The
Intervention of the Christ Impulse in the Historical
Events.
Bridging the Abyss between the Living and the Dead
Nuremberg, 13th March, 1915
If
spiritual science shall be a kind of life-force for our souls,
and it can be that, this spiritual science must also prove
itself powerful and suitable to extend the spiritual ken of the
souls dedicating themselves to spiritual science in such times
like ours in which a lot prepares which is so significant. One
sees the events thereby in a wider perspective than other
contemporaries often can do with their narrow view of
materialism. One could see in that what our
spiritual-scientific movement has nurtured during the years
that one of the purposes has also consisted in extending the
mood of soul, so that the human being frees himself from the
bare thinking about his narrow self and about that what
surrounds this narrow self and is really able to look at the
big impulses, the big manifestations of forces which go through
the whole evolution of humanity. If we have tried that way to
extend the vigour of our feelings and sensations as it were, we
also have to make the forces suitable which we have won by
spiritual science, just in such times, on the one hand, the
waves of which break so deeply painfully against the soul and,
on the other hand, raise this soul to particular height because
they bear such important matters in themselves. We must be able
to come already to the position in such times to go along with
that what is not so externally visible in the events, what the
everyday mind is not able to see in these events. We must be
able to ask ourselves: does that mean something prophetic for
the whole earth development what as such a dreadful torch of
war is burning above our heads?
Only that human being lives properly in the present events who
sees these events in such a significant light as far as it is
possible. Friends, who are in our circles, will often have
asked themselves, why I have spoken in our circle during the
last years now and again of the fact that in decades of the
20th century times come for which we must look ahead with a
particular attention because children and grandchildren of
those who live now will have to experience important and
immense, but also tragic and painful events. Those upon whom it
is incumbent today to give something to keep the souls of the
children and grandchildren upright towards that what the
humankind of the 20th century experiences must be aware that
this gift must be a strong internal spiritual force. Even more
than we can imagine already today in our everyday life, our
offsprings of the 20th century will need strong internal forces
keeping up the soul to pass on the achievements of humankind,
which were accumulated in the human development throughout
centuries. To quite other storms of life the offsprings of
humankind now living on earth will be exposed. I said that
someone could be surprised when that was said within our
circles that way. Now, however, a sensation of that may arise
if we consider that we are in the most dreadful war events
which concerned human beings, since humankind experiences
history consciously on this earth.
It
would be absolutely wrong if we did not penetrate ourselves so
intensely as possible with the importance of the moment and
present the question to ourselves: with what does that have
actually to do that we strive for out of internal longing of
the soul, what spiritual knowledge does have to do with that
which should come in the development of humankind? Don't we
see, even if we look only cursorily, a tempest breaking out
which got up from the East since long ago menacing modern
education and civilisation of Europe? You have at least to know
that in the lap of this East immense forces are working from
which you can already see that they make themselves noticeable;
so that they now intend to dismember, destroy the European
civilisation. You can only anticipate now to which extent this
is the case.
Our
European civilisation is in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It
is the culture of the consciousness-soul in whose middle souls
are among us who have to give something to humankind. Looking
back at what was the Greek-Latin culture, this Greek-Latin
culture was basically, even if in another arrangement, an echo,
a recapitulation of that what already lived in the old Atlantis
but on a higher level. It lived there still differently. In the
fourth post-Atlantean culture-epoch a kind of recapitulation
happened. The fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch in which we
stand is a new formation, is something absolutely novel what
has been added to the current development of humankind. We
should not conceive that only as an abstract truth, as a
theory, but with the deepest and most intensive human sense of
responsibility. We should also be clear to ourselves about the
fact that in the earthly evolution still long times will have
to run off, until everything has come out of the human hearts
and souls what the divine cosmic order has to give to humankind
in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch.
In
the fourth culture-epoch, the impulse of the Mystery of
Golgotha took place as the most significant event of the whole
earth development. Just as this Mystery of Golgotha had an
effect in the fourth culture-epoch, it does not merely continue
working in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. This fifth
culture-epoch is incumbent to go to meet the Mystery of
Golgotha gradually with full knowledge of spirit, with full
understanding, with all forces of knowledge of the soul; not
only with the forces of the reason, the forces of devoutness.
It has to comprehend Christ, Who went through Death and
Resurrection, bit by bit with everything the soul can produce
from itself of knowledge and understanding forces. So that the
word of Paul
[Galatians 2:20]
is true, indeed, in a new way: “not I, but
Christ in me.” Every effort we make in spiritual science
is a preparation to grasp with all internal recognising forces
of the soul in the end what is, actually, this Christ. This is
a significant, great task of the fifth culture-epoch.
Now
we may imagine what it means, actually, if such efforts are
expected from the fifth culture-epoch. Let us put before our
souls the way how the Christ Impulse has worked since the
Mystery of Golgotha in humankind. If the Christ Impulse could
have worked only by that what the human beings understood about
this Christ Impulse in the course of the centuries, since the
Mystery of Golgotha has taken place, then the Christ Impulse
could have worked only a little among the human beings. But it
is not such an impulse which has spoken only conceptually to
the human understanding or to the feeling understanding, but it
is a real impulse which flowed into the course of history with
living forces. The external symbol of the blood flowing on
Golgotha represents the living force flowing into the history
of humankind.
We
will try to get clear in our mind with the help of a historical
event in which way this Christ Impulse has worked, without
being understood already by human beings, in which way it has
worked as a living driving force in the evolution of humankind.
The fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch has a vocation to make
conscious the whole internal nature and being of the Christ
Impulse. But that has already worked as a living force in the
subconscious soul forces, before it became fully conscious in
humankind. One of those figures the Christ Impulse selected to
work through them, to work something significant is, for
example — one could still give others — the figure
of the Maid of Orleans. If we pursue the history of Europe up
to the event that is connected with the personality of the Maid
of Orleans, we must say, even if we look only externally at
history: with that what she accomplished in those days when she
struck back the English, in the midst of the French people
rising up, — she did that really, — the map of
Europe was arranged as it was just arranged gradually. Any
other historical consideration is basically a fairy tale for
the last centuries, in so far as it concerns the distribution
of nations and states in Europe. It is something unconscious
that the Christ Impulse as a living impulse with the help of
the Maid of Orleans caused the distribution of the European
nations and national forces in those days.
I
may say: while the learnt people argued about a lot, already
started to argue about the question whether one has to take the
Communion in this or that form whether this or that has to be
interpreted according to this or that formula, and while the
learnt people showed that they were not yet able to comprehend
the Christ Impulse, this impulse worked through the simple
farmer girl, the Maid of Orleans, worked as a formative force
in European history.
Because the effect of the Christ Impulse is just not dependent
on the understanding which somebody shows for it. By his
Michaelic representative the Christ Impulse worked in the Maid
of Orleans. Now, however, the Maid of Orleans had to go through
something that is similar to an initiation. We talk of
initiation today and give the rules to the consciousness of the
human being which I have collated in my book
How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?
But such an initiation
of the Maid of Orleans is out of the question, of course. You
can only talk about an initiation which was as it were a relic
of the ancient initiation which took place more in the
subconscious soul forces of the human beings. Now just these
ancient initiations have reproduced like elementary forces up
to the modern time. In old legends and fairy tales a lot is
told: that this or that happened to this or that person by
which he got the internal soul-force. That is why he has seen
this or that of the spiritual world. Such matters should be
only an indication of it, like without any help of the human
being, by the effect of divine-spiritual forces permeating the
world, certain human beings, who are suitable for that because
of their karma, are natural initiates, by the place on which
they are put by karma where the karma of humankind flows
together with the personal karma. A good echo of such a natural
initiation, as one would like to call it, gives us a poem which
speaks of the fact, that the “solar son” Olaf
Åsteson was in a kind of sleeping state during
thirteen nights and days — the interval between Christ's
birth and His Epiphany, up to the 6th January. The name Olaf
Åsteson already indicates that subconscious
hereditary forces of knowledge are included in it, because
somebody is called Olaf Åsteson through whom the
blood of his forefathers runs. The solar son Olaf
Åsteson sleeps through and dreams for thirteen
nights which are the darkest of the year or contain at least
the biggest force of the earthly annual darkness in them, from
the first Christmas Day up to the 6th January, to Epiphany.
That is not only superstitious nonsense what goes back to these
nights in such legends. Since, indeed, there are two seasons
which are in a certain way like two opposite cosmic poles for
the soul-life of the living human being. If we take the season
around the St Johns-tide in summer, this is the time when the
human soul with all its passionate impulses is united with the
universe through the external physical sun force whose energy
then reaches its peak. Hence, the St Johns-tide festival of the
old time was intended to put divine-spiritual forces,
permeating the universe, into the human soul when the human
beings forgot themselves and were wrapped up in the external
strong physical forces of the universe. However, when the solar
force is physically the weakest, in the middle of winter, the
spiritual forces which have an effect in the darkness reaches
its peak in return. And rightly, one can say, according to the
cosmic laws the birth of Jesus of Nazareth is in this time.
When the physical surroundings are the darkest, the soul can
have the profoundest experiences if it feels united with the
forces permeating the aura of the earth.
That is why Olaf Åsteson keeps on sleeping during
these days, and experiences everything we call Kamaloka,
soul-world, and, finally, spirit-land. The Norwegian legend
tells us that Olaf Åsteson, when he awoke again
after thirteen nights, knows to tell about his experiences that
he has met the souls in the soul-world and in the spirit-land.
Indeed, these are pictures which correspond to an Imaginative
knowledge, but they point to that what really living
possibilities of the human soul are if these souls feel
transported in that time of physical darkness which is,
however, the time of spiritual enlightenment, if they feel
transported to that what flows and weaves in the earth's aura.
At the end of the legend, we see the forces of the Christ
Impulse which get hold of the subconscious understanding of
Olaf Åsteson. In such legends one speaks — as
it were — of natural initiations which were still
possible in olden times, of beholding the spiritual world. In
these times the earth's aura really has a force which it does
not have in other times when it is flooded and outshone by the
physical sun force. Because Christ is united with the earth's
aura since the Mystery of Golgotha, the force of the Christ
Impulse is also able to work into the souls particularly during
these days if the souls are susceptible for it.
Hence, one may assume, before one investigates something
historical, that — also with such a figure like the Maid
of Orleans — the Christ Impulse would have worked
subconsciously in her soul during thirteen days. The fact that
also she would have gone through something like enlightenment
by the Christ Impulse in the subconscious soul forces —
what Olaf Åsteson has gone through during thirteen
days and nights in the sleeping state. Then, however, the Maid
of Orleans would have been in a kind of sleep once during the
thirteen days from the 25th December to the 6th January, and
then on the 6th January the Christ Impulse would have grasped
this soul after it had been in a kind of sleeping state. That
what one can assume did really exist in a peculiar way, only in
a quite particular time when the human being can be, indeed, in
a kind of sleep. Namely, before the human being does the first
gasp in his earth-life, before he is released from the body of
his mother and receives the first earthly-physical beam of
light, he spends a time as a nascent human being in a true
sleeping state. Just as you get a dreaming sleep in the
evening, you are in the body of the mother in such a dream-like
sleep.
Those days in which the dream-like sleep is most receptive to
the unaware influence of the spiritual world are just the last
days which the human being spends in the body of his mother.
That is why it could also be that just these days would have
been used with the Maid of Orleans to plant the Christ Impulse
to her, before she saw the physical sunlight with physical eyes
and did the first gasp outside the body of her mother. This was
the case, because the Maid of Orleans is born on the 6th
January. On the 6th January, it took place that the whole
village gathered because something uncertain was in the aura of
the village. This is a historical fact. The people did not know
what had happened: the Maid of Orleans was born. Behind such
matters a lot is hidden. Only if humankind gets round to seeing
this mysterious fact once in the right light, will
understanding of that also exist what really takes action in
the human development under the surface of the external sensory
world. The divine forces look for the most manifold ways for
themselves to get into the human soul. Of course, the karma of
the Maid of Orleans had to be suitable that such a thing could
happen.
But
while the karma of the Maid of Orleans coincided with the fact
that she was born on the 6th January, the historical chance was
given that the Christ Impulse had a particular effect on her
and gave Europe a new formation. These are matters which you
can examine if you observe the course of history with some
understanding. These are the matters which the spiritual
understanding resumes in future when this fifth post-Atlantean
culture-epoch really gets every knowledge force out of the
souls. Then the soul experiences the existence of the Christ
Impulse more and more consciously. But it experiences this only
if humankind is able to regard spiritual science not as a mere
theory, but to feel it as living, to experience it internally.
Then spiritual science is able to achieve its actual mission in
the development of humankind.
In
such a time like ours, we must be clear to ourselves in
particular about the fact that the chasm must be bridged which
opens for a materialistic age more and more between the human
souls, who are here incarnated, and those who have already gone
through the gate of death. More and more one will get round to
regard also the souls which stand in the life between death and
a new birth as belonging to the whole humankind, like those who
are in the physical life between birth and death. The
consciousness must become stronger and stronger, that we all
are united on earth, also those who have gone into the
supersensible realms before us who work only with different
forces among us than we do who are incarnated. This
consciousness must become more and more intense. However, just
understanding of the spiritually effective forces is necessary.
It is necessary that we learn to look at the connections of the
earthly phenomena in that new light spiritual science can
give.
Only because spiritual science should be something that touches
our hearts at the same time, while it helps our souls in
knowledge, want I to talk to you about something that has
concerned us during the last weeks. I do that to explain
something about the way which goes back at the same time to
something that occupied us in the farther vicinity of our
spiritual-scientific current during the last weeks. I could
also take other cases, indeed, but these cases are connected
with our karma immediately, so that I can speak about them just
today again. You can extend that what I say here also to other
persons who stand within and beyond our spiritual-scientific
movement with their destinies and their relation to death in a
similar relation as in the cases about which I want to
speak.
Last autumn we have experienced a distressing case in Dornach
in the vicinity of our construction. Dear friends had moved
with their children to Dornach, settled there near the
construction to manage the garden. And the oldest, seven
year-old child, a spiritually infinitely bright boy who was
something quite peculiar, however, also concerning his heart
qualities was really a little bit like a sunny child. One had
the most intimate interest in the soul of this child, even if
one could see it only briefly here and there. When then the
father joined the armed forces to do his duty as a German
citizen on the battlefield, there was the seven-year-old boy
with his heart, I would like to say, already in the whole
situation of life that he made particular efforts to substitute
the father, as well he was able to do, to help his mother,
while he managed everything possible. He went into the city,
made purchases, the seven-year-old boy quite on his own. One
evening the boy was missed. It was just an evening lecture. A
person friendly to us came possibly at ten o'clock and said
that the boy would be missed. It could not be unclear in the
end at all that this had to do something with a removal van
which had toppled over near our construction at a place where
perhaps a removal van has never gone before and and will
probably also not go for a long time. The van had toppled over
a small embankment in a meadow that the carters said, it would
be out of question that one could lift the van in the evening.
They unyoked the horses about which they were very anxious, and
left the van to lift it the next day because they believed that
they had to work for a whole day to be able to lift the heavy
carriage. Now it was ten o'clock in the evening. We had to
assume that the boy was missed because the carriage had toppled
over. All possible tools were brought, and everybody who could
work worked, and in two hours the carriage was lifted. At
midnight we found the dead boy under the removal van.
Now
if one takes only externally into account and considers, how
from longer time, before this had happened, everything pushed
itself together, so that the boy who had always gone,
otherwise, a somewhat different way by which he would have
passed the van on the right side, however, at that time he went
so that he passed the carriage on the left side where the
carriage just had to topple over him. If you imagine that he
was detained a little bit in the most benevolent way, so that
he left possibly a quarter of an hour later — he got
something for the supper in the so-called canteen, — so
that he has left later than he wanted, actually. If you imagine
that the whole accident took place that it depended really on
some, even not some minutes that the boy was just here where
the carriage toppled over, and nobody noticed the accident. Not
far away from that place people noticed that the carriage fell
down, but they did not see the boy. If you imagine everything,
you will recognise already externally that this is a most
remarkable example of logical delusion which may occur easily
to human beings.
I
have often shown clearly, also to you, that the human being can
already delude himself in the external life, so that he
mistakes cause and effect. I have said: imagine that you see a
person from the distance going along a riverside. You see him
suddenly staggering and falling into the river. He is pulled
out dead not long afterwards. Now you are quite justified to
suppose according to all external reasons that the person has
fallen into the water and has just drowned. If you do nothing
else, you adhere to this judgment. In this case it only
requires external means to convince you of the opposite. One
has still found a stone where the person has fallen into the
river, and you are supported in your judgment. If one opens the
corpse, one will find out that the person suffered a stroke
that he has fallen consequently into the river and that he has
met his death not because he fell into the river, but that he
fell because he was dead. So cause and effect were completely
mistaken. However, somebody who understands the matters
observes that at many places above all in science. In our case
where the boy met his death, we must say: the karma of this boy
ordered the removal van; karma brought the van just to that
place. The judgment is wrong if one believes that chance played
a role. The boy should only arrive just at the seventh year in
this incarnation. I would like to say, the whole arrangement
was made for that. We must completely get used to exchange
cause and effect compared with the way of judging matters in
the everyday life.
If
we look now with the glance of the seer at the life of this
soul, something stupefying becomes apparent to us that at the
same time lights up the divine-spiritual secrets of the world.
Not long after the boy's death, the whole aura of the Dornach
construction changed. While I say this, I say something to you
that is connected with my experiences. If anybody himself has
to work for the Dornach construction of the Anthroposophical
Society, if one has to instigate what is to be carried out
there, then one knows what one has to thank the supporting
forces for working from such an aura into one's soul. Since
those days, the still unused etheric body of the boy is really
connected with the aura of the Dornach construction. After the
human being has taken off his etheric body, he goes on with his
ego and astral body; this is something different. But the
etheric body if it is taken off at such a tender age has forces
in itself which could still have supplied the physical body and
its life for decades. Now these forces have gone unused through
the gate of death. They are taken off after some days. These
forces just co-operate with the aura of our construction. One
is not allowed to say that it is the soul itself of this
individuality, but it is the unused etheric body. Nothing gets
also lost in the spiritual world. The physicist knows that
nothing of physical forces gets lost that the forces only
change. Also in the spiritual world we have to look for
transformed forces, unused etheric forces which ascend from
early-deceased human beings to the spiritual world. We approach
these matters if we observe them in concrete cases. That is why
I may talk to you only about such concrete cases today.
A
dear anthroposophical friend (Sibyl Colazza) died before
some weeks in Zurich after a life which had brought her some
ordeals, and the karma of our movement brought it about that I
had to speak at the cremation. The time from death up to
cremation lasted from Wednesday at six o'clock p. m. until
Monday at eleven o'clock a. m. This interval was a little
longer than usual. That is why the separation of the
individuality from the etheric body had already happened, while
the cremation took place. Now the peculiar was that in the
time, in which the soul had already separated from the etheric
body during the days between death and cremation, the necessity
arose to me to speak certain words before and after the
obituary. My own ability of coining words had really to do a
little with the way these words were coined. However, by
identifying with the soul of that personality the necessity
resulted to characterise this personality as if an inspiration
came from her soul itself. The soul said as it were: coin your
words, so that they characterise my soul. — But the soul
was still unconscious. The words came not consciously from the
soul, but from the being of this soul. I had to characterise
her as she wanted not to mirror herself in selfish way, but as
she appeared to herself if another soul looked at her. For this
other soul the necessity arose to speak the following words at
the beginning of the funeral speech and to coin each single
word. The words had to be spoken as an address to the soul who
had gone through the gate of death:
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.
As
I said, in the beginning and at the end of the funeral these
words had to be spoken. Now, indeed, this soul was as it were
like sleeping during the whole process, during the funeral
ceremony. Then the cremation followed. Strangely enough the
soul experienced a first flashing of consciousness, which later
passed again, at the moment when, one cannot say the flame, but
the heat seized the corpse. There one could say: now this soul
has gone through the gate of death, it had taken off its
etheric body, and it now appeared how such a soul looks back.
In this retrospective view, the whole funeral ceremony stood
before the soul, looking at the spoken words. Someone could see
there the secret of time effectiveness for the soul, after it
has gone through the gate of death. One could always have seen
this in such a case. If one here in the physical body looks at
something spatial and then leaves it, this object does not
leave, but is left, and one can always look around — one
sees that it is left. However, that does not hold true of
something we experience in time in the physical life. There we
have a memory picture of the events only. If one looks back
after death at past events, they are left; one looks at the
events like through space. Thus the words had been left; the
soul looked back at them like at spatial things through the
course of time. This is the way to look at the things of the
Akasha Chronicle. Then a kind of sleeping state happened again.
But particularly in this case it was rather clear that the fear
of the materialistic soul is unfounded that the consciousness
of the soul is reduced when it goes through the gate of
death.
We
do not have no consciousness or not enough consciousness after
death when we sink in a kind of sleeping state, but we have too
much consciousness. When we have taken off the etheric body,
when the life tableau is taken off, we are full of
consciousness that blinds us at first, and the human being must
orientate himself first. — I gave more details in my
talks of the Vienna cycle
The Inner Nature of the Human Being and Life Between Death and New Birth.
— The soul orientates itself, while it looks back at its own
earth-life and at its character in this earth-life. It has to
orientate itself by means of self-knowledge. The force of
orientation must take hold there, and then the abundant
consciousness is reduced as far as the human being is able to
endure it, depending on what he has gone through in his last
incarnation. It is, actually, reducing the superabundance of
consciousness to the degree which the human being can endure.
But that may happen in stages. When the body was seized by the
heat, the first flashing of real consciousness took place in
the soul of this personality friendly to us.
It
appeared to me especially clearly in another case that the
soul, when it has gone through the gate of death, wants to
summarise its being. I said that you can experience these
matters at every death, but I give you typical examples of the
most recent time. It appeared to me with quite particular
clearness in another case when a friendly personality, after it
had reached higher years, has gone through the gate of death.
During the last years which it lived through on earth it was
given away with all feelings in a rare way to the impulses of
spiritual science. It felt the details of spiritual science
more than it grasped them with the mind, that it united with
its soul the kind of feeling which gives not a theoretical, but
a true view of spiritual science. Shortly after the hour of
death, while the soul experienced the life tableau with its
etheric body, it tried now to grasp its self where it had taken
off its body. This process seemed likewise to ray forth to me,
and I identified with it. I had then to note words shortly
after death, when the soul was still united with the etheric
body, which I have also not coined with the help of my human
knowledge. These words are nothing else than a reproduction of
that what the soul worked internally in itself to summarise
what it had been able to get from spiritual science and came to
an internally complete self-awareness that way. There the words
sounded from the soul which I had to speak then also, following
an inspiration, before and after the funeral speech. You will
immediately notice the great difference to the whole tone of
those words I gave for the other personality before.
Into cosmic distances I will carry
My feeling heart, so that it grows warm
In the fire of the holy forces' working;
Into
cosmic thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, so that it grows clear
In the light of eternal life-becoming;
Into
depths of soul I will sink
Devoted contemplation, so that it grows strong
For the true goals of human activity;
In the
peace of God I strive thus
Amidst life's battles and cares,
To prepare myself for the higher Self;
Aspiring to work in joy-filled peace,
Sensing cosmic being in my own being,
I seek to fulfil my human duty;
May I
live in anticipation
Oriented toward my soul's star,
Which gives me my place in spirit realms.
The
soul speaks of itself as “I.” In the former case,
the considering soul had to characterise the other soul
interchanging with it. In this case, the considering soul had
nothing else to do than to transport itself completely into the
soul which still tried to grasp, enriched by spiritual science,
with the forces of the etheric body to become clear that it has
now to orientate itself in the spiritual world.
These are cases again in which one realises that the human
being, after he has gone through the gate of death, is
dependent on looking back at himself in self-knowledge. One
could see clearly that somebody who is still in the physical
body can help the dead to formulate in words what works and
weaves in him. Of course, the times, when the human being sees
his weaknesses and mistakes, his sins, come later in the
soul-world. But we have to retain: as much as death is feared
now and again by those who are still in the body, death is
something completely different seen from the other side in the
retrospective view. Here in the physical life nobody can look
so far back with his everyday human forces to the hour of his
birth. Actually, nobody who does not have clairvoyant forces
has the possibility to look at his entry into the world; only
later the point in time up to which one can look back takes
place.
Just the reverse is the case with that birth for the spiritual
world which we call death. The human being looks at this point
in time permanently in the life between death and new birth.
This moment belongs to the most marvellous, greatest at which
one can generally look in the spiritual world. Death is always
an immediate proof of the fact that the spirit incessantly
celebrates his victory over the physical nature. And you
experience this in yourself. That is why the soul wants to
experience that which one can be also really in the soul after
death. Hence, it is a help if a soul living in the body
expresses that in words what the soul strives for, so that the
soul clearly sees itself with the best it has before its own
spiritual view after it has gone through the gate of death. I
just could see in this case that such words came to me with an
internal necessity which referred to the soul in question when
I had to speak at the funeral and did not speak out of
arbitrariness, but obeyed the divine voice which told me what I
had to do.
In
still another case that appeared to me by the karmic course of
the last times, when one of our friends died as young man who
gave rise to great hopes just for our movement. He died in the
thirtieth year of his life. On the 26th February he would have
been thirty years old, he died shortly before. This friend, our
dear Fritz Mitscher, has been somebody who was able to
summarise that spiritual-scientifically what he had gained in
learning — he had a disposition to scholarship, —
with infinite, sacrificing devotion, and thus, indeed, he stood
before something our movement needs so much: taking up our
extensive science in oneself, so that one penetrates it
spiritual-scientifically and reports it
spiritual-scientifically, so that one stands completely on the
ground of the scientific present. He was well prepared for
that. Even if now the karma runs a way that such souls go early
through the gate of death, this has its significance in the
whole world course. Like in the other cases — because I
was urged just by karma to speak at the funeral, — it was
there also that I had to speak words in the beginning and at
the end of the funeral speech which had to be spoken again in
the same manner, transporting myself into the soul's being, so
that I coined the words again not arbitrarily, but grasped them
in the lively being together with the deceased. There I had to
say then:
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.
Already in the next night I could experience that the following
sounded from this soul from the spiritual realm:
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
assure you, when I had written down these verses, I did not
think, not in the least, that in both stanzas each
“you” can be transformed to “me,” each
“your” to “my.” I took notice only,
when both stanzas sounded back from the other soul like an
answer in the next night. So that the stanzas could just
remain, only the second person was replaced by the first
person.
I
mention this, because a heart understanding can arise to us
that in the future of the human development the possibility
remains to speak from soul to soul, when the mouth is no longer
the tool. In the same way we get answer here for the everyday
life from the mouth of the other soul, it was here at an
example where the soul gave answer still even from the
unconscious of its being, saying as it were: I have now
understood, because it was to me really that way in life; now I
understand what I have aimed at in life, after I have taken off
my body.
It
does not only depend on the fact that we take up concepts,
ideas and mental pictures of the spiritual worlds, but that we
live in a certain life, in a certain way of life as human
beings, while we go as human beings of the fifth post-Atlantean
culture-epoch towards the sixth and seventh culture-epochs. It
depends on the fact that the chasm is bridged really which
separates the living human beings from the so-called dead that
humankind becomes one more and more not only in so far as it is
incarnated in the body, but also as it has taken on those forms
of existence which the human being lives through between death
and new birth. Spiritual science has not only to bring that to
humankind, but for the life which the earth needs for the rest
of this post-Atlantean development, spiritual science is the
first, I would like to say, still stammering attempt, because
what can be given in spiritual science is basically only a
stammering compared to that what future generations experience
of spiritual science.
My
account tried to make that comprehensible by the force of heart
what we can think about the relations of life and death,
referring today to spiritual science facing life, so that you
get another understanding than the head understanding, the
lively heart understanding which we seek for, actually, through
the spiritual-scientific deepening. That is the task of the
fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. The sixth and the seventh
epochs follow it. However, you understand only what is to be
defended as Central European culture if you just feel this
Central European culture intimately connected with that which
must be gained in the fifth culture-epoch for humankind.
Something may then begin from that which I have mentioned in
the beginning of this consideration: a widening of the view
beyond that what our destiny-burdened times have in their
lap.
In
the East, a kind of human life prepares which will be
significant for the future. You only need to read up about that
in the series of talks about the mission of the folk-souls
[
The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology
11 lectures in Kristiania (today Oslo, June 1910), Steiner's
Collected Works volume 121]
I held once in Kristiania (= Oslo). But totally different
from the soul kind which is just that of the Central European
is already the soul kind of the Eastern European not to speak
at all of the Far Eastern — totally different. We have
already to get on by that what spiritual science should be for
us to create an open spirit eye for such things. What is often
told that once the Varangians were invited by the
Russian-Slavic population that they would have said to them: we
have a nice country, but we have no order, come to us and make
order. Arrange something like a state for us. What is told
sentimentally as a starting point of the Russian history is
nothing else as a legend without any historical background.
This has never taken place that way. In truth, these Varangians
came into the country as conquerors and were not called really.
Nevertheless, what is told in history has more significance,
even more than it would have if it corresponded to a historical
truth. Because it means something prophetic, something really
prophetic, something that has not yet happened that happens,
however, in future. What should develop in the East, has to
develop so that the abilities of the eastern peoples are used
to take up what the western civilisation has created, and to
process it in itself to get fertilised with that which the West
has created. This is the task of the eastern peoples in
future.
One
can just characterise the nature of the Russian eastern nation
briefly. When we look at the real nation — not at that
dishonest society which now governs the Russian nation, —
then we have to be aware of the fact that the Russian soul has
an immense lot of talents that it is gifted as it were for
everything; but just while it unfolds its mission in the world
human development more and more, will appear that something can
be there in humanity what one can call: talent without
productive power. The talent will still become greater and
greater. That, however, what distinguishes, for example, the
Central European, that he has combined his talent with the
spiritual force that he produces that “for him whose
striving never ceases ...” and lives intimately with his
folk-soul. He wants to produce that what he wants to understand
at the same time what is there so splendid in Fichte's
philosophy where the ego to understand itself wants to produce
itself perpetually — one will see only later which
significance this philosophy has, — just that what
distinguishes Central Europe. The opposite of that is in
existence in Russia, in the east of Europe. These Russian souls
are receptive first of all: they have the biggest gift for
taking up, and if one speaks of productiveness, one is
mistaken. They have a vocation to develop talents without
productiveness. Today even the concept is difficult to grasp
because something like that has not yet existed in the
development, but has to develop only bit by bit. In future it
happens that from the East over here to the West the call goes
out: we have a nice country, but no order — for disorder
increases more and more, — come and make order. —
Central Europe has a vocation to bring spiritual productiveness
to the East. What happens now means that they defend themselves
unreasonably against that which must still happen in future.
One wants to crush that to which once one will have to come and
say: come to us and make order. — It is thus in the
historical evolution of humanity that that is thrown back
mostly, pushed back mostly what one has to long for in the end.
The biggest misfortune would be that the east of Europe, if
Russia were victorious in this process. That would not be the
biggest misfortune for Central Europe, not at all, but for
Russia herself, the biggest misfortune, considered internally,
because this victory would have to be cancelled again. This
victory could not last with its effects. Thus we stand before
the tragic moment of the historical evolution of humanity that
the East defends itself against something it will long for in
future, will long for with all its forces. Because it would
experience an entire decline if it could not be fertilised by
the spiritual life of the directly bordering West. In the
further course of its culture this West has to produce a lively
cultural life, not only idealism, but lively cultural life.
This lively cultural life will be like a spirit sun which moves
from the West to the East, opposite to the movement of the sun.
The external Russian human being will see more and more how
little he is able to do by himself how he is dependent on
arranging himself really in the whole evolutionary process of
humanity; how he commits the biggest sin assaulting the
west-European culture.
I
would like to say we could feel strange pre-flashes of it.
Something appeared in this East that was impossible in the
West: the so-called world view of the discalced friars,
[
the following quotation from the dramatic poem
The Lower Depths
by Maksim Gorky (1868–1936) stems originally from a writing
by Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1865–1941)]
a type of philosophy of the discalced friars which has quickly spread
over big circles, while it was not there some years ago at all.
Being discalced! The world view of those who make the absolute
unbelief in human beings and humanity a philosophy, because
they cannot believe that the human being is really something
different than that what there walks around between birth and
death under tribulation and fright, that the words liberty,
fraternity, compassion and love are empty phrases, and that the
only wise one is who walks as a pilgrim barefoot through the
world, who the whole culture, the whole putrescent
west-European culture — as the discalced friar says
— feels as a big deception and regards the tattered
clothing, the musty room and broad street as something through
which the human being walks, when he forced himself to the
discalced friars' world view. When a poet allows to express
this discalced friars' world view by one of his persons with
characteristic words, this must touch us quite strangely who
always try to find out that of the Central European world view
which can kindle the light of the future for the human beings.
If a poet allows to express a person that what is, however,
basically a kind of a summary of the discalced friars' world
view and their philosophy how does it seem to us?
”Yes what does this person mean to you? Do you
understand? He collars you, quashes you under the nails like a
fleeing! Then you may feel sorry for him ... Certainly! Then
you may manifest your whole stupidity to him. He will stretch
you on seven instruments of torture for your compassion; he
wraps your intestine over the hand and pulls all your veins out
of the body, an inch per hour ... Oh you ... Compassion! Pray
to God that one may thrash you simply without any compassion,
and finish ... Compassion ... Bah!”
And
Gorki of whom you have already heard something says to such
words: “Cruel, but true,” while he returns now not
only the world view of a poetic personality, as the poet
expresses it, but he expresses his own world view which results
for him as the consideration of the world. This is the world
view of a discalced friar, a world view about which one can
just talk like about other world views now in existence. It is
the world view which has lost the possibility to come out of
itself to something that rays light to life. It has to wait,
until it is fertilised by this light, and then it can fulfil
its mission in the human evolution. However, now it rebels
against that what it just must do. One could experience many
phrases in the world, but I say that from the most tragic
feeling:
Such phrases, as they were spoken by the most different parties
in August 1914 on the war assembly of the Russian Duma, such a
sum of phrases exceeds the peak of phraseology. Such a thing is
only spoken when any lively productive force of the soul is
exhausted. In the East one stands in reality in the eve of that
what should become first, and unfolds a force that is opposite
to that what will once make this East great. We in Central
Europe have to say to ourselves: nevertheless, this East waits
just for the spiritual wisdom which has to arise in the middle
of Europe.
My
dear friends, try to transform that into feelings what I has
suggested to you with grievous feelings, I would like to say,
in single words that it can light up that what we are able to
see as spiritual scientists with enlarged sensations and with
which we should familiarise ourselves to understand the real
necessity and also the contemporary historical necessity of the
spiritual-scientific world view. Then we penetrate ourselves
with thoughts which ascend from our souls to cosmic distances.
Thoughts which meet then what works down from these spiritual
worlds, when peace prevails on earth.
Today I have shown you how the etheric bodies of those souls
work which free themselves as unused etheric bodies from the
souls, which could work still for years, still for decades here
in the physical bodies, for the physical lives. The idea must
become apparent to us how many such unused parts of etheric
bodies ascend into the spiritual world — still except
that what human beings going through the portal of death on the
battlefields take with their individualities into the spiritual
world. However, these etheric bodies represent a big sum of
spiritual forces, those spiritual forces which should help
forming a spiritual world view from the spiritual spheres which
should seize humanity more and more. It is necessary that
thoughts ascending from earthly human beings to the spiritual
spheres meet these forces of the unused etheric bodies which
are able to work down from the spiritual spheres. These human
thoughts have to show understanding for the secret work of the
spiritual world into which the forces of these unused etheric
bodies are woven.
However, this should be an encouragement for us that we
penetrate ourselves with the profundities of spiritual science.
Since these profundities stimulate thoughts in us which have an
effect then more and more also in other human beings. Depending
on what develops as destiny-burdened contents of our days, days
full of peace will come when that what the souls have planted
of spiritual science in themselves will ascend. It will meet
the forces that have collected from the etheric bodies of those
who went through the gate of death on the battlefields and flow
down. Then this will happen what I would like to subsume in
some words as a result of this spiritual-scientific
consideration. If we are able to put the fruits of spiritual
science in our time rightly, then that will happen what I would
like to express 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.
|