The Temple Is Man : What the world needs now is anthroposophy

 

Lecture 1 of 3

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland

July 16, 1920

Today, I would like to precede the reflections of these three days with an introduction that will initially provide orientation from a certain point of view regarding the relationship between the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science movement and older spiritual research movements. You have noticed, and I have often mentioned and characterized, how it has become necessary due to the conditions of our time to treat the knowledge and cognition of supersensible things, which we speak of within our spiritual scientific movement, differently than the knowledge and cognition that was brought to people in the old mysteries. You are also aware that the comparison of this spiritual-scientific knowledge of the present with the initiatory knowledge of the ancient mysteries is justified, despite the differences between the two. It is true that the ancient mystery teaching imparted knowledge that was based on an atavistic, one might say half-dream-like state of consciousness of the person seeking knowledge. The modern spiritual knowledge we are speaking of here is such that everything in it, down to the smallest detail, must be attained with full consciousness, with a consciousness that is completely equal to the consciousness we have, for example, when we absorb and process geometrically or mathematically comprehensible truths. Thus, the fully awakened spiritual experience is attained through this modern spiritual movement in a soul life that must be completely illuminated with the same light that also illuminates our waking day life when we are truly awake. But this knowledge, like the instinctive, half-dreamlike knowledge of the ancient mysteries, is meant to lead to the higher supersensible forms of existence.

We have often spoken of the special character of this ancient mystery knowledge. We have pointed out that it goes back to an original knowledge, to an original wisdom of humanity. It is only obscured by the prejudices of the modern materialistic-Darwinian view that humanity did not start its development from animal-like conditions, but from conditions for which there is no analogue at all in the present-day physical world, but which so encompassed the life of the soul that knowledge of the spiritual was instinctively acquired and was present throughout the inhabited earth of that time. We must, however, bear in mind when considering this fact of supersensible original knowledge that in that primeval time mankind had a more naive, more elementary, one might say more innocent, view of life. In a sense, those impulses which the divine-spiritual beings themselves laid into the souls were in that primeval mankind. So that one can say: In the sphere which we might today call the moral, the beings of primitive times were simply the instruments for the deeds of the divine spiritual beings, so that one cannot speak of any personal responsibility of these human beings, of the possibility of personally sinning, for that time, nor of an actual straying from the will of that Divine-Spiritual from which, after all, the human soul-life has emerged. But this also includes the reason why it was possible in those older times to spread the means in humanity, to keep spread in humanity a knowledge of supersensible things. This knowledge, if it is true knowledge, even in its atavistic state of primeval times, is in reality connected with the control of certain forces of material existence. Today we are proud of the fact that we have formed our technology out of our few scientific ideas, that in this sense we control nature to a certain extent through our knowledge of nature. In a completely different way, however, prehistoric man was able to control the various natural forces of material existence by virtue of the knowledge that was his in his innocent state of mind. This state of mind prevented him from using the supersensible knowledge given to him by the gods to harm humanity.

From my descriptions you know that this early humanity was not as dense as the later humanity and that in some respects it was much less material. This also meant that the impulses of divine-spiritual existence could express themselves in a much more direct way than was later the case. What gradually occurred in the development of humanity is, of course, the connection of the spiritual-soul-like with the physical-material. In a sense, man descended deeper and deeper into matter. But with this descent into matter, there also arose what might be called the possibility of sinning, the possibility of deviating from the paths that came from the impulses of the divine-spiritual beings themselves, thus the possibility of doing evil, and therefore also the possibility of applying supersensible knowledge in an evil sense. This possibility only arose at a certain point in human evolution. At this point, however, something very special occurred. It was only then that the most important mystery being actually concentrated in the oracle sites, in the mysteries, in the true sense of the word. You know this from the description of the Atlantean world that I gave in my book “Occult Science”. There, so to speak, the knowledge of the supersensible worlds was withdrawn from the broad masses of humanity, and this knowledge became the property of those initiated into the mysteries. So that the development goes so that actually more and more the supersensible knowledge fades from the great mass of people and is preserved in its actual form in the mysteries. But these mysteries, as you know, still contained a great deal of ancient wisdom and preserved it until almost Christian times, some of them until much later. But various mysteries with the very deepest knowledge, such as one, or rather two, in the area of present-day France, were wiped out by the Romans in the century before the emergence of Christianity, as I recently hinted to you, wiped out root and branch, even in a terribly bloody way. And in these places, which must be pointed out, a wonderful, penetrating knowledge still flowed within Europe in the last pre-Christian centuries, which has since completely disappeared for Europe. This also happened in other places in Europe.

Then, only in very narrow circles could the wisdom of the ancient world be preserved. In these circles, where one very rarely found people who could penetrate into the supersensible worlds from their own experience, it was also the case that knowledge of the supersensible worlds was then applied in the worst , in the national-socialistic sense, which even today comes to light in the cases that I have been characterizing here for years, namely as the work of certain secret societies of the English-speaking population.

Now, there is a certain way in which those people who actually think entirely in the spirit of ancient times about the knowledge of supersensible worlds still present the reasons why the mystery knowledge was so carefully withheld from the masses by the bearers of the mysteries. The obedient representatives of secret societies, who preserve this knowledge with greater or lesser justification, in a better or also in a very questionable way, still speak today of the fact that a certain kind of knowledge, the highest kind of knowledge about the supersensible, cannot be delivered to the masses, because today the masses are absolutely not ripe for certain contents of this knowledge. These things are said, and the way it is substantiated from certain quarters is always significant. It is necessary that we talk about this a little today in the introduction, because I have all sorts of important things to talk to you about tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. We have to do this because the principle is being followed from here, with regard to the dissemination of knowledge of the supersensible worlds, to put it bluntly, from the point of view of the democratic being.

You know that I have not held back, at least to a certain extent, even from the broadest public, certain supersensible insights. And insights of the kind that I present today in public lectures, although they are little understood, are considered by very worthy representatives of today's mystery teachings to be insights that should not be communicated to the public in this way. One cannot go as far as certain peaks of knowledge, but these insights must be presented to the public at a certain level, if only for the reason that, as I have often emphasized, they must be incorporated into the social impulses that are most urgently needed by present-day humanity and humanity in the near future. And so it has come about that I have continued with the communication of such insights, which, as I said, are unfortunately very little understood. The most important things, which are already being incorporated into public lectures and which one would often think have a deeply moving effect, are actually received in such a way that one can see that the souls that receive them are actually sleeping a very healthy sleep as these things resonate in their ears. But nevertheless, these things must be communicated to the public today, and in a certain form I have repeatedly tried to bring them forward to an even higher level within the Anthroposophical Society, although not the best experiences have been made in the process.

Everyone will see it as ridiculous to hand over higher geometry to someone who does not know elementary geometry. The comparison is misleading, like all comparisons, because what is given as a certain higher knowledge in the field of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is not quite the same as elementary geometry, although it only appears to be so. The fact is this: if you do not know elementary geometry, you will reject higher geometry when it is presented to you because you are aware that you do not understand it. But if you present the higher knowledge of anthroposophy to someone who does not yet have the elementary knowledge of anthroposophy, they will accept it. He understands them just as little as the other person understands higher geometry, but since the insights have to be clothed in popular words that can be understood, he believes he understands them, scoffs at them or talks about them like Pastor Kully, and then we have the impossible situation of the higher insights being brought to humanity in a completely distorted form, in a dishonest form. But to bring true knowledge to people in a false form means to contribute to the destruction of humanity. Therefore, it would be necessary to assume an understanding of such things, to assume that this higher knowledge should be preserved from those who do not already have the lower knowledge. But for decades now, quite bad experiences have been made within the Anthroposophical Society, which could actually urge one to stop the whole proclamation of the supersensible world system, if, for example, one had the old ideas about secrecy regarding supersensible knowledge. For, what one does experience! The gossip, the inner and outer gossip, has indeed been no small thing over the decades; and even in recent times we have had to experience it, when we were obliged, to our great regret, to protect our writings from a possible false understanding of certain facts, that from a certain side a naive and foolish revolt has arisen. It is of no use to leave these things unspoken because there is no complete and thorough understanding of them, especially of their sacredness. If there were an awareness of the place of supersensible knowledge in the whole social life of man, it would never have been possible for those things which belong to the most sacred matters of humanity to have been carried out into the world in such a distorted, lying form, where they have been stripped bare in such a way. But despite all this, even if a large number of people treat what should be treated with the utmost seriousness as a light-hearted game, it is still necessary, urgently necessary, that these things be brought to humanity today. The duty towards the spiritual world, the duty towards the spiritual guiding powers of humanity, must be considered higher today than that which can be observed from the outside in the manner just described. The time has come when a certain sum of supersensible knowledge must be handed down to the world.

As a rule, supersensible knowledge remains harmless when it is expressed in abstract terms about spiritual things; but seriousness is immediately called for – if seriousness is called for at all – when it is a matter of supersensible knowledge of the older initiates. Such things are indeed completely comprehensible only to him who can now in turn find the wisdom of the old initiates through his own researches. The old initiate said: If one imparts occult truths only in groups of three, then as a rule one can indeed cause all kinds of social harm; one can stultify people, one can lull people to sleep, one can befuddle them, and so on; but when one imparts all sevenfold forms of the secrets of the supersensible worlds, then one imparts to people something that, if they are maliciously inclined, must lead to evil. The initiate says: To impart the supersensible knowledge in a threefold form may possibly only cause external social harm; to impart it in a sevenfold form means danger at the moment when people who are capable of evil in some direction approach these sacred secrets. What does that mean?

You see, there is a kind of harmless mysticism. Such harmless mysticism is practised when people sit together in small circles in a sectarian way and make all kinds of statements to a number, let us say seven, eight or a hundred people, about the etheric body, the astral body, about re-embodiment, about karma and so on, in short, when one speaks in abstract sentences about these things in much the same way as one speaks about the things of ordinary life, without being in a different state of mind than in ordinary life, at most in a mystical devotion of a nebulous kind and the like. Of course, what stands out as bad is that ultimately the people who sit down together in this way do, let's say, steal a little from the dear Lord, when it would be much wiser if they would sew or knit or cook or wash or do something similar in the same hour in which they make such mystical communications to others. In fact, such abstract dabbling in supersensory truths is basically no better than the other activities that are now being organized through numerous channels with so-called world views. But you know: we, on our anthroposophical ground, have never got involved with such abstract stuff where it was taken seriously. We have, of course, always emphasized that one must have certain substantial insights into the human being, into the nature of the universe, and so on, if one really wants to form ideas about the supersensible. The aim of our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has always been to bring spiritual-scientific knowledge into real life, into medical life, into social life, into the life of scientific experiment and other areas where, above all, it is necessary to bring in supersensible knowledge before one can think of achieving a social recovery from our catastrophic conditions. But if, let us say, we apply supersensible knowledge to medicine, then we immediately enter the field of which the true initiates know that it can cause evil in the hands of evil people. For when we exert our soul powers, thinking, feeling, and willing, as we initially carry them in their abstractness in our soul, then these soul powers are very, very strong mere images, applied to ordinary consciousness mere images, very shadowed images. There is only a very low intensity of reality in it (triangle). What people can think is, I would say, an image of an image; what they can feel even more so; and they do not descend into their will at all, they only see it in images of external events that take place on the physical plane as a result of this will. Since what a person experiences is so little connected with reality, not much harm can be done. One does indeed enter into the realm of abstract concepts. One can speak very beautifully about Atma, Buddhi, Manas and so on, but one is actually speaking of abstract words, of words that are far removed from really drilling into reality.

With our instincts, that is, with all that underlies our being, we say our temperament, and with what else underlies our instinctive being, we are already more in reality. With what, for example, our hunger is, what becomes of our hunger as a result of our will instincts, we are very much in our reality; and if it were not for hunger and the will instincts connected with hunger, which are often perverted today, there would be no Russian Bolshevism and the like. Reality is more closely connected with this life (square), out of which thinking, feeling and willing (triangle) rises only like a shadow, with this life of our instincts, our drives, our temperaments. This reality is just as threefold as our soul life is threefold; this reality is also fourfold and has always been represented as such by the initiates. And if we look at the human being as a whole, we see a sevenfold being. But the lower members, those in which the human being repeats the animal in a certain way, are present with a much more intense reality than the shadowy, distilled abstraction of thinking, feeling and willing.

But now, when we grasp the supersensible worlds, if only in the abstract, our knowledge does reach into our instinctual life, into our temperament, into our life of drives, and with that it reaches into the world of real facts, into reality. One would like to say: If one draws this world of the soul, as it exists today in the human being, very thinly, one would like to draw the world of the instinctive, the impulsive, the temperamental, very thickly and realistically, and supersensible knowledge plays into this world (see drawing). But this world must only be ennobled, otherwise it becomes an evil world. Therefore supersensible knowledge can only have an ennobling effect on this world, so that at the moment when one approaches realities with supersensible knowledge, when one plunges into material things, it depends entirely on whether it is done in a pure, ethical, free spirit or whether it is done in an impure, immoral, unfree, that is, emotional, instinctive, animalistic spirit.

These things have been seen through by the keepers of the original human world wisdom, who have locked away the higher knowledge in the mysteries for those prepared for it. But this secrecy is not something that can be asserted today as an absolute necessity, and those people who today, for example, belong to secret societies and in the abstract sense want to assert the necessity of secrecy about the higher knowledge are completely wrong. They are wrong because such people do not understand the signs of the times at all. They preserve old traditions, they still say today what the great teachers of mystery wisdom said thousands of years ago. It is interesting, for example, that in the books of Aelena Petrovna Blavatsky, precisely where Blavatsky speaks most ingeniously about occult things, you will find attitudes towards the concealment of occult knowledge occult knowledge, opinions that are no longer valid today, which Blavatsky held because she had learned them from those who had no idea of the actual necessities of the present time. And so Blavatsky behaved like a personality who might just as well have lived thousands of years ago; she had no idea of the necessities of present-day life, talked about the necessary concealment of certain mystery truths, just as the mystery priests talked thousands of years ago. As a result, even if one does not want to, one becomes untruthful to one's fellow human beings in the present. And certain supersensible currents become untruthful to their fellow human beings in the present in the most eminent sense precisely from this point of view, because the times in which we live today speak a clear and distinct language, and this language proclaims an extraordinary aberration in the spiritual and soul realms among people.

Only recently I called your attention to a literary phenomenon of the most significant kind, namely, to the book The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler. I told you that this book has a profound influence on young people, especially on the student youth of Central Europe, and that when I recently had to speak to the students of the Stuttgart Technical University about the significance and nature of of spiritual-scientific-anthroposophical research, I went into this lecture with the impression that Spengler's ideas about the decline of the Occident make on today's youth, especially on academic youth. You will perhaps have noticed how justified it is to speak today of the profound impact of Spengler's ideas, because far beyond the borders of Central Europe, everywhere where literary phenomena are observed today, Spengler's book is taken into account. The Times has even repeatedly published detailed reviews of the book.

What is the strange theory that comes to light in this Spengler book? We find it set forth in a thick volume by a man who, as I have already mentioned, has a genius for mastering any of a dozen or fifteen sciences, and who presents his arguments in the manner in which arguments are presented in science today. The fact that Benedetto Croce, who has since attained great eminence, has said foolish things about this book, although he has otherwise said sensible things, need not mislead us. that it is shown how the whole of the Western world, with its American offspring, is growing old and becoming senile, how death at the beginning of the third millennium is imminent for Western culture, how barbarism must break in, how, roughly around the year 2200, what is now Western civilization must be replaced by barbarism. We find this, as I said, substantiated with all the tools of today's science, and we have to recognize that only spiritual scientific deepening can arise against such a terrible view, terrible above all because of the scientific tools with which it appears, that only spiritual scientific deepening is capable of showing the point where in the human soul itself arises that which must replace what is today Western civilization, and that only spiritual scientific deepening is capable of showing how this must happen, approximately around the year 2200. can only arise from spiritual-scientific deepening, and that only spiritual-scientific deepening is capable of showing the point where, in the human soul itself, that which the West in turn drives out of ruin wells up. If the Occident only retained what is now being taught at universities, grammar schools, secondary schools, and primary schools, and what is being taught through our newspaper literature and our popular scientific literature, Spengler's calculation that barbarism would sweep over this Occident in 2200 would be justified. Only an appeal to the will of the human soul, as can be made by spiritual science, because it ignites spiritual forces in this human soul, because it opposes the external forces that are everywhere pushing towards decline today with the force that man must oppose out of his will, only spiritual science has the right to rebel today against such scientific armament as presented by Oswald Spengler. Ordinary, profane refutations of Spengler's book are a mockery.

But what do we learn from Spengler's book in particular? From the way it is conceived as a whole, from the way the research is processed in it, we see that Spengler's thinking has emerged entirely from the thinking of the broad masses of today's educated humanity, only that Spengler is immensely more clever and ingenious than the average person today. Therefore, he says the opposite of what the average person of today says about many things, but what he says is only a straightforward continuation of what the average person of today thinks, what the average person of today considers to be right. But how does this book strike us, which makes a harrowing impression on thousands and thousands of souls today, when we look at it with the unbiased gaze that comes from the wisdom of initiation? It throws almost complete light on the innermost structure of the traditional world-view of today, on the current current thinking. The remarkable thing about Spengler's book is that one can be ingenious — Spengler is ingenious, extraordinarily ingenious — and yet say the greatest follies; for his book also contains the greatest follies, but follies that only an ingenious person can actually find today. Other people are not capable of finding such great follies as Spengler has found. Now imagine the confusion that a book must cause in the mind, where on every page one can admire both genius and folly at the same time!

Today, extremes collide in a way that one might not have dreamed of a hundred or a hundred and twenty years ago. And if today's philistines reproach me for calling someone both a genius and a fool, I have to say that I reserve the right to do so today. Perhaps I shall make the mistake of calling Oswald Spengler a genius and a fool at the same time, because he is both at once. But that is what one is when one outgrows the strange configuration of today's literature. One must be as clever as Spengler, as fundamentally clever, to think up such idiotic nonsense as Spengler has thought up. A person of little intelligence would not arrive at Spengler's fascinating and dazzling assertions, for example, that the right, the true socialism is Prussianism, and that Western civilization, which will decline and fall by the year 2200, has no other way out than to become completely Prussian, that is, completely socialist in Spengler's sense. And a brochure that is considered a supplement to the book “The Decline of the West,” “Prussianism and Socialism,” is full on every page of the most ingenious insights that can be gained into individual details of the intellectual and social essence of today. What Spengler says, for example, about Russianity sometimes reminds me – although I must always take into account everything I have just said about Oswald Spengler – of many things I myself said many years ago about Russianity, about the future of Russianity and about the nature of the Russian people. And since Spengler declares that he will expand on what he says about Russianness, especially in terms of its scientific justification, in his second volume of “The Decline of the West,” I have to say: I look forward to that “brilliant cabbage” that will be said about the future of Europe under the influence of the further development of Russianness in this second volume.

You see, today you have to be paradoxical if you want to describe truthfully what is actually around us, and you can't get by without describing in such a paradoxical way what is beneath us. A third thing that can also be found in Oswald Spengler: he describes pessimism all the way. For it is pessimistic to say that in the year 2200 all Western civilization will have been replaced by barbarism. And it is particularly pessimistic when you prove this with twelve to fifteen sciences as rigorously as Spengler does. But Spengler worships this pessimism in a certain way, with religious humility. He indulges in this pessimism, I might say he glorifies this pessimism, this socialism or this Prussianism, which will take hold of the whole world, because only through organization and saturation of society in the Prussian spirit can the necessary downfall be postponed until the year 2200. That is pessimism, isn't it? But the whole thing that Oswald Spengler has before him as this socially Prussianized world, this Western world that will still be alive until the year 2200 and then dying, is still glorified by him, so to speak. He describes it with inner fire, but it is not a lasting fire, it is a theatrical fire, if you watch closely.

I don't like to talk abstractly, I prefer to talk in facts. And if you were to ask why: why does a brilliant man, just because he has a keen eye for certain details of contemporary civilization, have to be so foolish at the same time? Why does such a fundamentally clever man have to claim such stupid things at the same time? Why must such a man, who paints pessimism, paint this pessimism with a theatrical fire that makes this pessimism, if one can forget that it leads to destruction, appear like a grandiose optimism, like an invitation to admire this catastrophic downfall? Why is that all?

I would like to answer with a very specific sentence: Oswald Spengler, while thinking entirely in terms of natural science, demands psychology for the 20th century, but he has not the slightest idea about the human soul. Why? Because the moment he utters the words “theosophy” or “occultism” – he seems to be unaware of anthroposophy – he turns red and becomes quite angry. This is why his brilliant approach can only be devoted to the shell, not to the inwardness through which the soul must be sought. Therefore, his fire cannot be that which arises from the elemental primal forces of man, but is basically only a theatrical fire. Oswald Spengler turns red when he mentions the words “theosophy” and “occultism,” and it seems that he can hardly find any other purpose for occultism and theosophy than to use them to foster Bolshevism and Spartacism into a kind of parlor socialism. This is again the grandiose stupidity of a man whose genius is born of the intellectual substance of the present. But at the same time it testifies that where there is no idea, but only a red head in the face of intellectual deepening, that is precisely where the most confusing cultural phenomena of the present must come to light, even if they appear in a genial way.

That is what I wanted to say today by way of an introduction to the important considerations that I will present to you tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive