The Path to Freedom and Love and their Significance in World Events
December 19, 1920
Man stands in the world as thinking, contemplative being on the one
hand, and as a doer, a being of action, on the other; with his
feelings he lives within both these spheres. With his feeling he
responds, on the one side, to what is presented to his observation; on
the other side, feeling enters into his actions, his deeds. We need
only consider how a man may be satisfied or dissatisfied with the
success or lack of success of our deeds, how in truth all action is
accompanied by impulses of feeling, and we shall see that feeling
links the two poles of our being: the pole of thinking and the pole of
deed, of action. Only through the fact that we are thinking beings are
we Man in the truest sense. Consider too, how everything that
gives us the consciousness of our essential manhood is connected with
the fact that we can inwardly picture the world around us; we live in
this world and can contemplate it. To imagine that we cannot
contemplate the world would entail forfeiting our essential manhood.
As doers, as men of action, we have our place in social life and
fundamentally speaking, everything we accomplish between birth and
death has a certain significance in this social life.
In so far as we are contemplative beings, thought operates in
us; in so far as we are doers, that is to say, social beings,
will operates in us. It is not the case in human nature, nor is
it ever so, that things can simply be thought of intellectually side
by side with one another; the truth is that whatever is an active
factor in life can be characterized from one aspect or another; the
forces of the world interpenetrate, flow into each other. Mentally, we
can picture ourselves as beings of thought, also as beings of will.
But even when we are entirely engrossed in contemplation, when the
outer world is completely stilled, the will is continually active. And
again, when we are performing deeds, thought is active in us. It is
inconceivable that anything should proceed from us in the way of
actions or deeds which may also take effect in the realm of
social life without our identifying ourselves in thought with
what thus takes place. In everything that is of the nature of will,
the element of thought is contained; and in everything that is of the
nature of thought, will is present. It is essential to be quite clear
about what is involved here if we seriously want to build the bridge
between the moral-spiritual world-order and natural-physical
world-order.
Imagine that you are living for a time purely in reflection as usually
understood, that you are engaging in no kind of outward activity at
all, but are wholly engrossed in thought. You must realize, however,
that in this life of thought, will is also active; will is then
at work in your inner being, raying out its forces into the realm of
thought. When we picture the thinking human being in this way, when we
realize that the will is radiating all the time into his thoughts,
something will certainly strike us concerning life and its realities.
If we review all the thoughts we have formulated, we shall find in
every case that they are linked with something in our environment,
something that we ourselves have experienced. Between birth and death
we have, in a certain respect, no thoughts other than those brought to
us by life. If our life has been rich in experiences we have a rich
thought-content; if our life experiences have been meagre, we have a
meagre thought-content. The thought-content represents our inner
destiny to a certain extent. But within this life of thought
there is something that is inherently our own; what is inherently our
own is how we connect thoughts with one another and dissociate
them again, how we elaborate them inwardly, how we
arrive at judgments and draw conclusions, how we orientate
ourselves in the life of thought all this is inherently our
own. The will in our life of thought is our own.
If we study this life of thought in careful self-examination we shall
certainly realize that thoughts, as far as their actual content is
concerned, come to us from outside, but that it is we ourselves who
elaborate these thoughts. Fundamentally speaking, therefore, in
respect of our world of thought we are entirely dependent upon the
experiences brought to us by our birth, by our destiny. But through
the will, which rays out from the depths of the soul, we carry into
what thus comes to us from the outer world, something that is
inherently our own. For the fulfillment of what self-knowledge demands
of us it is highly important to keep separate in our minds how, on the
one side, the thought content comes to us from the surrounding world
and how, on the other, the force of the will, coming from within our
being, rays into the world of thought.
How, in reality, do we become inwardly more and more spiritual?
Not by taking in as many thoughts as possible from the surrounding
world, for these thoughts merely reproduce in pictures this outer
world, which is a physical, material world. Constantly to be running
in pursuit of sensations does not make us more spiritual. We become
more spiritual through the inner, will-permeated work we carry out in
our thoughts. This is why meditation, too, consists in not indulging
in haphazard thoughts but in holding certain easily envisaged thoughts
in the very centre of our consciousness, drawing them there with a
strong effort of will. And the greater the strength and intensity of
this inner radiation of will into the sphere of thinking, the more
spiritual we become. When we take in thoughts from the outer material
world and between birth and death we can take in only such
thoughts we become, as you can easily realize, unfree; for we
are given over to the concatenations of things and events in the
external world; as far as the actual content of the thoughts is
concerned, we are obliged to think as the external world prescribes;
only when we elaborate the thoughts do we become free in the real
sense.
Now it is possible to attain complete freedom of our inner life if we
increasingly efface and exclude the actual thought content, in so far
as this comes from outside, and kindle into greater activity the
element of will which streams through our thoughts when we form
judgments, draw conclusions and the like. Thereby, however, our
thinking becomes what I have called in my Philosophy of Spiritual
Activity: purethinking. We think, but in our thinking there
is nothing but will. I have laid particular emphasis on this in the
new edition of the book (1918). What is thus within us lies in the
sphere of thinking. But pure thinking may equally be called pure
will. Thus from the realm of thinking we reach the realm of
will, when we become inwardly free; our thinking attains such maturity
that it is entirely irradiated by will; it no longer takes anything in
from outside, but its very life is of the nature of will. By
progressively strengthening the impulse of will in our thinking we
prepare ourselves for what I have called in the
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,
"Moral Imagination." Moral Imagination rises
to the Moral Intuitions which then pervade and illuminate our will
that has now become thought, or our thinking that has now become will.
In this way we raise ourselves above the sway of the ‘necessity’
prevailing in the material world, permeate ourselves with the force
that is inherently our own, and prepare for Moral Intuition. And
everything that can stream into man from the spiritual world has its
foundation, primarily, in these Moral Intuitions. Therefore
freedom dawns when we enable the will to become an ever
mightier and mightier force in our thinking.
Now let us consider the human being from the opposite pole, that of
the will. When does the will present itself with particular clarity
through what we do? When we sneeze, let us say, we are also
doing something, but we cannot, surely, ascribe to ourselves any
definite impulse of will when we sneeze! When we speak, we are doing
something in which will is undoubtedly contained. But think how, in
speaking, deliberate intent and absence of intent, volition and
absence of volition, intermingle. You have to learn to speak,
and in such a way that you are no longer obliged to formulate each
single word by dint of an effort of will; an element of instinct
enters into speech. In ordinary life at least, it is so, and it is
emphatically so in the case of those who do not strive for
spirituality. Garrulous people, who are always opening their mouths in
order to say something or other in which very little thought is
contained, give others an opportunity of noticing they
themselves, of course, do not notice how much there is
in speech that is instinctive and involuntary. But the more we go out
beyond our organic life and pass over to activity that is liberated,
as it were, from organic processes, the more do we carry thoughts into
our actions and deeds. Sneezing is still entirely a matter of organic
life; speaking is largely connected with organic life; walking really
very little; what we do with the hands, also very little. And so we
come by degrees to actions which are more and more emancipated from
our organic life. We accompany such actions with our thoughts,
although we do not know how the will streams into these thoughts. If
we are not somnambulists and do not go about in this condition, our
actions will always be accompanied by our thoughts. We carry our
thoughts into our actions, and the more our actions evolve towards
perfection, the more are our thoughts being carried into them.
Our inner life is constantly deepened when we send will our own
inherent force into our thinking, when we permeate our thinking
with will. We bring will into thinking and thereby attain freedom. As
we gradually perfect our actions we finally succeed in sending
thoughts into these actions; we irradiate our actions which
proceed from our will with thoughts. On the one side (inwards)
we live a life of thought; we permeate this with the will and thus
find freedom. On the other side (outwards) our actions stream forth
from our will, and we permeate them with our thoughts.
(Diagram IX)
But by what means do our actions evolve to greater perfection? To use
an invariably controversial expression How do we achieve
greater perfection in our actions? We achieve this by developing in
ourselves the force which can only be designated by the words:
devotion to the outer world. The more our devotion to
the outer world grows and intensifies, the more does this outer world
stir us to action. But it is just through unfolding devotion to the
outer world that we succeed in permeating our actions with thoughts.
What, in reality, is devotion to the outer world? Devotion to
the outer world, which pervades our actions with thoughts, is nothing
else than love.
Just as we attain freedom by irradiating the life of thought with
will, so do we attain love by permeating the life of will with
thoughts. We unfold love in our actions by letting thoughts radiate
into the realm of the will; we develop freedom in our thinking by
letting what is of the nature of will radiate into our thoughts. And
because, as man, we are a unified whole, when we reach the point where
we find freedom in the life of thought and love in the life of will,
there will be freedom in our actions and love in our thinking. Each
irradiates the other: action filled with thought is wrought in love;
thinking that is permeated with will gives rise to actions and deeds
that are truly free.
Thus you see how in the human being the two great ideals, freedom and
love, grow together. Freedom and love are also that which man,
standing in the world, can bring to realization in himself in such a
way that, through him, the one unites with the other for the good of
the world.
We must now ask: How is the ideal, the highest ideal, to be attained
in the will-permeated life of thought? Now if the life of
thought were something that represented material processes, the will
could never penetrate fully into the realm of the thoughts and
increasingly take root there. The will would at most be able to ray
into these material processes as an organizing force. Will can take
real effect only if the life of thought is something that has no
outer, physical reality. What, then, must it be?
You will be able to envisage what it must be if you take a picture as
a starting-point. If you have here a mirror and here an object, the
object is reflected in the mirror; if you then go behind the mirror,
you find nothing. In other words, you have a picture nothing
more. Our thoughts are pictures in this same sense.
(Diagram X)
How is this to be
explained? In a previous lecture I said that the life of
thought as such is in truth not a reality of the immediate
moment. The life of thought rays in from our existence before birth,
or rather, before conception. The life of thought has its reality
between death and a new birth. And just as here the object stands
before the mirror and what it presents is a picture only that
and nothing more so what we unfold as the life of thought is
lived through in the real sense between death and a new birth, and
merely rays into our life since birth. As thinking beings, we have
within us a mirror-reality only. Because this is so, the other reality
which, as you know, rays up from the metabolic process, can permeate
the mirror-pictures of the life of thought. If, as is very rarely the
case today, we make sincere endeavors to develop unbiased thinking, it
will be clear to us that the life of thought consists of
mirror-pictures if we turn to thinking in its purest form in
mathematics. Mathematical thinking streams up entirely from our
inner being, but it has a mirror-existence only. Through mathematics
the make-up of external objects can, it is true, be analyzed and
determined; but the mathematical thoughts in themselves are only
thoughts, they exist merely as pictures. They have not been acquired
from any outer reality.
Abstract thinkers such as Kant also employ an abstract expression.
They say: mathematical concepts are a priori. A priori,
apriority, means "from what is before."
[e.Ed: See Oxford Dictionary.]
But why are mathematical concepts a priori? Because they stream
in from the existence preceding birth, or rather, preceding
conception. It is this that constitutes their ‘apriority.’ And the
reason why they appear real to our consciousness is because they are
irradiated by the will. This is what makes them real. Just think how
abstract modern thinking has become when it uses abstract words for
something which, in its reality, is not understood! Men such as Kant
had a dim inkling that we bring mathematics with us from our existence
before birth, and therefore they called the findings of mathematics
‘a priori.’ But the term ‘a priori’ really tells
us nothing, for it points to no reality, it points to something merely
formal.
In regard to the life of thought, which with its mirror-existence must
be irradiated by the will in order to become reality, ancient
traditions speak of Semblance.
(Diagram XI, Schein.)
Let us now consider the other pole of man's nature, where the thoughts
stream down towards the sphere of will, where deeds are performed in
love. Here our consciousness is, so to speak, held at bay, it
rebounds from reality. We cannot look into that realm of darkness
a realm of darkness for our consciousness where the will
unfolds whenever we raise an arm or turn the head, unless we take
super-sensible conceptions to our aid. We move an arm; but the
complicated process in operation there remains just as hidden from
ordinary consciousness as what takes place in deep sleep, in dreamless
sleep. We perceive our arm; we perceive how our hand grasps some
object. This is because we permeate the action with thoughts. But the
thoughts themselves that are in our consciousness are still only
semblance. We live in what is real, but it does not ray into our
ordinary consciousness. Ancient traditions spoke here of Power
(Gewalt), because the reality in which we are living is indeed
permeated by thought, but thought has nevertheless rebounded from it
in a certain sense, during the life between birth and death.
(Diagram XI.)
Between these two poles lies the balancing factor that unites the two
unites the will that rays towards the head with the thoughts
which, as they flow into deeds wrought with love, are, so to say, felt
with the heart. This means of union is the life of feeling, which is
able to direct itself towards the will as well as towards the
thoughts. In our ordinary consciousness we live in an element by means
of which we grasp, on the one side, what comes to expression in our
will-permeated thought with its predisposition to freedom, while on
the other side, we try to ensure that what passes over into our deeds
is filled more and more with thoughts. And what forms the bridge
connecting both has since ancient times been called Wisdom.
(Diagram XI.)
In his fairy-tale,
The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,
Goethe has given indications of these ancient traditions in the
figures of the Golden King, the Silver King, and the Brazen King. We
have already shown from other points of view how these three elements
must come to life again, but in an entirely different form
these three elements to which ancient instinctive knowledge pointed
and which can come to life again only if man acquires the knowledge
yielded by Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition.
But what is it that is actually taking place as man unfolds his life
of thought? Reality is becoming semblance! It is
very important to be clear about this. We carry about with us our
head, which with its hard skull and tendency to ossification,
presents, even outwardly, a picture of what is dead, in contrast to
the rest of the living organism. Between birth and death we bear in
our head that which, from an earlier time when it was reality, comes
into us as semblance, and from the rest of our organism we pervade
this semblance with the element issuing from our metabolic processes,
we permeate it with the real element of the will. There we have
within us a seed, a germinating entity which, first and foremost, is
part of our manhood, but also means something in the cosmos. Think of
it a man is born in a particular year; before then he was in
the spiritual world. When he passes out of the spiritual world,
thought which there is reality, becomes semblance, and he leads over
into this semblance the forces of his will which come from an entirely
different direction, rising up from parts of his organism other than
the head. That is how the past, dying away into semblance, is kindled
again to become reality of the future.
Let us understand this rightly. What happens when man rises to pure
thinking, to thinking that is irradiated by will? On the
foundation of the past that has dissolved into semblance, through
fructification by the will which rises up from his egohood, there
unfolds within him a new reality leading into the future. He is the
bearer of the seed into the future. The thoughts of the past, as
realities, are as it were the mother-soil; into this mother-soil is
laid that which comes from the individual egohood, and the seed is
sent on into the future for future life.
On the other side, man evolves by permeating his deeds and actions,
his will-nature, with thoughts; deeds are performed in love. Such
deeds detach themselves from him. Our deeds do not remain confined to
ourselves. They become world-happenings; and if they are permeated by
love, then love goes with them. As far as the cosmos is concerned, an
egotistical action is different from an action permeated by love.
When, out of semblance, through fructification by the will, we unfold
that which proceeds from our inmost being, then what streams forth
into the world from our head encounters our thought-permeated deeds.
Just as when a plant unfolds it contains in its blossom the seed to
which the light of the sun, the air outside, and so on, must come, to
which something must be brought from the cosmos in order that it may
grow, so what is unfolded through freedom must find an element in
which to grow through the love that lives in our deeds.
Thus does man stand within the great process of world-evolution, and
what takes place inside the boundary of his skin and flows out beyond
his skin in the form of deeds, has significance not only for him but
for the world, the universe. He has his place in the arena of cosmic
happenings, world-happenings. In that what was reality in earlier
times becomes semblance in man, reality is ever and again dissolved,
and in that his semblance is quickened again by the will, new reality
arises. Here we have as if spiritually we could put our very
finger upon it what has also been spoken of from other points
of view. There is no eternal conservation of matter! Matter is
transformed into semblance and semblance is transformed to reality by
the will. The law of the conservation of matter and energy affirmed by
physics is a delusion, because account is taken of the natural world
only. The truth is that matter is continually passing away in that it
is transformed into semblance; and a new creation takes place in that
through Man, who stands before us as the supreme achievement of the
cosmos, semblance is again transformed into Being (Sein.)
We can also see this if we look at the other pole only there it
is not so easy to perceive. The processes which finally lead to
freedom can certainly be grasped by unbiased thinking. But to see
rightly in the case of this other pole needs a certain degree of
spiritual-scientific development. For here, to begin with, ordinary
consciousness rebounds when confronted by what ancient traditions
called Power. What is living itself out as Power, as Force, is
indeed permeated by thoughts; but the ordinary consciousness does not
perceive that just as more and more will, a greater and greater
faculty of judgment, comes into the world of thought, so, when we
bring thoughts into the will-nature, when we overcome the element of
Power more and more completely, we also pervade what is merely Power
with the light of thought. At the one pole of man's being we
see the overcoming of matter; at the other pole, the new birth of
matter.
As I have indicated briefly in my book, Riddles of the Soul,
man is a threefold being: as nerve-and-sense man he is the bearer of
the life of thought, of perception; as rhythmic being (breathing,
circulating blood), he is the bearer of the life of feeling; as
metabolic being, he is the bearer of the life of will. But how, then,
does the metabolic process operate in man when will is ever more and
more unfolded in love? It operates in that, as man performs such
deeds, matter is continually overcome. And what is it that
unfolds in man when, as a free being, he finds his way into pure
thinking, which is, however, really of the nature of will?
Matter is born! We behold the coming-into-being of matter! We
bear in ourselves that which brings matter to birth: our head; and we
bear in ourselves that which destroys matter, where we can see how
matter is destroyed: our limb-and-metabolic organism.
This is the way in which to study the whole man. We see how
what consciousness conceives of in abstractions is an actual factor in
the process of World-Becoming; and we see how that which is contained
in this process of World-Becoming and to which the ordinary
consciousness clings so firmly that it can do no other than conceive
it to be reality we see how this is dissolved away to nullity.
It is reality for the ordinary consciousness, and when it obviously
does not tally with outer realities, then recourse has to be taken to
the atoms, which are considered to be firmly fixed realities. And
because man cannot free himself in his thoughts from these firmly
fixed realities, one lets them mingle with each other, now in this
way, now in that. At one time they mingle to form hydrogen, at
another, oxygen; they are merely differently grouped. This is simply
because people are incapable of any other belief than that what has
once been firmly fixed in thought must also be as firmly fixed in
reality.
It is nothing else than feebleness of thought into which one lapses
when he accepts the existence of fixed, ever-enduring atoms. What
reveals itself to us through thinking that is in accordance with
reality is that matter is continually dissolved away to nullity and
continually rebuilt out of nullity. It is only because whenever matter
dies away, new matter comes into being, that people speak of the
conservation of matter. They fall into the same error into which they
would fall, let us say, if a number of documents were carried into a
house, copied there, but the originals burned and the copies brought
out again, and then they were to believe that what was carried in had
been carried out that it is the same thing. The reality is that
the old documents have been burned and new ones written. It is the
same with what comes into being in the world, and it is important for
our knowledge to advance to this point. For in that realm of man's
being, where matter dies away into semblance and new matter arises,
there lies the possibility of freedom, and there lies
the possibility of love. And freedom and love belong together, as I
have already indicated in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.
Those who on the basis of some particular conception of the world
speak of the imperishability of matter, annul freedom on the one side
and the full development of love on the other. For only through the
fact that in man the past dies away, becomes semblance, and the future
is a new creation in the condition of a seed, does there arise in us
the feeling of love devotion to something to which we are not
coerced by the past and freedom action that is not
predetermined. Freedom and love are, in reality, comprehensible only
to a spiritual-scientific conception of the world, not to any other.
Those who are conversant with the picture of the world that has
appeared in the course of the last few centuries will be able to
assess the difficulties that will have to be overcome before the
habits of thought prevailing in modern humanity can be induced to give
way to this unbiased, spiritual-scientific thinking. For in the
picture of the world existing in natural science there are really no
points from which we can go forward to a true understanding of freedom
and love.
How the natural-scientific picture of the world on the one side, and
on the other, the ancient, traditional picture of the world, are
related to a truly progressive, spiritual-scientific development of
humanity of this we will speak on some other occasion.