LECTURE TWO
As we live through the day and realize all that we owe
to the Sun, and to what extent the tasks of life are connected with
the sunlight, we forget that through the whole pleasure and
satisfaction we derive from the sunlight, there runs the thread of
sure knowledge that on the following morning, after we have rested
through the night, the Sun will rise again. This is a token of the
confidence that lives in our soul — confidence in the lasting
reality of the world-order. We may not always consciously realize it,
but if asked, we should certainly answer in this sense. We devote
ourselves to our work today because we know that the fruits of our
work are assured for tomorrow; that after the night's rest the
Sun will reappear, and the fruits of our labor will ripen.
We turn our eyes to the Earth's covering of
plants; we admire its display; we know the world-order ordains that
the plants and fruits for next year will arise from the seeds of this
year. If asked why we live on with such a sense of security, we
should reply that the reality of the world-order seems to us assured;
we feel certain that from the ripening of the old seeds a new
flowering will emerge into full reality.
But if we are thinking of this kind of reassurance from
external reality, there is something in face of which we need a
support. It is something of quite special significance for our
soul-life. And only one phrase need be uttered — ”our
ideals” — to make us feel the need for assurance, since
to those who truly think and feel it will be obvious that the phrase
carries no such assurance in itself. When we think and feel in a
higher sense, our ideals belong to those things that are more
important to our souls than external reality. It is our ideals which
fire our souls, and in many connections make life valuable and
precious. And when we look at the assured reality of external life,
we are often troubled by the thought: does this reality include
anything that guarantees the most precious thing in life — the
realization of our ideals?
Innumerable conflicts in the human soul proceed from the
fact that people doubt more or less strongly in the realization of
their ideals, although it is precisely on this that they would like
to rely with every fiber of their being. We need only consider the
world of the physical plane in an unprejudiced way and we shall find
innumerable human souls passing through the hardest, bitterest
conflicts because they are unable to bring to fulfillment their
cherished ideals. For we cannot conclude from the course of evolution
that our ideals in life will prove to be the seeds of a future
reality in the same way as the plant-seeds of this year foretell next
year's flowering. These plant-seeds, we know, bear within them
a potential which next year will yield a manifest reality on the
widest scale. But if we consider our ideals, we may indeed cherish
the belief that they will have some significance, some value for
life; but certainty in the same sense we cannot have. As human beings
we should like our ideals to be the seeds of a later future, but we
look in vain for anything that can give them assured reality. When we
look at the physical plane, we find that our souls, with their
idealism, are often in a state of despair.
Let us pass from the world of the physical plane into
the world of the occult, the world of hidden spirituality. A man who
has become a spiritual seer learns to know souls in the period
through which they have to pass between death and a new birth, and it
is very revealing to look with the eyes of the spirit at those souls
who in their earthly life were imbued through and through with high
ideals, with ideals born from the fire and light of their hearts.
A man who has passed through the gate of death has
before him the well-known life-tableau, the memory-picture of his
past Earth-life, and interwoven with it is the world of ideals. This
world of ideals can come before a man after death in such a way that
his feelings concerning it might be expressed as follows: “These
ideals, which have fired and illumined my inmost heart, have been my
dearest, most intimate treasure; they now wear a strange, unfamiliar
aspect. They look as though they did not rightly belong to all that I
remember as actual Earth-experience on the physical plane.” Yet
the dead man feels himself magnetically attracted to these ideals of
his; he feels as though he were under their spell. But they may also
contain an element that gives him a mild shock; he feels that this
element may be dangerous, that it may alienate him from the
Earth-evolution, and from what is connected with Earth-evolution in
the life between death and a new birth.
In order to express myself quite clearly, I should like
to connect what I have said with concrete events. To some of those
sitting here they will be known already, but this evening they
require to be specially illumined from a certain aspect, that they
may be brought into connection with what I have said concerning the
nature of human souls. Of recent years, a man of poetic nature joined
us [Christian Morgenstern]. Coming from a life that was dedicated to
the purest idealism and had already undergone a mystical deepening,
this man joined our Anthroposophical Movement. Although his soul
dwelt in a failing body, he devoted himself heart and soul to our
spiritual Movement. In the spring of this year we lost him from
Earth-life; he passed through the gate of death. He left to mankind a
series of wonderful poems, published in a volume that came out
shortly after his death.
Owing to the difficulties of his bodily life he was
separated in space from our Movement for long periods, either in a
lonely spot in the Swiss mountains, or in some other place
recommended for his health. But he remained attached to our Movement,
from however far away, and his poems, which in certain
anthroposophical circles have lately been recited over and over
again, are the poetic reflection, as it were, of what we have been
developing in Anthroposophy for more than ten years.
Now he has passed through the gate of death, and
something very remarkable comes from occult observation of this soul.
The significance of the soul's life in that ailing body has
become apparent only since death. While working faithfully with us
for the progress of our Movement, this soul absorbed something that
developed very great strength below the surface of the gradually
dying body. This strength was concealed by the ailing body as long as
the soul dwelt within it; but now, when one comes into the presence
of this soul after death, there shines forth, as it can shine forth
only in the spiritual life, the content of the life which this soul
absorbed. The cloud-like sphere in which our friend now lives, after
having passed through the gate of death, presents itself as a mighty
cosmic tableau. For the occult observer this is a most striking
sight.
It might perhaps be said that the occult seer is able to
cast his gaze round the whole wide sphere of the cosmic world. But it
is one thing to allow the gaze to wander round the whole sphere of
the cosmic world, and quite another to see, separated out from a
particular human soul, something that has the appearance of a mighty
tableau, like a painting of what would otherwise be there on its own
account in the spiritual world. Just as we have the physical world
around us, and then see it reflected in the magnificent paintings of
a Raphael or a Michelangelo, so is it in the spiritual world in the
case we are speaking of. Just as one never says in the presence of a
picture by Michelangelo or Raphael, “Oh, this picture has
nothing to give me, for I have all the real world to look at” —
so, in observing the tableau that mirrors in a soul what can
otherwise be seen in contemplating spiritual reality, one does not
say that this soul tableau is not an endless enrichment. And it may
be said that there is infinitely more to be learnt in the presence of
this friend, who after death contains in his soul a reflection of all
we have described from out of the spiritual world in the course of
many years, than from direct contemplation of the vastness of
spiritual reality.
This is an occult fact. I have repeatedly mentioned it
to our friends in other places, and I have now taken from it elements
that will be important for our considerations today. And this occult
fact, as it presents itself in Christian Morgenstern, shows me
something else. Anyone who sees how much opposition there still is to
the promulgation of occult teaching, as we give it, will often ask
questions — I will not call it doubt, but the questions are
asked: “What progress will this occult teaching make in human
hearts and souls?”, and “Is there any guarantee, any
assurance, that the work of the Anthroposophical Society will have a
continuing influence on the course of the spiritual evolution of
humanity?” The sight of what the soul of our friend has become
is one such assurance from the occult world. Why? Our friend, who has
left behind him the poems, Wir fanden einen Pfad (“We
found a Path”) lives in the immense cosmic tableau that is like
a kind of soul-body for him after death; but while he was connected
with us, he absorbed into his being our teaching about the Christ. He
absorbed this anthroposophical teaching, binding it to his soul until
it became the very spiritual heart-blood of his soul; he received it
in such a way that for him it was enfilled with the substance of the
Christ. The Christ Being flowed into him in the teaching. The Christ,
as He lives in our Movement, passed over likewise into his soul.
In contemplating this occult fact, the following
presents itself. The man who goes through the gate of death can
indeed live in a cosmic tableau of this kind; he will go forward with
it through the life that lies between death and a new birth. It will
work and be embodied in his whole being, or rather it will “ensoul”
his whole being, and it will permeate his new Earth-life when he
again descends to a life on Earth. Moreover, such a soul receives a
germ of perfection for its own life, and progresses in the evolution
of the Earth's existence.
All this comes to pass because such a soul has absorbed
the teaching into his being. But this particular soul accepted all
the teaching, steeped through and spiritualized by the Christ-Being,
by the conception of the Christ-Being that we can make our own. All
that such a soul absorbed, however, is not merely a treasure
stimulating the further evolution of this single soul, but through
Christ, who is there for everyone, it works back again upon all
mankind. And that cosmic tableau which for clairvoyant eyes is being
developed in the soul of him who this spring passed through the gate
of death — that Christ-enfilled soul-tableau is for me an
assurance that what may be spoken today from out of the spiritual
world will, through the love of Christ, radiate into souls who will
come later. They will be set on fire, inspired by it. Not alone will
our friend carry forward the Christ-enfilled anthroposophical
teaching for his own greater perfecting, but because it has become
part of his being it will become an impulse from the spiritual world
to the souls who will live in the coming centuries; into them will
pour the rays of that which is Christ-enfilled. Our souls cannot take
in for themselves alone the Christ-filled spiritual science which is
their most precious possession, but they will bear it through epochs
of civilization yet to come. If you enfill this teaching with Christ,
it will stream forth as a seed into the whole of humanity because the
Christ Being belongs to all mankind. Where Christ is, the treasures
of life are not isolated; their fruitfulness for individuals is
always there, but at the same time they become a treasure for all
mankind.
We must place this clearly before our souls. We see then
what a significant difference there is between wisdom that is not
filled with Christ and wisdom that is illuminated by the light of
Christ. When we come together in a narrower circle of our Society, we
are not there for the sake of abstract considerations, but in order
to cultivate true occultism, undismayed by what the modern world has
to say against it. Hence we are able to touch on matter which can
come to our knowledge only through investigation in the spiritual.
A second example calls for mention. In recent years we
have had occasion in Munich to perform what we call the Mystery
Plays, and Swedish friends have often been present. The performances
of these Mystery Plays had to differ in many respects from other
performances; that had to be a sense of responsibility to the
spiritual world. One could not attend these Mystery Plays as if one
were going to an ordinary theatre. Certainly, whatever is
accomplished in such a case must proceed from one's own
soul-powers. But let us understand clearly that when in our physical
life we want to carry out something through the will of our souls, we
have to use our muscular power, which is imparted to us from outside
and yet belongs to us. If we lack this muscular power, which comes to
us from outside, there are some things we cannot do. In a certain
sense muscular forces belongs to us and yet again not to us. So it is
with our spiritual faculties, but our physical forces, our muscular
powers, are of no help to us if these spiritual faculties are to be
active in the spiritual spheres. The powers of the spiritual world
itself must come to our aid; the powers and forces which stream out
of the spiritual world into our physical world must irradiate and
permeate us. It is true that other enterprises somewhat similar in
character to our Munich Mystery Plays may be based on a different
consciousness, but it was always clear to me that our project could
be carried through only in the course of years, that the various
impulses might be used only when definite spiritual forces, moving in
this direction, flowed into our human forces; when spiritual
“Guardian Angel” forces flowed into our human forces.
At the beginning of our spiritual-scientific work, when
our very small circle came together at the beginning of this century,
it was always easy to count the number present. For a short time a
faithful soul was always among them, a soul who through her Karma
possessed a special talent for beauty and art. [Maria Spettini,
actress at the German Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg.] Even
though it was for a short time, the bearer of this soul worked with
us, especially in connection with the more intimate
spiritual-scientific work that needed to be done at that time. With
an inner depth of feeling and an enlightened enthusiasm she worked
among us, and absorbed particularly certain cosmological teachings
which it was possible to give at that time. And I still remember
today how at that time a fact came before my soul which may perhaps
seem unimportant, but may be mentioned here.
When our Movement began, a periodical which, for
well-considered reasons, was called Lucifer, came into being.
At that time I wrote an article under the title of “Lucifer”
which was meant to indicate, in tendency at any rate, the direction
in which we wished to work. This article, even if it did not say so
in words, laid down the lines which our Anthroposophical Society
should follow, and I may say: that article, too, is Christ enfilled.
The life-blood of Christianity can flow into those souls who absorb
what is in that article. I may now perhaps remark that, at the time,
this article met with the most violent opposition in the circle of
the few who had joined us from the old Theosophical Movement. By all
of them this article was considered entirely “untheosophical”.
The personality of whom I have been speaking entered into this
article with the warmest possible heart and the deepest inner
feeling, and I was able to say to myself: When it is a question of
the actual truth, her agreement is of more importance for the
progress of the Movement than all the opposition put together. In
short, this soul was deeply interwoven with all that was to flow into
our spiritual stream.
She soon died; in 1904 she passed through the gate of
death. For a while after death she had to struggle through in the
spiritual world to find her real identity. Not as early as 1907, but
from the time of our Mystery Plays in Munich, from 1909 onwards, and
then to an increasing degree as time went on, this soul was always
there, guarding and clarifying what I was able to undertake in
connection with the Munich Festival Plays. All that this soul, owing
to her talent for the beautiful, was able to give to the artistic
realization of our spiritual ideals, worked down out of the spiritual
world, as though from the Guardian Angel of our Mystery Plays, in
such a way that one felt in oneself the power to take the necessary
initiative. Just as in the physical world our muscular energy
supports us, so the spiritual force streaming down from the spiritual
worlds flowed into one's own spiritual force.
Thus do the dead work with us, so are they present with
us. This was yet another case — and here comes the point I must
specially speak about today — this was again a case in which
all that the personality had absorbed in the field of Anthroposophy
was not used only to assist her own progress, for it clearly flowed
back to us again in something that we ventured to do for the whole
Movement. Two possibilities existed. This personality had taken in
all that she could, she had it in her soul, and so she could apply it
for the sake of her further progress through life and also through
the life after death. This is right — it ought to happen so —
for if the human soul is to attain its divine goal, it must become
ever more and more perfect; it must do all it can to help forward
this perfecting. But because this soul had taken into herself the
whole purpose of what it is to be “Christ-enfilled”, what
she had absorbed was able not merely to work for herself but to flow
down to us — and to become an effective kind of common
possession for us all.
That is what Christ brings about when He permeates the
fruits of our knowledge. He does not take away all that these fruits
of knowledge represent for an individual, for the Christ died for all
souls. When we rise up to that knowledge which must be possessed by
all true Earth-men — ”Not I, but Christ in me” —
when we realize the Christ within us in all that we know, and when we
attribute to Christ the forces which we ourselves employ, then all we
take into our being works not for ourselves alone, but for the whole
of humanity. It becomes fruitful for the whole of humanity. Look at
the souls of men all over the Earth. Christ died for them all, and
that which you receive in His Name you receive for your own
perfecting, but also as a most precious possession that is effective
for all mankind.
And now let us return to our introductory words this
evening. It was said that when, after death, we look back upon our
life-tableau, on all that we have lived through, it appears to us as
though our ideals might have something strange about them. We feel in
regard to our ideals that they really do not bear us forward to the
common life of men, that they have no inherent guarantee of reality
in the general life of men; they carry us away from it. Lucifer has a
powerful influence over our ideals because they flow in such beauty
out of the human soul, but only out of the human soul. They are not
rooted in external reality. That is why Lucifer has such power, and
it is really the magnetic impulse of Lucifer which we experience in
our ideals after death. Lucifer approaches us, and the ideals we have
are specially valuable to him, because by the indirect path of these
ideals he can draw us to himself. But when we permeate with Christ
all that we attain spiritually, when we feel the Christ in us,
knowing that what we receive is also received by the Christ in us —
”Not I, but Christ in me” — then, when we pass
through the gate of death we do not look back upon our ideals
although they tended to alienate us from the world. Our ideals have
been committed to Christ, and we know that it is Christ who makes our
ideals His own concern. He takes our ideals upon Himself. And the
individual can say: “Not I alone can take my ideals upon myself
so that they are seeds for humanity on Earth as surely as the
plant-seeds of the present summer are seeds for the earthly
plant-robe of the summer to come, but the Christ in me can do this;
the Christ in me permeates my ideals with the reality of substance.”
And of those ideals we can say: “Yes, as men we give expression
to ideals on Earth, but in us lives the Christ and He takes them upon
Himself.” These ideals are true seeds of future reality.
Christ-enfilled idealism is permeated with the seed of reality, and
he who truly understands Christ looks upon ideals in this way. He
says: “Ideals have not yet in themselves that guarantee of
their own reality, their own actuality, which inheres in the
plant-seeds for the coming year; but when our ideals are committed to
the Christ within us, they are real seeds.” Whoever has a true
Christ-consciousness and makes his life-substance St. Paul's
words “Not I, but Christ in me — He is the bearer of my
ideals”, he has this realization. He says: “There are the
ripe, germinating seeds, there are the streams and seas, the hills
and valleys — but close by is the world of idealism; this world
of idealism is taken over by Christ, and then it is like the seeds of
the future world in the world of the present, for the Christ bears
our ideals on into the future world as the God of Nature bears the
plant-seeds of this year on into the coming year.”
This gives reality to idealism; it removes from the soul
those bitter, gloomy doubts which can arise from the feeling: What
becomes of the world of ideals that are inwardly bound up with
external reality and with all that I most value? He who takes the
Christ Impulse into himself perceives that everything which ripens in
the human soul as idealism, as wisdom-treasure, is permeated,
saturated through and through with reality. And I have brought the
two examples before you in order to show you, out of the occult
world, how different is the working of that which is entrusted,
Christ-enfilled, to the soul, from that which is entrusted to it only
as wisdom which is not Christ-enfilled. What the soul has permeated
with Christ in this Earth-life flows down to us quite differently
from that which is not Christ-enfilled.
A terrible impression is received when with clairvoyant
consciousness one looks out into the spiritual world and sees souls,
in whom full Christ-consciousness has not arisen during their last
incarnation, fighting for their ideals — fighting for what is
dearest to them, because in their ideals Lucifer has power over them,
which enables him to separate them from the fruits, the real fruits,
which the whole world ought to enjoy.
Quite different is the aspect of those who have allowed
their soul-wealth, their wisdom-wealth, to become Christ-enfilled.
These souls work down into our bodies in this life; they kindle
warmth and vitality in our souls. Permeation with the Christ Impulse
can be felt as most precious inner soul-warmth, as comfort in the
most difficult circumstances, as support in the worst abysses of
life. And why? Because he who is truly permeated with the Christ
Impulse finds that in whatever conquests his soul achieves, however
imperfect they may appear in earthly life, there lies this Christ
impulse as the assurance and guarantee of fulfillment for them. That
is why Christ is such a consolation in the doubts of life, such a
support for the soul. How much for the souls on Earth remains
unfulfilled in life! How much seems to them precious, although in
relation to the outer physical world they cannot but regard it as
resembling vain hopes of spring. But anything we honestly feel in our
soul, anything we can unite with our soul as a valued possession —
all this we can commit to Christ; and whatever may be its prospects
of realization, when we have committed it to Christ He bears it forth
upon His wings into reality. It is not always necessary to have
knowledge of this, but the soul that feels the Christ within it, as
the body feels its life-giving blood, feels the warmth, the promise
of realization in this Christ Impulse in respect of all that cannot
be realized in the external world, although the soul, with perfect
justification, longs for it to be realized.
The fact that clairvoyant consciousness sees these
things when it surveys souls after death is a proof of how
justifiable is the feeling of the human soul when in all that a man
does, in all that he thinks, he feels himself Christ-enfilled, takes
the Christ into his soul as comfort, as support, saying in
Earth-life: “Not I, but Christ in me!” For a man may
indeed say that in this Earth-life! Recall a passage at the beginning
of my book, Theosophy, which is meant to indicate one of these
points where, at a certain stage of the spiritual life, there is a
realization of what fills the soul in this earthly life. In a certain
place in this book I have drawn attention to the fact that Tat
twam asi (“Thou art that”) upon which the Eastern
sages meditate, comes before man as a reality at that moment when the
transition from the so-called soul-world into the spiritual world
takes place. Look up the passage in question.
But something else can become a reality, in a way that
is of immense human significance in relation to St. Paul's
words, “Not I, but Christ in me”, which the
Christ-enfilled soul may say in this life. If a man knows how to
experience as inner truth this “Not I, but Christ in me”,
it comes to powerful fulfillment after death. For what we receive
through the words “Not I, but Christ in me” becomes our
endowment, our inner nature between death and a new birth, to such an
extent that we may impart it as fruit to the whole of humanity. What
we so take that we receive it under the aspect of “Not I”,
Christ makes into a common possession for all humanity. What I
receive under the aspect of “Not I”, of this I may dare,
after death, to say and feel, “Not for me alone, but for all my
human brethren!” And then only may I say the words: “Yes,
I have loved Him above all, even above myself,” and therefore I
have hearkened to the command, “Love thy God above all.”
“Not I, but Christ in me.”
And I have fulfilled that other commandment, “Love
thy neighbor as thyself”, for whatever I have attained for
myself will become through the fact that Christ carries it into
reality, the common property of all mankind.
We must allow such things as these to work upon us, and
then we experience what Christ has to signify in the human soul —
how Christ can be the bearer and supporter, the comforter and
illuminator of the soul of man. And so we gradually come to enter
through our feelings into that which may be called the relation of
Christ to the human soul.
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