LECTURE 2.
Cassel, 10th
May, 1914.
Yesterday
we spoke of the relation of the spiritual world to the physical world,
as expressed by the actual facts which, in a sense work from one world
into the other, in so far as the relation between them means something
to life in the physical world, in so far as the filling of the soul
with feelings and emotions gained through spiritual knowledge is
essential and of significance for human life. Something of a general
nature must now be added. Here in the physical world we acquire our
ideas through our sense perceptions, through the feelings and emotions
experienced when events of physical life touch us. Our conscious life
in the physical world arises from all these things, and when we observe
that life in the physical world, it seems to the vision of the
spiritual investigator that in the main, the more this consciousness
serves the physical plane the less are its chances of spiritual
experiences in the spiritual world ever surrounding us. We may say: the
more a man limits himself to his life of ideas and feelings, allowing
these to be aroused by the physical plane alone, the less inner
strength and power he possesses for gaining a real relationship with
the spiritual world. Of course at first a person does not notice that
reliance on merely physical ideas is a hindrance to the gaining of a
relationship with the spiritual world; but he is compelled to notice it
when he has passed through the gates of death; for if during earth-life
a man has gained no conceptions beyond the excitements and requirements
of the physical plane, his soul is too weak to adapt itself to the
experiences of the spiritual world. This can easily be seen when we
remember that all that excites us on the physical plane really storms
in upon us and so approaches us that we allow ourselves to be
captivated by it. Because we allow ourselves to be thus captivated,
because we more or less yield ourselves to its influence, we develop
too little power in our souls for the spiritual world to mean more to
us than a weak dreamy world in which we can neither stir nor move. In
order to be able to move freely in that world, something else is
needed: viz., that the soul should be inwardly alive, that it should
have evolved within itself, by its own efforts, forces to which it had
not been incited externally and in which it does not merely remain
passive. Out of the depths of our souls such conceptions, such feelings
must arise without any incitement from the external world, —
however beautiful we may consider that world to be. I may say:
Conceptions and feelings arising freely in the soul can alone make it
strong enough to establish its own relationship with the spiritual
world — a relationship which it needs.
In order
that you may properly understand this, I should like to refer to
something which is correct though a seeming paradox. Think of a person
yielding entirely to the allurements of the physical plane. He thinks
and feels only that which is aroused by the physical plane. Such a
person is weak in the spiritual world; when he enters the spiritual
world after death he can through his own powers only look upon the
richness of spiritual life around him, he cannot bring the beings near
to him, though he greatly needs them. Spiritual intercourse with them
eludes him. Not that the spiritual world is absent, but he cannot find
the clues which would bring him into direct relationship with it.
Speaking paradoxically, a person who only fantastically arouses ideas
and feelings in his soul which, though they are not aroused from
outside, yet do not rise above the sense world — this person, who
thinks out ideas in a fanciful way thereby produces forces in his soul,
which give a free ascending development, and he in a certain sense,
finds life in the spiritual world easier than one who will not think at
all about spiritual things. It is very significant that we have to
grant that visionaries who form conceptions that have nothing to do
with outer sense realities, and are only fanciful; nevertheless stand
firmer in the spiritual world than those who will not think about it at
all. Naturally such fantastic ideas, though they help a man to stand
firmly in the spiritual world, only lead him to strange spiritual
conditions and relations such as a man would experience in the physical
world if his senses were not functioning properly. All the grotesque,
lower beings, useless for spiritual life, would come to the person who
formed such fantastic concepts; while all that is progressive and
helpful in spirit-life would appear before his soul in distorted shape,
if it had only been prepared for spirit life by fantastic conceptions.
In olden times, before the Mystery of Golgotha took its place in human
evolution, conditions were such that human beings could only have
conceptions aroused in them from the physical plane; even those ideas
which appeared as clairvoyant conceptions were aroused in the physical
body. This is the curious part of humanity's ancient clairvoyance; this
clairvoyance, these symbolic plastic ideas, although wholly relating to
the spiritual world, were aroused through the influences of the
physical plane. So that if people had only devoted themselves to the
kind of conceptions which reached the level of ancient clairvoyance,
they would be in the position of human beings, who look into the
spiritual world by means of fantastic conceptions. In order that
humanity might have a sound healthy insight into the spiritual world
and develop the right relations with it, the various founders of
religions appeared in antiquity, Laotze, Zarathustra, Krishna, Buddha,
etc. these were very great benefactors of humanity. They appeared to
their age and to their peoples, speaking to them of these secrets of
the spiritual worlds, and so speaking of these secrets that the manner
of their speaking was inspired by immediate impulses which came to them
as Initiates and founders of religion out of the spiritual world
itself. Through their mighty authority they influenced the people to
whom they had a spiritual mission. Thus the people did not receive into
their souls merely what came to them and stirred them on the physical
plane, but also what was sent as a message from the spiritual worlds.
These ancient peoples had the capacity of sensing and feeling when such
a founder of religion appeared to them — or when one of his
successors and disciples appeared; they perceived the breath of
spiritual life which streamed through the soul of such a founder,
flowing down from spiritual heights into the evolution of the people
and the epoch. Thus to the people of antiquity were given thoughts and
feelings which were put into their souls by the founders of religion,
but which had to be re-awakened by each human being himself (because
each was under the influence of the teacher's authority), each had to
bring them to active life in his own soul. In this way arose healthy
conditions and relationships for human beings in the spiritual worlds,
and also the possibility of knowing where they were after they had
passed through the gates of death; of possessing the forces which
cannot be found in the external physical world, but must be awakened in
the soul of the individual himself; of possessing those forces which
enable a man to live in the spiritual world, just as by his physical
forces he is able to live in the physical world. Since the Mystery of
Golgotha many changes have taken place for humanity in this respect.
This is precisely the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha; it
closes the old epoch of human evolution and begins the new. We can say
the old evolution had to be built on authority, as we have just
described; on the authority of the religion-founders. But because these
souls (our own souls) have in earlier incarnations been through the
school of authority, they have become responsible or have come of age
let us say; so that now, in the incarnations which have run their
course since the Mystery of Golgotha, those impulses which formerly had
to be received on authority are now received inwardly. Not only are
conceptions now formed inwardly but also our impulses come from within.
This is what St. Paul's words mean: ‘Not I, but Christ in
me’; that is the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. The
Christ-Impulse has flowed into the spiritual substance of the earth,
and lives in each soul. Souls must learn to understand this
Christ-Impulse, which is to be found in the human soul. Humanity has
come ‘of age.’ Impulses which formerly had to come from
without, must now spring up within. For this reason Christ came to
earth. Greater and greater must our understanding of this Christ
become. What we gather from our anthroposophical knowledge, what we try
to understand about the evolution of the world and of humanity, about
the higher worlds and the Hierarchies in those worlds, really brings us
at the last to understand more and more the Christ-Impulse which is
within us, but which may also remain hidden within us, as do many other
things which we do not attempt to understand or to experience. In a
certain respect Spiritual Science is a means of attaining what must be
reached — of really finding in our souls that which is the Light
of Life, the Inner Warmth of life; that Light and Warmth which will
lead humanity to its spiritual home, and which is revealed in the soul.
In future evolution, human souls will gradually realize that it is
simply an abstract idea to speak of ‘the God within,’ if
the soul is too easy-going to concern itself with the understanding of
the teachings of Spiritual Science. How do we to-day regard the
spiritual world in its reality? All that has been written about
Spiritual Science, about Saturn, Sun, and Moon, the evolutionary epochs
of earth, about the heavenly Hierarchies and all that the spiritual
investigator knows and says about the spiritual world, all this he
ultimately realizes is a gift to him through the Christ-Impulse which
has entered earth evolution. He realizes this Christ-Impulse in such a
way that he sees the truth of Christ's words, ‘I am with you
always, even to the end of the earth-period.’ Not only at the
beginning of our epoch did Christ say this; if we noisy open our souls
to Him He is saying it now, here, and in our Spiritual Science, which
we must try to spread all over the world. Therefore it is so very
necessary that present-day souls should understand that Spiritual
Science is the suitable way and the right path into the spiritual
worlds for our time. Humanity having come ‘of age’ must
consciously develop thoughts and feelings, must seek step by step, of
its own powers and not by external authority, to enter the spiritual
worlds. Christ has come into the world that humanity may be able to do
this. Even though many assert to-day that Spiritual Science must be
believed because it is taught by the spiritual investigator —
this is not true. If anyone thinks he must believe what Spiritual
Science says, without understanding it by the efforts of his own
soul-faculties, these only shows that he has not laid aside the
prejudices of his materialistic thinking. Anyone who, with a truly open
mind, approaches the most daring teachings of Anthroposophy can
understand and grasp them. Souls have not passed through their former
incarnations in vain; they can find within their souls the inward
spiritual language wherewith to understand what the spiritual
investigators say. Of course if these souls allow their minds to become
clouded, as they are to-day, not by a true Natural Science but by a
mistaken outlook on nature, if they allow mist upon mist to accumulate
before their spiritual eyes and then say: ‘We do not understand
Anthroposophy, we must only believe its statements,’ this does
not mean that Anthroposophy cannot really be understood, for it happens
that in such a case people create their own hindrances to it. We live
in an age when most people never notice how many hindrances there are
and how these hindrances can block their path; but we also are living
in a century which unconsciously, from its as yet chaotic soul-force,
rises in revolt against these hindrances, when longings are arising in
the souls of men for an understanding of the spiritual worlds.
Truly of
tremendous importance is the work accomplished by Natural Science
during the last few centuries, and our friends know how often I
emphasize the great significance of the triumphs of Natural Science,
and how I compare the present and future work of Anthroposophy with
what Natural Science has discovered, especially during the nineteenth
century; but we must bear in mind that this Natural Science has become
much more dogmatic than the old religions. To-day, people — and
mostly those who take up Natural Science as amateurs — stick to
dogmas more rigidly and seriously than was the case with the old
religious dogmas. Truly the Copernican views represented a great swing
of the pendulum; they had to come, they were a step towards the truth,
as I have often said; but, they too are in many respects one-sided and
must be completed by a spiritual conception of the Universe. If they
are held as dogmatically as they are being expressed if it is said that
they are absolutely true, they will then force concepts into men's
souls which will prevent them from understanding and grasping Spiritual
Science. We can even now see the effects of these dogmatic assertions.
In our present age of compulsory education children are taught from
their earliest years to imagine the sun with the earth revolving around
it, also the planets, just as one forms an imagination, if one has in
front of one a model. But no one has any right to picture it thus, as
if these things were absolute certainties; as though one were able to
place a chair in Cosmic space, set oneself down, and from it watch the
movements of Sun, earth, and planets as one looks at a model which one
sets up in the schoolroom. In these children's souls a consciousness is
awakened that the facts really are such. People are amazed when we
speak of these matters. Other things are also experienced today, which
are false when looked at in another light. During the last few days an
apparently very aspiring man sent me a pamphlet. Nothing shall be said
here as to whether its contents were right or wrong, but this pamphlet
is one proof among many others, of the way in which the human soul
revolts against the dogmatism of the Natural Science of the last
century; for this writer tries to prove mathematically that the earth
is flat, not round. Of course this assertion seems very absurd in our
age, and you will naturally say: ‘But a man can easily sail right
round the world, therefore the man who says the earth is flat and not
round must be a fool.’ The man who wrote the pamphlet knew this
however. We need not agree with him, but he knew this and many another
valid objections, I assure you. By all this I am only trying to show
that in our day souls are already beginning to rise in revolt against
all the dogmatic Natural Science stuff which has been piled up in their
souls from earliest childhood and which hinders them from exercising
the free, judgment which is necessary for the recognition of
anthroposophical truths. When humanity has set itself free from dogma,
then — yes then, the time will come when we can speak of
spiritual scientific knowledge and it will be said; I see that it could
not be otherwise. You see, much that is paradoxical must be said now in
speaking of the relation of Spiritual Science to our age. Spiritual
Science, however, has gradually to flow into human souls, so that they
may become ever greater and greater factors in the spiritual
civilization of humanity as it progresses into the future.
Anthroposophy itself will be able to strengthen them, so that these
souls will be enabled to find their links with the spiritual world.
Spiritual Science will be welcomed by human beings, will be gradually
received by the youngest and they will know: ‘Around me are not
only mountains, rivers, clouds, stars, sun, moon, planets, animals and
minerals, but also spiritual beings, beings of the higher Hierarchies,
and spiritual events, even -as we have around us physical events and
processes. I have relationship with both spiritual and physical
processes.’
Let me
picture a few things which will gradually be more understood by human
souls when Spiritual Science becomes a living factor in the soul of
man.
In speaking
of these things we must start with concrete facts of spiritual
research, for they best show man's relation to the spiritual world.
I know a
man who, in his twenty-third or twenty-fourth year, had a kind of
vision. He wrote about this vision in a clumsy way, we may even say
stupidly. The vision was this: He placed into a sort of scene, very
awkwardly, the more important spirits of the German intellectual period
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; he did not know why he
arranged it so-everything that Goethe, Lessing, Schiller, Herder were
doing — but they were doing it after they had already passed to
the world to which a human enters after death. Thus he had a vision of
these great men living in the spiritual world he saw in his vision what
they were now doing. As Spiritual Scientists we must ask: ‘What
does such a vision signify? What does it show us?’ It shows the
soul as having been greatly permeated by certain influences from the
spiritual world, they press into it and become as it were a great
dream, which expresses itself in such a way that the soul sees in
vision, though indistinctly, its own inner feelings and impressions.
Influences work into the soul from the spiritual world. How do they
work? What is the actual relationship of the human soul to the beings
of the spiritual world, for even the dead are beings in the spiritual
world during the period between death and a new birth? What is this
relationship? Well, we see an object in the physical world if we look
at it — that is the right expression to use; I see the rose, I
see the table. It is, however, not right to speak in the same way when
referring to spiritual beings. It is not correct. The expression is not
quite accurate if we say: I see a being belonging to the ranks of the
Angels or Archangels. The expression is not correct; it must be put in
a different way. As soon as a human being enters the spiritual world
and there has feelings and experiences, instead of his seeing the
beings there, they look at him; he is aware of them. He feels the quiet
soothing influence of their spiritual senses and forces, which
illuminate and resound in his own soul. And we must actually say of the
spiritual world, ‘It is not I who see or perceive, but I know
that I am seen, that I am perceived.’ Can you feel the change of
experience indicated here? When, instead of using the words as in the
physical world: ‘I perceive something,’ the other words
receive a meaning: ‘Placed as I am in the spiritual world, I am
perceived from all sides, that is now my life.’ The
‘Ego’ knows of this ‘being perceived,’ of this
‘being carried away by the experiences which other beings have
with me.’ When this change takes place, you have an inkling of
what a different relation the soul has to its environment when it rises
from the physical into the spiritual world. It will then dawn upon you
that a soul's experience is actually different when it passes from the
physical to the spiritual world. A part of the task given to the dead
is, to turn their glances earthwards, towards those still living; that
they may, with their spiritual forces observe them; that those still
living on earth may be perceived by the souls of the dead. Humanity
will learn through Spiritual Science the meaning of the words:
‘Those who have passed through the gates of death see me; they
send their forces down to me.’ Human beings will thus learn to
speak of the dead as alive, as spiritually living. The one who had the
vision described, realized this relation, though very dimly — for
truly Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Herder are not inactive after death;
in the spiritual they occupy themselves with those who are still on
earth; they watch them, perceive them, stimulate them, according to the
measure of the forces they receive from the higher Hierarchies. Thus
the man who had this vision felt, without being conscious of the
feeling, that he was watched by the spirits who had been sent to aid
the evolution of humanity. This may not have been clear, but it
expressed itself in the vision which he then put into awkward words,
saying that Lessing ‘like a marshal in the spirit world went
first,’ followed by Goethe, Schiller and Herder, leading and
guiding their successors living on earth.
When such a
vision, arising chaotically and as if in a dream, presents itself
clearly to the soul, it may mean something for the dreamer; it may mean
for instance that his consciousness is directly stirred from the
spiritual world so that he can rise to the thought: ‘What I say
and do, I will so say and do that I can endure the dead looking down
upon me.’ It may also happen that a person living on earth, who
is inwardly aroused by a similar vision, feels some task to lie before
him, whether small or great, and his power, courage, and energy will be
strengthened, his conscience will become easier when he has come to the
right conclusion and imagines: ‘The dead are helping me, by
watching me.’
Thus can
the dead help the living? Through anthroposophy, we learn to feel the
responsibility of our actions towards the dead and we may also have the
happy feeling: ‘While I am doing this or that, my dead friend
with his active power is watching me, and his force is added to
mine.’ Not that he gives us the strength — which we must
develop ourselves; he does not give us our faculties, those we must
already possess; but he is a real help as if he were standing just
behind us. He really does stand there. I shall give you a concrete
example: for after we have for so long carried on together this
anthroposophical work, we may bring forward such examples; perhaps they
may sound personal, but they are meant quite impersonally, they set
forth only facts and may on that account be mentioned as examples.
In Munich
we tried for many years to perform the Mystery Plays, and so arrange
the scenes that spiritual force might stream through them into this
side of our movement. I am conscious that at any rate the really
essential things which were done, those which really mattered, were in
complete accord with the spiritual world. Over and over again I went to
my work in those days, when the plays were being prepared for the
stage, with a definite consciousness. At the commencement of our
anthroposophical activity, when we were quite a small society, there
was a person among us who was very enthusiastic about Spiritual
Science; a person who besides working with quiet enthusiasm in all that
could be done in the beginning as regards anthroposophy, introduced
into its whole management a wonderfully beautiful and artistic
understanding and interest. She was a person who united great
kindliness of personal action with great seriousness in her spiritual
views. She was soon taken from us, from the physical plane. Not only
does she remain what is usually called ‘never to be
forgotten’ by us, but she became what a human individual can
become, who, by dint of circumstances, is able only in the spiritual
world to build up what in physical life has been so beautifully
prepared and begun here with many latent powers that she is able to
develop in the spiritual world. Many years can be thus spent and many
years passed in this case, until the possibility was unfolded, as it
were out of a sort of chrysalis condition, for this person to link
herself with what was germinating here in the physical world. As if
through destiny, it happened that she entered upon a free spiritual
life in the spiritual world, a life which had acquired this wonderful
power of working, just when we had to undertake our staging, when Karma
had led us to that point. Of course we had to bring our own powers and
spiritual faculties to the work, but, just as no matter how strong the
spiritual powers at our disposal, we must bring our physical abilities
to bear when we have physical tasks to accomplish, so must certain
forces intervene from the spiritual world, when we have spiritual work
to do. Spiritual help, spiritual support must come to us; it comes also
to those who cannot see into spiritual worlds, although they are
unconscious of it, for we are always being influenced and helped by the
spiritual world. In the case of which I speak, it is a fact that I
always had the consciousness that the individual to whom I refer was
watching over and helping us. We felt this watching as a strengthening
force; as a kindling of warmth in our souls, enabling us to carry out
our task.
Thus must
we describe the way in which the spiritual worlds and the beings living
in them — among whom are our dead — work with us in the
physical world, and how true is the saying: ‘We are perceived by
those in the spiritual world who have developed connections with
us.’
There will
come a time when human life will be enriched through such events as we
have indicated when we shall not merely possess memory pictures in our
minds of our dead friends, but shall feel them as real helpers in our
undertakings. The souls of our dead will then live on in our
consciousness, the consciousness of the human being on earth; although
it may seem that the relationship is cut off by death. We can quite
understand that this is now only possible for the few, and can
understand why. It is because spiritual scientific development is only
at its beginning; it has not yet produced in souls the capacities and
powers that can act freely.
The road to
such conceptions as I have mentioned may be the following: it certainly
will be so for many souls in the future. We may think of the dead,
while at our daily work here on earth. We may awaken in our souls all
the love we had for them, and one day the moment will certainly come,
it need not be in a vision — truly it need not be in a vision
— when an impression comes to us: ‘Yes the one who died is
helping me, as if he were working through my hands and fingers, as if
he kindled my ardor for the work. I feel his force within me.’
This clear feeling that spiritual influences work down from spiritual
worlds is a fruit, a real living fruit, which comes to souls through
Spiritual Science.
Now let us
think of the great enrichment that will come to human lives when they
are not only aware of what is revealed to their senses, but also have
the consciousness impressed upon them (not necessarily in vision) in
all their physical work and undertakings: ‘While you are busy and
at work, this or that dear one who had been your helper or your
protector in life, shields you, helps you still, through powers he did
not possess in his physical life, but for which he could only prepare
here to be able to exercise them in the spirit world.’ Truly,
even as our physical health is refreshed when we inhale the fresh
morning air, so will human souls feel refreshed for their spiritual
life by breathing in the protecting help they will then be able to
perceive and feel coming to them, or even from the gaze directed
towards them by the beings in the spiritual worlds. We are looking into
a future of humanity which is to be prepared by the culture of
Spiritual Science, and which will be much richer than the present life
of man. Man will, however, need this enrichment from the spiritual
world — for have we not said the old dreamy clairvoyance of
antiquity was stimulated in the physical body — but the physical
body has changed. It is now only suited for giving to human beings
their physical thoughts, thoughts aroused on the physical plane. We
must acquire thoughts about the spiritual world through Spiritual
Science. Ever less will be the knowledge of spiritual worlds which can
be gained by man from the physical plane, the physical body will become
more powerless; and as all that is physical originates in the
spiritual, and the longing of the soul for a real connection with the
spiritual world will become greater and greater.
In olden
times something was given to man by his physical nature which flashed
into his soul as it were from the workings of his physical body, so
that he became clairvoyant. Now we may say: the time has come when
human beings will gradually know more of spiritual things, and these
must be ever more and more brought down from the spiritual worlds, but
the transition must not pass unnoticed. We must gain knowledge of the
path which leads into the spiritual world through Anthroposophy. We
must not evade the difficulties and inconveniences which a soul may
feel when it seeks step by step for knowledge of what happens in the
spiritual worlds. It is perhaps very uncomfortable to strain our
intellect, our powers of reason, our sense of truth, sufficiently; but
we must face this inconvenience. The anthroposophical movement, to
which we belong, exists for this. Anthroposophy must gradually cause us
to see: By their repeated earth-lives human souls are moving forward,
they are being changed; and we are living in the age when human beings
must go into the spiritual worlds with understanding. It would not be
right if in our Society in particular there were not a growing
understanding for the fact, that a man who, without having experienced
Spiritual Science, still has the old clairvoyant powers arising out of
his body, cannot stand higher than one who with intellectual ideas and
understanding learns of what can be communicated about spiritual
worlds. Human beings are so easily deceived, led away by their sense of
ease not to try to exert their soul's activity, not to strain their
powers of perception and observation. Naturally these must be exerted
if we wish to live in the spirit of Anthroposophy, but humanity is
tempted not to make these efforts. Therefore people are gradually
forced to value more highly the mental and psychic forces arising as if
out of the body, stimulated by the hidden bodily forces. Indeed we may
actually hear people say: ‘What you are trying to make
comprehensible about the spiritual worlds is not what we are really
seeking, we are not impressed by it; we want to experience the
incomprehensible.’ People are much more inclined to accept what
cannot be understood than to exert themselves to seek what can be
grasped spiritually. This then leads to the fact that there exists what
we may call a complete misunderstanding of the true spiritual task of
the present; if any one comes forward possessing natural psychic powers
without anthroposophical training, people say he is very wonderful, and
they put a special halo round his head. Because, they say, we do not
know whence his powers come, because he has not been trained through
Spiritual Science, and has not made efforts, therefore his powers are
so very valuable; another world makes itself evident in our world
through him. Truly our Movement would not reach its goal if it did not
soon overcome this prejudice. We can often hear it said: This or that
man must be the reincarnation of a great individual; he must have been
so and so, because he possesses these forces, these chaotic psychic
forces, without having worked for them in the present life by means of
a really active struggling soul-life. Rather we ought to feel sure that
the man who reveals such psychic forces within himself, is a backward
soul; one who has remained behind at an earlier stage of evolution, and
who must be raised and nurtured in the present age through Spiritual
Science. Those who have had the most important incarnations in earlier
times, appear to-day more like one of whom we shall be speaking
tomorrow, the anniversary of Christian Morgenstern's death, as having
powers which, unfortunately, are less valued perhaps by many than is a
kind of chaotic psychism, but which are fruits of much higher spiritual
forces, even though to-day they are represented as of little value,
because they are not understood.
In these
two lectures I have attempted partly from concrete facts to put before
you a picture of the interpenetration of the spiritual world into the
physical, and the working of the physical world into the spiritual. I
have tried to show you how unjustifiable it is for people to say that
it is useless to trouble about the spiritual world while living on the
physical plane. I have tried to show how the very reason why our
physical life cannot be understood is that we are not conscious of the
concrete inter-working of the spiritual world into our physical world.
Not that we receive our knowledge from the spiritual world alone
— that is not the point; this knowledge has to be there, we must
make it our own because it is truth revealed to us from spiritual
worlds and is the key to the understanding and experiencing of the
world. This knowledge must, however, lead us to an inner mood, an inner
feeling, a kind of ‘knowing oneself to be within the spiritual
world.’ Then through the new Spiritual Science there comes into
our souls what such an important spirit as Fichte said, and which I
have mentioned in a public lecture and shall repeat here. There comes
into our souls that at which Fichte could do no more than hint. I know
that I speak in the same sense as he did when I add a few words to his,
for the understanding of which he still works, from out the spiritual
worlds. Thus said the great philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, during
his earth life:
The
super-earthly will not come to me only when I have lost my connection
with earth life. Even now I live in the supersensible world, in it I
live a truer life than I do in the sense-world, it is my only firm
standpoint; and in that I possess the supersensible world, I possess
that for the sake of which alone I would like to continue my life on
earth.
‘What
you call heaven,’ says Fichte ‘does not only lie on the
other side of the grave. It is everywhere around us in Nature, and
springs up in every loving heart.’ ‘Now,’ we
understand Fichte to mean, as he speaks to us from the spiritual
world.
Anthroposophy, as it blossoms in this age and is to become a germ
within humanity, shall be the light which strengthens the feelings and
emotions for the spiritual life which springs forth in every loving
heart. The loving heart will increasingly beget longings for the
spiritual world, and Anthroposophy will more and more have to demand
this light from the spiritual world for its own possession.
In saying
this we are certainly speaking in agreement with those who have died
before us, who longed for the spiritual world. While lifting ourselves
up into this world, we are truly in harmony with the Cosmic Wisdom
which governs human evolution, in so far as we can understand and
recognize it with our human powers.
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