The Cycle of the Year as Breathing Process of the Earth. Lecture 2 of 5.
Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, April 1, 1923:
Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, April 1, 1923:
I have sought
out of the esoteric aspect of the Easter thought to speak to you about how, when
the course of Nature is permeated by spirit, it must come about that an autumn
festival is added to the festivals of the year. This should be a kind of Michael
festival, placed in relation to the fall equinox approximately in the same way
as Christmas is to the winter solstice, Easter to the spring equinox, and St.
John's to the summer solstice.
I should like
to try to bring closer to you the Easter thought appropriate to the present age,
particularly in its feeling content, so that tomorrow I can lay before you the
whole significance of such a contemplation.
When we
celebrate the Easter festival today, if we look about us into the consciousness
of contemporary humanity and are honest with ourselves, we shall have to admit
that the Easter thought is actually very little true for the greater part of
humanity! On what does the truth of the Easter thought depend? The truth depends
on a man's being able to link with this thought a mental image showing the
Christ Being as having gone through death, having conquered Death, and then when
He had undergone death and the succeeding Resurrection, having thereafter so
united Himself with mankind that He could still give revelations to those who
had formerly been His disciples, to the Apostles. But the Resurrection thought
has more and more faded away, whereas when Christianity was in its inception it
had been so living that Paul's words could sound across the ages from this
epoch: “And if the Christ be not risen, then is... your faith vain!”
Paul has here
linked Christianity directly with the Easter thought — that is, with the thought
of the Resurrection. People who have received the education of the present day
call the Resurrection a miracle, and as miracle it is excluded from the realm of
what is or can be reality. So that for all those who can no longer penetrate to
the Resurrection thought, the Easter festival merely reflects an ancient custom,
as do the rest of the Christian festivals. In the course of the years we have
mentioned this from the most varied points of view.
It will first
be necessary for mankind to reacquire a knowledge of the spiritual world as such
in order to understand events which do not belong to the realm of sense reality;
and what is connected with the Resurrection thought must be regarded as such an
event. Then it will be possible for the Easter thought to become truly living
again, which it cannot be for a humanity that relegates the Resurrection to the
realm of unreal miracles.
The Easter
thought arose in those epochs of mankind in which there were still remnants of
the ancient primitive human knowledge of the spiritual world. We know that at
the beginning of human Earth evolution, man had a certain instinctive
clairvoyance by means of which he could gain glimpses of the spiritual world
which led him to view this world as of equal validity with the physical sense
world. This original instinctive clairvoyance is lost for earthly humanity. But
in the first three centuries of the Christian era the last remnants of it at
least still existed. Hence in these centuries a certain understanding of the
Easter thought based upon ancient human insight could still take root.
Such an
understanding became blunted in the fourth century, when preparation began for
what has come to full expression since the first third of the fifteenth century:
namely, man's life in abstract, dead thoughts, which we have often mentioned. In
these abstract, dead thoughts, in which natural science attains greatness, the
Easter thought soon died. Today the time has come when it must again awaken as a
living thought. But in order to awaken, it must pass over out of the state of
death into a state of livingness.
That which is
living is characterized by the fact that it puts forth something other than
itself out of itself. In the early Christian centuries, when the Easter thought
was spreading throughout Christendom, the “Gemuets”* of men were still sensitive
enough to experience inwardly something very powerful when they pictured the
grave of Christ and, rising out of the grave, that Being Who was now united with
mankind. The Gemuets could experience with great inner force what appeared
before their souls in this powerful image. And this inner experience was a
reality in the human soul life.
* The
Gemuet, or feeling soul, together with the intellectual soul forms the
centermost of the three soul elements in Rudolf Steiner's picture of man. This
soul element was predominant in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, in which the
event of Golgotha took place.
Only that is a
reality in the human soul life which this soul really lays hold of, just as the
senses ordinarily lay hold of the outer sense world. The people of the early
centuries felt that they were changed by beholding the event of the Death and
the Resurrection of Christ. They felt that by this sight their souls were
transformed, just as a man feels that he is changed by physical events in the
course of his life on Earth.
The human being
is transformed at about the seventh year by the change of teeth, and again at
about the fourteenth or fifteenth year by the onset of puberty. These are bodily
transformations. In the contemplation of the Easter thought the early Christians
felt themselves transformed in their inner soul life. They felt themselves
thereby lifted out of one stage of human existence and transported into another.
In the course
of time the Easter thought has lost this force, this power, and it can regain it
only when the Resurrection, which cannot be understood according to
natural laws, regains reality through spiritual science, a science which
comprehends the spiritual. But what is spiritually conceived attains reality
not when this spiritual is conceived merely in abstract thoughts but only when
it is also grasped in lively connection with the world appearing before
the senses.
Anyone who
wants to cling to the spiritual only in its abstraction, who says, for example,
that we should not pull down the spiritual into the physical sense world, should
at the same time maintain that the Divine Being is degraded when He is
represented as having created the world. The Divine is comprehended in its
greatness and power not when we place it outside and beyond the sensible, but
when we ascribe to it the power to work in this sensible world, to permeate this
sensible world creatively. It is a debasing of the Divine to want to set it up
yonder in abstract heights, in a “cloud-cuckoo-land.” And we will never live in
spiritual realities if we conceive the spiritual only in its abstractness, if we
cannot bring it into connection with the whole course of the world as this comes
to meet us.
And this
cosmic course, as far as our earthly life is concerned, meets us first of all in
the fact that this earthly life comprises a certain number of years, and that
these years present the return of certain events in a regular rhythm, as I
indicated yesterday. After a year we return to approximately the same conditions
of weather, of Sun position, and so forth. The course of the year thus enters
into our earthly life in a rhythmical way.
We saw
yesterday that this course of the year represents an in-and-out-breathing by the
Earth itself of soul-spiritual elements. If we picture to ourselves once more
the four high points of this Earth breathing-process, as we allowed them to come
before our souls, we must say to ourselves: The time of the Christmas festival
represents the time when the Earth holds its breath within it. The
soul-spiritual part of the Earth is completely absorbed. Deep in the bosom of
the Earth there rests all that the Earth unfolded during summer in order to let
it be stimulated by the cosmos. All that opened up to the cosmos and was yielded
up to its forces during the summertime has now been completely drawn in by the
Earth, to rest in her deeps at Christmas time. Man of course does not dwell in
the earthly depths; physically he lives on the surface of the Earth.
Soul-spiritually also, he does not dwell in the depths of the Earth, for he
lives actually in the Earth's periphery; he lives in the atmosphere that
surrounds the Earth.
Therefore
esoteric wisdom has always recognized the essential being of the Earth at the
time of the winter solstice, at Christmas time, as something concealed at first,
as something which cannot be penetrated by the ordinary forces of human
knowledge, something which belongs in the sphere of the esoteric mysteries. And
in all ancient times when something comparable to our present Christmas festival
existed, it was recognized that what goes on in connection with the Earth at
Christmas time could be grasped only by initiation into Mystery knowledge, by
the initiation still known in Greece as the Chthonian Mysteries. By means of
this initiation, man forsook in a certain way the periphery of the Earth in
which he lived with his ordinary consciousness, to immerse himself in something
into which he could not submerge physically. He immersed himself in the
soul-spiritual element, and thus he learned to know what the Earth becomes
during midwinter, when she draws her soul-spiritual element into herself.
And then a man
came to know through this Mystery initiation that at the time of the winter
solstice the Earth is especially receptive to permeation by the Moon forces.
This was regarded as the secret — if I may express myself in the modern sense —
as the Christmas secret of the ancient mysteries: that just at Christmas time
one comes to know how the Earth, by being permeated and saturated by her
spirit-soul-being, becomes especially receptive in her inner being to the
activity of the Moon forces.
In certain
ancient times, for example, no one was entrusted with a knowledge of healing
science unless he was initiated in the Winter Mysteries, and understood how the
Earth, through the holding of her breath, becomes especially susceptible
inwardly to the activity of the Moon forces, how at this time she permeates
especially the plants with healing forces, how at this time she makes the plant
world, and to a certain extent also the world of the lower animals, into
something entirely different.
The Christmas
initiation was felt as a descent into the depths of the earthly world. But
something else was connected with this Christmas initiation: namely, something
that was felt in a certain sense to be a danger for the human being. A man said
to himself: “When anyone really observes his consciousness in connection with
what lives in the Earth as Moon forces at Christmastime, he comes into a state
of consciousness in which he must be inwardly very strong, must have inwardly
fortified himself, in order to withstand the attack from all sides of the
Ahrimanic powers, who live in the Earth precisely because of its having taken in
the Moon activity.” And only in the strength which a man had himself developed
in his soul-spiritual being, in the strength to break the opposition of these
forces, did he see what makes it possible to endure his Earth existence over the
long run.
But then sometime after the celebration of these Christmas Mysteries, the teachers of the
Mysteries gathered their pupils together and as a sort of revelation said to
them the following: “Certainly, through initiation one can, in full
consciousness, behold what is at work within the Earth at the time of the winter
solstice. But with the oncoming of spring, when the plant world starts to grow,
something rises up out of the depths of the Earth which permeates all that is
growing and sprouting, permeates also man himself: namely, what the Ahrimanic
powers bring about. At a time when man was still endowed with divine forces, as
he was at the Earth's beginning, then through this primordial divine heritage
men could still resist the attack of the Ahrimanic powers which broke over
mankind in this way during the time of the winter moon. But (so the initiates
told their pupils) a time will come when mankind will be rendered insensible to
the spiritual through the agency of the Moon forces which the Earth takes up in
the wintertime. With the growing and sprouting in the spring, a kind of
intoxication with regard to the spiritual will come over mankind, depriving men
of any consciousness that anything spiritual exists. Then, should mankind not
find it possible to resist these intoxicating forces, the humanity of the Earth
will go into decline and not be able to develop further with the Earth to future
higher stages of evolution.”
The initiates
painted in gloomy colors the age which had to break in for humanity in the
fifteenth century, when mankind will excel to be sure in abstract, dead
thoughts, but when man can again acquire spiritual capacities only by gaining
new strength to overcome the intoxicating forces that rise out of the Earth.
This he can do by developing the particular spiritual force now accessible to
mankind.
When we form
such visualizations, we transpose ourselves, so to speak, into the connection
that exists between the course of the year in nature and what lives in the
spirit. We bring together what is otherwise abstract, merely thought-out, with
what is the natural sensible course as it confronts us, for example, in the
seasons.
The polar
opposite of this Christmas Mystery is the St. John's Mystery, at the time of the
summer solstice. Then the Earth has completely exhaled. The spirit-soul element
of the Earth is then utterly surrendered to the super-earthly powers, to the
cosmic powers. Then the spirit-soul element of the Earth takes in all that is
extraterrestrial. Just as the ancient initiates had said of the Christmas
Mystery, so they said also of the St. John's Mystery (we use modern forms of
expression, but there were appropriate forms in the ancient Mysteries also) —
the initiates said that it was necessary to attain initiation in order to
penetrate the secrets of the St. John's Mystery — that is, the secrets of the
heavens. For man belongs to the periphery of the Earth; he belongs neither
within the Earth, nor as earthly man does he belong to the heavens. Hence he
must be initiated into the secrets of the sub-earthly in order to come to know
the secrets of the super-earthly.
In a certain
way, the Easter Mystery and the Michael or Autumn Mystery were seen as holding
the balance between the super-earthly and the sub-earthly. And the Michael
Mystery, as we have said, will first attain its proper significance in the time
that is still future to our own.
The Easter
Mystery in its full magnitude entered into the evolution of mankind through the
Mystery of Golgotha. And this Easter Mystery was understood, as I have already
said, because remnants of the ancient clairvoyance still existed. At that time
people could still raise themselves up in their Gemuets or feeling souls to the
resurrected Christ. The Easter Mystery was therefore woven into that ritual
which was not an initiation ritual, but a ritual for mankind in general: it was
woven into the ritual of the celebration of the Mass.
But with the
retreat of primitive clairvoyance, the understanding of the Easter Mystery was
lost. People begin to discuss a matter only when they no longer understand it.
All the discussion that began after the first Christian centuries about how the
Easter thought is to be understood derive from the fact that people could no
longer comprehend it in a direct elementary way.
Now, we have
often been able to apply to the Easter thought what anthroposophical spiritual
science gives to us. What is essential here is that this anthroposophical
spiritual research points again to forms of life which are not exhausted between
birth and death in the sense world; that it places what can be spiritually
investigated over against what can be sensibly investigated; that it makes
comprehensible how the Christ could converse with His disciples, even after the
physical body was turned to dust. In the light of spiritual research, the
Resurrection thought becomes alive again. But this Resurrection thought will be
fully understood only if it is linked to what I might call its counter-pole.
What then does the Resurrection thought really portray? The Christ Being
descended from spiritual heights, entered into the body of Jesus and lived on
Earth in this body, thereby bringing into the earthly sphere forces in
themselves super-terrestrial. And these super-earthly forces which the Christ
Being brought into the earthly sphere were, from the time of the Mystery of
Golgotha on, united with the forces of mankind's evolution. Since then that
which the men of ancient times could behold only outside in cosmic space is to
be feelingly perceived within the evolution of earthly humanity. Following the
Resurrection, the Christ united Himself with mankind, and since then He lives
not only in the super-earthly heights, but also within Earth existence; He
lives in evolution, in the stream of mankind's evolution.
Above all,
this event must be regarded not from the earthly point of view alone, but also
from the super-earthly viewpoint. We can say that we should not view the Christ
only in the way He comes to Earth out of heavenly worlds and becomes man, in the
way He is given to men, but we should view this Christ Event also from the
standpoint that the Christ actually departs from the spiritual world when He
descends to the Earth.
Human beings
saw the Christ arise in their realm. The Gods saw the Christ forsake the
heavenly world and plunge down among mankind. For men the Christ appeared; for
certain spiritual beings He vanished. Only when He passed through the
Resurrection did He appear again to certain extraterrestrial spiritual beings,
now shining out to them from the Earth like a star, a star which radiates out
from the Earth into the spiritual world. Spiritual beings mark the Mystery of
Golgotha by saying: “A star began to shine out from the Earth into the spiritual
realm.” And it was felt to be of immense importance for the spiritual world that
the Christ had submerged into a human body, and had gone through death in this
body. For by partaking in death in a human body He was enabled immediately after
this death to undertake something which His former divine companions could by no
means have accomplished.
These former
divine companions confronted, as an inimical world, what even in earlier times
was called “hell.” But the efficacy of these spiritual beings stopped short at
the gates of hell. These spiritual beings worked upon man. The forces of man
extend even into hell. This signifies nothing other than man's subconscious
projection into the Ahrimanic forces in the wintertime and also into the ascent
of these Ahrimanic forces in the spring. The divine spiritual beings felt this
as a world opposed to them. They saw it rise up out of the Earth and felt it to
be an exceedingly problematic world. But they themselves had only a roundabout
connection with it through man. They could only observe it in a certain way. But
because the Christ had descended to the Earth, had Himself become man, He could
descend into the realm of these Ahrimanic powers and overcome them. This is
expressed in the Creed as “the Descent into Hell.”
This Descent
into Hell provides the opposite pole to the Resurrection. This is what Christ
has done for mankind: By descending from the divine heights and taking on the
form of man, He became able actually to descend into the realm to whose dangers
man is exposed, into which the other Gods, who had not been exposed to human
death, could not descend. In His way the Christ gained the victory over death.
And therewith entered, I might say, as the opposite pole of the Descent into
Hell, the ascent into the spiritual world, in spite of the fact that the Christ
remained on Earth. For Christ had so united Himself with mankind that he had
descended to that to which mankind is exposed. During the winter and spring
seasons, He could win for man that which works out of extraterrestrial regions
into the Earth again from St. John's to autumn. Thus in the Easter thought we
see united in a certain way the Descent into the region of Hell, and through
this descent the winning of the heavenly region for the further evolution of
mankind.
All this
belongs to a right conception of the Easter thought. But what would this Easter
thought be if it could not become living! It was possible in ancient times to
connect the right feeling awareness with the thought of the winter solstice only
because they had on the other hand the St. John's thought. Schematically drawn:
If one had the earthly with its deeply concealed winter nature (orange),
then its counterpart was what in summer lay in the super-earthly periphery
(orange). Both were to be reached only through initiation, yet they were
connected by what was in the atmosphere surrounding the Earth, in the Earth's
periphery (green), Christmas calls for St. John's. St. John's calls for
Christmas. Man would rigidify under the influence of the Ahrimanic powers if he
could not be exposed to the loosening Luciferic powers, who again give wings to
thought, so that it need not remain rigid but can thaw again under the influence
of the light.
At first
humanity in its evolution had only the one pole, the Easter pole, and this
Easter pole became paralyzed. The Easter festival lost its inner vitality. It
will regain its inner life only when man can think about this festival in such a
way that he can say to himself: “Through what is symbolically expressed in the
Descent into Hell — which in reality can be understood as the Resurrection — a
counterweight was given against something which had to come: namely, the
paralyzing of all spiritual vision, its dying away in the earthly life.
Prophetically, Christ Jesus wanted to prepare for what had to come: namely, the
circumstance that man during his life on Earth between birth and death would
have to forget the super-earthly, the spiritual, that he would in a certain way
die to the spiritual. Opposed to this dying away of man in earthly life stands
the Easter thought of the victory of super-earthly life over the earthly.”
On the one
side is this: Man descends from his pre-earthly life; but in the period that
dawned in the first half of the fifteenth century, he will in his earthly life
more and more forget his super-earthly origin; as to his soul-being he will die
away, as it were, in the earthly life. That stands on the one side.
On the other
stands this: There was a spiritual, heavenly Being, Who by His deed, working out
of the heavens into the Earth, set forth the counter-image. That spiritual Being
descended into a human body, and in the Resurrection has, through His own being,
placed the super-earthly spiritual among the men of Earth. In remembrance of
this we have the Easter festival, which puts before mankind the picture of the
burial of Christ Jesus and the Resurrection of Christ Jesus.
He was laid in
the grave and thereafter He arose — this is the Easter thought, as it stands in
cosmic records... “Look upon thyself, O Man: thou descendest out of the
super-earthly worlds; thou art threatened by the danger that thy soul will die
away in the earthly life. Therefore the Christ appears, Who sets before thine
eyes how that from which thou also didst arise, how that super-earthly spiritual,
conquers death. There stands before thee in mighty images such as could be
placed before mankind: the entombment of Christ Jesus, the Resurrection of
Christ Jesus. He was laid in the grave. He rose from the grave and appeared to
those who could behold Him.”
But with the
paralyzed soul forces of man today, this image can no longer become living.
Where could it become alive? In a traditional faith man can still look upon what
the Easter festival gives him: upon the sublime picture of the burial and the
Resurrection. But out of the inner force of his soul he can no longer, of
himself, find anything to connect with this Easter thought, with the thought of
the entombment and the Resurrection. It is out of spiritual knowledge that he
must again unite something with it.
And this
something is another thought, to which there can be no alternative. It is,
however, possible for a human being to let spiritual knowledge approach him so
that he may understand this “other.” Let us place this “other” before ourselves,
so as to inscribe it deeply within our souls. Easter thought: He has been
laid in the grave; He is risen. Now let us place before ourselves the other
thought which must come over mankind: He is risen, and can confidently be laid
in the grave. Easter thought: He has been laid in the grave; He is risen.
Michaelmas thought: He is risen, and can confidently be laid in the grave.
The first
thought, the Easter thought, pertains to the Christ; the second thought
pertains to the human being. It pertains to the man who directly
comprehends the power of the Easter thought, comprehends how when spiritual
knowledge enters into the earthly life of the present, in which his
soul-spiritual is dying away, his soul can resurrect, so that he becomes
living between birth and death, so that in the earthly life he becomes
inwardly alive.
The human
being must through spiritual knowledge comprehend this inner resurrection, this
inner awakening; then will he confidently be laid in the grave. Then he may be
laid in the grave, through which he otherwise would fall prey to those Ahrimanic
powers who work within the Earth realm at the time of the winter solstice.
And the
festival which contains this thought: “He is risen and can confidently be laid
in the grave” — this festival must fall in the time when the leaves are
beginning to turn yellow and fall from the trees, when the fruits have ripened,
when the Sun has received that power which brings to maturity what in the spring
was budding and sprouting, full of the forces of growth, but which also brings
withering and the inclination to seek again the inner part of the Earth; when
what is developing on the Earth begins to be a symbol of the grave.
If we place
the Easter festival at the time when life begins to bud and to sprout, when the
forces of growth attain their highest point, then the other festival, which
contains: “He is risen, and can confidently be laid in the grave,” we must place
at the time when Earth nature begins to wither, when the mood of the grave is
spreading abroad in Earth nature, when the symbol of the grave can appear before
the soul of man. Then the Michael thought begins to stir in man, that thought
which is not, like the Easter thought in the earliest centuries of Christianity,
directed toward a kind of inner perceiving (Anschauung).*
* It is
assumed that Anschauung here is intended to describe the way man's
Gemuet could inwardly experience the Entombment and Resurrection, as was
indicated earlier. This would be perceptively, feelingly, rather than through
logic.
In the first
centuries of Christianity, this feeling perception was directed to the Christ
laid in the grave and risen. In this perception the soul was made strong,
was filled with its strongest forces. In the festival-thought at the time of the
fall equinox, the soul must feel its strength when appeal is made not to its
perceiving, but to its will. “Take into thyself the Michael thought which
confers the Ahrimanic powers, that thought which makes thee strong to gain here
on Earth knowledge of the spirit, so that thou canst overcome the powers of
Death.” — As the Easter thought is directed to the perception, this thought is
directed to the will-powers: to take up the Michael force, which means to
take the force of spiritual knowledge into the will-forces. And so the
Easter thought can become living, can be brought directly to the human soul and
spirit, when now the Michael thought, the thought of the Michael festival in the
autumn, is felt to be the counter-pole of the Easter thought — just as the St.
John's thought was perceived to be the counter-pole of the Christmas thought. As
the Christmas thought by its inner livingness has brought forth the St. John's
thought after a half-year, so must the Easter thought bring forth the Michael
thought. Mankind must attain an esoteric maturity, so as to think not merely
abstractly, but to be able again to think so concretely that men can again
become festival-creating. Then it will be possible again to unite something
spiritual with the cycle of sense phenomena.
All our
thoughts are so abstract! But no matter how remarkable they are, how
intelligent, if they remain abstract, life will not be able to penetrate them.
When today men reflect that Easter might be set abstractly on any day, no longer
according to the constellations of the stars, when today all higher knowledge is
darkened, when man no longer sees any relation between insight into the
soul-spiritual and the natural-physical forces, the force must once more awaken
in man which will be able to unite something spiritual directly with the sense
phenomena of the world.
Wherein then
did the spiritual strength of man consist, making him able to create festivals
in the course of the year, in accordance with the yearly phenomena? It consisted
in the primal spiritual force. Today men can continue to celebrate festivals
according to the ancient traditional custom, but they must gain once more the
esoteric force out of themselves to “speak” something into Nature that accords
with natural events. It must become possible to grasp the Michael thought as the
blossom of the Easter thought. While the Easter thought stems from physical
blossoming, it will become possible to place the blossom of the Easter thought —
the Michael thought — into the course of the year as the outcome of physical
withering.
People must
learn once more to “think” the spiritual “together with” the course of nature.
It is not admissible today for a person merely to indulge in esoteric
speculations; it is necessary today to be able once again to do the
esoteric. But people will be able to do this only when they can conceive
their thoughts so concretely, so livingly, that they don't withdraw from
everything that is going on around them when they think, but rather that they
think with the course of events: “think together with” the fading of the
leaves, with the ripening of the fruits, in a Michaelic way, just as at Easter
one knows how to think with the sprouting, springing, blossoming plants and
flowers.
When it is
understood how to think with the course of the year, then forces will
intermingle with the thoughts that will let men again hold a dialogue with the
divine spiritual powers revealing themselves from the stars. Men have drawn down
from the stars the power to establish festivals which have an inner human
validity. Festivals must be founded out of inner esoteric force. Then from the
dialogue with the fading, ripening plants, with the dying Earth, by finding the
right inward festival mood, men will also again be able to hold converse with
the Gods and link human existence with divine existence.
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