A-U-M

 

I affirm myself to me: A

I affirm myself to humankind: U

I affirm myself to life: M

Continued:

44 years at The Himalayan Institute

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Seals and the Trumpets: The Sixth Trumpet is sounding now! The Book of Revelation and the Work of the Priest. Lecture 13 of 18

     

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, September 17, 1924

I have already shown that the Apocalypse is built up on the number principle — one of the occult principles — from a certain view point. Prom my explanations about the fundamental rhythmic numbers in the universe and in man earlier today you may have seen how deeply numbers are grounded in the universe, to the extent that they can disclose rhythmical things.

The buildup in accordance with numbers is quite natural with occult revelations which are written in the way that the Apocalypse of John is. According to the modern principle of initiation the visions that the Apocalypticer speaks about arise if one has Imaginations before one and Inspiration speaks into them. Then one sees the Imaginations spread out before one in a pictorial way and Inspirations speak through them. However, when this occurs one has a number principle whereby the number 7 is always the most perfect one for all occultists. This is practically a tenet of occultism: 7 is the most perfect number. The number principle enables one to follow things up. You shouldn't think that this number 7 has much content or that its content is very important for one. But it is of very great importance when one is listening to Inspirations. If one lives in the number seven one can understand Inspirations in many different ways. I will give you an example. Let's suppose someone feels that there are important spiritual backgrounds behind his own age. Of course most people around the world feel the spiritual backgrounds in their own time; this is only natural from a human point of view, but it is rather arbitrary nevertheless. For if I am an observer in 1924, the observation year is 1924, whereas if someone else is an observer in the year 1905, that is the observation year, and so on. However, if I am the observer at any time and I know what I'm observing, and I'm able to go 7 impressions back from any given impression, then according to the laws of the spiritual world whatever makes the seventh impression explains the first one, and the fourteenth one explains both of these. So this is really a methodic principle to find one's way into what something can tell one. Just as one has to know the language which someone is speaking in order to understand him, so the main thing is to be able to live in this number seven.

This is the way one has to look at these things. For this revelation of the number seven is very complicated. All kinds of things in the universe are arranged in accordance with the number seven, and to a lesser extent according to twelve and other numbers. One can follow up the events which explain things from every point through multiples of 7.

We can do this precisely in connection with the fact that we indicate such an important point yesterday, which really seems to be extremely important in our age where Michael is regulating things in the world. We pointed out that John's significant vision of the woman clothed with the sun, the dragon under her feet, giving birth to a little boy will appear to men in a particular form in the near future. Therewith we have gained an extremely important point of departure; and from this point of view an apocalypse, every apocalypse and especially John's Apocalypse is the most impressive if one grasps what one is standing in in this way.

When I tried to interpret the Apocalypse in Nuremberg in 1908 it was an entirely different time in the entire Anthroposophical movement. The main thing then was to interpret Anthroposophy by means of the Apocalypse, as it were. One can interpret a great deal through the Apocalypse, and the events in the world which it was important to mention at that time could already be seen in the Apocalypse. However, as I already mentioned a number of times, you should identify yourselves with the Apocalypse and realize that the Apocalypse describes a large number of events which proceed in accordance with multiples of seven. Since I pointed to the events which are connected with the woman clothed with the sun and the dragon under her feet, you will be able to tell in which Apocalyptic point of time we're living from the point of view of the experiences of the consciousness soul.

My lectures in 1908 dealt more with the evolution of mankind in general, and with the evolution of the astral body, but with respect to the consciousness soul which doesn't rim parallel with the other evolutionary processes, but pushes into them we're really living in the age of the trumpet sounds today.

We're standing at the beginning of the development of the consciousness soul, and we only hear the trumpet sounds if this consciousness soul elevates itself to the point where it can have supersensible visions, because people do not interpret what goes on down below in a supersensible way to day. The significant thing today is that people accept things indifferently and that they do not interpret them in a supersensible way. In Anthroposophical lectures I have often referred to a particular point in the 19th century in this connection, namely to the beginning of the 1840s. I said that the beginning of the forties is a significant incision into the development of the civilized world, from a spiritual viewpoint. It is the culmination of materialism, as it were. Everything that is connected with materialism was already decided in 1843/44. What happened after this until now is basically only an after effect of this, and everything that happens in the future will also be an after effect. This point in time at the beginning of the forties is really extremely important for what has happened to the civilized population of Europe and its American appendage, for the breaking in of Ahrimanic powers into human affairs was a tremendously intensive one. You can say: yes, but there were even worse events after the years 1843/44. However, this only seems to be the case. You have to remember that Ahriman is smarter than human beings. Ahriman did his most important work in 1843/44, and he arranged things in the way that he does this in accordance with his intelligence. This is the low point in the materialistic path, or the summit, if you prefer. Then men continued to go about their business, and the things they did later on are sometimes seemingly nastier, but they are not as terrible for the totality of human evolution. If one looks at them from a spiritual viewpoint, they are the after effects of what was projected at the beginning of the forties. The sixth angel began to blow his trumpet at the beginning of the forties and he will continue to sound until the events of which I spoke yesterday will begin at the end of the 20th century, when the seventh trumpet will begin to sound.

We are definitely in the midst pf the three woes. This is the second woe that civilized humanity is going through in the age of the consciousness soul, which was precede by the fifth trumpet back to 150 years earlier. And if we follow the trumpets back with respect to the seven-foldness of the consciousness soul, we arrive at a somewhat earlier point in time. The consciousness age begins in 1413 down below here on earth; but things have shifted, and. earlier times work into them. The trumpet sounds go back to about the age of the Crusades. In real occult centers one always looked upon this time of the Crusades up to our time as the age of the trumpet sounds, in ä certain sense. You will be able to connect the stages which are described in the Apocalypse' with outer events. For instance, when Copernicanism takes hold and when materialism sets in one third of the human beings are killed, that is, they stop developing their full spirituality. And the plague of locusts which is described in the Apocalypse is really very shocking.

Here one comes to something which one doesn't like to talk about, although of course it belongs to the things that priests must deal with. This plague of locusts is with us in a very prominent way from a purely consciousness standpoint. Of course such things should not be discussed when we speak in a theoretical way or when we speak to humanity in general, where cures for sick conditions can always occur. But if it's a question of priestly activities, then of course one must know with whom one is dealing, just as one has to know this for normal humanity.

As a rule, the people who call themselves liberals or democrats are very glad if they can point to evidence that the number of people in a particular region on earth is increasing tremendously. An increase in the population is something which is very much desired, especially by politically minded democratic and liberal people, and also by people who think that they are free thinkers and intellectuals.

Now first of all this is not quite correct, because the statistics are based on errors; people usually look at one part of the earth and they don't realize that the other parts of the earth were more densely populated in previous times than they are today. It is not quite correct; however, on the whole it is correct in the sense that there is a kind of a surplus of human beings who are already appearing in our time who have no egos, who are not really human. This is a terrible truth. They walk around and are not incarnations of an ego; they enter into the physical line of heredity and receive an etheric body and an astral body. In a certain way they are equipped with an Ahrimanic consciousness, and they look human if one doesn't look too closely, but they are not human beings in the full sense of the word.

This is a terrible truth, which is present, it's a truth, and when the Apocalypticer speaks about the plague of locusts during the trumpets epoch he is referring directly to human beings. Here again one can see how good the Apocalypticer's vision is, for such men in their astral body look exactly the way the Apocalypticer describes them — like etheric locusts with human faces. One definitely has to think about such supersensible things in this way, and priests must know about such things. For a priest is a minister. Hence he must also be able to find words for everything that happens in such a soul. They're not always bad souls; they can just be souls who get to the soul stage but are lacking an ego.

One will certainly realize this when one runs into these human beings. A priest has to know this, for after all there is fellowship among men with regard to such matters. People with normal souls suffer through their association with such persons who really go through the world like human locusts. The question can and must arise: How should one behave towards such human beings? It is often very difficult to relate to such people because they feel things deeply, they can feel things very deeply, but one notices that there is no real individuality in them. However, one must of course take care to keep the fact that they have no individualities from them, otherwise insanity will necessarily result. But even though one has to conceal this from them, it's a question of arranging things for such souls — after all they are souls, even though they're not spirits — in such a way that these people can develop in the company of others, that they can make connections with others and go along with them, as it were. These human beings display the nature and essence of human beings fairly closely until their 20th year. The intellectual or mind soul only emerges around age 20, and this makes it possible for the ego to live out its life on earth.

Anyone who says that one shouldn't act in a sympathetic way to such ego-less, individuality-less people, since they won't incarnate again and because they have no individuality — is very much mistaken. He would also have to say that one shouldn't behave in a sympathetic way towards children. One must decide what is really inside such men in each individual case. Sometimes such men contain posthumous souls, that is, posthumous with respect to the actual or normal human souls that arose at a particular time in evolution and which incarnate repeatedly as men. These are souls which remained behind, or they are souls which returned belatedly from other planets, to which almost all human beings went during a certain age. Such souls may be present in such human bodies. Thus we must consciously educate such men like permanent children.

All of this is really secreted in the Apocalypse. And if one takes these ideas in the Apocalypse that are given as Imaginations, they sometimes cut into one's heart in a terrible way. It's really horrible the way he talks about all kinds of suffering that will befall mankind on earth. with regard to our age we can only say that a great deal of this is already here as far as the spiritual aspects go.

Then of course there are mildly grand ideas like the angels who come down with incense and a censer. There's a reference to the smoke of incense. Then our gaze immediately falls upon a great deal which happened at the time of the Crusades. The trumpets go back to the Crusades. What we see in the sphere of the consciousness soul enters the consciousness soul of humanity during the Crusades epoch.

Here one finds that consciousnesses of individual personalities arise during the time of the Crusades and what is connected with this, who really had tremendously strong impressions from their experiences of the spiritual world. Here we really meet what I would like to call geniuses of piety. It's very important for us to realize that we meet geniuses of, religiousness there.

If we go further back, we find that for the consciousness sphere the period between the Mystery of Golgotha and the time of the Crusades and everything that is connected with this is a smaller epoch that corresponds to the opening of the seven seals. One can only understand this completely if one realizes the following. Just think of how many personalities arise during the time of the Crusades who direct almost all of their religiousness into their depths, into their intensity of feeling, into an inner mystical experience. This begins at that time, whereas previously one looked up into the whole universe when one wanted to perceive the divine world; the previous state of affairs also existed in tone-setting places, although there was a continual battle with the stream that proceeded from Rome. They had an understanding for the God who lives, weaves and works in the sensory phenomena to which they looked up. However, at some point everything was more or less directed within. The great geniuses of mysticism appear. Previously one received divine revelations through the perception of the universe; afterwards we have a feeling of the, inner kindling of light which the human heart can feel, so that divine things can be illuminated from within men.

The stages which the Apocalypse describes are also present here. We have the first, quiet, victorious advance, where the spreading out of Christianity depends on the victorious spirit and word, where Christianity spreads out in the sub-depths of the social life at that time. Then we have a second epoch, where the spread of, Christianity takes away a lot of what one could call peace from the world. Christianity participates quite a bit in the wars which take place in a second epoch. Then we see an epoch where a gradual dying out of the inner impulse of Christianity occurs, where Christianity becomes the state religion, which of course is a dying of the real Christian impulse. Then we have the period which corresponds to the fourth seal, when Islam breaks in in the way I described. And so it goes; seal after seal is opened, and then what occurs under the influence of significant religious geniuses and under the influence of the Crusades is something that one can observe if one follows up what really happened more exactly. In this respect all the history books are really a falsification of history.

Up till the Crusades the spread of Christianity in a good sense through the repeated efforts of countless members of monastic orders and also in a more external and bad sense, occurred through the direct inspiration of the Palestinian stories. Of course, the gospels were only referred to by priests and not by laymen, but the things that happened were definitely influenced by what the priests learned from the gospels. The priests had the gospels and the cultic rites; the cult gradually became something that reflected the supersensible world in a sensory way. The priests looked upon the sacrifice in the mass as a direct portal to the supersensible world, and therefore they looked up to the starry heavens less and less for their divine, spiritual inspiration. All of the wonderful prophecies and wisdom which I mentioned this morning in connection with ancient astrology and astrosophy disappeared almost entirely by the time of the Crusades.

During the time of the Crusades we suddenly see people appearing who travelled from east to west. Some of them are coming back from the Crusades, and others who came a little later had taken a deep interest in the secrets of the Orient. A large number of writings were brought from the east that were later lost or destroyed. They were definitely brought, but not many of them survived because people didn't watch their literary possessions as vigilantly then as one does today. However, the cosmic Christianity which they contained was handed down by word of mouth from about the time of the Crusades. People began to develop a deep interest in this at the time of the Crusades.

A kind of 7th seal is opened here. And one could say that things have really changed with regard to people's respect for written things. For instance, it's still uncertain at the moment, but if this Italian professor really did find handwritten things by Livius, you can imagine what a storm the Italian state will kick up in order to acquire them. And yet you wouldn't have to go back too far to get to a time when the state would have been quite indifferent to whether or not this or that had been found. This is something which has only developed rather recently.

I once witnessed a find like this. When I was at the Goethe and Schiller archives we received a letter by Goethe which looked rather odd; it was dirty and terribly torn. To us this was a real crime; that was no way to treat Goethe's letters. We tried to find out what was behind this. And we discovered that the letter had once been in the possession of Kuno Fischer, and he had simply sent Goethe's original letters to the printers with his notes and comments in the margins, without bothering to copy them. It was a bit miraculous that this letter had survived, since one generally doesn't keep manuscripts.

Thus it's not too surprising that the Christianity that was still alive in the Orient, or the orientalism that helped to explain Christianity were spread by the Crusades. What we would call cabalistic truths spread and a few people who might have known much more than Jakob Boehme lived at a time when no one thought that this was strange, whereas during Jakob Boehme's time the fact that someone like him existed created a sensation.

It is the time of the Crusades, where we want to point to what was going on in men's consciousnesses, and not so much to the outer events that are described in history books, — it's the time when the seal age gave way to the trumpet age. People with a little depth to them have always had a feeling about the time of the Crusades which made them say: Ah yes, the trumpet sounds; if I look at the thing from supersensible viewpoints it's really terrible what is going on there with respect to human souls. However, men on earth don't hear the trumpets, even though they're there.

A great many people should be aware of this trumpet period, since we're living at the time of the 6th trumpet, and you know what the most important effects and characteristics of this trumpet are. We're told that a third part of the men are killed, as I mentioned. Of course this doesn't happen all at once. But this killing refers to the absence of an ego in those men who had already been prepared previously through their locust forms.

These are things which force priests to look more deeply into the structure of what actually occurs. After all, priests are supposed to be dealing with supersensible things. We are surrounded by supersensible things in all directions, and what one can observe in human beings through the fact that they have a physical body is only one segment of human life. As soon as we press into the supersensible world we see that people do things of which they are often not aware. It could be that it's in someone's karma to behave in a particular way towards another human being in this earth life; and one can sometimes not know what it does to the other person's life if he goes by him without paying any attention to him. Of course later on karma will exert much more force and the thing will be adjusted; but maybe it could have been adjusted in this lifetime already. Someone who should have had something to do with another human being in this life cannot be moved to do it and he passes him by. One doesn't necessarily have to notice this in outer life on the physical plane. No real objections to this can be made, since the person concerned has done all of his duties, from a conventional outer viewpoint, but perhaps he did something that can strike terribly deep wounds into something which is connected with world evolution. Then one cannot say that one is dealing with super-terrestrial things, but with supersensible things, for supersensible things are constantly happening on earth.

It will be necessary to understand the Apocalypse in a serious way, to the extent that the one whom I called the etheric Christ will make himself visible within humanity. Therefore, it was due to a very healthy feeling which came up out of your deepest sub-consciousness that you wanted to make the Apocalypse into the object of these studies. Perhaps you initially had a different idea about what I can give about the Apocalypse at this time, but that you wanted to hear something about the Apocalypse from me was definitely the voice of the times in your hearts. And one can say that the fact that the need arose in you to understand the Apocalypse shows that you have a certain relationship with John the Apocalypticer, since you priests belong together and have become united in such tendencies. Since this permeation with the spirit of the Apocalypse is very necessary for you, you will not find any contradiction in. the fact that one can find various sevenfold epochs, that one can really begin them anywhere and that one then discovers how things proceed; but if one cannot look upon the number principle as the methodic thing one won't find any connections in world evolution at all. Therewith we have really touched upon the productive side of the Apocalypse for our time.

Now we usually find other events sprinkled into the Apocalypse at the places where one set of seven goes over into the next one. that we run into here is very much in need of an explanation. If one only reads the Apocalypse in an external way one might think that there are so and so many numbers of human beings who have the seal of God on their foreheads in a particular epoch, so that they are among the fortunate ones who are rescued, or saved, or, however one wants to put it, whereas the others cannot be saved. This, is something which can be depressing if one reads the Apocalypse in a thoughtful way.

However, one should realize that there is always a difference between racial development and individual development in ancient writings. One should realize that no one felt at all depressed in earlier times when one said that so and so many will be saved in a particular race, whereas the others will be destroyed. No one included himself among these because one thought in a realistic way. It's just like today, where everyone is anxious to have his life insured.

Here one calculates how long one will probably live. Insurance companies don't accept people who will probably die soon because if they insured a lot of people who will soon die, their cash boxes would soon be empty. They want to have people who live a long time and make a lot of payments. Hence one must calculate the insured's probable life expectancy on the basis of past experience through probability calculus, which is a very interesting method of calculation. I have never found that anyone felt that he had to die at the moment he was supposed to according to the no doubt correct methods of the insurance companies. There's no such thing. One doesn't feel obliged to die. And this is based on a reality. As soon as one gets into numbers one is not grasping the stage of spiritüality at which a particular human individuality is.

When one says such things, one is touching upon a certain mystery and an occult secret. This is based on the fact that one thinks that if one has 1,2,3,4,5 individualities and one counts them and then uses the number — already in counting them — that this must also be of importance for the spiritual world. But it is not important in the same way. Numbers enter in at the moment when the spiritual world breaks through and becomes manifest. As for instance when it becomes manifest in the world year or in breathing, or wherever the spiritual world breaks through. So that if one ascends to a spiritual consciousness, one needs the number at the boundary or threshold into the spiritual world. One doesn't get further there if one doesn't have a number or something similar to a number. But once on has crossed the threshold and one wants to do something with numbers, nothing fits. Therefore, when an occult writer like the Apocalypticer speaks of racial development which takes place on earth, he can very well say that there are so and so many people in this category — and we v/ill see next time what these numbers mean — but a single human individuality cannot feel that he is affected by this, because these numbers refer to the development of races and not to human individualities. We will go into how all of this is possible the next time.

Source: https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Dates/19240917v02.html

Zut alors!

  

Rudolf Steiner:  "Everything from outside that tempts us to indulgence we may recognize as the sign of Ahriman.... When we begin to see Ahriman we are able to protect ourselves, since we become aware that Ahriman lurks behind allurements of sensual pleasure."

Continued: 

Source: March 28, 1913. GA 145 "The Sphinx"

Let Be What Will

  

Revelation 22:11:    He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.

Revelation 1:7:    Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.

Rudolf Steiner:

the present age is more than any other age demanding the one thing people least want to have: understanding based on the science of the spirit. Strange as it may sound to the ordinary, average people of today — order will not be created from the chaos of the present time until a sufficiently large number of people are prepared to recognize the truths of that science. Such will be the karma of world history.

If people insist that this war is just like the wars of the past and that we'll be making peace just as peace has been made before — let them talk. They are the people who love maya and do not distinguish between truth and deception. Let them make what may seem like ‘peace’ — order will only arise from the chaos that fills the world today when insight based on the science of the spirit dawns in human minds. You may feel in your heart that it will be a long time before such order comes; you may think it will be a long time before people are prepared to let the dawn of such a science arise — and you will be right. You have to accept that it will be a long time before order arises from the chaos. For it will not come until human hearts understand the realm of the spirit. Order can only come when it is understood how this chaos has arisen.

Chaos has arisen because the reality is considered in an unspiritual way — and the world of the spirit cannot be ignored with impunity. You may think it is enough to live with thoughts and ideas that are wholly derived from the physical world. It is what people generally think today, though this does not make it true. The most completely and utterly wrong idea humanity has ever had is — to put it simply — that the spirits will put up with being ignored. You may consider it egotistical and selfish on their part, but the terminology is different in their world. Egotism or not, the spirits take their revenge if they are ignored here on Earth. This is a law, an iron necessity. One way to characterize the present time is to say that the present human chaos is the revenge of the spirits that have been ignored for too long.

I have often said, both here and elsewhere: A mysterious connection exists between human consciousness and the destructive powers of decline and fall in the universe.

Continued: Per aspera ad astra

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive September 29, 1917. GA 177

The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness, lecture 1

 

"He must increase : I must decrease" : St. John's Tide

 

 

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland

June 24, 1923 — St. John's Tide

In the short lecture before the eurythmy performance this morning, I pointed out how modern man’s relation to the celebration of the festivals has gotten ever deeper into materialism. Of course, in order to see this a much deeper view of materialism must be taken. The most threatening symptom is not that man is infected by materialism but he is infected by the superficiality of our time, and this is far more dangerous.

This superficiality exists not only in relation to the spiritual views of the world, but also in relation to materialism itself. One usually only pays attention to its most superficial phenomena. In this regard I pointed out this afternoon, for example how, in olden times people were still receptive to the moods which could be experienced in the course of the year and which came to be expressed in the festival celebrations. These moods were embodied in the winter solstice festival, the spring festival, the St. John’s festival and the Michael festival—these were embodied in ritual-like celebrations in which these moods were embedded, and they took hold of man as he consciously experienced the course of the year.

Thereby something was given to the soul which today is only given to man’s body. We all still participate in the course of the day. When the sun sends its golden rays announcing the dawn we eat our breakfast. When it is at its highest point and pours out its warmth and light with special love over mankind, we eat lunch, and so on through midday, snack, and supper. In those daily festival events, we accompany the course of the sun through the day by co-experiencing in our souls the fiery trip of the sun around the world. We participate in this fiery ride around the world by overcoming the craving for food with the contentment of feeling satiated. And so the mood for the physical organism exists in a very decided and definite way at different times of the day. We can call breakfast, snack, dinner, snack, supper, the festivals of the day. The human physical organism accompanies what takes place between earth and cosmos.

In a similar way the course of the year was experienced intensively in the soul in olden times through instinctive clairvoyance. Actually, certain things played from one sphere over into the other. You need but remember what has been left as remnants of these festivals: Easter eggs, stuffed geese, etc. The lower bodily region plays into the soul region which ought also to experience the course of the year. Well, the easiest way to stimulate interest in the course of the year in our materialistic time would be by making available—I do not want to say “Easter eggs”,—but “stuffed turkeys.”

But this is not the way it was meant in olden times with regard to festival moods. They were attuned, rather, to soul-hunger and soul satisfaction. The soul of man needed something different at Christmas, Easter, St. John’s, and Michaelmas time. And one can really compare the content of the celebration to a kind of satisfying the hunger of the soul at different seasons.

So as we look at the daily path of the sun, we can say that it is related to what serves the needs of the body; as we look at the yearly course of the sun, we can say that it is related to what serves the needs of the soul.

If festivals are to become alive again, it would have to happen out of a much more conscious condition, out of an awakening of the soul as it is striven for in anthroposophical endeavors. We cannot just base a renewal of the Festivals on old history; we would have to rediscover them through a new knowledge, a new world-conception, out of our own soul-being. But, besides the body and soul, we also differentiate the human spirit.

However, for modern man it is already difficult enough to have a clear picture when someone speaks of the soul. Everything becomes a sort of indefinite fog. Already in the nineteenth century when they began to speak of psychology, they began to speak of a soul-science without a soul. Fritz Mauthner, the great language critic, found that we really do not know anything about the soul, we only experience something indefinite, certain thoughts and feelings, but really nothing of a soul reality. We ought not, therefore, to use in the future the world “soul” but “dis-soul” (Geseel). Mauthner advises, that in the future, when a poet intends to write a real work he ought not to say: “Sing immortal Soul, the sinful man’s redemption,” but rather, “Sing immortal What-cha-macall-it, the sinful men’s redemption”—if in the future it still would make sense to speak of something like that.

Today we can really say that modern man knows nothing more of the connection of his soul with the sun’s yearly course. He became a materialist in this region, also. He sticks to the festivals of the body which follow the daily course of the sun. The festivals are celebrated out of traditional habits but no longer experienced. Yet we have, besides a body, also a soul, and yes, also a spirit.

Let us now take into consideration the historical epochs. Those epochs, which reach far beyond the course of the year, encompassing centuries, are co-experienced by the human spirit, if it experiences them at all. In olden times they were most certainly experienced. He who knows how to enter, carried by the spirit, into the way the course of time was followed in the past knows how it was said: at this or that time some personality appeared out of the heights of the world and revealed the spirit again. And this spirit entered as the sunlight enters the physical. If such an epoch then entered its twilight phase, something new appeared.

Historical epochs are related to the evolution of the human spirit, as the course of the sun through the year is related to the soul evolution. Of course, wherever such metamorphoses, such changes in spirit evolution occur, it must happen through fully conscious cognition. Today, one would like to ignore such metamorphoses completely. One is outwardly touched by the effects, but one does not wish to consider seriously those changes emanating from the spirit which are nevertheless expressed in the outer events.

It would be helpful to pay attention to a certain direction of thinking and feeling appearing in children and young people, which was unknown to earlier generations, and which, when looked at properly in the course of the development of humanity, can really be compared to the course of the year. Therefore it would be good to listen to what the different ages proclaim as a need, to listen to the way in which a new age arises and how human beings demand something different from what might have been demanded in ages gone by. But just for this contemporary man has a very inadequate organ.

When we approach the festival mood in the right way out of a contemporary consciousness, the great relationships of life can again fill our souls. When we, for example, let something like the St. John’s mood really enter our soul, then we try to gain for our soul what will be met by the cosmos.

Certainly, the great world connections have become a matter of indifference for modern mankind. There is no heart for getting to know the great world relations. It is quite evident how the spirit of littleness, narrowness, I would like to say, the spirit of the microscope, the spirit of atomizing appears, which, when mentioned in the way I do, seems paradoxical.

I would like to point to something definite in relation to the St. John’s mood which, however, seems quite far-fetched. What is more obvious (even if one has not developed an organ for the course of the year) than the impression of growing plants, growing trees: when spring comes, things sprout, grow, everything goes from leaf to blossom. All this growing makes the impression as though the cosmos, with its sun forces, calls upon the earth to open itself to the cosmos, and this happens at St. John’s time.

Then begins a retreat of the sprouting, and we approach the time when the earth collects the growing forces into itself, when the earth withdraws from the cosmos. How obvious it is that from the received impressions one gets the picture that the snow-cover belongs to winter, when the being of the plants crawls, so to speak, into the earth; that it belongs to summer for the plants to grow towards the cosmos. What is more natural than to get this idea—although in a deeper sense the opposite is correct—that the plants sleep in winter and wake in summer.

I do not wish to speak now about the correctness of this sleeping and waking. I wish to speak only of the impression one receives, which leads to the thought that summer belongs to growing vegetation, and winter to the withdrawal of growth. In any case, a kind of world-feeling develops in which one is engaged in relating to the warming, bright force of the sun when seeing this force again in the greening, blossoming plant-cover of earth, and immersing into the feeling of being an earthly hermit with regard to the cosmos when the plant cover is replaced with snow in winter. In short, by so feeling, one tears oneself free with one’s consciousness from earth existence. One places oneself in a larger relation to the universe.

Now comes modern research—and what I am saying now is in no way critical, on the contrary—now comes modern research and shrugs its shoulders whenever great cosmic connections are referred to. Why should one feel elevated to divine radiating warming forces of the sun when the trees are shooting, becoming green, when earth covers itself with a cover of plants? Why should one have to sense a cosmic relation on seeing this plant cover? It is disturbing. One cannot bring such sentiments into harmony with a materialistic consciousness. Plant is plant. It seems like stubborness of the plant to blossom only in spring, or to be ready in summer to bear fruit. How does this actually work? One is supposed to be concerned not only with the plant but with the whole world? If one is to feel, to know, one is supposed to be concerned with the whole world, not only with the plant? That doesn’t sit right. Is one not already making an effort to avoid dealing with substances existing in powder or crystal forms, but rather just to deal with atomic structures, atomic cores, with electromagnetic fields, etc.? One tries to deal with something enclosed, not with something that points in so many directions. In the case of the plant is one supposed to admit that a sensing is needed that reaches to the whole cosmos? It is really awful if one cannot narrow one’s view to a singular object! One is used to, when using the microscope, to have everything limited to a narrow view. Everything takes place in the small enclosure. It must be possible to look at a plant by itself, not in connection to the whole cosmos!

And look, at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century the scientists succeeded to an extraordinary degree in this region. It was known, of course, from some plants in hothouses, greenhouses, that the mere summer and winter aspects of the plant could be overcome. But on the whole, not enough could be discovered about the plant needing a certain winter rest. Discussions about tropical plants occurred. The researcher, who did not want to know about plants being connected with the cosmos, maintained that the tropical plant grows throughout the year. The others, more conservative, said: one thinks this because plants have their winter rest at different times, some only for eight days. This being so, makes it imperceptible when a certain species is dormant. Long detailed discussions concerning tropical plants took place. In short, one became aware of a tremendous discomfort concerning the relation of plants to the cosmos.

But the most interesting and grandiose experiments in this direction were made exactly at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, when one succeeded in driving the stubborness out of the plants in the case of a great number of not only annuals, but also trees, which are much stronger: to drive out the cosmic stubborness from the plant. It was possible to do this in plants known as annuals by creating certain conditions. In the case of most of the trees growing in the temperate zone, conditions could be established which caused them to remain green all year round, to give up their winter sleep. This then provided the basis for certain materialistic explanations. In this way really magnificent accomplishments were achieved.

It was discovered that the cosmic element could be driven out of trees if they were brought into enclosed spaces, given enough nourishing minerals, making it possible that plants in winter-time, when the soil is poor in minerals, can find this nourishment. If enough moisture, warmth, and light is supplied, the trees will grow. However, one tree in Central Europe was defiant: the Blood Beech. It was approached from all sides to give up its independence and subjected to isolation in a prison. It was provided with everything necessary, but remained stubborn, and demanded nevertheless its winter rest. But it was the only one that still resisted.

And now we must record that in the twentieth century, in 1914, the beginning of the war, another great historical event occurred: the immense, mighty accomplishment of the most capable researcher, Klebs, who was able to compel the Blood Beech to give up its independence. He simply was able to bring it into an enclosed space, provide the necessary nutrients, warmth and light, which could be measured, and the Blood Beech submitted to the demands of research.

I am not mentioning this phenomenon in order to criticize it, for who can help but wonder at this most diligent scientific labor. Besides, it would be silly to try to disprove the facts. They exist and are there. It is not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing, but something quite different.

Why should it not be possible if somewhere on neutral ground the necessary condition for hair-growing existed, to grow hair outside the human or animal realms? Why not? One need only bring about the conditions. I know many would rather have hair growing on their heads than in some culture, but we can imagine it to be possible. Then it would no longer be necessary to bring anything that happens on earth together with what happens in the cosmos.

With all due respect to research, one must look deeper. Aside from what I said recently about the being of the elements, I would like to say something more today. One must be clear that, for example, the following is the case: we know that once earth and sun were one body. Of course this is long ago, during the Saturn and Sun periods. Then there was also a short repetition of those periods during the Earth period. But something remains behind which still belongs there. And this we bring forth again today. And we bring it forth from the repetitious condition on earth not only by heating our rooms with coal, but we bring it forth by using electricity. For, what remains from those times after Old Saturn and Old Sun, when the sun and earth were one, that provided the basis for what we have today on earth as electricity. We have in electricity a force which is sun-force, long connected with the earth, a hidden sun-force in the earth.

Why should not the stubborn Blood Beech, when approached forcefully enough, be induced to use not the sun that radiates from the cosmos, but to use the sun force retained within the earth, the Old Sun force, electricity?

Looking in this way we become aware of the necessity of deeper knowledge. As long as man could believe that the sun force comes only from the cosmos, man arrived at the perception of the relationship of the plant world to the cosmos. Today, when from a materialistic point of view, one would like to separate from the cosmos what so easily can be seen as cosmic effect, one must, if one looks at the seeming independence of the plant, have a science which recalls that cosmic relation between earth and sun which once existed, but in a different form. By being narrowed on the one hand by the microscope, we simply need a much wider expansion on the other hand, and especially the details show how much we need an expanded view.

The problem is not a dilettantic anthroposophical opposition to progress in research. But since progress in research necessarily leads through one’s own nature, it can bring us to the often mentioned “night-crawler view” and prevent that wide view of the great cosmic historic connections between earth and sun, which enables us to be conscious not only of the present sun, but also of the Sun of long past conditions. Everywhere we need the polarity, the counter-pole: not opposition to research, but the spiritual counterpole is what is needed. This is the position we need to take. And I would like to say it is also the mood of St. John’s time. When we inscribe clearly into our sentiment that we now have to live in a world-historic St. John’s mood, we carry our gaze into cosmic distances. That is what we need in spiritual cognition. Nothing is gained by mere talking about spirit; what is important is real penetration into the concrete phenomena of the spiritual world. What we bring forth by pointing to Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth evolutions, etc., has a tremendous supporting force regarding historic cognition.

When our attention is called to such brilliant results of materialistic science as those discovered by Klebs, that even the stubborn Blood Beech can be compelled to grow with electric light, this will lead us, without spiritual science, to the point where we will shatter everything into pieces and have a very narrow view. The Blood Beech will stand before us, growing in electric light, and we will know nothing except what this very narrow picture tells us.

With spiritual science, however, we can say something else: Klebs took the sunlight from the Blood Beech. He then had to give her electric light, which is actually ancient sun light. Our view is not narrow, but greatly enlarged. So, those who do not want to know of the soul experience will say glibly that one day is just like the next. There is breakfast, snack, dinner, snack, supper,—it is even nice when at Christmas time we get a nice cake—but basically every day is a repetition of the previous day. In fact material man sees only the day. But what about cosmic connections? Let us free ourselves of such a world view. Let us become clear that the stubborn Blood Beech no longer needs the sun. If we imprison her and give her enough electricity, she will grow without the sun. No! She will in fact not grow without the sun. But we need to seek the sun in the right way when we do something like that. And we must be clear that it is different when the Blood Beech grows in the sunlight or when ahrimanic sunlight, originating from long-past, is forced upon her. And we recall what has often been mentioned as the two polarities of Lucifer and Ahriman.

With an adequately wide view of these things we will not admire our brilliance at having overcome the stubbornness of the beech, but go much further. We will progress on to the sap of the beech, and investigate its effect on the human organism, investigate both the beech we permitted to be stubborn and the one which we treated with electric light, and we might discover something very special about the healing forces of one as opposed to the other. But we must do this by considering the spiritual!

But of what concern is this to people today? One has an admirable interest in research. One sits in the classroom, is an experimental psychologist, writes down all kinds of words which must be remembered, examines memory, experiments with children, and arrives at most interesting information. Once the interest is awakened, everything is interesting, depending on the subjective point of view. Why should it not be possible that a stamp collection is more interesting than a botanical collection? Since this is so, why not also in other realms? Why should the tortures to which children are subjected when they are experimented with, be not interesting? But the question everywhere is, whether or not there are higher responsibilities, and whether it is really justified to experiment with children at a certain age. The question arises: what is one ruining? And the greater question: what damage is done to the teachers, when instead of asking of them a living, heartfelt relation, one asks of them an experimental interest out of the results of experimental psychology. So everything depends, in such research, on whether or not one has the right relation to the sense world, and also to the supersensible world.

Now certain people who emphasize the necessary objectivity of research will assert that there are some who find it immoral when Klebs takes the stubbornness out of the Blood Beech. This would not occur to me. I wouldn’t dream of it. Everything that is done ought to be done, but one must have a counterweight for it. In the time when one emancipates oneself with regard to the growing beech tree from the cosmos, one must on the other hand, in a civilization which does such things, also have a sense for how the spiritual progress of man takes place. One must have a sense for the epochs of time, like ours. I do not want to limit research, but one must feel the necessity of a counter measure. There must be an open heart for the fact that at certain times spiritual impulses want to reveal themselves. When on the one hand materialism takes over and great achievements result, then those who are interested in such achievements should also be interested in the achievements of research about the spiritual worlds.

This lies in the inner nature of Christianity. A true view of Christianity sees, after the Mystery of Golgotha, the continuing of the Christ being in the earth, in the Christ force, the Christ impulse. And this means that when autumn comes, when everything dries up, when the growing and sprouting in nature ceases, ceases for the senses, then one can see the growing and sprouting of the spirit which accompanies man during the winter time.

But in the same way one must learn to sense how, although justifiable, the view for detail is narrowed in a certain way, the view for the totality for the great whole is narrowed. With regard to Christianity this is the St. John’s mood. We must sense with understanding that the St. John’s festival mood is the starting point for that occurrence which lies in the words: He must increase, I must decrease.

This means that the impressions upon man of everything that is accomplished by empirical research must decline. As the sense details are ever more enhanced, the impression of the spirit must be more and more intensified. And the sun of the spirit must shine more and more into the human heart, the more the impressions of the sense world decline.

The St. John’s mood must be experienced as the entrance into spirit impulses and as exit from the sense impulses. In the St. John’s mood we must learn to sense wherein something weaves and wafts like a soft wind, wafts the spiritually demonic out of the sensible into the spiritual, and from the spiritual into the sensible. And through the St. John’s mood we must learn to form our spirit light so that it does not stick like tar to the solid contour of ideas, but finds itself in weaving, living ideas. We must learn to notice the lighting up of the sensual, the dimming of the sensual, the lighting up of the spiritual in the dimming sensual. We must learn to experience the symbol of the June bug: the lighting up has its meaning as does the dimming of the light.

The lightning bug lights up, dims down, but by dimming down it leaves behind in us the living life and weaving of the spirit in the twilight evening, in the dusk. And when we see in nature everywhere the little waves as in the symbolic lighting up and dimming of the lightning bug, we will find the right St. John’s mood if it is experienced with clear, bright, full consciousness. And this St. John’s mood is necessary, for we must in this way pass through our time if we do not want to fall into the abyss, pass through in such a way that the spirit becomes glowingly alive and that we learn to follow it.

The St. John’s mood:—towards the future of the earth and mankind! No longer the old mood which understands only the growing and sprouting on the outside, which is pleased when it can imprison this growing and sprouting under electric light what otherwise was thriving in the sunlight. Rather we must learn to recognize the lighting up of the spirit so that the electric light becomes less important than it is today, so that the St. John’s gaze becomes sharpened for that old sunlight which will appear when we open ourselves to the great spiritual horizon, not only to the narrow earthly horizon, but the great horizon from Saturn to Vulcan.

If we allow the light of the great horizon to shine in the right way, then all the trivialities of our time will appear in this light, then we will go forward and upward; but if we cannot make this decision we will go backward and downward.

Today everything revolves around human freedom, human will. Everything revolves around the independent decision of either going forward or backward, upward or downward.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive  June 24, 1923