Spiritual Science and the Mystery of Death
Deeper Relations of European History
Bremen, 21st February 1915
What spiritual science calls the mystery of death faces us in
our times so significantly. Everything is in close or more
distant interrelation with them. Above all, through spiritual
science we receive not only the basic conviction, but the basic
knowledge of the world in the physical body and of the world,
into which we enter through the gate of death. However, this
world is always alive also in the sensory life and surrounds
us. It is only not recognizable for the human being engaged in
the sensory life, because he does not have the necessary
attention for it. If such drastic events flow through the time
which demand so manifold sacrifices of the human beings as they
surround us now, we must be woven with our whole souls in it.
Hence, it is obvious to inform you about some matters by means
of spiritual science.
We
want to turn our glance to fields of life that show us how
humankind has come to something fatefully illogical concerning
its surroundings because of the materialistic way of thinking.
We hear, for example, in the way usual today the individual
nations accusing each another: I have not wanted the war; it is
you who has incited it. — The question is legitimate and
one can now already answer it — for the facts speak
clearly — where the external causes are. But for the
spiritual-scientific seer it is different. In this question he
has to realise that the war is basically the last phase in the
course of events, or at least a later phase of matters that
were there already before. One commits a mistake in the
judgment also with illness processes where one often still
speaks of such, whereas these are already health processes,
which must take place to recover. The external processes, which
take place to paralyse the illness and to recover, have
happened before and are not to be observed. The war also is an
apparent illness process. It is an effort of humankind to come
beyond certain processes which were there before. The illness
lies already before in the really unhealthy relations between
the peoples. If anyone investigates the external causes with
reason, he ignores the internal ones. In the area where we are
crowded together like in a fortress and are surrounded with a
ring, it must seem reasonable to especially raise the question
which the internal causes are, or of which kind the single
cause is by which this encirclement was caused. One speaks of
such an encirclement for the last years, for the last decades,
but if you look at the great connections, it begins much
sooner. It sounds peculiar, but one can give the year 860 A. D.
— not 1860, but 860. For such a long time, the process is
going on, which finds expression now in a way we can call the
most dreadful war of humankind, since it inhabits the
earth.
In
the deeper interrelation of European history one finds the
extremely strange fact that in Central Europe something of
spiritual substance was crowded together. If anyone
investigates this deeper interrelation, he sees that it was
crowded together there for a particular purpose. It concerns
not the external determinations of blood or race, but the fact
that something like a spiritual substance permeates the world.
Something like a snake-shaped ring contracts in Central Europe
coming down from the distant north. Two currents of the east
and west go to the south and meet forming a ring. From a
centre, the Normannic tribes move in the 9th century down who
are related by blood to so many things that later exist in
Central Europe. But they push their way into the Romance
element, which comes from Southern Europe, and flow together
with it. In 860, they stand in front of Paris; there the
Normans were overpowered by the Romance people. The western
France came into being from that. More than the Angles and
Saxons could bring to the British islands, the Normans brought
back from France to England. In the east, the Normannic people
moved down, they got from the north to the Volga and the Black
Sea into the Slavic regions. Later the Tartar current
coalesces. The Slavic element overpowers the Normans and gives
them the Christian religion in its eastern form. They become
Slavic as “Ros” — they are called in Finland
that way — nothing has remained except the name Russia.
This name is of Germanic origin. The name Rurik has the same
origin.
About these relations one has rather doubtful views. In the
west of Europe many people speak that the French are appointed
to resurrect the old Celtic element in a kind of Renaissance.
One has the idea that in Central Europe are mainly Teutons and
that in the west the Celtic element predominates. However, it
is vice versa, in the French population is much more Teutonic
blood, in Central Europe is more Celtic blood, this is true.
Thus maya stands against truth. Only the inhabitants of the
west are completely overpowered by the Romance element. In the
east the Norman and with them the Teutonic elements are
overpowered by the foreign race element. Still today there a
religion prevails that is foreign to the Russian folk-soul
[ in
From Symptom to Reality,
third of nine lectures (Berlin, 1918), volume 185 of Steiner's
Collected Works (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1976)].
Thus the people in Central Europe are encircled as it were. The
Romance element reaches to Constantinople, and on the other
side the Slavic Normans reach to Constantinople as well. There
we have the snake, the ring.
If
we consider that what was crowded together there spiritually,
we get the view that it has an especially important task.
Yesterday, I have only indicated it, but, nevertheless, I have
spoken of the fact that here a certain familiar contact of the
folk-soul with the individual soul should take place and just
thereby the nicest blossoms are produced with the best
relatives. The ego should immediately be seized, not the single
members of the soul like in the West, should be immediately
living in the ego. From that arises — this would already
have to be clear to the exoteric consideration — that in
Central Europe basically complete hostility could never hold
sway against idealism that always a certain tendency to the
spiritual world was there to a high degree. When we began our
spiritual movement, karma ordained that we had to act at first
in association with the British movement. But externally
everything was only a symptom of that what had to happen
internally with a certain necessity. If we consider what the
theosophical movement represents, from which we had to
separate, you will notice that there the cultural life has
split in two parts. The external life takes a purely
materialistic way, and the spiritual element is coupled to it.
They always fall apart.
Compare to that which must be our spiritual life for us. As in
the organism the head cannot be thought without body, our
spiritual life grows out of the general cultural life. You only
need to start with Tauler, Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, then with
Herder, Lessing, everywhere we have to develop what should
become higher spiritual culture. We cannot couple our spiritual
view to anything, we must have it as an organism, must raise
it. We have to discover internally that the return of Christ is
a spiritual affair. Hence, we cannot make the slightest
concession. We are able to look at Christ as a figure only with
the spiritual eye, approach Him with the internal experience.
In the West that had to be dogmatised and materialised. People
could not imagine it differently, as that He would come in the
physical body. Hence, the absurd idea to present Christ in the
body on the salver
[the Indian boy Krishnamurti was propagated as
the reincarnated Christ by Annie Besant, the president of the
Theosophical Society (Adyar).].
This happened in connection with what was encircled there.
Hence, the question must touch us objectively: how has the
Central European civilisation to relate to the future culture?
— Truth is something general, but it is something
different how it arises. In the Central European civilisation
are the springs for the whole spiritual culture of the future.
We have to find the way from the German idealism to the
spiritual culture. For that is necessary that here in the
centre an ego-culture is founded. You can see that easily on
the esoteric field. The human ego has to enkindle itself in the
outside world, there only it is awake and realises internally.
Thus the ego-culture of Central Europe is aroused from without.
You need to look only at the last events, the standardisation
of the German being. It is typical that the German empire was
founded in 1871 on foreign ground. So many examples could be
given that also show in the external events that there is an
ego-culture in Central Europe.
It
seems reasonable to ask: which meaning do the deaths have for
the spiritual world? — Countless human beings go in the
prime of life through the gate of death. At first the
connection of ego, astral body, etheric body with the physical
body is separated. The physical body is handed over apparently
to the earth, the etheric body to the etheric world; astral
body and ego go on. However, this must strike us: are the
etheric bodies of the human beings of normal age going through
the gate of death different from those of the young men? As to
the physical body one understands this, as to the etheric one
will understand it now. The etheric body could still have
supplied the physical body for decades, and could have worked
on it. It goes with these unused forces through the gate of
death, coalesces there with the folk-soul, and the work of the
folk-soul will be impregnated in future with the unused forces
of these etheric bodies. It is our task to understand that.
Human beings will be there who will know: the folk-soul is an
active element. Only if one knows that the unused etheric
bodies will work as a spiritual force in concrete way in the
spiritual world, then one can understand what takes action
really. The consciousness of this concrete relationship with
the spiritual world will be important. Thereby, namely by
creation of such a consciousness of the spiritual world,
spiritual science becomes more and more life in the souls and
does not only remain doctrine. The human being knows that he is
in a spiritual aura as he knows here that the air is in his
surroundings. Like he distinguishes clean and dirty air here,
he will feel good and bad spirits, experiencing and feeling the
spiritual aura.
Only this is the right fruit of spiritual science. We see it if
we consider events that are close to us and can teach us. One
of them just happened in the place of our construction. In this
case it was a child whose etheric body was unused. The forces
are there; somebody who beholds them who knows how to behold
them sees that they have gone over into the aura of our Dornach
construction and live in it. This is an example I am
responsible for. The etheric body which belongs with its forces
more to the community is really working on. Since that time it
tries to do something by means of inspirations nearby the
construction. These are supporting forces.
Such matters are obvious to us, we can be taught through them
how mysterious the connections are in the spiritual world. Just
in the last time we experienced in the karma of our society
that dear friends have died off. What I said in the Vienna cycle
[
Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth,
eight lectures (Vienna, 1914), Steiner's Collected Works volume 153]
about the life between death and new birth became
completely clear just in some of these souls. One of these
souls has found so surely the way into our movement when the
physical body was already worn-out. Since it was in our
movement, it was a being whose soul faced me like through a
body that had become bright and transparent as glass. After
death the picture of this soul, as it was already before, grew
together with that which it presented after. I was not able to
help myself to give the obituary which shows that I was so
surely together with this soul. The following words made
themselves audible for about three days, after death had
occurred:
You
came to us.
The gentleness of your being
Spoke out of the calm strength of your eyes —
Calmness of your soul
Flowed in the waves
With which your glances
Carried your internal weaving
To things and human beings; —
And the soul penetrated your voice
Which revealed — more through the kind of word
In its eloquent manner —
What was working as a secret
In your lovely soul
Than it was contained in the word;
However, without saying a word
It revealed itself
To the compassionate love of human beings —
This being that told of noble, calm beauty
Of the world-soul's creation
To receptive feeling.
The
consciousness is dampened after death, just because a flooding
consciousness is there. This happens by the review you have on
death first — not in the case of suicide, — as it
were a solar point. That belongs to the most beautiful, highest
experiences. You resume it there, you say to yourself: there
you have lived, — and you orientate yourself that way in
the spiritual world.
Our
friend was out of the stage of the etheric review, so that I
spoke to the present, but not yet conscious being. Then a
moment of consciousness occurred as a result of the heat, and
she saw the cremation. Time there becomes space.
The
events in the physical and spiritual worlds correspond to each
other. In such a case, calling does not return like an echo
from the spiritual world, but converts itself to an answer,
giving the gist, from the not yet conscious soul. By such
examples we recognise feeling and feel recognising the
spiritual world. The result must be to experience the reality
of the spiritual world. It is especially important to get this
definite feeling in our time, so that the physical welfare and
the mental welfare arise for the whole humankind out of the
seriousness of the present. For always the big, significant
world events were, also for a superficial knowledge, the clear
expression for the fact that there are not only sensory beings,
but that the spiritual beings are working into the sensory
world.
It
is difficult to break through the veil which separates the
physical and spiritual worlds. This makes self-knowledge
difficult to the greatest possible extent; one imagines that as
something too easy. It is sometimes difficult already in the
external physical sense. The significant philosopher Ernst Mach
[Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Austrian physicist
and philosopher]
— not Ferdinand Maack, otherwise, I would not have spoken
of a significant philosopher — gave a grotesque example
of it. Mach describes in one of his works that when he was a
young man a disagreeable countenance struck him once in a
mirror of a shop-window, which he had immediately to recognise
as his own to his dismay. He experienced something similar
later again. While getting into a bus he saw a man with an ugly
face who met him from the other side, and recognised only
afterwards that he had seen himself in the mirror. The human
being is still even more uncertain about the being or form of
the soul. People do not dream of what one has to do to get
self-knowledge. In the subsoil of the soul, maya has often
large dimensions. A human being has the impulse of cruelty; he
lives together with people whom he torments every now and then
et cetera. He looks for an external cause for it; he often uses
an ingenious gift of invention to veil the structure of his
soul. I myself knew somebody who spoke repeatedly how many
great sacrifices his activity demanded. But I had to say that
it was only a lust of his soul, which he satisfied. When he
spoke of sacrifices that way, only egoism stood behind that.
Real self-knowledge is only accessible if one advances in
spiritual science gradually, in so far as he experiences by
himself what is in the world.
There are chatting people in the world who organise chat hours.
Apparently, that is even the case when men go to their
sundowners. If they are asked, why they chat, people have all
kinds of important reasons for that. But if we glide with our
hand over velvet or silk, we have a feeling of pleasure. While
somebody is chatting, his etheric body knocks perpetually
against the air set in motion, and in doing so it is stroked.
This is nothing bad. You understand what goes forward with
chatting, only if you know that the human being has an etheric
body.
Humankind goes towards a time when it must face such matters
more and more. Spiritual science must arouse the consciousness
for it more and more. Then people who state today in their
materialistic mind that everything spiritual is daydreaming
will look as if anybody wanted to say where the air is, is
nothing at all. Like one discovers that the air is real,
humankind will find out that the spirit is something real. If
you consider the biggest mystery, Christ's Death and
Resurrection, you may believe that Christ, after he has gone
through the Mystery of Golgotha, would have worked on humankind
particularly by means of teaching. However, what people knew
about Christ was the least.
The
theologians have quarrelled, but very few understood something
right. Only a part of historical events happens in the
consciousness. An example of that is the battle between
Maxentius and Constantine at the Milvian Bridge on the 28th
October 312 A. D.,
which was decided not by some external
circumstances, but by effects of non-physical kind. With an
army which was far stronger than that of his adversary
Constantine Maxentius had to defend Rome. Questioning the
Sibylline Books he got the advice to lead his troops out of
Rome and then he would destroy the enemies of Rome that way. He
was still encouraged in that by a dream. Also Constantine had a
dream that his soldiers should bear banners with the monogram
of Christ instead of the old field signs. Thus it happened, and
the army of Maxentius, which had been led out of Rome contrary
to reason, was defeated by the weaker armed forces of
Constantine, and Maxentius himself found his death on the run.
The Christ Impulse had here worked in the subconsciousness of
the people.
The
impulse lives in the subconsciousness, as if ships go on the
sea, but the important matters would take place in submarines.
An important point in time is again in the 15th century. At
that time, the Maid of Orleans intervened in the course of
history in such a way that everything that happened later was
determined through it. The whole map of Europe would be
different, also the spiritual life if the English had won. The
Maid was a servant of St. Michael. Schiller was deeply touched
by the figure of the Maid of Orleans: “the world likes to
blacken the beaming.” Whereas Voltaire vented his rage
against her, even Shakespeare could not understand her, Anatole
France pressed her down into the materialistic view, all
Western people of intellect did not understand her, and
Schiller embodied this sublime figure in his drama.
It
was necessary that the Maid of Orleans went through a kind of
unaware initiation to fulfil her historical mission. It
concerned an initiation as it is described to us in the legend
of Olaf Åsteson. Such initiations, for which
certain karmic conditions were necessary, could take place in
the time of the thirteen nights between the 25th December and
6th January. If the external light has the slightest strength,
an inner enlightenment is possible. Thus Olaf
Åsteson had real spiritual experiences in the
sleeping state during thirteen nights, which he then reports
before the portal of a church, as it is shown in the
Dream Song.
Also the Maid of Orleans spent thirteen nights as it
were in the sleeping state, namely in the body of her mother.
In the last time before birth the human being is especially
accessible to unaware influences from the spiritual world. On
the 6th January the Maid of Orleans was born. During this day
all the inhabitants of her birthplace gathered because
something quite unusual was to be felt in the aura of the
village. It was the birth of the Maid of Orleans, to whom the
Christ Impulse was implanted just before she saw the physical
sunlight.
The
proper purpose of all our attempts and that what depends on us
is to gain a living connection between the physical and
spiritual worlds. People will recognise that the time of
twilight of this war means a turn of an era. Human beings
should know that the souls of those who have sacrificed
themselves are working on and that this war has the task to
close the materialistic age.
It
is necessary that souls are there who send thoughts into the
spiritual world like extending arms and bring down the
consciousness from the spiritual world, souls conscious of
spirit. The more such souls conscious of spirit send their
thoughts upwards — a lot depends on the fact that our
spiritual atmosphere is penetrated by such thoughts, —
the more the fruits which come from the sacrificial deaths can
mature. Thus we summarise our consideration in the words:
From
the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit land.
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