Man As A Picture of The Living Spirit
A Lecture By
Rudolf Steiner
London, 2nd September, 1923
GA 228
Lecture given in London, 2nd September, 1923 on the day of the
foundation of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain.
Translated from a shorthand report unrevised by the Lecturer.
The original text is included in the volume of the Complete
Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner entitled:
Initiationwissenschaft und Sternenerkenntnis. (Bibl. No. 228.)
The volume contains the texts of eight lectures given by Rudolf
Steiner in different places between 27th July and 16th September, 1923.
This English edition of the following lecture is published by
permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach,
Switzerland.
Copyright © 1972
This e.Text edition is provided with the cooperation of:
The Rudolf Steiner Press
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MAN AS A PICTURE
of the
LIVING SPIRIT
Translated by George Adams
The following lecture was given by Rudolf Steiner to an audience
familiar with the general background of his anthroposophical
teachings. He constantly emphasized the distinction between his
written works and reports of lectures which were given as oral
communications and were not originally intended for print. It should
also be remembered that certain premises were taken for granted when
the words were spoken. These premises, Rudolf Steiner writes
in his autobiography, include at the very least the anthroposophical
knowledge of Man and of the Cosmos in its spiritual essence; also of
what may be called anthroposophical history, told as an
outcome of research into the spiritual world.
My Dear Friends,
After the excellent conference at Ilkley and summer school at
Penmaenmawr, it gives me heartfelt pleasure to be able now to give
this lecture at our London centre.
I may remind you first of what I said in former lectures here
(see Note 1).
Man, in accomplishing his work from day to day and from year to year, works
in the physical body which is given to him upon Earth, and through
which he is physically linked with all earthly life. So long as we
contemplate what surrounds us here in this physical existence upon
Earth, including that which we ourselves contribute to if, we shall of
course fix our attention mainly on the times we spend in waking life.
Yet as I said in those earlier lectures, that which goes on for man
during the times when he is fast asleep is still more important for
his whole existence even for what he is and does in earthly life.
When we look back in memory from any given point in our life, we
always exclude the times we spent asleep; we join the things we did
and underwent by day and while awake, as though they were to form a
continuous whole. Yet none of this would be possible without the
intervening periods of sleep. Above all, if we want to know the true
being of man, we must pay attention to these periods of sleep. A man
might easily say that he knows nothing of what goes on during sleep.
To ordinary consciousness this may seem true, but in reality it is not
so. For if we had to look back into a life uninterrupted by sleep, we
should be mere automata. True, we should still be spiritual beings,
but we should be automata.
Even more important than the daily periods of sleep throughout our
life are the times we spent in sleep as very little children. We
retain the good effects of those early periods of sleep all through
our life; in a sense, we only supplement them by what accrues to us
spiritually night by night during the rest of life. If we came into
the world as little children wide-awake and never slept, we should,
once more, be automate; my, in this automatic state we should be
unable to do anything consciously at all. We should not even recognize
what came about through us, as our own concern.
We may believe we have no memory at all of what transpires during
sleep, but even that is not quite true. When we look back in memory,
seeing the things we experienced while awake and omitting the periods
of sleep, the fact is that we see a void, a nothing, in the intervals
of time when we were sleeping. It is as though you were looking at a
white wall where at one place the white paint was lacking; you see a
black circle. Or there might be a hole with no light behind it; you
see the empty hole inasmuch as you see darkness. So do you see the
darkness when you look back on your own life. The times you spent
asleep appear as darkness in the midst of life. And in reality it is to
these darknesses of life that you say I. If you did not see the
darknesses you would have no consciousness of I. You owe the
ability to say I to yourself, not to the fact that you were
active every day from morning until night, but to the fact that you were
also sleeping. The Ego as we know it in this earthly life is, to begin
with, darkness of life, emptiness, even non-existence. If we consider our
life truly, we shall not say that we owe our consciousness of self to the
day but rather that we owe it to the night. This is the truth. It is
the night which males us real human being and no mere automata.
Indeed if we look back into earlier epochs of human evolution upon
Earth, though he was no mere automaton even then, for he already had
certain differences between his waking and sleeping states, yet
inasmuch as he was more or less aware of his sleeping states even in
ordinary waking life, man's earthly life and action was far more
automatic than it is today.
Truth is, we never bring our real and inmost Ego with us from the
spiritual world into the physical and earthly; we leave it in the
spiritual world. Before we came down into earthly life it was in the
spiritual world, and it is there again between our falling asleep and
our awakening. It stays there always, and if by day in the present
form of human consciousness we call ourselves an I, this
word is but an indication of something which is not here in the physical
world at all; it only has its picture in this world.
We do not see ourselves aright if we say: Here am I, this robust and
real man, standing upon Earth; here am I with my inmost being. We
only see ourselves aright if we say: Our true being is in the
spiritual world, and what is here of us on Earth is but a picture an
image of our true being. It is entirely true if we regard what is here
on Earth, not as the real man himself, but as the picture of the real
man.
I will now show how you can see this picture-character of man more
clearly. Let us imagine ourselves asleep. The Ego is away from the
physical and etheric body; the astral body too is away. Now it is the
Ego which works in the blood of man and in his movements. In sleep the
movements cease, inasmuch as the Ego is away; the blood however goes
on working, and yet the Ego is not there. We need only think of the
physical body and we must ask ourselves: What happens to it while we
are asleep? Something must still be living and working in the blood,
even as the Ego lives and works in it by day. Likewise the astral
body, living as it does in the whole breathing process, leaves it by
night, and yet the breathing goes on. Here again, something must be
there within the breathing process, working in it even as the astral
body does in waking life.
Thus every time we go to sleep, with our astral body we forsake those
inner organs which are the organs of respiration, and with our Ego we
forsake the pulsating forces of our blood. What then becomes of them
by night? The answer is that while the man lies asleep in bed, Beings
of the adjoining Hierarchy enter into the pulsating forces of the
blood from which his Ego has departed. Angels, Archangels
and Archai are then indwelling the self-same organs in which the
human Ego dwells in waking life by day. Moreover in the breathing organs
which we have forsaken inasmuch as the astral body is outside by night,
Beings of the next higher Hierarchy Exusiai, Dynamis and
Kyriotetes are living then.
Thus when we go to sleep at night, setting forth with our Ego and
astral body, leaving behind the body of our waking life, Angels,
Archangels and higher spiritual Beings enter into us and animate our
organs while we are outside until we re-awaken. And what is more,
as to our ether-body, even in our day-waking life we are not able to
fulfill what is needed there. The Beings of the highest Hierarchy
Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones have to indwell
this ether-body even while we are awake; they remain there always.
Lastly the physical body; if we ourselves had to achieve all the great
and wonderful processes taking place there, we should not merely do it
very badly; we could not set about it at all. Here we are utterly
helpless. What outer anatomy ascribes to the physical body could not
even move a single atom of it. Powers of quite another order are
required here, namely none other than those that have been known since
primeval times as the supreme Trinity the Powers of the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit. They the essential Trinity
indwell the physical body of man.
Therefore in truth, throughout our earthly life our physical body is
not our own. If it depended on us, it could not go on at all. It is,
as was said of old, the true Temple of the Godhead of the Divine
threefold Being. Likewise our ether-body is the dwelling-place of the
Hierarchy of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. They have to help in
caring for the organs which are assigned to the etheric body. As to
those physical and etheric organs on the other hand which are deserted
every night by the astral body, they are provided for by the second
Hierarchy Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai. Lastly, the organs
forsaken during sleep by the human Ego have to be cared for in the
night by Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. There is a constant activity
within the human being, proceeding not only from man himself. Only in
waking life he lives in this bodily nature, so to speak, as a
subtenant. For at the same time it is the Temple and the
dwelling-place of spiritual Beings the Beings of the Hierarchies.
Bearing all this in mind, we only see this outer form of man aright if
we admit: It is a picture a picture of the working-together of all
the Hierarchies. They are within it. Look at this human head in all
the detail of its form; look at the rest of the body in its human
form. I do not look at it truly if I describe it as a reality as a
real being, thus or thus. I only look at it truly if I say: It is a
picture of an invisible, super-sensible working of all the Hierarchies
together. Only when things are seen in this way can one speak truly
and in detail of what is commonly propounded in a rather abstract
manner. The physical world is not the true reality, so it is said; it
is a maya the true reality is behind it. Yet such a statement does
not help us much. It is too general, as if one were to say: Flowers
are growing in the meadow. Just as this statement will only be of use
if you know what kind of flowers, so too the knowledge of the higher
world can only be applied in practice if one is able to point out in
detail how it is working in the outer picture, maya, or reflection,
which is its physical, sense-perceptible manifestation.
Man therefore, seen in his totality, both in his earthly life by day
and in his earthly life by night, is related not only to his physical
and visible environment on Earth but to a world of higher spiritual
being. Through all the kingdoms of Nature upon Earth-mineral, plant,
animal kingdom there works what we may call a lower spiritual realm.
So too throughout the world of stars there works a higher spiritual
realm a realm which also influences man. Looked at in his totality,
man is related through his physical existence to plants and animals,
to water and to air; so too, he is related spiritually to the world of
stars. The latter too is but a picture, a revelation of the underlying
spiritual reality. It is the Beings of the Hierarchies who are really
there. When he looks up to the stars, man in reality is looking up to
the spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies. That which is raying down
upon him is but a kind of symbolic light which they send to him of
their presence, so that here too, even in physical life, he may have
some indication of the living Spirit which in reality fills the entire
Universe.
Just as on Earth we may long to know this mountain or that river, this
animal or yonder plant, so should we feel a longing to get to know the
starry world in its true being. In its true being it is spiritual. In
Penmaenmawr I tried to tell a little of the real spiritual nature of
the Moon, such as it shines upon us from the cosmic spaces in the
present phase of earthy evolution. When we look up to the Moon, we
never really see the Moon itself; we see at most a scanty indication
of it where the illuminated crescent is continued. What we are seeing
is the reflected sunlight, not the Moon itself. So altogether, only
the cosmic forces thrown back or reflected by the Moon reach us upon
Earth, never what lives within the Moon itself. That it reflects the
Sun's light to the Earth is but a part, nay, the smallest part of what
pertains to the Moon. All physical and spiritual impulses that reach
it from the great Universe, the Moon reflects to us like a mirror. And
as we never see through to the other side of a mirror, so do we never
see the interior of the Moon, where, in effect, there lives a
spiritual population among whom are very high guiding Beings. These
guiding Powers, with the rest of the Lunar population, were once upon
a time on Earth, whence they withdrew to the Moon more than 15,000
years ago. Before that time the Moon looked even physically different.
It did not merely reflects the sunlight to the Earth but mingled in
the sunlight something of its own essence. This is however not the
point which interests us now. What does concern us at this moment is
the fact that in the present epoch the Moon is there like a fortress
in the Universe a cosmic fortress within which lives a population
which fulfilled its human destinies more than 15,000 years ago, and,
with the spiritual guides of humanity, withdrew thereafter to the
Moon. For there were once upon a time on Earth very advanced Beings
Beings who did not put on physical human bodies as do the men of
today. They lived rather in etheric bodies, yet for the men who lived
on Earth at that time they were the great leaders and educators.
It was these mighty teachers and educators who brought to mankind,
long, long ago, the primeval wisdom the original and sublime
wisdom-teachings of mankind, whereof the Vedas, the Vendanta, are but
a distant echo. They now are living in the Moon and only radiating
spiritually to the Earth what issues from the Universe outside the
Moon.
Something of the erstwhile Moon-forces has indeed remained behind on
Earth, namely the physical forces of reproduction in man and animal;
but that is all. Only the most external and physical element remained
behind when at a certain time of old Atlantis the great teachers of
mankind migrated to the Moon, which had itself withdrawn from the
Earth long before.
Therefore when we look upward to the Moon we only see it truly if we
realize that there are lofty spiritual Beings there Beings who were
once upon a time on Earth and who now make it their task to ray down
to Earth not what they bear within themselves, but the forces, both
physical and spiritual, which they reflect and thus transmit from the
great Universe. Whoever seeks Initiation-wisdom in present time, must
among other things seek to receive into this Initiation-wisdom what
the Beings of the Moon with their sublime spiritual forces have to
tell.
Now this is only one of the cities in the great Universe
one colony, one settlement among many. Others are no less important,
notably those belonging to our planetary system. And as concerns
ourselves as concerns humanity on Earth the other pole, the
opposite extreme to the Moon, is the population of Saturn.
The Saturn population too, as you may gather from my
Occult Science,
was once united with the Earth, yet in a very different way from the
population of the Moon. The Saturn-beings are connected with the
earthly life in quite another way. They reflect nothing from cosmic
space. Even the physical sunlight is only just reflected on to Earth
by Saturn. Saturn like a lonely recluse wanders slowly round the Sun,
shedding very little light. What outer Astronomy can tell us about
Saturn is but a very small portion of the truth. The significance of
Saturn for humanity on Earth is made manifest, if only in a picture,
every night when man is sleeping, and it is realized more fully
between death and new birth when man is going through the spiritual
world and therefore too through the world of stars as I
explained in a lecture here not long ago
(see Note 1).
True, in the present phase of evolution man does not meet Saturn
directly; yet by a roundabout way which we need not go into now
he does come into contact with the Saturn-beings. Within Saturn in
effect, Beings of high perfection, very sublime Beings live Beings
who are in near relation to Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Seraphim,
Cherubim and Thrones are as it were the Beings nearest to them
nearest among the Hierarchies.
The sublime Beings, whom we may call the Saturn population, do not ray
down to Earth or give to men from Saturn anything that can be found in
the external, physical world. But they preserve the cosmic memory, the
cosmic record. All facts and all events, both physical and spiritual,
which the planetary system has undergone, all that the Beings within
our planetary system have ever experienced the Saturn-beings
faithfully preserve it in memory. In recollection they are forever
looking back on the entire life of the planetary system. Even as we
look back in memory upon the limited range of our earthly life, so do
the Saturn-beings in their collective activity cherish the
cosmic memory of what the planetary system as a whole and all the
beings in it have undergone.
For man himself, the spiritual forces living in this cosmic memory are
present, inasmuch as he comes into relation with the Saturn-beings
between death and a new birth, and also more in picture-form
every night. Thereby the spiritual forces proceeding from the
Saturn-beings forces in which the deepest inner life of the
planetary system is contained are also working within man. Even as
memory is our own deepest inner life on Earth, so too what lives in
Saturn represents the innermost and deepest cosmic I of the whole
planetary system.
Inasmuch as these influences are also there in man, many things are
going on in human life, of the significance of which we are for the
most part quite unconscious which none the less play the greatest
imaginable part in our lives. What we are conscious of, is after all
only a very small portion of our life.
Say for example there was an incisive moment, an all-important event
in your life. You met another human being with whom you then went on
through life together; or it was some other event, essential to your
future life. If you look back in time from this event, you will be
struck by the fact that something like a plan was leading you towards
it, beginning long before. Something that happened, say, between your
thirtieth and fiftieth year follow it backward through your life
and you will very likely find: I entered on the path leading to this
event when I was ten or twelve years old; all that then followed was
leading up to it, so that I landed there.
Elderly people, looking back contemplatively upon their life, will
find that it all works out. They will be able to say: There was a
subconscious thread running through it all. Unconscious forces were
impelling me to the decisive events of my life. These are the Saturn
forces forces implanted in us through our relation, such as has
been indicated, to the inner population of Saturn.
While therefore, of the Moon, only the physical forces of reproduction
are there on Earth (for these are Lunar forces, once again, which
remained at the Moon's departure), the very highest forces, namely the
cosmic moral forces, are on Earth through Saturn. The source of cosmic
equity, the great restorer of the balance for all that happens
upon Earth, is Saturn. And if the Moon-forces, now upon Earth, have to do
only with heredity heredity through father, mother and so on the
Saturn forces enter into human life through all that lives in Karma,
from incarnation to incarnation. In this respect the other planets are
intermediate between the two they mediate between the physical upon
the one hand and the highest ethical upon the other.
Jupiter, Mars and so on are there between Moon and Saturn.
They in their several ways mediate what Moon and Saturn at the uttermost
extremes bring into human life the Moon inasmuch as its spiritual
Beings have withdrawn, leaving behind with the earthly realm only the
physical aspect, the physical force of propagation; and Saturn
inasmuch as it represents the moral justice of the Universe in its
highest aspect. These two are working together in that the other
planets are there between than, waving the one into the other. Karma
through Saturn, physical heredity through the Moon: these in their
interrelation show how man upon his way from earthly life to earthly
life is connected with the Earth itself and with the great Universe
beyond the Earth.
As you will readily understand, my dear Friends, the science of today,
fixing attention upon the earthly life alone, can only tell about a
very little part of man. It tells a lot about the forces of heredity,
yet even here it fails to see that these are Lunar forces left behind
on Earth. It fails to relate them to the cosmic activities,
transcending the mere earthly life, to which they properly belong. And
it knows nothing at all about the destiny of Karma with which this
earthly life is infused. Yet in reality, even as physical man is
pulsated through and through by the living blood, so are the Beings
bearing within them the vast memory of the planetary system with all
its cosmic happenings, pulsating through man's Karma upon Earth.
Looking into our own inner life, we must admit: We are true human
beings only inasmuch as we have memory. Looking out into the planetary
system with all its physical and spiritual happenings, and reaching
upward to Initiation-science, we must equally admit: This planetary
system would be void of inner life were it not for the inhabitants of
Saturn preserving through the ages the memory, the cosmic past
thereof, and also pouring ever down into mankind the forces springing
from this preservation of the cosmic past, whereby all human beings
are immersed in a living spiritual-moral nexus of causes and effects
leading from earthly life to earthly life.
In earthly life, as to his conscious action, man is confined in his
relation to other men within narrow limits. But if he takes into
account what he experiences between death and new birth, there his
relation to other human beings, who like himself will be discarnate,
living no longer in physical bodies, reaches far wider circles. True,
between death and re-birth he is at one time more in the neighbourhood
of the Lunar influences and at another more in the neighbourhood of
those of Saturn, Mars and so on. Yet through the cosmic spaces the one
kind of planetary force interpenetrates the other. As upon Earth we
work from man to man across the narrow confines of terrestrial space,
so between death and new birth there is a working from planet to
planet. The Universe then becomes the scene of man's activity and of
the mutual relations between men. There between death and new birth,
maybe the one departed soul is in the realm of Venus while the other
is in Jupiter's domain; yet the interactions between them are far more
intimate and tender than is possible within the narrow confines of
earthly life. And even as the cosmic distances are called into play,
to be the scene of action of the relations between human souls between
death and new birth, so too the Beings of the Hierarchies are there,
working throughout the cosmic spaces. We have to tell not only of the
working of the several kinds of Beings say, the inhabitants of
Venus, or of Mars. We have to tell of the relations between the
populations of Mars and Venus a never-ending interaction, a
constant to and fro of spiritual forces between the population of Mars
and that of Venus amid the Universe.
This which goes on in the Universe between the populations of Mars
and Venus this everliving interplay in the spiritual Cosmos,
the deeds of Mars and Venus fertilizing one another all this again
has its relation to man. Even as the Saturn-memory is related to human Karma,
and the physical Lunar forces, left behind on Earth, to the external
force of reproduction, so is the hidden spiritual interaction between
Mars and Venus related to what appears in earthly life as human
speech. For we could never speak by virtue of physical forces alone.
It is the eternal being of man, going on from earthly life to earthly
life, living in effect between death and new birth, which radiates
into this outer world the gift of speech. Whilst as a spiritual being
we are on our way from death to a new birth, we come into the sphere
of action of the mutually fertilizing life which goes on between Mars
and Venus between the spiritual populations of Mars and Venus.
Their spiritual forces, raying to and fro, co-operating, enter also
into us ourselves upon our way from death to a new birth. This too is
reproduced on Earth as in a physical picture, out of the innermost
being of man, entering into the organs of speech and song. Never
should we be able to speak through these organs if they were not
physically kindled by the forces we receive into the depths of our
being between death and new birth forces derived from what is ever
streaming to and fro in the Cosmos between Mars and Venus.
Thus in our daily life and action we are under the influence of the
same spiritual forces, to the outward signs of which we look up with
awe and wonder when we look out into the starry heavens. He alone is
able to look up with inner truth who knows that in the stars, raying
down to us from cosmic space, are to be seen the signs and characters
of the great cosmic writing. For they are but the written signs of the
great Universe of the eternal, all-embracing spiritual life and
process which also lives within us and of which we, once more, are but
the image.
Long, long ago, in an instinctive atavistic clairvoyance, mankind had
vision and perception of these things. The vision faded. If he had
kept it, man could never have grown free. The ancient vision was
therefore darkened. In compensation, the Mystery of Golgotha came into
earthly life. A sublime Being from the population of the Sun came to
Earth. He could not, it is true, bring to mankind all at once a
consciousness of what is going on in yonder world of stars, but He
brought with Him the forces whereby this consciousness can gradually
be achieved.
Therefore it happened that to begin with, while the Mystery of
Golgotha was taking place, a Gnostic wisdom was still there, inherited
from olden time, through which the Mystery was understood This wisdom
too then faded out; during the fourth century after Christ it vanished
altogether. Yet the spiritual force which had come to Earth through
Christ remained. Man can now call this force to life within him, if he
once opens his eyes to the reality of spiritual worlds, as he can do
through the communications of modern spiritual Science.
How much is yet to come to the humanity of modern time through looking
thus once more to spiritual worlds! It is a striking fact: yonder in
Asia, in more than one Asiatic, Oriental country, are living those who
still preserve some relic of the old instinctive wisdom. They are the
educated people, the true scholars, in the Oriental sense. No doubt
this remnant of an ancient wisdom no longer belongs, in the best sense
of the word, to our time; it needs to be replaced by a more conscious
wisdom. And yet these bearers of an ancient and instinctive wisdom
look down with not a little contempt upon the people of Europe and
America. They are persuaded that their ancient Oriental wisdom even in
its decadence, even the remaining rags and tatters of it, are
preferable to the kind of knowledge of which Western civilization is
so inordinately proud. Hence it is interesting to see a book recently
published by a Cingalese, an Indian of Ceylon, The Culture of Souls
among the Western Nations, wherein the author says to the Europeans,
in effect: Since the Middle Ages your knowledge of the Christ has died
out. No longer have you any real knowledge of the Christ, for he alone
who can look up into the spiritual world can have real knowledge of
the Christ. Hence you must first let teachers come to you from India,
from Asia, to teach you Christianity again. You can actually read it
in this book. A Cingalese Indian says to the Europeans: Teachers must
come to you from Asia; they will be able to tell you what Christ
really is. Your European teachers no longer know it. Since the decline
of the Middle Ages you have lost your knowledge of the Christ.
Yet in reality it is for Europeans and Americans themselves once more
to summon courage to look into the spiritual worlds from which the
knowledge of the Christ, the wisdom of the Christ can be regained.
Christ is the Being who came down from spiritual worlds into the
earthly life. Therefore in His true inwardness He can only be
understood in the light of the Spirit.
Upon this way it is also necessary for man to learn to look upon
himself as a picture an image of the spiritual Beings, spiritual
realities and activities, on Earth. And he can do so best of all by
permeating himself with such ideas and perceptions as I presented to
you at the beginning of this lecture. Amid his conscious experiences
in the stream of time he looks into the emptiness. He becomes
conscious that his true Ego never descends from the spiritual world;
that in the physical world he is but a picture. The real I is not
here in the physical world at all. He sees, as it were, a hole in time
a seeming darkness and it is to this that he says I.
Man should therefore become aware of the deep significance of this
fact. When he looks back and remembers his past life, he must admit: I
see in memory the experiences I underwent from day to day, but there
is ever and again a hole, a gap of darkness. It is this darkness which
in my ordinary consciousness I call I. But I must now become
conscious of something more than this.
I have summed up this something more in a few words, which
as a kind of meditation reaching out to the true I
may be inscribed in the soul of every human being of our time.
Ever repeatedly we may call to life in us these words of meditation,
which I will write as follows:
Ich schaue in die Finsternis:
In ihr ersteht Licht
Lebendes Licht.
Wer ist dies Licht in der Finsternis?
Ich bin es selbst in meiner Wirklichkeit!
Diese Wirklichkeit des Ich
Tritt nicht ein in mein Erdendasein.
Ich bin nur Bild davon.
Ich werde es aber wieder finden,
Wenn ich,
Guten Willens fur den Geist,
Durch des Todes Pforte gegangen.
I gaze into the Darkness.
In it there arises Light
Living Light!
Who is this Light in the Darkness?
It is I myself in my reality.
This reality of the I
Does not enter into my earthly life.
I am but a picture of it.
But I shall find it again
When with good will for the Spirit
I shall have passed through the Gate of Death.
Entering ever and again into a meditative saying of this kind, we can
confront the Darkness. We realize that here on Earth we are only a
picture of our true Being that our true Being never comes down into
the earthly life. Yet in the midst of the Darkness, through our good
will towards the Spirit, a Light can dawn upon us, of which we may in
truth confess: This Light am I myself in my reality.
- Note 1:
- See
Man's Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds.
Six lectures given in England during 1922.