Lecture 6
Spiritual Perception Essential at the
Present Time
Berlin, January 26, 1915
Due to circumstances, my departure has
been postponed till tomorrow and so we can still have
this evening together.
As usual,
let us first of all direct our thoughts to the souls of
those who are out at the front, having to stand up for
the momentous events of our time.
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 of 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:
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 who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha
— the spirit we have been seeking in our spiritual
movement over the Years so that he was able to influence
our mind deeply — may he be with you and with the
hard duties you have to perform.
Dear
friends, I want to use this extra evening we have been
given, as it were, to comment on a number of unrelated
points that may of value to us in one respect or
another.
First of
all let me point out that in spite of the materialism of
the present age, or perhaps exactly because of the
materialism of our age, the souls of people doing
scientific work in certain fields are guided towards the
existence of a spiritual world even though they do not
really intend this. Let me give you a specific example.
It would of course be possible to pick up a great many
threads with regard to what I have just indicated, but I
should like to refer to a pamphlet which has appeared
quite recently. It is number twelve in a series now being
published with reference to the war written by Professor
O. Binswanger, the well-known psychiatrist, under the
title
Die seelischen Wirkungen des Krieges
(The Psychological Effects of War).
[ Note 34 ]
It is not my intention
to take up the more detailed points made by Binswanger
concerning the psychological effects of war but merely
certain comments he made in this pamphlet. A scientist
like Binswanger now feels compelled, as it were, to do
more than just hint at the existence of a spiritual life.
Yet he also feels obliged to apologize for this, pointing
out that the present age is not inclined, where the
enlightened are concerned, to believe in any such thing
as a life of the spirit or of the soul. In his pamphlet
Binswanger refers to the more than well-known fact that
there has been a major increase in nervous diseases in
our day. He discusses a number of contributory causes and
on page 10 makes the significant statement: 'It may seem
strange to some of you that I put such great emphasis on
the psychological element in these nervous conditions.'
He is a psychiatrist entirely in the materialistic way,
yet finds it necessary to speak of the psychological
element, the soul element, as one of the causes of the
diseases he is particularly interested in.
‘What does the psychological element have to do
with a nervous stomach, with a nervous heart, nervous
pain in the back, arms and legs? All I can say is that
it is the general medical opinion that in the final
instance, pathological nervous reactions in many
different organs and parts of the body are largely due
to disorders in the psychological sphere.’
We see how
someone whose researches lead him to consider the facts
of soul life is forced by those facts to confess that
nervous stomach complaints, nervous heart complaints,
nervous pain in the back and, indeed, also in the
extremities — conditions as a rule only considered
from the materialistic point of view today — have
their causes in disturbances in the soul life.
The modern
scientist will however tend to go no further than making
this admission. He will go no further, not one step
further. In the first place it has to be admitted that we
are not getting anywhere if the causes of pathological
processes of the kind described are sought only in the
physical sphere. Yet people still lack the courage and
energy to do some serious investigation of spiritual
scientific aspects. The moment people hear anything
positive relating to the field of spiritual science they
feel they no longer have solid ground under their feet,
as it were; as though everything we are able to gain from
the spiritual world by applying the methods of spiritual
science lacked the security of certainty. For a
psychiatrist this is doubly fatal, one might say. If the
causes of certain physical conditions lie in the
processes occurring in soul-life, it will have to be
admitted that the best way to deal with such conditions
is through treatment directed at the soul life.
But how is
one to treat a soul if one has not developed any concept
as to how the soul relates to the body? The prescriptions
for getting rid of spiritual disorders, as it were, can
only be taken from the spiritual world. Yet it is only
possible to perceive the relationship between the
spiritual world and the outer material world if we know
something of that spiritual world. And so one gets a
peculiar lack of precision, lack of logic, very peculiar
reasoning, when such people attempt to speak about the
relationship between body and soul in a really positive
way. This is something we can demonstrate in the case of
this particular scientist. A few pages further on —
on page 23 — he says something very peculiar
indeed. Wanting to speak of the Confidence he feels as to
the successful conclusion of the German campaign in the
light of his understanding of how the human soul is
constituted, he says:
‘It
is my conviction that the army whose soldiers have the
better nerves will win, or, to put it in other words
those with greater moral resilience.’
Let us
consider this in all seriousness. A scientist who admits
that the causes even of physical disorders, so-called
nervous disorders, are psychological, says that victory
is sure to go to the soldiers who have the better nerves,
or — as he says— '...in other words, those
with greater moral resilience'. It is hard to imagine
anyone producing greater nonsense than this. Both
statements are of course absolutely true, but it is
nonsense to maintain that the one says the same as the
other. Just imagine someone forming a very clear picture
of the nervous system, able to trace this nervous system
down to it smallest ramifications, and then saying that
'put in other words' stronger nerves are equivalent to
greater moral resilience in a person. It means that
purely physical nerve strands are, in other words,
supposed to be moral resilience. The modern reader will,
of course, fail to nonce such things. You will find he
fails to notice the oddest things when reading anything
he considers tremendously erudite. Such things are,
nonetheless, genuine nonsense unless they are seen in
relation to what spiritual science has to say about it.
What view does spiritual science take of these
things?
If we
consider the moral power of a person, the moral element
that ensouls him and fills the whole of his soul, it is
in the first instance something entirely spiritual,
nonphysical, something that has nothing to do with
anything material. What we call the moral power of a soul
is a spiritual power within it, in so far as this soul
belongs to the spiritual world. When the soul returns to
its body on waking up, as it always does, it uses the
body as a tool for the physical world from the moment of
waking until going to sleep. Between going to sleep and
waking up the soul is living in the purely spiritual
world, separate from its physical tool, the body,and it
also gathers its moral power there. In the physical
world, however, moral powers can be active only by using
the physical body as their tool. They are in that case
also active as spiritual powers. In the ego and astral
body of man the element we call his moral power is
active. It is something purely spiritual in them. But
what does this purely spiritual element of moral power in
the astral body and ego of man have to do with his
nervous system?
Let me make
a comparison. The moral power of a person has exactly as
much to do with his nervous system as I have to do with
the floor on which my feet are now standing. If the floor
were not there, nor the ground on which it rests beneath
it, I would be unable to stand here, being a physical
human being. The floor has to be there, but it has
nothing to do physically with anything within me. The
floor or the ground has to be there for me to stand on.
In the same way the nerves have to be there in the
physical body merely to provide the Physical resistance
which the moral powers of the astral body and the ego
must encounter in the physical world in order to make
their Presence felt.
There is
another comparison I can make — one that really
goes to the heart of the matter though it will be
necessary to think it through in some detail before one
can really see what lies behind it. I am going to use a
comparison that again comes up in physical life.
Consider
the process of digestion. It consists in some of the food
stock becoming part of the organism whilst the rest is
eliminated. If it were not possible for a certain part of
our food to be eliminated, digestion would be impossible.
The process of elimination has to be a very regular one.
Yet no one would get it into their heads to say we obtain
nourishment from the part of the food we eliminate. The
processes going on in our nervous system when we develop
moral Power within us are like processes of elimination,
genuine processes of elimination in relation to what is
fruitful for us, what really lies within us as our true
human nature. The assertion of a specific moral impulse
in the soul is connected with a process of elimination.
The process of elimination — the part which drops
out as it were, the waste material we produce—that
is the process in the nervous system. This relates to
what we are actually doing in the same way as the process
of elimination relates to the process by which foods are
assimilated in our digestion. People who refer to the
spiritual process in which moral impulses are formed as a
process in nervous system are really saying—with
reference to another sphere — that human nutrition
consists in elimination, and they then examine the
products of elimination in order to establish what is
particularly beneficial to man. That, then, is the
back-to-front method used by materialistic science. The
principle which the spirit has to eliminate in order to
unfold is considered the real thing. In their efforts to
get at the truth about the spirit modern scientists
investigate exactly the things the spirit has no use for.
The method is more or less like that used by someone
examining the intestinal contents in order to find out
what kind of substances man takes up into his muscles.
One has to put this bluntly at times to show up the utter
absurdity of modern materialism. The false picture
produced by modern materialism carries such enormous
conviction in the perverted mental climate of today that
strong words have to be used in pointing out the nature
of the terrible misconception which prevails.
I am now
going to start from something quite different, though
later we shall relate this to what I have already put
before you. Let us consider the question of the different
religious systems that have evolved in the course of
human evolution. In the course of human evolution a
number of different religious teachers have appeared,
telling People one thing or another about conditions in
the spiritual world. It really does not take much to
arrive at a really clever view of those religious
systems. (It is not really difficult to be clever in the
present age, as we have seen with regard to a number of
opinions held today. You know how this should be taken
and that it does not imply criticism of the present
age.)
Someone who
may be considered clever can so easily point to the fact
that different religious teachers have taught different
things and draw the conclusion that none of it could
therefore be true. For if it were to be true then surely
they must all have taught the same. This in turn would
lead to the conclusion that all the talk of higher worlds
has been shown to be so full of contradictions that it
cannot be considered to be based on anything that comes
to mankind out of truth.
The only
way of finding the right answer to the above question is
to form an idea of how much of what man has lived through
here on earth goes with him through the gate of death.
You can easily form an idea of what we take with us if
you consider the following. As soon as you close your
eyes and put your hands over your ears you will see or
hear nothing of the physical world around you. And now
ask yourselves: How much of the impressions the soul
takes into itself from morning to night, and how much of
the ideas and concepts it holds within it, is in actual
fact owed to the eyes and ears? If we had no eyes and
ears, by far the greatest part of human soul content
would simply not be there. Now, after death the human
being quite definitely has neither eyes nor ears.
Anything taken in through the eyes and ears can therefore
only be carried through the gates of death through
memory. There really is no need to reflect further on
this. Anything taken in through the eyes and ears can
only be carried through the gate of death as memory. The
same applies to all the ideas we have formed on the basis
of sensory impressions. And now you merely need consider
how much has to be left behind when we enter into the
spiritual world — everything which has come to man
through external impressions is left behind.
What
quality should an idea have if we are to take it with us
through the gate of death? It most certainly cannot
derive from any form of external impression; and one
quality it must possess is that anyone thinking in
materialistic terms will be able to say: ‘What you
have before your mind's eye simply does not exist, for
you are not able to see it with your eyes nor hear it
with your ears.’ The nature of such an idea or
concept must be such, therefore, that its subject is not
perceptible to the outer senses, for anything we are able
to perceive with the outer senses cannot go through the
gate of death as an idea. My comment is that materialism
is seduced into raising such objections because it is all
the time talking of ‘being’ and
‘non-being’ without really understanding the
ins and outs of ‘'being’ and
‘non-being’. It is sufficient for our present
purpose to consider just the German language. The verb
sein (to be) derives from sehen (to
see). Anything said to be in ‘being’
therefore is said to be no more than ‘something I
have actually seen’. All the rest of the talk about
‘being’, is really nothing more than
communication about that what has been seen. The
conclusion to be drawn from this is that we should not
speak of the things we take with us through the gate of
death in terms of ‘being’, for that would
imply that we must have seen them with our physical
eyes.
What did
the founders of religions want to give to people in the
ideas they presented?
They wanted
to present ideas to people that would strengthen the
spirit within them, endow it with the power of inner
light. On passing through the gate of death and entering
into the supersensible world man would then carry his own
light, being able to illumine what he finds there out of
his own power. People find it very easy to say: When I
get you to tell me of the supersensible worlds how can I
know that all these ideas are really correct?' Let us
imagine someone was spreading ideas about the
supersensible worlds, ideas accepted by a number of
people, and these were in fact wrong, or one-sided, or
did not turn out to be correct in the sense we speak of
things being correct in the outer physical world. In such
a case it would still have been better for people to have
taken up the wrong ideas than to have taken up no ideas
at all concerning the supersensible world. Why? It would
have been better because the soul has to make an effort
in accepting any kind of idea about the supersensible
world. You may take up correct ideas or incorrect ideas
but you have to make an effort, and it is this effort
which counts in the spiritual world when we go through
the gate of death. It is this effort that will benefit us
after death or, indeed, benefits us altogether when we
enter into the spiritual world.
Let us
assume we had made our own what is a completely wrong
view of the spiritual world. By taking it up we have
developed our soul forces just as a gymnast develops his
limbs. And whatever we have developed will be ours and we
carry it with us into the spiritual world. By taking it
with us into the spiritual world we then have something
there that is similar to our having eyes here on earth.
We shall no longer be blind in the spiritual world. Even
if it were to be the case that everything we have taken
up was wrong and the only thing we have done is to make
an effort, this means we shall have developed the eye of
the soul so that we are now able to see what it there in
the spiritual world.
Now the
situation is that the teachings of the different
religious teachers are in no way completely wrong. It is
rather that the truth concerning the supersensible world
has been presented from different points of view and only
appears to be contradictory. The one must be taken to
complement the other. What is essential is that all these
religious systems have something in common, and this is
that they all provide the human soul with concepts the
soul uses to make itself strong to enter the spiritual
world, so that the soul is raised from death in its
spiritual depths. Individual religious teachers give to
the souls what those souls are capable of receiving,
depending on the conditions given in individual races
— I would say depending on climatic conditions of
the country and on the time when such teachers come
forth. They all have in common that they give power and
strength to the souls of men. We may also say they make
them radiant within so that the souls may be real not
only in the physical world but also in the spiritual
world. Food to strengthen the soul is the universal truth
that has been given to men in all religious systems,
depending on the given situation.
Our own age
is now faced with the necessity gradually to accept a
different view of the spiritual world compared to what
people of Past ages were able to take in.
Certain
ideas which have evolved with the flowering of modern
science need to be strengthened inwardly in our age, to
grow in inward Power so that these very ideas enable the
soul to be alive in the spiritual world and not dead. It
is through this that something more profound — more
demanding but also more profound — than anything
achieved in the various religions arises for the soul of
its own accord. I have given a number of reasons over the
years as to why our age is the one called to spiritual
science. What I'd like to say is the following: For
anyone close to spiritual life it is evident wherever we
go — and that is what Is so deeply moving for us
today — that one of the elements that has to come
into the life of the present age, one form of leaven, is
spiritual science.
Many, many
souls have gone through the gate of death these last
months, gone through the gate of death in the full vigour
of youth. I have already told you that in the normal
course of events the human beings whose souls have now
gone through the gate of death could have expected to
live longer on earth. When a human being goes through the
gate of death we know that first of all he lays aside his
Physical body and then, after a relatively short time,
his ether body. This ether body then belongs to the outer
ether world and the astral body and the ego continue to
belong to the person concerned. It is usually said that
the ether body dissolves in the spiritual world. But the
time it takes to dissolve differs greatly. When a person
has grown very old, i.e. has reached what we may call a
normal life-span, he will have used up the forces of his
ether body so that it dissolves quickly. But when a
person goes through the gate of death in the vigour of
youth, his ether body could still have served him for
many years. This ether body is a cohesive, structured
whole. It will not dissolve immediately in the second
case. It will separate from the astral body and the ego
and these will go their own ways in the spiritual world.
The ether body will separate from them, but it will not
dissolve immediately. It will seem quite natural to you
that the human being maintains a certain connection with
the ether body which has separated immediately but still
continues to be present in the spiritual ether. We are
therefore able to say that the sphere of this spiritual
ether—taking it in absolute terms, close to the
earth's aura — contains a very considerable number
of unused ether bodies, ether bodies with vigorous
forces. It is particularly impressive to see, when
observing the spiritual world as it is at the moment,
that we find there such a large number of unspent ether
bodies. Something else may be noted at every point where
we are able to be in touch with the feelings of the dead
with regard to these, their ether bodies. (You are, of
course, free to believe this or not. My only claim to
credibility lies in the power of truth contained in what
I have been telling you over many years.) As to the
feelings one may perceive in the dead in relation to
their ether bodies, one finds that a spiritual whisper
reaches one, as it were, from all those who have now made
the sacrifice of death: ‘The time has come! Mankind
will only make rightful use of the unspent energies
within our ether bodies if it becomes conscious of its
relationship to the spiritual world.’
Many, many
energies stream from those unspent ether bodies. They
enter our world and men will only use them rightly if
they direct their thoughts to the spiritual world. Then
the energies from ether bodies given in sacrifice will be
energies to benefit mankind. That, as it were, is what
the dead are calling out to us today: ‘Do not allow
our ether bodies to be wasted. Do not let the time go by
when the energies of our unspent ether bodies are able to
serve the spiritual progress of mankind.’
There is a
special point I wish to make. On one or more previous
occasions I have described the way in which it is
possible to help the dead. Under specific conditions the
dead are able to benefit if we make accessible to them,
by reading to them, what we attain to in spiritual
science. I have pointed out that it means much to a
person who has gone through the gate of death when we
read spiritual scientific material to them in the spirit,
when we form a vivid picture of that person in our mind
and read a chapter of spiritual science to them, not
aloud of course, but in our thoughts. It could also be
several or, indeed, many persons. This may seem absurd to
people who believe that the whole spiritual world is
present around the human being as he enters through the
gate of death so that there is no need for us to read to
him. But it is not all that absurd. Of course, someone
who has died does have the spiritual world around him, he
finds himself within it. But just as someone here on
earth understands only little of the world of the senses
although he is within it, so someone who has died does
not have full knowledge of the spiritual world merely by
virtue of going through the gate of death, even though he
will then be within that world. Such knowledge has to be
acquired. When we read to someone who has died it is as
though we were giving him food — it flows into him.
In the time that lies ahead mankind will be able to
achieve much strength-giving power where spiritual things
are concerned by using the mantram I have always used at
the beginning of our meetings: ‘Spirits of your
souls, guardian guides...’ and so forth (in the
version making reference to ‘those whom you guard
in the spheres...’ for those who have fallen in
battle). Usually this Method can be used only with the
dead whom we have known personally, but this particular
mantram can also be addressed to those among the dead who
were not personally known to us. Having used this mantram
with true reverence we are then able to read out into the
unknown, as it were. Dead people who have gone to their
death in consequence of the events of the present time
will be able to receive this. They will be able to gain
benefit from this connection with us and use it to
influence cultural developments on earth through their
ether bodies. They will be working together with the
people living on earth to advance spiritual life.
There is
something else we can achieve in this way. It is
perfectly true that we have been living in an age of the
most miserable materialism and that the events of the war
have triggered something which clearly bears the marks of
spiritual life. Anyone travelling through Germany and
observing people spiritually could note an enormous
difference in spiritual life between July 1914, or even
earlier, and then in August, September and especially
now. The difference which emerges is that before
everybody had his own egoistic aura that was well closed
in upon itself and clung to a person, as it were. Now a
common aura may be seen, with people's thoughts flowing
into it as something uniform. All thoughts going in one
direction — that is something highly significant in
spiritual terms. It means that for this time of war
something has been created in the spirit that was not
there before. This is quite undeniable.
But now
imagine — for that is how it will have to be
— that peace returns. Then souls will grow all the
more empty and barren unless they are able to find some
kind of spiritual asset out of their inner life. It is
something men have need of at all times, that they direct
their thoughts to something that has nothing to do with
any external reality. In some form or other this
strengthens them for the spiritual world. Ideas
concerning the supersensible world will strengthen them
with regard to the good powers in the supersensible
world. Ideas not relating to the supersensible or ideas
not justifiable with regard to the supersensible will
also strengthen men for the supersensible world, though
in that case for the Luciferic or Ahrimanic world. But it
simply is part of the makeup of human beings that the
spiritual wants to come to expression within them. We
might put it like this: Man has to have something that
does not hold true for the external world. If he has
refused for a long time to take anything into his soul
that does not hold true for the external world then there
will be a reaction, a reaction to the effect that he will
have to believe in something that does not hold true for
the external world. Such beliefs may then take hold of
human souls in the strangest way. Certain souls
completely subject to materialism may nevertheless be
religious in an external sense. And such souls may
experience that reaction in a particular way. They may,
for instance — how shall I put it — all be in
accord in believing that some people, some race with its
own culture, were a race of barbarians, and they may make
this an article of faith. Leaving aside certain other
aspects, this is nothing more than the soul's yearning
for faith, for something that has no reality in the
physical world. It is because they are no longer in the
habit of applying their minds to what is genuinely
supersensible that such men then fill their souls with
the belief that some people or other are barbarians. This
becomes an article of faith, a dogma, that is now as
fanatically adhered to as they previously adhered to
various religious dogmas. It is a substitute for a faith
that has long been absent. We need to realize, however,
that in the long run this will not do. Once peace has
been restored People will no longer be able to have this
real-world substitute that finds expression in the belief
that some people or other are barbarians. And then
emptiness comes, dreadful desolation. That is the
prospect for those regions where people are today
creating a faith, creating dogmas for themselves in a way
that at times is downright disgusting, being nothing but
lies. A terrible emptiness of soul will be experienced in
those regions. And this emptiness of soul can only be
combated if the unspent ether forces of those dedicated
to sacrificial death are used in the right way, as I have
described. That is why all of them are saying to us
— reminding us, as it were, to use their ether
forces rightly — and expressing it in form of a
spontaneous discovery made as they went through death:
‘Now is the time!’ Mankind has to develop
spiritually and these events must now be seen as a
twilight state out of which a new Sun-state shall
arise.
That is the
thought which should fill the hearts and minds of those
who suffer great losses: Our age desperately needs to
become spiritual, and this will be possible only with
help from the spiritual world. The means of providing
such help have to come out of painful events like those
we are now living through.
To the
spiritual scientist it is immediately obvious that these
events should not be considered from a materialistic
point of view only. Yet a purely materialistic way of
looking at these events is about all one can find. It may
happen — and we have seen this happen — that
a number of people in one part of the world feel that
there is hostility towards them and therefore issue some
form of proclamation. This proclamation reaches enemy
territory and from this enemy territory the question is
put: ‘Who was it who wanted this war?’ Or the
other party is accused of having wanted the war. Again
and again they forget the one thing which must be
understood if a deeper insight is to be gained into the
situation. Some good for the future will also come out of
looking into things more deeply. It has to be understood
that all these events are indeed willed out of the
spiritual world, because the spiritual world needs the
powers that may be the fruits arising from the seed of
those unspent ether bodies. If accusations were to be
levelled one would also have to level them at the
spiritual world. But there all thought of blame goes from
one's mind. There we become aware of the iron necessity
which exists, the iron necessity which, from the point of
view of the spiritual worlds, has to regard our earth
world in about the same way as we have to regard a
situation where it is necessary to consume so and so
much, kill it, take it out of its natural context by
force, in order to build up something else. We can not
build a house unless we destroy so-and-so many rock
formations' There is no point here in speaking of blame.
We have to speak of necessity in this case. And in the
same way it is necessary in the spiritual world to demand
the sacrifices that are now being demanded because seed
is needed. This seed consists in the unspent ether bodies
which will then be present in all that develops for
humanity, and these have to be available if evolution is
to proceed. Otherwise mankind would lack the energies it
needs to progress. Today's events have their outward
significance but, in addition, we must also take these
facts fully into account if we want to understand their
true inward meaning.
Taking this
point of view, we say to ourselves: I may not be able to
know from the beginning if everything I am receiving from
the spiritual world is ‘correct’, as they
say. One thing is true, however, and that is that by
uniting these revelations from the spiritual world with
my own soul I am exerting my soul, and in this way I am
giving it powers so that my soul grows luminous for the
spiritual world, is given eyes for the spiritual
world.
Conditions
are, however, different in the spiritual world than they
are in the physical world. In the physical world we can
be satisfied once we have formed a thought and recognized
its truth. It is sufficient for the practical life of the
physical world to have perceived the truth of a thought
just once. What I mean is this: If a body of judges wants
to establish whether a person is guilty in a particular
case, the matter is settled once the conclusion has been
reached that the person is guilty. Everything that is
necessary has then been done. In the spiritual world,
however, everything has not been done once a conclusion
has been reached or a thought has been formed. It is
necessary for the thought to recur over and over again.
What matters in spiritual terms is the repetition. It is
not just a matter of knowing something about things but
of ever and again making that thought present in the
soul. This is also what meditative life is based on, that
we have the content of the meditation present in the soul
by constant repetition. Anything made constantly present
in this way will truly have the power to act like the
drops falling on a stone that will finally make a hollow.
A single drop falling on to a stone will leave no
impression. Nor will it do so if it falls ten times or a
hundred times. But in the end it will make a hollow. When
we take such things into our soul just once it might
appear that they make no impression at all. Nor will they
if taken in ten times. But if we are patient we can get
to the point where we perceive the essential core that is
eternal in man. It is the power we develop in the process
that matters. People tend to run away from this power.
They do not want it. Why is it that they do not want this
power?
The
question as to why people do not want this power, why
they fight shy of spiritual science even today, can be
answered if we briefly look again at the significance of
the images for life after death presented in spiritual
science. The images which are most important after death
are those which do not depict anything belonging to the
outer world, do not relate to external existence and are
such that a crude materialist will say they are of no
significance in life. Yet it is these images which are
the most important after death. To form such images calls
for such a great power of reflection, of deliberation and
attunement, that it will make the soul strong, letting it
experience itself, perceive itself, in the spiritual
world. Those are the images the souls needs on going
through the gate of death.
How can we
gain such images? We know the answer. We do so by
exerting the soul to a greater degree than it normally
exerts itself. If we want to take in the images the
modern scientist takes in we merely need to look, if
necessary through a microscope or telescope. We can stay
nice and passive as we receive impressions of the world
and record them. That is only too common. No one likes to
make an inner effort, for with things that are invisible
it takes greater effort than with things that are
visible. And greater effort in thought is what People shy
away from, run away from. We are really inwardly lazy, if
you will forgive such harsh words; we like to take things
easy. The most profound characteristic of modern
scientific endeavour is this inner laziness — going
for the easy way, not wanting to call forth power from
the soul. But if we do this, if we call forth such powers
from the soul, what effect does this have after death?
Well, we do gain something for life after death out of
these powers we have called forth, but it is something we
usually do not like at all, because we tend to live with
a certain illusion. Let me tell you why we usuallY do not
like it. When we enter the spiritual world through death
or through initiation, something has to be experienced
after death that is like a second death. It is a kind of
second death- As you know, we later have to separate also
from our astral body and this maY be done consciously or
we can sleep through it. There is a certain fear in
people's hearts which they do not interpret correctly. It
is the fear of waking up so much after death that they
will then be conscious of everything around them. That
fear is entirely the same as the one men have in the
physical world, where they would find it preferable not
to live their physical life too intensively, not to be
fully awake all the time, but rather go through life in a
bit of a haze. Life would be more pleasant that way. And
the most comfortable way of all would be to spend all
one's life in bed, going through life half asleep. Yet
this cannot always be done. The human being has to wake
up. And if he has been in a haze concerning what happens
after death up to the point in time I have mentioned, he
cannot be allowed to go on being in a haze after death.
Man must wake up. But he is still afraid of this! Even
people who come as close to spiritual science as a
scientist who says that nervous disorders affecting the
back, the arms and the legs arise from the soul sphere
will struggle to resist. He will struggle because he is
desperately afraid. He will be like someone who says:
'Something is missing. It's been stolen. The wind cannot
have carried it away, so it cannot have been removed by
natural forces — some person must have taken it.'
And he will stop at that point. He won't go further
because he is afraid he may get beaten up. That is how
some scientists behave, Binswanger for example. They say
that certain nervous disorders affecting the arms, legs
and so on are psychological in origin. But they will
stick at that. They do not go further because they are
afraid of getting beaten up — ahem! — I mean
because they like to sleep through what goes on in the
spiritual world.
Something
we have to become aware of is that modern scientists
actually are brought face to face with the effects
produced by the spiritual world but refuse to tackle that
world. Once these scientists are prepared to tackle the
spiritual world they will have to understand that it is
not permissible to talk about conditions relating to the
spiritual world in just any kind of general terms, but
that spiritual science has to be approached in a positive
way so that the very act of turning one's mind to
spiritual science becomes a kind of healing Process. That
is how one thing goes with another. It is not that mental
illness as such has increased — it would be wrong
to think so — but it is a fact that the type of
condition we may call a nervous disorder has spread a
great deal in more recent times. If things continue the
way they have been going until now the result will be
that nervous disorders have to get worse and worse and
this will show itself in the course human evolution is
taking.
It would be
possible to quote some very interesting facts. Let us
take one very simple case. There is the Austrian poet
Robert Hamerling [1830-89], an excellent poet, some of
whose work has also been presented to this group. This
man spent much of the second half of his life in bed. He
was very ill suffering from a serious illness that was
gradually getting worse and worse. He did not develop a
nervous condition, however. There is nothing of a nervous
quality about his writing. Even when he was only able to
lie on one side and was in the most terrible pain when
writing, his style was not what we would call 'nervous'.
The reason is that he belonged to that Central European
culture which has not yet fallen into nervousness the way
the spiritual life of other European peoples has done.
The nervous state does not take anything away from the
life of the spirit, but the facts still must be seen
clearly. I have seen how in the 1870s and 1880s People
still had a feeling for the things Robert Hamerling had
to offer, for instance, and then suddenly in the 1880s
tremendous enthusiasm came up for Dostoevsky. [1821-81]
Of course I do not want to take anything away from
Dostoevsky, but what he mainly has to offer is a very
nervy, twitchy art, however great. Such nervy art would
develop if the stream of materialism were to go on and
on, for Dostoevsky's art is materialistic even if it is
psychology’.
If this is
not to happen it will be necessary to develop the great
powers which the human soul has to come up with to enter
into lines of thought like the one that says Saturn, Sun
and Moon are earlier stages of earth evolution. Just try
and present ideas like Saturn evolution, Sun evolution
and so on to a proper modern man, expecting him to exert
his mind to the point where such things seem absolutely
natural. It is possible to find such things absolutely
natural, but the soul has to make considerable efforts to
reach that point, and the result will be that the
nervousness is driven out. It does require patience, but
the nervousness will be driven out. The general
nervousness which would otherwise affect the whole of
human civilization will be cured if men take up what
arises from spiritual science through the widening of the
spiritual stream. In a situation where mankind is in
danger of going all twitchy, spiritual science comes from
the other side to offer a cure.
A
psychiatrist who has not yet entered into spiritual
science will have to admit to himself that nervous
symptoms are on the increase. On the basis of spiritual
science, however, he may then perhaps be forced to admit
that the best cure for nervous conditions is to tell his
patients: ‘Take a book on spiritual science for
three-quarters of an hour every day and try to think it
through; this will make your nerves much stronger.’
They will definitely get stronger. But we shall only be
able to believe this if we clearly understand that our
soul life relates to nerve function only in so far as it
initiates processes of elimination, as we have shown in
the comparison made at the beginning of this lecture. The
soul life cannot be cured by putting particular emphasis
on eliminatory processes but only by strengthening from
within the aspect which has nothing to do with the
eliminatory processes. The soul must impregnate this by
letting spiritual energies stream into itself. A time
will come when prescriptions are written on the basis of
spiritual science, prescriptions making use of one thing
or another that can only be found through spiritual
science, and this will apply particularly to the diseases
of more recent times. Of course we are not anywhere near
it yet. For a long time to come it will be thought that
there is sufficient evidence to show that any kind of
therapy that could be labeled ‘mystical’ is
claptrap. The label ‘mysticism’ will be all
the more freely applied the less people know what
mysticism really is. We are the ones who use the term
‘mysticism’ least often. We use it only as a
technical term. On the other hand, it is used most of all
by people who have no idea as to the nature of
mysticism.
In getting
a clear idea of these things we cannot hide from the fact
that we are living in a significant time of crisis. I
have said on a number of occasions that I am not in the
habit of saying we live in a time of transition. Every
period has something that went before and something that
is to follow. The point is to recognize the concrete
nature of the transition, the specific sense in which a
time is one of transition. In our own time, the concrete
part of it is that everything that is now happening
points to one thing: Men must find the way to Comprehend
the spiritual worlds. They will find calm, inner firmness
and inner certainty in those spiritual worlds. That is
what mankind is in absolute need of.
If you want
to let this idea really come to life in your soul of how
a new kind of calm has to be won for the soul out of
spiritual science, it is a good idea to meditate on the
following. It is truly significant that for the last
three or four centuries people gradually had to accept
the idea that they are rushing through space, genuinely
rushing through space. Of course anybody can say they
know this. But people do not usually reflect on this
— a fact they already learned at school —
that they are rushing through space at tremendous
speed.
This more
or less brings to mind the story of the man lying in a
ditch who was very comfortable as he lay there and yet
felt highly dissatisfied. Asked as to the reason for his
dissatisfaction, seeing that he did not have to do
anything, he replied that after all he had to revolve
around the sun with the earth but would find it more
convenient to stay behind. That was a man who had taken
the notion of that revolution seriously. As a rule people
do not think about this, for there is an element in man
which he does not normally keep in mind.
To continue
in our line of thought: Over the last three or four
hundred years people have got used to the thought of
being part of the earth as it rushes through space.
Resistance has to be put up against this, resistance
coming from cosmic space. It really is true that there
Was a feeling of security in the old thought that the
earth stood still and the sun was moving. Now it will be
a long time yet before people come to realize that the
Copernican view
[ Note 35 ]
is not correct. Things are not the way they are taught
today. It will however be possible to reach a point where
life is brought into the concepts of non-physical science
to the effect that a person may be sitting in a railway
carriage or travelling by boat and make such inner
efforts to counteract the rumbling noises that he will
cease to hear them, being wholly contained within
himself. That can only be done today with the help of
spiritual science-It must be remembered, however, that
constant repetition will be required, for it is the
strength developed in the process that matters. Then we
remain contained within ourselves, calm and sure. This is
a good subject for meditation: The powers of the
spiritual world will be able to come in and join us if we
go out to meet them in the right way in such calm. They
can only enter into our awareness if we go out to meet
them with the kind of living idea I have described to
you
That
characterizes the period of transition we live in. That
is the transition in which we really find ourselves. A
longing for the spiritual world is definitely present in
human souls, though most people do not yet know it. A
conscious longing for the spiritual world will however
develop out of the particular events that now involve
such a large part of the earth. Something the spiritual
scientist is already aware of today is that all the
unused ether bodies given in sacrifice will release a
truly profound longing for the spiritual world. This most
profound longing will come, the longing for a truth that
has to be won not through external observation but
inwardly, through efforts made by the soul. The German
spirit is indeed prepared for this. It is prepared for a
truth that reveals itself to be true out of itself, not
requiring external verification. The German spirit is
prepared for this and evidence of this may be found
everywhere. The thoughts of those who were truly working
within the essence of the German spirit have always taken
the form of considering truth to be an inner gift of the
human soul. What would such a person say to many of the
things happening in the present time? During the first
days of August statements appeared in the foreign press
that Hamburg fay in ruins, that the Russians had entered
Stettin and even Cologne. And all kinds of other things
were spread about as well. As you know, the Emperor Franz
Joseph died on 8 September!
[ Note 36 ]
What would a person of the type I characterized above have
to say to this?
‘Brass may be sold for gold by some, forged bills
of exchange rather than genuine ones, more than one
side may claim a lost battle as a victory, and other
lies concerning physical things and isolated events may
be made credible for a time. But when it comes to
knowledge of the essential reality where the conscious
mind has direct certainty of its own existence, the
thought of deception or illusion falls away.’
That could
have been written out of the depths of what had to be
experienced today. It was written by Hegel
[ Note 37 ]
who died in 1831. This
is What is so strange: if someone is profoundly moved by
the inner reality of truth he will say things that hold
true for all times. What has been said out of an
awareness of truth can be put forward again at all times.
This is something that has to be said concerning the
particular nature of the Central European spirit,
concerning its very Special relationship to the truth. No
one who takes the trouble to find out about these things
can deny it. Today one has the feeling, of course, that
one needs to ask again and again: ‘For what purpose
have People been studying history?’ Perhaps they
never actually have. It really is as though their souls
had only been born after 1 August 1914, making no use at
all of anything that happened earlier to help them form
an opinion. But in the final instance all this exists
only to make the reaction all the more powerful and
intense, to arouse an even more powerful and intense
desire for a truth that is true in itself. That is the
nature of the transition we are going through now, at a
time when this inner bond with the truth is often lacking
and shows itself to be lacking. The reaction will be a
most profound longing for the truth. Then the souls
incarnated in bodies here will hear what those other
souls are saying to them, the souls which have prepared
themselves through their sacrificial death at this time
to learn more of the truth than is generally known
today.
That is
what I have wanted to say to you in this lecture, to
reaffirm once again what I have said on several occasions
now in our time Concerning the way the events of the
present time speak to us in a living way. For it is true:
these events do speak of it. They offer courage and
comfort to those who surrender to them ready to make
sacrifices, to those who feel grief in considering the
events of the present time — courage and comfort to
lend new strength:
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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