THREE LECTURES GIVEN BY Dr. RUDOLF STEINER
at
DORNACH, January 21st, 23rd, 29th, 1921.
LECTURE, given 21st JANUARY 1921
My
dear friends,
Our
lectures, in that period of time before I had to go away some
weeks ago, all tended to show how that which we call Spiritual
Science can pass over into real life. They tended to show how
that which we call the Cosmos stands in a certain inner
connection with what we ourselves inwardly experience in
man. And if you just survey the lectures given upon this very
theme, I beg you once in a way, radically to ask yourselves
this question: — What would it signify for the sum total
of the evolution of humanity if these most penetrating, most
significant results of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science would
only penetrate into the life of those human beings working and
living in a social relation with each other. They would know
that man, while he attains his consciousness in a physical
body, is all the time preserving something in this physical
body which points to the period of time before his birth, or
rather before his conception, when he was in a condition in
which he was filled with a longing once again to have the life
between birth and death. He carried within him then the feeling
that the soul that has lived for a long time in the Spiritual
world again needs the perception of the world obtainable
through the bodily senses in order to progress further, and
also needs actions performed in a physical body. This conscious
contemplation of the pre-existence of the soul, if really
understood in the right way, would not remain a mere
theoretical view, but would lay hold of one's Feeling and Will,
and thereby become a direct force in life.
We
can see this my dear friends, in the humanity of the present-
age. — They all show something of a lack of initiative,
in its broad outlines. This lack of initiative, which broadly
speaking, works in a weakening way on all these forces which
are necessary in order to turn our decaying life once again
into an ascending one, can only be bettered when man becomes
conscious of his community with the Spiritual world. That
however cannot be brought into the human soul through any
theoretical considerations, but only through the living
perception of what man was before he descended into the
physical world.
Again, if that which looks beyond the time which we pass here
as human beings between birth and death, is not the object
simply of a vague belief but of a clear cognition, it does not
work so abstractly in man as do the religious confessions of
to-day, but works concretely, as a direct force of life, Man
then works in such a way that what lies in his labour extends
beyond his death; and because a man can take up such ideas into
himself, life is thereby poured into everything which as
a rule man only knows.
Just think for a moment. To-day we have a widely-extended
Science of Nature; and as regards this external Science, we
must say that man has progressed enormously; but the last few
years have shown that this progress has not improved humanity
in any moral respect. Such persons as Wallace and others, to
whom I have often pointed when I wanted to emphasise that years
ago, they were quite right when they said, “We have
indeed made immense progress with respect to our knowledge of
the outer world, but as regards our moral nature, humanity
compared with primeval times, has not progressed.”
This progress must come to-day, in this historic Age, because
human beings cannot remain as they are now, in their present
disposition of soul. But how can this change be brought about?
How can the more theoretical view of the world be animated? Let
us take an apparently coarse example. In our human life, we
make use of coal. We know that this coal is a relic of old
forests, and so fundamentally it is a plant-substance. But now,
how is this plant-substance, how is the whole world of plants
connected with man as such? Just reckon over a few thousand
years and see how much carbon dioxide, carbonic-acid the air
would then contain, — because we breathe out carbon
dioxide into the air with each expiration, — and you will
find that it is a large quantity.
In
the course of a few thousand years it would be an enormous
quantity. In the course of a few thousand years, it would cause
man to disappear; it would extinguish life. But now the plants
absorb this carbon dioxide, and excrete the carbon; they form
their body out of that which they absorb from man's
cast-off produce; and these plants which once covered the
Earth, now compose our layers of coal, our coal strata.
You
see, that is an extraordinary transformation. At first it is
more the qualitative aspect which comes into consideration;
because naturally that coal was not formed by our breath but by
other beings; but this qualitative aspect has to be considered.
That which in a sense we excrete from ourselves, furnishes the
basis for what we again use from the Earth. Thus far one can
think, according to the theoretical results arrived at by
Science.
Spiritual Science leads us further, I must remind you of what I
have told you. It is true that man lays aside his physical body
when he goes with his soul and spirit into the Spiritual
worlds; but I also told you that the physical body, which is
laid aside, signifies just that which builds up the Earth
again.
As
in our expiration we give carbon to the plant-world, so we give
our body to the entire Earth. And what we see around us, my
dear friends, is simply the product of such beings as
ourselves, beings who, during the Moon, Sun and Saturn epochs
were our predecessors, and who gave to the Earth that which
composes the Earth to-day. When future worlds come, there will
live in them that which we now excrete as our bodily substance.
That is a thought of infinite scope, if one follows it out,
because from our knowledge of nature (which is but a
half-knowledge), we can get the connection of man with the
entire world, and it is important that we should get that,
extremely important; for if we bring together all that has been
laid down as a foundation in our earlier lectures, we must say;
that in our entire human nature, not merely in our thinking but
in our entire nature, even as far as our external body, lives
what we have worked upon in ourselves as our moral ideals. That
dualistic philosophy, which can build no bridge between the
natural world and the moral sphere, cannot imagine how what we
have in our moral ideals can be connected with the very
processes in our muscles; but if one can look at the world as
we have tried to do in our recent lectures, one sees how what
we think in our moral ideals incorporates itself into the very
processes of our body. One sees that the Spiritual and bodily
processes are interwoven and form a unity.
This method of looking at things ought to become general. If
only it were taken up as part of the education of children,
human beings would grow up who would not look on one side to a
world developed from a nebulous condition, out of which, the
Sun, the Stars and the Planets have condensed, and from which
too, through the welding-together of matter void of morale or
being, humanity has developed in order finally to return back
into a purely natural condition. That which springs up in our
souls as moral Ideals would then again be one with what
stood at the starting point of our Cosmic evolution in its
purely natural existence. We human beings would then realise
that we are called upon to incorporate into the life of nature,
what we experience as moral ideals. And then, in future worlds,
we should know that what we now experience morally will
re-appear as the Laws of Nature.
If
only children could grow up to-day under the influence of such
a perception, they would be able to take their place in the
world in such a way that they would feel themselves as part of
the Cosmos, and would thereby have a feeling for life drawn
from these very forces which they would absorb into themselves
with their knowledge of the Cosmos. Indeed, being educated to
action, they would then know that whatever they do is to be
imprinted in the entire Cosmos. If only that were the
prevailing feeling, how differently human beings would live;
whereas to-day man asks himself: “What am I really in
this world?” He sees himself standing alone, sprung forth
from indefinite Nature-forces, and permeated with moral ideals
like soap bubbles. Such a man can be crippled in his very
feeling for life. When he looks up to the stars he sees them
passing through Cosmic space, but he feels he has no connection
with them. They themselves have only arisen in a natural way.
They are perishable worlds, falling to pieces, serving no
purpose, and having no inner Spirituality.
We
must bear in mind what a life-force for humanity might be
developed from a Spiritual method of looking at things. That
must be pointed out again and again, because that is just what
human beings to-day understand least of all. They say that a
Spiritual view makes a man live apart from the world; but my
dear friends, it is the present modern view which makes one
avoid the world. Why is this so? Because it works with the
dogmas of the past, which in the past served a good purpose,
because they then arose from a certain instinctive
clairvoyance. But this instinctive clairvoyance has now
disappeared, and human beings have no longer any relationship
to it. The dogmas still retained are no longer understood. It
is not a question of their falsity, but of modern humanity
having no longer a living relationship with them. And outside
of the dogmas still maintained, humanity to-day only has a
nature science devoid of spirit. Anthroposophy will give a
spirit-filled Science of nature, a science able to animate man,
and that which trickles, as a knowledge of the spirit, into
nature, will then transform itself in man in the same way as do
the food-substances in a physical respect. That knowledge is
transformed in man into Social Force, and one would
experience it if one earnestly realised that Spiritual
knowledge is nourishment for the soul, and can be absorbed and
digested — if I can use that expression — it can be
digested and re-appear as a force working socially. We can get
social impulses in no other way than by taking up Spiritual
cognition from surrounding Nature. Anyone who thinks he can
carry out social reforms from any other impulse, thinks about
the things of this world as one who meditates about man and
wishing to explain him as clearly as possible, and in order to
explain him to himself, forbids him food. Whoever speaks to-day
of social forms without having Spiritual knowledge, does the
same thing with reference to the social order of humanity as a
man who wishes to explain man and prescribes for him a hunger
cure. That is just what stands as a deep absurdity in the
modern views of humanity, and which it cannot see through.
When we enter this life between Birth and Death, what we carry
with us from the Spiritual worlds is only like an image, and
fundamentally the whole of our soul-life is a life of images,
pictures. But in former Ages this picture-life was animated by
what then already existed in the natural perception as spirit.
In ancient times there existed no concept of nature which was
not filled with spirit. People to-day can read older views, but
they read nothing there of a Natural Science, that is, of a
natural Science devoid of spirit. Whoever goes back, even into
the 13th or 14th Centuries, and reads the things written and
spoken of nature there, may mock at the childishness, the
superstition then existing; but the essential is, that all the
things described then were described as permeated by spirit.
To-day, on the other hand, we try as far as possible to see the
phenomena of nature without spirit. Indeed, we regard it as the
very perfection of our scientific observations to see them
without spirit.
That which we take up out of nature without spirit, can however
no longer work animatingly in the pictorial existence of our
soul. We remain at a standstill in this respect and will not
admit that it is merely an image. But this image, which is
really the image of a past life, will not be fructified by the
present life around us. This present life should be fructified
by the past life, so that it can then be carried through the
Gate of Death into the Spiritual worlds. It is only Spiritual
Science livingly beheld which can give man that which it has to
give him.
Just take, for instance, the dogmas of the old books of
religion. Many men to-day fight against these because they find
and consider them nonsensical; but they are in no wise
nonsensical. Even such a dogma as that of the Trinity has a
most profound sense. It was read by human beings from nature
itself by means of the old instinctive clairvoyance, and for
thousands of years in the evolution of humanity that dogma gave
man an infinite amount. The external Churches have preserved
such dogmas, but to-day they hardly exist except as a certain
vocal sound. Men to-day feel no need to develop a relationship
with what was an object of an ancient clairvoyance, and
so it remains something which has no relationship to man
to-day, because of his modern nature, although at one time it
was a living soul-nourishment. And again, apart from these
dogmas, we have our external Science of Nature, in a state of
utter deprivation, which kills the soul unless it is permeated
by the spirit.
These are the two basic evils which Spiritual Science as
studied here, has to keep in mind: in order once more to give
to the soul something which will animate it, and give it force,
so that it can feel itself directly as a member of the entire
Cosmos, and feel that responsibility in its social work which
proceeds from knowing that as single individuals, even our
tiniest action has a Cosmic significance for the whole
evolution of the future. We have to look beyond that narrow
circuit in which we are enclosed by reason of our lack of
education; for that narrowing which man has himself brought
about will increase more and more. That is why Spiritual
Science meets with so much difficulty, because fundamentally
that which it seeks to be, does not consist merely of words,
nor thoughts, not merely ideas, but that which can permeate all
those thoughts, flow through the words as the very Spiritual
blood of life, and then trickle directly into each human soul.
It is for that reason that, in any advocating of Spiritual
Science, it is far more a question of how we speak than
of what we say. We see to-day the most violent conflict between
Materialism and Spiritualism. This conflict simply rests
on the fact that human beings simply will not see what deep
foundations this utterance has: — The truth always
lies midway between two directly opposite
associations.
My
dear friends, is it true that God is within us? Is it true then
that we are in God? It is true that we are in God. These two
assertions are direct opposites. Both are true. God is in us,
and we are in God; but the two assertions are polar opposites.
The real truth, the whole truth lies between the two. The
nature of all the conflict of ideas in the world rests on this
— that human beings always tend to a one-sidedness, which
is true, but only a one-sided truth; whereas the real truth
lies between two opposite assertions. We must know both in
order to get at the reality. For instance, to-day, in the
present state of the evolution of the world, one must have the
most earnest will to learn all we can of material existence
above all, and not propagate the desire of those people who
say: “We will only occupy ourselves with the Spirit: we
do not want to know Matter.” To learn as much as possible
of Matter is one side of human cognition, one thing for which
the Will of man, must strive. On the other hand one must learn
to know the Spirit, because between those two, lies what we
are, and ought really to strive for. Both are wrong. —
those who say the world is only Matter and those who say the
world is only Spirit are wrong — For what is matter?
Matter as human beings know it, is that which has remained
behind from the Spirit, after the Spirit has become Spirit.
Your own human form, my dear friends, is only what was once a
thought of the Gods, which I here draw in red — the
Divine workings of thought.
Just think; even as water that freezes gets a solid form, so
this Divine thought gets a form and becomes the sheaths of man,
(Blue). Then a new thought of God makes itself valid in the
inner being of man, and then goes out again, (Red) and this
Divine thought (left) was once transformed from a form which in
still older times was also a thought of the Gods. Whatever we
see as matter is nothing else than spirit which has become a
firm form, and that which we perceive as the human spirit is
simply a young form, a form engaged in the process of becoming.
These two — Spirit and Matter — are only different
because of their ages in the world — they only are of a
different age. The mistake made about them does not consist in
our applying ourselves either to Matter or to Spirit, but in
wanting to maintain in the Present what we
should so maintain in Life, which we should so fructify,
that it may become something for the future.
Now
just think. We bring something over into the present from our
pre-existence in the Spiritual world; we bring that over as a
Spiritual psychic life. But if we permeate that with a barren
external spiritless Science of Nature, we harden it, we do not
keep it germinal, we do not allow it to grow up for future
worlds. We Ahrimanise it.
And
if we try and grasp that which is already form, which is
Divinity itself grown old and crystallised itself in form if we
seek to grasp that in a nebulous way, through a nebulous
mysticism into which we dream all kinds of things, we do not
support ourselves on that which is given us by the Gods as our
bodily support. And thus we Luciferise Matter. What is nebulous
mysticism? Man should look into himself. He should recognise
from out of the Cosmos that which he is in his own physical
organism in his life between birth and death. Instead of that
he cherishes the fantasy that he has a God within him. He has
indeed a God within him, but he does not attain that through
mystical fantasy, for he thus Luciferises what he should see in
the later form of his own bodily sheaths. These are false views
of Matter and Spirit, about which human beings come into strife
with one another, for Matter and Spirit are one and the same,
but at different ages of life.
That is something which it is very necessary our present Age
should perceive; otherwise it can never come to an
understanding of the social life. The attempt must be made
to-day really to enter with one's thoughts into the true
reality; but human beings do not want to do this, — they
prefer to remain on the surface of things. A pretty little
story was told to me a few days ago, which occurred a few weeks
back in Zurich. Probably it has already been related to some of
you here. One of our friends spoke at a University Celebration
in Zurich about the scientific significance of Anthroposophy. A
socialistic thinker in reply, got up and said: “One
should not educate man to-day to such mystic phantasy, but to
exact Science, for did not Goethe say: Into the inner being of
nature no creative spirit can penetrate.”
You
see, what this Swiss delegate brought forward rests simply on a
superficial knowledge of what Goethe did say, For
Goethe, quoting the above utterance of Halley said: “I
have heard this repeated for 60 years and have sworn at it the
whole time.” That is how the Spiritual Life is carried on
to-day. That represents the accuracy with which men know
things, and thus in a certain degree do they become
authorities. Thus, do men strive to learn to know the world.
Whether one man believes Goethe himself uttered what he swore
at for 60 years, or whether as National Economists do they
perform things such as I will characterise now, is really a
matter of indifference. A very learned National Economist wrote
a book about the free and the fixed formation of prices. He had
to investigate a good deal as to the way in which, as I might
say National Economy could be made social. Amongst the many
things he discussed, is also the following. He says: Even
George Brandes (who was himself no deep thinker) said: The
people in their economic and social deeds are not guided by
reason but by instinct.” Therefore, things should be
explained to the people. That is what this National Economist
is advocating. One must bring enlightenment to the people.
Now, my dear friends to this one could reply: In our many
Universities, there are a great number of these National
Economists, they are all enlightened, but when they arrange
things amongst themselves, they are working exactly under the
same institute instincts as the others, — neither more
nor less. And so, as things are fashioned, especially
to-day by our highly developed intelligence, as regards social
life these same instincts remain, and are working. But now we
must go further, we must now ask ourselves: How can we bring
light into this working of the instincts, for that alone can be
of social significance. It is simply nonsense to suppose that
the majority of human beings can be guided by this; they
cannot. Something must come in which can enter and transform
these instincts. Reason cannot enter into them. We have here to
remind ourselves of that ancient instinctive perception,
(See Diagram) which has developed into our
intellectuality; but this intellect lives only in the inner
Spiritual life of man. On the other hand, the external forces
working socially are permeated by instinct. Into this instinct
something must penetrate which is related to the old
instinctive vision, but which has an impulse from Spirituality.
That is Imagination. Imagination must enter. (See Diagram)
Imaginations as we call them in Spiritual Science, can alone
give the force which can bring light to those instincts.
That which enables us to understand things to-day
scientifically and externally; Botany, Zoology,
Mathematics, — can be furnished by the intellect, but not
that which implies human co-operation. There must enter what we
have called Imagination. Imaginations must permeate the social
life — that is the essential thing. In all social life
which has developed from olden times up to recent times, there
have lived the human instincts. It is actually only since the
2nd, and last third of the 19th Century that man has entered
that age which no longer requires the old instincts. You can
prove this exactly. Even at the turn of the 18th and 19th
Century there still lived these ancient instincts in the social
life of man. The uncertainty of man's instincts first appeared
in that Age when intellect developed in its most shining form.
Then tradition alone remained.
Just think, my dear friends, what gigantic efforts were made in
the 19th Century, in order still to have moral views. Men had
to preserve in the most abstract way what was still maintained
from ancient times; and of necessity the old moral ideals were
still propagated, though they were then petrified. We need
to-day a rebirth of morality for that alone can produce
what is social, that cannot come from the intellect, but simply
and solely from moral intuition. Moral fantasy must raise
itself to the Spiritual world, in order to fructify itself out
of that world. That is now the essential, otherwise man faces
the loss of moral impulses.
Those abstract Confessions which tend to belief alone
cannot find in their faith the necessary strength for life
to-day. Faith can give one something for the egoism of one's
own soul; but with that egoism alone, at most one can live as
an individual, separate being. If we want to enter into action,
and that means social action, it is then necessary that we
should be permeated with a Spiritual-psychic life-blood, and
that can only come from a concrete Spiritual life. This
consciousness of the Life-Force must flow through the
Anthroposophical Movement into the Anthroposophical view of
life. Especially from this point of view must one make oneself
acquainted with these important concepts which to-day need a
justification and defence.
Pantheism is a very favourite reproach against Anthroposophy,
Pantheism, i.e., giving reverence to the things around us, for
God lives in those things. That is heresy to the modern
Confessions; and why? Why is it that the modern Confessions
call our Anthroposophy a heresy? Because these Confessions are
permeated through and through with materialism. — If the
Jesuit regards the world around him simply as Matter, it is of
course blasphemy to say that this Matter is Divine, is God. But
can Anthroposophy help it if the Jesuits regard the world
around them simply as Matter? It is not Matter, it is
Spirit; and that which the Jesuits perceives as Matter in the
world, that Anthroposophy has to show as illusion. We do not
explain as Divine the world which we assert — is an
illusion; — of course not, we do not claim that for
Divine existence. Of course it is quite different to take what
is around us and explain that as Divine, at the same time
realising external sense-phenomena as illusion, than to regard
it as mere Matter and then explain that the grossest Matter is
Divine.
You
see how far asunder these things are, and we must not grow
weary of really trying to make these things valid before the
world. Otherwise there may be a repetition of what happened
lately, when something was printed in a Swiss Newspaper by way
of objection to my methods of attaining Spiritual knowledge.
There it was asserted that I said that one can see the Spirit;
but that cannot be, because the Spirit is not sensible, and
only the things of sense can be perceived. One cannot grasp the
Spirit, and therefore one cannot see it.
You
see, what a hopeless way this is; the writer maintains nothing
else but that — he cannot see the Spirit, and
therefore no one can see the Spirit. One can know
nothing of the Spirit because one cannot grasp it. And in such
variations, the thoughts of a whole Newspaper goes on. What
works so terribly destructively to-day, is the fact that people
have not the consciousness that they should read such things to
the end. “Into the inner being of nature no creative
Spirit can penetrate” — thus ran the first two
lines; but the person reading them stopped there, and did not
notice that Goethe added; “I have heard this said for 60
years, and have cursed it all the time.”
What we must look for everywhere to-day is the prevailing
superficiality. I have often pointed this out, but it cannot be
done too often. We must trace everywhere this terrible clinging
to superficiality. It can be chiefly seen where it works so
terribly to-day externally, i.e. in the sphere of Social
Economics; There people will not dive down into that which lies
in the very essence of things. For instance, I have been told
to-day, that people are constantly saying that “The
Threefold State” (book) is so difficult to understand,
— well, that they want something which they can
understand much more easily. But, my dear friends, if, with
these things that can easily be understood, nothing is done in
social life, but men have simply bungled, it is necessary to
grasp what is a little difficult, which requires effort. It is
strange to demand that a thing be made more comprehensible, for
it is really necessary for our modern social thinking that we
should make an effort. Things one can easily understand
have worked so abstractly, so ruinously to-day. To demand that
such things should be made more comprehensible, is simply
frivolous. It really is. Indeed, it is not a question that one
should not cultivate such inwardly frivolous thoughts as
“This is difficult” — for if it were given in
any such form as is desired, it would simply give people
something else with which they could bungle. For really
objective work this apparent difficulty simply must be
overcome, it simply urges us to make a study of that
book. That is the essential. In this earnest way should
one try to enter into these things, in such serious times as
these.
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