The yoga of anthroposophy : overcoming the illusion of the personal self

  

I am come to send fire on the Earth;

and what will I, if it be already kindled?

But I have a baptism to be baptized with;

and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!

—Luke 12:49-50

Rudolf Steiner:

The founders of the great religions did not give mankind these teachings from vague feeling. They based them an much firmer foundations, because they were mighty Initiates. Out of their knowledge did they shape their moral teachings. They were aware how these would react upon the finer nature of men, and desired that the culture of these qualities should gradually lead to the organization of that finer nature. To live according to these great religions is to work out one's own spiritual perfection, and only in so doing can one really serve the world. Self-perfection is in no wise selfish, for the imperfect man is also an imperfect servant of humanity and of the world. The more perfect one becomes the more does one serve the world. “If the rose adorns herself she adorns the garden.”

The founders of religions are therefore the great magicians. That which comes from them flows into the souls of men and women, and thus with humanity the whole world moves forward. The founders of religions have consciously worked with this evolutionary process of humanity. One only understands the true meaning of religious instructions when one realizes that they are the result of actual knowledge concerning the innermost depths of human nature. The leaders of religion were mighty sages, and it is out of their knowledge that the ideals of humanity have sprang. Yet the individual comes nearer to these leaders when he uplifts himself in his own evolution to their heights.

If a person has evolved his etheric body in the manner just described, an entirely new life is opened up before him, and at the proper period in the course of his training he now receives that enlightenment which adapts him to this new existence. For example, he sees (by means of the sixteen-petalled lotus) the shapes of a higher world. He must then realize how different are these forms when caused by this or that object or being. In the first place, he should notice that he is able, in a certain manner, to influence some of these forms very powerfully by means of his thoughts and feelings, but others not at all, or only to a limited extent. One species of these figures will be altered immediately if the observer thinks to himself when they appear, “that is beautiful,” and then in the course of his contemplation changes his thought and thinks “that is useful.” It is particularly characteristic of the forms which come from minerals or from objects artistically made, that they possess the peculiarity of changing under every thought or feeling which is directed upon them by the observer. In a lesser degree this is also true of the forms that proceed from plants, and to a still smaller extent of those that are connected with animals. These forms are full of life and motion, but this motion only pertains to that part which is under the influence of human thought or feeling, and in the other parts it is effected by forces upon which a person can exercise no influence. Now there appears within this whole world a species of forms which are almost entirely unaffected by activities an the part of human beings. The student can convince himself that these forms proceed either from minerals or artificial shapes, and not from animals or plants. In order to make these things quite clear, he must now observe those forms which he can realize to have proceeded from the feelings, impulses, and passions of human beings. Yet he may find that upon these forms his own thoughts and feelings still hold some influence, even although it be comparatively small. There always remains a residuum of forms in this world upon which all such influences are less and less effective. Indeed, this residuum comprises a very large proportion of those forms which are usually discerned by the student at the outset of his career. He can only enlighten himself concerning the nature of this species by observing himself. He then learns that they were produced by himself, that what he does or wishes or wills finds expression in these forms. An impulse that dwells in him, a desire that he possesses, a purpose that he harbors, and so forth, are all manifested in these forms; indeed, his whole character displays itself in this world of shapes. By means of his thoughts and feelings a person can exercise an influence upon all the forms which do not come from himself; but upon those which are sent into the higher world from his own being he possesses no power when once he has created them. Now it follows from what has been said that from this higher aspect of human inner nature one's own world of impulses, desires, and conceptions is seen to express itself in outward shapes, just like all other beings or objects. To the higher knowledge the inner world appears as a part of the outer world. Just as anyone in the physical world who should be surrounded with mirrors could look at his physical form in that way, so, too, in a higher world does the spiritual self of man appear to him as an image reflected in a mirror.

At this stage of development the student has arrived at the point when he overcomes the “illusion of the personal self,” as it has been expressed in theosophical books. He can now regard that inner personality as something external to himself, just as previously he recognized as external the things which affected his senses. Thus he learns by gradual experience to master himself as hitherto he mastered the beings around him.

If any one obtains a view into this higher world before his nature has been sufficiently prepared, he stands before the character-picture of his own soul as before an enigma. There his own impulses and passions confront him in the shapes of animals or, more seldom, of human beings. It is true that the animal forms of this world have never quite the appearance of those in the physical world, but still, they possess a remote resemblance. By the inexpert observer they may easily be taken for the same. When one enters this world, one must adopt an entirely new method of forming one's judgments. For, seeing that those things which properly pertain to the inner nature appear as external to oneself, they are only discerned as the mirrored reflections of what they really are. When, for instance, one perceives a number, one must reverse it as one would read what is seen in a mirror. 265 would mean in reality 562. One sees a sphere as if one were in the center of it. One has therefore at first to translate correctly these inner perceptions. The attributes of the soul appear likewise as if in a mirror. A wish that is directed toward something outside appears as a form which moves toward the person who wished it. Passions that have their habitation in the lower part of human nature take an the forms of animals or of similar shapes that let themselves loose upon the individual. In reality these passions are struggling outward; it is in the external world that they seek for satisfaction, but this outward striving appears in the mirrored reflection as an attack upon the impassioned person.

If the student, before attaining the higher vision, has learned by quiet, sincere examination of himself to realize his own attributes, he will then, at the moment when his inner self appears to him as a mirrored reflection outside, find courage and power to conduct himself in the right way. People who have not practised such introspection sufficiently to enable them to know their own inner natures will not recognize themselves in these mirrored pictures and will mistake them for something foreign. Or they may become alarmed at the vision and say to themselves, because they cannot endure the sight, that the whole thing is nothing but an illusion which cannot lead them anywhere. In either case the Person, by his unseasonable arrival at a certain stage in the development of his higher organization, would stand disastrously in his own way.

It is absolutely necessary that the student should pass through this experience of spiritually seeing his own soul if he is to press onward to higher things. For in his own self he then possesses that spirituality by which he can best judge. If he has already acquired a fair realization of his own personality in the physical world, and when the picture of that personality first appears to him in the higher world, he is then able to compare the one with the other. He can refer to the higher as to a thing known to him, and in this way can advance on firm ground. If, on the contrary, he were confronted by numbers of other spiritual beings, he would be able to gain hardly any information concerning their nature and attributes. He would very soon feel the ground slipping away from his feet. It cannot too often be repeated that a safe entrance into the higher worlds can only follow a solid knowledge and estimate of one's own nature.

It is pictures, then, that the student meets on his way up to the higher worlds, for the realities which are expressed by these pictures are really in himself. He must soon become sufficiently mature to prevent himself from desiring, at this first stage, veritable realities, but to allow of his regarding these pictures as appropriate. But inwardly he soon learns something completely new from his observation of this picture-world. His lower self only exists for him as mirrored pictures, yet in the midst of these reflections appears the true reality that is his higher self. Out of the pictures of the lower personality the form of the spiritual ego becomes visible. Then, from the latter, threads are spun to other and higher spiritual realities.

This is the moment when the two-petalled lotus in the region of the eyes is required. If this now begins to stir, the individual attains the power of setting his higher ego in connection with spiritual, superhuman entities. The currents which flow from this lotus move so toward these higher entities that the movements here spoken of are fully apparent to the individual. Just as the light makes physical objects visible to the eyes, these currents reveal the spiritual things of the higher worlds.

Through sinking himself into certain ideas which the teacher imparts to the pupil in personal intercourse, the latter learns to set in motion, and then to direct,the currents proceeding from this lotus-flower of the eyes.

At this stage of development especially, what is meant by a really sound capacity for judgment and a clear, logical training is manifested. One has only to consider that here the higher self, which had hitherto slumbered unconscious and like a seed, is born into conscious existence. One is here concerned not with a figurative, but with a veritable birth in the spiritual world, and the being now born, the higher self, if it is to be capable of life, must enter that world with all the necessary organs and conditions. Just as nature takes precautions that a child shall come into the world with well-formed ears and eyes, one must take precautions in the self-development of an individual, so that his higher self shall enter existence with the necessary attributes. These laws which have to do with the development of the higher organs of the spirit are no other than the sound, rational, and moral laws of the physical world. The spiritual ego matures in the physical self, as the child in the mother's womb. The health of the child depends upon the normal working of natural laws in the womb of the mother. The health of the spiritual self is similarly conditioned by the laws of common intelligence and reason that work in the physical life. No one who does not live and think healthily in the physical world can give birth to a sound spiritual self Natural and rational life is the basis of all true spiritual evolution. Just as the child, when still in the womb of the mother, lives according to natural forces which after its birth it uses with its organs of sense, so the higher self in a human being lives according to the laws of the spiritual world even during its physical incarceration; and even as the child out of a vague sensational life acquires the powers above mentioned, so can a human being also acquire the powers of the spiritual world before his own higher self is born. Indeed, he must do this if the latter is to enter its world as a completely developed being. It would be quite wrong for anyone to say, “I cannot follow the teachings of the mystic and theosophist until I can see them for myself,” for if he should adopt this view, he could certainly never attain to genuine higher knowledge. He would be in the same position as a child in the mother's womb who should reject the powers that would come to him through the mother, and should intend to wait until he could create them for himself. Even as the embryo of the child learns in its dim life to accept as right and good what is offered to it, so should it be with the person who is still blindfolded in relation to the truths declared in the teachings of mystic or theosophist. There is an insight, based upon intuition of the truth and a clear, sound, all-round critical reason, concerning these teachings, that exists before one can yet see spiritual things for oneself. First, one must learn the mystical wisdom, and by this very study prepare oneself to see. A person who should learn to see before he has prepared himself in this way would resemble a child who was born with eyes and ears but without a brain. The entire world of sound and color would widen out before him, but he could make no use of it.

That which before appealed to the student through his sense of truth, his reason, and his intelligence, becomes, at the stage of occult education already described, his own experience. He now has a direct realization of his higher self, and he learns how this higher self is connected with spiritual entities of a loftier nature and how it forms a union with them. He sees how the lower self descends from a higher world, and it is revealed to him how his higher nature outlasts the lower. Now he can distinguish between what is permanent in himself and what is perishable, and this is nothing less than the power to understand from his own Observation the teachings concerning the incarnation of the higher self in the lower. It will now become plain to him that he stands in a lofty spiritual relation thereto, that his attributes and his destiny are originated by this very relation. He learns to know the law of his life, his Karma. He perceives that his lower self, as it at present shapes his destiny, is only one of the forms which can be adopted by his higher nature. He discerns the possibility stretching before his higher self of working upon his own nature so that he may become ever more and more perfect. Now, too, he can penetrate into the great differences between human beings in regard to their comparative perfection. He will recognize that there are before him people who have already traversed the stages that still lie in front of him. He discerns that the teachings and deeds of such people proceed from the inspiration of a higher world. All this he owes to his first glimpse into this higher world. Those who have been called “the masters of wisdom,” “the great Initiates of humanity,” will now begin to appear as veritable facts.

These are the treasures which the student at this stage owes to his development: insight into his higher self; into the doctrine of the incarnation of this higher self in a lower; into the laws by which life in the physical world is regulated according to its spiritual connections—in short, the law of Karma; and, finally, insight into the nature of the great Initiates.

Of the student who has arrived at this stage it is said that doubt has entirely vanished away. If he has already acquired a faith which is based upon reason and sound thought, there now appears in its place full knowledge and an insight which nothing whatsoever can make dim.

Religions have presented in their ceremonies, their sacraments, and their rites, external visible pictures of the higher spiritual beings and events. None but those who have not penetrated into the depths of the great religions can fail to notice this; but he who has seen for himself these spiritual realities will understand the great significance of each outward and visible ad. Then for him the religious service itself becomes a representation of his own communion with the spiritual, superhuman world.²

It has been shown how the student, by arriving at this stage, becomes veritably a new person. Little by little he can now mature himself by means of the currents that come from the etheric body, until he can control the still higher vital element, that which is called “the fire of Kundalini,” and by so doing can attain a more complete liberty from the bondage of his physical body.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive  CW 10 Initiation and Its Results

13 ways of looking at my guru. #1: Krishna

 

      

The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of Paul

[who, imho, is the reincarnated Arjuna]

Lecture 1 of 5:

  "And the Veda was made flesh, and dwelt among us"  

Rudolf Steiner, December 28, 1912

We stand today, as it were, at the starting-point of the foundation of the Anthroposophical Society in the narrower sense, and we should take this opportunity of once more reminding ourselves of the importance and significance of our cause. It is true that what the Anthroposophical Society wishes to be for the newer culture should not in principle differentiate it from that which we have always carried on in our circle under the name of theosophy. But perhaps this giving of a new name may nevertheless remind us of the earnestness and dignity with which we intend to work in our spiritual movement, and it is with this point in view that I have chosen the title of this course of lectures. At the very outset of our anthroposophical cause we shall speak on a subject which is capable of indicating in manifold ways the remarkable importance of our spiritual movement for the civilization of the present day.

Many people might be surprised to find two such apparently widely different spiritual streams brought together, as the great Eastern poem of the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of one who was so closely connected with the founding of Christianity, the Apostle Paul. We can best recognize the nearness of these two spiritual streams to one another if, by way of introduction, we indicate how at the present day is to be found, on the one hand, that which appertains to the great Bhagavad Gita poem, and on the other the Paulinism which originated with the beginning of Christianity.

Certainly much in the spiritual life of our present time differs from what it was even a comparatively short time ago, but it is just that very difference that makes a spiritual movement such as Anthroposophy so necessary.

Let us reflect how a comparatively short time ago if a man concerned himself with the spiritual life of his own times he had in reality, as I have shown in my Basle and Munich courses, to study three periods of a thousand years each; one pre-Christian period of a thousand years, and two other millennia, the sum of which is not yet quite completed; two thousand years permeated and saturated with the spiritual stream of Christianity. What might such a man have said only a short time ago when contemplating the spiritual life of mankind when, as we have said, there was no question of a theosophical or anthroposophical movement as we now understand it? He might have said: “At the present time something is making itself prominently felt which can only be sought for in the thousand years preceding the Christian era.” For only during the last thousand years before the Christian era does one find individual men of personal importance in spiritual life. However great and powerful and mighty much in the spiritual streams of earlier times may appear to us, yet persons and individuals do not stand out from that which underlies those streams. Let us just glance back at what we reckon in not too restricted a sense as the last thousand years before the Christian era. Let us glance back at the old Egyptian or the Chaldean-Babylonian spiritual stream; there we survey a continuity so to speak, a connected spiritual life. Only in the Greek spiritual life do we find individuals as such standing out as entirely spiritual and living. Great, mighty teachings, a mighty outlook into the space of the Cosmos; all this we find in the old Egyptian and Chaldean-Babylonian times, but only in Greece do we begin to look to separate personalities, to a Socrates or Pericles, a Phidias, a Plato, an Aristotle. Personality, as such, begins to be marked. That is the peculiarity of the spiritual life of the last three thousand years; and I do not only mean the remarkable personalities themselves, but rather the impression made by the spiritual life upon each separate individuality, upon each personality. In these last three thousand years it has become a question of personality, if we may say so; and the fact that separate individuals now feel the need of taking part in the spiritual life, find inner comfort, hope, peace, inward bliss, and security in the various spiritual movements, gives these their significance. And since, until a comparatively short time ago, we were only interested in history inasmuch as it proceeded from one personality to another, we got no really clear understanding of what occurred before the last three thousand years. The history for which alone we had, till recently, any understanding, began with Greece, and during the transition from the first to the second thousand years, occurred what is connected with the great Being, Christ Jesus. During the first thousand years that which we owe to Greece is predominant, and those Grecian times tower forth in a particular way. At the beginning of them stand the Mysteries. That which flowed forth from these, as we have often described, passed over into the Greek poets, philosophers, and artists in every domain. For if we wish rightly to understand Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides we must seek the source for such understanding in that which flowed out of the Mysteries. If we wish to understand Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, we must seek the source of their philosophies in the Mysteries, not to speak of such a towering figure as that of Heraclitus. You may read of him in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact, how entirely he depended upon the Mysteries.

Then in the second thousand years we see the Christian impulse pouring into spiritual development, gradually absorbing the Greek and uniting itself with it. The whole of the second thousand years passed in such a way that the powerful Christ-impulse united itself with all that came over from Greece as living tradition and life. So we see Greek wisdom, Greek feeling, and Greek art slowly and gradually uniting organically with the Christ-impulse. Thus the second thousand years ran its course. Then in the third thousand years begins the cultivation of the personality. We may say that we can see in the third thousand years how differently the Greek influence is felt. We see it when we consider such artists as Raphael, Michaelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci. No longer does the Greek influence work on together with Christianity in the third thousand years, as it did in the culture of the second; not as something historically great, not as something contemplated externally was Greek influence felt during the second thousand years. But in the third thousand we have to turn of set purpose to the Greek. We see how Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and Raphael allowed themselves to be influenced by the great works of art then being discovered; we see the Greek influence being more and more consciously absorbed. It was absorbed unconsciously during the second thousand years, but in the third millennium it was taken up more and more consciously. An example of how consciously this Greek influence was being recognized in the eyes of the world is to be found in the figure of the philosopher Thomas Aquinas; and how he was compelled to unite what flowed out from Christian philosophy with the philosophy of Aristotle. Here the Greek influence was absorbed consciously and united with Christianity in a philosophic form; as in the case of Raphael, Michaelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci in the form of art. This whole train of thought rises higher through spiritual life, and even takes the form of a certain religious opposition in the cases of Giordano Bruno and Galileo. Notwithstanding all this, we find everywhere Greek ideas and conceptions, especially about nature, cropping up again; there is a conscious absorption of the Greek influence, but this does not go back beyond the Greek age. In every soul, not only in the more learned or more highly educated, but in every soul down to the simplest, a spiritual life is spread abroad and lives in them, in which the Greek and Christian influences are consciously united. From the University down to the peasant's cottage Greek ideas are to be found united with Christianity.

Now in the nineteenth century something peculiar appeared, something which requires Anthroposophy to explain it. There we see in one single example what mighty forces are at play. When the wonderful poem of the Bhagavad Gita first became known in Europe, certain important thinkers were enraptured by the greatness of the poem, by its profound contents; and it should never be forgotten that such a thoughtful spirit as William von Humboldt, when he became acquainted with it, said that it was the most profoundly philosophical poem that had ever come under his notice; and he made the beautiful remark, that it was worth while to have been allowed to grow as old as he to be enabled to become acquainted with the Bhagavad Gita, the great spiritual song that sounds forth from the primeval holy times of Eastern antiquity. What a wonderful thing it is that slowly, although perhaps not attractive as yet to large circles, so much of Eastern antiquity was poured out into the nineteenth century by means of the Bhagavad Gita. For this is not like other writings that came over from the ancient East which ever proclaim Eastern thoughts and feelings from this or that standpoint. In the Bhagavad Gita we are confronted with something of which we may say that it is the united flow of all the different points of view of Eastern thought, feeling, and perception. That is what makes it of such significance.

Now let us turn back to old India. Apart from other less important things, we find there, in the first place, three shades, if we may so call them, of spiritual streams flowing forth from the old Indian pre-historic times. That spiritual stream which we meet with in the earliest Vedas, and which developed further in the later Vedantic poems, is one quite definite one — we will describe it presently — it is, if we may say so, a one-sided yet quite distinct spiritual stream. We then meet with a second spiritual stream in the Sankhya philosophy, which again goes in a definite spiritual direction; and, lastly, we meet a third shade of the Eastern spiritual stream in Yoga. Here we have the three most remarkable Oriental spiritual streams placed before our souls: The Vedas, Sankhya, and Yoga.

The Sankhya system of Kapila, the Yoga philosophy of Patanjali, and the Vedas are spiritual streams of definite coloring, which, because of this definite coloring, are to a certain extent one-sided, and which are great because of their one-sidedness. In the Bhagavad Gita we have the harmonious inter-penetration of all three spiritual streams. What the Veda philosophy has to give is to be found shining forth in the Bhagavad Gita; what the Yoga of Patanjali has to give mankind we find again in the Bhagavad Gita; and what the Sankhya of Kapila has to give we find there too. Moreover, we do not find these as a conglomeration, but as three parts flowing harmoniously into one organism, as if they originally belonged together. The greatness of the Bhagavad Gita lies in the comprehensiveness of its description of how this Oriental spiritual life receives its tributaries from the Vedas on the one side, on another from the Sankhya philosophy of Kapila, and again on a third side from the Yoga of Patanjali.

We shall now briefly characterize what each of these spiritual streams has to give us.

The Veda stream is most emphatically a philosophy of unity; it is the most spiritual monism that could be thought of; the Veda philosophy which is consolidated in the Vedanta is a spiritual monism. If we wish to understand the Veda philosophy, we must, in the first place, keep clearly before our souls the fact that this philosophy is based upon the thought that man can find something deeper within his own self, and that what he first realizes in ordinary life is a kind of expression or imprint of this self of his; that man can develop, and that his development will draw up the depths of the actual self more and more from the foundations of his soul. A higher self rests as though asleep in man, and this higher self is not that of which the present-day man is directly aware, but that which works within him, and to which he must develop himself. When man some day attains to that which lives within him as “self,” he will then realize, according to the Veda philosophy, that this “self” is one with the all-embracing self of the world, that he does not only rest with his self within the all-embracing World-Self, but that he himself is one with it. So much is he one with this World-Self that he is in twofold manner related to it. In some way similar to our physical in-breathing and out-breathing does the Vedantist picture the relationship of the human self to the World-Self. Just as one draws in a breath and breathes it out again, while outside there is the universal air and within us only the small portion of it that we have drawn in, so outside us we have the universal, all-embracing, all-pervading Self that lives and moves in all things, and this we breathe in when we yield ourselves to the contemplation of the spiritual Self of the World. Spiritually one breathes it in with every perception that one gets of this Self, one breathes it in with all that one draws into one's soul. All knowledge, all thinking, all perception is spiritual breathing; and that which we, as a portion of the world-Self, draw into our souls (which portion remains organically united to the whole), that is Atman, the Breath, which, as regards ourselves, is as the portion of air that we breathe in, which cannot be distinguished from the general atmosphere. So is Atman in us, which cannot be distinguished from that which is the all-ruling Self of the World. Just as we breathe out physically, so there is a devotion of the soul through which the best that is in it goes forth in the form of prayer and sacrifice to this Self. Brahman is like the spiritual out-breathing. Atman and Brahman, like in-breathing and out-breathing, make us sharers in the all-ruling World-Self. What we find in Vedanta is a monistic spiritual philosophy, which is at the same time a religion; and the blossom and fruit of Vedantism lie in that which so blesses man, that most complete and in the highest degree satisfying feeling of unity with the universal Self powerfully weaving through the world. Vedantism treats of this connection of mankind with the unity of the world, of the fact of man's being within a part of the whole great spiritual cosmos. We can say the Veda-Word, because Veda means Word: the Word, the Veda, as given is itself breathed forth, according to the Vedantic conception, from the all-ruling unitary Being, and the human soul can take it into itself as the highest expression of knowledge. In accepting the Veda, the Word, the best part of the all-mighty “Self” is taken in; the consciousness of the connection between the individual human self and this all-mighty World-Self is attained. What the Veda speaks is the Word of God, which is creative, and is born again in human knowledge. Thus, human knowledge is joined with the creative, permeating principle underlying existence. Therefore, that which was written in the Vedas was considered the Divine Word, and those who were filled with it were the possessors of the Divine Word. The Divine Word had come spiritually into the world and was to be found in the Vedic books; those who mastered these books took part in the creative principle of the world.

Sankhya philosophy is different. When one first meets with this, as it has come down to us through tradition, we find in it exactly the opposite of a teaching of unity. If we wish to compare the Sankhya philosophy to anything, we may compare it to the philosophy of Leibnitz. It is a pluralistic philosophy. The several souls mentioned therein — human souls and the souls of Gods — are not traced back by the Sankhya philosophy to unitary source, but are taken as single souls existing, so to speak, from eternity; or, at any rate, their origin is not traced back to unity. The plurality of souls is what we find in the Sankhya philosophy. The independence of each individual soul, carrying on its development in the world enclosed within its own being, is sharply accentuated.

Against this pluralism stands what Sankhya philosophy calls the prakriti element. We cannot well describe this by the modern word “matter,” for that has a materialistic meaning. But in Sankhya philosophy we do not mean to convey this materialistic meaning when using the term prakriti, “the substantial,” which is in contrast to the multiplicity of souls, and which again is not derived from a common source. In the first place, we have multiplicity of souls, and then that which we may call "the substantial," the basis of the material, which, like a primeval flood, streams through the world, through space and time, and out of which souls take the elements for their outer existence. Souls must clothe themselves in this material element, which, again, is not to be traced back to unity with the souls themselves.

And so it is in the Sankhya philosophy that we principally find this material element, carefully studied. Attention is not so much directed to the individual soul; this is taken as something real that is there, confined in and united with this material basis, and which takes the most varied forms within it, and thus shows itself outwardly in many different forms. A soul clothes itself with this original material element, that may be thought of like the individual soul itself as coming from Eternity. The soul nature expresses itself through this material basic element, and in so doing it takes on many different forms, and it is in particular the study of these material forms that we find in the Sankhya philosophy.

Here we have, in the first place, so to speak, the original form of this material element as a sort of spiritual primeval stream, into which the soul is first immersed. Thus if we were to glance back at the first stages of evolution, we should find there the undifferentiated material elements and immersed therein, the plurality of the souls which are to evolve further. What, therefore, we first find as Form, as yet undifferentiated from the unity of the primal stream, is the spiritual substance itself that lies at the starting-point of evolution.

The first thing that then emerges, with which the soul can as yet clothe itself individually, is Buddhi. So that when we picture to ourselves a soul clothed with the primal flood-substance, externally this soul is not to be distinguished from the universal moving and weaving element of the primeval flood. Inasmuch as the soul does not only enwrap itself in this first being of the universal billowing primal flood but also in that which first proceeds from this, in so far does it clothe itself in Buddhi.

The third element that forms itself out of the whole and through which the soul can then become more and more individual, is Ahankara. This consists of lower and lower forms of the primeval substance.

So that we have the primeval substance, the first form of which is Buddhi, and its second form which is Ahankara. The next form to that is Manas; then comes the form which consists of the organs of the senses; this is followed by the form of the finer elements; and the last form consists of the elements of the substances which we have in our physical surroundings. This is the line of evolution according to Sankhya philosophy. Above is the most supersensible element, a primeval spiritual flow, which, growing ever denser and denser, descends to that which surrounds us in the coarser elements out of which the coarse human body is also constructed. Between these are the substances of which, for instance, our sense organs are woven, and the finer elements of which is woven our etheric or life-body. It must be carefully noticed that according to the Sankhya philosophy, all these are sheaths of the soul. Even that which springs from the first primeval flood is a sheath for the soul; the soul is at first within that; and when the Sankhya philosopher studies Buddhi, Ahankara, Manas, the senses, the finer and the coarser elements, he understands thereby the increasingly dense sheaths within which the soul expresses itself.

We must clearly understand that the manner in which the philosophy of the Vedas and the Sankhya philosophy are presented to us is only possible because they were composed in that ancient time when an old clairvoyance still existed, at any rate to a certain extent. The Vedas and the contents of the Sankhya philosophy came into existence in different ways. The Vedas depend throughout on a primeval inspiration which was still a natural possession of primeval man; they were given to man, so to speak, without his having done anything to deserve them, except that with his whole being he prepared himself to receive into his inner depths that divine inspiration that came of itself to him, and to receive it quietly and calmly. Sankhya philosophy was formed in a different way. That process was something like the learning of our present day, only that this is not permeated by clairvoyance as the former then was. The Veda philosophy consisted of clairvoyant knowledge, inspiration given as by grace from above. Sankhya philosophy consisted of knowledge sought for as we seek it now, but sought for by people to whom clairvoyance was still accessible. This is why the Sankhya philosophy leaves the actual soul element undisturbed, so to say. It admits that souls can impress themselves in that which one can study as the supersensible outer forms, but it particularly studies the outer forms, which appear as the clothing of those souls. Hence we find a complete system of the forms we meet with in the world, just as in our own science we find a number of facts about nature; only that in Sankhya philosophy observation extends to a clairvoyant observation of facts. Sankhya philosophy is a science, which although obtained by clairvoyance, is nevertheless a science of outer forms that does not extend into the sphere of the soul: the soul-nature remains in a sense undisturbed by these studies. He who devotes himself to the Vedas feels absolutely that his religious life is one with the life of wisdom; but Sankhya philosophy is a science, it is a perception of the forms into which the soul impresses itself. Nevertheless, it is quite possible for the disciples of the Sankhya philosophy to feel a religious devotion of the soul for their philosophy.

The way in which the soul element is organized into forms — not the soul element itself, but the form it takes — is followed up in the Sankhya philosophy. It defines the way in which the soul, more or less, preserves its individuality or else is more immersed in the material. It has to do with the soul element which is, it is true, beneath the surface, but which, within the material forms, still preserves itself as soul. A soul element thus disguised in outer form, but which reveals itself as soul, dwells in the Sattva element. A soul element immersed in form, but which is, so to say, entangled in it and cannot emerge from it, dwells in the Tamas element; and that in which, more or less, the soul element and its outer expression in form are, to a certain extent, balanced, dwells in the Rajas element. Sattva, Rajas, Tamas, the three Gunas, pertain to the essential characteristics of what we know as Sankhya philosophy.

Quite different, again, is that spiritual stream which comes down to us as Yoga. That appeals directly to the soul element itself and seeks ways and means of grasping the human soul in direct spiritual life, so that it rises from the point which it has attained in the world to higher and higher stages of soul-being. Thus Sankhya is a contemplation of the sheaths of the soul, and Yoga the guidance of the soul to higher and ever higher stages of inner experience. To devote oneself to Yoga means a gradual awakening of the higher forces of the soul so that it experiences something not to be found in everyday life, which opens the door to higher and higher stages of existence.

Yoga is therefore the path to the spiritual worlds, the path to the liberation of the soul from outer forms, the path to an independent life of the soul within itself. Yoga is the other side of the Sankhya philosophy. Yoga acquired its great importance when that inspiration, which was given as a blessing from above and which inspired the Vedas, was no longer able to come down. Yoga had to be made use of by those souls who, belonging to a later epoch of mankind, could no longer receive anything by direct revelation, but were obliged to work their way up to the heights of spiritual existence from the lower stages. Thus in the old primal Indian times we have three sharply-defined streams, the Vedas, the Sankhya, and the Yoga, and today we are called upon once more to unite these spiritual streams, so to say, by bringing them to the surface in the way proper for our own age, from the foundations of the soul and from the depths of the Cosmos.

You may find all three streams again in our Spiritual Science. If you read what I have tried to place before you in the first chapters of my Occult Science about the human constitution, about sleeping and waking, life and death, you will find there what in our present-day sense we may call Sankhya philosophy. Then read what is there said about the evolution of the world from Saturn down to our own time, and you have the Veda philosophy expressed for our own age; while, if you read the last chapters, which deal with human evolution, you have Yoga expressed for our own age. Our age must in an organized way unite that which radiates across to us in three so sharply defined spiritual streams from old India in the Veda philosophy, the Sankhya philosophy, and Yoga. For that reason our age must study the wonderful poem of the Bhagavad Gita, which, in a deeply poetical manner, represents as it were a union of these three streams; our own age must be deeply moved by the Bhagavad Gita. We should seek something akin to our own spiritual strivings in the deeper contents of the Bhagavad Gita.

Our spiritual streams do not only concern themselves with the older ones as a whole, but also in detail. You will have recognized that in my Occult Science an attempt has been made to produce the things out of themselves. Nowhere do we depend on history. Nowhere can one who really understands what is said find in any assertion about Saturn, Sun, and Moon, that things are related from historical sources; they are simply drawn forth from the matter itself. Yet, strange to say, that which bears the stamp of our own time corresponds in striking places with what resounds down to us out of the old ages. Only one little proof shall be given. We read in the Vedas in a particular place, about cosmic development, which can be expressed in words somewhat like the following: “Darkness was enwrapt in darkness in the primal beginning; all was indistinguishable flood-essence. Then arose a mighty void, that was everywhere permeated with warmth.” I now ask you to remember the result of our study of the evolution of Saturn, in which the substance of Saturn is spoken of as a warmth-substance, and you will feel the harmony between the so-called “newest thing in Occult Science” and what is said in the Vedas. The next passage runs: “Then first arose the Will, the first seed of Thought, the connection between the Existent and the Non-existent, ... and this connection was found in the Will ...” And remember what was said in the new mode of expression about the Spirits of Will. In all we have to say at the present time, we are not seeking to prove a concord with the old; the harmony comes of itself, because truth was sought for there and is again being sought for on our own ground

Now, in the Bhagavad Gita we find, as it were, the poetical glorification of the three spiritual streams just described. The great teachings that Krishna himself communicated to Arjuna are brought to our notice at an important moment of the world's history — of importance for that far-distant age. The moment is significant, because it is the time when the old blood-ties were loosening. In all that is to be said in these lectures about the Bhagavad Gita you must remember what has again and again been emphasized: that ties of blood, racial attachment, and kinship were of quite special significance in primeval times, and only grew less strong by degrees. Remember all that is said in my pamphlet The Occult Significance of Blood. When these blood-ties begin to loosen, on account of that loosening, the great struggle began which is described in the Mahabharata, and of which the Bhagavad Gita is an episode. We see there how the descendants of two brothers, and hence, blood relations, separate on account of their spiritual tendencies; how that which, through the blood, would formerly have given them the same points of view,now takes different paths; and how, therefore, the conflict then arises, for conflict must arise when the ties of blood also lose their significance as a help for clairvoyant perception; and with this separation begins the later spiritual development.. For those to whom the old blood-ties no longer were of significance, Krishna came as a great teacher. He was to be the teacher of the new age lifted out of the old blood-ties. How he became the teacher we shall describe tomorrow; but it may now be said, as the whole Bhagavad Gita shows us, that Krishna absorbed the three spiritual streams into his teaching and communicated them to his pupil as an organized unity.

How must this pupil appear to us? He looks up on the one side to his father, and on the other side to his father's brother. The children of the two brothers are now no longer to be together, they are to separate; now a different spiritual stream is to take possession of the one line and the other. Arjuna's soul is filled with the question: How will it be when that which was held together by the ties of blood is no longer there? How can the soul take part in spiritual life if that life no longer flows as it formerly did under the influence of the old blood-tie? It seems to Arjuna as if everything must come to an end.

The purport of the great teachings of Krishna, however, is to show that this will not be the case, that it all will be different. Krishna now shows his pupil — who is to live through the time of transition from one epoch to another — that the soul, if it is to become harmonious, must take in something of all these three spiritual streams. We find the Vedic unity interpreted in the right way in the teachings of Krishna, as well as the principles of the Sankhya teaching and the principles of Yoga. For what is it that actually lies behind all that we are about to learn from the Bhagavad Gita? The revelations of Krishna are somewhat to this effect: There is a creative Cosmic Word, itself containing the creative principle. As the sound produced by man when he speaks undulates and moves and lives through the air, so does the Word surge and weave and live in all things, and create and order all existence. Thus the Veda principle breathes through all things. This can be taken up by human perception into the human soul life. There is a supreme, weaving Creative Word, and there is an echo of this supreme, weaving Creative Word in the Vedic documents. The Word is the creative principle of the World; in the Vedas it is revealed. That is one part of the Krishna teaching. The human soul is capable of understanding how the Word lives on, in the different forms of existence. Human knowledge learns the laws of existence by grasping how the separate forms of being express, with the regularity of a fixed law, that which is soul and spirit. The teachings about the forms in the world, of the laws which shape existence, of cosmic laws and their manner of working, is the Sankhya philosophy, the other side of the Krishna teaching. Just as Krishna made clear to his pupil that behind all existence is the creative cosmic Word, so also he made clear to him that human knowledge can recognize the separate forms, and therefore can grasp the cosmic laws. The cosmic Word, the cosmic laws as echoed in the Vedas, and in Sankhya, were revealed by Krishna to his pupil. And he also spoke to him about the path that leads the individual pupil to the heights where he can once again share in the knowledge of the cosmic Word. Thus Krishna also spoke of Yoga. Threefold is the teaching of Krishna: it teaches of the Word, of the Law, and of reverent devotion to the Spirit.

The Word, the Law, and Devotion are the three streams by means of which the soul can carry out its development.

These three streams will for ever work upon the human soul in some way or another. Have we not just seen that modern Spiritual Science must seek for new expression of these three streams? But the ages differ one from the other, and in many different ways will that which is the threefold comprehension of the world be brought to human souls. Krishna speaks of the Cosmic Word, of the Creative Word; of the fashioning of existence; of the devotional deepening of the soul — of Yoga.

The same trinity meets us again in another form, only in a more concrete, more living way — in a being who is Himself to be thought of as walking the Earth — the Incarnation of the Divine Creative Word! The Vedas came to mankind in an abstract form. The Divine Logos, of whom the Gospel of St. John speaks, is the Living and Creative Word Itself! That which we find in the Sankhya philosophy, as the law to which the cosmic forms are subject, that, historically transposed into the old Hebrew revelation, is what St. Paul calls the Law. The third stream we find in St. Paul as Faith in the risen Christ. That which was Yoga in Krishna, in St. Paul was Faith, only in a more concrete form — Faith, that was to replace the Law.

So the trinity of Veda, Sankhya, and Yoga were as the redness of the dawn of that which later rose as Sun. Veda appears again in the actual being of Christ Himself now entering in a concrete, living way into historical evolution — not pouring Himself out abstractly into space and the distances of time, but living as a single individual, as the Living Word. The Law meets us in the Sankhya philosophy, in that which shows us how the material basis, Prakriti, is developed even down to coarse substance. The Law reveals how the world came into existence, and how individual man develops within it. That is expressed in the old Hebrew revelation of the Law, in the dispensation of Moses. Inasmuch as St. Paul, on the one hand, refers to this Law of the old Hebrews, he is referring to the Sankhya philosophy; inasmuch as he refers to faith in the Risen One, he refers to the Sun of which the rosy dawn appeared in Yoga. Thus arises in a special way that of which we find the first elements in Veda, Sankhya, and Yoga. What we find in the Vedas appears in a new but now concrete form as the Living Word by Whom all things were made and without Whom nothing is made that was made, and Who, nevertheless, in the course of time, has become Flesh. Sankhya appears as the historical representation based on Law of how out of the world of the Elohim emerged the world of phenomena, the world of coarse substances. Yoga transformed itself into that which, according to St. Paul, is expressed in the words “Not I, but Christ in me” — that is to say when the Christ-force penetrates the soul and absorbs it, man rises to the heights of the divine.

Thus we see how, in a preparatory form, the coherent plan is present in world history, how the Eastern teaching was a preparation, how it gives in more abstract form, as it were, that which in a concrete form we find so marvelously contained in the Pauline Christianity. We shall see that precisely by grasping the connection between the great poem of the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, the very deepest mysteries will reveal themselves concerning what we may call the ruling of the spiritual in the collective education of the human race.

As something so new must also be felt in the new age, this newer age must extend beyond the time of Greece and must develop understanding for that which lies behind the thousand years immediately before Christ — for that which we find in the Vedas, Sankhya, and Yoga. Just as Raphael in his art and Thomas Aquinas in his philosophy had to turn back to Greece, so shall we see how in our time a conscious balance must be established between that which the present time is trying to acquire and that which lies further back than the Greek age, and stretches back to the depths of Oriental antiquity. We can allow these depths of Oriental antiquity to flow into our souls if we ponder over these different spiritual streams which are to be found within that wonderfully harmonious unity which Humboldt calls the greatest philosophical poem: The Bhagavad Gita.

Related post: The yoga of anthroposophy

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Alas, Babylon! The Three Great Evils of Our Time: Americanism, Jesuitical Catholicism, and Animalistic Socialism

  

America's tombstone epitaph:


The love of money is the root of all evil.

  

A Sound Outlook for Today and a Genuine Hope for the Future

Lecture 6 of 7

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, July 30, 1918

Today we will go rather further in outlining the connections we have tried to understand in the course of our recent studies.

The present time, with its many diverse currents, spiritual and material, is extremely difficult to understand; and the effort ends only in perplexity unless we make up our minds to recognize the causes as lying far, far back in the womb of history. Let us look back, as students of Spiritual Science, at the so-called fourth post-Atlantean period.

This begins, as we know, somewhere about the year 747 before the Mystery of Golotha, and closes with the beginning of the fifteenth century, about 1413 A.D. (The figures are of course to be taken approximately, as always in matters of this kind.) Within this period, as we observe it, we can perceive certain forces, connected with and related to each other, but differing fundamentally from all others working in previous and subsequent epochs. This period, in which the development of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul in man's being took place, can be divided into three smaller ones: the first, between the year 747 B.C. (which is the real date of the founding of Rome), ends about 27 B.C.; the second runs from 27 B.C. until about the end of the 7th century; (693 A.D.); the third and last from 693 to 1413 A.D. Since this date, since about 1413, we have the time which brings forth, in its own characteristic way, soul-forces already known to you to some extent. Just as this fourth Post-Atlantean epoch can be clearly distinguished from the three preceding ones (the ancient Indian, Persian, and Egypto-Chaldean) and must also be sharply distinguished from what followed it and what is still to come, so within it the growth is marked by noticeable moments, if we consider its progress through these three shorter periods.

From 747 to 27 B.C. the peoples inhabiting the countries around the Mediterranean come chiefly into prominence. We see a distinct form of soul-life developing among them. History hardly mentions it, because history has no means of creating the ideas and conceptions which would fit it to deal with the really characteristic features. This epoch, which I have marked off, can be characterized by saying that it is the time when, for inner reasons of human evolution as a whole, the souls of men emancipate themselves from their connection with the universal spiritual world. If we look back into Egyptian and Chaldean times, during the epoch of the Sentient-Soul, we find in human consciousness a decided sense of kinship of the soul with the cosmos. The Sentient-Soul in man's nature was then able to perceive that man is a member of the whole cosmos. We cannot rightly estimate what is characteristic of the Egyptian, Chaldean, or Babylonian stages unless we take into account the fact that man at that time actually experienced a feeling of kinship with the spiritual cosmos. Just as the fingers on our hand feel themselves part of us, as it were, so the Egyptian or Chaldean felt himself to be a member of the spiritual cosmos. This feeling for the cosmos underwent a crisis in the 8th century before Christ, was shaken to its roots. In the past, human souls owed their sense of belonging with the cosmos to their ancient, atavistic, dream-like clairvoyance. They did not perceive as we do today. In the act of sense-perception they also perceived what profane science ignorantly calls “Animism” — the spiritual, the divine; and through this they felt themselves as belonging to the Spirit of the universe.

This relationship disappeared. The consequences were, on the one hand, numerous phenomena of decadence, but on the other, the whole marvelous culture of Greece, whose civilization was founded on what man experiences when, as man, he begins to stand alone in the universe. We owe this civilization to the fact that man no longer felt himself a member of the cosmos, but a totality as man, a being complete in himself. He had in a sense taken his own place in the cosmos, had begun to live a life of his own. If Greek civilization had retained the soul-constitution for instance, of the Ancient Indian period, with its feeling of connection with the cosmos, it is impossible to imagine that this beautiful Greek civilization could ever have arisen. All the splendor and glory displayed by Greek civilization, unequaled elsewhere, developed in the time between the eighth and the first centuries before Christ. Humanity had withdrawn into the citadel of the soul, of the human soul in the true sense. This was the time when humanity began to move toward the Mystery of Golgotha. We must not forget that there is always something in the Mystery of Golgotha which cannot entirely dawn on human understanding, even supersensible understanding. There will always be something uncomprehended. It is beyond the power of human conceptions, human feelings, human experiences, fully to grasp what was achieved by the entrance of the Christ into earthly evolution. Therefore the Mystery had, in a sense, so to take place that while it was in progress, human civilization was not ready fully to share in it; it had to take its course separately, side by side with ordinary human experience. That is fairly evident, even from history. How much did human civilization around the Mediterranean notice of what happened in the far-off Jewish province of Palestine, with regard to Christ Jesus? How little did it enter into the consciousness of civilized humanity, even that of Tacitus, who was writing only a century after the Mystery of Golgotha!

On the one hand we have the current of human civilization, and on the other the stream which brought with it the Mystery of Golgotha: the two run their course side by side. This could happen only because man, civilized man, at the time of the Divine Event was severed from the Divine, was living a life which had no direct connection with the spiritual. Thus on the Earth itself there took place a spiritual event, which went its way side by side with human civilization. Such a juxtaposition of outer civilization with a Mystery Event is unthinkable in any earlier period. It never had happened before, because in earlier times human civilization knew and recognized itself as being in connection with happenings in the realm of the Divine-Spiritual. It is very distinctive, very remarkable, that the secular culture which ran parallel with the Mystery of Golgotha was remote from it; man had severed himself from it.

In the second period, which lasted from about 27 B.C. to 693 A.D., mid-European civilization was not of a kind to enable secular culture to come to an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. This may sound very strange, considering that Christianity had made itself at home in this secular culture and had spread over the civilization of mid-Europe; but its expansion took place in the way I have described. The Mystery of Golgotha was isolated, was alone. Certainly, it was accepted as outer dogma to this extent: Christ had come, had called apostles, had accomplished this or that for humanity, had said this or that about man's relation to the Divine. All this was readily accepted in its outer application by secular culture; but this outer recognition does not alter the fact that in reality all those who accepted Christianity in these early centuries were far removed from an inner understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. With the help of the Gnosis, or of all that had been carried over as treasures of wisdom from the ancient pagan world, they might have come near to facing the question: “What really happened in the Mystery of Golgotha?” They did not do so. They declared everything heresy which might have led to an understanding of it, and tried to accomplish the impossible: to put into trivial forms what never could be confined within such forms, what could be the object only of wisdom's highest aspiration — the Mystery of Golgotha.

Hence the organizations fostered during the early centuries of Christianity were not such as to help people to unite themselves with the Mystery; their effect was to encourage in the human soul something very remote from a genuine inner feeling of understanding and partaking in it. The “Church” was an organization rather for the non-understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Anyone who follows up what the various councils, and more especially the intrigues of the Church, strove to accomplish will find that all these efforts went toward getting certain dogmatic ideas accepted, and toward inducing people to think of everything connected with the Mystery of Golgotha as having no real relationship to the life of the human soul. All this led up to a certain point, which can be described, somewhat radically, in the following way. Men tried to accommodate themselves, here on Earth, to certain ideas concerning the Mystery of Golgotha and its effects; but the most important thing was not the extent to which they could come to know about it and to absorb it into their souls. It was that they should be able to adopt this belief: “We grasp the fact that the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished on its own account, independently of us, and Christ will take care that we are saved!” This tendency gained ground until the reality of spiritual events was relegated to a region quite outside the soul; sacred, spiritual events were not to be thought of as connected with what took place in any human breast; the two were to be as widely separated as possible. Within this tendency lay the germ of a purpose — unexpressed of course, but active subconsciously — which emerged clearly for the first time at the Council of Constantinople in 869. The aim was to keep the human spirit away from any individual, personal concern with the spiritual (which was restricted to the Mystery of Golgotha), and therefore from any inclination to understand the Mystery in terms of personal experience. It was to remain incomprehensible. So the Church was able to include more and more people of a purely secular frame of mind, who came to believe that the supersensible was beyond the range of the human soul, and that human thinking should confine itself to the objects and activities of the physical world. No forces were to be developed out of the human soul which could lead to an independent understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. In certain decrees of this eighth Council of Constantinople it is clearly stated that European humanity might not — because the forces of the human soul were not equal to it — reflect on the realm wherein the life appertaining to the Mystery of Golgotha had taken its course.

In this middle period of the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, lasting from 27 B.C. until 693 A.D., something was accomplished which may be described as the confirming of humanity in the belief that all human knowledge and experience is adapted only for the palpable “this life”; the impalpable, supersensible realm — the “beyond” as it is called — must be always withdrawn from their ken, inaccessible to direct perception. The entire history of those centuries can be understood only by keeping this cardinal fact in mind: The whole policy of the Catholic Church was directed to bringing men to the belief: “The soul can know only the things of this life; as regards the supersensible, thou must approach this in a way which has nothing to do with thy intelligence or personal knowledge.” The effect of this was that after the close of this epoch, in the eighth and ninth centuries, a sort of obscurity descended on European humanity as regards the connection of the human soul with the supersensible. And certain later phenomena, among which that of Bernard of Claivraux is typical, can be explained only by the fact that such men remained in a sense beyond the physical, in “the other world,” their souls absorbed in what is inaccessible to rational human understanding. This enthusiasm for something which undoubtedly lies beyond all human comprehension must be seen in the entire disposition of soul in a Bernard of Clairvaux, if he is to be understood. In his personality we find many traits which are great and powerful in their effects, for what is capable of a more or less distorted activity is equally capable of a beautiful, great, and glorious one. Bernard had characteristics which clearly show him to be a product of that disposition of soul which developed in Western civilization in the way I have described, during these particular centuries. Many other men resembled him; he is just a typical figure — as, for instance, when he spoke to his followers (who were very numerous) of all that would be bestowed on humanity by the “Crusade” he contemplated. Then came the failure of the whole attempt. How did this devout man speak of the failure? Somewhat this way: If everything, everything goes wrong, may the blame be on me alone, not on the Divine, which must be always right. Even when such a man was convinced of his connection with what he conceived of as the Divine-Spiritual power behind events, he separated the one from the other and said: “Lay the sin at my door: Providence is something that takes its own course in a realm beyond and apart from that of the human soul."

So, at the beginning of the third period of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch of civilization, something akin to a darkening descended on humanity — best expressed by saying that man's horizon no longer extended to the idea of a connection with spiritual currents and impulses. In philosophy of the centuries between the 8th and 15th one finds always the same aim: to prove that human ideas and concepts should in no case attempt to grasp the course of spiritual reality, that spiritual reality can only be, and must be, a matter of revelation, left to the teaching office of the Church. This was reduced to a convenient formula!

Thus had the power of the Church been built up. This power of the Church did not derive purely from theological impulse, but from the fact that man was banished to the physical life of the senses as regards the use of his own forces of knowledge and mental powers, and was not allowed to think of a knowledge of the supersensible. Hence arose a conception of belief which was not in existence in the early centuries (although it is sometimes antedated), but developed later. It took this form: “Concerning the Divine-Spiritual, only faith is possible — not knowledge.” This division between the “truth of faith” and the “truth of knowledge” was actually made against certain significant historical backgrounds, which should be studied in connection with the things I have indicated.

We have been living since the 15th century, approximately since 1413 A.D., during a period (this will become evident in the third millennium) in which we are concerned in part with the heritage of all that has happened under such influence as I have described. On the one hand stand of the legacies from those days; on the other we have to deal with something coming to view in this, the fifth post-Atlantean period — something entirely new. In the fourth period, when we look back at it, we see that there was then a kind of severance of the human soul from the Divine-Spiritual, a banishment to purely external physical sense-transactions. That was the new thing in the fourth period. It did not exist in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, as I have already pointed out. We now have to deal with an analogous novelty in our own epoch, and humanity's task — having entered on an age in which self-consciousness must play an ever greater and greater part — is to distinguish between what is a legacy from time past, and what is newly added to it from our own time. Let us first look at the inheritance, the legacy.

We have seen that it consists in man having been constrained to develop his soul-life apart from the supersensible. Moreover there is another result of this, the more clearly to be seen the closer the events of history are surveyed; indeed, a searching review shows the facts to be unquestionable, admitting of no doubt whatsoever. This fact is that man, confining his soul-force to the sense-perceptible, was willing to be severed from the supersensible, and finally — since the 15th century — arrived at rejecting the supersensible altogether. The eighth Council of Constantinople in 869 is characterized by the wish to keep man and the supersensible apart; and from this separation, sponsored deliberately by the Church, the belief arose that the supersensible might be only a matter of imagination and have no reality. If one investigates the genesis of modern materialism from a historical, psychological point of view, the Church must be held responsible for it. Of course the Church is only the outer expression of deeper forces working in man's evolution, but to notice how one thing arises from another enables one to understand the course of events. In the fourth post-Atlantean age, the orthodox man would say: “The human faculty of knowledge is adapted only for understanding what is connected with the realm of the senses. The supersensible must be left to revelation, which may not be contested; to speak against revelation is heresy and can lead only to delusion.”

The modern Marxist, a modern Social Democrat, true scion of this view — which is nothing but the consequence of the Catholicism of earlier centuries — says: “All knowledge worthy of the name is concerned only with sense-perceptible, physical events; there is no ‘Spiritual Science’ because there is no such thing as spirit. ‘Spiritual’ Science is, at best, Social Science, the science of human communities.” Of course this tendency has come to fruition differently in various parts of the civilized world, but the differences are no more than nuances.

Hence, from the ninth century onward, in the central and western countries of Europe, it becomes necessary to ensure that human soul-life should occupy itself with the supersensible by “believing” in it, but should know of it only through revelation. The races and peoples of Central Europe were such that they had to be handled carefully; they could not be treated in the same simple way. To say to people: “Your human capacities are limited to eating and drinking and things of the outer world; the supersensible is beyond you” — that could not be done in Western Europe; but it was done in Eastern Europe, and that is the reason for the cleavage between the Eastern and Western Churches. In Eastern Europe, people really were confined to the sense-world; that was where their capacities had to unfold. That which finally led to the Orthodox religion was to be developed in the heights of Mystery-experience, quite untouched by anything to do with the senses. What man brought forth out of his human nature was set sharply apart from the true spiritual world, which lived only in the ritual that hovered loftily above mankind.

What was it that had to develop there? In varying shades, the point of view, the perception, that reality belonged only to the physical world of the senses. One might say that forces toward which man adopts an attitude of repression do not develop, but atrophy. If, then, humanity was restrained for centuries from spiritually grasping the supersensible, the power of doing so was bound in the end to disappear completely. This is what we find in the modern socialistic views of life, whose misfortune consists not in their socialism but in the fact that they entirely reject the spiritual-supersensible, and are therefore obliged to confine themselves to a social structure which takes account only of the animal side of man's nature. This was prepared for by the paralyzing of man's supersensible forces; hence it follows that men are driven into saying: “Care for our salvation shall not in any way make us unite our soul's knowledge experience with the stream that lives a life on its own — the stream which includes the Mystery of Golgotha.” 

With what is this connected? With the fact that in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch the Luciferic forces were especially active. They severed man from the cosmos, because their aim is invariably to isolate man in selfishness, to cut him off from the whole spiritual universe, as well as from the knowledge of his connection to the physical one. Hence, when this severance was at its height, there were no natural sciences. This was Lucifer's doing. The activity which separated sense-knowledge from dogma regarding the supersensible was therefore a Luciferic one. Over against it stands the Ahrimanic influence; and these two are the great adversaries of the human soul. The fact that the supersensible forces of humanity have been allowed to atrophy — leading to a purely animal form of socialism, now due to break over humanity in a devastating and destructive way — is to be traced to Luciferic forces. The new influence, developing in our age, is of a different nature, more Ahrimanic. The Luciferic element would isolate man, cut him off from the spiritual-supersensible, and lead him to experience the illusion of being a totality in himself. On the other hand, the Ahrimanic element inspires man with fear of the spiritual, keeps him away from it, fosters in him the illusion that the spiritual cannot be attained by mankind. The Luciferic keeping away of man from the supersensible might be described as of a more educational, cultured kind, whereas the Ahrimanic, founded on fear of the spiritual, is more ‘natural,’ arising in the age which began with the 15th century. And as the Luciferic severance from the spiritual came especially to expression under the cover of Orthodox Christianity of the East, so the Ahrimanic fear, the holding back from the spiritual, makes itself felt especially in the culture of the West, and particularly in the element of American civilization.

Such truths may be unpalatable today, but they are truths nevertheless, and we get very little farther by generalizing — however mystically or theosophically — about the connection of the human with the Divine, or whatever it may be called. We can progress only by recognizing the reality as it is. We can reduce our chaos to order only if we recognize the true characteristics of the different currents running side by side. These various currents, springing from their several assumptions, spread out locally, and so everything is confused in the hodgepodge called “modern civilization.” What I am now speaking of as “Americanism” (as collective concept, not applying to individual Americans) is fear of the spiritual, the longing to live only on the physical plane, or at most in what rises into that plane as coarse spiritualism and such-like, which is not, in the real sense, spiritual at all. The mark of Americanism is fear of the spiritual; it is by no means confined to America, but there it lives as a social characteristic, not simply a human one. Above all it is predominant in all science. Science has increasingly been founded on fear of the spiritual. Nothing in science is called “objective” unless it excludes as far as possible living conceptions engendered in the inwardness of the soul. No idea, no conception, engendered in the inwardness of the soul is permitted to intrude into the observation of nature. This is allowed to embrace only what is dead, not the living that is spirit-inwoven. If, in the manner of Hegel, Shelling, or Goethe — those genuine representatives of mid-European thought — anyone introduces the “concept” into observation of nature, he is at once thought to be on the road to uncertainty, for no objective reality is ever expected to be attained through spiritual comprehension or experience. It is assumed that this means bringing in personal bias; that an experiment ceases to be objective directly any time anything subjective enters into it. That is Ahrimanic. Science is universally “American” in so far as it clings to the fundamental axiom “Everything subjective must be banished from an observation of Nature.”  This is the fundamental result of the earlier severance from the spiritual in the fourth post-Atlantean period.

Thus a new element is added to this legacy — a new element which will make itself felt more and more as a destructive force alongside all that has to develop fruitfully — and consciously — in the future. It is essentially of an Ahrimanic nature; it is fear of the spiritual, and it brings havoc and disintegration into human civilization.

At the transition from the fourth to fifth post-Atlantean epoch, and during the fifth epoch, these impulses became more and more noticeable. With the discovery of America, and the transplantation into America of European ways, fear of this spiritual life appeared there, too; but on the other hand there arose what might be called a tension in human souls, for the native forces of the people in Europe were such that they could not fail to some extent to trace their own connection with the spirituality of the universe. A tension arose at the passing of the forth into the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of civilization, during the centuries in which what is known as “modern history” takes shape. Then came this tension caused by the suppressed spiritual element in the breast of man. Certain people decided that a barrier had to be put up against it, partly because they understood very well what was left of the old inheritance, and partly because they had a very pertinent grasp of the newly approaching Ahrimanic element. This was the genesis of that spiritual current — a much more influential one than most people think, as I mentioned from a different point of view in my last lecture — which tries to perpetuate this keeping of the human soul at a distance from the supersensible: in other words, Jesuitism. Its inner principle is to do everything possible in human evolution to keep man at a distance from any real, conscious connection with the supersensible. Naturally, this was facilitated by presenting the supersensible dogmatically as a realm into which human knowledge could not penetrate. But the Jesuit movement knows very well how to reckon with the other side; it wants no such inner relation between modern science and Americanism. In that respect Jesuitism is great: it recognizes the importance of physical science and makes a deep study of it. Jesuits are great spirits in the round of physical, material science, for Jesuitism reckons with the elemental tendency of mankind to fear the spiritual, a fear which must be overcome by leading human nature toward the spiritual world; and it counts on being able to impose this fear on society by saying to people, in so many words: “You cannot and shall not approach the spiritual; we are trustees of the spiritual and we will purvey it to you in the proper way.”

These two currents of thought, Americanism and Jesuitism, play into one another, as it were. This is not something to take casually; in all such matters we must look for the deeper impulses which are active in human evolution. If we try to identify the forces which have brought about the present catastrophe we shall find a remarkable cooperation between Americanism — in the sense here given — and Jesuitism. And from a wider point of view we see, on the one hand, how the inheritance from earlier times still influences our mental life, and on the other, the advent of something new. If we specify these two impulses as the Luciferic and Ahrimanic, we describe precisely the opposition toward that which must be introduced into the development of mankind for its salvation as true spiritual life. Anyone who approaches with inner sympathy such a figure as Bernard of Clairvaux, who in a certain sense inclines towards the Luciferic, will take account of the following attitude: “Human knowledge is after all directed only toward the physical-material; therefore we direct the soul to seek the divine-spiritual in the fervor of elemental experience.” This is what kindles enthusiasm in a temperament of that kind. We might say that what lives in human souls as a tendency toward this elemental side lives on in our own time, but there is also the other tendency — toward the dark and somber side. The 12th century had its Bernard of Clairvaux: ours has such figures as Lenin and Trotsky. As in former centuries there was an active inclination toward the supersensible, so now we find hatred for it, although expressed in different words and substance. That is the dark reverse side of those times: there the pouring of the human soul into the divine mould, here the pouring of man's being into an animal mould, on which alone the social structure is to be built.

These matters can be understood only if one has a clear grasp of one fact, which is far away from present-day comprehension. Our time is credulous in respect of theories, taking the content of ideas and programs as gospel, as I have often remarked. It is reality that counts, not theories and programs. The modern follower of Marx, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, before the world war, would of course have said: “This is what Marx teaches, Engles teaches, Lassalle teaches, and that is all one needs for salvation.” He was concerned only with the “content” of ideas and programs. In reality it is never a question of that, for ideas are never carried into life in accordance with their content, but by means of forces which are quite distinct from it. No one knows the truth unless he knows that ideas often have  little to do with reality, which may arise independently of their content. A splendid program can be devised, established, on a sound scientific basis, fervently longed for as the Marxists longed for theirs, but all to no purpose. For an age as unspiritual as ours, this is playing with fire. Men believe that they are working to realize the content of their ideas, but anyone who knows how things happen in life knows that the reality is quite different. If ideas are not derived from spiritual knowledge they may enter into cultural life as sheer monstrosities — and this applies to the ideas of Marx, which are intended to banish the spirit. However fine they may be, they become abortions. It is no use asking in the morning: “Why has it grown light through what has happened on the Earth?” One has to turn away from abstract ideas and say: “Daylight has come because the Sun is shining”. In going out beyond the Earth one sees the reason for the daylight. Similarly, if we want to understand “today” we must look away from what is happening in the immediate present to what took place in a time long past. Bolshevism cannot be understood except by recognizing it as an after-the fact of the Eighth Ecumenical Council of 869 A.D. You cannot understand it except as a result of the atrophy of the forces which man once had for apprehending the supersensible world. In order really to understand the happenings of the outer world, in order to confront them, we must perceive this inner connection. For anyone observing the relations of events in history it is the most fearful thing to see how movements which set out to reform the world are concerned only with the “subject-matter” of ideas, and refuse to reckon with their reality, which exists quite independently of whether their content is beautiful or not. Suppose a child is born, a beautiful child; his mother may be charmed. Mothers are sometimes charmed even when their children are not beautiful! He becomes a good for nothing, a ne'er-do-well, perhaps even a criminal. Is it therefore untrue to say that he was a beautiful child? Have people no right to say that he was? Does his childish beauty contradict the unforeseen things in his life? Just so there have been in many circles men with admirable ideas through which they wanted to reform the world, and these men were admired; yet the ideas became abortions! For ideas of themselves are but dead things; they must be animated by being received into the vigorous life of the spirit.

In reading modern socialistic publications one finds — if certain differences are left out of account — a great similarity between them and writings which express the standpoint of the Catholic Church, although the latter are differently expressed and deal with different realms. For instance, I recently read to you out of a certain brochure. Notice its thought-forms; compare what is said there with the rabid tendencies, whether cultured or not, which led gradually to Bolshevism; compared with the beginning of a publication by Kautsky or Lenin; you'll find the same thoughts. One is the development of the other. Nowhere does one get a stronger feeling of Catholicism than in reading certain dogmatic socialist utterances. But something which Catholicism forbids — philosophizing about certain things — has become a passion, a principle: the principle of declaring that all learning comes from the bourgeoisie, and all spiritual development from class warfare. This principle is the effect of the Catholic principle. Bolshevism may perhaps, in the form of its inception, have only a short existence: but all mankind will have to reckon long enough with what stands behind it. Anyone who knows how it all hangs together would not be surprised that Bolshevism should have dawned in the place where this way of thinking, in the bestial course it is followed, proceeded under cover of the Orthodox religion.

We must fathom all these things if we want to be conscious of the necessity for approaching the spiritual life in the right way. Mystical talk about it is out of place today. What is needed today is to apply spiritual knowledge so as to look into reality and to discover the connections belonging to it; because from such knowledge alone does the correct grasp of the world's events arise; never from a past inheritance, or from fear, or from this elementary new thing I have described, which can but lead deeply into chaos. In this animalized socialism we see displayed one result of what developed in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. It has a Luciferic element in it; the Luciferic “Original Sin” is within it. But what is now developing is the penalty for that general incapacity of human faculties for turning to the supersensible. These faculties have become truly impotent, and hatred and rejection of the supersensible arise in their place. There is not merely hatred and original sin, but punishment for the forsaking of the supersensible. This applies to much that is happening today.

The impulses active in human evolution take on various nuances, and events can be understood only in this light. The peoples of the Italian and Spanish peninsulas have come under the sway of Christianity in the course of its expansion, as well as the peoples of modern France and the British Isles. We know something of what has been unfolded among them. We know that on the Spanish and Italian peninsulas the sentient soul has blossomed forth, on French soil the intellectual or mind soul; here in mid-Europe the ego; and in eastern Europe in the same way a civilization of the spirit self is to be looked for, to be active only in the future and at present existing in germs which are now entirely hidden.

If only people would look at western Europe and understand its riddles through spiritual science! For instance, the characteristics of Italian regions (not those of single individuals, which of course grow out everywhere beyond the common norm) develop differently from those of French or British humanity. This last is so constituted that the nature of the people has a special connection with the consciousness soul. Through living in the consciousness soul man is banished to the physical plane, although not so strongly in the British Isles as in America. The result is that man, cut off first from the supersensible by ecclesiastical developments, will be led back to union with the cosmos — but it is only to the outer cosmos that he is led by the consciousness soul. Therefore the British people, as Britons, find their union with the cosmos only through economic principles. British thought is essentially economic, framed on economic lines. Anyone who grasps the connection of the consciousness soul with the physical world will see this necessity; also that the French national character (not that of individuals), having an affinity with the intellectual or mind soul, develops chiefly political thinking and feeling; while the Italian and Spanish in the same way have the sensuous side of the mind developed, because the sentient soul is directly connected with the nature of these people. I can only outline this, but it gives an idea of what lies in the characters of the peoples themselves.

If we look on the German essence, developing as it has in the midst of such a tragedy, we see that the ego dwells within it. The whole of German history becomes clear if we consider this fact, which is disclosed from the supersensible world. The ego of man is the principle that is least externally developed; it has remained man's most spiritual member. Thereby the German, inasmuch as he is connected through the ego with the spiritual world, is linked with it in the most spiritual way. He cannot achieve any connection with the cosmos economically, politically, or sensuously; he can achieve it only in so far as it manifests in the soul-life of single individuals — as the ego invariably does — and is then poured out over the people. It comes to expression most characteristically in what may be discerned as the essence of Goethe's genius, of Herder's and Lessing's, as something detached, a state higher than the physical-sensible. Hence comes a certain estrangement from the latter realm, a feeling of not really belonging to matter when the physical-sensible alone is in question; hence the great amount of “Americanism,” and of the elements which I prefer not to particularize, poured out over Germany during the last decades, have alienated it from the original activity destined for its national soul.

In a yet higher way eastern Europe will be connected with the spiritual through its national characteristics — and will develop a still higher civilization and a spiritual sense, as a reaction from what is now taking shape there. But that is a matter of the future; it is not yet in evidence and must first evolve out of the animal character in which it is still confined.

The countries of western Europe are directly connected by a lawful inheritance, so to speak, with the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Something more recent, but opposed to “Americanism,” lies hidden in the German nature; a certain relation to the spiritual world, sought inwardly in the spiritual itself. The German soul, following its own peculiar nature, has no fear of the spiritual; rather an inclination toward it, such as is to be found, albeit in a higher form, in Goetheanism. This is plain speaking, of course; but you know that these things are brought forward from knowledge — not from chauvinism, nor said to please anyone here. You saw in the last lecture that I understand how not to speak flatteringly. One thing, however, must be said: within the German soul — though this is often forgotten in middle Europe — there is a dormant relation of the human spirit to the supersensible world which must be cultivated, and which is the exact opposite of everything else now manifesting on the Earth. Could we have recognized this — if only, alas, the last decades had not brought Americanism and Russian thoughts into this realm — how differently the impulse of science in middle Europe would have developed! You know from my other lectures that a science of soul and spirit might have flowed from Goetheanism — but it remained a disregarded impulse! Has it really been grasped at all? Not yet — although within its depths lies the true being of Germany, which is, as you will have gathered, a stranger to the others, for they are still to a great extent animated by the legacy of the old, as well as by the new. In middle Europe alone has something developed which has more or less emerged from the old and the new.

By many indications we see that Goetheanism is untouched by materialistic science. (Goethe is praised, of course, but an ex-finance Minister — Kreuzwendedich — is made President of the Goethe Society!) What exists in the true, inner element of the German nature will be experienced in other realms as a continual reproach. The easiest way to protect oneself against what by nature one cannot acknowledge is to slander it. We must look frankly at this. Such a living reproach can be evasively described as “delinquency.” This is a subjective way of escaping from the reproach. Here we touch upon an important psychological fact. The slander will spread further and further, rooted in the uncomfortable feeling that the special relationship of this ego to the spiritual does exist. It is necessary, however, to see clearly in these domains, not to shun a clear view of them, as is done today. Had we not so much conventionalism and Americanism among us, we should discern that German Goetheanism and Americanism are two opposite poles, and we should know that to regard these two currents of the present day with an unprejudiced mind is the only correct attitude to maintain. We should reject all exaggerated patriotism and look facts fully in the face.

If we did so, we would no longer laud Americanism to the skies as we have been wont to do and, since the characteristic trait of this Americanism is fear of the spirit, would come to see that the American element will increasingly act as a radically evil driving force in current catastrophic events. Those who say otherwise are short-sighted, not judging things in their real setting. Everything arising from the political attitude of the French, from the economic rigidity natural to the British, or from the elemental sensationalism — the so-called “sacred egoism” of the Italian people — all this, in view of the great events now playing their part, is but trivial compared to the especially evil element arising from Americanism.

There are three currents whose inner affinity and confluence produces a destructive effect upon human evolution. In diverse ways each has assimilated old legacies and a new element, as I tried to outline briefly today. The destructiveness lies in these three currents: firstly in everything we can call Americanism, which increasingly tends to invoke fear of the spirit and make the world into a place where only physical life can unfold. This is actually quite different from the British tendency to try to make the world into a trading company. Americanism seeks to make the world into a physical habitation, furnished as comfortably as possible, where one can live in comfort and prosperity. That is the political element of Americanism. Whoever does not detect it is blind to the facts and merely shuts his eyes and ears. Man's connection with the spiritual is bound to die out under such an influence. In these forces of Americanism lies what must actually bring the Earth to its end, destruction dooming it at last to death, because the spirit will be shut out from it.

The second destructive element is not only that of Catholicism, but all Jesuitism, which in essence is virtually allied to Americanism. If the latter is the cultivation of the impulse to build up fear of the spirit, so the former seeks to awaken the belief that one should not seek contact with the spirit, which it deems impossible; it wishes spiritual blessings to be dispensed by those who are called into the teaching office of the Catholic Church. This influence seeks to atrophy forces in human nature which incline to the supersensible.

The particular indications of the third stream can be seen arising in a terrible form in the East: a social state based on a purely animal, physical socialism. Without plastering it with dogmas, we call it “Bolshevism,” and it will not easily be overcome by mankind.

These are the three distinctive elements in the modern development of humanity. To bring knowledge to bear upon them, so that the events of the present day may be met in the right way, is possible only through spiritual science.

Related post: A Glockwork Orange

Related: Ain't that America

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0181/19180730p01.html
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