Lecture VI
Dornach, August 20, 1920
Once again, I
would like to sum up some of what has been presented here
recently. We spoke about the external sense world in its
relation to the inner world of the human being and I pointed
out two things in particular. I stressed that the external
sense world certainly must be understood as a world of
phenomena and that it is a sign of the prejudices of our age
not to interpret correctly this view of the world of
phenomena. Certainly, here and there, a certain perception
surfaces concerning the fact that the outer sense world is a
world of phenomena, of appearances, not one even of merely
material realities. Then, however, behind this world of
external phenomena, one seeks for material realities, for
example, for atoms and molecules, and the like. This search
for atoms and molecules, in short, for any world of physical
reality standing behind the world of phenomena, is just as if
one were to seek for some kind of molecular materiality
behind the rainbow that is obviously only an appearance, a
phenomenon. This search for material reality in regard to the
external world is something quite unfounded, as spiritual
science points out from the most diverse directions. We have
to understand clearly that surrounding us in what we perceive
as the sense world is a world of phenomena, and we may not
interpret the sense of touch differently from the other
senses in regard to the sense world. Just as we see the
rainbow with our eyes without searching for a material
reality behind it, accepting it as appearance, so we must
accept the entire external world as it is, namely, in the
sense I depicted it decades ago in my introduction to the
volume an color theory
[ Note 42 ]
in Goethe's natural scientific writings. The
question then is posed to us: What is it that really stands
behind this world of phenomena? The material atoms are not
behind it; there are spiritual beings behind it — there
is spirituality. This recognition signifies a lot, for it
means that we admit that we do not live in a material world
but in one of spiritual realities.
When we as
human beings turn to the external world this drawing
representing, as it were, the boundary of our body — we
have here the sense world and behind it the world of
spiritual realities, spiritual beings (right side).
Now, when we
turn to the human interior, when we move from our senses
inward, we have first of all the content of our world of
conceptions, our soul world. If we call the sense world the
world of sense phenomena, of sensory appearances, we have the
world of spiritual phenomena when we turn from our senses
inward (left). Naturally, in the manner in which they are
present within us, our thoughts, our conceptions, are not
realities, they are spiritual phenomena. Now, if we descend
from this soul world still deeper into our inner being, it is
all-important for us not to believe that we thereby arrive at
a special, higher world, something that mystic dreamers
presuppose. There, we actually come into the world of our
organism, the world of material realities.
This is why it
is important not to assume that by inward brooding one could
discover something spiritual; there, we should seek for the
constitution of the material human organism. One should not
seek for all manner of mystical realities within oneself, as
I have pointed out from a number of viewpoints. Instead,
behind what pushes up into the soul and thus turns into a
spiritual phenomenon, especially when one penetrates more and
more deeply into oneself, we should seek the interaction of
liver, heart, lungs, and other organs that mystics in
particular do not like to hear mentioned. There we become
acquainted with the essentially material element of our
earthly existence. As I have often emphasized, many a person
who believes he has encountered mystical realities by
descending deeply into his inner being only finds what is
given off by his liver, gall bladder and other related
organs. Just as tallow turns into flame, so everything that
liver, lungs, heart and stomach give off turns into mystical
phenomena when it lights up into consciousness.
The important
point is that true spiritual science guides the human being
beyond any sort of illusion. Materialists cling to the
illusion that they can find physical, material realities, not
spiritual realities, behind the sense world. It is the
illusion of mystics that when they descend into their own
being, they can find, not the world of the material
organization, but different kinds of special divine sparks,
and such like.
In genuine
spiritual science, it is important that we do not search for
material substance in the outer world and do not seek the
Spirit in the inner world, which initially appears as such
through inward brooding.
What I have now
said is of significant consequence for our entire world view.
Bear in mind that from the time man falls asleep until he
wakes up he is outside his physical and etheric bodies with
his astral body and I. Where is he then? This is the question
we must ask ourselves. If we assume that out there is the
world described by the physicists, it makes no sense whatever
to speak about an existence of the astral body or the ego
outside the physical body. If we know, however, that beyond
the sense world lies the world of spiritual realities, out of
which the sense world blossoms forth, then we are able to
imagine that the astral body and ego move into the spiritual
world which lies behind the sense world. Indeed, astral body
and ego find themselves in that part of the spiritual world
that underlies the sense world. Thus, we can say that in
sleep man penetrates into the spiritual world which is the
basis of the physical world. Of course, upon awakening, his
ego and astral body first penetrate his etheric being and
then what constitutes the realm of the material
organization.
Clear concepts
of an anthroposophical world-view can only be attained if one
is able to form intelligible ideas concerning such matters.
For, above all, one will not succumb to the illusion of
seeking the divine, or the spiritual underlying our human
condition, behind the sensory surroundings. There, only that
spiritual element is found which, out of itself, brings forth
the sense world. As human beings we have our roots in the
spiritual world, but in which spiritual world? We have our
roots in the very spiritual world that we leave when
incarnating into our physical body. We come from the
spiritual world that we live in between death and a new
birth; through birth or conception we enter this physical
existence. The world we inhabit between death and a new
birth, which we then leave, is a different spiritual world
than this one
[behind the sense world],
although, because it
is a spiritual world, it is related to the latter from which
springs forth our sense world. We will not grasp the
spiritual world of which we are speaking — I have
described it in the lecture cycle,
Inner Nature of Man and the Life Between Death and a New Birth,
[ Note 43 ]
namely, the spiritual world
we experience between death and rebirth which creates and
brings us forth — if we seek it behind the sense world.
We will not take hold of it if we seek it within ourselves.
There, we only discover the material element of our own
organization. We can only grasp it when we leave space
altogether. This spiritual world is not within space. As I
have often emphasized, we can only speak about it when we
base it solely on time, thinking of it as a world of time.
Consequently, it goes without saying that all the
descriptions we have about this world between death and
rebirth can only be images, merely pictures. We must not
confuse these pictures, in which we must of necessity express
ourselves, with the realities in which we dwell between death
and a new birth. It is vital that on the basis of the
anthroposophical world-view we do not merely talk about all
manner of fantastic things, depicting them in the ancient
terminology which actually does not designate anything new.
What matters is that we enrich our world of concepts and
ideas when we try to send our thoughts into the world in
which we live between death and rebirth. Thus we can acquire
a most important concept that can also give rise to profound,
albeit uncomfortable, reflection. It is this: When we have
absolved the life between death and birth, we incarnate here
in space. We penetrate into space out of a condition that is
not spatial. Space has significance only for our experiences
between birth and death. Again, it is important to know that
when we pass through the portal of death, not only do we
leave the body with our soul, we also leave space behind.
This concept
was quite familiar to people until the fourth, fifth, and
sixth centuries A.D. Even a person like
Scotus Erigena,
[ Note 44 ]
who lived in the ninth century, was fully
conversant with it. Yet the modern age has completely lost
the concept of the spirituality underlying human existence,
within which the human being lives after death — as was
thought then, only after death; today we must say: between
death and rebirth we are outside space. The modern age is
proud and arrogant regarding its thinking, yet it can
actually think only of what is spatial, holding any and every
thought in a spatial context. In order to conceive of
spiritual matters, on the one hand, we must make the effort
to overcome space within our thinking. Otherwise we will
never reach the truly spiritual; above all, we will never
attain to an even approximately correct natural science, much
less a spiritual science. Particularly in our time it is
infinitely important to become acquainted with these finer
distinctions of spiritual-scientific knowledge. For, what we
acquire through such concepts is not just any kind of world
concept, any sort of thought content. The acquisition of a
thought content is, after all, the very least we can achieve
through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. For it
is one and the same whether someone believes the world
consists of molecules and atoms, or if he believes man
consists of a physical body, a somewhat less dense etheric
body, then something more nebulous and tenuous, the astral
body, followed by whatever is next, say, a still finer mental
body, or something even more and more rarefied; for one
doesn't come anywhere near the etheric body by just thinking
of something more rarefied. It is really the same thing
whether one is a materialist picturing the world as atoms, or
whether one harbors this coarsely materialistic conception
that is the common factor of the so-called theosophical
society teachings, or whatever they are called now. Something
quite different is what really matters, namely, that we
become capable of changing our entire soul constitution. We
have to make every effort to think about the spiritual in a
manner different from the one in which we are accustomed to
think about the external sense world. We do not comprehend
spiritual science if we conceive of something other
than the sense world as being spiritual; we enter into
spiritual science if we think about the spiritual in a
different way than we think about the sense realm. We think
of the latter in terms of space. We can think about the
spiritual world in terms of time within certain limits,
because we have to think of ourselves within this spiritual
world. And we are in a certain sense spiritually conditioned
by time, in that at a certain moment in time we are
transposed from the life between death and rebirth into the
life between birth and death.
As I have often
indicated, it is this transformation of the state of mind
that is so absolutely essential for mankind of today. For how
did we become caught up in the calamities of the present? It
is because, along with so-called modern progress, humanity
has altogether forgotten to admit the spiritual into its
conceptions. The theosophical teachings of the so-called
Theosophical Society are actually the attempt to characterize
spiritual facts in materialistic forms of thought, hence, to
drive materialism all the way into the spirit. We do not
attain to a spiritual concept merely by calling something
spiritual, only by transforming our thinking to what is
suited to the sensory realm.
Human beings do
not live with each other only in purely spatial relationships
that can be constructed by means of what has become the
general thinking of natural science. We can no longer develop
social concepts based on the present-day world view. The kind
of thinking that humanity has become accustomed to owing to
natural science cannot lead to a characterization of social
life. In this way arise the aberrations we experience today
as a variety of social ideologies that only come about
because it is impossible to think realistically about the
social problems based on the conceptions from which we
proceed to regard something as right or wrong. Not until
people are willing to penetrate spiritual science will it
become possible again to think of the social life in the
manner it has to be conceived if further decline is to be
halted and, instead, progress is to ensue. The discipline
brought about in us by spiritual science is more important
than its content. Otherwise we shall finally reach the stage
of demanding that spiritual matters be popularized, that is
to say, that they be presented in coarsely sensory, realistic
terms. Things that must be expressed in a certain manner if
one doesn't want to fantasize but to speak of realities, as I
have done in our anthroposophical presentations as well as in
my book,
Towards Social Renewal,
[ Note 45 ]
are found to be not graphic
enough. Well, “graphic” is a word that has a
peculiar connotation for people today. There are people today
who have much to say about this longing of mankind to have
everything presented in a crudely senseperceptible
manner. This is true all over the world, not just in
certain countries.
I found an
interesting passage, for example, in a recently published
book,
Les forces morales aux Etats-Unis,
[ Note 46 ]
written by a French lady. It
has the following subdivisions: l'eglise, l'ecole, la femme.
The book contains an interesting little episode which
demonstrates how, in certain quarters, one triel
“graphically” to describe matters pertaining to
man's relationship with the spiritual world. The author
relates:
One evening a
friend and I strolled down Broadway. I came to a church. A
quick glance showed us the place was filled with men only.
Offended by seeing this, we avoided moving further inside.
A priest clad in a soutane saw us, approached and invited
us to come in. Since we hesitated, he asked about our
confession. “We are not Catholics,” I said. He
urged us to enter the church and, index finger pointing
upward, he said with conviction “Come here and listen
to me. If, for instance, you wish to travel to Chicago, how
would you go about it? You might go on foot, take a car, a
boat, or travel by train. It stands to reason that you
would choose the fastest and most comfortable means. In
this case that's the train. Obviously, if you wish to get
to the Garden of God you will choose the religion that will
get you there in the fastest and safest way. That's the
Catholic religion, which is the express train to
Paradise.”
The Lady telling the story only concluded
that she was so perplexed she did not think of telling him
that he had forgotten the airplane in his graphic comparison,
which he could have mentioned as a still quicker means of
getting to Paradise.
You see, here
was someone eager to counter people's prejudices, and he
chose graphic conceptions. The description of the Catholic
Church as the “express train to heaven” is a
graphic image. It is indeed the tendency of our time to
search for graphic images, meaning concepts that do not make
any demands on people's thinking. It is precisely here that
we must already discern the gravity of modern life which
demands that we do away with such graphicness which turns
into banality and triviality, thus pulling man down into
materialism in regard to those matters that must be
comprehended spiritually. Even in symptoms such as these we
have to search for what is needed most in our age. It must be
said again and again: Such symptoms cannot be ignored; we
cannot afford to go blindfolded through the world, which is
an organism asking to be understood by means of its symptoms.
For these symptoms contain what we must comprehend if we wish
to arrive at an ascent again from our general decline.
At this point,
however, it is necessary to see a number of things in the
right light. What has actually been produced from
spiritual-scientific foundations in
Towards Social Renewal
truly has not been created out of some theory
but out of the whole breadth of life, with the difference
that this life is viewed spiritually. Mankind today cannot
progress if people do not adjust to such a view of life.
I would like to
put in here two points taken from life that once again showed
me recently how necessary it is to lead humanity today to a
life-filled comprehension of reality, but at the same time a
spiritual comprehension of reality. Yesterday I read an article
by a journalist whose name, so I am told, is Rene Marchand,
[ Note 47 ]
who, for a long time, was a correspondent for
Figaro, Petit Parisien,
and so on. He participated in the war on the
Russian front, being a radical opponent of the Bolsheviks. He
then had dealings with the general of the counter-revolution,
becoming a follower of it. Overnight, he became converted to
the idea of workers' councils, to Bolshevism. From an
opponent of Bolshevism, so it says here, he turned into a
protagonist, an unreserved supporter of the leadership and
the ideology of workers' councils. Here is a man who belongs
to the intellectual class, for he is a journalist, who, after
all, lives with a deeper understanding of life, a deeper
sensitivity for life, who dwells in the old traditions as do
most of today's sleeping souls. It is interesting how such a
person suddenly realizes: All this will assuredly lead to
destruction! — and now the only goal worth aiming at
for him appears to be Bolshevism! In other words, the man now
perceives that everything that is not Bolshevism leads to
ruin. I explained to you how Spengler described this.
[ Note 48 ]
Marchand sees only
Bolshevism; initially, he believes that Bolshevism is merely
a Russian affair. Then he discovers something quite
different. He feels that Bolshevism is an international
matter that must spread over the whole world. He says:
It now became
clear to me that peace can only be restored when the people
in all the countries freely take their destiny into their
own hands. The principles, hitherto proclaimed by the
bourgeois governments merely to deceive the masses, can
only become reality when this new imperialism (that of the
Entente powers) has in turn broken down.
He then relates how he has now arrived at
the conviction that justice, unity, peace, and law will only
rule when the world has become bolshevistic through and
through; not till then will reconstruction be possible. This
man now sees that all else leads to destruction. And
basically he is quite correct in pointing out: If anything
outside Bolshevism is to be cultivated further, it must turn
into the dictatorship of the old capitalism, the Bourgeoisie
and its trappings. It must become the dictatorship of people
like Lloyd George,
[ Note 49 ]
Clemenceau,
[ Note 50 ]
Scheidemann,
[ Note 51 ]
and so on. If one does not wish for this, if one does not want
ruin, there is no other choice but the dictatorship of
Bolshevism. He sees the only salvation in the letter.
In a certain
sense this man is honest, more honest than all the others who
see the approach of Bolshevism and believe they can oppose it
with the old regime. At least Marchand sees that all the old
ideas are ready to perish. A question arises, however,
especially if one stands on spiritual scientific ground and
experiences this; for a man like Rene Marchand is an
exception. The question forces itself upon one's mind: Where
has the man gained knowledge of all this? He has acquired
such knowledge where most of our contemporaries have gathered
it, namely, from newspapers and books. He does not know life.
To a large extent, people living today know -life only from
newspapers and books. Particularly the people in leading
circles know life just from newspapers. Think of all that we
have experienced in this regard through newspapers, by means
of books! We have witnessed that a few decades ago people
still formed their world conceptions by reading French
comedies, that they knew the events occurring in a comedy
better than what takes place in life. They ignored the
realities of life and informed themselves by what they had
seen on the stage. Later, we saw that people formed their
view of life based on Ibsen, Dostoevsky, or Tolstoy. They did
not know life; neither could they judge the books on the
basis of life. Actually, people only assimilated the
secondhand life printed on paper. From that they developed
their slogans, founded societies for all manner of reforms
without any real knowledge of life. It was a life which they
knew only from Ibsen or Dostoevsky, or a life they knew in a
manner that frequently could not help becoming quite
obnoxious to a person when, in all the big cities of Europe,
Hauptmann's “Weber” (weavers),
[ Note 52 ]
for example, was being
performed. The lifestyle of weavers appeared on stage. People
with no idea of what transpires in life, having seen only its
caricature on the stage, observing the misery of weavers on
stage, and because it was a time of social involvement
— began talking about all sorts of social questions,
having become acquainted with these matters only in this way.
Basically, they are all people who do not know life except
vicariously from newspapers or books such as exist today. I
have nothing against the books; one must be familiar with
them, but one must read them in such a manner that through
them one is able to perceive life. The problem is that we
live in an age of abstraction today, abstract demands by
political parties, societies, and so on.
This is why it
is interesting for me to encounter, on one side, such a
realistic man like Rene Marchand who, being a journalist, is
simultaneously an oracle for many people. It does not even
occur to him to ask if this Bolshevism really leads to a
viable life style. For he really does not know life; he only
exchanges what he has become acquainted with and finds headed
for destruction, with a new abstract formula, with new
theories. On the other side, I must now compare a letter I
received this morning with these utterances of an
intellectual. Somebody who is fully grounded in life, who has
experienced precisely what can be experienced today in order
to form an opinion of the social condition, wrote to me. He
wrote that my book,
Towards Social Renewal,
[ Note 13 ]
had become a sort of
salvation for him. This man, who has worked in a weaving
mill, was thoroughly familiar with the practical aspects. One
will only grasp what is meant with the book,
Towards Social Renewal,
when one judges it from the standpoint
of practical life. It is a book depicting reality, but
derived completely from the spiritual world, as must be the
case with anything that is to serve life today. One will only
know what is meant if one understands that every line, every
word of this book is in no way theoretical, but taken
straight from practical life; when one realizes that it is a
book for those who wish to intervene actively in life, not
for those who want to engage in socialistic chatter and
babble about life.
It is this that
causes one such pain, namely, that a book steeped in reality
is called utopian by those who have no idea of reality. Those
who have no inkling of the reality of life, being themselves
addicted to literature, view even such a book that is truly
taken from life as a piece of literature. Today, the
“how” matters more than the “what.”
Everything depends an our acquiring thought forms that are
suitable tools for the comprehension of the spiritual life,
for in reality spiritual life is everywhere. We have
spiritual realities here in our surroundings as well as from
beyond the sense world. It is out of these spiritual
realities that social reconstruction must come about, not out
of the empty talk appearing in Leninism and Trotskyism, which
is nothing but the squeezed-out lemon of old commonplace
Western views that have no power to produce any viable kind
of social idea. One may well ask: Where are the human beings
today who are prepared to comprehend life with the necessary
intensity? We will never penetrate life if we are unwilling
to view it from the spiritual standpoint. The life between
birth and death will not be understood as long as one is not
willing to comprehend the life between death and rebirth. If
people are unwilling to resort to the spiritual life, they
will either become complete materialists or intellectuals
living in theories that only enable them to comprehend life
after having had it dramatically presented by an Ibsen, a
Dostoevsky, or another writer. What matters is that we
interpret library presentations as a kind of window through
which we look out upon life. This will be possible for us
only if we perceive the spiritual world, the world of
spiritual entities, behind the sense world; if we finally
dismiss all the fantasies concerning atoms and molecules from
which present-day physics wishes to construct a world for us.
It would follow from these fantasies that the whole present
world in fact really consists basically only of atoms and
molecules, effectively eliminating all spiritual, and with
it, moral and religious ideas. I will say more about this
tomorrow.
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