Israel versus Christ

  

The Challenge of the Times

Lecture 5 of 12:

Israel versus Christ : Specters of the Old Testament in the Nationalism of the Present : The Sixfold Nature of the Christ Impulse

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland

December 7, 1918

It is often difficult for a person to find his bearings within the course of world events, especially when they are considered from a higher point of view. People are so very loath to view the truth without prejudice, which often resolves certain conflicts of life only after long periods of time. They would like only too well to be guided by the reins of the cosmic powers, even though they do not admit this to themselves. It becomes especially difficult for a person to find his bearings in an unprejudiced way when he is compelled in any single incarnation to live in such a catastrophic time as the present. He likes then to ask why the gods permit such things. He does not like to ask about the necessities of life. He always has in the background a longing to have everything as comfortable as possible.

In such a time as ours, man must behold all sorts of things that are in course of preparation from chaos. Chaos is necessary for the total course of events, and he must often take up his position in the midst of the chaotic, as well as in what has been harmonized. Especially is our fifth post-Atlantean epoch such a time as causes man to pass through much that is chaotic. But this is connected with the entire characteristic, the whole nature, of this epoch. We are living at a time in which man must pass through those impelling forces in the course of evolution that set him upon his own feet and permeate him with individual consciousness. We are living in the epoch of the consciousness soul.

Now, after all that we have considered, in connection with which we have brought together a great variety of things that may be suited to make our age understandable to us, we must ask ourselves what is the most profound characteristic of the evolution of the consciousness soul in our epoch. The profoundest characteristic of this epoch is that man must become acquainted in the most profound and the most intense way with all those forces that oppose the harmonizing of humanity as a whole. For this reason a conscious knowledge of those ahrimanic and luciferic powers working against man must gradually spread. If he should not pass through these evolutionary impulses in which the luciferic and ahrimanic forces are participating, he would not arrive at the complete use of his consciousness, and thus at the development of his consciousness soul.

This integration of the consciousness soul into human nature has to be recognized as a strongly antisocial impulse. Thus we have in our epoch the peculiar fact that the manifestation of social ideals appears as a reaction against what is striving to emerge out of the innermost nature of man, a reaction against the evolution of individual consciousness. What I mean to say is that the reason we have such an outcry about the need of socializing is that the innermost nature of man, precisely in our age, is most violently opposed to this socializing. For this reason it is necessary that we should obtain a view of everything in the cosmos, in the universe, that sustains a certain relationship to man, in order that we may become aware of the relationship existing between the antisocial impulses streaming today out of the depths of human souls and the clamor for social harmonizing, working like a reaction to what streams forth from the inner nature of the human soul. It is simply necessary that we should come to see clearly that man represents in his life a state of balance between conflicting powers. Every conception characterized by the idea of mere duality—a good and an evil principle—will always fail to illuminate life. Life can be illuminated only when we represent it from the point of view of a trinity, in which one element represents a state of balance and the two others represent the opposite poles, between which the state of balance tends to move continually like a pendulum. This is the reason for the Trinity we undertake to represent in our Group¹ ; the Representative of Man balancing Ahriman and Lucifer, which is to constitute the middle point of this building.

This consciousness of a state of balance for which one strives, but that is always in danger of swinging toward the one or the other side, must become the essential element in the world conception of this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. As man passes through the stage of the consciousness soul, he develops toward the spirit self. This epoch of the evolution of the consciousness soul will continue for a long time. But within reality things do not proceed in such a way that one always follows the other in a beautiful scheme. On the contrary, one is telescoped in a way into the other. While we are developing in ever stronger measure the consciousness soul, there is always waiting in the background the spirit self that will then develop during the sixth post-Atlantean epoch just as strongly as the consciousness soul during this fifth epoch. Just as strongly as the consciousness soul works antisocially in its development, will the spirit self work socially. Thus we may say that, during this epoch, man develops from the innermost impelling forces of his soul what is antisocial, but behind this something spiritually social exerts its influence. This spiritually social element that is exerting its influence in the background will appear in its essential nature when the light of the spirit self shall dawn in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. It is not surprising therefore, that in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch what can enter livingly and in a well-ordered way into humanity only during the sixth epoch appears in all sorts of abstruse, extreme forms.

Man is exposed during the fifth post-Atlantean epoch to the preliminary disturbing movements of what is to come during the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. Everything will depend upon the acquisition of an understanding of what we must pass through during this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The antisocial instincts will play a tremendous role, and they can be restrained and integrated into a true social life only in the way that I recently explained. To assist him, man shall employ the social science that is to be derived from a general spiritual science.

Behind all the many struggles, therefore, of the present time, and also of the immediate future, the social question will remain in the background because its time has not yet come. But we must repeat from all possible points of view the fact that this social formation that is demanded cannot attain to real life unless it enters into a union with two other things. In the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, this union will appear more or less spontaneously. During this fifth epoch, social life must be regulated through the fostering of spiritual science. Every effort to regulate social life outside the sphere of spiritual science will lead only to chaos and radicalism, bringing about unhappiness for humanity. As regards a social shaping of life, this fifth post-Atlantean epoch is dependent in preeminent degree upon the science of the spirit. Just consider what I referred to yesterday and also recently in a public lecture in Basel. Just consider that man has mastered a nature that is distributed over the whole animal kingdom. He is the conqueror of the animal nature; he bears the animal nature within him.

Naive Darwinism maintains that human morality is only the development of the social impulse among animals. The social impulses are inborn in the animal, and they become, just to the extent that they are social impulses in the animal, antisocial impulses in man. He can awaken again to a social life only when he grows above what has developed as an antisocial impulse in him out of the animal nature. This is the truth. Thus, if we wish to represent the human being schematically from this point of view, we may say that man overcomes and develops beyond animality. What is social in the animal becomes antisocial in man. But he grows into spirituality and within the spiritual he may again achieve the social for himself. At a higher stage than the one that man has reached in the epoch of the consciousness soul, where he has grown out of animality, he will gain the social element. This shines amid the chaos of this middle stage where he now is.

This must be supplemented by two other facts. When the socializing process becomes manifest as an elemental impulse as a demand within humanity, this socializing alone must always bring a curse. The socializing process can become a blessing only if it is linked with two other things that must develop during the entire course of our postAtlantean age, up to the seventh post-Atlantean epoch. This may occur only when it is linked with what may be called the free life of thought and an insight into the spiritual nature of the world lying behind the sensible nature. Socializing without a science of the spirit and without freedom of thought is an impossibility. This is simply an objective truth. But man must awaken to freedom of thought; he must make himself ripe for freedom of thought precisely during our epoch of the consciousness soul.

Why must he awake to freedom of thought?

During the course of human evolution, man has come in a certain respect to a decisive point in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Up to this fifth epoch he possessed the possibility of having the prenatal time continue its influence into the postnatal life. Let us grasp this quite clearly. Up to our epoch man has borne forces within him that are not acquired by him during the course of life but were possessed by him when, as the expression goes, he first beheld the light of the world, when he was born. These were imprinted upon him during the embryonic time. These forces that were impressed upon man during the embryonic time and that then continue to work throughout life, were possessed by man up to the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Only now do we face a great crisis in the evolution of humanity through the fact that these forces can no longer be determinative; they can no longer work in such an elemental manner as hitherto. In other words, during this fifth postAtlantean epoch man will be in much greater measure exposed to the impressions of life, because forces opposing the impressions of life, which were acquired in the embryonic period before birth, are losing their sustaining power. This fact is something of enormous importance.

Only in one respect was life even prior to this time such that man could acquire something between birth and death, something that was not imprinted upon him during the embryonic time. But this was possible only because of the following facts. We explained yesterday the peculiar phenomena of sleep in relation to social life. When man is asleep, his ego and astral body are outside the physical and the etheric body. There is a different relationship between the ego and the astral body, on the one hand, and the physical and etheric bodies on the other hand during sleep from that existing in the waking state. While man is asleep, he stands in a different relationship to his physical and etheric bodies. Now, there is a certain resemblance between our sleep and our embryonic period—a resemblance, not an identity. In a certain sense, our life during the period from sleeping to waking is similar to the life that we live from conception—or actually three weeks thereafter—until birth—again similar, not identical. While we rest as an infant in the body of our mother, our life is similar to what we experience later during sleep, except that during sleep we breathe the outer air. For this reason I have to say only “similar” but not “identical.” We do not breathe the outer air when we rest in the body of the mother. We are stimulated to breathe the outer air when we are born.

Thus, in this way life during sleep is different from the embryonic life. Now hold firmly to the fact that, while the human being is sleeping, his life is in many respects similar to that of the embryonic state except that something is at work that can occur only between birth and death and not in the embryonic life. Breathing works here. The fact that man breathes the outer air causes his organism to be influenced in a certain way. But everything that influences our organism affects the totality of our life-expressions, even our psychic expression. Because we breathe, we understand the world otherwise than if we did not breathe.

Now, there was a cultural element in the evolution of humanity. We touch upon a significant mystery of human evolution when we undertake to explain this. This was the Old Testament cultural element, which was permeated in an especially profound way for its initiates by the fact that man is different, by reason of the breathing between birth and death, from the embryonic life, which is otherwise like the life of sleep. It was upon this inner knowledge of the nature of breathing that the relationship between the old Jewish initiates, the Hebrew initiates of the Old Testament, and their Jehovah God was based. The Jehovah God manifested himself, as we need only learn from the Bible, to his people. Which was the people of Jehovah? It was the people who had a peculiar relationship to this truth of breathing that I have just explained. This is the reason why precisely this people received the revelation that man became man when the breath of life was given to him.

We acquire a special understanding when this is developed on the basis of the nature of human breathing. We acquire an understanding of the life of abstract thinking, which was called in the Old Testament the life of law, an understanding of the reception of abstract thoughts. Strange as this may seem at present to materialistic thought, it is nevertheless true that the human power of creating abstractions is determined essentially by the breathing process. The fact that man can abstract, that he can conceive abstract thoughts, just as laws are abstract thoughts, is connected with his breathing process and even physiologically with his breathing process. The instrument of abstract thinking is, of course, the brain. This brain is involved in a continual rhythm synchronized with the breathing rhythm. I have already spoken here repeatedly in regard to this relationship of the brain rhythm with the breathing rhythm. I have explained to you how the brain is floating in the cerebral fluid, and how this fluid, when the air is breathed out, flows down through the spinal column and empties below into the abdominal cavity; how the fluid is pressed upward again when the air is breathed in so that a continual vibration occurs: with exhalation, a sinking of the cerebral fluid; with inhalation, an ascent of the cerebral fluid and the immersion of the brain in the cerebral fluid. The capacity of the human being to form abstractions is connected even physiologically with this rhythm of the breathing process.

A people who based things in special measure upon the breathing process was likewise the people of the abstraction process. For this reason the initiates could impart a special revelation to their people, as they perceived things in their Jehovah manner, because this revelation was completely adapted to the process of abstract thinking. This is the secret of the Old Testament revelation. Man received a wisdom that was adapted to the abstracting capacity, the capacity of abstract thinking. Jehovah wisdom is adapted to abstract thinking.

As regards this Jehovah wisdom, man is asleep in the ordinary state of consciousness. The Jehovah initiates simply received in connection with their initiation what man experiences through his breath from falling asleep until waking. Because of this fact, persons who love half-truths have often designated Jehovah as the divinity who regulates sleep. This is true also. He imparted to man that element of wisdom that he would experience if he should become as clairvoyant as the initiates became, and should experience consciously the life between falling asleep and waking. Now, this was not experienced by the ordinary consciousness in the Old Testament times, but was given to man as a revelation, so that he thus received as revelation in this Jehovah wisdom that through which they had to sleep. It was necessary to sleep through this, since otherwise the life process could not continue.

This is the essential element of the Old Testament culture. The night wisdom was revealed as Jehovah wisdom. To a certain extent—but I beg you to note that I say to a certain extent—this possibility for man was exhausted during the period when the Mystery of Golgotha drew near because this wisdom, which is in a sense the wisdom of sleep and breathing, is one-seventh of all the wisdom that man must develop in the course of his evolution. It is the wisdom of a single one of the Elohim, that is, Jehovah. The other six-sevenths could and can come to humanity only as the Christ impulse flows into mankind. We may thus say that, as Jehovah revealed himself, he revealed the wisdom of night and breathing in anticipation. The six other Elohim, constituting in their totality together with the seventh Elohim the Christ impulse, reveal all other wisdom, which comes to man between birth and death otherwise than through breathing.

Within the life of Old Testament culture man would have been entirely antisocial if Jehovah had not revealed the social element to his people in that abstract law that regulated and harmonized their life.

Now, Jehovah was able to gain complete control for himself by thrusting back the other Elohim, as I have explained to you, and dethroning them in a certain way. This caused other, lower spiritual entities to come in contact with human nature and to take possession of it. Man was exposed to these other entities, so that we have two conditions in the course of Old Testament evolution: first, the harmonizing Jehovah wisdom in what was given to the Jews as their Law, which included at the same time their social life; second, what opposed this social union, the lower entities coming close to human nature because the other Elohim were not yet given access in the time before the Mystery of Golgotha. These lower entities directed their powerful attacks in an antisocial sense against the Jehovah element.

It is a peculiar fact that, in the middle of the nineteenth century, in the fifth decade, Jehovah ceased in a certain sense to master the opposing spirits with his influence, so that they acquired special power. Not until the course of the nineteenth century was it really necessary for the first time that the Christ impulse, which had previously been only in a preliminary stage as I have often pointed out, should really be understood. Human culture could not progress further without this impulse and it was the social element particularly that stood face to face with this important crisis. It was necessary that the Christ impulse should be understood for the future. Without an understanding of this Christ impulse, no social demand takes the direction leading to any sort of wholesome objective.

The almost twenty centuries during which Christianity has previously been disseminated were only preparatory stages for the real understanding of the Christ impulse because the Christ impulse can be understood only in the spirit. Everything happens gradually. In our critical times, when we face a crisis in regard to just those things I have called to your attention, the situation is as follows. The instinct leading toward a mere Jehovah wisdom still extends into our age as a remnant, tending toward the wisdom that depended upon what was acquired during the embryonic life and is modified only by the unconscious breathing process. The Jehovah wisdom requires a revelation in order to enter our consciousness. This sufficed up to the time when the consciousness soul had not yet evolved to a certain degree. Now, since the consciousness soul has evolved to this degree, humanity cannot get along further with Jehovah wisdom that is adapted to the breathing, but it is invariably true that an effort is made to continue to get along with something that has become insufficient according to inner necessities. Since, for the life between birth and death, what is 'connected with the breathing remains unconscious, the Jewish culture was a folk culture, not an individualized culture of humanity. It was a folk culture in which everything is related to the descent from a common tribal father. Jewish revelation is, in its essential nature, a revelation adapted to the Jewish people, because it takes account of what is acquired during the embryonic life and is modified only through an unconscious element, the breathing process.

What is the result of this fact in our critical times? The result is that those who will not become adherents of the Christ wisdom that brings into the human being the other element, acquired during the life between birth and death apart from the breathing process, wish to continue in their relationship to the Jehovah wisdom and to have humanity established only on the basis of folk cultures. The present clamor in favor of an organization consisting of individuals from mere peoples is a retarded ahrimanic demand for the establishment of such a culture, in which all the peoples represent only folk cultures, that is, Old Testament cultures. The peoples in all parts of the world are to become like the Jewish Old Testament people. This is the demand of Woodrow Wilson.

We are here touching upon a most profound mystery, which will be unveiled in the greatest variety of forms. A social element that is antisocial as regards the whole of humanity and undertakes to base the social life upon individual peoples alone is striving to come to manifestation as an ahrimanic element. The cultural impulse of the Old Testament is to be maintained in an ahrimanic form.

Thus you see things are not so simple as people suppose in thinking that it is necessary only to think out one thing or another in order to propose ideals to men. We must be able to look into reality. We must be able to say what really governs and develops its powers amid these realities. Man is faced, in fact, with the prospect of not being able any longer to base his life upon the merely unconscious or of finding it necessary to base his life upon the conscious element within life between birth and death. The unconscious depends upon the breathing process and thus inevitably upon what is connected with the breathing process, upon the blood circulation, that is, upon the line of descent, upon connections by blood, upon heredity. The culture that must come into existence cannot base the social order upon mere blood connections because these blood connections yield only one-seventh of what must be established in the culture of humanity. The other six-sevenths must be added through the Christ impulse: In the fifth epoch, one; in the sixth epoch, the second; in the seventh epoch, the third. The rest stretch out into the following periods of time. For this reason there must gradually develop in humanity what is connected with the true Christ impulse, and what is related to the mere Jehovah impulse must be superseded.

Typically, far-reaching endeavors of the Jehovah impulse will take place, for the last time, in what the proletariat understands as international socialism. In essence, this is the last stirring of the Jehovah impulse. We face the strange situation that every people will become a Jehovah people, and every people will at the same time demand the right to spread its own Jehovah cult, its own socialism, throughout the world.

These will be the two contending forces between which a balance must be found. In all that comes to manifestation as objective necessity in the course of humanity's evolution there mingles the feeling, the sentiment, of human beings who take one relation or another to the various national groups, and who work disturbingly within the objectively inevitable course of evolution. Through the Jehovah wisdom one of the seven doors to the union of humanity has been opened. A second door will be opened when it shall come to be known that what man bears with him as the physical and the etheric nature becomes ill in the course of life. Naturally, I do not refer to an acute illness, but in our fifth epoch life is identical with a gradual process of becoming ill. This has been true since the fourth epoch; it is especially true in the fifth epoch. The life process is the same thing, only gradual in its stages, as an acute illness, except that this takes a more rapid course. If, therefore, an acute illness must be cured by a specific healing process, something must enter also into human life that brings healing.

In short, the natural life of human beings, from the fifth post-Atlantean epoch on will be a sort of continual, gradual becoming ill. All influences of education and of culture must be directed to the objective of making well. In a certain way, this is the first true activation of the Christ impulse: healing. This is the special mission of Christ in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—to be the Healer, the One who heals. The other forms of the Christ impulse must remain in the background. For the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, the Christ impulse must work in the direction of seership. There the spirit self comes to development within which man cannot live without seership. In the seventh postAtlantean epoch a sort of prophetic nature will develop as the third element, since it must, indeed, pass prophetically over into an entirely new period. The other three members of the sixfold Christ Being will do their work in the following periods. Thus must the Christ impulse find its way into humanity, as the element that permeates mankind with social warmth in the course of the present and the two following cultural epochs, that is, as the healing process, the seer process and the prophetic process. This is the real living entrance of the Christ impulse. This will interpenetrate other things necessary for evolution that we have already mentioned. One door has been opened through the Jehovah wisdom, but this door became unusable in the middle of the nineteenth century. If mankind should pass through this door alone, the only result that can follow would be that all peoples would in a way develop Hebraic cultures, each in its own form. Other doors must be opened. Initiation wisdom, which will become known through a second, third, and fourth door, must be added to the wisdom that has become known through the Jehovah door. Only in this way can man grow into other connections than those that are regulated by the bonds of blood and breath.

This constitutes, in turn, the critical element of our age. It is a fact that human beings wish to preserve a regulation of the world order according to the bonds of blood, coming in an ahrimanic way out of ancient times, but that an inner necessity strives outward beyond these bonds of blood. In the future what controls the social life cannot proceed from anything having to do with kinship. On the contrary, only what the soul itself in its own free decision can experience as regulating the social order will be valid. An inner necessity will so guide men that everything that penetrates into the social order out of mere bonds of blood will be eliminated. All such things enter into manifestation at first tumultuously. In our age there must evolve spirit knowledge and freedom of thought, especially freedom of thought in the religious realm. The science of the spirit must develop for the reason that man must enter into relationship with man. But man is spirit. Man can enter into relationship with man only when the approach is from the spirit. The relationship into which men entered at earlier stages had its origin in the unconscious spirit vibrating in the blood, in accordance with Jehovah wisdom, which leads only to abstraction. That to which the men must next be led must be something grasped within the soul. The heathen peoples had their myths in pictorial form, created through atavism in ancient cultural forms. The Jewish people had its abstractions, not myths, but abstractions: the Law. This has continued its existence. This was the first elevation of the human being to the conceptual force and into the force of thought. But from humanity's present view of the matter, which is only the revival of the command, “Thou shalt make unto thyself no image,” man must revert to the capacity of the soul that can once more, and this time consciously, form images. It is only in images, in imaginations, that the social life also can be rightly established in the future. The social life could be regulated only as regards a single people in abstractions, and the regulation for a people in social relationships was that of the Old Testament. The next form of regulation of the social life will depend upon the capacity to exercise in a conscious way the same force that once existed atavistically, in unconscious or half-conscious form, in man's myth building capacity. Men would be completely filled with antisocial instincts if they should endeavor to continue disseminating mere abstract laws. They must come again by way of their world conception, to the pictorial. Out of this conscious myth creation there will arise also the possibility for the development of the social element in the intercourse of man with man.

You may look at such a sculptural form as that of our Group: the Representative of Man, Lucifer and Ahriman. There you confront for the first time what is working in the whole human being, because man is the state of balance between the luciferic and the ahrimanic. If you permeate yourself in actual life with the impulse to confront every person in such a way that you correctly see this trinity in him, then do you begin to understand him. This is an essential capacity, bearing within itself the impulse to evolve in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Thus we shall no longer pass by one another as one specter passes another, so that we form no picture of each other but merely define the other person with our abstract concepts. The truth is that we do nothing more at the present time We pass by each other as if we were specters. One specter forms the conception, “That is a nice fellow,” and the other, “That is not such a nice fellow” ... “That is a bad man” . . . “That is a good man,”—all sorts of such abstract concepts. In the intercourse of man with man we have nothing but a bundle of abstract concepts. This is the essential thing that has entered into humanity out of the Old Testament form of life: “Make unto thyself no image.” It must inevitably lead to an antisocial life if we should continue it further. What is flowing out from the innermost nature of man, striving toward realization, is that, when one individual confronts another, a picture shall stream forth in a certain way from the other person, a picture of that special form of balance manifested individually by everyone. But this requires, of course, the heightened interest that I have often described to you as the foundation of social life, which each person should take in the other person. At present we have not yet any intense interest in another person. It is for this reason that we criticize him, that we pass judgment upon him, that we form our judgments according to sympathies and antipathies and not according to the objective picture that leaps to meet us from the other.

This capacity to be mystically stimulated in a certain way as we confront another person will come to realization. It will enter as a special social impulse into human life. On the one hand, the consciousness soul is striving to come in an antisocial way to complete domination in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. On the other hand, something else is striving outward from the nature of man, that is, a capacity to form pictures of the human beings with whom we live. It is here that the social impulses arise, the social instincts. The simple fact is that these things lie at a far greater depth than is ordinarily supposed when people talk about the social and the antisocial.

Now the question may arise in your minds as to how we shall gradually attain to the capacity of causing the picture of the other person to leap to meet us. It is in life that we must gain this capacity. Jehovah capacities are given to us at birth; we evolve them in the embryonic life. The culture of the future will not make things so comfortable for people. The capacities a person must manifest will have to be developed during the course of his life. Far more concrete and definite principles must enter into education than those that are now being brought into dominance in such an utterly confused manner in today's pedagogy. It is most important of all that the instinct shall be implanted in people to look back more frequently during this life, but in the right way. What people develop at present as memories of earlier experience is marked as yet for the most part by a selfish character. If a person looks back in a more unselfish way to what he has experienced in childhood, youth, etc.—according to the age he has reached—there emerges as if out of the gray depths of the spirit various persons who have had something to do with his life in all sorts of relationships.

Look back into your life and pay less attention to what interests you in your own respectable person and much more to those figures that have come into contact with you, educating you, befriending you, assisting you, perhaps also injuring you—often injuring you in a helpful way. One thing will then become evident to you and that is how little reason a person really has to ascribe to himself what he has become. Often something important in us is due to the fact that one person or another came into contact with us at a certain age, and—perhaps, without knowing it himself, or perhaps, being fully aware of the fact—drew our attention to something or other. In a comprehensive sense, a really unselfishly conducted survey of our lives is made up of all sorts of things that do not give us occasion to immerse ourselves selfishly in our own being, to brood over ourselves egotistically, but lead us to broaden our views to include those figures who came into contact with us. Let us immerse ourselves with real love in what has come into our life. We shall often discover that what evoked an antipathy in us at a certain period is no longer so disagreeable to us when a sufficient length of time has passed because we begin to see an inner connection. The fact that we had to be affected in an unpleasant way at a certain time by one person or another might have been useful to us. We often gain more from the harm that a person does to us than from the furtherance afforded us by another. It would be advantageous to a person if he more frequently exercised such a survey of his life, and should permeate his life with the convictions flowing from his self observation. “How little occasion I really have to occupy myself with myself! How immeasurably richer my life becomes when I look back to all those who have entered my life!” In this way we free ourselves from ourselves when we carry out such an unselfish survey. We then escape from that terrible evil of our times, to which so many fall victims, of brooding over ourselves. It is so extremely necessary that we should free ourselves from this brooding over ourselves. Anyone who has once felt the power of such self-observation as I have just described will find himself far too uninteresting to spend much time brooding over his own life. Unlimited illumination is cast over this life of ours when we see it irradiated with what enters into it from the gray depths of the spirit.

But this has such a germinating power over us that we really acquire the imaginative forces necessary to confront the contemporary human being in such a way that in him the thing is manifest that appears to us only after many years in our backward survey of those figures with whom we have lived together. We thus acquire such a capacity that pictures actually come to meet us from the individuals we confront.
The cultivation of the social life, which in earlier times had its source only in the bonds of blood, does not depend so much upon any sort of socialistic programs, but upon man's becoming a spiritual-social being. He will become such a being by awakening within himself, in the manner I have described, the deeper forces that can bring to birth within him the capacity for conceiving pictorially the other human being. Otherwise, we shall always remain antisocial beings, capable of approaching others only according to our sympathies and antipathies, incapable of approaching them according to the picture that may stream forth from each person if we only develop the picture-forming forces in our intercourse with them. Precisely in the social life of humanity must the principle come into existence, “Thou shalt make for thyself an image of thy fellow man.” Then, when we form a picture of our fellow man, we enrich our own soul life; then do we bestow a treasure upon our own inner soul life with each human acquaintanceship. Then we no longer so live that A lives there, B there, C there, but A, B and C live in D; A, B and D live in C; C, D and E live in A; etc. We gain the capacity to have other human beings live in us.

But this must be acquired; it is not born in us. If we should continue simply to cultivate those characteristics that are born in us, we should continue within the limits of a mere blood culture, not the culture to which could be ascribed in the true sense of the word human brotherhood. Only when we carry the other human being within us can we really speak of human brotherhood, which has appeared thus far only in an abstract word. When we form a picture of the other person, which is implanted as a treasure in our souls, then we carry within the realm of our soul life something from him just as in the case of a bodily brother we carry around something through the common blood. This elective affinity as the basis of social life must take the place in this concrete way of the mere blood affinity. This is something that really must evolve. It must depend upon the human will to determine how brotherhood shall be awakened among men.

Human beings have hitherto been separated. They ought to become socialized in brotherhood. In order that the manifoldness shall not be lost, the innermost element in man, thought, must be able to take form individually in every single person. With Jehovah the whole folk stood in a relationship. With Christ each individual person must stand in relationship. But the fact that brotherhood will thus awaken requires that there shall be a compensation in an entirely different field, that is, through freedom of thought.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anthroposophy: The Elixir of Life

To me, Anthroposophy is the elixir of life. When I read Rudolf Steiner I feel like a thirsty plant being rained on.

Also:

Rudolf Steiner:  "One who understands how to observe such things knows what a great change took place in the last third of the nineteenth century with respect to the life of human thought. Before that time man could only feel how thoughts formed themselves in his own being; from the time indicated he is able to raise himself above his own being; he can turn his mind to the spiritual; he there meets Michael, who proves his ancient kinship with everything connected with thought. He liberates thought from the sphere of the head; he clears the way for it to the heart; he enkindles enthusiasm in the feelings, so that the human mind can be filled with devotion for all that can be experienced in the light of thought.

The Age of Michael has dawned. Hearts are beginning to have thoughts; spiritual fervor is now proceeding not merely from mystical obscurity but from souls clarified by thought. To understand this means to receive Michael into the heart. Thoughts which at the present time strive to grasp the spiritual must originate in hearts which beat for Michael as the fiery Prince of Thought in the universe."

Springing from powers of the Sun

,
Radiant spirit-powers, blessing all worlds!

For Michael's garment of rays

You are predestined by Divine Thought.

He, the Christ messenger, reveals in you —

Bearing humankind aloft — the sacred will of worlds.

You, the radiant beings of ether worlds,

Bear the Christ-Word to human beings.

Thus shall the herald of Christ appear

To the thirstily waiting souls

To whom your Word of Light shines forth

In the cosmic age of the Spirit Human Being.

You, the disciples of spirit knowledge,

Take Michael's beckoning wisdom;

Take the Word of Love of the Will of Worlds

Into your soul's aspiring, fervently!

Judaism : Christ's Placenta

 

 

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, May 8, 1924:

Dr. Steiner: Have you any questions today?

Questioner: What was the cause of the darkening of the sun for three hours at the time of Christ's death?

Dr. Steiner: That, of course, is a most significant question and one which, as you may imagine, has occupied me very deeply. I can well believe that the questioner too considers it important, because it indicates that such things are really no longer credible to the modern mind. That is why the nineteenth century solved it simply by asserting: It is not true, it is only imagery and no great importance need be attached to it.—That, however, is wrong. Careful study of the knowledge yielded by Spiritual Science leads to the discovery that at the time of Christ's death there was an eclipse of the sun, or at all events the sun was obscured to such an extent that when the death took place, darkness fell over the district. Such things should not be brushed aside and simply denied; quite obviously they call for explanation.

Let me here remind you of something I have often mentioned in your presence. In ancient records you will everywhere find evidence that importance was attached to the time of the day, the time of the year, and so forth. No notice is taken of this to-day. In the New Testament a great deal is said about the miracles of healing performed by Christ, about the way in which He healed the sick. Emphasis is laid upon the fact that He adopted a definite practice in His acts of healing. In those days it was much easier to effect cures than it is to-day and this is a fact that is entirely ignored. Owing to the way in which humanity has developed—particularly in Europe—healing must start to-day from the body. But it was not always so. At the time when Christ lived on the earth, and above all in earlier epochs, it was still possible for healing to start from the soul. In a modern man the soul no longer has a very strong influence because as a result of upbringing and education his thoughts are entirely abstract. Thoughts of the kind that are universal to-day were absolutely unknown in those olden times. The human being was deeply and inwardly moved by what he thought. There was no such thing as “abstract, logical thinking.” Man's life of soul was quite different. To-day you may tell a human being something of supreme importance ... but it has no effect whatever upon his body because his soul is detached from the body. It is believed that the men of old were instinctively clairvoyant because they were not so closely bound up with their bodies, but this is simply not true; they were more deeply rooted in the body, they felt everything in the body itself and for this reason influences from the soul could work directly upon the body. When a particular name was uttered, a picture arose simultaneously before the soul. To-day ... well, a word may be uttered but no picture arises. In olden times a picture, definite and complete, arose before men and this picture would give them goose-flesh, cause a burst of laughter, or some other physical symptom; an immediate effect was produced in the body. Now this was made much use of in healing. But to be effective, the forces in the environment of a man must be used in the right way. That is why, when the Gospels are referring to Christ's acts of healing, we find the words: When the sun had set He gathered the sick and the suffering around Him. … “When the sun had set”—not, therefore, when the sun was shining in its full strength. If that had been the case, the words (which were addressed to the soul) would have been without effect. It was only when men came to Him in the evening twilight that the words could serve their purpose.

Such things are ignored to-day but they are connected, nevertheless, with the life of man. Whether the sun is shining at the full, whether it is twilight, whether the season is spring, or autumn—all these factors have a mighty influence, And so it is, too, with other manifestations of nature. We see the life of Christ Jesus unfolding from the birth to the baptism in the Jordan and then through the three years until His death: everything drew to a climax. And the contributory factors were not the decree of the High Council alone, not the, revolution among the people alone, but also what was happening in the heavens and in the whole of nature!

The Moon forces have an influence upon the human being during embryonic life which culminates in birth. Later on, the forces of the Sun and of other heavenly bodies have an influence upon him.¹ He is influenced by all the happenings of external nature.

The attitude of people to-day to happenings in nature is really remarkable and is due to the fact that they never get away from their abstract thinking. It is known, for example, that after about eleven to twelve years, sunspots reappear in considerable numbers. But although it is known that a period of sunspots invariably coincides with unrest in some form on the earth, people cannot accustom themselves to take real account of the influence which plays down upon the earth from the super-earthly world and comes to expression in the sunspots. Nevertheless the influence is a reality! When it rains, human beings consciously abandon certain activities. When it is raining cats and dogs you cannot go on with gardening or work of that kind. There, you see, nature has an influence upon the conscious life of man. But upon his unconscious life, the whole surrounding universe of stars has a very great influence. Obviously, therefore, the effect of the sunlight upon man is by no means the same when the Sun is partly obscured.

It cannot be said that in this way man's freedom is affected. But wherever deeper, spiritual laws come into consideration one must build on these in freedom, just as securely as a man, when he is on the first floor of a house, assumes that the floor will not develop a hole and precipitate him down to the ground floor. The laws of nature must be taken into account, also the great laws which rule outside in the universe.

The deep sorrow caused in the hearts of certain men by what came to pass in Palestine at that time was accompanied by anguish in the world of nature. The anguish in human hearts and the anguish in nature were simultaneous. Just as the blood flows in the body and man's health is dependent on this blood, so do the living forces contained in the sunlight flow into the blood.

Think of this.—A man dies on some particular day. Examination of his blood some two months or so before death would reveal to careful scrutiny that it is already on the way to becoming lifeless. Just as before the death of a human being the blood is gradually becoming lifeless, so—even at the time of Christ's birth—what lives in the light was already on the way to that condition of darkness which set in when the death actually took place. There was a close and intimate connection between happenings in nature and the life of Christ. And it may be said that just as Christ consciously chose twilight as the time for healing the sick, so His unconscious depths of soul chose the darkening of the Sun as the time of death. That is how one must picture these things in order to interpret them truly; their meaning can only be suggested in a delicate and intimate way for they do not lend themselves to crude explanation.

Question: Have the Jews, as a people, fulfilled their mission in the evolution of humanity?

Dr. Steiner: Discussion on this subject is unfortunately all too apt to lead to propagandism. But what must be said quite objectively on the subject has nothing whatever to do with propaganda in any shape or form.

The way in which the development of the Jewish people proceeded in olden times was a most important preparation for the subsequent rise of Christianity. Before Christianity came into the world, the Jews had a deeply spiritual religion but, as I have told you, it was a religion which took account only of the spiritual law of nature.—If a Jew were asked: Upon what does the coming of spring depend?—he said: Upon the will of Jehovah!—Why is so-and-so an unrighteous man?—Because Jehovah wills it so!—Why does famine break out in a country?—Because Jehovah wills it!—Everything was referred to this one God. And that was why the ancient Jews did not live at peace with the peoples around them, whom they did not understand and who did not understand them. The neighbouring peoples did not worship this one and only God in the same way but recognised spiritual beings in all the phenomena of nature—a multiplicity of spiritual beings.

These many spiritual beings are actually present in nature and anyone who denies their existence denies reality. To deny that there are spiritual beings in nature is just as if I were to say now that there is not a single person in this room!—If I brought in a blind man and you were not laughing loudly enough for him to hear, he might believe me. Deception in these things occurs very readily.—Friedrich Nietzsche's sight was very poor and when he was a professor in Basle only a few dilatory students came to listen to his lectures although they were extremely interesting. Nietzsche was always deeply sunk in thought as he went to the desk and proceeded to deliver his lectures. He lectured on one occasion when not a single person was present but because his sight was so bad he only noticed this when he was going out of the lecture-hall! In the same way a blind man could be made to think that a room is empty.—People disbelieve in spiritual forces and influences because they have been blinded by their education and all that happens in modern life.

It is important for man to realise that he has a great deal to do with these myriad nature-spirits; but there is a power within him that is mightier than anything wrought by these nature-spirits. This is the basis of the conception of the ONE God, the Moon-God. The Jews came first to the recognition of this one God and repudiated all other spiritual beings in the phenomena of nature. They acknowledged the one God, Jahve or Jehovah. Jahve means, simply: I AM.

Now this has been a very important factor in world-history. Think of it: veneration of the one and only Godhead is accompanied by the disavowal of all other spiritual beings ... Suppose two peoples are at war in spite of the fact that each of them recognises the one God; only one of the two peoples can be victorious. The victors say: Our God has given us the victory.—If the other side had gained the victory, the same would have been said. But if the same God has allowed the one people to be victorious and the other to be defeated, then this God has Himself been defeated. If Turks and Christians have the one God and both pray to this one God to bring them victory, they are asking the same God to defeat Himself. The real point is that one cannot, with truth, speak of a single Divine-Spiritual Being. In daily life, too, it is the same: somebody wants it to rain and prays for rain ... somebody else wants the sun to shine and prays for this on the selfsame day. Well ... it just doesn't make sense! If people noticed this there would be greater clarity about such matters—but they do not notice it. In the great things of life human beings often lapse into a thoughtlessness which they would not entertain in small things. Nobody, presumably, will put salt and sugar into his coffee at the same time; he will put in the one or the other, not both. Generally speaking, men are very lax about clarity of thought—and this lies at the root of the many disorders and confusions in life ...

The Jews introduced what is known as Monotheism, the belief that there is but the one God.

I once said to you very briefly that Christianity thinks of three Divinities: God the Father, living in all the phenomena of nature; God the Son, working in man's free spiritual activity; and God the Holy Spirit, who awakens in man the consciousness of having within him a spirituality that is independent of the body. Three distinct spheres are pictured. If there were not three spheres it would have to be assumed that by the same resolve this one God allows the human being to die and then wakens him to life again. If there are Three Divine Persons, death belongs to the sphere of one Godhead, passage through death and beyond to another, and the awakening in spirit to yet another. Christianity could not do otherwise than picture the spiritual Godhead in three Persons. (In three Persons: this is not understood to-day but the original meaning was that of threefoldness, the Divine manifesting in three forms.)

Now because Judaism conceived only of this one God, it could make no image of the Godhead but could only grasp the Divine with the innermost forces of the soul, with the intellect. It is easy to understand that this led to an intensification of human egoism; for man becomes remote from what is around him if he sees the Spiritual only in and through his own person. This has produced a certain folk-egoism in the Jewish world—there is no denying that it is so; but for this very reason the Jews are by nature adapted to assimilate what is not pictorial; they have less talent for the pictorial. If a Jew becomes a sculptor, he will not achieve anything very great, because this is not where his talent lies; he does not possess the gift of pictorial representation, nor does he readily develop it. But if a Jew becomes a musician he will generally be a very fine one, because music is not a pictorial art; it does not take visual form. And so you will find great musicians among the Jews but—at the time when the arts were at their prime—hardly ever great sculptors or painters. The style in which the Jews paint is quite different from that of Christian or oriental artists. The actual colour in a picture painted by a Jew has no very great significance; what it is that is being expressed, what the painter wishes to say by means of the picture—that is the essential. Judaism is concerned above all with the non-pictorial, with bringing into the world that which transpires within the human “I.”

But to maintain this adherence to the one God is not as easy as it seems, for if such adherence is not strongly forced upon them, men readily become pagans. It is among the Jews that this tendency has been least of all in evidence. Christianity, on the other hand, tends easily in the direction of paganism. If you observe closely you will find many indications of this. Think, for example, of how ceremonies are revered in Christianity. I have told you that the Monstrance actually depicts the Sun and the Moon. The meaning of this is no longer known but men unenlightened in this respect actually pray to the Monstrance, they pray to something external. Men are easily inclined to pray to something external. And so in the course of the centuries Christianity has developed many pagan characteristics, whereas in Judaism the opposite has been the case.

This is most obvious of all in one particular field. Fundamentally speaking, Christians of the West—those who came from Greece, Rome, and Central Germany—were almost incapable of continuing the principle of ancient medicine because they were no longer able to perceive the spiritual forces contained in the remedial herbs. But Jews who came from the East, from Persia and so forth, saw the Spiritual—that is to say their One Jehovah—everywhere. The Jews played a tremendously important part in the development of medicine in the Middle Ages; the Arabians were occupied more with developing the other sciences. And whatever medical knowledge came through the Arabians had been elaborated with the help of the Jews. That is why medicine has become what it is today. Medicine has, it is true, retained a certain abstract spirituality but it has assumed, so to speak, a “monotheistic” character. And if you observe medicine today you will find that with few, very few exceptions, all kinds of properties are ascribed to every sort of medicament! The exact effect which a particular medicament will produce is no longer known with certainty any more than Judaism knew how the myriad nature-spirits work. The abstract, Jehovah-influence has made its way into medicine and remains there to this day.

Now it would be natural if the number of Jewish doctors in the different countries of Europe were proportional to the population. I am not for one moment saying—I beg you not to misunderstand me—that this should be adjusted by law. It would never occur to me to say such a thing. But in the natural course one would expect to find Jewish doctors in proportion to the number of Jews. This is certainly not the case. In most countries a relatively far greater number of Jews become doctors. This is a survival from the Middle Ages. The Jews still feel very drawn to medicine because it is in keeping with their abstract thinking. This abstract, Jehovistic medicine fits in with their whole mode of thinking. Anthroposophy alone, in that it takes account of the diverse nature-spirits, can recognize the forces of nature in the different herbs and mineral substances and so again establish this knowledge on sure foundations.²

The Jews worshipped the one God Jehovah and men were thereby saved from wholly losing their way in polytheism. A natural consequence has been that the Jews have always kept themselves distinct from other men and so too—as always happens in such a case—have in many respects evoked dislike and antipathy. The right attitude to take today is that in the times to come it will not be necessary to segregate any particular culture in order to prevent its dissipation—as the Jews have been doing for centuries—but that this practice must be superseded by spiritual knowledge. The relation between the single Godhead and the multiplicity of spiritual beings will then be intelligible to men and no one people need be under the sway of subconscious impulses. That is why from the very outset I was apprehensive when the Jews, not knowing which way to turn, founded the Zionist movement. The attempt to set up a Jewish State denotes a decidedly reactionary drift, a retrogression that leads nowhere and runs counter to progress. A very distinguished Zionist with whom I was on friendly terms once told me about his ideal in life, which was to go to Palestine and found a Jewish kingdom there. He was, and still is, taking a very active part in the attempt to bring this about and he holds an important position in Palestine. I said to him: Such a cause is not in keeping with the times; what the times demand is something with which every human being can be allied without distinction of race, nation, class, and so forth—that is the only kind of cause one can whole-heartedly support today. Nobody can expect me to join the Zionist movement, for there again one portion of humanity is being separated off from the rest. For this quite simple, natural reason, such a movement today cannot prosper in the real sense of the word—it is essentially retrogressive ... The advocates of such movements often use a remarkable argument. They say: But the course of history has shown that men do not really want the “human-universal”; they desire everything to develop on the basis of race.

The conversation of which I have just told you took place before the Great War of 1914–18. And a factor leading up to that war was men's refusal to accept the great principle of the human-universal. The fact that men set their faces against this principle and wanted to separate from one another, to develop racial forces and interests, ultimately led to the outbreak of that war. Thus the greatest disaster of this twentieth century was due to an urge that is also present in the Jews.—And so one can say: Since everything that the Jews have achieved could now be achieved consciously by all human beings, the Jews would serve their own interests best if they let themselves be absorbed into the rest of mankind, be merged in the rest of mankind, so that Judaism, as a race or people, would come to an end. That would be in the nature of an ideal—but many Jewish habits and customs, and above all the hatred meted out to them, still militate against it. These are the kind of impulses that must be overcome and they will not be overcome if everything remains the same as it has been in the past. If the Jews feel hurt when they are told, for example: you have little talent for sculpture ... they can say to themselves: It is not necessary for every race of people to be sculptors; with their own particular faculties they can achieve something in a different domain! The Jews are not naturally gifted for sculpture. One of the Ten Commandments decrees: “Thou shalt make no graven image of thy God ...” it is because the Jewish people are averse to making any picture or image of the Supersensible. Now this is bound to lead back to the personal element.

It is quite easy to understand this.—If I make an image or a picture, even if it is only in the form of a description as often happens in Spiritual Science, another person may impress it on his memory, learn from it, see truth in it, think what he likes about it. But if I make no image, my own personal activity must be in operation; the thought does not separate itself from me. For this reason it has a personal character. So it is in Judaism. Men must learn to perceive the Spiritual in their fellow-men. The Jewish world is still dominated by the racial impulse. The Jews marry among themselves, among their own people; their attention is still focused upon the racial, not upon the spiritual.

Therefore to the question: “Have the Jewish people fulfilled their mission in the evolution of human knowledge?” the answer is: They have fulfilled their mission, for in earlier times the existence of a people who brought a certain form of monotheism into being was a necessity. Today, however, what is required is spiritual knowledge. The mission of the Jewish people has been fulfilled. Hence this particular mission is no longer a necessity in evolution; the only right course is for the Jews to intermix with the other peoples.

Question: Why was it that the Jewish people were destined to live in exile?

Dr. Steiner: It is important to bear in mind the whole character of this “exile.” The Jewish people among whom Christ died were living at that time among people of quite a different kind, namely, the Romans. And now, suppose that the Roman conquest of Palestine had been complete; suppose they had killed everybody they wanted to get rid of and turned out the rest. Suppose that already at that time the Jews had intended or felt the urge to intermix with the other peoples ... what would have happened? Well ... the Romans would have captured Palestine and a number of Jews would have been put to death; others—as one says today in every country—would have been expelled and would have been able to continue their existence somewhere or other outside Palestine.

But the Jews had neither the intention nor the urge to intermix with the other peoples; on the contrary, wherever they were, even when there were only a few of them, they always lived among themselves. They scattered far and wide; and only because they lived exclusively among themselves, intermarried among themselves, has it been noticed that, as Jews, they constitute a foreign element. The idea of an exile would otherwise not have arisen. It was this natural urge in the Jews that gave rise to the idea of their exile. It is all part of the intrinsic character of Judaism. And posterity is now astonished that the Jews were dispersed, were obliged to live as strangers. This has happened nearly everywhere. Other peoples intermixed and so were unnoticeable. By its very nature, Judaism has held tenaciously together. In this particular connection one is obliged to say that because human beings have held together, attention has been called to things that would not, otherwise, have been noticed.

It is grievous and heartbreaking to read how in the Middle Ages the Jews lived in the ghettoes, in quarters of the towns where alone they were permitted to dwell. They were not allowed to go into the other parts of the towns; the gates of the ghettoes were locked, and so forth. But these things are talked about because it was noticed that the Jews in the ghettoes clung tenaciously together, lived entirely among themselves. Other men, too, have had equally terrible things to endure, although in a different way. The Jews stayed in their ghettoes, clung together there and people knew that they were not allowed to come out of their quarters. But just think of it.—Other men who were forced to work every day from early morning until late evening could not come into the towns either, although there were no gates to keep them out. Their sufferings, too, have been great. It must be admitted, therefore, that such things are often based solely upon their outer appearance ... they are based, as are many things in world history, upon outer appearance.

The time has come when these things must be penetrated by the light of reality. And here we are led to the conception that when a destiny is fulfilled it is—to use an Eastern expression—karma, it is inner destiny. The characteristics of the Jews themselves has helped to give the story of exile the form it has assumed; the Jews are a tenacious people, they have held their own in foreign lands; and that is why in later times this has been so noticeable and is talked about to this day.

On the other side, the natural result of all this is that the Jews are differentiated from other peoples and they are accused of all sorts of things of which the causes are not known. Does it not happen that if, in some district where people are superstitious, a man is murdered by an unknown hand and an unpopular Jew happens to live there, the whisper goes round that at Easter-time the Jews need human blood for their rites—therefore it is they who have killed the man ... The reason why such things are said is because the Jews are differentiated from the others; but the Jews themselves have done a great deal to cause this state of affairs.

In considering these matters today it is essential to lay stress upon the human-universal, in contrast to the racial principle.

Question: What was the significance in world-history of the seventy souls of the original family of Israelites?

Dr. Steiner: Peoples of diverse character have lived on the Earth since ancient times. From the present age onwards, this diversity ceases to have real meaning, for as I have said, the human-universal must become the essential principle. Nevertheless if we study the earlier phases of the evolution of mankind we find the population of the Earth divided into all kinds of different peoples. The Spiritual is a living reality in the phenomena of nature; the Spiritual is also a living reality in the peoples of the Earth. In every people there is a guiding Folk-Spirit. As I have said in my book, Theosophy, “Folk-Spirit” is not merely an abstract term. When one speaks today of the French people and the rest, what does this suggest to the materialistic thinking of today? It suggests an accumulation of some 42 millions of human beings in the West of Europe—a pure abstraction; the traits and qualities of the people in question are a very secondary consideration. But it really is not so! Just as the seed lives in the plant, so something seed-like exists, which lives in the spirit of a people and then unfolds. A Spirit, a real Being, lives and works in the whole people.

I have told you that the mission of the Jews in human history was to spread the belief in the One Godhead, and it will be clear to you that it was necessary for them, as a people, to be prepared for this. Therefore it came about that when the Jewish people originally came into existence, the several Folk-Spirits, each of whom worked individually in a particular people, all concerned themselves with the Jewish people. Thinking of the different peoples, we say: Indians—Indian Folk-Spirit; Egyptians—Egyptian Folk-Spirit; then Greek Folk-Spirit, Roman Folk-Spirit, and so on. Each Folk-Spirit had to do with a particular people. (Drawing on blackboard.) But if we take the Jewish people, then, in that corner of the Earth called Syria where the Jews had their home, the influences and will of all the Folk-Spirits operated in this one people.

Let me try to make this clear by a simple analogy.—Imagine that each of you is in your own family circle, attending to its affairs. Each of you has a particular sphere of activity. So it was in the case of these Folk-Spirits.—But now, suppose you want to support, let us say, the cause and interests of the workers as a body: if that is so you will not remain in your own circle but you will hold a meeting and discuss among yourselves what proposal shall be put forward by you all, acting as a whole. And so we may say: In the peoples other than the Jews, each of these Folk-Spirits worked as it were in his own sphere; but what the Folk-Spirits achieved through the Jewish people was the outcome of a spiritual assembly. This influence worked with varying strength upon the members of the Jewish people. The Bible gives an indication of this when it speaks of seventy Folk-Souls entering into the people of Israel. All the Folk-Souls were in operation. This strong and potent influence has in a certain respect made the Jews into a cosmopolitan people and accounts for the tenacity that has remained characteristic of them. No matter where they might be, they were always able to gather together and preserve Judaism, simply because they had everything within them.

It is very remarkable how Judaism has everything within it. In Orders or Societies of Freemasons, Oddfellows, and the like, in which there is no new spiritual knowledge but an antiquated kind of knowledge they themselves no longer understand, you will find in the very words of the rites, elements deriving from all kinds of different peoples: Egyptian rites and words, Assyrian and Babylonian words and signs—but especially elements from the Jewish Kabbala and so forth.

In this respect Judaism is truly cosmopolitan; it adapts itself to everything but also preserves its original impulse which is still alive within it. The same is true of the Hebrew language in which there is great richness of content, both spiritual and physical. Every Hebrew word is always full of meaning. It was a peculiarity with the Jews to write only the consonants; later on, the vowels were indicated by means of signs. The vowels themselves were not written; everybody might pronounce them in his own way, so that one man said: J-e-h-o-v-a ... another said: J-e-h-e-v-a ... a third said: J-e-h-a-v-e ... a fourth, J-o-h-a-v-e.—The vowel sounds were pronounced as they were felt. And that is why such a designation as the name “Jehova” which had been instituted by the priests in this particular form, was called the “unutterable Name” ... because it was not permissible to make arbitrary use of the vowels.

The very tenacity which characterized Judaism was an indication of the way in which the several Folk-Souls worked upon this one people. When you see the Jews in different countries you will need very keen perception to be able to recognise those Jews who have really mingled with the other peoples. You know, of course, that the most important statesman of the nineteenth century was a Jew. Jews who have really merged into the other peoples are no longer distinguishable from them. In a sentence spoken by a Jew, an experienced person will at once recognise the typical Jewish style—if, that is to say, there is no imitation, which is a very common practice today. But the Jews seldom imitate. It is noticeable that a Jew invariably takes his start from something that is inwardly fixed or registered in a concept. This is very characteristic and it is connected with that assembly of the Folk-Souls and their cooperation. To this day, when a Jew makes a statement, he believes that it must be unconditionally valid. He proceeds on the basis of individual decision. It is really very interesting! Suppose a number of people—three, four, five—are together; one is a Jew, the other four are not. The men are representatives of a community of one kind or another. (I am not telling you about an imaginary situation but one which I have actually experienced) ... In this community, people have diverse views. Now these five men, of whom only the fifth is a Jew, begin to speak. The first says: It is very difficult to bring all these people into any harmony; the only thing to do is to bring persuasion to bear upon the minority and then upon the majority so that a compromise is reached. (That, after all, is how compromises are made—by people talking among themselves.) The second man says: Yes, but I have lived among the people who compose the minority and I know how difficult it is to persuade them! The third, a representative of the minority, says: We don't want to have anything to do with it; it just won't work! The fourth man says: After all, one has to take one side or the other. When these four have spoken the Jew begins: All this is futile! Concept of compromise: compromise consists in balance being reached among different opinions and in certain people giving way.—You see, he comes out with an abstraction: “Concept of compromise”; he does not start from any particular point, but leaving out the article, begins: Concept of compromise ... thereby demonstrating his inborn tenacity. When somebody says: What, exactly, is this concept of compromise? ... he already has a mental picture of some kind. But the Jew does not begin in this way; he says: Concept of compromise!—This is an example of the Jehovistic conception: Jehovah says ... No thought is given to how it works out in a particular instance, but what has been registered and fixed in a concept is simply laid down as a principle. That is why the Jew always thinks he can develop everything out of the concept. As long as the Jews keep tenaciously among themselves, things will naturally remain as they are; once the Jews have merged into other peoples they will lose the habit of saying: “Concept of compromise!” ... and they will have to be in line with the others. All this is connected with the way in which the Folk-Souls have worked upon them.

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Ave Eva! ~ The 10 Aristotelian Categories as the successive stages of embryonic development during the 10 lunar months of human gestation [from Sophia to Anthropos-Sophia]

Source: May 8, 1924