Anthony Bourdain: "Once you've been to Cambodia, you'll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands."
Wednesday, June 30, 2021
Central Europe between East and West. Ahrimanic Inspiration and Spiritual Impulses. The Symbol of the Rose Cross
The Mystery of Death. Lecture 10 of 15
Rudolf Steiner, Prague, May 15, 1915:
My dear friends,
When we gather at such an occasion at which an own room is dedicated to our efforts which we can give a spiritual character commensurate with our spiritual-scientific feeling, it is good to think of the big viewpoint which we want to get as supporters of spiritual science towards the world and its phenomena, its tasks, its big riddles. How should our time, our distressing time full of ordeals, not urge our souls to get a more far-reaching viewpoint? In particular in our time, one has to long for a viewpoint that reaches farther than the external life and external human efforts.
Out of the tasks and the efforts of our spiritual-scientific worldview we put up a sculptural group at an important place in our new Dornach construction. This sculptural group should explain that which our souls should feel in the most intimate and also in the deepest sense. This group contains a central figure. One may call this central figure Christ; one may also call it the divine in the human being which tries to position itself in the right way in the world. One may call this middle figure the “human being,” the cosmic human being, expressed in an earthly personality as Christ was expressed in the earthly personality in a temporal-historical life by Jesus of Nazareth.
But two other figures will be on the sides of this middle figure, the one on top like on a rock, winged, but falling off from the rock. Because of the peculiar posture of the hand of the middle figure, expressing neither hatred nor power but inner firmness, a strength is achieved by which the figure on the rock on top, the winged figure, breaks its wings and falls down into the depth. This breaking of the wings — this must be well expressed in this sculpture — is not achieved because the human being who stands in the middle, the Christ-human being, breaks the wings, but because he stretches out his hand in his spirituality; the other, the winged being, does not endure that, and because he finds that unbearable for his being which lives below, he himself breaks his wings by internal strength and falls off. You have to record the fact that this being throws down himself, that he is not thrown down by any adversary.
Below, inside the rock we see another figure tied up in chains. This is eager to turn up the earth from below. But he does not cope in his striving with that which flows out from the downwards directed hand of the middle figure. He writhes because he is thrown back by his own nature and by the strength of the middle figure.
You anticipate that in this group is expressed what we call the Christ-principle of our universe in the middle figure, the luciferic principle in the angel falling off from the rock, and the ahrimanic principle in the figure in the cave which strives from below upwards. I endeavoured to design the three figures as very similar portraits — we may express such a matter in this intimate circle — so that one really gets an impression of the form which Ahriman takes on appearing to the human being in such a connection, and also of the physiognomy of Lucifer which he takes on appearing to the human being. Until our days, the Western religious worldview has lacked the knowledge that Ahriman and Lucifer work in the whole world interrelation.
Publicly one can only indicate the matters because today people still recoil from precisely expressing these matters. However, we remember that even in yesterday's public lecture I said that the human being is led by meditation, on one side, to a region where he feels lonesome in his innermost nature and helpless, on the other side, to a region where he feels being penetrated in his nature with fear and powerlessness. What threatens us if we strive unilaterally only for freeing ourselves from the material, what threatens us if we strive for the spiritual in the abstract, this is that we are seized by the luciferic principle. What threatens us if we only strive down for the material, if we live longing for the material where we appear as fossilized — as I have explained it in the public lecture yesterday — this is the ahrimanic principle. And the human being stands between the luciferic and ahrimanic principles.
This must be recognised. But we have also to recognise correctly that it is not sufficient for us to say: we have to remove anything luciferic and ahrimanic from ourselves. All the emotions of hatred and fear which we summon up against the luciferic and the ahrimanic elements are not good, actually, for our human nature. We have to realise that Ahriman and Lucifer have their justification in the whole universe. That is why it is indicated in the sculptural figure that Christ does not want to overcome Lucifer and Ahriman because He hates them or wants to harass them, but that Lucifer and Ahriman overcome themselves. It is wrong to develop feelings in us, as if we had to reject Ahriman and Lucifer, as if we had to fight against them directly. Even the normal divinity permeating the world did not order in its wise guidance of the universe that Ahriman and Lucifer are not allowed to exist in the guidance of the universe. They are there.
If we ask ourselves where the luciferic principle does exist in the human development even today, then we have to look at the East. In the East, in Asia and in European Russia, Lucifer prevails in the culture. Although the Russian element has a vocation to develop the spirit-self in future, as I explained in the series of talks on the mission of the folk-souls, the threat exists that the Russian culture is entangled by Lucifer. It is on the way to experiencing that. The luciferic principle consists of the fact that good spirits lag behind. In the Greek-Orthodox Church was a good spirit until the sixth, seventh centuries. But a spirit that is good at a certain time changes into a luciferic spirit if it is detained beyond this time. Adhering to the orthodox religion means “to be in Lucifer's claws.” And that is much more the case with the spiritual forms that develop in the East that were justified in ancient times. Because they preserve themselves, they run into the luciferic element. Everywhere in the East we find many people who have to go through something in the luciferic element. Everywhere in the West we find the souls imbued with the ahrimanic element, in America above all. In America the trend exists to develop a civilisation which is imbued completely with the materialistic ahrimanic element which is infiltrated with purely material views, even where one strives for spiritualism. Even where one strives for spirituality, one wants to seize the spirits, as it were, with the hands like the spiritualists. This tendency becomes stronger and stronger, and the longing for the material becomes bigger and bigger. It will also seize the west of Europe gradually. There the mission is fulfilled to introduce the ahrimanic element into civilisation.
These are the big points of view I had in my eye: that we see how we are roped in between the luciferic principle of the East and the ahrimanic principle of the West in Central Europe, but that we have a vocation to rise toward the forces that are shown by the Christ principle. This principle makes Lucifer break his wings by overcoming the feeling of powerlessness, and, on the other side, emits forces against Ahriman which push back any fear of knowledge of the spiritual world. Because you cannot hold up the ahrimanic element pulsating through the world; it is there. Also Central Europe is seized by this ahrimanic element. People must only know how they have to position themselves to it, because the course of the ahrimanic element is the course through materialism. This course through materialism must be, and it has a deep wisdom-filled reason why this course through materialism must be.
Imagine that there is a one-sided religious movement — I expressly say “one-sided” religious movement, also in Christianity, and manifests itself in the element of Jesuitism the strongest. Think that it always turns against the real scientific progress. The Catholic Church only acknowledged the Copernican worldview in the 19th century. The one-sided religion combats the external science, of course; this cannot be different. Two impulses are in this fighting against the external science. One impulse is that the one-sided religion may feel: in science which is done only in view of the external world Ahriman shows himself. This aspect of the quarrel is justified. Ahriman cannot be kept away from external science if it does not look up to the spiritual worldview; this is justified. However, the impulse of the one-sided religion against science is not justified.
This one-sided religious worldview itself is inspired, is ensouled, so to speak, by the luciferic element in particular. Since striving for religious deepening and hating the scientific investigation of spiritual worlds is what Lucifer wants from the human beings. Lucifer could not arrive better at his goal, if all human beings were only religious. This religious attitude has a tremendously strong selfish impact. Imagine only how the human beings who do not strive for spiritual knowledge understand their religion. They want egotistically to become blest, live egotistically after death, as they imagine it. They want egotistically to be embodied only once in the world. In the one-sided religion, egoism has reached its peak, egoism of the soul, not only of the body. The best religious aspirations which surround us are in this egoism. The most pious people who touch us by their devoutness — Lucifer is he who controls their religious feelings. Lucifer prefers to get a lot of devout souls who have a sense for the spiritual, for the good they aim at egotistically. Because he does not want criminal souls, he wants to lead just the devout souls into his realm.
So we have, on the one side, the justified scientific element, which stands just at the threshold to the ahrimanic if it does not look up to the spiritual world; on the other side, the luciferic element which would be enslaved by selfish religiousness also in Central Europe unless the spiritual worldview brought in a spiritual knowledge. This will be the progress of Christianity. It is exceptionally valuable to our souls if we penetrate ourselves with the knowledge that we stand betwee what must be there, to the luciferic and ahrimanic elements from which we cannot escape, which lose, however, their power if we recognise them. This is the characteristic of the spiritual world: if we recognise it, it loses the power through which it makes the human beings obsessed. Lucifer and Ahriman are invisible. If we get an idea of them in space and time, they lose their power over us.
You must not believe that if a person has a premonition of a bad spirit because of his clairvoyant capacity but does not behold it, the person does something worse when he represents the bad spirit pictorially or plastically. On the contrary, the following is correct: the spirit loses its power as a result of the sensory view. People will no longer become nervous by spiritually putting a figure, but the spirit as an invisible power loses its significance as an invisible force, and we consciously position ourselves in it. As God Himself uses Lucifer and Ahriman to put the world from East and to West back to the right track, so that the world does not experience an irregular development, but advances like by a pendulum movement, in the same way the world government lets the luciferic of the East, the ahrimanic of the West be effective.
However, it also poses the difficult and big task for us in Central Europe to look at this pendulum movement correctly. This pendulum is actually a small boat, as if a small boat were appended to a pendulum clock. In this small boat the souls of Central Europe are sitting who strive rightly for spirituality. These souls really have to dive in it and know that they have to grasp the right balance point. They have to recognise what is behind the threshold of the everyday consciousness; they have to take up it in their consciousness. Our present grievous days are admonitions above all to those who already anticipate a little bit of that which approaches the world in future.
It does not concern that within the war an external victory is won by the one or the other side, but it concerns how people live after this victory. Imagine that the Central European nations were victorious; however, on the field of this victory the purely materialist-ahrimanic worldview would spread out and this would be detained by the luciferic element. If the East, on one side, and the West, on the other side, penetrated the Central European spirituality, an external victory would also not be salutary for this Central Europe. Since centuries, the human beings are penetrated rather strongly by the ahrimanic-luciferic element without noticing it. Imagine only that it was necessary to reject the oriental-luciferic element in our Central European theosophical movement. For that which we got as theosophy from the East was infiltrated by Lucifer and led also in its extreme to the recognition of an external human idol, a physically reincarnated Christ. This was the quarrel we had to have about the unjustified interpretation of the theosophical worldview.
But it must be clear to us that we have to recognize correctly in Central Europe how we have to imagine what approaches humankind in future. We learn to see just by that which spiritual science can be to us that materialism, the materialistic worldview, is not allowed to extend about the area prepared for Central Europe. Those have to strive to prevent it who anticipate a little bit of the fact that a spiritual worldview really spreads out, floating over Central Europe and radiating from there to the whole Earth. It would be imaginable, externally imaginable as a hypothesis, that this Central Europe would serve a materialistic civilization after a victory. Then Ahriman would reap the fruits of this victory. This must be prevented.
Think only of such a tragic figure like Ernst Haeckel. Goethe wrote a theory of evolution. Since 1884 I have attempted to make it clear to the people that it is a theory of evolution which is spiritual in the highest sense. But people cannot understand it in the deep way in which it is given there. When Darwin put it up trivially, people understood the teachings which could flow into their hearts and souls. The teachings had got a materialistic coloring. Take such a tragic figure like Ernst Haeckel. He got any thought, any fiber of his scientific life, from England. Huxley, Locke, Darwin were his masters. Today Ernst Haeckel is somebody who turns mostly against England, he is one of the most furious fighters — as far as he can be it as an old man. He stood at the head of those who sent back their medals, certificates, and honorings to England. However, it does not matter to send back medals and honorings unless the English-colored Darwinism is sent back.
And still some other things are there. The souls are prepared for materialism best of all if they are in a half-sleeping state for the external life, so to speak, if they are still childish souls. One does not notice that one can bring into the souls ideas which prepare them best of all to accept the materialistic view as a matter of course. Ahriman accomplished this, while he let a very effective spirit come into being who planted the tendency of materialism in the childish souls, unnoticed by the British people, without the human beings being aware of it. This is the exceptionally ingenious author of Robinson Crusoe. If anybody plants the ideas of Robinson in the childish souls, they get the propensity for materialism. In the book even religion comes into being of its own accord, as well as cabbages grow up. Nowhere is reflected on anything that should flow in from the spiritual world. See only Robinson moving through the world. There was a time of the literary development in Central Europe when imitations of Robinson existed in many languages. So many translations of Robinson are there. One cannot count them at all. So deep is this there inside. But the Central European culture has to show the way to spirituality again. And really a higher guidance inspired the brothers Grimm to collect fairy tales. If we give these fairy tales to our children instead of the ahrimanic Robinson, we bring them the propensity for spiritualism.
One is painfully affected if one — all that is symptomatic — experiences the following: a very significant philosopher of Austria, Ernst Mach, wrote a book, Analysis of Sensations, which was of great importance for many who want to think philosophically today. On the third page, he speaks of self-knowledge. We know that self-knowledge is exceptionally important, as I have often explained. Ernst Mach gives a proof of the fact that self-knowledge is rather difficult even for the external world. He tells: I passed a shop window where I saw my own picture, my own figure meeting myself. I thought: what an unpleasant, disgusting person meets me there. I myself was it. — Thus he said. He himself was it who has known himself so little that he said to his mirror image: what an unpleasant, disgusting person. And to make that clear completely, he adds: when he was already a professor, he had once returned from a trip at night and had got in a bus. When he got in, he saw in the mirror a man getting in and said to himself again: what a down-and-out schoolmaster is getting in there? So he adds: I knew the appearance of my type better than my individual appearance.
If it is already so difficult for a person who does not often see himself in a mirror — this speaks for Ernst Mach that this has taken place — to recognize the external figure, then one will get an inkling how difficult it is to get self-knowledge in the soul. It is just this, however, that is necessary: attaining self-knowledge in the soul. I would like to say, it affects somebody almost tragically if one reads up in the same book even farther, and Ernst Mach speaks of the education of his son and says, from a really serious soul: thanks to God — no, he does not say that, but something that is commensurate with it — never did my children read any fairy tales. So they were not introduced in a spiritual world by fantastic ideas resulting from reading fairy tales. — There we see nesting in the souls of the present that which wants to lead the Central European culture to Ahriman. One has to say: that does not concern to be victorious, but that the right attitude of mind is victorious on the basis of the victory.
We are also heavily burdened in Central Europe, even in the case of a victory. Because we are connected with something that is infiltrated very luciferically. It was once a benefit for Europe that from South Europe the Arabian, Moorish culture spread out. For the past, it was justified, but today it has become ahrimanic. We are heavily burdened with the alliance with the Ottoman Empire [the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War on the side of the Central European powers in 1914]. We have to find the correct standpoint and not believe that we can arrange our sensations according to external political viewpoints.
The life of the external world is not suited to prevent Ahriman. The external banal literature leads directly to the ahrimanic principle and pours scorn on the attempts to clearly see the powers working into our world. That is why that must appear as a big warning, which appears to us under the sign of blood and grief; to make the present souls inclined to get the gifts of the spiritual life. Our souls have to tend to that which was prepared in the Central European culture, especially expressing that we are put pendulum-like between two powers permeating the world and that we must find the balance. We have to realize that, on the one side, the world strives for ahrimanic hardening, strives to get solidified in the fire of the purely material; that it strives, on the other side, to ascend egotistically to an abstract spirituality.
Following the one or other side would ruin the Central European human being. Following only the science engaged in the external senses would persuade us to tear the roses from the cross and only to look at that which solidifies. We would gain a worldview gradually which would completely deflect the human being from looking at the spiritual. It would allow to only looking at that which has solidified ahrimanically. Try to imagine the ideals of the ahrimanic science: it is a world of whirling atoms, a purely material world creation. One wishes to throw everything spiritual out of this world-picture. One wants to imagine, and one teaches it already the children at school, that once whirling gaseous masses were in the universe from which the Sun formed, which then again pushed off the planets. One makes it clear to the children at school, while one does an oil drop in water, pushes a small round paper sheet at its equator through it, pierces it with a pin in the middle, and turns the pin then. Small drops are split off that way; a small planetary system comes into being. Of course, it is proved what one shows in such a way, but one forgets the most important fact: that the teacher must turn the pin. In truth, however, you have to conceive a big Mr. Teacher turning the whole matter in space, if you want to imagine it honestly. But the thoughts, the sensations and feelings, which tend to Ahriman, are those which imagine the creation of the Sun and the planets in the just described way. That also influenced the historical view. Herman Grimm [Herman Grimm (1828–1901), in his Lectures on Goethe] says once: a bone of carrion around which a hungry dog is circling is a more appetising sight than this worldview which is based only on this Copernican worldview.
This is a threat to tear the roses from the cross and to have only the black, charred cross. The other threat is to tear the cross from the roses and want to strive only for the spirit, despise what the divinity has put in the world development, not to want to dive affectionately into the thought that the phenomena of the sensory world express the godhead. This is the unilaterally religious worldview which despises the science which only wants the roses and which tends unconsciously to the luciferic element of the East. In the same way, science which wants to tear the roses from the cross and to keep only the charred cross, tends to the West. We, however, in Central Europe, we have a vocation to have the roses on the cross, to have what is expressed only by the connection of the roses with the cross, the roses on the cross. Looking at the stiff cross we feel that that which has come as a stiff material to the world entered the world from the godhead. It is as if spirituality created a circle in the material for itself: ex deo nascimur.
We also feel that if we understand it correctly we may enter the spiritual world not only with Lucifer, but that we die while we are united with that which descended from the divine higher Self to the world: in Christo morimur.
And uniting the cross with the roses, the material worldview with the spiritual worldview, we feel that the human soul can awake in spirit: per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.
Therefore the cross wound around by roses was the symbol of Goethe, who positioned himself in the spirituality of the Central European culture. It must be our symbol. That is why we will remind ourselves — as far as we can be present in future, gathering in this room — of that which must be our ideal out of the big tasks of Earth development: winding roses around the cross, neither tearing the roses from the cross and holding only the cross in our hands, nor only esteeming the roses and ascending by means of the roses to the spiritually blossoming, sprouting life in the abstract. It is expressed to us in our symbol, in the rose cross, what we want to take up more and more in our souls, in our feelings, when we come together in a room dedicated to our attempts. Then we can be sure that the spirits who lead the Earth development in a good sense exist invisible among us; that our words, that all our thoughts and feelings, while we dedicate ourselves to the spiritual-scientific attempts, that all this is really supported in such a room by the spiritual powers guiding our attempts. We can feel, cultivating our spiritual-scientific views, as if we are constantly inspired by the spirits who exist invisible in such a room. I would like to call on these spiritual powers that they be always present with the souls that strive in serious truth, honestly and affectionately, in this room. If that comes true we can be sure that this spiritual-scientific worldview finds the way to the gods as it was always found.
Today we come together in such rooms. They are separated from the efforts of the external world. The external world considers the events in our rooms as something sectarian, something superstitious. And thus we are gathered as it were underground compared with the intellectual culture of the present. This intellectual culture, which is deeply infiltrated by Lucifer in the East, by Ahriman in the West, is above ground. There we remember repeatedly in order to strengthen our hearts, to invigorate our souls, that in another epoch the Western worldview ascended from underground to the surface. There was the worldview of the Roman Empire, the worldview which had taken up the distinguished philosophy and the artistic worldview of the Greeks. There were basically brilliant minds among those who lived within this ancient Rome and its surroundings with this old worldview. They were deeply despised who cultivated a quite new teaching underground in the catacombs. However, those who cultivated the new teaching, separated from the worldview above-ground justified at that time, knew that they had only to hold on to the contents of their striving and to retain what had entered in the world as a result of the Christ Impulse.
They strove in the catacombs and knew: those lived above-ground who were out to kill them, who pursued them, who did not understand them. — After we have got these conditions of the ancient Roman Empire clear in our mind, we look at the human development a few centuries later. What was above has disappeared. What lived underground in the catacombs has ascended; it passes triumphantly through the West. It already lived in the souls of those who were striving for that which should then conquer the world although they were repelled, despised, and mocked, living underground in the catacombs. We must feel that way, my dear friends: as if we were still spiritually outcast and mocked and pursued by those who cultivate the so-called justified worldview today. But in such a way as it happened in the first epoch of the western Christian development, it will go on. What one would best destroy — not like once, while one covered human beings with pitch and burnt them, but while one mocks them — it will gain acceptance. What jeers and mocks there, what wants to conquer the Earth only with an ahrimanic and luciferic worldview — this will have disappeared, like the ancient Roman culture, the ancient worldview, disappeared in a certain way. However, what is cultivated in our catacombs — they are spiritual catacombs, the world has progressed, nevertheless — what is felt in these catacombs, what is imagined, what is reflected, what penetrates our souls: it will ascend and arrive triumphally as the culture of the next epoch. We may keep in mind that at every moment when we pass the gate to such a room. And staying in it, we keep in mind that we are still like in a submarine which will take the direction upwards — and absolutely will take it if we become engrossed strongly in this with which we have learnt to connect our souls. With this vow that we want to penetrate ourselves strongly with the spiritual Christ Impulse which is developing a further level, with this attitude, with this vow we really will enter this room. We enter in the sense of these feelings that everything is dedicated to the spiritual powers, to the spiritual individualities who permeate our movement, as we can know, who spread out their blessing and protecting hands about us. We want to keep that in mind when we come together here in future.
Cottagecore versus Cambodia
Rudolf Steiner:
It is not a question of knowing things in an abstract sense but above all of calling for a changing of ways, for an effort to be made; the old easy ways must go, and a spiritual approach must be seen to be the right way. And the effort must be made to find energies through spiritual science, not the kind of mere satisfaction where people say: 'Wasn't that nice! I feel really good!’ — and float around in Cloud-Cuckooland where they gradually go to sleep in their satisfaction at the harmony which exists in the world and the love of humanity which is so widespread. This was very much to the fore in the society endeavor headed by Mrs Besant. Many of you will remember the many protests I made against the precious sweetness and light that was particularly to be found in the Theosophical Society. High ideals were dished up liberally and internationally in the sweetest tones. All you heard was ‘general brotherhood’, ‘love of humanity’. I could not go along with this. We were seeking real, concrete knowledge about what went on in the world. You will remember the analogy I have often used, that this sweetness and general love seemed to me like someone who keeps on encouraging the stove which is supposed to heat the room: ‘Dear stove, it is your general stove duty to get the room warm; so please make it warm.’ All the male and female aunts, it seemed to me, were presenting the sum total of theosophy in those days in sweet words of love for humanity. My answer at the time was: ‘You have to put coal in the stove, and put in wood and light the fire.’ And if you are involved in a spiritual movement you must bring in real, concrete ideas; otherwise you will go on year after year with sweet nothings about general love of humanity. This ‘general love of humanity’ has really shown itself in a very pretty light in Mrs Besant, the leading figure in the theosophical movement.
It is, of course, more of an effort to deal with reality than to waffle in general terms about world harmony, about the individual soul being in harmony with the world, about harmony in the general love of humanity. Anthroposophy does not exist to send people off to sleep, but to make them really wide awake. We are living at a time when it is necessary for people to wake up.
Anthony Bourdain: "Once you've been to Cambodia, you'll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands."
Source: October 13, 1917
The new yoga : The yoga of light
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| Ex Deo Nascimur In Christo Morimur Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus |
Striving Spirit-Powers
Struggle with Matter;
It is not Matter they find —
They find themselves.
They hover over the natural life,
Living within themselves:
Breathing the Power of Michael.
Ringende Geisteskräfte
Streben im Stoff;
Sie finden nicht den Stoff,
Sie finden sich selber.
Sie schweben über Natürlichem,
Sie leben in sich selber:
Michael-Kraft atmend.
—Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner: "One who understands how to observe such things knows what a great change took place in the last third of the nineteenth century with respect to the life of human thought. Before that time man could only feel how thoughts formed themselves in his own being; from the time indicated he is able to raise himself above his own being; he can turn his mind to the spiritual; he there meets Michael, who proves his ancient kinship with everything connected with thought. He liberates thought from the sphere of the head; he clears the way for it to the heart; he enkindles enthusiasm in the feelings, so that the human mind can be filled with devotion for all that can be experienced in the light of thought.
The Age of Michael has dawned. Hearts are beginning to have thoughts; spiritual fervor is now proceeding not merely from mystical obscurity but from souls clarified by thought. To understand this means to receive Michael into the heart. Thoughts which at the present time strive to grasp the spiritual must originate in hearts which beat for Michael as the fiery Prince of Thought in the universe."
Springing from powers of the Sun,
Radiant spirit-powers, blessing all worlds!
For Michael's garment of rays
You are predestined by Divine Thought.
He, the Christ messenger, reveals in you--
Bearing humankind aloft--the sacred will of worlds.
You, the radiant beings of ether worlds,
Bear the Christ-Word to human beings.
Thus shall the herald of Christ appear
To the thirstily waiting souls
To whom your Word of Light shines forth
In the cosmic age of the Spirit Human Being.
You, the disciples of spirit knowledge,
Take Michael's beckoning wisdom;
Take the Word of Love of the Will of Worlds
Into your soul's aspiring, fervently!
Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. —John 8:12
John 3:11-21
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.
If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?
And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." — Matthew 11:28-30
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| "ES IST ICH" |
"The Ancient Yoga Culture and the New Yoga Will. The Michael Culture of the Future"
Lecture 6 of The Mission of the Archangel Michael
Lecture 6 of The Mission of the Archangel Michael
Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland
November 30, 1919
November 30, 1919
Now, if we speak spiritual-scientifically about the human being by differentiating between head man and the rest of man, then these two organizations are, at the outset, pictures for us, pictures created by nature herself for the soul element, for the spiritual element, whose expression and manifestation they are. Man is placed in the whole evolution of earth humanity in a way which becomes comprehensible only if one considers how different is the position of the head organization in this evolution from that of the rest of the human organization. Everything connected with the head organization, which chiefly manifests as man's life of thought, is something that reaches far back in the post-Atlantean evolution of mankind. When we focus our attention upon the time which followed immediately after the great Atlantean catastrophe, that is, the time of the sixth, seventh, eighth millennium before the Christian era, we shall find a soul mood holding sway in the regions of the civilized world of that period which can hardly be compared with our soul mood. The consciousness and whole conception of the world of the human being of that time can scarcely be compared with that which characterizes our sense perception and conceptual view of the world. In my Occult Science, an Outline I have called this culture which reaches back into such ancient times, the primeval Indian culture. We may say: the human head organism of that time was different from our present head organism to a great degree and the reckoning with space and time was not characteristic of this ancient people as it is of us. In surveying the world, they experienced a survey of immeasurable spatial distances, and they had a simultaneous experience of the various moments of time. The strong emphasis on space and time in world conception was not present in that ancient period.
The first indications of this we find toward the fifth and fourth millennium in the period we designate the primeval Persian period. But even then the whole mood of soul life is such that it can hardly be compared with the soul and world mood of the human being of our age. In that ancient time, the main concern of the human being is to interpret the things of the world as various shades of light, brilliancy, and darkness, obscurity. The abstractions in which we live today are completely foreign to that ancient earth population. There still exists a universal, all-embracing perception, a consciousness of the permeation of everything perceptible with light and its adumbration, shading, with various degrees of darkness. This was also the way the moral world order was conceived of. A human being who was benevolent and kind was experienced as a light, bright human being, one who was distrustful and selfish was experienced as a dark man. Man's moral individuality was, as it were, aurically perceived around him. And if we had talked to a man of this ancient, primeval Persian time about that which we call today the order of nature, he would not have understood a word of it. An order of nature in our sense did not exist in his world of light and shadow. For him, the world was a world of light and shadow; and in the world of tones, certain timbres of sounding he designated as light, bright, and certain other timbres of sounding he designated as dark, shadowy. And that which thus expressed itself through this element of light and darkness constituted for him the spiritual as well as the nature powers. For him, there existed no difference between spiritual and natural powers. Our present-day distinction between natural necessity and human freedom would have appeared to him as mere folly, for this duality of human arbitrary will and the necessity of nature did not exist for him. Everything was to be included for him in one spiritual — physical unity. If I were to give you a pictorial interpretation of the character of this primeval-Persian world conception, I would have to draw the following line. (It will receive its full meaning only through that which will follow.)
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Then after this soul mood of man had held sway for somewhat more than two thousand years, there appeared a soul mood, the echoes of which we can still perceive in the Chaldean, in the Egyptian world conception, and in a special form in the world conception whose reflection is preserved for us in the Old Testament. There something appears which is closer to our own world conception. There the first inkling of a certain necessity of nature enters human thoughts. But this necessity of nature is still far removed from that which we call today the mechanical or even the vital order of nature; at that time, natural events are conceived of as identical with Divine willing, with Providence. Providence and nature events are still one. Man knew that if he moved his hand it was the Divine within him, permeating him, that moved his hand, that moved his arm. When a tree was shaken by the wind, the perception of the shaking tree was no different for him from the perception of the moving arm. He saw the same divine power, as Providence, in his own movements and in the movements of the tree. But a distinction was made between the God without and the God within; he was, however, conceived of as unitary, the God in nature, the God in man; he was the same. And it was clear to human beings of that time that there is something in man whereby Providence that is outside in nature and Providence that is inside in man meet one another.
At that time, man's process of breathing was sensed in this way. People said: If a tree is shaking, this is the God outside, and if I move my arm, it is the God inside; if I inhale the air, work it over within me, and again exhale it, then it is the God from outside who enters me and again leaves me. Thus the same divine element was sensed as being outside and inside, but simultaneously, in one point, outside and inside; people said to themselves: By being a breathing being, I am a being of nature outside and at the same time I am myself.
If I am to characterize the world conception of the third culture period by a line, as I have done for the primeval Persian world conception by the line of the preceding drawing, I shall have to characterize it through the following line:
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This line represents, on the one hand, the existence of nature outside, on the other hand, human existence, crossing over into the other at the one point, in the breathing process.
Matters become different in the fourth age, in the Graeco-Latin age. Here the human being is abruptly confronted by the contrast outside-inside, of nature existence and human existence. Man begins to feel the contrast between himself and nature. And if I am again to draw characteristically how man begins to feel in the Greek age, I will have to draw it this way: on the one hand he senses the external and on the other the internal; between the two there is no longer the crossing point.
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What man has in common with nature remains outside his consciousness. It falls away from consciousness. In Indian Yoga an attempt is made to bring it into consciousness again. Therefore Indian Yoga culture is an atavistic returning to previous evolutionary stages of mankind, because an attempt is made again to bring into consciousness the process of breathing, which in the third age was felt in a natural way as that in which one existed outside and inside simultaneously. The fourth age begins in the eighth pre-Christian century. At that time the late-Indian Yoga exercises were developed which tried to call back, atavistically, that which mankind had possessed at earlier times, quite particularly in the Indian culture, but which had been lost.
Thus, this consciousness of the breathing process was lost. And if one asks: Why did Indian Yoga culture try to call it back, what did it believe it would gain thereby? one has to answer: What was intended to be gained thereby was a real understanding of the outer world. For through the fact that the breathing process was understood in the third cultural age, something was understood within man that at the same time was something external.
This must again be attained; on another path, however. We live still under the after-effects of the culture in which a twofold element is present in the human soul mood, for the fourth period ends only around the year 1413, really only about the middle of the fifteenth century. We have, through our head organization, an incomplete nature conception, that which we call the external world; and we have through our inner organization, through the organization of the rest of man, an incomplete knowledge of ourselves.
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That in which we could perceive a process of the world and at the same time a process of ourselves is eliminated; it does not exist for us.
It is now a question of consciously regaining that which has been lost. That means, we have to acquire the ability of taking hold of something that is in our inner being, that belongs to the outer and the inner world simultaneously, and which reaches into both.
This must be the endeavor of the fifth post-Atlantean period; namely, the endeavor to find something in the human inner life in which an outer process takes place at the same time.
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You will remember that I have pointed to this important fact; I have pointed to it in my last article in Soziale Zukunft (The Social Future) {Soziale Zukunft, Vol. III: Geistesleben, Rechtsordnung, Wirtschaft (Spiritual Life, Rights order, Economy), Vol. IV: Dreigliederung und soziales Vertrauen (The Threefold Social Order and Social Confidence), where I seemingly dealt with these things in their importance for social life, but where I clearly pointed to the very necessity of finding something which the human being lays hold of within himself and which he, at the same time, recognizes as a process of the world. We as modern human beings cannot attain this by going back to Yoga culture; that has passed. For the breathing process itself has changed. This, of course, you cannot prove clinically; but the breathing process has become a different one since the third post-Atlantean cultural period. Roughly speaking, we might say: In the third post-soul; today he breathes air. Not only our thoughts have become materialistic; reality itself has lost its soul.
I beg you, my dear friends, not to see something negligible in what I am now saying. For just consider what it means that reality itself, in which mankind lives, has been transformed so that the air we breathe is something different from what it was four millennia ago. Not only the consciousness of mankind has changed, oh no! there was soul in the atmosphere of the earth. The air was the soul. This is it no longer today, or, rather, it is soul in a different way. The spiritual beings of elemental nature of whom I have spoken yesterday, they penetrate into you, they can be breathed if one practices Yoga breathing today. But that which was attainable in normal breathing three millennia ago cannot be brought back artificially. That it may be brought back is the great illusion of the Orientals. What I am stating here describes a reality. The ensouling of the air which belongs to the human being no longer exists. And therefore the beings of whom I spoke yesterday — I should like to call them the anti-Michaelic beings — are able to penetrate into the air and, through the air, into the human being, and in this way they enter into mankind, as I have described it yesterday. We are only able to drive them away if we put in the place of Yoga that which is the right thing for today. We must strive for this. We can only strive for that which is the right thing for today if we become conscious of a much more subtle relation of man to the external world, so that in regard to our ether body something takes place which must enter our consciousness more and more, similar to the breathing process. In the breathing process, we inhale fresh oxygen and exhale unusable carbon. A similar process takes place in all our sense perceptions. Just think, my dear friends, that you see something — let us take a radical case — suppose you see a flame. There a process takes place that may be compared with inhalation, only it is much finer. If you then close your eyes — and you can make similar experiments with every one of your senses — you have the after-image of the flame which gradually changes — dies down, as Goethe said. Apart from the purely physical aspect, the human ether body is essentially engaged in this process of reception of the light impression and its eventual dying down. Something very significant is contained in this process: it contains the soul element which, three millennia ago, was breathed in and out with the air. And we must learn to realize the sense process, permeated by the soul element in a similar way we have realized the breathing process three millennia ago.
You see, my dear friends, this is connected with the fact that man, three millennia ago, lived in a night culture. Yahve revealed himself through his prophets out of the dreams of the night. But we must endeavor to receive in our intimate intercourse with the world not merely sense perceptions, but also the spiritual element. It must become a certainty for us that with every ray of light, with every tone, with every sensation of heat and its dying down we enter into a soul-intercourse with the world, and this soul-intercourse must become significant for us. We can help ourselves to bring this about.
I have described to you the occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha in the fourth post-Atlantean period which, if we wish to be accurate, begins with the year 747 B.C. and ends with the year 1413 A.D. The Mystery of Golgotha occurred in the first third of this period, and it was comprehended at the outset, with the remnants of the ancient mode of thought and culture. This ancient way of comprehending the Mystery of Golgotha is exhausted and a new way of comprehension must take its place. The ancient way does no longer suffice, and many attempts that have been made to enable human thinking to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha have proved unsuitable to reach up to it.
You see, dear friends, all external-material things have their spiritual-soul aspect, and all things that appear in the spiritual-soul sphere have their external-material aspect. The fact that the air of the earth has become soul-void, making it impossible for man to breathe the originally ensouled air, had a significant spiritual effect in the evolution of mankind. For through being able to breathe in the soul to which he was originally related, as is stated at the beginning of the Old Testament: “And God breathed into man the breath as living soul,” man had the possibility of becoming conscious of the pre-existence of the soul, of the existence of the soul before it had descended into the physical body through birth or through conception. To the degree the breathing process ceased to be ensouled the human being lost the consciousness of the pre-existence of the soul. Even at the time of Aristotle in the fourth post-Atlantean period it was no longer possible to understand, with the human power of comprehension, the pre-existence of the soul. It was utterly impossible.
We are faced with the strange historical fact that the greatest event, the Christ Event, breaks in upon the evolution of the earth, yet mankind must first become mature in order to comprehend it. At the outset, it is still capable of catching the rays of the Mystery of Golgotha with the remnants of the power of comprehension originating in primeval culture. But this power of comprehension is gradually lost, and dogmatism moves further and further away from an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Church forbids the belief in the pre-existence of the soul — not because pre-existence is incompatible with the Mystery of Golgotha, but because the human power of comprehension ceased to experience the consciousness of pre-existence as a force, the air having become soul-void. Pre-existence vanishes from head-consciousness. When our sense processes will become ensouled again, we shall have established a crossing point, and in this crossing point we shall take hold of the human will that streams up, out of the third stratum of consciousness, as I have described it to you recently. Then we shall, at the same time, have the subjective-objective element for which Goethe was longing so very much. We shall have the possibility of grasping, in a sensitive way, the peculiar nature of the sense process of man in its relation to the outer world. Man's conceptions are very coarse and clumsy, indeed, which maintain that the outer world merely acts upon us and we, in turn, merely react upon it. In reality, there takes place a soul process from the outside toward the inside, which is taken hold of by the deeply subconscious, inner soul process, so that the two processes overlap. From outside, cosmic thoughts work into us, from inside, humanity's will works outward. Humanity's will and cosmic thought cross in this crossing point, just as the objective and the subjective element once crossed in the breath. We must learn to feel how our will works through our eyes and how the activity of the senses delicately mingles with the passivity, bringing about the crossing of cosmic thoughts and humanity's will. We must develop this new Yoga will. Then something will be imparted to us that of like nature to that which was imparted to human beings in the breathing process three millennia ago. Our comprehension must become much more soul-like, much more spiritual.
Goethe's world conception strove in this direction. Goethe endeavored to recognize the pure phenomenon, which he called the primal phenomenon, by arranging the phenomena which work upon man in the external world, without the interference of the Luciferic thought which stems from the head of man himself; this thought was only to serve in the arranging of the phenomena. Goethe did not strive for the law of nature, but for the primal phenomenon; this is what is significant with him. If, however, we arrive at this pure phenomenon, this primal phenomenon, we have something in the outer world which makes it possible for us to sense the unfolding of our will in the perception of the outer world, and then we shall lift ourselves to something objective-subjective, as it still was contained, for instance, in the ancient Hebrew doctrine. We must learn not merely to speak of the contrast between the material and the spiritual, but we must recognize the interplay of the material and the spiritual in a unity precisely in sense perception. If we no longer look at nature merely materially and, further, if we do not “think into it” a soul element, as Gustave Theodore Fechner did, then something will arise which will signify for us what the Yahve culture signified for mankind three millennia ago. If we learn, in nature, to receive the soul element together with sense perception, then we shall have the Christ relationship to outer nature. This Christ relationship to outer nature will be something like a kind of spiritual breathing process.
We shall be aided by realizing more and more, with our sound common sense, that pre-existence lies at the basis of our soul existence. We must supplement the purely egotistical conception of post-existence, which springs merely from our longing to exist after death, by the knowledge of the pre-existence of the soul. We must again rise to the conception of the real eternity of the soul. This is what may be called Michael culture. If we move through the world with the consciousness that with every look we direct outward, with every tone we hear, something spiritual, something of the nature of the soul element, streams out into the world, we have gained the consciousness which mankind needs for the future.
I return once more to the image: You see a flame. You shut your eyes and have the after-image which ebbs away. Is that merely a subjective process? Yes, says the modern physiologist. But this is not true. In the cosmic ether this signifies an objective process, just as in the air the presence of carbonic acid which you exhale signifies an objective process. You are dealing here with the objective element; you have the possibility of knowing that something which takes place within you is at the same time a delicate cosmic process, if you become but conscious of it. If I look at a flame, close my eyes, let it ebb away — it will ebb away even though I keep my eyes open, only then I will not notice it — then I experience a process which does not merely take place within me, but which takes place in the world. But this is not only the case in regard to the flame. If I confront a human being and say: this man has said this or that, which may be true or untrue, this then constitutes a judgment, a moral or intellectual act of my inner nature. This ebbs away like the flame. It is an objective world process. If you think something good about your fellow-man: it ebbs away and is an objective process in the cosmic ether; if you think something evil: it ebbs away as an objective process. You are unable to conceal your perceptions and judgments about the world. You seemingly carry them on in your own being, but they are at the same time an objective world process. Just as people of the third period were conscious of the fact that the breathing process is a process that takes place simultaneously within man and in the objective world, so mankind must become aware in the future that the soul element of which I spoke is at the same time an objective world process.
This transformation of consciousness demands greater strength of soul than is ordinarily developed by the human being of today. To permeate oneself with this consciousness means to permit the Michael culture to enter. Just as it was self-evident for the man of the second and third pre-Christian millennium to think of the air as ensouled — so must it become self-evident for us to think of light as ensouled; we must arouse this ability in us when we consider light the general representative of sense perception We must thoroughly do away with the habit of seeing in light that which our materialistic age is accustomed to see in it. We must entirely cease to believe that merely those vibrations emanate from the sun of which, out of the modern consciousness, physics and people in general speak. We must become clear about the fact that the soul element penetrates through cosmic space upon the pinions of light; and we must realize, at the same time, that this was not the case in the period preceding our age. That which approaches mankind today through light approached mankind of that former period through the air. You see here an objective difference in the earth process. Expressing this in a comprehensive concept, we may say, Air-soul-process, Light-soul-process. This is what may be observed in the evolution of the earth. The Mystery of Golgotha signifies the transition from the one period to the other.
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My dear friends, it does not suffice, for the present age nor for the future age of mankind, to speak in abstractions about the spiritual, to fall into some sort of nebulous pantheism; on the contrary, we must begin to recognize that that which today is sensed as a merely material process is permeated by soul.
It is a question of learning to say the following: there was a time prior to the Mystery of Golgotha when the Earth had an atmosphere which contained the soul element that belongs to the soul of man. Today, the Earth has an atmosphere which is devoid of this soul element. The same soul element that was previously in the air has now entered the light which embraces us from morning to evening. This was made possible through the fact that the Christ has united Himself with the Earth. Thus, also from the soul-spiritual aspect, air and light have undergone a change in the course of Earth evolution. My dear friends, it is a childish presentation that describes air and light in the same manner, purely materially, throughout the millennia in which Earth evolution has unfolded. Air and light have changed inwardly. We live in an atmosphere and in a light sphere that are different from those in which our souls lived in previous earthly incarnations. To learn to recognize the externally-material as a soul-spirited element: this is what matters. If we describe purely material existence in the customary manner and then add, as a kind of decoration: "This material existence contains everywhere the spiritual!" — this will not produce genuine spiritual science.
My dear friends, people are very strange in this respect; they are intent on withdrawing to the abstract. But what is necessary is the following: in the future we must cease to differentiate abstractly between the material and the spiritual, but we must look for the spiritual in the material itself and describe it as such; and we must recognize in the spiritual the transition into the material and its mode of action in the material. Only if we have attained this shall we be able to gain a true knowledge of man himself.
“Blood is quite a special fluid,” but the fluid physiology speaks about today is not a “special fluid,” it is merely a fluid whose chemical composition one attempts to analyze in the same way any other substance is analyzed; it is nothing special. But if we have gained the starting point of being able to understand the metamorphosis of air and light from the soul aspect, we shall gradually advance to the soul-spiritual comprehension of the human being himself, in every respect; then we shall not have abstract matter and abstract spirit, but spirit, soul, and body working into one another. This will be Michael-culture.
My dear friends, people are very strange in this respect; they are intent on withdrawing to the abstract. But what is necessary is the following: in the future we must cease to differentiate abstractly between the material and the spiritual, but we must look for the spiritual in the material itself and describe it as such; and we must recognize in the spiritual the transition into the material and its mode of action in the material. Only if we have attained this shall we be able to gain a true knowledge of man himself.
“Blood is quite a special fluid,” but the fluid physiology speaks about today is not a “special fluid,” it is merely a fluid whose chemical composition one attempts to analyze in the same way any other substance is analyzed; it is nothing special. But if we have gained the starting point of being able to understand the metamorphosis of air and light from the soul aspect, we shall gradually advance to the soul-spiritual comprehension of the human being himself, in every respect; then we shall not have abstract matter and abstract spirit, but spirit, soul, and body working into one another. This will be Michael-culture.
This is what our time demands. This is what ought to be grasped with all the fibers of the soul life by those human beings who wish to understand the present time. Whenever something out of the ordinary had to be introduced into human world conception it met with resistance. I have often quoted the following neat example: In 1837 (not even a century ago), the learned Medical College of Bavaria was asked, when the construction of the first railroad from Fuerth to Nuremberg was proposed, whether it was hygienically safe to build such a railroad. The Medical College answered (I am not telling a fairy tale, the documents concerning it exist): Such a railroad should not be built, for people who would use such a means of transportation would become nervously ill. And they added: Should there be such people who insist on such railroads, then, it is absolutely necessary to erect, on the right and left side of the tracks, high plank walls to prevent the people whom the train passes from getting concussion of the brain. Here you see, my dear friends, such a judgment is one thing; quite another is the course which the evolution of mankind takes. Today we smile about such a document as that of the Bavarian Medical College of 1837; but we are not altogether justified in smiling; for, if something similar occurs today, we behave in quite the same manner. And, after all, the Bavarian Medical College was not entirely wrong. It we compare the state of nerves of modern mankind with that of mankind two centuries ago, then we must say that people have become nervous. Perhaps the Medical College has exaggerated the matter a bit, but people did become nervous. Now, in regard to the evolution of mankind it is imperative that certain impulses which try to enter Earth evolution really should enter and not be rejected. That which from time to time wishes to enter human cultural development is often very inconvenient for people, it does not agree with their indolence, and what is duty in regard to human cultural development must be recognized by learning to read the objective facts, and must not be derived from human indolence, not even from a refined kind of indolence. I am concluding today's lecture with these words because there is no doubt that a strongly increasing battle will take place between anthroposophical cognition and the various creeds. We can see the signs for this on all sides. The creeds who wish to remain in the old beaten tracks, who do not wish to arouse themselves to a new knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha, will reinforce their strong fighting position which they already have taken up, and it would be very frivolous, my dear friends, if we would remain unconscious of the fact that this battle has started.
I myself, you can be sure, am not at all eager for such a battle, particularly not for a battle with the Roman Catholic Church which, it seems, is forced upon us from the other side with such violence. He who, after all, thoroughly knows the deeper historical impulses of the creeds of our time will be very unwilling to fight time-honored institutions. But if the battle is forced upon us, it is not to be avoided! And the clergy of our day is not in the least inclined to open its doors to that which has to enter: the spiritual-scientific world conception. Remember the grotesque quotations I read to you recently where it was said that people should inform themselves about anthroposophically-oriented spiritual science through the writings of my opponents, since Roman-Catholics are forbidden by the Pope to read my own writings. This is not a light matter, my dear friends; it is a very serious matter! A battle which arises in such a manner, which is capable of disseminating such a judgment in the world, such a battle is not to be taken lightly. And what is more; it is not to be taken lightly since we do not enter it willingly. Let us take the example of the Roman-Catholic Church, my dear friends; matters are not different in regard to the Protestant Church, but the Roman-Catholic church is more powerful — and we have to consider time-honored institutions: if one understands the significance of the vestments of the priest when he reads the Holy Mass, the meaning of every single piece of his priestly garments, if one understands every single act of the Holy Mass, then one knows that they are sacred, time-honored establishments; they are establishments more ancient than Christianity for the Holy Mass is a ritual of the ancient Mystery culture, transformed in the Christian sense. And modern clergy who uses such weapons as described above lives in these rituals! Thus, if one has, on the one hand, the deepest veneration for the existing rituals and symbolism, and sees, on the other hand, how insufficient is the defense of and how serious are the attacks against that which wishes to enter mankind's evolution, then one becomes aware of the earnestness that is necessary in taking a stand in these matters. It is truly something worth deep study and consideration. What is thus heralded from that side is only at its beginnings; and it is not right to sleep in regard to it; on the contrary, we have to sharpen our perception for it. During the two decades in which the Anthroposophical Movement has been fostered in Middle Europe, we could indulge in sectarian somnolence which was so hard to combat in our own ranks and which still today sits so deeply embedded in the souls of the human beings who have entered the Anthroposophical Movement. But the time has passed in which we might have been allowed to indulge in sectarian somnolence. That which I have often emphasized here is deeply true, namely, that it is necessary that we should grasp the world-historical significance of the Anthroposophical Movement and overlook trifles, but that we should also consider the small impulses as serious and great.
Related posts:
https://martyrion.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-old-yoga-breathing-and-new-yoga.html
https://martyrion.blogspot.com/2020/07/becoming-clairvoyant-developing.html
https://martyrion.blogspot.com/2020/07/becoming-clairvoyant-developing.html
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