The
Intimate Element of the Central European Culture
and
the Central European Striving
Leipzig, 7th March 1915
We
live in grievous, destiny-burdened days. Only few souls wait
with full confidence what these destiny-burdened days will
bring to us earth people. Above all, the significance of that
what expresses itself by the events of these days, does not
speak with full strength in the souls. Some human souls attempt
to experience the impulses more and more that spiritual science
demands to be implanted into the cultural development. They
should know being connected with their deepest feeling with
that which, on one side, takes place around us so tremendously
and, on the other side, so painfully.
Something takes place that is matchless not only according to
the way but also according to the degree within the conscious
history of human development, that is deeply intervening and
drastic in the whole life of the earth's development. One needs
to imagine only what it means — and this is the case
today with every human being of the European and also of many
parts of the other earth population — to be in the centre
of the course of such significant events. We have to feel that
this is just a time which is not only suitable but also demands
that the soul frees itself from merely living within the own
self, and should attempt to experience the common fate of
humankind. The human being can learn a lot in our present if he
knows how to combine in the right way with the stream of the
events. He frees himself from a lot of pettiness and egoism if
he is able to do this. Such great events take place that almost
anybody caring for himself ignores the destinies of the other
human beings.
In
particular the population of Central Europe — which
immense questions has it to put to itself about matters that it
can learn basically only now! The human being of Central Europe
can perceive how he is misunderstood, actually, how he is
hated. And these misunderstandings, this hatred did not only
erupt since the outbreak of the war, they have become
perceptible since the outbreak of the war. Hence, the outbreak
of the war and the course of the war can be even as it were
that what draws attention of the Central European souls to that
how they must feel isolated in a certain way more or less
compared with the feeling of those people who stand on all
sides around this Central European population really not with
understanding emotions. If anybody could arouse deeper
interests in the big events of life in the souls dedicating
themselves to spiritual science — this would be so
desirable, especially now — events that lead the soul
from the ken of its ego to the large horizon of humankind! Then
one were able to deepen the look, the whole attitude of the
souls who recognise the encompassing forces, because they have
taken up spiritual science in themselves, and release them from
the interest in the narrow forces that deal only with the
individual human being! If one hears the world talking today,
in particular the world which is around us Central Europeans,
if one reads which peculiar things there are written about the
impulses which should have led to this war, then one has the
feeling that humankind has lost the obligation to judge from
larger viewpoints in our materialistic time, has lost so much
that you may have the impression, as if people had generally
learnt nothing, but for them history only began on the 25th
July, 1914
[Serbia refuses the ultimatum of Austria-Hungary].
It
is as if people know nothing about that what has taken place
in the interplay of forces of the earth population and what has
led from this interplay of forces to the grievous involvements
which caught fire from the flame of war, finally, and flared
up. One talks hardly of the fact that one calls the
encirclement by the previous English king who united the
European powers round Central Europe, so that from this union
of human forces around us, finally, nothing else could
originate than that what has happened. One does not want to go
further back as some years, at most decades and make
conceptions how this has come what is now so destiny-burdened
and painful around us.
But
the matters lie still much deeper. If one speaks of
encirclement, one must say: what has taken place in the
encirclement of the Central European powers in the last time,
that is the last stage, the last step of an encirclement of
Central Europe, which began long, long ago, in the year 860 A.
D. At that time, when those human beings drove from the north
of Europe who stood as Normans before Paris, a part of the
strength, which should work in Europe, drove in the west of
Europe into the Romance current which had flooded the west of
Europe from the south. We have a current of human forces which
pours forth from Rome via Italy and Sicily over Spain and
through present-day France. The Norman population, which drives
down from the north and stands before Paris in 860, was flooded
and wrapped up by that which had come as a Romance current of
olden times. That what is powerful in this current is due to
the fact that the Norman population was wrapped up in it. What
has originated, however, as something strange to the Central
European culture in the West, is due to the Romance current.
This Romance current did not stop in present-day France, but it
proved to be powerful enough because of its dogmatically
rationalistic kind, its tendency to the materialistic way of
thinking to flood not only France but also the Anglo-Saxon
countries. This happened when the Normans conquered Britain and
brought with them that what they had taken up from the Romance
current. Also the Romance element is in the British element
which thereby faces the Central European being, actually,
without understanding. The Norman element penetrated by the
Romance element continued its train via the Greek coasts down
to Constantinople. So that we see a current of Norman-Romance
culture driving down from the European north to the west,
encircling Central Europe like in a snake-form, stretching its
tentacles as it were to Constantinople.
We
see the other train going down from the north to the east and
penetrating the Slavic element. The first Norman trains were
called “Ros” by the Finnish population which was
widely propagated at that time in present-day Russia.
“Ros” is the origin of this name. We see these
northern people getting in the Slavic element, getting to Kiev
and Constantinople at the same time. The circle is closed! On
one side, the Norman forces drive down from the north to the
west, becoming Romance, on the other side, to the east,
becoming Slavic, and they meet from the east and from the west
in Constantinople. In Central Europe that is enclosed like in a
cultural basin what remained of the original Teutonic element,
fertilised by the old Celtic element, which is working then in
the most different nuances in the population, as German, as
Dutch, as Scandinavian populations. Thus we recognise how old
this encirclement is.
Now
in this Central Europe an intimate culture prepares itself, a
culture which was never able to run like the culture had to run
in the West or the culture in the East, but which had to run
quite differently. If we compare the cultural development in
Central Europe with that of the West, so we must say, in the
West a culture developed — and this can be seen from the
smallest and from the biggest feature of this culture —
whose basic character is to be pursued from the British islands
over France, Spain, to Sicily, to Italy and to Constantinople.
There certain dogmatism developed as a characteristic of the
culture, rationalism, a longing for dressing everything one
gets in knowledge in plain rationalistic formulae. There
developed a desire to see things as reason and sensuousness
must see them. There developed the desire to simplify
everything. Let us take a case which is obvious to us as
supporters of spiritual science namely the arrangement of our
human soul in three members: sentient soul, intellectual soul
or mind-soul, and consciousness-soul. The human soul can be
understood in reality only if one knows that it consists of
these three members. Just as little as the light can be
understood without recognising the colour nuances in their
origin from the light, and without knowing that it is made up
of the different colour nuances which we see in the rainbow, on
one side the red yellow rays, on the other side the blue,
green, violet ones, and if one cannot study the light as a
physicist. Just as little somebody can study the human soul
what is infinitely more important. For everybody should be a
human being and everybody should know the soul. He, who does
not feel in his soul that this soul lives in three members:
sentient soul, intellectual soul or mind-soul,
consciousness-soul, throws everything in the soul in a mess. We
see the modern university psychologists getting everything of
the soul in a mess, as well as somebody gets the colour nuances
of the light simply in a mess. And they imagine themselves
particularly learnt in their immense arrogance, in their
scientific arrogance throwing everything together in the
soul-life, while one can only really recognise the soul if one
is able to know this threefolding of the soul actually.
The
sentient soul also is at first that what realises, as it were,
the desires, the more feeling impulses, more that in the
current earth existence what we can call the more sensuous
aspect of the human being. Nevertheless, this sentient soul
contains the eternal driving forces of the human nature in its
deeper parts at the same time. These forces go through birth
and death. The intellectual soul or mind-soul contains half the
temporal and half the eternal. The consciousness-soul, as it is
now, directs the human being preferably to the temporal. Hence,
it is clear that the nation, who develops its folk-soul by
means of the consciousness-soul, the British people, after a
very nice remark of Goethe, has nothing of that what is
meditative reflection, but it is directed to the practical, to
the external competition. Perhaps, it is not bad at all to
remember such matters, because those who have taken part in the
German cultural life were not blind for them, but they
expressed themselves always very clearly about that. Thus
Goethe said to Eckermann
[conversation with Eckermann, 1st September 1829]
— it is long ago, but you can
see that great Germans have seen the matters always in the true
light — when once the conversation turned to the
philosophers Hegel, Fichte, Kant and some others: yes, yes,
while the Germans struggle to solve the deepest philosophical
problems, the English are directed mainly to the practical
aspects and only to them. They lack any sense of reflection.
And even if they — so said Goethe — make
declamations about morality mainly consisting of the liberation
of slaves, one has to ask: which is “the real
object?” — At another occasion, Goethe wrote
[letter to Zelter, 20th February 1828]
that a remark of Walter Scott expresses more than many books. For even
Walter Scott admitted once that it was more important than the
liberation of nations, even if the English had taken part in
the battles against Napoleon, “to see a British object
before themselves.” A German philologist succeeded
— and what does the diligence of German philologists not
manage — in finding the passage in nine thick volumes of
Napoleon's biography by Walter Scott to which Goethe has
alluded at that time. Indeed, there you find, admitted by
Walter Scott, that the Britons took part in the battles against
Napoleon, however, they desired to attain a British advantage.
He himself expresses it “to secure the British
object.” — It is a remark of the Englishman
himself, one only had to search for it. These matters are
interesting to extend your ken somewhat today.
You
have to know, I said, that the human soul consists of these
three members, properly speaking that the human self works by
these three soul nuances like the light by the different colour
nuances, mainly in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms.
Then one will find out that the human being, while he has these
three soul nuances, can and must assign each of these soul
nuances to a great ideal in the course of human progress. Each
of these ideals corresponds to a soul nuance not to the whole
soul. Only if people can be induced by spiritual science to
assign the corresponding ideals to the single soul members,
will the real ideal of human welfare and of the harmonious
living together of human beings on earth come into being.
Because the human being has to aim at another ideal for his
sentient soul, for that which he realises as it were in the
physical plane, at another soul ideal for that what he realises
in the intellectual soul or mind-soul, and again another ideal
in his consciousness-soul. He improves a soul member through
one of these ideals; the other soul members are improved
through the others. If one develops the soul member in
particular through brotherliness of the human beings on earth,
one has to develop the other one through freedom, the third
through equality. Each of these three ideals refers to a soul
member. In the west of Europe everything got muddled, and it
was simplified by the rationalists, by that rationalism, which
wants to have everything in plain formulae, in plain dogmas,
which wants to have everything clearly to mind. The whole human
soul was taken by this dogmatism simply as one, and one spoke
of liberty, fraternity, equality. We see that there is a
fundamental attitude of rationalising civilisation in the West.
We could verify that in details. For example, just highly
educated French can mock that I used five-footed iambi in my
mystery dramas
[cf. the lecture
On the Mystery Dramas
“The Portal of Initiation”
and
“The Soul's Probation”
19th December 1911, Steiner's Collected Works volume 127]
but no rhymes. The French mind cannot understand
that the internal driving force of the language does not need
the rhyme at this level. The French mind strives for
systematisation, for that what forms an external framework, and
it says: one cannot make verses without rhyme.
However, this also applies to the exterior life, to everything.
In the West, one wants to arrange, to systematise, and to
nicely tin everything. Think only what a dreadful matter it
was, when in the beginning of our spiritual-scientific striving
many of our friends were still influenced by the English
theosophical direction. In every branch you could find all
possible systems written down on maps, boards et cetera, on
top, nicely arranged: atma, buddhi, manas, then all possible
matters in detail which one systematises and tins that way.
Imagine how one has bent under the yoke of this dogmatism and
how difficult it was to set the methods of internal development
to their place, which we must have in Central Europe, that one
thing ensues from the other, that concepts advance in the
internal experience. One does not need systematising, these
mnemonic aids which wrap up everything in certain formulae.
Which hard work was it to show that one matter merges into
another, that you have to arrange matters sequentially and
lively. I could expand this account to all branches of life;
however, we would have to stay together for days.
We
find that in the West as one part of the current which
encircled Central Europe. If we go to the East, then we must
say: there we deal with a longing which just presents the
opposite, with the longing to let disappear everything still in
a fog of lacks of clarity in a primitive, elementary mysticism,
in something that does not stand to express itself directly in
clear ideas and clear words. We really have two snakes —
the symbol is absolutely appropriate, — one of them
extends from the north to southeast, the other from the north
to southwest, and both meet in Constantinople. In the centre
that is enclosed what we can call the intimate Central European
spiritual current, where the head can never be separated from
the heart, thinking from feeling, if it appears in its original
quality.
One
does not completely notice that in our spiritual science even
today, because one has to strive, even if not for a conceptual
system, but for concepts of development. One does not yet
notice that everything that is aimed at is not only a beholding
with the head. However, the heart and the whole soul is
combined with everything, always the heart is flowed through,
while the head, for example, describes the transitions from
Saturn to the Sun, from the Sun to the Moon, from the Moon to
the earth et cetera. Everywhere the heart takes part in the
portrayal; and one can be touched there in the deepest that one
ascends with all heart-feeling to the top heights and dives in
the deepest depths and can ascend again. One does not notice
this even today that that what is described only apparently in
concepts one has to put one's heart and soul in it at the same
time if it should correspond to the Central European cultural
life. This intimate element of the Central European culture is
capable of the spiritual not without ideal, not to think the
ideal any more without the spiritual. Recognising the spirit
and combining it intimately with the soul characterises the
Central European being most intensely. Hence, this Central
European being can use that what descends to the deepest depths
of the sensory view and the sensory sensation to become the
symbol for the loftiest. It is deeply typical that Goethe,
after he had let go through his mind the life of the typical
human being, the life of Faust, closed his poem with the
words:
Alles
Vergängliche
All that is transitory
Ist nur ein Gleichnis
Is only a symbol;
and
the last words are:
Das
Ewig-Weibliche
The eternal feminine draws
Zieht
uns hinan
Us up to higher levels.
A
cosmic mystery is expressed through a sensory picture, and just
in this sensory picture the intimate character of the Central
European culture expresses itself. We find this wonderfully
intimate character, for example, so nicely expressed and at the
same time rising spiritually to the loftiest just with Novalis.
If you look for translations of this last sentence: “Das
Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan,” in particular the French
translations, then you will see what has become of this
sentence. Some French did explain it not so nicely, but they do
not count if it concerns the understanding of Faust.
The
Central European being aims at the intimacy of spiritual life
most eminently, and this is that what is enclosed by the
Midgard Snake in the East and the West. So far we have to go to
combine completely in our feeling with that what happens,
actually. Then we gain objectivity just from this Central
European being to stand in front of the present great events
with the really supranational human impulses, and not to judge
out of the same impulses which are applied by the East and the
West. Then we understand why the Central European population is
misunderstood that way, is hated by those who surround them. Of
course, we have to look at the mission of Central Europe for
the whole humankind with all humility. We are not allowed to be
arrogant, but we must also protect the free look for what is to
be done in Central Europe.
The
Central European population has always gone through the
rejuvenating force of its folk-soul. It arrived at the summit
in the ideals of Lessing, Schelling, Hegel, and Grimm. However,
everything that already lived there lived more in a striving
for idealism. Now this must gain more life, more concrete life.
The profound ideas of German idealism have to get contents from
spirituality, by which they are raised only from mere ideas to
living beings of the spiritual world. Then we can familiarise
ourselves in this spiritual world. The significance of the
Central European task has now to inspire German hearts, and
also the consciousness of what is to be defended in all
directions, to the sides where the Midgard Snake firmly closes
the circle. It is our task in particular because we are on the
ground of spiritual science to look at the present events in
such a higher sense. We cannot take the most internal impulse
of our spiritual science seriously enough if we do not
familiarise ourselves with such an impersonal view of the
spiritual-scientific striving if we do not feel how this
spiritual-scientific striving is connected in every individual
human being with the whole Central European striving as it must
be united with the whole substantiality of this Central
European striving. We have to realise that something of what we
have in mind exists only in the germ, however, that the Central
European culture has the vocation to let unfold the germs to
blossoms and fruits.
I
give you an example. When the human being tries to further
himself by means of meditation and concentration, by the
intimate work on the development of his soul, then all soul
forces take on another form than they have in the everyday
life. Then the soul forces become as it were something
different. If the human being works really busily on his
development, by concentration of thought and other exercises as
I described them in the book
How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?,
the human being begins to understand
vividly, I would like to say to grasp vividly that he does no
longer think at the moment, when he approaches the real
spiritual world, as he has to think in the everyday life. In
the everyday life, you think that the thoughts start living in
you. If you face the sensory world, you know: that is me, and I
have the thoughts. You connect one thought with the other and
you thereby make a judgment, you combine the thoughts and let
them separate. In my writing which is entitled
The Threshold of the Spiritual World,
I have compared somebody developing thoughts to one putting his
head into a world of living beings.
The
thoughts start internally prickling and creeping, they become,
if I may say so, living beings, and we are no longer those who
connect one thought to the other. One thought goes to the
other, and frees itself from the other, the life of thoughts
starts coming to life. Only when the thoughts start as it were
becoming shells and containers which contract in a small room
and extend then again largely, bag-like, then the beings of the
higher hierarchies are able to slip into our thoughts, then
only! So our own way of life, the whole thinking changes when
we settle in the spiritual world. Then you start perceiving
that on the other planets other beings live not human beings
like on the earth. These other beings of the other planets,
they penetrate as it were our living thinking, and we do no
longer think about the beings of the other worlds and world
spheres, but they live in us, they live combined with our
selves. Thinking has become a different soul-force; it has
developed from the point on which it stood to another
soul-force, to that force which surpasses us and becomes
identical with that world, the spiritual world.
Here we have an example of that what humankind has to conceive
if it should develop the condition in which it now lives to a
higher one for the earth future. This must really become common
knowledge that such thinking is possible, and that only by such
a thinking the human being can get to know the spiritual world.
Not every human being has to become a spiritual researcher,
just as little as everybody needs to become a chemist who wants
to understand the achievements of chemistry. However, even if
there can be few spiritual researchers, everybody can see the
truth of that using unbiased thinking and understand what the
spiritual researcher says. But it must become clear that there
are unnoticed soul forces in the human being during life which
when the human being goes through the gate of death become the
same forces as an initiate has. When the human being goes
through the gate of death, thinking becomes another soul-force:
it intervenes in the being. It is as if antennas were
perpetually put out, and the human being experiences the higher
worlds which are in these antennas.
There was a witty man setting the tone in the 19th century, who
contributed to the foundation of the materialistic world view:
Ludwig Feuerbach
[Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872):
the censorship confiscated his writing
Thoughts on Death and Immortality
(Nuremberg, 1830)].
He wrote a book
Thoughts on Death and Immortality,
and it is interesting to read the following in
a passage of this book. Feuerbach says there for instance: the
summit human being is able to reach is his thoughts. He cannot
develop higher soul forces than thinking. If he could develop
higher soul forces than thinking, some effects and actions of
the inhabitants of the star worlds would be able to penetrate
his head instead of thoughts. — This seems so absurd to
Ludwig Feuerbach that he regards everybody as mentally ill who
speaks of such a thing at all. Imagine how interesting this is
that a person — who just becomes a materialist because he
rejects higher soul forces — gets on that the soul-force
is that which represents the higher development of thinking. He
even describes it, but he has such a dreadful fear of this
development that just because it would have to be that way, as
he suspects, he declares this soul-force a matter of
impossibility, a fantasy.
The
spiritual development in the 19th century comes so near to that
what must be aimed at, but it is so far away at the same time
because it is pushed, as it were, from the inside to that what
should be aimed at, but cannot penetrate the depths, because it
must regard it as absurd, because it is afraid of it really,
fears it quite terrifically. As soon as it only touches what
should come there, it is afraid. The Central European cultural
life has to come back to itself, then we will attain that this
Central European cultural life just develops and overcomes this
fear. That has become too strong what wants to suppress this
Central European spiritual light.
Some examples may also be mentioned. Hegel, the German
philosopher, raised his voice in vain against the
overestimation of Newton. If you today hear any physicist
speaking — you can read up that what I say in many
popular works, — then you will hear: Newton set the tone
in the doctrine of gravitation, a doctrine through which the
universe has only become explicable. — Hegel said: what
has Newton done then, actually? — He dressed that in
mathematical formulae what Kepler, the German astronomer, had
expressed. Because nothing is included in Newton's works what
Kepler did not already say. Kepler worked out of that view with
which the whole soul works not only the head. However, Newton
brought the whole in a system and thereby all kinds of mistakes
came into being, for example, the doctrine of a remote effect
of the sun which is not useful for the judgment of planetary
motion. With Newton it is real that way, as if the sun had
physical arms, and stretches these arms and attracts the
planets. — However, the German philosopher warned in vain
that the Central European culture would be flooded by the
British culture in this field.
Another example: Goethe founded a theory of colours which
originated completely from the Central European thinking and
which you only understand if you recognise the connections of
the physical with the spiritual a little bit. The world did not
accept the Goethean theory of colours, but the Newtonian theory
of colours. — Goethe founded a teaching of evolution. The
world did not understand it, but it only accepted what
Darwinism gave as a theory of evolution, as a theory of
development in a popular-materialistic way. You may say: the
Central European human being who is encircled by the Midgard
Snake has to call in mind his forces. It concerns not to bend
under that what rationalism and empiricism brought in.
You
see the gigantic task; you see the significance of the ideal.
One does not notice that at all because it still passes, I
would like to say, in the current of phenomena if one asserts
the Central European being. I do not know how many people
noticed the following. When for reasons which were also
mentioned yesterday in the public lecture
[
The Bearing Force of the German Spirit.
Lecture of the same title in Berlin, 25th February 1915, in
Steiner's Collected Works volume 185]
our spiritual-scientific movement had to free itself from the
specifically British direction of the Theosophical Society and
when long ago as it were that happened beforehand in the
spiritual realm what takes place now during the war — and
preceded for good reasons, — I have discussed and
explained the whole matter in those days on symptoms. There are
brainless people who want to judge about what our
spiritual-scientific movement is and have often said: well,
also this Central European spiritual-scientific movement has
gone out from that which it has got from the British
theosophical movement.
I
say the following not because of personal reasons, but because
it characterises the situation, the whole nerve of the matter
in a symptom, I would like to remind you of the fact that I
held talks in Berlin which were printed then in my writing
Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Spiritual Life,
before I had any external interrelation with the British theosophical
movement. In this writing nobody will find anything of western
influence, but there everything is developed purely out of the
Central European cultural life, from the spiritual, mystic
movement of Master Eckhart up to Angelus Silesius. When I came
to London the first time, I met one of the pundits of the
theosophical society in those days, Mr. Mead
[George M. S. Mead: last private secretary of
H. P. Blavatsky. He left the Theosophical Society later.].
He had read the book which was immediately translated in many chapters
into the English, and said that the whole theosophy would be contained
in this book. — So far as people admitted that they could
go along with us, so far we could unite with the whole object,
of course; but nothing else was done.
What matters is that we reflect on our tasks of the Central
European spiritual culture and that we never deviate from them.
The one or the other sent the medals, certificates and the like
back to the English. That is, nevertheless, less important. The
important thing will be first to send back Newtonianism, the
English coloured Darwinism, that means to release the Central
European cultural life from it. Something is to be learnt from
the way how — free of other influence — the Central
European cultural life has made itself noticeable just as
spiritual science. But you have to call to mind the essential
part once and to stand firmly on this ground. It is very
peculiar how mysteriously matters work.
Imagine the following case: Ernst Haeckel has taken care
basically through his whole life to direct the German world
view to the British thinking. The British thinking, the British
empiricism flows into Ernst Haeckel's writings completely. He
now rails against England the most. These are processes which
take place in the subconscious of the soul of the Central
European; these are also matters which are tightly connected in
such a soul with karma. Consider please what it means that
Haeckel places himself before the world and says, he himself
has accomplished the first great action of the great researcher
Huxley, while he stamped the sentence of the similarity of the
human bone and the animal bone; that he, Haeckel, then has
pointed to the big change in the view of the origin of the
human being, and that he accepted nothing in the evolution
theory but what came from the West. — Then one sees that
he is urged now to rail against that what has constituted his
whole intellectual life. It is the most tragic event of the
present for such a soul which can be only thought. It is
spiritual dynamite, because it bursts, actually, all supporting
pillars on which such a soul stands.
Thus you can, actually, look into the depths of the present
dreadful events. Only if you really consider the matters that
way, are you able to consider them beyond a narrow horizon
under which they are often considered today. You will be able
to learn a lot — and this will be the nicest, at the same
time the most humiliating and the loftiest teaching. For this
teaching the prevailing active world spirit determined the
Central European human being who is now embraced by the Midgard
Snake, enclosed like in a fortress, surrounded by enemies
everywhere. If the events become a symbol of the deepest world
weaving and world being, then only we release ourselves from a
selfish view of the present grievous, destiny-burdened events.
Then we feel only that we must make ourselves worthy of that
what, for instance, Fichte also spoke about in a time in which
Germany experienced destiny-burdened days in his
Addresses to the German Nation.
There he wanted to speak, as he
expresses it himself, “for Germans par excellence, of
Germans par excellence,” and he spoke like one had to
speak of the German par excellence to the German par excellence
in those days. But like in those days Fichte spoke of the
German mission, of the German range of tasks, we have today to
experience the seriousness as the sunrise of the Central
European consciousness within the containment by hating
enemies. Indeed, a word which is found at the end of Fichte's
addresses may be transformed: the spiritual world view must
flow into the souls for the sake of humankind's welfare. The
world spirit is looking at those who live in Central Europe
that they become a mouthpiece for that what he has to say and
bring to humankind in continuous revelation.
Without arrogance, without national egoism one can look at that
which the sons of Germany and Central Europe have to defend
with body, blood and soul generally. However, one has also to
realise that. Then only from the immense sacrifices, which must
be brought from the sufferings, must that result what serves
the welfare of humankind. We stand at a significant threshold.
One may characterise this threshold in the human development
that one says: in future the abyss must be bridged between the
physical and the spiritual worlds, between the physically
living and the spiritually living human beings, between the
earthly and that what lies beyond the earthly death. A time
must come to us as it were when not only the souls are alive to
us which walk about in physical bodies, but when we feel being
integrated to that bigger world to which also the souls belong
living between death and new birth disembodied in our world.
The view of the human being has to turn beyond that which
sensory-physical eyes are only able to see. Indeed, we are
standing at the threshold of this new experience, of this new
consciousness. What I said to you of the widening of the
consciousness, of the ascending development of the
consciousness, this must become a familiar view. The Central
European culture prepares itself to make this a familiar view;
it really prepares itself for that.
I
have shown you how the best heads of the 19th century are
afraid even today to get into their consciousness what the soul
has in its depths; only its earthly soul forces cannot yet turn
the attention to it. That thinking exists, into which the
supersensible forces and supersensible beings extend, and this
thinking also opens straight away after the human being has
gone through the gate of death. The materialists are afraid of
admitting that the human consciousness can be extended that
really the barrier between the physical and the spiritual
experience can fall, between that what lies on this side of
death and beyond death. Because they are afraid, they reject it
as something fantastic, dream-like, nay as mentally ill.
However, one will recognise that the human being when he has
gone through the gate of death develops only the forces which
he also has now already between birth and death. Only they work
in such depths that he does not behold them. They cause
processes in him which are done, indeed, in him, but escape his
attention in the everyday life. With the forces of thinking,
feeling and willing, about which the human being knows, he
cannot master the physical-earthly life. If the human being
could only think, feel and will, as well as now he is able to
do it, he would be never able to develop his body, for example,
plastically that the brain matched its dispositions. Formative
forces had to intervene there. However, they already belong to
that what the soul does no longer perceive in the physical
experience what belongs to a more encompassing consciousness
than to the segment of consciousness which we have in the
everyday life.
When the human being goes through the gate of death, he has not
a lack of consciousness, but then he lives at first in a
consciousness which is much richer and fuller of contents than
the consciousness here in the physical life. Because from a
more encompassing consciousness the body cuts out a piece and
shows everything that can be shown only in a mirror. However,
what is in the body and the human being bears through the gate
of death that has an encompassing consciousness in itself. When
the human being has gone through the gate of death, he is in
this encompassing consciousness. He then does not have not
enough, but on the contrary too much, too rich a consciousness.
About that I have spoken in my Vienna cycle
[
Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth,
eight lectures (Vienna, 1914), Steiner's Collected Works
volume 153]
at Easter 1914. The
human being has a richer consciousness after death. When the
often described retrospect, caused by the etheric body, is
over, he enters into a kind of sleeping state for a while.
However, this is not a real sleeping state, but a state which
is caused by the fact that the human being is in a richer
consciousness than here on earth. As our eyes are blinded by
overabundant light, the human being is blinded by the
superabundance of consciousness, and he only must learn to
orientate himself. The apparent sleep only consists in the fact
that the human being orientates himself in this superabundance
of consciousness that he then is able to lessen the
superabundance of consciousness to that level he can already
endure according to the results of his life. This is the
essential part. We do not have not enough, but too much a
consciousness, and we are awake when we have lessened our sense
of direction to the level we can endure. It is reducing the
superabundance of consciousness to the endurable level what
takes place after death. You must get such matters clear in
your mind by the details of the Vienna cycle
[
Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth,
eight lectures (Vienna, 1914), Steiner's Collected Works
volume 153].
I
want to illustrate that today only with the help of two obvious
examples. I could state many such examples, because many of our
friends have gone through the gate of death recently and also
before. But as a result of characteristic circumstances, just
by the fact that it concerns the last deaths, these
considerations are more obvious. I would like to take the
starting point from such examples to speak to you of that which
makes our hearts bleed because it has happened in our own
middle out of the circle of our spiritual-scientific
movement.
Recently we have lost a dear friend (Sibyl Colazza) from
the physical plane, and it was my task to speak words for the
deceased at the cremation. There it turned out to me
automatically by the impulses of the spiritual world, in such a
case speaking clearly enough, as a necessity to characterise
the qualities of this friendly soul. We stood — it was in
Zurich — before the cremation of a dear member of our
spiritual-scientific movement. Because her death occurred on a
Wednesday evening and the cremation took place in the early
Monday morning, it is comprehensible that the retrospect of the
etheric body had already stopped. Actually, without having
wanted it, I was induced by the spiritual world to begin and
close the obituary with words which should characterise the
internal being of this soul. This internal being of the friend
deceased in the middle of life was real that I had to delve in
this being and to create it spiritually by identification with
this being. That means to let the thinking dive in the soul of
the dead and that what wove in the soul of the dead let flow
into the own thoughts. Then I got the possibility to say as it
were in view of this soul how the soul was in life and how it
is still now after death. It has turned out by itself to dress
that in the following words. I had to say the subsequent words
at the beginning and at the end of the cremation:
You
walked among us.
Your being's gentle spirit
Spoke through the quiet power of your eyes —
Ensouled, alive, peace
Flowed in waves,
With your glance
To things and people
Bearing your inner weaving;
And your voice ensouled this being —
Your voice that eloquently,
More in the kind of words
Than in the words themselves,
Revealed what worked hidden
Within your beautiful soul;
Yet your sacrificial love
Unveiled itself completely
To sympathetic people without words —
This being, who, from noble, quiet beauty,
Heralded the sensitive awareness
Of worlds-and-souls creation.
The
being of this soul appeared to me that way during the days
before the cremation, when I identified myself with it, after
the retrospect of the etheric body was over. The soul was not
yet able to orientate itself in the superabundance of
consciousness. It was sleeping as it were when the body was
about to be cremated. The above-mentioned words were spoken in
the beginning and at the end of the cremation. Then it happened
that the flame — that what looks like the flame, but it
is not — grasped the body, and while the body was grasped
from that what looks like the flame what is, however, only the
ascending warmth and heat, the soul became awake for a moment.
Now I could notice that the soul looked back at the whole scene
which had taken place among the human beings who were at the
cremation. And the soul looked particularly back at that what
had been spoken, then again it sank back into the
superabundance of consciousness, you may say: in the
unconsciousness. A moment later, one could perceive when such a
looking back was there again. Then such moments last longer and
longer, until finally the soul can orientate itself entirely in
the superabundance of consciousness.
But
one can recognise something significant from that. I could
notice that the words spoken at the cremation lighted up the
retrospect, because the words have come from the soul itself
which had something awakening in them. From that you can learn
that it is most important after death to overlook your own
experience. You have to begin as it were with self-knowledge
after death. Here in the life on earth you can miss
self-knowledge, you can miss it so thoroughly that is true what
a not average person, also a not average man of letters, but a
famous professor of philosophy, Dr. Ernst Mach
[Ernst Mach (1838–1916),
Austrian physicist and philosopher]
— not Ferdinand Maack, I would not mention him — admits in his
Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations,
a very famous work: as a young man I crossed a street and saw a person
suddenly in a mirror who met me. I thought: what an unpleasant,
disgusting face. I was surprised when I discovered that I had
seen my own face in the profile. — He had seen his own
face which he knew so little that he could make this judgment.
The same professor tells how it has happened to him later when
he was already a famous professor of philosophy that he got in
a bus after a long trip, surely exhausted, there a man also got
in from the other side — there was a big mirror opposite,
— and he confesses his thoughts quite sincerely, while he
says that he thought: what a disagreeable and down-and-out
schoolmaster gets in there? — Again he recognised
himself, and he adds: so I recognised the type better than the
individual. — This is a nice example of how little the
human being already knows himself by his external figure in
life if he is not a flirtatious lady who often looks in the
mirror. — But much less the human being knows the
qualities of his soul. He passes those even more. He can become
a famous philosopher of the present without self-knowledge. But
the human being needs this self-knowledge when he has passed
through the gate of death.
The
human being must look back just at the point of his development
from which he has gone through death, and he must recognise
himself there. As little the human being, who stands in the
physical life and looks back with the usual forces of life is
able to see his own birth, as little this stands before the
usual soul-forces — there is no one which can look back
with the usual soul-forces at the physical birth, — in
the same way it is necessary that the moment of death is
permanently there at which one looks back. Death stands always
before the soul's eyes as the last significant event. This
death, seen from the other side, seen from beyond, is something
different than that from the physical side. It is the most
beautiful experience which can be seen from the other side,
from the side of the life between death and new birth. Death
appears as the glorious picture of the everlasting victory of
the spiritual over the physical. Because death appears as such
a picture, it wakes up the highest forces of the human nature
permanently when this human nature lives in the spirituality
between death and new birth. That is why the soul looking back
or striving for looking back must look at itself at first. Just
in these cases which we have gone through recently it was clear
in which way the impulse originated to characterise this soul.
The so-called living human being works together with the
so-called dead that way. More and more such a relation will
come from the so-called living to the so-called dead.
We
experienced another case in the last time, that of our dear
friend Fritz Mitscher. Even if Fritz Mitscher is less known to
the local friends, nevertheless, he worked by his talks among
many other anthroposophists, by that what he performed
wonderfully from friend to friend by the way he familiarised
himself with the anthroposophical life. His character has just
to be regarded as exemplary, because he whose soul forces were
directed to go through a learnt education was keen to take up
and collect everything in himself according to his disposition
of scholarship, to embrace it intimately in his soul-life, to
insert it then in his spiritual-scientific world view. We need
this kind of work, in particular, while we want to carry the
spiritual-scientific ideals into future in a beneficial way. We
need human beings, who try to penetrate the education of our
time with understanding to immerse it in the stream of
spiritual education; who offer that as it were as a sacrifice.
Also there — and I speak only of matters that resulted
from karma with necessity — karma caused that I had to
speak at the cremation. Out of internal necessity it turned out
that I had to characterise the being of our dear friend again
in the beginning and at the end of the funeral speech. I had to
characterise this being:
A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.
Your longing was bound from the beginning
To pure truth-loving being;
To create out of spirit-light
Was the earnest life goal
For which you strove without rest.
You nurtured your beautiful gifts
To tread with steady steps
Bright paths of spirit-knowledge
As truth's true servant
Unperturbed by worldly contradiction
You trained your spirit-organs
That, with courage and persistence,
On both sides of the path
Repelled error for you
And made a space for truth for you.
For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.
Other cares, other joys
Barely touched your soul,
For knowledge seemed to you to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to you life' s true value.
A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.
A loss that pains us deeply,
You disappeared from the field
Where the Spirit's earthly kernels
In the womb of soul being
Ripened your senses for the spheres.
Feel how we lovingly gaze
Into the heights that now
Call you to other works.
Give to the friends left behind
Your power from spirit-realms,
Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.
A hope, filling us with happiness,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Allow us to hope, that you, far-near,
Un-lost, light our life
As a soul-star in spirit-realm.
In
the following night the soul which was not yet able to
orientate itself returned of own accord something like an
answer what is connected with the verses, which were directed
to its being at the cremation. Such words like those are spoken
that the own soul writes them down really without being able to
add a lot. The words are written down while the soul oriented
itself to the other soul, out of the other soul. It was unclear
to me at all that two stanzas are built in a quite particular
way, until I heard the words from the friend's soul who had
gone through the gate of death:
For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within me
Was my life's concern and joy.
Other cares, other joys
Barely touched my soul,
For knowledge seemed to me to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to my life's true value.
I
could only know now, why these stanzas are built that way; I
spoke them exactly the same:
For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.
However, any “you” came back as “I,”
any “your” came back as “my;” thus they
returned transformed, expressed by the soul about its own
being.
This is an example in which way the correspondence takes place,
in which way the mutual relation already exists between the
world here and the world there in the time after death. It is
connected with the meaning of our spiritual-scientific movement
that this consciousness penetrates the human souls. Spiritual
science will give humankind the consciousness that the world of
those who live between death and a new birth also becomes a
world in which we know ourselves connected with them. Thus the
world extends from the narrow area of reality in which the
human being lives provisionally. However, this is connected
intimately with that what should be in Central Europe. Somebody
who has well listened finds just in the words directed to Fritz
Mitscher's soul what is deeply connected with this meaning of
our spiritual-scientific movement, because the words are spoken
from a deep internal necessity:
Hear
our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.
Sometimes one may doubt, even if not in reality but concerning
the interim period, whether the souls, which are embodied in
the flesh here on earth, do really enough for the welfare of
humans and earth what must necessarily be made concerning the
spiritual comprehension of the world. However, somebody who is
engaged completely in the spiritual-scientific movement may
also not despair. For he knows that the forces of those who
ascended into the spiritual worlds are effective in the
current, in which we stand in this incarnation. In their
previous lives those souls felt stronger here because they had
taken up spiritual science in themselves. It is as if one
communicates with a friend's soul who has gone through the gate
of death if one says to him what one owes to the friend's force
for the spiritual movement, if one is able to communicate as it
were with the soul to remain united with its forces. We have it
always among us, so that it always works on among us. We take
up not only ideas, concepts and mental pictures in our
spiritual science, that does not only concern, but we create a
spiritual movement here on earth to which we really bring in
the spiritual forces.
It
suggests itself to us just at this moment, out of the
sensations which perhaps inspire our local friends to turn the
thoughts to the soul of somebody who has always dedicated his
forces to this branch. We want to feel united also with him and
his forces, after he has gone through the gate of death;
therefore, we get up from our seats. The Leipzig friends know
of which friendly soul I am speaking, and they have certainly
turned their thoughts to this soul with moved hearts.
It
was my responsibility to bring these ideas home to you today,
while we were allowed to be together. These words were inspired
through the consciousness that the grievous and
destiny-burdened days in which we live must be replaced again
with such which will pass in peace on earth in which the forces
of peace will work. But a lot will be transformed, nay, must
absolutely be transformed by that what happens now in the
earthly life of humankind. We who bear witness to spiritual
science must particularly keep in mind how much it depends on
the fact that must take place on the ground — for which
so much blood flows for which so often now souls go through the
gate of death on which so many fathers and mothers, brothers
and sisters, sons and daughters are mourning — what can
be done by those whose souls can be illumined through the
forward-looking thoughts of spiritual science.
Those thoughts which come from the consciousness of the living
relationship of the human soul with the spiritual world have to
ascend from the earth into the spiritual heights. Souls now
enter these spiritual worlds, and there will be spiritual
forces which are produced just by our destiny-burdened days.
Imagine how many people go through the gate of death in the
prime of their lives in this time. Imagine that the etheric
bodies of these human beings who go between their twentieth and
thirtieth years, between their thirtieth and fortieth years
through the gate of death are etheric bodies which could have
supplied the bodies still for decades here in the physical
life. These etheric bodies are separated from the physical
bodies; however, they keep the forces still in themselves to
work here for the physical world. These forces keep on existing
in the spiritual worlds, separated from the unused etheric
bodies of the souls which went through the gate of death. The
bright spirituality of the unspent etheric bodies of the heroic
fighters turns to the spiritual welfare and progress of
humankind. However, that what flows down there has to meet the
thoughts coming from the souls which — aware of spirit
— they can have by spiritual science. Hence, we are
allowed to summarise the thoughts of which we made ourselves
aware today in some words showing the interrelation of the
consciousness based on spiritual-scientific ideas with the
present events. They express how for the next peacetime the
room has to be filled with thoughts which have ascended from
souls to the spiritual worlds, from souls which experienced
spiritual science. Then that can flourish and yield fruit in
the right sense what is gained with so big sacrifices, with
blood and death in our time, if souls are found, aware of
spirit, which turn their senses to the realm of spirits. That
is why we are allowed to say taking into account the grievous
and destiny-burdened days today:
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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