X
Individual
Spirit Beings and the Undivided Foundation of the World: Part 1
You will recall the studies in which we have tried to
establish a relationship to the different premises and assertions of
modern psychoanalysis. What mattered to me in those studies was to
bring clarity into the concept of the “unconscious,” to
show that the way in which the concept of the “unconscious”
is commonly used in psychoanalysis is essentially unfounded. As long
as one is unable to go beyond this concept, a purely negative
concept, one cannot say more than that psychoanalysis works with
insufficient methods of cognition on an especially challenging
phenomenon today. Because the psychoanalysts strive to explore the
soul and spirit and, as we have observed, even pursue this soul and
spirit into a social life, one must admit that we have here a point
of departure that is much more significant than what official
academic science is able to offer in this realm. Because analytical
psychology tries to intervene in life, however, through pedagogy,
therapy, and soon, most likely, social and political means, the
dangers related to this matter must be regarded with great concern.
The question thus arises what it is essentially that the researchers
of today cannot and do not wish to reach. They recognize that there
exists a soul nature beyond consciousness; they search for a soul
beyond consciousness, but they cannot raise themselves to cognition
of the spirit itself. Spirit can in no way be grasped through a
concept of the unconscious, because an unconscious spirit is like a
human being without a head. I have brought to your attention that
there are people who under certain hysterical conditions walk about
the streets and see in other human beings only their bodies, not
their heads. It is a definite form of illness if one is unable to see
a person's head. Among contemporary researchers, there are some who
believe they are seeing the whole spirit. Since they represent the
spirit as unconscious, however, they show immediately that they
themselves have fallen prey to illusion, the illusion that there is
an unconscious spirit, a spirit without consciousness, if we were to
cross the threshold of consciousness, whether in the right way, as we
have always described it in our spiritual scientific research, or in
an ill, abnormal way, as in the cases that are usually submitted to
psychoanalysts.
When one crosses the threshold of consciousness, one
always enters a spiritual realm; regardless of whether one enters the
subconscious or the super-conscious, one always enters a spiritual
realm. This is a realm, however, in which the spirit is conscious in
a certain way, is developing some form of consciousness. Where there
is spirit there is also consciousness. One must only seek the
conditions under which the consciousness in question exists. Through
spiritual science it is possible to recognize what type of
consciousness a particular spiritual being has.
A week ago the case was presented here of the lady who
left a social gathering and ran in front of some horses but then was
prevented from jumping into a river and was carried back to the house
from which she had fled. There she was brought together with the
master of the house, because in some unclear, subconscious way she
was in love with this man. In this case it may not be said that the
spirit, which did not belong to this lady's consciousness, this
spirit that pushed and led her, is an unconscious spirit or that it
is an unconscious soul quality. Indeed, it is something extremely
conscious. The consciousness of this demonic spirit that led the lady
back to her unlawful lover, this demon is indeed much shrewder in its
consciousness than the lady is in her muddle-headedness, that is to
say her consciousness. When the human being in any way crosses the
threshold of his consciousness, these spirits that become active and
powerful are not unconscious spirits. Such spirits become consciously
active and powerful in their own right. The expression, “unconscious
spirit,” as the psychoanalysts use it, has no sense whatsoever.
If I were to speak merely from my own viewpoint, I could just as well
say that the whole illustrious company sitting here is my unconscious
if I were unfamiliar with it. Just as little may we describe as
unconscious the spiritual beings that surround us and that take hold
of the personality under particular conditions, as was the situation
in this case that I related a week ago. They are subconscious; they
are not actually grasped by the consciousness that lives directly
within us, but in themselves they are fully conscious.
It is exceptionally important to know this —
particularly for the task of spiritual science in our time —
basically because the knowledge of a spiritual world that lies on the
other side of the threshold and the knowledge of truly self-conscious
individualities is not merely an achievement of today's spiritual
science but is actually an ancient knowledge. In earlier times it was
only known through an ancient, atavistic clairvoyance. Today one
knows it through other methods; one learns to know it gradually. The
knowledge of actual spirits to be found outside of human
consciousness — spirits living under different conditions from
human beings but standing in continuous relationship to human beings,
spirits that can take hold of the human being in his thinking,
feeling, and willing — this knowledge was always there. This
knowledge was always considered the secret treasure of particular
brotherhoods, who treated this knowledge within their circles as
strictly esoteric. Why did they treat it in this way? To enlarge on
this question would lead at this moment too far afield. It should be
said, however, that individual brotherhoods were permeated with the
earnest conviction that the majority of humanity was not sufficiently
mature for this knowledge. Indeed, this was the case to a large
extent. Many other brotherhoods, however, which are called
brotherhoods of the left, were striving to retain this knowledge,
because such knowledge, when taken possession of by a small group,
would give this group power over others who did not possess such
knowledge. There have always been endeavors whose aim was to secure
power for certain groups over others. This could be achieved by
considering a particular kind of knowledge as an esoteric possession
but using it in such a way that the power over something quite
different was expanded.
In our day it is particularly necessary to have real
clarity in these matters. As you know — I have enlarged on this
in the last lectures — since 1879 humanity has been living in a
very special spiritual situation. Since 1879, extraordinarily
powerful spirits of darkness have been shifted from the spiritual
world into the human realm, and those people who cling to the
mysteries connected with this fact and retain them wrongfully within
small groups could cause everything imaginable with these secrets.
Today I shall show you exactly how certain mysteries that relate to
present-day development can be used in a wrongful way. You must be
careful, however, to consider coherently all that I say today, which
will be of a more historic nature, with what I will add tomorrow.
You all know that for a long time attention has been
drawn within our anthroposophical stream to the fact that this
twentieth century is one that should bring about in the evolution of
humanity a special relationship to the Christ. This relationship to
Christ will come about in the course of the twentieth century, and
already in the first half, as you know, will begin the phenomenon
that has been suggested in my first Mystery Drama, in which for a
large number of people Christ in the etheric will be an actual,
existing being.
We know that we actually live in the age of materialism.
We know that since the middle of the nineteenth century this
materialism has reached its climax. In reality, however, polarities
must converge. It is exactly this climax of materialism within the
evolution of humanity that must converge with the intensification in
human evolution that leads to truly beholding Christ in the etheric.
One can grasp that just the announcement of the mystery of beholding
Christ, of this new relationship with humanity into which Christ will
enter, would arouse ill-will and resistance from some human beings.
These would be members of certain brotherhoods who wished to exploit
the event of the twentieth century, this event of the appearance of
the etheric Christ, who wished to use it for their own purposes and
not allow it to become general human knowledge. There are
brotherhoods, and brotherhoods always influence public opinion by
allowing this or that to be publicized by such means as would be
least noticed by people. There are certain occult brotherhoods who
spread the message that the age of materialism has almost run its
course, that in a certain way it is already past. These poor,
pitiable, “clever people” — in quotation marks, of
course — spread the doctrine in numerous assemblies, books, and
societies that materialism has exhausted itself, that one can already
grasp again something of spirit, but they can offer people nothing
more than the word spirit and single phrases. These people are more
or less in the service of those who have an interest in saying what
is not true, that materialism has been “ruined by bad
management,” as it were. This is not true; on the contrary,
materialistic thinking is in the process of growing. It will thrive
most when people deceive themselves by believing that they are no
longer materialists. The materialistic way of thinking is in the
process of increasing and will continue to increase for about four or
five centuries.
It is necessary, as has been frequently emphasized here,
to grasp this fact in clear consciousness, to know that it is so.
Humanity will come to a true healing when one works so thoroughly in
the life of spirit that one knows absolutely that the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch is there for the purpose of extirpating
materialism from the general evolution of humanity. A more spiritual
being, however, must counteract materialism. I have spoken in
previous lectures about what people of the fifth post-Atlantean
period must learn to meet, that is, the fully conscious struggle
against evil rising up in the evolution of humanity. Just as in the
fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch the task lay in the struggle
with birth and death, so we are now facing a struggle with evil. What
matters now, therefore, is to grasp spiritual teaching in full
consciousness, not to cast sand into the eyes of contemporaries as if
the devil of materialism did not exist. He will thrive increasingly.
Those who deal with these matters in a wrongful way know about the
event of the appearance of Christ as well as I do, but they deal with
this event in a different way.
In order to understand this one must keep one's eyes on
the following. Now that humanity has become what it has in the
post-Atlantean time, the phrase that many people expound in their
comfortable smugness is completely incorrect: “While we live
here between birth and death, it is a matter of surrendering
ourselves to life. If later, when we have passed through death, we
then enter a spiritual world, that will reveal itself in good time
and for that we can wait. Here we will enjoy life as if there were
only a material world; if one enters a spiritual world through death,
such a world will then reveal itself, if it really exists.”
This attitude is about as clever as the pledge that someone makes,
saying, “As truly as there is a God in heaven, I am an
atheist!” It is just about that intelligent, but it is the
attitude of many who say, “It will be revealed after death how
things are; meanwhile it is not at all necessary to occupy ourselves
with spiritual science.”
This attitude has always been contestable, but in the
post-Atlantean period in which we live it becomes especially ominous,
because it has been particularly urged upon human beings by the
powers of evil. When man under the present conditions of evolution
passes through the portal of death, he takes with him the conditions
of consciousness that he has created for himself between birth and
death. The person who has occupied himself under present
circumstances exclusively with materialistic ideas, concepts, and
sense impressions of the material, of the sense world, condemns
himself after death to live in an environment in which only concepts
defined during bodily life have bearing. The human being who has
absorbed spiritual ideas enters the spiritual world legitimately, but
one who has rejected spiritual ideas is forced to remain in a certain
sense within earthly conditions until he — and this may endure
for a long time — has learned there to absorb enough spiritual
concepts that he can be carried by them into the spiritual world.
Whether we absorb spiritual concepts or reject them therefore
determines our environment on the other side of the threshold. Many
of those souls — and this must be said with compassion —
who have rejected or were hindered from absorbing spiritual concepts
here in life are still wandering about on earth and, though dead,
remain bound to the earthly sphere. The soul of the human being,
however, when no longer separated from its environment by the
physical body — which can then no longer prevent the human soul
from acting destructively — becomes a source of disturbance
within the earthly sphere.
Let us study what I would like to characterize as the
more normal situation, in which souls under present circumstances
pass over into the spiritual world after death, souls who wished to
know nothing at all about spiritual concepts and experiences. They
become sources of disturbance, because they are retained within the
earthly sphere. Only souls who here on earth have already been
completely permeated by a certain relationship to the spiritual world
pass through the portal of death in such a way that they can be
received in the right way in the spiritual world. They will be
carried away from the earthly sphere in such a way that they can spin
threads to those remaining behind, threads that are continually being
spun. We must be clear about this: the spiritual threads between the
souls of the dead and those of us who are bound to them are not
ruptured by death; they remain, are even closer, after death than
they were here on earth. What I have said must be accepted as a
serious, significant truth.
I am not the only one who has this knowledge; others are
also aware that this is so at present. There are many, however, who
exploit this truth in a terrible way. There are misguided
materialists today who believe that material life is the only one,
but there are also initiates who are materialists and who spread
materialistic teaching through brotherhoods. You must not be misled
into believing that these initiates are of the foolish opinion that
there is no spirit or that the human being does not have a soul that
can live independently of the body. You can be confident that one who
has been truly initiated in the spiritual world would never surrender
himself to the foolishness of believing in mere matter. There are
many, however, who have a certain interest in encouraging the
dissemination of materialism and who make all sorts of arrangements
so that a large proportion of human beings believe only in
materialism and are totally under its influence. There are
brotherhoods that have at their head initiates who have exactly this
interest in cultivating materialism and disseminating it. These
materialists are well served when there is constant talk that
materialism has already been overcome, for it is possible to further
some causes by using words with antithetical meaning. How this is
handled is often most complicated.
What is it that such initiates desire, these initiates
who know quite well that the human soul is a purely spiritual being,
a spiritual being fully independent of corporeality? What do these
initiates desire who, in spite of knowing this, shelter and cultivate
the materialistic thinking of human beings? These initiates desire
that there should be as many souls as possible who here between birth
and death absorb only materialistic concepts. Through this, these
souls are prepared to remain in the earthly sphere. They become to a
certain extent fastened to the earthly sphere. Picture to yourself
that brotherhoods are established that clearly know this, that are
thoroughly familiar with these circumstances. These brotherhoods
prepare certain human souls so that they remain in the realm of the
material. If these brotherhoods then arrange — which is quite
possible through their infamous power — that these souls come
after death into the region of the power-sphere of their brotherhood,
then this brotherhood grows to tremendous strength. These
materialists, therefore, are not materialists because they do not
believe in the spirit — these initiate materialists are not so
silly; they know full well the spirit's position. They induce souls
to remain with matter even after death, however, in order to make use
of such souls for their own purposes. From these brotherhoods, a
clientele of souls is thus produced who remain within the realm of
the earth. These souls of the dead have within them forces that can
be guided in the most diverse ways, with which one can bring about a
variety of things and by means of which one can come to special
manipulations of power in relation to those who have not been
initiated in these things.
This is simply an arrangement of certain brotherhoods.
In this matter, one can see clearly only if one does not allow
oneself to be deceived by darkness and fog, does not permit oneself
to be deceived by the belief that such brotherhoods either do not
exist or that their activities are harmless. They are by no means
harmless; they are, in fact, extremely harmful. They say that human
beings should enter more and more deeply into materialism, that they
should believe, according to the thinking of such initiates, that
spiritual forces exist, to be sure, but that these spiritual forces
are nothing other than certain forces of nature.
| Diagram 5 Click image for large view | |
I would like to characterize for you the ideal that such
brotherhoods hold. One must exert a little effort to understand the
situation. Picture for yourself, therefore, a harmless world of
people who are somewhat led astray by today's prevailing
materialistic concepts, who have strayed away a little from the old,
established religious ideas. Picture for yourself such a harmless
humanity. Perhaps we can picture it for ourselves graphically.
We imagine here the realm of such a harmless humanity
(larger circle). As I said, this humanity is not completely clear
about the spiritual world; led astray by materialism, they are unsure
how they should conduct themselves toward the spiritual world. They
are especially unclear how they should act in relation to those who
have passed through the portal of death. Let us assume that the realm
of such a brotherhood is here (small circle, green). This brotherhood
spreads the teachings of materialism; it is concerned that people
think purely materialistic thoughts. In this way the brotherhood
brings about the procreation of souls who remain in the earthly
sphere after death. These would become a spiritual clientele for the
lodge (see drawing, orange). This means that dead people have been
created who would not leave the earthly sphere but would remain on
earth. If the right preparations have been made, they can be retained
in the lodges. In this way, therefore, lodges have been created that
contain the living as well as the dead, but dead who are related to
earthly forces.
The matter is directed so that these people hold
sessions in the same way as was the case with the seances held during
the course of the second half of the nineteenth century, about which
I have often spoken. It may then happen — and I beg you to bear
this in mind — that what occurs in these seances is directed by
the lodge with the help of the dead. The true intention of the
masters of those lodges, however, is that the human beings should not
know that they are dealing with the dead but rather should believe
that they are dealing with higher forces of nature. People are made
to believe that these are higher forces of nature, that psychism and
the like are only higher forces of nature. The true concept of soul
will be taken from them, and it will be said that, just as there is
electricity, just as there is magnetism, so there are also such
higher forces. The fact that these forces are derived from souls is
concealed by those who are leaders in the lodge. Through this,
however, these others, these harmless souls, gradually become
completely dependent, dependent in their souls, upon the lodge,
without realizing what is subjugating them, without realizing the
source of what is actually directing them.
There is no remedy against this situation other than
knowledge of it. When one knows about it, one is already protected.
When one knows it to the extent that the knowledge has become an
inner certainty, a real conviction, then one is protected. One must
not, however, be too lazy in striving to gain knowledge of these
things. It must be said, though, that it is never entirely too late.
I have often brought the following to your attention: these things
can become clear only gradually, and I can pull together only
gradually the elements to bring you complete clarity. I have often
made you aware that, in the course of the second half of the
nineteenth century, many brotherhoods of the West introduced
spiritism experimentally to convince themselves through this test
that they had gone as far with humanity as they had intended. It was
a testing to see how far they were with humanity. In these seances
they expected that people would say that there are higher forces of
nature. Then they were disappointed, these brothers of the left, that
people did not say this but rather said that in the seances spirits
of the dead appear. That was a bitter disappointment for the
initiates; that was exactly what they did not want, because it was
just this belief in the dead that these initiates wished to take from
man. Not the activity of the dead, not the activity of the forces of
the dead, but this thought that the forces derive from the dead, this
correct, significant thought, this was to be taken from man. The
brothers see that this is a higher materialism; it is a materialism
that not only denies the spirit but wishes to force the spirit into
matter. They see that materialism has forms in which it can already
be denied. One can say that materialism has disappeared — we
are speaking already about spirit, but all of them speak about spirit
in a vague way. It is very easy to be a materialist when all nature
has been made into spirit in such a way that psychism emerges. What
is important is that one is able to cast one's glance into the
concrete spiritual world, into concrete spirituality.
Here you have the beginning of what will become more and
more intense in the next five centuries. These evil brotherhoods now
are limiting themselves, but they are bound to continue their
activity if they are not prevented, and they can only be prevented if
one overcomes laziness toward the spiritual scientific world
conception.
Through these seances, therefore, these brotherhoods
betray themselves, so to speak. Instead of covering themselves, they
have unveiled themselves through these seances. This showed that
their scheme was not really quite successful. For this reason, the
impulse sprang up within these same brotherhoods to strive to
discredit spiritism for a time during the 1890s. In short, you can
see how deeply incisive effects can be achieved in this way with the
methods of the spiritual world. What we are dealing with here is the
enhancement of power, exploiting certain evolutionary conditions that
must emerge in the course of humanity's evolution.
This growing materialization of human souls, this
imprisonment of human souls within the earthly sphere — lodges
are also in the earthly sphere — will be counteracted. If the
souls therefore haunt the lodges and are to be effective there, they
must be confined to the earthly. This striving, this impulse to work
in the earthly sphere through the souls, is counteracted by the
significant impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha. This impulse of the
Mystery of Golgotha is also the healing of the world against the
materialization of the soul. The way taken by Christ Himself is
completely outside the will and intentions of human beings. No human
being, therefore, no matter how knowledgeable — also no
initiate — has influence over what Christ does, which will
lead, in the course of the twentieth century, to the appearance about
which I have spoken and of which you will find indications in the
Mystery Dramas. This depends completely upon Christ Himself. Christ
will exist in the earthly sphere as an etheric being. It depends upon
the human being how he establishes a relationship to Him. On the
appearance of Christ Himself, therefore, no one, no initiate however
mighty, has any influence. It will come. I beg that you hold firmly
to this. Arrangements can be made, however, for receiving this Christ
event in this way or that, for making it effective.
These brotherhoods about which I have just spoken, which
wish to confine the souls of human beings to the materialistic
sphere, strive for the Christ to pass unnoticed through the twentieth
century, for His coming as etheric individuality to be unobserved by
human beings. This striving evolves under the influence of a quite
definite idea, under a definite impulse of will. These brotherhoods
have the urge to conquer the sphere of influence that is to come
through Christ in the twentieth century and to continue further, to
conquer it for another being, about which we shall speak later in
more detail. There are brotherhoods of the West who strive to battle
the Christ impulse. They wish to place another individuality who has
never yet appeared in the flesh but only as an etheric individuality,
who is of a strong Ahrimanic nature, in place of Christ.
All these measures about which I have just spoken
regarding the dead and so forth serve in the end the aim of leading
human beings away from Christ, Who passed through the Mystery of
Golgotha, and of securing the rulership of the earth for another
individuality. It is a real struggle, not just something that I know
of as abstract concepts or whatever but a real struggle. It is a real
struggle that concerns itself with placing another being in place of
the Christ being in the course of human evolution for the rest of the
fifth post-Atlantean period and for the sixth and seventh. It will be
the task of a healthy, honest spiritual development to eradicate such
strivings, which are in the true sense of the word anti-Christian, to
remove them, to annihilate them. This can be achieved, however, only
through clear insight. This other being whom the brotherhood wishes
to substitute as ruler they will call “Christ”; they will
actually designate him as the “Christ.” What will be
important will be to distinguish between the true Christ, Who, when
He appears, will not be an individuality incarnated in the flesh, and
the being that is distinguished from the true Christ by having never
yet incarnated during earthly evolution. This other being is one who
has only reached etheric embodiment, and he will be put by the
brotherhoods in the place of Christ, Who is to pass by unobserved.
There we have the part of the battle concerned with
counterfeiting the appearance of Christ in the twentieth century. He
who observes life only on the surface, above all in outer discussions
about Christ and the question of Jesus and so forth, does not look
into the depths. This is the fog, the fumes with which people are
deceived, diverting them from the deeper things, from what is the
essential issue. When theologians debate about Christ, there is
always in such discussions a spiritual influence from somewhere.
These people then encourage quite different aims and purposes from
those in which they actually believe consciously.
This is just the danger of the concept of the
unconscious, that people are driven into confusion even concerning
such circumstances. These evil brotherhoods pursue their aims very
consciously, but what the brotherhoods pursue consciously naturally
becomes unconscious for those who have all kinds of superficial
discussions and plans. One does not reach the heart of the matter,
however, when one speaks about the unconscious, for this so-called
unconscious is simply on the other side of the threshold of everyday
consciousness. It is in that sphere in which the knowing one can
unfold his plans. You see that this is essentially one side of the
situation, that it is really so that a number of brotherhoods take an
opposing stand, brotherhoods who wish to replace the activity of the
Christ with the activity of another individuality. These brotherhoods
arrange everything so that they can achieve their purpose.
Countering this are brotherhoods of the East, especially
Indian brotherhoods, who wish no less significantly to interfere in
the evolution of humanity. These Indian brotherhoods pursue yet
another goal. They have never developed the type of esotericism
through which they could ensnare the dead into their realm, into the
realm of the lodges. That is far removed from their purposes; they
have no interest in such things. On the other hand, they also do not
wish the Mystery of the Golgotha with its impulse to take hold of the
evolution of humanity. They also do not wish this. It is not,
however, that they do not wish it because the dead are at their
disposal, as I indicated is the case with the brotherhoods of the
West. They wish to fight against the Christ, Who will enter human
evolution as an etheric individuality in the course of the twentieth
century, not by substituting another individuality; for that purpose
they would need the dead and these they do not have. Instead they
wish to divert the interest away from this Christ. They do not wish
to allow Christianity to become strong, these brotherhoods of the
East, especially the Indian brotherhoods. They do not wish the
interest in the true Christ, Who has passed through the Mystery of
Golgotha, to flourish, the interest in the Christ Who had only a
single incarnation for three years here on earth and Who cannot
appear again on earth in a physical incarnation. They do not wish to
make use of the dead in their lodges but something other than what
were once simply living human beings. In these Indian, Eastern
lodges, a different type of being is made use of in place of the dead
used by the Western lodges.
When a human being dies, he leaves behind his etheric
body; it separates from him soon after death, as you know. Under
normal conditions this etheric body is assimilated by the cosmos.
This absorption is somewhat complicated, as I have shown you in many
different ways. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, however, and even
after Golgotha, particularly in the Eastern regions, something quite
distinctive was possible. When the human being after death surrenders
such an etheric body, certain beings are able to inhabit this etheric
body; they then become etheric beings with these etheric bodies that
have been laid aside by human beings. In Eastern regions, therefore,
it now happens that not dead people but all kinds of demonic spirits
are induced to inhabit etheric bodies laid aside by human beings.
Such demonic spirits that inhabit the etheric bodies laid aside by
human beings are taken into the Eastern lodges. The Western lodges
thus have the dead who have been directly confined within matter; the
Eastern lodges of the left have demonic spirits, spirits that do not
belong to earthly evolution but who creep into earthly evolution by
occupying the etheric bodies vacated by human beings.
Exoterically this phenomenon is transformed through
veneration. You know that certain brotherhoods possess the art of
calling forth illusions. Because people do not know how widespread
illusion already is in reality, they can easily be deceived by
artificially called forth illusions. It is done in this way: what one
wishes to achieve is clothed in the form of veneration. Imagine that
I have a tribe of people, a related clan; I have arranged ahead of
time as an “evil” brother the possibility that the
etheric body of an ancestor is occupied by a demonic being. I say to
them that they must venerate this ancestor. The ancestor is simply
the one who had laid aside his etheric body, which was then occupied
by demons through the machinations of the lodge. The veneration of
ancestors is thereby brought about. These ancestors who are being
worshipped, however, are simply demonic beings within the etheric
body of the respective ancestor.
One can divert the world conception of Eastern people
from the Mystery of Golgotha by working in these ways, as they do in
the Eastern lodges. Through this their purpose will be achieved, that
Christ as individuality, as He is intended to pass over the earth,
remains unnoticed by Eastern people and perhaps by people everywhere.
They therefore do not wish to substitute a false Christ but to cause
the appearance of Christ Jesus to remain unnoticed.
To a certain extent a twofold struggle is thus waged
today against the Christ impulse appearing in the etheric in the
course of the twentieth century. Humanity is actually inserted within
this evolution. What we see happening in individual cases is
essentially only a consequence of what is transpiring in the great
impulses of humanity's evolution. For that reason it is sad that
people will be deceived constantly when the unconscious, the
so-called unconscious, is working within them — be it some
receding love affair or something similar — when, in fact,
impulses of extremely conscious spirituality are passing from all
sides through humanity but remaining relatively unconscious if one
does not trouble oneself about them in one's consciousness.
To these things you must add much more. Human beings who
have been honestly concerned with the evolution of humanity have
always taken into consideration such things as we have characterized,
and they have undertaken what was right from their point of view.
Much more than this the human being cannot or is not permitted to do.
A good sheltered place for spiritual life, an
exceptionally good sheltered spot, protected against all possible
illusions, was Ireland, the Irish Island during the first Christian
centuries. It was truly protected from all possible illusions, more
than any other region on earth. This is also the reason that so many
disseminators of Christianity in the early Christian centuries
originated in Ireland. These disseminators of Christianity, however,
had to work with a naive humanity, because European humanity, among
whom they were active, was in those days naive. They had to take this
humanity in its naiveté into consideration, but as far as they
themselves were concerned, they had to know and understand the great
impulses of humanity. In the fourth and fifth centuries particularly,
Irish initiates were active in Central Europe. They began there, and
their activity consisted in preparing what was to take place in the
future. To a certain extent they were under the influence of the
initiate-knowledge that revealed that in the fifteenth century (1413,
as you know) the fifth post-Atlantean era was to begin. They were
under this influence. They also knew that they had to prepare for a
completely new age, that a naive humanity must be protected for this
new period. What was it that was done at that time to protect this
naive humanity, to build a fence around it, as it were, to keep
certain harmful influences from entering? What was done?
Evolution was guided first by well-instructed and then
by honest groups in such a way that gradually all ocean journeys were
suppressed, journeys that in past times had been made from Northern
lands to America. It was thus arranged that whereas in past times
boats would cross from Norway to America for certain purposes (I
shall say more about this another time), this knowledge of America
would be completely forgotten by the European population, so that the
connection with America was gradually obliterated. In the fifteenth
century nothing was known of America by European humanity. The
development was directed particularly from Rome so that for definite
reasons the connection with America was gradually lost, because
European humanity had to be sheltered from American influences.
Especially involved in this process of protecting European humanity
from American influences were just these monks from Ireland who as
Irish initiates had spread Christianity over the European continent.
In ancient times quite definite influences were brought
from America; in the age when the fifth post-Atlantean epoch began,
however, matters were arranged so that European humanity was
uninfluenced by America, knew absolutely nothing about it, lived in
the belief that America did not exist. Only after the fifth
post-Atlantean period had begun was America again discovered, as is
familiar history. One of the truths with which you are most likely
familiar is that what is learned in schools as history is many times
a “fable convenue.” That America was discovered for the
first time in 1492 is such a convenient fable. It was only
rediscovered. It was merely that for a period the connections were
cleverly concealed, as had to occur. It is again important, however,
to know what the situation was, to know the true history. True
history is that Europe was fenced in for a time and was carefully
protected against certain influences that were not to come to Europe.
Such things show you how significant it is not to accept
the so-called unconscious as an unconscious but rather as something
that is extremely conscious and takes place beyond the threshold of
everyday human consciousness. It is indeed important for a larger
portion of humanity to learn about certain mysteries. I have
therefore done as much as it is possible to do now in public lectures
in Zurich. In Zurich, as you may know, I have gone at times as far as
to explain to people the extent to which historical life is not
grasped by human beings with the ordinary consciousness but is in
reality dreamt, how the content of history is in reality dreamt by
human beings. Only when people become conscious of this will health
come to these concepts.
These are things through which one gradually awakens
consciousness. The phenomena, the facts that will come about, will
show us the truth of these things. One must only be sure not to
overlook them. Human beings go blindly and slumbering through the
facts; they also go blindly and slumbering through such tragic
catastrophes as the present one. These are things that I would like
to impress upon your hearts, today more historically. Tomorrow I
shall speak about these things more explicitly.
I would like to add one more picture to these things.
First, you have seen from the discussion what a tremendous
distinction there is between East and West in the evolution of
humanity. Second, I ask you to consider the following. You see, the
psychoanalyst speaks about the subconscious, about the subconscious
life of the soul, and so on. It is not so important to speak about
such an indefinite concept of these things, but it is necessary to
grasp what is truly beyond the threshold of consciousness. What is
there? Much is certainly to be found down there under the threshold
of consciousness. For itself, however, what lies down there is
extremely conscious. One must come to understand what kind of
conscious spirituality exists beyond the threshold of consciousness.
One must speak of conscious spirituality beyond the threshold of
consciousness, not unconscious spirituality. We must become clear
that man has much about which he knows nothing in his ordinary
consciousness. It would put the human being in a terrible position if
he had to know in his ordinary consciousness all that goes on within
him. Just consider how he would be able to go about eating and
drinking if he were to acquaint himself exactly with all the
physiological and biological processes that take place from the
ingesting of food onward, and so on. All this takes place in the
unconscious. There are spiritual forces at work everywhere, even in
the purely physiological. Man cannot wait with eating and drinking,
however, until he has learned what is really going on within him. So
much goes on within man! For man, a large portion, by far the largest
portion, of his being is unconscious, or to say it better,
subconscious.
The strange thing is that this subconscious that we
carry within us is taken hold of by another being under all
circumstances. This means that we are not only a fusion of body,
soul, and spirit, carrying within us through the world our soul,
which is independent of our body; shortly before birth another being
takes possession of the subconscious portions of the human being.
This being is there, this subconscious being that accompanies man the
entire way between birth and death. Somewhat before birth it enters
man and accompanies him. One can also characterize this being as one
that permeates man in those parts that do not come into his ordinary
consciousness: it is a very intelligent being and possessed of a will
that is akin to the forces of nature; in its will it is much more
closely related to the forces of nature than is man. I must emphasize
the peculiarity, however, that this being would suffer
extraordinarily if under present conditions it were to experience
death with man. Under present conditions this being cannot experience
death with man. It thus disappears shortly before death; it must
always save itself. It always has the urge, however, to arrange the
life of the human being in such a way that it can overcome death. It
would be dreadful for the evolution of the human being, however, if
this being that has taken such possession of man should also be able
to conquer death, if it could die with man and in this way enter the
spiritual worlds that man enters after death. It must always take its
leave of man before he enters the spiritual world after death. In
some cases this is very difficult for this being, and all sorts of
complications arise.
This is the situation: this being that holds sway
completely in the subconscious is extremely dependent upon the earth
as a whole organism. The earth is not at all the being described by
geologists, mineralogists, and paleontologists; this earth is a fully
living being. Man sees only its skeleton, because the geologist,
mineralogist, and paleontologist describe only its mineral nature
that is the earth's skeleton. If you knew only this much, you would
know about as much as if you were to enter this room and, through
some special arrangement of your capacities for sight, could see
nothing of this honored company but the bones, the skeletal system.
Imagine if one entered through the door and on these chairs sat
nothing but skeletons (not that you necessarily would have nothing
but bones — that I do not expect of you — but we will
assume that man has the capacity to see only bones; he would be
fitted out with some kind of X-ray machine). This is just what
geology sees of the earth; it sees only the skeleton. This earth,
however, not only consists of skeleton but is a living organism, and
this earth sends from its center to every point on the surface, to
every territory, special forces. Picture for yourself the surface of
the earth (see drawing):
| Diagram 6 Click image for large view | |
Here is the Eastern region, there the Western region, to
take it only on a large scale. The forces that are transmitted from
the earth are something that belong to the life organism of the
earth. Depending on whether a human being lives on this or that spot
on earth, his soul, this immortal soul, does not come directly in
contact with these forces but only indirectly — the immortal
soul of man is relatively independent of earthly conditions. The soul
is only artificially dependent upon earthly conditions, as was shown
today. By the circuitous path through this other being, however, this
being that takes possession of man before birth and must leave him
again before death, these various forces work particularly strongly.
These forces are active in racial types and geographic
differentiations in human beings. It is thus this “double,”
which man bears within him, upon whom the geographic and other
differentiations particularly exert their influences.
This is extremely significant, and we will see tomorrow
in which way this double is influenced from various points of the
earth and what the resulting consequences are. I have already
mentioned that it is necessary for you to consider what I have said
today with what will come tomorrow, because the one can hardly be
understood without the other. We must now try to absorb into
ourselves such concepts as become even more serious when related to
the total reality, to that reality in which the human soul lives with
its entire being. This reality metamorphoses itself in various ways,
but how it is metamorphosed depends greatly upon man. Two significant
metamorphoses that are possible become clear when one is aware of how
human souls, depending upon whether they absorb materialistic or
spiritual concepts between birth and death, imprison themselves on
earth or come into the right spheres. In these matters increasing
clarity must prevail in our concepts. We will then find increasingly
the right relationship to the entire world. This will not occur in an
abstract spiritual movement, but rather it must lie within us, in a
concretely comprehended spiritual movement that reckons with the
spiritual life of a number of individualities.
It is truly satisfying for me that such discussions —
discussions that are also particularly significant for those among us
who no longer belong to the physical plane but have passed through
the portal of death, remaining our faithful members — that such
discussions as these are fostered here as a reality, that they bring
us ever closer to our departed friends.
|