Lecture 3
The Nature of European Folk Souls
Berlin, November 28, 1914
Our first thoughts must once again be
directed to the guardian spirits who are guiding those
who are at the front where the events of our day are
taking place. We address ourselves to the spirits
protecting those who are with us in this movement but are
now out there, and have to stand up with their life and
the whole of their physical being in response to what the
time is asking of them. And in a wider sense we are also
turning towards the spirits who protect all who have to
offer life and limb out there in the field, even though
they are not part of our community.
Spirits of your souls, guardian
guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.
And for those who have already gone
through the gate of death we say:
Spirits of your souls, guardian
guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard in the spheres.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.
May the
spirit we are seeking in our movement, the spirit we have
been seeking in coming together through the years, rule
over you and spread his wings over you, so that you shall
be able to complete your task according to your karma.
Dear friends, I do not know how many of our friends were
able to sense that it is much harder than usual to speak
in public lecturers in the present day, lecturers like
those given yesterday and the day before
[ Note 15 ]
— especially in
public lectures of the type given yesterday. The reason
is that the things which have to be said may only too
easily be subject to misunderstanding. It is particularly
when we are within our movement with heart and mind that
we need to let a thought I also made reference to the
last time I was able to speak to you here, enter more and
more profoundly into our souls. It is the thought that,
fundamentally speaking, external life — life on the
physical plane as man normally encounters it, not in its
reality — is Maya, a kind of ghostly dream, and
that the truth, the reality, lies only behind this. It
must be clear to us that this truth of the Maya cannot be
grasped by theories only, nor indeed just with the
intellect. It has to be grasped with all the powers of
our soul, the whole of our soul-life and, above all, also
the impulses of our heart and feelings. Our intellect is
focused on things physical and finds it impossible to
grasp that this world that surrounds us is not to be
regarded as the true, real world. And our feelings, our
will impulses, find this truth even more difficult to
grasp. Entering into the life of spiritual science we not
only have to learn to think differently but also to feel
differently and go down to the wellsprings of our will
activity in a different way.
It is
difficult to find adequate expression for these things,
for no words exist for what pertains to the spiritual
world. It is therefore only too easy for the things I
said yesterday to be taken to show a certain bias, a
certain sympathy or antipathy, in the characterization of
one folk soul or another in these days when human
thoughts and feelings are so strongly tinged with the
sympathies and antipathies that arise out of the mood of
the time. And yet, when spiritual science is spoken of in
the right frame of mind, it will have to be believed that
things like the characterization of folk souls in fact
cannot be presented in sympathy or antipathy in the usual
sense, even if it is necessary to characterize them
sharply. If they were presented in sympathy or antipathy
they could not be true, they would have to be untrue, a
lie. Why is this so?
It is very
easy to think that someone developing his soul life in a
certain way to attain to perception of the spiritual
worlds, to an objective view of these spiritual worlds,
might dry up in his inner feelings and will impulses.
That definitely is not possible, however. It would be
quite impossible for someone to attain to an objective
vision of the spiritual world if he first allowed himself
to dry up in the sphere of his living will and feelings,
dry up in the inner fire of the impulses that are
normally arising in the world of human feelings,
sentiments and paSsions. On the contrary all the inner
feelings there are, all the inner will activity, must be
firmly taken hold of, must become as fiery as possible.
But they need to be transformed in the soul. They cannot
remain the way they are in ordinary life. They need to be
transformed to such effect that through this life of
feeling and will impulses the person achieves something
of a new synthesis in the sphere of his will and
feelings. It is exactly in this way that something must
evolve which we may call the inner eye, the inner ear. It
is impossible to become inwardly dried up when seeking
the spiritual world. Yet once that world is perceived,
once it has been reached after all the inner struggles,
all inner victories, then it does present itself in such
a way that, for example, it may still evoke sympathy and
antipathy in us, but that any characterization given of
it has as little in it of budding sympathy and antipathy
as you would find of budding sympathy in a rose you arc
looking at. We are able to experience sympathy with it
and antipathy, but it is there before our eyes as an
objective presence and if we wish to grasp its nature we
are merely able to characterize. For a person who is
forced, as it were, to characterize the spiritual world,
it is in every single case an impossibility to speak in
either sympathy or antipathy.
Yesterday
the attempt was made to characterize the Italian, the
French, the British and the German folk souls. There
will, of course, have been some people in the audience
who felt that what was presented was not objective
characterization but sympathy and antipathy. Yet if
sympathy and antipathy were to come to expression the
characterization itself would have to be a lying one, it
could never be reliable.
You will be
able to understand this very well in this individual
instance if I tell you the following. You all know that
man is not merely the entity that stands before us when
we look at him with our everyday eyes. There he is living
in his physical body by his very nature, there he looks
at us, as it were, through his physical body. Yet he has
another reality, one he is not conscious of in ordinary
life on earth for reasons you are aware of. This reality
essentially lies within his ego and astral body, and he
lives and passes through it quite independent of his
physical and etheric body between going to sleep and
waking up. A spiritual scientist obtains the results of
his researches by illuminating for himself what normally
remains unconscious between going to sleep and waking up.
This gives him inner experiences of things that normally
remain hidden behind the outer impressions of the world,
the ghostly dreams of the world.
One thing I
said in yesterday's lecture was that the folk spirit, the
folk soul, lives specifically in the etheric body of man,
and we are within this body from the moment we wake until
we go to sleep. On waking we become immersed in the folk
soul as we enter into the body. When asleep we are not in
the folk soul — only between the moments of waking
and going to sleep.
The
question is: If the spiritual scientist brings inner life
and light particularly into the aspects that are not
within the physical body, what is the situation with
regard to his life in the folk soul when separate from
the body? There the folk soul has a divisive effect. The
spiritual scientist cannot live within the folk soul when
consciously going through the things man goes through in
his sleep. The peculiar thing is that at any time, at any
particular moment, a certain number of folk souls may be
said to be reigning. The way these folk souls behave
toward one another actually makes up the whole earth life
of mankind, in so far as it is on the physical plane.
Entering into the physical body we also enter into our
folk soul. Coming out of the physical body, and having
conscious experience outside it, we also enter into the
folk-soul element — this is one of many experiences
one has—but not into our own folk soul. We enter
into the other folk souls and never our own, that is the
one we live in during the day in our physical bodies.
Accept the full weight of these words. On going to sleep
we do not enter into one particular folk soul but into
the concerted action, the dance as it were, of the other
folk souls. The one soul which does not contribute to the
dance is the one we enter into on returning to the
physical body. In doing his researches, the spiritual
scientist actually joins those other folk souls —
which are acting in concert and with them lives through
the same things we normally experience on the physical
plane in relation to our own folk soul, the soul
belonging to the nation within which we ordinarily find
ourselves.
Let me ask
you then: If a spiritual scientist really knows of life
not only in his own folk soul but also in those other
folk souls, if he has to go through this, would he then
have any real reason to describe his own folk soul with a
different kind of objectivity than other folk souls? He
does not. Here the potential is given to rise above the
prejudices of sympathies and antipathies and be
objective. Of course it is not only the spiritual
scientist who goes through this — and he does it
consciously — but all human beings go through it.
Between going to sleep and waking up every human soul
lives in the sphere where all folk souls act in concert,
except for the one his soul lives in when awake in the
daytime.
This is
something spiritual science offers so that the horizon of
our feelings and sentiments can be truly widened. We
often say that spiritual science is able to provide for
genuine love, with no distinction of race, nation, class
and so forth, because of the nature of the insights it
makes possible. This statement is so profound that anyone
who clearly sees himself as a human being in that part of
himself that is of the spirit simply cannot shut himself
away in hatred and antipathy from that which is humanity.
He will have to say to himself that it is really
senseless not to love. Yet in order to be able to say
‘It is really senseless not love’ spiritual
science simply must come to us as something we live, not
something we merely know. That is also why we pursue
spiritual science not merely as knowledge but in such a
way that in living together for years in our branches it
truly becomes one with us, a spiritual nourishment that
we take in and digest.
I have said
that between going to sleep and waking man usually lives
in the interplay of folk souls other than the one which
is his own folk soul at the time. That is the usual way.
There is a way, however, of living one-sidedly, as it
were, in just one particular folk soul. There is a way in
which one is forced, in this state between going to sleep
and waking, to live not within the whole interplay of
those other folk souls, within their dance as it were.
Instead one is more or less under a spell to live
together with one or several folk souls that are taken
out of the total concord of all folk souls. There is such
a way. It consists in our feeling a particular hatred for
one or several folk souls or nations. This hatred we
produce lends the special power that forces us in our
sleep state to live with the folk soul we hate most or
even hate altogether. There is no better way of preparing
ourselves for entering completely into one particular
folk soul when in the unconscious state between going to
sleep and waking, and having to live with it the way we
live with the folk soul we know when in our physical
bodies, than to hate it —but to hate it sincerely,
at the level of our feelings, not merely persuading
ourselves that we hate it.
When such
things are said we become aware how the reality of Maya
has to be taken with profound seriousness. It is not only
that our intellect, being what it is, does not want to
see that things are different in their depths than in the
outer ghostly dream they present, but our feelings, our
will, also rise in protest against something which holds
true for the spiritual world. If we consider such truths
as the one of having to live in other folk souls, and
particularly in the one we hate, we have to say to
ourselves that the vast majority of people reject
spiritual truth not only because it is not accessible to
the intellect but also because they simply do not want
it, because it upsets them also in the sentiments they
ordinarily live with on earth. As soon as one enters more
deeply and seriously into the realities of the spiritual
world, they are not the least bit comfortable; they are
not in the least the kind of thing man really likes when
he desires to live on the physical plane only. They are
uncomfortable. They shake us up and shake us through and
the more profound they are the more they demand of us,
really at every single moment, that we must be different
from the way we usually are on the physical plane. As a
living inner entity it demands something different from
us than we are on the physical plane, and that is usually
one of the reasons why people reject spiritual reality.
We cannot do other than see ourselves linked, not with
just one part of the world or of mankind but linked with
the whole world and the whole of mankind.
Fundamentally speaking, our physical existence is merely
the swing of the pendulum to one side. The swing of the
pendulum in the other direction is in many respects the
opposite, only we do not know of it in our ordinary life.
It can be said that things are getting serious as soon as
we consider the deeper truths of spiritual life. These
deeper truths can become infinitely important in pointing
the way for what human evolution, progress for mankind,
demands of us at this very time. Let us take a particular
example from spiritual science that can be of special
importance for the present time.
Things
being the way I have just described to you — so
that in entering into physical body and ether body we
join in experience what is normally called the folk
spirit, the folk soul — you will easily understand
how sharing in the experience of the fate of the
individual folk spirit is one of the things we will
gradually shed after death. Many things have been spoken
of that man will shed after death; and one of these
things is the link with the folk spirit. The folk spirit
is active in the progress of earth evolution, it is
active in the way mankind develops on earth from
generation to generation. After death, between death and
rebirth, we have to come free of the folk spirit in the
same way we also grow out of other things. This at the
same time lends significance to the hero's death, on the
field of battle for instance, a significance that is
felt. Any who feel it in the right way — and those
going through such a death in the right frame of mind
surely will feel this — will know that this death
is a death of love. It is not suffered for personal
reasons, not for the things one can keep with one for.
the whole period between death and rebirth—it is
suffered for the folk soul, in that this physical and
ether body is given up selflessly. It is impossible to
think of death in battle without knowing that it is
filled through and through with genuine and most
heartfelt love, with men being upheld by something that
contributes to the future good of mankind. That is what
is so great, so utterly tremendous in this death on the
field of battle, if it is experienced in the right frame
of mind. For it is impossible to conceive of it except in
conjunction with love.
The
association with our particular folk spirit has to be
cast off between death and rebirth. It has to fall away
from us. We have to reach a region where we do not live
with the individual folk spirit as such. We shall not,
however, be able to enter immediately into other folk
spirits. That only happens between going to sleep and
waking up. We have to free ourselves altogether of
everything that is wholly of the earth, and enter into a
life that is separate from anything to do with the
evolution of mankind on earth. We must also free
ourselves of everything that links us to folk spirits.
And this again is something that widens and enlarges the
horizons of our feeling life, if we make it something we
know, for it lets us look towards the other element, an
element we seek that is not around us when we live on the
horizon of physical existence.
As you were
able to see from the characterization of individual folk
spirits given yesterday, it is so that in conscious
awareness one of them may be more inclined towards the
individual personality of man, to what man is as an
individual personality, whilst another is less inclined
that way. I have compared it with the way one person
looks more into his inner life whilst another lives more
in the life of the outer world. One particular folk
spirit is more concerned with individual human
personalities, another less so. As we belong to one folk
spirit or another, this determines the way we relate to
what the folk spirit is doing in our ether body, what is
in preparation there. As a result there are certain
differences in the casting-off process after death, in
the gradual emergence out of what the folk spirit has
made of us.
Let us take
the French folk spirit, for example. It is a folk spirit
whose Inspirations are connected with a highly developed
culture, a culture that can only be seen as arising
because this folk spirit is looking back to ancient Greek
civilization. I have discussed this already. This folk
spirit now works on the people belonging to that
particular nation in such a way — and that is the
very nature of the folk spirits that go hand in hand with
highly developed civilizations — that deep
impressions are made on the human ether body, that the
signature of the folk spirit leaves a sharp imprint on
the ether body. This has to do with something I pointed
out yesterday, that the Frenchman becomes attached to the
image he has created of himself. The consequence of the
sharp impressions left on the ether body by the folk
spirit is that when the soul leaves the body when death
occurs, sharply distinct features are left in their ether
body and also in the astral body of man. It is
particularly if one belongs to a nation such as the
French that the soul emerges from physical life with an
astral body bearing distinct features. The consequence is
that it takes a lot to cast off all that is left of the
folk spirit after death.
If we
compare the shedding of the essential folk spirit as it
occurs in a member of the French nation with the same
process for a soul that has been under the influence of
the Russian folk soul, for example, we get really the
opposite effect in the latter case. The Russian folk soul
is young, as it were, and as yet concerns itself less
with the individual human beings put in its care. Because
of this, individual people passing through the gate of
death bear little of the stamp of the Russian folk soul
in the ether and astral bodies. Looking at the overall
situation in the spiritual world we find, in looking at
the souls that have passed through the gate of death,
that we encounter sharply defined ether bodies and also
sharply defined astral bodies in the souls of the French
people whilst Russian souls show little of the imprint of
the folk spirit on their ether and astral bodies. Because
of this the different souls can be used for different
purposes by the guiding spirits that have the task of
furthering the evolution of mankind.
We are now
in an age that truly cannot progress unless a certain sum
of spiritual truth reveals itself to mankind. That has
been discussed on many occasions, even to the point that
it has been said that by a certain time-span in the
present century the revelation of Christ will be made to
man in the spiritual world. But we can take it in such a
way that we say: A spiritual element has to come into the
world. This spiritual element entering into human
evolution is first of all the fruit of a struggle won by
the spirits in the supersensible sphere. Higher spirits,
spirits belonging to higher hierarchies, are fighting in
this supersensible sphere to enable the spiritual stream
to enter into human evolution. In this struggle they also
bring into play forces deriving from human beings who
have passed through the gate of death. In the life
between death and rebirth man is always participating in
the work that brings about what happens in the world.
Being individual in his constitution he will also
contribute in quite a different way, depending on whether
he comes from a French body, for example, or a Russian
one. That is why the spirits of the different higher
hierarchies are able to use these souls in different
ways.
The future
development of mankind does, however, depend on a
tremendous struggle taking place in the spiritual world
at this moment. A struggle in the spiritual world does
have a different meaning from one in the physical world.
A struggle in the spiritual world means working together
to give form and function to something fruitful. It is a
struggle necessary for human evolution; in short it is a
struggle that gets somewhere. It is being fought by
certain spirits belonging to the higher hierarchies. They
are fighting it by making use of certain young souls
coming from the area of Eastern European civilization and
certain souls coming from the Western European
civilizations. It is a struggle that will go on for a
long time yet, a struggle between Russian souls that have
gone through the gate of death and French souls that have
gone through death; a war waged by spiritual Russia
against spiritual France. It is a terrible war if we use
the words belonging to the physical plane. Looking into
the spiritual world today one sees this struggle between
spiritual Russia and spiritual France, and the spiritual
world is full of it. It is a distressing struggle.
And now, in
the light of this, let us look at what is happening on on
the physical plane. An alliance is made. That is the
mirror-image of the struggle in the spiritual world. Now
this is the kind of problem one has to cope with in
spiritual science. Please do not think that it is
possible simply to generalize and say: ‘It is easy
to arrive at spiritual truths by always thinking the
opposite of what is happening on the physical
plane’. If that were made the rule we would get the
most silly and erroneous results. For it may hold true in
five out of a hundred cases, but not in the other
ninety-five. All spiritual truths are individual and have
to be considered individually! They cannot be determined
by mere dialectics. But the truth I have spoken of is one
of those that make a particular impact today, for it can
make us aware once again how very different the world
looks when we see behind the veil of Maya and how the
external doings of man may present the opposite of the
true reality, of the spiritual.
If we take
this point of view it is inevitable that our feelings
must change in the contemplation of external happenings.
We come to understand that proper discernment must first
be used with regard to external events if the truth is to
be seen. A cloud formation may look undefined when seen
from a distance and quite different from near by. And
that is also true for things that happen on the national
scale. And right in the middle, I would say, between the
warring parties in East and West, lies the German area in
the spirit, and this exists for the purpose of mediating
between the two sides, truly to mediate between the two,
and also does this. And whilst in the spirit there is
mediation between the two sides we see them hitting out
from both directions and in both directions in the
physical world.
In a sense
the events we are now experiencing have to do with the
deepest impulse in present-day human evolution. I have
often said: Why do we actually pursue anthroposophy? We
pursue it because it is a cosmic mission, a work the
spiritual world demands of man. A number of Imaginations
have to be conveyed to mankind; within the near future
men will have to take in a number of spiritual truths.
That is part of the plan, I would say, for human
evolution. Against it there is the objection, the very
real objection, the opposing view, that men have to
mature gradually and that this takes a long time. But the
Imaginations want to come in now into human evolution.
Something has to enter into human evolution that lies a
bit above the physical plane, I would say, something
higher. Men are still rejecting it today, rejecting it as
comprehensively as possible. As a result the
counter-image appears. And the counter-image of
Imaginations are passions, are emotional outbreaks
arising from the depths of human nature, from a point as
far below the physical plane as the Imagination are above
it. When we see human beings face one another in hatred
today, in genuine untruthfulness — what is this
hatred, this untruthfulness? They are the mirror-images
of the Imaginations that want to burgeon forth and are
now emerging in this form because men resist them. An
element present at a certain height above the physical
plane emerges as a product of transformation, as
something that lies at the same distance below the
physical plane; it has to work itself out. Again it is
possible to find the reason for these disagreeable events
in the general karma of mankind.
Why does it
have to be now, in our present age, that men receive a
certain sum of spiritual truths? The question can be
answered as follows.
Two things
are possible. One is that a person has a certain feeling
for spiritual truths and does not meet them with deaf
ears, but rather takes them into his heart and his soul.
That he becomes an anthroposophist, as it were, the way
it is possible now to become an anthroposophist. Or it
may happen that a person rejects spiritual truths, that
he will say perhaps that all this is foolish, stupid
nonsense; that it all comes out of the heads of a few
foolish dreamers who would do better to take up something
else.
When a
person passes through the gate of death he does of course
enter into the spiritual world. If someone were to say:
‘Do we only enter into the spiritual world if we
acquire knowledge of that world in the time between birth
and death?’ we might perhaps say to him: ‘Of
course, a person who knows nothing of the spiritual world
will also enter into it.’ But what it the
difference between these two types of people? The
difference is considerable. I am now always speaking only
of our own time, for spiritual truths are individual. And
if someone were to say in relation to what I described
earlier: 'I assume Imaginations unable to come through
will therefore always be transformed into a war of
malice, like the one we have now?’ that would be
the wrong view. At other times they may behave quite
differently. Spiritual truths are always individual and
what I am going to say now represents a truth that is
individual to our time.
A person
going through the gate of death without having made use
of the opportunity to take in spiritual elements that
exist in our time hands over his soul to the higher
worlds on passing through the gate of death in almost the
same state he received it when he went through birth to
enter into physical existence. The higher worlds receive
nothing from him but what they have given him on his
incarnation. On the other hand, a person may make his own
here on earth what it is possible to obtain from the
spiritual world, not by mere faith, but by entering into
the spiritual worlds in a living way. On his death he
will not hand over his soul to the spiritual worlds the
way he received it at birth. He will also hand over to
the supersensible beings the concepts, ideas and feelings
he has achieved here. These belong not only to him, they
belong also to the supersensible beings. Any who do not
bring these with them will, of course, also live into the
spiritual world but make no contribution to human
progress, and if people had always lived like that, or
done so from a certain point of time, mankind would have
remained as it was. There is progress, further
development, and souls will always find something new on
entering the earth in a new incarnation because they find
opportunity to take in the particular mission of an age.
In the final instance, a decision always has to be made
as to whether we relate to the spiritual world or not.
For instance, someone might say: ‘What do I care
about the progress of mankind! What does the evolution of
the earth matter to me? Let the earth come to a stop! I
shall go on regardless.’ That is how a person may
speak who has no real love, no interest in earthly
progress. Any, however, who bear within them the love for
human progress as their highest responsibility will be
unable to choose that road. There is also freedom in this
sphere. And souls will come to anthroposophy only through
freedom and love for man's true progress and man's true
good. So it is not possible either to become an
anthroposophist out of mere egotism; in becoming one we
contribute something to the progress which one otherwise
withdraws from. One is active in love therefore —
not merely for oneself but for something else.
This is
something I hope will always shine through in all our
discussions of the spiritual knowledge we are seeking:
that this spiritual science is a living, active force. I
am not talking about visions; I am talking of this
science. Vision merely yields the results. I am speaking
of the results coming alive in man. Spiritual science is
something alive, something active, that takes up its
abode in our souls, that is working and active in our
souls.
I have
often used the comparison that merely to speak of love
— considering particularly the talking that goes on
in the theosophical movement — is like standing in
front of a stove and preaching that it shall grow hot,
this being its duty as a stove. Even the best of sermons
concerning its responsibilities as a stove will not make
it grow hot. It will grow hot, however, if we put some
wood in it and put a match to it. Basically that is how
it is with all preaching of human love, and such
preaching will prove hardly more successful when directed
at men than a sermon directed at the stove, telling it to
grow hot. Such preaching has been done at all times and
the results can be seen. But anything that is not mere
knowledge of the spiritual world, not mere idea, mere
word, but is instead something alive, something active in
the word, that is the wood we give to our soul, and it
will burn if it is rightly taken in by the soul. This can
be learned particularly from conflicts like the present
one. There knowledge is set aflame, knowledge becomes
love, for man is transformed by the spiritual life he has
recognized in his depths, in his foundations. This
profound transformation is indeed most uncomfortable for
him; he rejects spiritual truth and would rather remain
in Maya.
Basically,
that is also the next reason for the often-heard
statement that spiritual truths should not be offered too
freely to the public. After all, these are not truths
that act as neutrally as physics or chemistry when they
are spoken, but truths towards which the human soul
cannot maintain a wholly neutral attitude, having to
either reject them or take them in. To take them in,
however, the soul has to change in a certain way from
what it is in ordinary physical life. So it is true that
the world does get somewhat stirred up, excited, when the
deeper spiritual truths are presented. Yet our age is
ordained not to shrink from such excitement and really to
go through this excitement. This will be the only way of
preparing the ground for a new spiritual life, a
spiritual life we must live towards, for we are now
indeed at its starting point. And the signs of the times
indicate that it is necessary to understand certain
things. We may find many of the things that are happening
in the outside world particularly in these days
incomprehensible and senseless. Just try and take a
number of things together. It is my task here, as it
were, to speak to you in more intimate fashion than is
possible in a public lecture. I have the task of
formulating the things I said in my public lectures that
were in the context of current events in such a way that
they become effective truth; to formulate them in such a
way that the words are the right ones for this our time.
If you try and take a number of things together, you will
see that one particular aim has been present all the
time: to call forth ideas that are a little more the
right ones, sentiments and feelings that are more the
right ones, with regard also to current events, than
those that come so easily and are so widespread.
Try, for
instance, to hold on to the fact that in my first public
lecture I endeavoured to show how the German people at
heart really had a very strong inclination towards peace,
towards peaceful progress, and how it really is quite
accurate to say: the German people as such did not want
the war. Though if we listen to our left and to our right
we find they all say, they all stress: ‘We did not
want the war!’ The French did not want the war. The
English did not want the war. They had to go to war for
'moral reasons'. But those moral reasons were produced in
just eighteen hours! They all stress they did not want
the war. Let us hold fast to that — there is a lot
of truth in it, a great deal of truth — and
consider what I did when I said: the German people did
not want the war. I did not follow this with the
conclusion: this means the other side did want it.
Instead, I said quite expressly in that first lecture
that at most we could raise a question, the question as
to who could have prevented the war. And there I pointed
to the Russian East, for they could have prevented the
war.
I have
drawn special attention to the fact that the right answer
depends on the right question being asked. If someone
insists he did not want the war this does not necessarily
mean the other person did want it. It is possible that
both did not want it and yet it came about. Leaving aside
the peculiar situation of Russia, we are basically able
to say that the war really had not been wanted or
intended — what we call ‘intend’ on the
physical plane. This war arose with elemental necessity
out of opposing forces; quite incomprehensibly out of
forces in elemental opposition. Basically, it has never
before happened in world history that an event popped up
as though out of a box within such a few days. This has
shown that whatever takes place in external events arises
from spiritual contexts and presents itself as something
physical.
From this
point of view the events of today may serve as a lesson,
to show mankind that we will never get the right answer
by asking: ‘Did he do it?’ or ‘Did
another do it?’ Instead you have to accept the
premise that something else has been involved as well;
you will have to make the effort and go somewhat deeper.
Only then will we learn to speak of events in the right
way.
There is
yet another reason why it will be necessary to go to the
effort of taking a deeper view of things. We are now
experiencing how the world appears divided against
itself. People are not yet able to do other than always
blame another person. The time will come when the deeper
truths relating to karma will have entered into the
hearts and minds of men. Then this way of blaming the
other for whatever has to be lived through will no longer
exist. Then people will know that every nation is, in its
karma, living through the things it has to live through
for its own sake. A nation will be aware of the necessity
to gain strength in battle — not because of another
but for its own sake — to progress; the other is in
a certain way only the agent. This will focus attention
on the karma of folk souls. And seen from a higher point
of view, the statement: ‘I am standing here and the
other is standing there. It is his fault. He is
responsible for my having to go through these events,
these struggles. It is his doing’ is like a man of
fifty looking at a child. The child is young, he is old;
when the child did not yet exist he was not yet old, and
as the child grows he is getting old. It is then as
though he were to say: ‘It is the child's fault
that I am getting old; for if the child were not to grow
and get older I also would not get old!’ But the
child can merely make him aware of getting old.
This is
what we must take note of. Every nation has to experience
whatever it does experience out of its karma, even the
most serious of events. Do not say that such a truth,
when it enters into the hearts and minds of men, will be
something comfortless that enters into their hearts and
minds. Instead, it will lead to a heroic view of life, a
courageous view of life, a view of life that encompasses
evolution. Once men are able to hold such a view of life
it will appear to them as a waste of energy always to
seek the fault in another and always to carry on to the
usual conclusion. They will call upon the energies that
can help them onward. They will learn to identify with
their destiny in every sphere. We have seen, in my public
lecture, that this destiny, generally seen as something
external, can only be properly grasped when we surrender
to this destiny. And it is the same with the karma of a
nation. When love comes to earth then this attitude will
arise among men.
Again, as
on former occasions, I would appeal to you, dear friends,
who have dedicated yourselves to a spiritual movement, to
consider that in future it will be necessary to fill the
mental horizon we live in not merely with the kind of
thoughts that existed before, but to fill it with new
thoughts. These, however, can only be thoughts arising
from the spiritual world. It will not be immaterial
whether or not a number of people send up thoughts into
the spiritual world like those deriving from such
considerations as have been presented today. In deciding
to meditate on these truths you will help the events that
are to happen in the future to happen in the right way,
for the good of man. You are anything but inactive with
regard to human progress if you meditate on the thoughts
the present time calls for in order that man may truly
progress. Let us hope that a good many of us succeed in
doing spiritual work side by side with the work that is
done with blood and death; spiritual work which consists
in filling the World with the right thoughts, with
thoughts that relate to the mission of age. We shall then
be able to feel that these are the true thoughts of love.
Looking for a quotation, many people have been reaching
for the popular volume by Buechmann these days to find
the right phrase and quoted the words of old Heraclitus,
according to which war is the ‘father of all
things’.
[ Note 16 ]
Heraclitus was right in saying this and those who quote
him are also right. Yet a father on his own cannot
produce a child. The child has to have a mother. As war
is the father, so anything achieved in peace-filled work
is the mother. Unless the father is to remain sterile,
there has to be a mother. And she in turn will have to
come from the hearts and minds of those who understand
the mission of our time in the spirit and know how to
come to love out of understanding.
That is
what I want to put into your souls in today's gathering,
so that in keeping with the demands made in the present
day our spiritual science shall not serve merely to
satisfy our curiosity or thirst fa: knowledge but give us
the right living energies, energies that we develop to
make them a true comfort in the sorrows our time is
bringing. True comfort does not result in weakness but
leads to strength, courage to be active —
spiritually active or physically active, but in any case
active. Over and over again we have to remember how
important it is in our time for a number of people to
feel the free impulse to enter more deeply into the
spirit. For this in itself means that progress is made
not by the individual but by the whole of mankind.
And in this
attitude of mind let us in conclusion return once more to
the thoughts we are sending forth, in the way I have
indicated, to those who are at the front.
Out of courage shown in
battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.
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