scene something as dramatically tumultuous and exciting as
what one likes to have in superficial physical drama. If Maria's
inner nature were such that at the moment of receiving the memories
of the devachanic world and of the Egyptian period, her soul had
experienced disturbing passions, disturbing desires, it would have
been hurtled back and forth by these waves of emotion. A soul that
cannot receive the impulses of the spiritual world with inner calm,
in absolute tranquillity, rising above all outward physical drama,
will suffer in the spiritual world a fate that I can only render in
the following picture: Imagine to yourselves a being made of rubber
flying in all directions in a space enclosed on all sides, flying
against a wall and thrown back from it, flying against another wall,
thrown back again, flying back and forth like this in turbulent
movement on the waves of the emotional life. This actually happens to
a soul that carries into the spiritual world the kind of perception,
feeling and passion belonging to the sense world. Something further
happens. It is not pleasant to be thrown back and forth like a rubber
ball as if one were in a cosmic prison. Therefore in such a case the
soul that is clairvoyant follows chiefly the special policy of the
ostrich; as a matter of fact, the soul stupefies itself in regard to
this being thrown back and forth; it dulls its consciousness so that
it is no longer aware of it. It therefore believes that it is not
being thrown back and forth. Lucifer can then come all the closer,
because the consciousness is dulled. He lures the soul out and leads
it to his isolated kingdom. There the soul can receive its spiritual
impressions but, received in this island kingdom, they are completely
luciferic.
Because self-knowledge is hard to come by and the soul
has the greatest difficulty in becoming clear about certain of its
qualities, because, too, people are bent on getting as quickly as
possible into the spiritual world, it is not at all to be wondered at
that they say to themselves: I am already mature enough; I will of
course be able to control my passions. As a matter of fact, it is
more easily said than done. There are certain qualities that
particularly challenge our control. Vanity, ambition, and similar
things sit so deeply entrenched in human souls that it is not easy to
admit to oneself: You are vain and ambitious! You want power! When we
look into ourselves, we are usually deceived about just those
emotions that are the very worst ones. To carry them into the
spiritual world means that a person will most easily become the prey
of Lucifer. And when he notices how he is thrown hither and thither,
he does not willingly say: This comes from ambition or from vanity —
but he looks for the way to deaden the soul. Then Lucifer carries him
off into his kingdom. There, of course, a person may receive insights
but these do not correspond to the cosmic order, which had already
been designed before Lucifer began his meddling.
( 8 )
They are spiritual insights of a thoroughly luciferic nature. He may
receive the most extraordinary impressions and judge them to be absolute
truths. He may tell people about all sorts of incarnations of this
person or that, but these will simply be purely luciferic
inspirations.
In order that the right relationship should come about
at her “Awakening,” Maria had to be presented, at the
moment when the spiritual world was to rush in on her with such
vehemence, as a person who could well appear absurd to someone like
one of our fine young theater critics. A dainty little modern critic
might well say: “After finishing the Egyptian scene, there sat
Maria as if she had just had breakfast, experiencing these things
without a bit of lively drama.” And yet anything else would be
untrue at this stage of her development. Only Maria's quiet calmness
can represent the truth of her development, as the rays of spiritual
light fall upon the scene. We see from this how much depends on the
soul mood, mastering within itself all the emotions and passions that
are significant only for the physical sense world, if the soul is to
cross the threshold of the spiritual world in the right way;
otherwise it will experience there the necessary consequence of what
remains of sensual feeling. Ahriman is the more spiritual being; what
he carries out in the way of unlawful activity, of the unlawful
activity he can create, flows more or less into the general world of
the senses. Lucifer is more a being of soul; he tries to draw
emotional soul elements out of the sense world and embody them in his
special luciferic kingdom, where for every human being —
according to the egoism rooted in his nature — Lucifer wants to
ensure the greatest possibility of segregated independence.
We see from this that when we want to form
a judgment of such beings as Ahriman and Lucifer, it cannot be a
question of simply calling them good or bad. Instead we have to
understand what is the lawful activity, what is the right domain of
these beings and where their unlawful activity, the overstepping of
their limits, begins. For through the fact that they go beyond their
limits, they entice human beings to an unlawful overstepping of the
boundary into the other world, taking with them the faculties and
laws of this world. The scenes of
The Souls' Awakening
deal particularly with what is experienced in passing back and forth
across the boundary between the physical sense world and the
super-sensible world. In this lecture today I wanted to make a
beginning by describing some of the things that must be carefully
watched in the borderland between the two worlds. Tomorrow we will go
further into this.
|