The First Goetheanum
by
Rudolf Steiner
Translated from the German by Frank Thomas Smith
Lesson Five
Dornach, March 14, 1924
My
dear friends,
We
have seen the changes which take place in a person who
encounters the Guardian of the Threshold. And whether he or she
is able to approach and come to an understanding of the
spiritual world in any form, depends upon understanding the
essence of this Guardian. In particular, we have seen how what
constitutes man's inner self - thinking, feeling, willing -
undergoes a substantial transformation in the Guardian of the
Threshold's domain. Especially in the last lesson here, it
became clear to us how in a certain respect thinking, feeling
and willing go different ways upon entering the spiritual
world, how they enter into different relationships than those
which usually prevail for earthly consciousness.
We
have seen how through his will man is greatly influenced by
earthly conditions. At the moment when the person approaches
the spiritual world, in a certain sense thinking, feeling and
willing become separated. The will, now living much more
independently than previously in the soul, shows itself to be
much more related to the forces which attract man to the earth.
Feeling shows itself to be related to the forces which hold man
in the periphery of the earth through which the light
penetrates when it shines upon the earth in the morning, and
which disappears from sight on the opposite side in the
evening. Thinking, however, is the force which relates upwards
to the heavenly. So that in the moment that man stands before
the Guardian of the Threshold, this Guardian draws his
attention to how he belongs to the whole world: through his
will the earth, through his feeling the periphery, through his
thinking the higher powers.
But
that, my dear friends, is exactly what must be made clear -
that upon entering the spiritual world a growing together with
the universe occurs. For normal consciousness we stand here in
the world while outside of us are the forces which are active
in the plant, mineral, animal kingdoms, to which we have access
through our senses, but which at first indicate no relationship
to human beings. So here we stand, apart, looking inwards at
our thinking, feeling and willing, aware that our thinking,
feeling and willing are somewhat separated, apart from external
nature. And we feel a deep chasm between our human nature and
the expansive nature around us.
But
this chasm must be bridged. For this chasm, only the exterior
aspects of which are perceived by normal consciousness, is the
threshold itself. And our being able to perceive the threshold
depends on our ceasing to simply accept this unconsciousness,
when we look within ourselves, concerning an external nature
which we perceive as being foreign to humanity. For this chasm
needs to be understood as being not only extremely important
for human life, but also for the entire universe.
Well, you see, at the moment when one enters the esoteric, a
bridge over this must be built. We must, in a sense, merge with
nature. We must stop saying to ourselves: Out there is nature,
which has nothing to do with morality. We don't ask the
minerals about morality, although it is of prime interest to
us, nor do we ask the plants, or the animals - and in this
materialistic age we have even ceased asking humans, because
only human physicality is taken into consideration.
And
also when looking into the inner human we see what for normal
consciousness is passive thinking, with which we can indeed
visualize the world pictorially, but which is nevertheless
powerless. Our thoughts are at first things we own which allow
us to recognize the objects in the world. As thoughts they have
no power. Our feeling is our inner life. To a certain extent we
are separated through it from the world. Our will does
communicate external objects to us, but in so doing the
external objects take on something foreign to their nature.
Something truly great happens to a person when he becomes aware
of the abyss which exists between himself and nature: something
great. Something which has been expressed since ancient times
with these words, words which must be understood anew in every
age: Nature must appear as divine, and the human must be a
magical being. What does it mean, that nature must be able to
appear as divine?
Nature must be able to appear as divine. The way it appears to
the senses, and how reason understands it, it is certainly not
divine. One would like to say: divinity is hidden within
nature. It only appears to lack divinity. At most in dreams do
we see a relationship between nature and the inner life of man.
We can become aware of how an irregularity in our breathing
process in one direction or the other can cause happy dreams or
fearful and anxiety-filled ones. We can be aware of how the
purely natural overheating of a room can give a kind of moral
content to certain dreams. Dreams pull nature into the
psyche.
However, we also know that in dreams our consciousness is
submerged, and dreams are not what can directly describe the
spiritual to us. Rather than the sleeping consciousness, we
must see how the awakened consciousness presents nature.
Now
in nature, my dear friends, we have a relationship of the human
physical body with what is solid, with what is characteristic
of the earthly element. We have a relationship of the human
etheric body with what is characteristic of water. However,
this relationship of the human physical body with the earthly,
and the relationship of the human etheric body with the liquid
element lie deep beneath what people experience.
What is closer to man is his breathing process, which is
dependent upon the air. So it is from the breathing process
upwards where the region begins where man can feel himself-
when he is approaching the spiritual - related to nature.
The
breathing process contains the air element, in which we
exist.
air [is written on the blackboard]
Above the element of air we have the quality of warmth.
warmth [is written on the blackboard above
“air”]
And
above the element of warmth we have the essence of light:
warmth-ether, light-ether.
light [is written above “warmth”]
When we go even higher we come to a region - which we will
speak about later - which does not lie so close to humans.
That man lives and moves in the element of air is obvious from
a completely exterior point of view. One needs only to look at
dreams to see how dependent they are on irregularities,
abnormalities in the breathing process. When the breathing
process takes place while awake, we don't notice it, because in
general we pay little attention to normal life processes.
That the element of warmth is extremely essential to man is
obvious to even superficial observation. If we dab our skin
with an object that is colder than our body, a cold knitting
needle for example, we feel the cold places that have been
touched as separate even though they are very close to each
other. We are very sensitive to the cold. If we touch our skin
with an object that is warmer than our body, we don't feel the
difference so clearly. We can hold two cold knitting needles
very close to each other and feel the coldness of both. If we
hold two warmed needles, the close contacts flow together at
one point, and we must hold them quite far apart in order to
sense them as separate. In fact we are far more sensitive to
cold than to warmth. Why? We endure warmth much better then
cold because we are creatures of warmth, because warmth is our
own nature and we live and act in it. Cold is foreign to us and
we are very sensitive to it.
It
is more difficult for normal consciousness to understand light.
Today we want to approach these things esoterically. So it may
be sufficient that I have indicated what air and warmth means
to normal consciousness. But with this consciousness man feels
air as something external, natural. He also feels warmth as
something that touches him from without, and he also feels that
light comes to him from outside himself.
In
the moment when a person takes the leap in his life which
brings him near to the Guardian of the Threshold, he becomes
aware of how intimately he is related to what otherwise seems
alien to him.
I
have often pointed out how in every moment of our lives, also
for normal consciousness, we can become aware of our
relationship to the universe through our relation to the air.
The air is outside, the same air which is inside me a moment
later, then it is again outside, the same air which was within
me. But we are not aware of the fact that, in the sense that we
are beings of air, that what we hold within us we let out
again, then take what was external into us again, so that we
become one with the whole life and being of the element of air
in which we exist as earthly beings. Whereas we always carry
our muscles and bones within us, so we are only conscious of
their origination and passing away during the embryonic and
dying stages.
At
the moment we enter the spiritual region this is no longer the
case. We then feel how with every exhalation we fly out on the
wings of the exhaled air into the expanse of being into which
the exhaled air disperses. And how by inhaling we take into us
the spiritual beings who live in the circulating air. The
spiritual world flows into us when inhaling; our own being
flows out into the environment upon exhaling.
This is not only so in respect to the air, but to an even
greater degree in respect to warmth. As we are one with the air
environment which encircles the earth, so are we also one with
the warmth which encircles and penetrates the earth. [Two white
circles are drawn: air, then a red one: warmth.]
When we approach the spiritual world we truly experience the
spirit entering us when inhaling, our own being streaming out
into the expanse of space when exhaling, that is, we experience
a spiritual interweaving of inhaling and exhaling. And we feel
more intensively how with the increase of warmth - in that we
are ourselves within the element of warmth - we become more
human, and with the lessening of warmth we become less human.
Thus warmth ceases to be a merely natural element, for we feel
and recognize the spiritual nature of warmth - and we feel it
to be closely related to our being human. We feel that the
increase of warmth means that the spirits which are active in
the element of warmth say: We give you your humanity through
the element of warmth; we take it away through the element of
cold.
So
we come to the light, in which we live and act. But we don't
notice it because with normal consciousness we have no idea of
the fact that the inner movements of light are contained in our
own thinking, that every thought is captured light - both for
the physically sighted and for the physically unsighted. Light
is objective. Not only the physically sighted receive it, the
physically unsighted also receive it ... when they think. Because
the thoughts which we hold within us, which we capture, is
light present within us.
We
can say then, that when we approach the Guardian of the
Threshold he admonishes us in the following way:
When you think, O man, your being is not in you, it is in the
light. When you feel, your being is not in you, it is in the
warmth. When you will, your being is not in you, it is in the
air. Keep not within yourself, O man. Think not that your
thinking is in your head. Think that your willing is none other
than the moving, living, active air element working within.
One
must be very conscious of the fact that in the Guardian of the
Threshold's presence one is divided into the universal
elements, that one can no longer simply hold one's self
together in the usual chaotic, dim way of normal consciousness.
And that is the grand experience that initiate knowledge gives
to the human being, that he ceases to seriously think that he
is enclosed within his skin - something which is no more than a
mere indication that he exists. For spiritual consciousness
what is concentrated within the skin is an illusion; for man is
as great as the universe. His thoughts are as wide as the
light, his feelings are as wide as the warmth, his will is as
wide as the air.
If
a being of sufficiently developed consciousness were to descend
to the earth from another planet, he would speak to people in
quite a different way than how people of the earth address each
other. He would say: The light which envelops the earth is
differentiated [The cloak of light is drawn around the air and
warmth circles: yellow.] Many individually differentiated
beings are in the light. One must imagine that in this
earth-light, in the light that surrounds the earth, that weaves
and waves around it, in this space many beings are present, as
many as there are human beings on the earth. They all
accommodate themselves within the earth's world of light. And
for this visitor from space all human thoughts are in this
cloak of light. And all feelings are in the cloak of warmth,
and all willing is in the atmosphere, in the cloak of air.
Then this being would say: I have qualitatively differentiated
out a being. It is indicated by body a; another, also within
the cloak, is designated as b, and so on [within the yellow,
two spots, a and b, are drawn]. The real human beings are all
together in the light, warmth and air surrounding the
earth.
For
the person who really stands before the Guardian of the
Threshold this is not speculation, but experience. And this is
what constitutes spiritual progress, that man integrates with
the surrounding world. It is of little use to speak of these
things theoretically. It is not particularly profound
mystically to say that you are one with the world by merely
thinking that you are, if you do not begin to experience the
fact that when you are thinking you are living in the entire
earth's light, are becoming one with the earth's light, and how
by doing so, by becoming one with the light of the earth, you
go out of yourself - go out, so to speak, through all the pores
of your skin into a divine-spiritual being - you become one
with the essence of the earth itself and with the other
elements of the earth's being. This is something which must be
understood in all seriousness by anyone who strives toward
relationship with the spiritual world.
You
see, light must, in a sense, have a moral effect. And we must
be aware of how we are related to the light and how the light
is related to us in the esoteric experience of the world. But
then, at the moment when one steps over the threshold, it
becomes clear that the light is real and must wage a hard
battle with the forces of darkness. Light and darkness become
real. And then something occurs to the person which makes him
say to himself: If in my thinking I merge completely with the
light, I will lose myself in the light. For in the moment when
I merge with the light in my thinking, light-beings grasp hold
of me and say: You, human, we will not let you out of the light
again, we will hold you back in the light. This expresses the
light-beings' will. They want to draw man to them through his
thinking, make him one with the light, rend him from all the
earthly forces and integrate him into the light. The
light-beings who are around us are those who at every moment of
existence wish to rend human beings from the earth and
integrate them with the sunlight which flows over the earth.
They live in the periphery of the earth and say: You, human
being, should not remain with your soul in your body; with the
sun's first light of dawn you yourself should shine down on the
earth, you should set with the sun's afterglow, and encircle
the earth as light!
These light-beings will be found enticing us ever and again. At
the moment of crossing the threshold one becomes aware of these
light-beings who want to pull human beings away from the earth
and try to convince him that it is not worthy of him to stay
chained to the earth by its gravity. They wish to absorb him in
the sun's radiance.
Yes, for ordinary consciousness the sun is shining above and we
humans stand below and let the sun shine on us; for the more
developed consciousness the sun in heaven is the great tempter
who wants to unite us with its light and pull us away from the
earth - who whispers in our ear: O man, you don't need to stay
on the earth, you can exist in the rays of the sun, then you
can illuminate the earth and bring it happiness, so you no
longer have to be illuminated and made happy on the earth from
without.
This is what we encounter when we meet the Guardian of the
Threshold: nature, which was previously quietly outside us and
made no claim on our normal consciousness, now has the force to
speak to us morally. Nature appears in the sun as a tempter.
What before was quietly shining sunlight now speaks enticingly,
temptingly. And we first realize that there is something
spiritual living and moving in this sunlight when the enticing,
the tempting beings appear in the light of the sun who want to
pull us away from the earth. For these beings are in continuous
battle with what constitutes the interior of the earth -
darkness.
And
if we fall into extremes - which is quite possible because the
experiences in meeting the Guardian of the Threshold are most
earnest and profound and gripping for the human soul - when we
realize how enticing the sunlight is, caused by the
light-beings, that is when we want to escape from them, if we
remember that we are supposed to be human beings. We may not
forget this. If we do, although we continue to live physically
on the earth, we are to a certain extent psychically crippled.
But when we become aware of how enticing the sunlight is, we
turn to the opposite side and seek relief in darkness, against
which the light is continually fighting. And by swinging from
light to darkness we fall into the opposite extreme. So this
self, which wanted to surge out into the bright shining
sunlight, is now threatened in darkness by loneliness, by being
separated from all other beings. But we human beings can only
live in the area of equilibrium between light and darkness.
Such is the great experience before the Guardian of the
Threshold: that we face the enticement of light and the
dehumanizing force of darkness. Light and darkness become moral
forces which have moral power over us. And we humans must
realize that it is dangerous to look at the pure light and the
pure darkness. And we are reassured when, there at the
threshold, we see how the middle gods, the good gods of normal
progress dim the light to a luminous yellow, to a luminous red,
and when we know that we can no longer be lost to the earth,
when we are aware not of the light which enticingly dazzles us,
but of the color in spirit, which is subdued light.
And
it is equally dangerous to yield to pure darkness. And we will
be inwardly liberated if we do not stand before the pure
darkness in spirit-land, but when we stand before the
illuminated darkness as violet and blue. Yellow and red say to
us in spirit-land: Light's enticements will not be able to
wrest you away from the earth. Violet and blue say to us: The
darkness will not be able to bury you, as soul, in the earth;
you will be able to hold yourself above the effects of the
earth's gravity.
Those are the experiences where the natural and the moral grow
together in one, where light and darkness become realities. And
without light and darkness becoming realities, we will not be
aware of the true nature of thinking. Therefore we should
listen to the words the Guardian of the Threshold speaks when
we meet him with our thinking, which has become independent and
separated in our soul:
The
light does battle with the forces dark
In that realm where your thinking
Would enter into the spirit-being.
You find, striving towards the light,
Your self by spirit taken from you;
You can, when darkness entices you,
In matter lose your self.
This means becoming aware of the duality in which one is placed
and between which one must find equilibrium, harmony, in
thinking.
[The lines are written on the blackboard:]
The
light does battle with the forces dark
In that realm where your thinking
Would enter into the spirit-being.
You find, striving towards the light,
Your self by spirit taken from you;
You can, when darkness entices you,
In matter lose your self.
The
impulses which can derive from such words must be forcefully
received by thinking and one must learn to feel when dealing
even with normal exterior light, and exterior darkness, how
this light can only be tolerated when it is dimmed to color.
Then we must do our best to understand, with spiritual
visioning, how thinking is placed in the middle of this battle
between light and darkness: How, when it comes into contact
with light, it is absorbed in a certain sense, interwoven with
the light; and when it comes into contact with darkness it is
extinguished. If we want to enter into matter, into dark
matter, our thinking is extinguished. By understanding this,
one gradually enters the spiritual realm.
And, my dear friends, in order to experience this, one must
have courage, inner courage. To deny that one needs courage is
to be ignorant of the true situation. We may think that courage
is needed to let a finger be cut off, but none is needed to
allow the severed thinking to stream into the vortex in which
it will be seized when it finds itself in the middle of the
battle between light and darkness. And it is always there.
Knowledge means that we are aware of this.
In
every waking moment, with his thinking, man is in danger
because there are certain spiritual beings on neighboring
heavenly bodies who know that in every century, in every age,
it is possible, as far as humanity is concerned, for light to
win over darkness or darkness to win over light.
Yes, my dear friends, for people with normal consciousness life
seems as little dangerous as it does for a sleepwalker who has
not yet been woken up: he doesn't fall down. For someone who
observes life, however, a battle ensues, and he cannot say
with certainty whether in a hundred years light or darkness
will have won, and whether the human race will even have an
existence worthy of humanity. And he will know why such a
catastrophe has not happened to human evolution until now.
I
could use another comparison. When you watch a tightrope walker
on his rope you know that he could fall at any moment to the
left or to the right. That you could be on such a tightrope
psychically - that anyone can plummet psychically to the right
or the left - there is no awareness of that in ordinary life,
because one does not see the abyss on the left or right.
Nevertheless, it is there.
That is the benefit the Guardian of the Threshold bestows on
man - that he does not let the abyss be seen until his own
warnings alert him to it. That has been the secret of the
Mysteries of all times, that the abyss is shown to the adept
and he therewith is able to acquire the strength necessary for
knowledge of the real world.
As
it is with light in regard to thinking, so it is with warmth in
regard to feeling. When approaching to Guardian of the
Threshold, one is aware of entering a battle between warm and
cold: how warmth is always enticing our feeling, for it wishes
to suck it in to itself. Just as the light-beings, the
Luciferic light-beings would in a certain sense fly away with
us from the earth towards the light, so would the Luciferic
warmth-beings suck our feeling into the general universal
warmth. All human feeling should be lost to humanity and soaked
up into the general universal warmth.
And
this is enticing because what the initiate-science adept is
aware of when he approaches the threshold with his feeling: the
warmth-beings appear, who want to give the human being an
over-abundance of his own element, of the element in which he
lives: warmth. They want all his feelings to be soaked up by
warmth. When the human being is aware of this however: when he
approaches the threshold, the warmth-beings are there, he gets
warm, warm, warm, he becomes warmth, he flows over into the
warmth. It is a feeling of pleasure, and a great enticement. It
flows through him continuously. One must know all this. For
without knowing that this enticement exists within the desire
for warmth, it impossible to obtain an unobstructed vision of
spirit-land.
And
the enemies of these Luciferic warmth-beings are the Ahrimanic
coldness-beings. These beings attract those who are still aware
of how dangerous it is to bask in the pleasure of warmth. They
would like to dip into the healthy cold. That is the opposite
extreme: the cold can harden them there. And then, when the
cold affects man in this way, infinite pain ensures, which is
also physical pain. The physical and the mental, matter and
spirit, become one. The human being experiences the cold
capturing his whole being, as though tearing him apart in great
pain.
That the human being is continually engaged in this battle
between warmth and cold is what one must understand as the
Guardian of the Threshold's admonition in respect to
feeling.
[The second verse is written on the blackboard.]
The
warmth does battle with the cold
In that realm where your feeling
Would like to live spiritually.
You find, loving the warmth,
Your Self in spirit-pleasure dispersed;
You can, when coldness hardens you,
Enwrap the Self in suffering.
With his volition man enters a world which seems quite near to
us - which in fact it is. It is the world of air, the world
which sustains our breathing. One does not suspect how closely
related human will is to the air which we breathe, for our will
depends upon our breathing. And in the air, dear friends, life
and death exists. It contains the vivifying oxygen; it contains
the deadly nitrogen. The chemist says with his terrible, untrue
abstraction: Air consists of oxygen and nitrogen. Yes, as long
as we remain in normal consciousness one says: oxygen and
nitrogen. Once we arrive at the Guardian of the Threshold,
however, it becomes clear that oxygen is the external
manifestation of many spiritual beings - the ones who give
humanity life. Nitrogen is the external manifestation of the
spiritual beings who give humanity death - also the death
which, in every instant of our waking life in which we think
and in which we develop our soul-life, is partially putting us
to death, is unmaking us.
In
the air there is a battle in which the Luciferic oxygen-spirits
do battle with the Ahrimanic nitrogen-spirits. As long as one
has not arrived at the Threshold, air consists of the chemists'
abstraction: oxygen and nitrogen. When we arrive at the
Threshold, it consists of Ahriman and Lucifer, and the oxygen
is the outer mask for Lucifer, and nitrogen the outer mask for
Ahriman. And a battle rages in the air. This battle is hidden
from the every-day, illusory consciousness. But one enters it
when the Threshold is reached.
Once again: if one wishes to realize what exists in
oxygen-spirits, what exists in the life-element when one wishes
to unite his will with spiritual creativity, when one is
stimulated to inner courageous activity, the danger exists that
one's actions are all absorbed by spiritual acts and one ceases
to be even human because what one needs as strength of will is
taken over by the Luciferic spiritual world.
And
if you turn to the opposite side, then the nitrogen forces, the
Ahrimanic ones that act as death in the element of air will
tempt you. This is not the death which we see in the physical
world, but one with which one is not personally related. If you
become related to death you begin to consider it as something
you wish to unite with, and then are never released from.
Whereas in the element of life the spirits want to hold us in
order for their deeds to absorb the deeds of men, on the other
side - that of the Ahrimanic nitrogen-spirits - we are thrown
aside into the nothingness of life. We then want to act in
death, act in nothingness. We are cramped instead of being
active; the self is cramped.
Man
is placed between these two opposing elements of which he must
be aware with respect to his will.
[The third verse is written on the blackboard.]
A
battle rages between life and death
In that realm where your will
Would like to act in spirit-creation.
You find, grasping life,
Your Self in spirit-forces ending;
You can, if death-forces bind you,
Confine the Self in nothingness.
If,
dear friends, we say: I would rather do without such knowledge!
Why should I do that to myself, approaching the Guardian of the
Threshold, if what is otherwise benevolently hidden from
humanity is revealed to me? Can it be beneficial for humanity
to be aware of such terrible truths? It is obvious that this
objection is due to the human desire for comfort, especially
when the question: What should I do with such truths? is asked.
If I ask that, it is about something I'd rather not know.
But, my dear friends, the task of contemporary times is that
man penetrate in reality, that he does not cowardly shrink back
from reality, that he penetrates into reality in order to unite
with what is directly related to his being. We could of course
stick our heads in the sand during this short earth-life and
know nothing about these realities; that we can no longer do
however, for we are now entering a new age when man can only
thrive after death if he becomes aware of what he will
experience after death.
And
how will it be after death? When a person passes through the
gates of death and his consciousness has still not been erased,
he looks back and when this looking back has become conscious,
spiritual beings whisper into the process causing a soft
undertone to be present. One looks back the few days after
death during which the etheric body is dissolving in the cosmic
ether, one looks back and sees the pictures of the earth-life
just experienced - and certain spirits whisper:
A
battle rages between life and death
In that realm where your will
Would like to act in spirit-creation.
You find, grasping life,
Your Self in spirit-forces ending;
You can, if death-forces bind you,
Confine the Self in nothingness.
Now
we know the reality: if we do not find the middle way, but
wander off either to the right or the left instead, then one of
those things can happen.
And
also, when one has gone through the sleeping time after death,
which does not last long, he enters in consciousness into a
time when he experiences his past earthly life backwards, an
experience which lasts a third of that of his past earthly
lifetime, as we have described in the general anthroposophical
lectures. But the admonishing spirits keep appearing during
milestones along this journey. And they say to us:
The
warmth does battle with the cold
In that realm where your feeling
Would like to live spiritually.
You find, loving the warmth,
Your Self in spirit-pleasure dispersed;
You can, if coldness hardens you,
Enwrap your Self in suffering.
Bearing this in mind, I have often counseled those who have
asked me how they should act in respect to the dead who have
been close to them to direct thoughts towards them in the
sense, for example: “My love goes out to you, so that it
might warm your coldness, lessen your warmth,” for during
the whole time of reverse experience of the past life warmth
and cold play the role described above. But we are also warned
that they play that role continually. These things are
realities.
And
when we then cross over from the life of reverse experience
into the experience of being in the free spirit-land, preparing
ourselves for the next earth-life, the spirits warning us at
the milestones again appear. They call out to us
unceasingly:
The
light does battle with the forces of darkness
In that realm where your thinking
Would like to engage in spiritual being.
You find, striving towards the light,
-
The striving is real; you could go right or to the left -
Your
Self taken away by spirit;
You can, when darkness entices you,
In matter lose the Self.
My
dear friends, when man still had an instinctive clairvoyance
and passed through the gates of death, it was through this
instinctive clairvoyance that he could understand the words
spoken to him during the three stations of life after death.
But in the age which man had to pass through in order to
achieve freedom, it became ever more difficult for him to
understand what was being called out to him. And now we live in
an age when, if human beings are not made aware of the meaning
of these words during their life on earth, they will not
understand the words called out to them in spirit-language.
But
that is what can happen to man if he confronts a future in
which he passes through a world where these words are called
out to him and he does not understand them and must therefore
live through the torments of not understanding. And what do
these torments mean? They mean the ever increasing prevalence
of anxiety in the soul of losing the connection with the
creative spiritual powers and finally not being able to join
those spiritual powers to whom we owe our existence, and
instead find ourselves with alien powers where the human origin
can be lost.
To
enter esoteric life, my dear friends, does not imply a mere
learning process, nor a mere theory; rather it means to accept
a most serious aspect of life. And whoever immerses in esoteric
life does not listen to a mere teaching or a theory, but
immerses himself in aspects of real life. The life which our
senses are aware of is only the outer manifestation; behind it
at all times is the spiritual world. We do not enter it if we
close our ears to what lies in these words. If we enter deeply,
meditatively into such words, then our thinking, our feeling
and our willing will be able to understand and to grasp the
spirit in which we must penetrate as human beings.
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