THE GREAT
VIRTUES
A lecture
given by RUDOLF STEINER
in Zurich, 31st January 1915
From
notes unrevised by the lecturer. Published by kind permission of the
Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung,
Dornach, Switzerland, and in agreement with the Rudolf Steiner
Publishing Company. The German text appears in Das Geheimnis des Todes, Rudolf Steiner
Gesamtausgabe, Verlag der Rudolf Steiner
Nachlassverwaltung, 1967.
UR spiritual science has the task of removing for our consciousness,
indeed for our whole inner life, the gulf that exists for our
external human consciousness between the physical world, in which man
spends the time between birth and death, and the spiritual world in
which man spends the other part of the totality of his existence, the
time between death and a new birth.
For one
who lives in spiritual science with every fibre of his soul, such a
saying is familiar, and even self-evident. But one may well say that
it becomes particularly holy to us at such a moment as this. Through
the grave events of war we have lost within quite a short time a
number of our dear friends and members, and are soon to accompany
friends upon their last paths on earth. Tomorrow morning at eleven we
shall have here in Zürich the cremation of a dear member, Frau
Dr Colazza, and we have just heard that our dear friend Fritz
Mitscher died this afternoon about five near Davos. With these two
members, souls dear to us have left the physical plane; but spiritual
science has shown us the way to understand in a much higher sense
than we would otherwise be able to achieve that we do not lose such
souls, but remain united with them.
There are
already a considerable number of souls belonging to us, who have gone
through the gate of death since our work in this movement began. And
from those sources from which knowledge of the spirit comes to us, it
can be said that these souls have become faithful fellow-workers with
us in the spiritual world, each according to his powers. With the
full responsibility, with which something can be said, which should
have a firm foundation in spiritual knowledge, I can say: in them we
have won pillars supporting our spiritual movement. Many have passed
through the gate of death, working within our spiritual movement, and
looking down upon that to which their love is directed. In the period
between birth and death they have grown attached to the kind of
aspiration which is represented in our circle. They have left behind
them in our Society something which is itself upon the path between
death and a new birth.
Just as
nature around us is a world upon which we look back, we can look back
upon our physical life from that moment onwards, which can be
compared with man's birth. Immediately after death man passes through
a condition which can be compared with the embryonic life, with the
life within the maternal body, except that this period in the life
after death can be counted in days, and is much shorter than the
embryonic life in relation to physical life. Then follows what can be
compared to the entry into the physical world, with the drawing of
the first breath. This can be called the awakening in the spiritual
world; it is a perceiving that the will of the soul which has gone
through the gate of death is received by the beings of the higher
Hierarchies. Just as a human being physically entering the physical
world from his mother's body finds himself able to receive the
external air, and as his senses gradually awaken — in the same
way there comes the moment after death when the soul feels: that
power of will, which during physical life was contained within the
limits of the physical body, now flows from me out into the universe.
And this soul then feels how this will is really received through the
activity of the beings of the next higher hierarchy, the hierarchy of
the Angels. That is like drawing the first breath in the spiritual
world, and the gradual growth into the spiritual environment;
spiritual experience shows us this.
I would
like to speak of the destiny of those who have gone from us in the
course of the years, leaving the physical plane. I would like to look
at those who have become attached to our spiritual movement here, and
who look down upon it as something of which they know that it informs
human souls while still within the physical body about that condition
in which they themselves live. To be able to relate oneself in this
way in memory of earthly life is something which even here in the
physical world belongs already to the spiritual world. For those who
have gone through the gate of death this is something infinitely
precious and significant. When, like a tributary into a river, they
can flow entirely into that stream which flows up to them from the
physical world, taking its source from what they have experienced in
our movement — the stream in the thoughts of those linked with
them in love or by family ties — then the community is a much
closer one than it could otherwise be in our materialistic times,
because it is based on spiritual relationships.
We may
say: with many a one, who has gone early through the gate of death
into the spiritual world, it seems as if he had done this from
intimate love to our spiritual movement, in order to help with
stronger powers from the spiritual world. Among a considerable number
of those who have gone from us there lives in their souls the most
wonderfully clear feeling about the need for our spiritual movement.
For him who can look into the spiritual world all those who have gone
through the gate of death, and now gaze down upon the movement with
which they were connected, are like spiritual heralds of our
movement. They carry their standards before us, and call to us
constantly: we were convinced while we were united with you of the
necessity of this movement. But now that we have entered the
spiritual world we know that we can help and how we must help at a
time in which this movement is necessary.
This is
something which those who are left behind on the physical plane will
feel more and more, when they have lost people dear to them. For them
what has been said can be the deepest comfort, for they have here all
that can bring about a still deeper connection between souls when we
can no longer be connected in the external realm of manifestation,
through physical eyes and physical words.
This
spiritual movement, of which we are to become part, has to bring a
very great deal. Today I would like to choose out one particular
chapter. A time like ours, in which external civilisation, in spite
of the last echoes of the old religions, builds entirely upon the
materialistic consciousness, can only develop the impulses of the
moral life in a way that reckons only with life between birth and
death. Among the many things which should come about through our
spiritual movement will be a fresh development of the whole moral
life of humanity. For men will learn to regard the moral life from a
point of view which extends beyond birth and death, and which reckons
with the fact that the human soul goes through repeated lives on
earth, and that this soul, as we bear it within us between birth and
death, has passed through many lives, and can hope for other lives in
the future. When we have extended our vision from a single life to a
series of successive lives, we shall have a more comprehensive
understanding for our existence, and a sounder and more comprehensive
understanding of what virtue and morality are.
When we
speak of human virtues we can distinguish four of these which we can
describe in ordinary language. There is one virtue, as we shall
indicate later on, which lives in the depths of the human soul, but
of which we should speak as little as possible as we shall see, for
reasons that are holy. All other virtues which exist in life, and
which together make up morality, can be regarded as special examples
of the four virtues which we shall consider, four virtues of which
antiquity in particular had much to say.
Plato,
the great philosopher of ancient Greece, distinguished these four
virtues in particular, because he was able to draw his wisdom from
the echoes of the ancient Mysteries. Under the influence of the old
Mysteries Plato could distinguish the virtues better than later
philosophers and much better than our times, in which knowledge of
Mystery wisdom has become so remote and so chaotic.
The first
virtue which we must consider, if we speak about morality from a
comprehensive knowledge of human nature, is the virtue of wisdom. But
this wisdom is to be understood in a rather deeper sense, more
related to ethics, than is usually done. Wisdom is not something that
comes to man of its own accord; still less can it in the ordinary
sense be learned. It is not easy to describe what its meaning for us
should be. If we pass through life in such a way that events work
upon us, and we learn from them how we could have met this or that
more adequately, how we could have used our powers more strongly and
effectively — if we are attentive towards everything in life,
so that when something meets us a second time in a comparable way we
can treat it in a way which shows us we have benefited from the first
experience — then we grow in wisdom. If we preserve all through
life a mood of being able to learn from life, of being able to regard
everything brought to us by nature and our experience, in such a way
that we learn from it, not simply accumulating knowledge, but growing
inwardly better and richer — then we have gathered wisdom, and
what we have experienced has not been worthless for the life of our souls.
Life has
been worthless for us if we pass through decades and still judge
something that we have experienced in just the same way as we thought
about it earlier in our lives. If we pass through life in such a way,
we are most remote from wisdom. Karma may have brought it about that
in youth we grew angry, and condemned this or that human action. If
we retain this quality we have made poor use of our lives. We have
used them well, supposing we formed harsh judgments in our youth, if
at a later stage of life we do not judge harshly, but with
understanding and forgiveness; if we make the effort of wishing to
understand. If we have the character that from birth some things
aroused furious anger in us, and if when we are old we no longer grow
angry as in our youth, but our anger has left us and we have grown
gentler — then we have used life in accordance with wisdom. If
we were materialists in our youth, but then allowed ourselves to
experience what our time could bring us as revelations from the
spiritual world, then we have used our life in accordance with
wisdom. If we close ourselves to the revelations of the spiritual
world we have not used our life in accordance with wisdom.
To be
enriched in this way, and to achieve a wider horizon, we can call the
use of life in accordance with wisdom. What spiritual science seeks
to give us is able to help us in opening ourselves towards life, in
order to grow wiser. Wisdom is something which strongly opposes human
egoism. Wisdom is something which always reckons with the course of
universal events. We let ourselves be instructed by the course of
universal events because this liberates us from the narrow judgment
made by our ego. Fundamentally, a wise man cannot judge egoistically;
for if one learns from the world, and grows in understanding for the
world, one allows one's judgment to be corrected by the world; thus
wisdom detaches us from narrow and limited vision and brings us into
harmony with itself. Much else could be described, in order gradually
to form a picture of wisdom. We should not attempt a definition of
such ideas, but keep our hearts open, in order to grow wiser, even
about wisdom.
Here in
the physical world everything which man is to experience in waking
life has to use the instruments of external physical and ethereal
nature. Between birth and death we are only outside our physical and
ethereal body with our soul-being, in so far as this is ego and
astral body, during our periods of sleep. In our conscious, waking
condition we use as instruments our physical and ethereal bodies.
When we fill ourselves with wisdom, when we try in action and
thought, in feeling and perception to live in accordance with wisdom,
we use those organs of our physical and ethereal bodies which are so
to speak the most perfect in our earthly life — those organs
which have developed over the longest period, which were prepared by
Saturn, Sun and Moon and have come into our lives as a heritage,
having reached a certain completion.
I would
like to give you from another point of view an idea of what can be
understood by more or less perfect organs. Take on the one hand our
brain. The brain is not the most perfect organ, but we can still call
it more perfect than other organs, for it has needed longer for its
evolution. We can compare the brain with our torso, upon which we
have our hands. When we intend to do something with our hands, we
have the thought: I stretch out my hand, I take the vase, I draw back
my hand. What have I done ? I have stretched out not only the
physical hand, but also the ethereal and the astral hand, and a part
of my ego; the physical hand went with them.
If I only
think, clairvoyant consciousness can see how something like spiritual
arms stretch out from the head, but the physical brain remains within
the skull. Just as my ethereal and astral hand belongs to my physical
hand, something ethereal and astral belongs to the brain. The brain
cannot follow, but the hands can follow. In a later time the hands
will one day be fixed, and we shall only be able to move their astral
part. Hands are on the way to become what the brain is already. In
earlier times, during the old Sun and Moon periods, what today
stretches out from the brain as something that is only spiritual was
still accompanied by the physical organ. The skull has now covered
it, so that the physical brain is held fast within it during the
evolution of the Earth. The brain is an organ which has passed
through more stages of evolution. The hands are on the way to become
similar to the brain, for the whole man is on the way to become a
brain. Thus there are organs which are more perfect, and have evolved
into something more self-enclosed, and others which are less perfect.
The most perfect organs are used for what we achieve in wisdom. Our
ordinary brain is
Section of cerebellum, enlarged, showing tree-like
structure
really
used only as the instrument for the lowest form of wisdom, earthly
cleverness. The more we acquire wisdom, the less we depend upon our
cerebrum, the more activity is withdrawn (a thing unknown to external
anatomy) to our cerebellum, to that smaller brain enclosed within our
skull which looks like a tree. When we have become wise, when we have
become wisdom, we find ourselves in fact under a ‘tree,’
which is our cerebellum and which then especially begins to unfold
its activity.
Imagine
how a man who has become especially wise stretches out the organs of
his wisdom mightily, like the branches of a tree. They originate in
the cerebellum which remains within the hard covering of the skull;
but the spiritual organs stretch far out, and man is under the tree,
the Bodhi tree, in spiritual reality.
And so we
see too that what we do in wisdom is the most spiritual thing about
us, or at least belongs to the most spiritual, for the organs are
already at rest. If we do anything with our hands, we must use part
of our strength in the movement of the hand. If we form a wise
judgment, or decide something wisely, the organs remain at rest,
strength is no longer used upon the physical organ. We are there more
spiritual; those organs which we use on the physical plane for the
development of wisdom are those on which we need to use the least
amount of energy — they are in a sense the most perfect.
Thus
wisdom is something in the moral life which allows men to experience
themselves in a spiritual way. It is connected with this that what
man attains in the way of wisdom enables him to reap the greatest
harvest from his earlier incarnations. Because we can live in wisdom
within the spirit without any effort by the physical organs, we are
most able through the life of wisdom to make fruitful what we have
won in earlier incarnations for this life, bringing over this wisdom
from earlier incarnations.
We have
in German a good expression for a man who refuses to become wise. We
call him a Philistine. [The German and the English
meanings of the word are rather different. (Tr.)] A Philistine
is a man who resists the development of wisdom, who wants to remain
as he is his whole life through, without altering his opinions. A man
who seeks to become wise makes the effort to carry over the work
which he has done and stored up in the course of earlier
incarnations. The wiser we become, the more we bring over from
earlier incarnations into the present, and if we do not wish to
become wise, so that we leave barren the wisdom developed in earlier
incarnations, there is then one who comes to saw it off: Ahriman.
No-one
likes it better than Ahriman that we fail to grow wiser. We have the
power to do it. We have gained far, far more in earlier incarnations
than we believe; we won far more during the times in which we passed
through the old conditions of clairvoyance. Everyone could become
much wiser than he does become. No-one has the excuse that he could
not bring
The Buddha as Tree of Wisdom (sandstone relief from Bharhut,
India, c. 2nd. Century B.C.) Indian Museum, Calcutta.
much over
from the past. To become wise means that one develops what has been
won in earlier incarnations in such a way that it fills us in this
incarnation.
* * *
Another
virtue can be called — though it is difficult to describe it
exactly — the virtue of Courage. It contains the mood which
does not remain passive towards life, but is ready to use its
strength and activity. It can be said that this virtue comes from the
heart. Of one who has this virtue in ordinary life it can be said: he
has his heart in the right place. This is a good expression for our
condition when we do not withdraw in a timid way from things which
life asks from us, but when we are prepared to take ourselves in hand
and know how to intervene where it is necessary. When we are inclined
to get moving, confidently and bravely, we have this virtue. It is
connected with a healthy life of feeling, which develops bravery at
the right moment, while its absence brings about cowardice. This
virtue can naturally be used in the physical course of life only
through specific organs. These organs, to which the physical and
ethereal hearts belong, are not so perfect as those which serve
wisdom. These organs are on the way to alter, and will indeed become
different in the future.
There is
a great distinction between the brain and the heart in their relation
to cosmic evolution. Suppose that a man goes through the gate of
death, and passes through life between death and a new birth. His
brain is altogether a work of the Gods. The brain is permeated by
forces which leave him altogether when he goes through the gate of
death, and for his next life the brain is built up entirely anew, not
only materially, but also in its inner forces. That is not the case
with the heart. With the heart it is so, that not the physical heart
itself, but the forces which are active in the physical heart, remain
in existence. These forces withdraw into the astral and into the Ego,
and continue in existence between death and a new birth. The same
forces, which beat within our hearts, beat again next time in our new
incarnation. What works in the brain has gone; that does not appear
in the next incarnation. But the forces active in the heart reappear
in the next incarnation. If we contemplate the interior of the head
we can say: invisible forces are working there, which compose the
brain. But when a man has gone through the gate of death these forces
are given over to the universe. But if we perceive a human
heart-beat, we perceive spiritual forces which are not only present
in this incarnation, but will live too in the next incarnation,
having passed through death and a new birth.
Popular
feeling has had a wonderful inkling of such things. It is because of
this that it is so much concerned with the feeling of the heart-beat,
not because the physical heart-beat in itself is valued so much, as
because we are looking at something much more eternal when we
consider a human heart-beat. If we have the virtue of courage, of
bravery, we can use for it only a part of certain forces. We must use
the other part for the organs which are the instrument for this
virtue. They are organs for which we have still to use part of the
forces concerned. If we are not courageous, if we let ourselves go
and withdraw timidly from life, abandoning ourselves to our own
weight, then we cannot bring to life those forces which have to
accompany the use of the quality of courage in life.
When we
stand in life in a cowardly way, the forces which should fire our
hearts remain unused. They are then seed for Lucifer. He takes charge
of them, and we lack them in the next life. To be cowardly towards
life means to abandon a number of forces to Lucifer; and these are
missing for us, when we seek to build up our hearts in our next
incarnation. For these hearts should be the organs, the instruments
of courage. We come into the world with defective, underdeveloped
organs.
* * *
The third
virtue reckons with the least perfect organs, those which will
achieve a form in the future, of which they contain at present only
the seed. This virtue can be called Temperance. [The
German word ‘Besonnenheit’
seems impossible to render adequately in English.
‘Temperance’ is widely used for Plato's word σωϕροσύνη)
(Tr.)] One shade of it can be called ‘Moderation.’
We have thus three virtues: Wisdom, Courage, and Temperance.
[Another translation for Plato's σωϕροσύνη
is ‘Prudence.’ – e.Ed]
Now it is
possible to be intemperate in the most varied ways. One can be
intemperate in excessive eating and drinking; this is its lowest
form. Here the soul is absorbed into bodily desire, and we live
entirely through our body. But if we take our desire in hand, if we
command the body, what it may not do, we are then temperate or
moderate. Through such moderation we keep in the right order those
forces which ought to help us, in order that we do not abandon the
organs concerned to Lucifer in the next incarnation. For we abandon
to Lucifer those forces which are expended through giving ourselves
up to a life of passion. We do this in the worst way when our
passions intoxicate us, and we are content to live in a dreaming,
drowsy state.
When we
lose our clear consciousness through intemperance we are always
abandoning powers to Lucifer. He takes up these powers, and thereby
deprives us of the forces which we need for the organs of breathing
and digestion. We return with bad organs of breathing and digestion,
if we do not practise the virtue of moderation. Those who like to be
carried away by their desires, who give themselves up to the life of
their passions, are candidates for decadent human beings in the
future, for those future human beings who will suffer from all kinds
of faults in their physical body.
It can be
said that this virtue of Temperance depends upon the least perfect
human organs, those organs that are at the beginning of their
development and have to be fundamentally transformed. When we
consider our organs of digestion and all that is connected with them,
they are put in motion by the use of Ego, astral body, ethereal body
and physical body. It is different with those organs which are the
instruments for Courage. Here our Ego remains more or less outside,
and we move freely; only what is astral and ethereal in us is
absorbed into the physical. If we go further to the virtues embraced
by Wisdom, we retain Ego and astral body in free detachment. For as
we become wiser, we develop the organisation of the astral body and
achieve control over it. That is the essential thing, that through
becoming wise we transform the astral into the Spirit-Self, and only
the ethereal accompanies the physical. In the brain only the ethereal
accompanies the physical. While during waking life in relation to the
rest of the body we are closely connected, at least with our astral
nature, with the physical organ, we retain for the brain the
condition, which we have in sleep, in the highest degree. Thus we
require physical sleep particularly for the brain. For when we are
awake we are also outside the brain with our Ego and our astral body,
and these have to make the greatest efforts within themselves,
without being supported by the external organ.
Thus we
find a connection between our human being and the virtues. We can
call Wisdom a virtue, which belongs to man as a spiritual being,
where with his Ego and his astral body he is freely active, using his
physical and ethereal organs only as a kind of basis. We can name
Courage as the virtue active where man is only free with his Ego,
which is supported by his astral, ethereal and physical bodies.
Finally we can speak of Temperance, where the seed contained in our
Ego is becoming free; where our Ego is still bound to the astral,
ethereal and physical bodies, and yet with our Ego we are beginning
to work ourselves free from these bonds.
* * *
There is
then a virtue which is perhaps the most spiritual of all. This is
connected with the whole human being. There is an exercise of the
human being which we lose early, which we possess only in the first
years of childhood. I have often mentioned this. When we enter the
physical plane we do not yet have the attitude which belongs to our
human dignity: we crawl, on all fours. I have pointed out that we
only achieve the right attitude, the upright position, through our
own forces. We develop too through the forces which enter into
speech. In the first years of our life we develop the forces which in
the main guide us into the position which we have in the world as
true men. We do not enter the world in such a way that we already
have the right direction in the world. We crawl. But we are set in it
rightly, when we direct the head outwards towards the stars. This
corresponds to inner forces.
In later
life we lose these forces. They no longer appear. There is nothing
which enters human life again so radically as learning to walk and
stand upright. In relation to standing upright we grow more and more
weary. If we begin in the early morning to live with our brain, then
when the day is ended we grow tired and need sleep. What makes us
upright in childhood, when we are tired, remains tired all through
life and grows feeble, and anything comparable to achieving
uprightness as children is no longer done by us in later life.
And how
do we direct ourselves into life when we learn to speak? Forces of
direction work as well when we learn to speak. But the forces which
we use in early childhood are not really lost for us in later life.
They remain for us, but they are connected with a virtue; with the
virtue which is related to rightness and the right, the virtue of
all-comprehending Justice, the fourth virtue. The same impulse, which
we use as a child when we raise ourselves up from crawling, lives in
us if we have the virtue of justice, the fourth that Plato mentions.
Whoever
really exercises the virtue of justice puts every thing and every
being in its right place, and goes out of himself and into the
others. That is what all-comprehending Justice means. To live in
Wisdom means to derive the best fruits from the forces we have stored
up during earlier incarnations. If we have there to point towards
what was imparted to us during earlier incarnations, where we were
still permeated by divine forces, with Justice we have to point out
still more: we are sprung from the whole universe. We exercise
justice by developing those forces which relate us spiritually to the
entire universe. Justice is the measure of a man's connection with
the divine. In practice Injustice is equivalent to the godless;
equivalent to the one who has lost his divine origin; we blaspheme
against God, the God from whom we spring, if we do any man injustice.
Thus we
have two virtues, Justice and Wisdom, which guide us back to what we
were in earlier times, in earlier incarnations in the times when we
ourselves were still in the womb of the godhead. And we have two
other virtues, Courage and Temperance, which guide us towards later
incarnations. We provide all the more forces for these, the less we
give to Lucifer. We have seen how what is of the nature of courage
and of temperance goes into the organs, and how the organs are
prepared thereby for the next incarnation. In the same way moral life
extends into the future, when we fill ourselves with spirituality.
Two virtues shine out over the past incarnation: Wisdom and Justice.
Courage and Temperance shine out over the incarnations to come.
The time
will come when men will see clearly that they are throwing themselves
into the jaws of Ahriman, when they shut themselves off against
justice and wisdom. What was theirs in earlier incarnations, what
belonged to the divine world, they would cast over to Lucifer through
intemperate or cowardly actions. All that can be seized by Lucifer is
taken away from the powers available to us for building up our body
in the coming life.
We cannot
practise wisdom and justice without becoming selfless, as has been
indicated. Only a self-seeking man can be unjust. Only a self-seeking
man can be willing to remain unwise. Wisdom and justice lead us out
beyond our own Self and make of us members of the whole organism of
humanity. Courage and temperance make us in a sense members of the
whole organism of humanity; only through experiencing courage and
temperance and expressing them in our lives, do we provide for
ourselves for the future with a stronger organism to take its place
within humanity. We do not then lose what we would otherwise throw to
Lucifer. Egoism is of itself transformed into selflessness when it is
rightly extended over the whole horizon of life, and man finds his
place in the light of the fourth virtue. That is what will be brought
by spiritual wisdom for the future of man, and will extend over
ethics and the moral life. This will pour into educational method as
well. Through understanding wisdom and justice in the sense that I
have indicated, the desire to learn all through life will arise. It
will be seen that one has to begin learning in the right way when one
has already youth behind one — while people think now that they
do not need to learn anything more once their youth is past. In this
way even the greatest and noblest works of art of the greatest poets
are lost. We would understand them best if we took them up again in
old age. If people read Goethe's Iphigenia or Schiller's Tell, they
usually think: we read that at school already. That is not right; one
should not forget that these writings have their best effect if they
are read in later life, for then they develop justice and wisdom.
And again
the education of children will bring special fruit if the virtue of
courage and the virtue of temperance are seen in the right light.
Where children are to be educated, these virtues must be regarded in
an individual way, by showing the children again and again that they
are to take hold of life courageously, and not be afraid or withdraw
themselves from all sorts of things; and that they grasp life
temperately and moderately, in order gradually to free themselves
from their passions. An immense amount can be done for the education
of children in this way. In the later course of our study of spiritual
science these things will have to be developed in greater detail.
So we see
that while otherwise the ethical life only provides laws concerned
with life between birth and death, on the external physical plane,
the considerations of spiritual science extend to an unlimited
horizon. It is the same as with other things in spiritual science.
Humanity has had to experience in relation to the science of nature
the extension of its horizons. Giordano Bruno showed men that there
is not only the earth, but many other worlds in cosmic space.
Spiritual science shows men that there is not only earthly life, but
many earthly lives. Before Giordano Bruno men believed that there was
a fixed boundary up in the sky. Giordano Bruno showed that there is
no boundary, that the blue of the sky is not a limit. Spiritual
science shows that birth and death are not there, but that we
introduce them into life through the limitation of our understanding.
Thus the
gulf between the physical and the spiritual can be bridged over.
Things which rest upon a spiritual-scientific foundation are like
this for those seeking to found a genuine, truthful Monism. Those who
often call themselves Monists today manage their Monism very simply.
They take one part of the world and make of it a unity by throwing
away the other half. True Monism comes about through allowing both
halves to have their significant influence upon one another. This
comes about through spiritual science. This should not only arise in
a significant way for our consciousness, but for the whole of our
life. We have to come more and more to the real knowledge, looking
out into the world: in all that lives and works around us something
super-sensible is present, not only in what is seen by our eyes, but
also in what can be perceived by the understanding which is bound to
the brain. There are everywhere spiritual forces, behind every
phenomenon, behind the phenomenon of the rainbow, behind the movement
of the hand, and so on.
If you
read the lecture cycle which I held in Leipzig at the turn of the
year last year, [Christ and the Spiritual
World. The search for the Holy Grail (six lectures, Leipzig, 28th
December 1913 – 2nd January 1914), published by the Rudolf
Steiner Press.] you will find how the Christ Impulse worked
through the Mystery of Golgotha, and how Christ lives in the most
important affairs of humanity, not only in human conscious knowledge.
For instance, there were quarrels about dogmas. But while men were
quarrelling, the Christ Impulse lived on and brought about the
necessary events.
Take the
figure of the Maid of Orléans. In European history the simple
shepherd girl appears. She appeared in a remarkable way; there lived
in her soul not only those forces, which are otherwise to be found in
human beings, but the Christ Impulse works in this personality,
enlivening and sustaining her through its mighty influence. She
became a kind of representative of the Christ Impulse itself for her
time. This she was only able to do, because the Christ Impulse could
enter and live within her.
You know
that we celebrate the Christmas Festival in the time when the sun has
least power, in the deepest darkness of winter, because we can be
convinced that at this time the inner light, the spiritual light, has
its greatest power.
Old
legends tell us that over Christmas, up to 6th January, people have
had special experiences, because at this time the life of the earth,
and the inner forces of the earth, are most concentrated. Those who
have the right disposition for it, experience then in fact the spiritual
forces within the earthly forces. Countless legends describe this. The
best time for this covers thirteen days before 6th January.
The Maid
of Orléans passed through these thirteen days in a particular
condition, in a condition in which the life of her feeling was not
yet affected by the external world. It is remarkable that the time
during which the Maid of Orleans was carried in her mother's body
ended during the Christmas time of the year 1411. She was born,
having been carried for the last thirteen days in her mother's body,
on 6th January. Before she drew the first breath, before she saw the
physical life with physical eyes, she experienced what is earthly
during these thirteen days in that sleep, through which man passes
before he enters the physical world.
Here I am
indicating something immensely significant, which shows how the world
is guided from the spiritual; how what happens externally in the
physical world is given its direction by the spiritual world; how,
through the physical, the spiritual world is flowing.
Thus in
our time we must work ever more consciously to remove through
spiritual science the gulf between the physical and the spiritual. We
do this for one field of our lives, when we become conscious that
within our movement the powers of those are at work, who united their
soul and body during their earthly life with our movement, and have
passed through the gate of death. If we look across to the other bank
of the stream, where they are active, feeling ourselves united with
them, directing our thoughts towards them — we do this in full
consciousness, the consciousness won through spiritual science. We
know that we are in the most living connection with those who have
gone through the gate of death, and we know that they provide the
best powers among us. When we do this, or can think it, we regard
life like a field that is to be sown. Between what we ourselves
plant, we see plants everywhere springing up, which we could not have
grown ourselves. Then we can know: these plants have been put in by
those to whom it is granted to be in the world of the spirit, those
with whom we feel ourselves connected, those with whom we become united.
Human
brotherhood with those as well who no longer bear a physical body
— that will be the characteristic sign of this movement and of
those who feel themselves as members of this movement, and reckon
themselves as belonging to it in the future. Other societies, founded
only upon earthly things, will be able to remove many barriers
between human beings. The barriers between the living and the dead
will more and more be taken away by the movement which unites those
men who wish to be united in the sign of spiritual science. We will
carry all this in our souls, and keep as an abiding sense this
characteristic quality, uniting us with this spiritual movement,
which has become dear to us.
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