LECTURE SIX
If in a broad
sense, without going into details, you review what I ventured
to put before you in the foregoing lectures, you will realise
that the path of development which the spiritual-scientific
current of thought was bound to take, imposes definite and
earnest responsibilities upon those who feel themselves its
sponsors. For you will certainly have realised from our
recent studies that when man tries to find his bearings along
the right path, great difficulties spring up for him,
difficulties of a kind different from those otherwise
encountered in life.
Now in life
on the physical plane we are in many respects protected from
aberrations in one direction or another. Many years ago I
drew attention to this protection when, in connection with
the problem of the Guardian of the Threshold, I gave certain
indications which have been added to in the course of time.
[note 1]
Even in the early articles now incorporated in the book
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it achieved?
it was shown how man on the physical
plane is protected from deviating too readily in one
direction or another in intellectual and moral life. We enter
into existence in such a way that certain guiding forces for
life are with us during our childhood. We know well that only
in later years do we reach the stage of being able to
exercise our power of free judgment.
If you
observe a child and compare his soul-life with that of a
grown-up person you will detect a certain difference. For you
can justly say: instead of a kind of dreamlike life which he
leads in childhood, the human being begins in later years to
exercise his own faculty of free judgment. It is very
important to be aware of these variations.
If in
thinking of the whole course of human life from birth until
death we keep childhood too much in mind, we may perhaps pay
insufficient attention to this metamorphosis of the inner
life of soul. But it is important to understand it because it
is during the period when our power of judgment is not yet
fully awake that guiding impulses for later life can be
received. For the sake of our power of free judgment we must,
as it were, be swathed in dream during the early years of our
life in order that certain forces of guidance may find their
way into our intellect and into our moral impulses, in order
that we shall not prematurely crystallise the forces bestowed
upon us for the purposes of our life and which are
“breathed” — I will not say
“incorporated” — into our being. Thereby we
have something for the whole of our life; we direct ourselves
throughout life in accordance with the intellectual and moral
impulses that have been breathed into our soul.
When we
approach concepts of the spiritual worlds, we become in a
certain sense freer. It has often been said and must again
and again be repeated, that the approach to the spiritual
worlds is also a kind of awakening from the ordinary
conditions and circumstances of life; again, therefore, this
is a variation in the metamorphoses of life similar to the
metamorphosis leading from childhood to the capacity of free
judgment in later life.
But this
means that when we adopt the spiritual-scientific view of
life it can very easily happen that the steady direction of
life we formerly knew, begins to waver. So that when we begin
to grasp the reality of the spiritual worlds, it is a matter
of mustering the forces of the whole man within us —
because we need the “life-capital” breathed into
us during childhood in order rightly to approach the things
now to be revealed from the world on yonder side of the
Threshold. And I showed you how easy it is, under influences
which proceed as a matter of course from the different
currents of the time, to go astray in one direction or
another. An aberration such as occurs in Sinnett's
Esoteric Buddhism
is due to the fact that the strong
impulse of materialism can have an effect upon the souls of
men — I say, can have an effect. Just because oriental
influences were at work, a deviation was possible in the
direction which led to a defamation of the whole nature of
the present Moon, and on the other side aberration was
possible because it was in the interests of certain persons
not to allow the truth of repeated lives on Earth to come
into the open. The one who had an interest — in this
case it was not Sinnett himself but the one who was behind
him — in helping materialism in human life to be, as it
were, “ultra-materialised”, introduced into an
otherwise true system, teaching such as that concerning the
Moon, thereby giving a twist in a particular direction.
Now we know
that especially in recent centuries Western civilisation and
its American offshoot have been subject to a strongly
Christian impulse. I myself have been at pains to show that
the significance of Christianity does not depend upon what
can actually be understood of it — for a great deal
will become intelligible only in the future, and we ourselves
are only just beginning to grasp certain facts connected with
the Mystery of Golgotha. But the impulses of Christianity are
real; they take effect even when men do not yet
understand them. In earlier centuries, however, certain
cosmic truths were excluded from these impulses. These truths
are entirely compatible with Christianity although insight
has not succeeded in making this evident. Truths relating to
repeated lives on Earth were withdrawn from Christianity, and
so a Western culture with an American offshoot arose with a
form of Christianity from which the teaching of repeated
lives on Earth was excluded.
Now I have
shown you how certain occultists made efforts to preserve
this view of Christianity — the view which rejected the
truth of repeated earthly lives. I spoke of trends in
occultism that were connected, for example, with the High
Church party. Those concerned were people of knowledge, they
were well-informed. It can be said that they knew much more
about occultism than did the leading members of the
Theosophical Society. But their whole object was to ensure
that the teaching of repeated earthly lives should be
eliminated even more decisively; hence their denial that man,
as I have shown in
Occult Science,
enters in the course of his earthly evolution into relationship
with the other planets of our solar system.
The forces
here implanted into the human soul have mainly to do with
man's participation in the extra-terrestrial
Cosmos; and it was desired from this quarter that men should
be left in obscurity about this participation. The object was
to divert them from the realisation that the soul is
connected, not only with the Earth and its happenings, but
also with what is out there in the Cosmos, shining down to
us, for example, from the other planets of our solar
system.
Now in that
they work upon the human being, the impulses proceeding from
the other planets of our solar system have the power to wrest
the soul, as living soul, away from physical death. That is
their essential function, as you can realise from the
descriptions of the life between death and a new birth which
I have given in various connections and from various points
of view.
But if you
look back over the evolution of humanity, you will find that
precisely in the times when atavistic knowledge, clairvoyant
knowledge, was present as an ancient heritage, men directed
their gaze to the other celestial bodies of our solar system,
and Astrology — which in our day has become such a
questionable science — played a part of tremendous
importance in those olden times.
Why, we may
ask ourselves, has Astrology ceased to play this important
part? It is because the gaze of human souls had to be
diverted in order that Christianity should have time to take
root in earthly existence. Just as the gaze of clairvoyance
had to be diverted from the Imaginative world, so too had the
gaze to be diverted from the impulses proceeding from the
planets of our solar system. All that has remained of
Astrology consists of old traditions. I have often spoken of
this. In a sense, we may say: the old clairvoyance and also
the old vision of the impulses proceeding from the planets of
our solar system, were circumscribed. Man was relegated to
the physically perceptible world, to the senses by means of
which he was to perceive only that which takes place on the
Earth. This was in order that the impulses of the Mystery of
Golgotha might wax in strength and take root in the souls of
men, in the feelings of the believers, so that men might be
inwardly deepened.
In ancient
times, clairvoyance was, after all, an external faculty. It
was not a question of having to acquire it by effort, for it
was a heritage. Just as a man today has eyes and ears, so in
those times he had the faculty of clairvoyance. But the times
are approaching when clairvoyance will increasingly be
regained. This made it necessary that in one phase of his
existence man should be shut off from the spiritual world and
confined to the outer, mineral world, in order that
everything may be built up again from within; what was once
seen from without must now be built up again from within. I
will sketch it for you like this (drawing on the
blackboard).
Picture
a man with the old clairvoyant vision. (I will take
the eye as representing the clairvoyant gaze, although this
is not exclusively a function of the eye.) He directed his
gaze to the starry heavens and beheld the different spiritual
impulses streaming from there.
Then, in the
course of the ages this clairvoyance faded away and
man's gaze was restricted to the phenomena of earthly
existence. Something else had to arise in place of the
earlier clairvoyance, something that can be indicated by
saying: What formerly came from without must now go out
from within. Man had to learn to project outwards
what the Heavens had implanted in him in order that he might
again find his links with the phenomena of the Heavens.
The direction
that had now to be followed was exactly the opposite of that
of the earlier path. It is an actual fact that human nature
is at this present point of time involved in a process of
re-organisation. It has passed through the point of deepest
darkness — one expression of which was what I called
the full flood of materialism in the middle of the nineteenth
century. But humanity is emerging from this condition.
Describing this in terms of occultism, we may say: In earlier
times men did not perceive, did not think with the physical
body only, but they perceived and thought with the etheric
body. What was perceived with the etheric body was
experienced consciously in the astral body as Astrology. But
in modern Astronomy everything is a matter of calculation.
The etheric body must be revitalised, and this is connected
with the new revelation of Christ. When the etheric body is
re-vitalised, man finds Christ. But, as you see, it is
essential that this vitalising of the etheric body shall take
place.
Noteworthy
discoveries can be made if one goes deeply into these
matters. The whole feeling that man has an etheric body has
disappeared and the feeling that he has only a physical body
predominates. But it would be entirely false to believe that
this opinion about man having a physical body only, is very
old. By no means is it so. If this restriction to the
physical body was actually brought about by the full flood of
materialism in the nineteenth century, then men must
previously have had some inkling of the etheric body which
was then suppressed but is now emerging again. I could give
you many proofs that previously something was known
about the etheric body, the existence of which began
gradually to be ignored. I could quote many passages from
earlier works, but I will read one from a book published in
1827. On page 208, a remarkable passage occurs. I will read
it very slowly so that you may be able to judge how
differently these things are written about today under the
influence of views that have become wholly materialistic.
“The
concept of nourishment is connected erroneously with the
mere imbibing of food and drink and their elaboration in
the organs of digestion. The organism is nourished, and
organic life sustained, not by food and drink, but by the
blood (the neutralised earthly and etheric
life-principle)” — here the writer shows that
he is not speaking of the physical blood but of what
underlies the blood as etheric life-principle —
“and indeed not until in the plastic membranes the
blood has been enhanced and as it were sublimated into the
vitalising, formative exhalation (Aura vitalis).”
What does the
writer want to express here? He wants to indicate that
external nourishment is not the fact of primary importance
but that while external nourishment is taking place, extracts
stream from the foodstuffs into the blood, so that a process
is going on in that which underlies the blood as an etheric
life-principle. — This was written in the year 1827.
The writer has put brackets round the words “Aura
vitalis”. “Plastic” here is a synonym of
“imaginative”. I might equally well read the
lines thus: “Not until in the imaginative membranes the
blood has been enhanced and sublimated as it were into the
vitalising, formative exhalation (Aura vitalis)” ...
the two last words are in brackets. “Aura
vitalis” can only be translated as “etheric
body.”
The man who
wrote this was Professor of Psychiatric Therapy at the
University of Leipzig and Physician at the Hospital of St.
George there. He was Johann Christian August
Heinroth, of whom I once spoke in connection with
Goethe.
Hundreds of
such examples could be given and they will indicate to you
how utterly different the attitude of mind once was, how the
knowledge that was still in evidence by no means such a very
long time ago, has degenerated into the materialistic view of
the world.
One can say:
A stream of knowledge oozes away and the materialistic view
of the world rises to the surface, but beneath the stream a
sub-stream develops in human nature. The connection with the
Cosmos is established again, this time from within.
You may still say: Prove to us that there have been people
who had an inkling of the fact that whereas, on the one side,
knowledge of the activities of the etheric body passed away,
on the other, the etheric body was being revitalised again
from within.—
Here I will
read you a passage from a book published even earlier, from
which you can see that there were indeed people who drew
attention to a change that would take place in the
organisation of humanity in the future. Admittedly, the story
is told in a very veiled form, but at all events it is told.
The story is about a female character. When I read the
passage, most of you will know where it occurs.
We read that
there is a soul in the body of a woman who no longer leads
the earthly life but the solar life, that in the course of
her life she circles around wider and wider spheres —
it can therefore be assumed that beings, in so far as they
are corporeal, strive towards the centre, and in so far as
they are spiritual, towards the periphery. A soul who lives
with the Cosmos is here described.
[note 2]
Makaria is
in our solar system in a relation which we may scarcely
dare to express. In spirit, soul, imagination, she keeps
within herself; she does not only look, but at the same
time she makes a part of it; she sees herself carried away
in those heavenly circles, but in a quite special manner.
From her childhood she wanders around the sun, and indeed,
as is now discovered, in a spiral, withdrawing always more
from the centre and circling towards the outer regions.
If we may
accept that creatures, so far as they are bodily, strive
towards the centre, so far as they are spiritual to the
periphery, so does our friend belong to the most spiritual.
She appears to be born only to free herself from what is
earthly, so as to pierce through to the nearest and most
remote spaces of existence. This quality, splendid as it
is, was, however, lent to her from her earliest years as a
difficult task. She remembers from childhood her innermost
self as penetrated by illuminating beings, brightened by a
light which even the brightest light of the sun could get
no hold on.
She therefore
bears sources of light within herself and the external light
can “get no hold” on her.
Often she saw
two suns, one inward, another in the sky; two moons, of which
the outer one, in its size, remained the same in all phases;
the inner always diminished more and more.
This gift
drew her interest away from ordinary things, but her
excellent parents directed everything towards her culture.
All faculties were alive in her, all activities operative, so
that she understood how to satisfy all outward relationships,
and while her heart, her spirit, was entirely filled with
otherworldly visions, her actions and dealings remained
always suited to the noblest decorum. As she grew up,
everywhere helpful, incessant in great and small services,
she wandered like an angel of God upon the earth, while her
entire spiritual being moved indeed around the sun of this
world, but in continually increasing circles towards what is
beyond this world.
The
exuberance of this condition was in some measure modified,
that it also seemed to her to dawn and to grow dark, while
with quenched inner light she strove most loyally to fulfil
external duties; with the fresh shining of the inner light
she gave herself up to the most blessed tranquility. Yes, she
will have observed that some kind of clouds hovered over her
from time to time, and for some time obscured for her the
look of the heavenly companions — a period which she
understood how to make use of continually for the well-being
and delight of her surroundings.
So long as
she kept her views secret, it required much to support them.
What she revealed of them was not recognised, or
misinterpreted; therefore in her long life she let it appear
outwardly as an illness, and in the family they still always
speak of it so; but at last good fortune introduced to her
the man whom you see with us, as doctor, mathematician and
astronomer equally valuable; a thoroughly noble man who,
however, first actually approached her out of curiosity. But
when she gained confidence towards him, described by degrees
to him her circumstances, joined the present to the past and
had brought a connection into the events, he became so
fascinated by the phenomenon that he could no more separate
himself from her, but day by day endeavoured continually to
penetrate more deeply into the secret.
At first, as
lie gave it to be understood not obscurely, he considered it
to be deception, for she did not deny that from earliest
youth she had diligently busied herself about knowledge of
the stars and sky, that she had been well instructed in them,
and had missed no opportunity of getting a clear idea for
herself of the structure of the world by means of machines
and books. He did not, therefore, have his say out; it was
learnt by heart, the effect of an imagination regulated in a
high degree, the influence of the memory was to be
conjectured, a co-operation of the power of judgment, but
especially of a hidden calculation.
He is a
mathematician and therefore obstinate, a clear mind and
therefore unbelieving. For a long time he resisted, observed
however what she mentioned, exactly, endeavoured to get near
to the sequel of different years, kept himself especially to
the newest with the opposite position of the lights of heaven
and their tasks in accordance, and at last exclaimed:
“Now why should not God and Nature be a living
‘Armillarsphere’, an intellectual clockwork
movement, so that just as the clocks perform it for us daily
and hourly, it would be in the position of itself in a
special way to follow the course of the stars!”
But here we
dare not proceed further, for the incredible loses its value
when we wish to look at it more nearly in detail. We say so
much, however: that which served as the basis of the
reckonings to be instituted, was as follows. For her, the
seeress, our sun appeared in the vision much smaller than she
beheld it as such by day; also an unusual position of this
high light of heaven in the zodiac gave rise to
inferences.
On the other
hand, doubts and errors arose because she who looked
indicated one and the other star as appearing alike in the
zodiac, but of which in the sky one was not aware. They might
be the small planets at that time still undiscovered, for
from other accounts it could be concluded that she, long
since over the, orbit of Mars, drew near to the orbit of
Jupiter. Openly, for a long time, she had considered these
planets, at what distance it would be difficult to say, with
astonishment in their mighty splendour, and looked at the
play of its moons around it, but had seen it in the most
marvellous manner as waning moon, and indeed, without being
turned round, as the waxing moon appears to us. From this it
would be concluded that she saw it from the side, and was
really on the point of moving outside its orbit, and in the
infinite space coming in opposition to Saturn. Thither no
imagination follows her, but we hope that such an entelechy
does not withdraw itself entirely from our solar system; but
if it has arrived at the border of it, it will yearn to be
back again, so as to work again in favour of our great
grandchildren for earthly life and beneficence.
Here, in a
very significant way, the vista is presented to us of how the
soul, how the human being, will from within take the path of
return to the world of the stars. I have been reading to you
the description of Makaria from Goethe's
Wilhelm Meister,
and he has expressly added that he has not said
everything. He indicates that this was an ethereal poem, in
the words: “While we now here close this ethereal
poetry, hoping for forgiveness, let us turn again to that
terrestrial story, of which we have given above a transient
indication.”
Before Goethe
describes Makaria he writes:
But arrived
at this point, we cannot resist the temptation of
communicating from our archives
[note 3]
a paper which concerns Makaria, and the special quality which
was imparted to her mind. Unfortunately, this composition was
written from memory not till a long time after the contents
were communicated, and cannot be looked upon as altogether
authentic, as in so remarkable a case would be desirable. But
however this may be, here already is so much communicated as
to arouse reflection and recommend attention as to whether
already something similar or approximating to it has been
remarked and noted down.
I wanted to
call your attention to this passage in
Wilhelm Meister's Travels
because it will show you that
with Spiritual Science we are really meeting the demands of
our age. Human nature is changing in such a way that it will
bring forth from itself that ancient heritage from
the pre-earthly world which it has lost. And men must be
aware of what is approaching them — otherwise they will
fall into utter confusion. Spiritual Science must establish
its place in the cultural life of our time.
But the
moment men become attentive to what has been indicated here
they inevitably come across the teaching of reincarnation,
because they say to themselves that an entelechy from the
spiritual world, from the spheres of Jupiter, Saturn, and so
on, may well have something to do with the Earth and might
return among us. Therefore those occultists who wish the
teaching of reincarnation to be suppressed, say that
barricades must be erected against the advent of this view of
life, and these barricades are erected by diverting
men's minds as far as possible from the connection with
the celestial bodies of the solar system. So we see that in
that quarter there is intense interest in not allowing
certain things to come to light. I said yesterday that if
interest is present for a biased, one-sided cause, it always
finds support. But truth is generally contested and
everything possible is done to prevent the truth itself from
coming to light. And whether we take the right stand in our
spiritual Movement depends upon our being fully conscious
that the truth for which we seek will be attacked from many,
many sides. Nothing is more essential than that in order to
be armed, we shall endeavour to develop clarity of thought in
every domain. You must bear in mind that the antagonisms that
arise, above all the hostile personalities, are really, for
the most part, puppets of the opposing Powers. For we are
here in the field of activity of super-sensible Powers. These
super-sensible Powers, to which Lucifer and Ahriman belong,
naturally work in human life through human souls, which are
simply their instruments.
Hence it is
necessary to know exactly what is at issue in the one case or
the other; but what is far and away the most necessary of all
is that the acquisition of the faculty of clear, exact
thinking shall never be neglected. You know that life
itself has its contradictions, and Hegel built up his whole
philosophy on this. It is not a question of avoiding the
contradictions in life, for they are there. The essential
thing is to recognise and be alert to them.
Ahriman and
Lucifer can accomplish something only when a contradiction
remains unnoticed, when we have neither the strength nor the
will to lay it bare. Whenever we get entangled in a
contradiction that we do not recognise as such but simply
regard it as a natural part of life, this makes it possible
for Lucifer and Ahriman to take possession of our soul.
Let us take a
strange contradiction with which we have been just recently
confronted here. The circumstances have obliged me to read a
passage in a letter from a lady who states that what is
wanted is “not the teaching and not the teacher, but
the man”. The teaching was therefore taken as
a kind of adjunct and the chief value attached to the man.
Then came another assertion — the very opposite! The
man was completely rejected and it was stated that the
teaching must be acknowledged as correct. Just think of it:
on the one hand it is asserted that the quest should not be
for the teaching or the teacher, but for the man; and on the
other: “I hate the man and reject him; he makes
promises and does not keep them — but the teaching is
good, I accept it.”
To what does
this really amount? In effect it amounts to this: For a time
I had a certain relationship with an individual; he himself
interested me, the teaching only very little. Then I turn
from the individual and lay stress on what did not really
interest me at all. I now lay the stress upon what I formerly
put aside; I did not assimilate the teaching and now say: it
is good. I stand for something which I refused to accept,
something I cannot possibly have acquired because previously
I refused to accept it! — There you have a literal
example of the kind of contradictions to be found in the
world. Can you possibly imagine that where such
contradictions prevail there can be any real, inner
connection with our spiritual-scientific Movement? There can
obviously be none.
It is
important to be aware of contradictions such as these, for if
we fail to notice such phenomena among us we shall never find
the right path to knowledge of the spiritual world. Needless
to say, many things may escape us, but we must have the will
to take note of such contradictions. On the other side,
however, it must be remembered that contradictions of this
kind are used with the intent of shaking the truth to its
foundations. Suppose, for example, someone were to say: a man
is giving teaching but he himself is full of contradictions,
even of immoral tendencies, indeed he is dominated by the
power of evil; but the teaching itself is good — that
is certainly to be admitted. Very well — but if it is
part and parcel of the teaching that the one who represents
it and the Movement connected with it establishes the
relationship between himself and the others precisely through
the teaching, wishing to be nothing more than the bearer of
the teaching — then such an attitude demands him to be
something else! All kinds of demands are made upon the man,
and although at bottom the teaching is rejected, it is said:
the teaching is good, but for all that the man is evil! In
this way, someone who feels utterly incapable of grasping the
teaching can work against it through those who believe in it.
This is the best way for a person to undermine teaching which
he cannot disprove, for as I indicated yesterday, it is then
delivered into the hands of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic
Powers.
It has been
said so often that our teaching must not be mere theory, but
actual life. If it is made into mere theory, it is
killed, delivered into the hands of Ahriman, the God of
Death. That is the best method for ensuring that what is
taught is given over to Ahriman and thus exterminated from
the world; moreover, it is a method very similar to that
employed by certain individualities who were standing behind
Mr. Sinnett, for example. They inspired him to take a certain
direction in order to steer him into fallacy which culminated
in the true facts being violated. The Moon, which as physical
Moon is an agent for paralysing the Eighth Sphere, is
declared to be the Eighth Sphere itself. The reality
concerning the Eighth Sphere is obscured, effaced. And later
on H. P. Blavatsky corrects this by alleging that Jahve has
created the lower sphere of man's life only, the sphere
of his senses — whereas the truth is that Jahve has
created a counteracting agent for the Eighth Sphere.
This method therefore consists in spreading over some matter
a fog whereby it is presented in a false light. If you
examine these things carefully, you will see that what has
happened among us is essentially of the same pattern, only on
a smaller scale. It is an attempt to shed calumny on the
truth that would fain come into the world. Someone feels
incapable of refuting the teaching and so levels imputations
against the one who has to present it. This of course shows
that such a person is unable to grasp the essence of the
teaching.
This is a
problem well worth the notice of people of standing and
sincerity among us, for these things must be viewed from a
higher vantage-point. I am quoting these examples because
they are near at hand and because they show us whither our
attention should be directed. In our Movement the strongest
possible emphasis must be laid — and this has been done
ever since I have been connected with it—upon a right
attitude being adopted towards atavistic clairvoyance, so
that there may be no delusions about it. An example of what
has been invented in order to distort what we do or desire to
do, is that it has been said: One can see that this is a
Movement which applies itself to the cultivation of
clairvoyance — and then efforts have been made to imply
that everyone in the Movement is urged to develop
clairvoyance. This kind of thing spreads a fog over the
Movement. The truth is reversed — although it is a fact
that clairvoyance must be developed — but a good means
is furnished for provoking hatred against the Movement.
Again, it is
said: A Movement that comes into being in the modern age
ought not to cultivate the old, atavistic clairvoyance, but
that is precisely what this particular Movement is doing.
— On the subject of cultivating atavistic clairvoyance
the Movement says exactly the same, but here the direction of
the arrow is turned round and the Movement is censured. This
is happening, for example, in our immediate vicinity, where
in sermons and addresses it is alleged that those who have
gathered here in Dornach are urged, above all by me, to
develop clairvoyance, and it is imputed at the same time that
this is pathological, atavistic clairvoyance.
Needless to
say, the one who voices these things has no inkling of what
he is really saying; he is only a puppet. But we ourselves
must look more deeply into the connections, realising that we
are living at a time when such impulses will assert
themselves strongly against us. And it would be particularly
grotesque if our teaching itself were to he used as a weapon
for confuting us. Even this has already happened. In one of
the antagonistic criticisms published during recent weeks, an
attack was formulated by using quotations from the Mystery
Plays and from the book
Occult Science.
So the Powers that do not want the truth to come to light are
everywhere at work.
About the
truth itself we need have no anxiety. ... Truth makes its
way in the world by laying emphasis only on what is
positive.
But the
moment statements that simply do not remotely come near the
truth go out into the world, we must be armed and know how to
judge them. We must not adopt the stand merely of studying
what is to be found in the literature; we must translate into
very life the life-principle contained in our
teaching. That is to say, we must judge life according to the
principles of our teaching; we must not think about one or
another attack from outside as we should be bound to think if
we had accepted our teaching merely as a theory. The need for
polemics does not begin until we are attacked. But then we
must realise that ours is a teaching very easily distorted
into its opposite and that we have therefore to watch over
and protect it. Especially must we be on guard against all
one-sidedness.
For example,
undertones could be heard in connection with certain things
that have been said here and there — undertones coming
from an attitude that very easily runs to opposite extremes.
And then it is easy to be refuted. You will remember that it
was necessary to say a great deal on the subject of illusions
about particular incarnations. If this were carried to the
extreme of laughing all such matters to scorn, our opponents
might well say: “These people teach something. But let
one of them touch the very fringe of it and they at once
proceed to ridicule him!”
We have no
ground for rejecting clairvoyant experiences —
obviously not. Our only duty is to get to the bottom of such
experiences when they are being used to bolster up the aims
of personal vanity, or certainly when the outer course of
events proves these experiences to have been incorrect. We
must not, to use a trivial expression, pour away the child
with the bath-water. Our Society must certainly not transform
itself into a body of scientific theory. There too you can
see that this danger may easily arise.
An essay sent
to us during the last few days is astutely written, for there
is no more plausible way of attacking our Movement than by
saying: “Those people behave as if they rejected all
connection between the world of the senses and the spiritual
world!” This is actually stated in the essay. In an
appendix, strangely enough, the question is raised :
“Why should not the Mother of God also
reincarnate?” — Of course, one can ask, why
should she not reincarnate? There is no reason why it cannot
be so. But of this you may be sure: the exoteric life of this
Mother of God in such a reincarnation would not be in the
form in which it is claimed to have taken place!
Truly, in
these matters it is a question of something that I have been
emphasising for many years and found it necessary to include
in my fundamental philosophical work. If you read other
philosophies you will find in their theories and forms of
expression, also in still earlier writings, much that appears
again in my
The Philosophy of Freedom.
But one thing is
contained in it which, at least in the way it is there
expressed and interwoven as an ethical principle, a moral
impulse, is entirely original. — For the first time,
“moral tact” is introduced as something that
cannot be grasped through the mere power of judgment, but
only through the whole mind and life of feelings, so that
when something has to be handled delicately one shall not
immediately fall into extremes and try to sweep away one
error by means of another. That is “moral tact”.
I have tried to define it as clearly as possible in the
Philosophy of Freedom. It is truly necessary to emphasise at
the present time that — because here we have to do with
a very tricky matter — we must avoid the danger of
falling into the other extreme.
I indicated
various dangers yesterday but have felt it necessary to add
something today, in order to emphasise that we must not fall
into the other extreme. The whole of our activity, the whole
nature of our Movement, must be based upon making the
spiritual world a reality, upon feeling and experiencing our
own life as connected with the spiritual world.
But if we
hold this principle sacred, we must tactfully refuse to allow
directly personal affairs, the subjective-personal life, to
be drawn in. This again does not imply that we should never
try to discover whether we ourselves are the reincarnation of
someone. But simply to look from one personality in search of
the other is of no account. It is the easy-going way. But the
right way is to endeavour to reach the point where we begin
to discover certain secrets of our own life. Then we shall
certainly make progress. In this connection we are standing
at a point of great significance, namely that we must pay
heed to the saying: do not pour the child away with the bath
water!
At the same
time we must work with all intensity to prevent what would be
utterly disastrous to an occult Movement, namely, a gradual
lapse into haziness and lack of clarity. There are certain
things which need to be treated with a certain harshness.
That is another matter. But we must always be mindful of the
ground on which we stand — the ground of an earnest and
worthy spiritual Movement.
These are
some of the points of view which can help us to realise the
conditions that are essential to the life of our Movement.
When it is said that outer reality is maya, then this maya
too must be thoroughly studied. Nor must we keep emphasising
the theoretical saying, “outer reality is maya”,
and then act as if the outer reality itself is of supreme
importance when we encounter it concretely in the world.
Notes:
Note 1.
See inter alia, Macrocosm and Microcosm, lecture 4. (Rudolf
Steiner Press, 1968).
Note 2.
The translation of the passage is by R. O. Moon, M.A.,
M.D.(Oxon.), from Vol. II of Goethe's
Wilhelm Meister.
Published by G. T. Foulis & Co.,
London.
Note 3.
(Goethe means “spiritual” archives.)
|