What the world needs now is Anthroposophy, the new Christianity

        

Karmic Relationships. Lecture 68 of 82

Rudolf Steiner, Torquay

August 21, 1924

During the hour that has become available today I want to speak about certain things which will be easier to understand now that preparation has been made both in the general lecture-course and in the last two lectures to Members. I shall speak this evening about the karma of the Anthroposophical Society and continue this same theme in London during the next few days.

The lectures here have made it clear that in our own epoch the Impulse of the Being known in Christian terminology as the Archangel Michael is responsible for the spiritual guidance of civilised mankind. This particular Rulership — if so it may be called — of the spiritual life began in the seventies of last century and was preceded, as I said, by that of Gabriel. I shall now have something to say about certain aspects of the present Rulership of Michael.

Whenever Michael sends his impulses through the evolution of humanity in the sphere of earthly life, he is the bringer of the Sun-forces, the spiritual forces of the Sun. With this is connected the fact that during their waking consciousness men receive these Sun-forces into their physical and etheric bodies.

The present Rulership of Michael — which began not very long ago and will last from three to four centuries — signifies that the cosmic forces of the Sun penetrate right into the physical and etheric bodies of men. And here we must ask: What kind of forces, what kind of impulses are these cosmic Sun-forces?

Michael is essentially a Sun-Spirit. He is therefore the Spirit whose task in our epoch is to bring about a deeper, more esoteric understanding of the truths of Christianity. Christ came from the Sun. Christ, the Sun-Being, dwelt on the earth in the body of Jesus and has lived since then in super-sensible communion with the world of men. But before the whole Mystery connected with Christ can reveal itself to the soul, mankind must become sufficiently mature and the necessary deepening will to a great extent have to be achieved during the present Age of Michael.

Now whenever the Sun-forces work in upon the earth they are always connected with an impulse which streams into earthly civilisation as an inpouring wave of intellectuality, for in our sphere of existence everything possessed by man and by the world in general in the way of intellectuality, intelligence, derives from the Sun. The Sun is the source of all intellectual life operating in the service of the Spirit.

Utterance of this truth may evoke a certain inner resistance today, for men do right not to place too high a value upon intellect in its present form. Those who have any real understanding of the spiritual life will not set much store by the intellectuality prevailing in the modern age. It is abstract and formal, it crowds the human mind with ideas and concepts which are utterly remote from living reality, it is cold, dry and barren as compared with the warm, radiant life pulsing alike through the world and through man.

In respect of intelligence, however, this holds good only for the present time, since we are living in a very early period of the Michael Age and what we now possess as intelligence is still only just beginning to unfold in the general consciousness of mankind. In time to come this intelligence will have an altogether different character. In order to realise how the nature of intelligence changes during the course of human evolution, let us recall that in medieval Christian philosophy Thomas Aquinas still speaks of Beings, of “Intelligences” inhabiting the stars. As opposed to the materialistic views prevailing today, we ourselves regard the stars as colonies of spiritual Beings

This seems strange and far-fetched to the ears of a modern man who has not the remotest inkling that when he gazes at the stars he is gazing at Beings related in certain respects with his own life and inhabiting the stars just as we ourselves inhabit the earth.

In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas speaks of Beings in the stars although he assigns to each star a single Being in the sense that earthly humanity would be regarded as a single unit if the earth were being observed from some distant heavenly body. We ourselves know that the stars are to be conceived as colonies of Beings in the cosmos. Thomas Aquinas does not speak of specific Beings or numbers of Beings inhabiting the stars, but when he refers to the “Intelligences” of the stars this authority of medieval Christian doctrine is continuing a tradition which at that time was already dying away. This is an indication that what is comprised to-day in the term “Intelligence” was once something altogether different.

In very ancient times a man did not produce his thoughts from out of himself; when he thought about the things of the world his thoughts were not the product of his own inner activity. The faculty of thinking, man's own activity in the forming of thoughts, has only fully unfolded since the 15th century, since the entry of the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul into the evolution of humanity. In olden, pre-Christian times it would never have occurred to men to believe that they were producing their own thoughts out of themselves; they did not feel that they themselves were forming their thoughts but rather that the thoughts were revealed to them from the things of the world. They felt: Intelligence is universal, cosmic; Intelligence is contained within the things of the world; the Intelligence-content, the Thought-content of things is perceived just as colours are perceived; the world is full of Intelligence, pervaded everywhere by Intelligence. In the course of his evolution man has acquired a drop of the Intelligence that is spread over the wide universe. Such was the conception in days of old.

And so man was conscious all the time that his thoughts were revealed to him, inspired into him. He ascribed Intelligence only to the universe, not to himself.

Now throughout the ages, the Regent of this Cosmic Intelligence which, like the light, streams over the whole world, has been the Spirit known by the name of Michael. Michael is the Ruler of the Cosmic Intelligence. But after the Mystery of Golgotha something of deep significance took place in that Michael's dominion over the Cosmic Intelligence gradually fell away from him, fell from his grasp. Since the earth began, Michael has administered the Cosmic Intelligence. And in the age of Alexander, of Aristotle, when a man was aware of thoughts, that is to say of the content of Intelligence within him, he did not regard these thoughts as his own, self-made thoughts; he felt that the thoughts were revealed to him through the Michael-Power, although in that pagan epoch this Being was known by a different name. This Thought-content gradually fell away from Michael. And if we look into the spiritual world we see that the descent of the Intelligence from the Sun to the earth is accomplished by about the 8th century A.D. In the 9th century men are already beginning, as the forerunners of those who came later, to unfold their own, personal intelligence; intelligence begins to take footing within the souls of individual men. And looking down from the Sun to the earth, Michael and his hosts could say: What we have administered through aeons of time has fallen away from us, has streamed downwards and is now to be found within the souls of men on earth.

Such was the mood and feeling prevailing in the Michael-community on the Sun. It was in the age of Alexander and for a few centuries previously that Michael had exercised his former earthly dominion. But at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, Michael and his own were in the sphere of the Sun and from there they witnessed the departure of Christ from the Sun; they did not, as those who were below, witness His arrival among them on earth. Michael and his hosts witnessed the departure of Christ from the Sun and at the same time they saw that their dominion over the Intelligence was gradually falling from their grasp.

Thus in the periods of evolution after the Mystery of Golgotha, the course of development is as follows. Here we have the stream of spiritual, heavenly life (red) and here the stream of earthly life (yellow). Christ comes to the earth and lives henceforward in union with the earth. Until the 8th or 9th century the Intelligence is gradually sinking down to the earth (green). Men begin to ascribe what they call knowledge, what they unfold in thoughts, to their

own, personal intelligence. Michael sees that what he has administered through aeons is now to be found within the souls of men on earth. And in the Michael-community it was realised: During our next rulership (— it was to begin in the last third of the 19th century —) when our impulses are again to pour through earthly civilisation, it is on the earth that we shall have to seek for the Intelligence which has descended from the heavens in order that in the hearts and in the souls of men it may be possible for us again to administer what through aeons we have administered from the Sun, from the cosmos.

And so at this time the Michael-community prepared itself to find again in the hearts of men that which had fallen from its grasp that which under the influence of the Mystery of Golgotha had also been taking the path, albeit a more gradual path, from the heavens to the earth. I will now indicate briefly how Michael and his hosts have striven in order that from this present Michael Age onwards they may once again take hold of the Intelligence that fell away from them in the heavens. Michael who has been striving from the Sun for those on earth who perceive the Spiritual in the cosmos, desires henceforward to establish his citadel in the hearts and in the souls of men on earth. This is to begin in our present age. Christianity is to be guided into a realm of deeper truths inasmuch as understanding of Christ as a Sun Being is to arise within humanity through Michael, the Sun Spirit who has always ruled over the Intelligence, who can now no longer administer it in the cosmos but desires in future time to administer it in and through the hearts of men.

In seeking to discover the origin and source of Intelligence in whatever form it may be revealed, men turn today to the human head, because having descended from the heavens to the earth, the Intelligence weaves within the soul and is made manifest inwardly through the head. It was not always so in times when men strove for Intelligence for the essence of the Intelligence revealing itself from the Cosmos In those earlier epochs men strove for Intelligence not by developing the faculties of the head but by seeking for the Inspirations conveyed to them by the cosmic forces

An example of how in olden time men sought the Cosmic Intelligence in a way in which it is no longer sought today is to be found when one stands, as we were able to do last Sunday, at that place in Tintagel which was once the site of King Arthur's Castle and where he with his twelve companions exercised a power of far-reaching significance for Europe.

From the accounts contained in historical documents it will not be easy to form a true conception of the tasks and the mission of King Arthur and his Round Table as it is called. But this becomes possible when one stands on the actual site of the castle and gazes with the eye of spirit over the stretch of sea which an intervening cliff seems to divide into two. There, in a comparatively short time, one can perceive a wonderful interplay between the light and the air, but also between the elemental spirits living in light and air. One can see spirit-beings streaming to the earth in the rays of the Sun, one can see them mirrored in the glittering raindrops, one can see that which comes under the sway of earthly gravity appearing in the air as the denser spirit-beings of the air. Again, when the rain ceases and the rays of the Sun stream through the clear air, one perceives the elemental spirits intermingling in quite a different way. There one witnesses how the Sun works in earthly substance — and seeing it all from a place such as this, one is filled with a kind of pagan “piety” — not Christian but pagan piety, which is something altogether different. Pagan piety is a surrender of heart and feeling to the manifold spiritual beings working in the processes of nature.

Amid the conditions of modern social life it is not, generally speaking, possible for men to give effect to the processes coming to expression in the play of nature-forces. These things can be penetrated only by Initiation-knowledge. But you must understand that every spiritual attainment is dependent upon some essential and fundamental condition.

In the example I gave this morning [Lecture X. True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation.] to illustrate how the knowledge of material phenomena must be furthered and extended, I spoke of the interweaving, self-harmonising karma of two human beings as a necessary factor. And in the days of King Arthur and those around him, special conditions were required in order that the spirituality so wondrously revealed and borne in by the sea might flow into their mission and their tasks.

This interplay between the sunlit air and the rippling, foam-crested waves continues to this day; over the sea and the rocky cliffs at this place, nature is still quick with spirit. But to take hold of the spirit-forces working there in nature would have been beyond the power of one individual alone. A group of men was necessary, one of whom felt himself as the representative of the Sun at the centre, and whose twelve companions were trained in such a way that in temperament, disposition and manner of acting, all of them together formed a twelve-fold whole — twelve individual men grouped as the Zodiacal constellations are grouped around the Sun. Such was the Round Table: King Arthur at the centre, surrounded by the Twelve, above each of whom a Zodiacal symbol was displayed, indicating the particular cosmic influence with which he was associated. Civilising forces went out from this place to Europe. It was here that King Arthur and his Twelve Knights drew into themselves from the Sun the strength wherewith to set forth on their mighty expeditions through Europe in order to battle with the wild, demonic powers of old still dominating large masses of the population, and drive them out of men. Under the guidance and direction of King Arthur, these Twelve were battling for outer civilisation.

To understand what the Twelve felt about themselves and their mission, it must be remembered that in olden time men did not claim a personal intelligence of their own. They did not say: I form my thoughts, my Intelligence-filled thoughts, myself. They experienced Intelligence as revealed Intelligence, and they sought for the revelations by forming themselves into a group like the one I have described, a group of twelve or thirteen. There they imbibed the Intelligence which enabled them to give direction and definition to the impulses needed for civilisation. And they too felt that their deeds were performed in the service of the Power known in Christian-Hebraic terminology as Michael. The whole configuration of this castle at Tintagel indicates that the Twelve under the direction of King Arthur were essentially a Michael-community, belonging to the age when Michael still administered the Cosmic Intelligence.

This was actually the community which worked longer than any other to ensure that Michael should retain his dominion over the Cosmic Intelligence. At the ruins of King Arthur's Castle today, the Akasha Chronicle still preserves the picture of the stones falling from those once mighty gates, and these falling stones become an image of the Cosmic Intelligence falling, sinking away from the hands of Michael into the minds and hearts of men.

At another place this Arthur-Michael stream has its polaric contrast: the Grail stream of which the Parsifal Legend tells. [See Rudolf Steiner, Christ and the Spiritual World, Leipzig, 28th December, 1913–2nd January, 1914. Rudolf Steiner Press, 1963.] This other stream comes into being at a place where a more inward form of Christianity had taken refuge. In the Grail stream too we have the Twelve around the One but account is everywhere taken of the fact that the Intelligence, the Intelligence-filled thoughts, no longer flow as Revelations from the heavens to the earth; what has now streamed downward seems, in face of earthly thoughts, to be like the “pure fool” — Parsifal. It is realised here that the Intelligence must now be sought within the earthly sphere alone.

There in the North stands King Arthur's castle where men still turn to the Cosmic Intelligence and where they strive to instil the Intelligence belonging to the universe into civilisation on earth. And further to the South stands that other castle, the Grail castle, where the Intelligence is no longer drawn from the heavens but where it is realised that what is wisdom before men is foolishness before God and what is wisdom before God is foolishness before men. The impulse proceeding from this other castle in the South strives to penetrate the Intelligence that is now no longer the Cosmic Intelligence.

And so in olden times, lasting on into the age when the Mystery of Golgotha takes place over in Asia, we find in the Arthur stream the intense striving to ensure Michael's dominion over the Intelligence, and in the Grail stream going out from Spain, the striving in which account is taken of the fact that the Intelligence must in future be found on earth, since it no longer flows down from the heavens. The import of what I have just described to you breathes through the whole legend of the Grail.

Study of these two streams brings to light the great problem arising from the historical situation at that time. Men are confronted with the after-workings of the Arthur-principle and the after-workings of the Grail principle. The problem is: How does Michael himself, not a human being like Parsifal, but Michael himself, find the path leading from his Arthurian knights who strive to ensure his cosmic sovereignty, to his Grail knights who strive to prepare the way for him into the hearts and minds of men in order that therein he may again take hold of the Intelligence? And now the great problem of our own age takes definition: How shall the Michael Rulership bring about a deeper understanding of Christianity? Overwhelmingly this problem confronts us, marked by the contrast of the two castles: the one of which the ruins are to be seen to this day at Tintagel, and that other castle which will not easily be seen by human eyes, since in the spiritual realm it is surrounded, as it were, by a trackless forest, sixty leagues deep on every hand. Between these two castles looms the great question: How can Michael become the giver of the impulse which will lead to a deeper understanding of the truths of Christianity?

Now it would not be correct to say that the Knights of King Arthur were not battling for Christ and the real Christ Impulse. It was simply that they bore within them the urge to seek for Christ in the Sun and they would not abandon their conviction that the Sun is the fount of Christianity.

Hence their feeling that they were bringing the heavens down to the earth, that their Michael-battles were being waged for Christ Who works from the rays of the Sun. Within the Grail stream the Christ Impulse takes expression in a different way. Men are conscious that the Christ Impulse, having come down to the earth, must hence-forward be carried into effect through the hearts of men. The spiritual Essence of the Sun is now united with earthly evolution — such was their conviction.

I have told you in these lectures [See Lecture 4. True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation.] of individuals who in the 12th century taught and worked in the School of Chartres, where teachings still inspired by a lofty and sublime spirituality were given forth. I spoke of particular Teachers in the School of Chartres, among them Bernardus Sylvestris, Bernard of Chartres, Alanus ab Insulis — and there were others too, surrounded by a great company of pupils. Remembering what was especially characteristic of these Teachers of Chartres, we may say: In some measure they still preserved within them the old traditions of nature teeming with life and being as opposed to an abstract, material nature. And this was why there still hovered over the School of Chartres elements of that Sun-Christianity which the heroes of Arthur's Round Table, as Knights of Michael, had striven to implant as an impulse in the world.

In a remarkable way this School of Chartres stands midway between the Arthur-principle in the North and the Grail-principle in the South. And like shadows cast by the castle of King Arthur and the castle of the Grail, the super-sensible, invisible impulses made their way, not so much into the actual content of the teachings, as into the whole attitude and mood-of-soul of the pupils who gathered with glowing enthusiasm in the “lecture halls” — as we should say nowadays — of Chartres. These were times when in the Christianity presented by these Teachers of Chartres, Christ was conceived as the sublime Sun-Spirit Who had appeared in Jesus of Nazareth. So that when these men spoke of the Christ they saw His Impulse working on in earthly evolution in the sense of the Grail-conception, and at the same time they saw in Him the down-pouring Impulse of the Sun.

What is revealed to spiritual observation as the essence, the keynote of the teachings given forth at Chartres cannot be discovered today from surviving literary texts emanating from individual Teachers in the School of Chartres. To the modern student these writings seem scarcely more than glossaries of names. But in the brief sentences interspersed between the countless designations, names, definitions, those who read with spiritual penetration will discern the deep spirituality, the profound insight still possessed by these Teachers of Chartres.

Towards the end of the 12th century they passed through the gate of death into the spiritual world. And there they came together with that other stream which was also linked with the Michael Age of ancient time but in which full account was taken of the central truth of Christianity, namely that the Christ Impulse had come down from the heavens to the earth. In the spiritual world the Teachers of Chartres came into contact with all that the Aristotelians of old had been able, as a result of the expeditions of Alexander to Asia, to achieve in preparation for Christianity. But they also came together with Aristotle and Alexander themselves who were then in the spiritual world. The impulse of which these two individualities were the bearers could not take effect on the earth at that time because it counted upon an abandonment of the old, nature-inspired Christianity that had still been reflected in the teachings of Chartres where, as in Arthur's Round Table, a pagan Christianity, a pre-Christian Christianity prevailed. In the days of the Teachers of Chartres it was not possible for the Aristotelians, for those who had established and promoted Alexandrianism, to be on the earth. Their time came a little later, from the 13th century onwards.

But in the intervening period something of great significance took place. When the Teachers of Chartres and those who were associated with them had passed through the gate of death into the spiritual world, they came together with souls who were preparing to descend to the physical world and who were eventually led by their karma to the Order paramountly connected with the cultivation of knowledge in the Aristotelian form: the Order of the Dominicans. The men of Chartres came together with these other souls who were preparing to descend.

Using trivial words of modern speech, I will now describe what then transpired. At the turning-point of the 12th and 13th centuries, at the beginning of the 13th century, a kind of conference took place between the souls who had just arrived in the spiritual world and the souls who were about to descend. And the momentous agreement was reached, that Sun-Christianity as expressed, for example, in the Grail-principle and also in the teachings of Chartres, should now be united with Aristotelianism. Those who descended to earth became the founders of Scholasticism, the spiritual significance of which has never been truly assessed and in which, to begin with, men could only hope to win the day for their view of personal immortality in the Christian sense by advocating it in the most radical, extreme way. The Teachers of Chartres had laid less emphasis upon this principle of the personal immortality of man. They still inclined to the view that having passed through the gate of death the soul returns to the bosom of the Divinity. They spoke far less of personal, individual immortality than did the Dominican Schoolmen.

Many significant happenings were connected with what was here taking place. For example: When one of the Schoolmen had come down from the spiritual world to work for the spread of Christianity in an Aristotelian form, he had not, to begin with, been able fully to grasp the essential import of the Grail-principle. Karma had willed it so. And here lies the reason for the comparatively late appearance of Wolfram von Eschenbach's version of the Grail story. Another soul, who came down to the earth somewhat later than the first, brought with him the impulse that was necessary, and within the Dominican Order deliberations took place between an older and a younger Dominican as to how Aristotelianism might be united with the Christianity which, inspired more by nature and the workings of nature, had prevailed in King Arthur's Round Table.

Then the time came for those individualities who had been teachers in the Dominican Order also to return to the spiritual world. And now the great agreement was reached under the leadership of Michael himself who looking down to the Intelligence that was now on the earth gathered his own around him: spiritual beings belonging to the super-sensible worlds, a great host of elemental spirits, and many, many discarnate human souls who were longing for a renewal of Christianity. It was too early, yet, for this to take effect in the physical world. But a great and mighty super-sensible School was instituted under the leadership of Michael, embracing all those souls in whom the impulses of paganism still echoed on but who were nevertheless longing for Christianity, and those souls who had already lived on the earth during the early centuries of Christendom and who bore Christianity within them in the form it had then assumed. A Michael host gathered together in super-sensible realms, receiving in the spiritual world the teachings which had been imparted by the Michael Teachers in the old Alexander time, in the time of the Grail tradition and which had also taken effect in impulses like that going out from Arthur's Round Table.

Christian souls of every type and quality felt drawn to this Michael-community where, on the one side, deeply significant teaching was imparted concerning the ancient Mysteries and the spiritual impulses at work in olden days, while, on the other, a vista was opened into the future when' in the last third of the 19th century, Michael would again be working on earth and when all the teachings given forth in this heavenly School under Michael's own leadership in the 15th and 16th centuries, were to be carried down to the earth.

If you seek for the souls who gathered around this School of Michael at that time, preparing for the later period on earth, you will find among them very many who now feel the urge to come to the Anthroposophical Movement. Karma has so guided these souls that in the life between death and a new birth at that time they thronged around Michael, preparing to carry down a Cosmic Christianity again to the earth.

The fact that the karma of very many of the souls who have come into the Anthroposophical Movement with real sincerity is connected with these preliminary conditions and antecedents, makes the Anthroposophical Movement into the true Michael Movement, the Movement that is predestined to bring about the renewal of Christianity. This lies in the karma of the Anthroposophical Movement. It lies, too, in the karma of many individuals who have come with sincerity into that Movement. To carry into the world the Michael Impulse which in this way can be pictured in all its concrete reality, which is betokened by many a sign on the earth today and also comes strikingly to expression in the wonderful play of nature-forces around the ruins of Arthur's castle — this is the task of the Anthroposophical Movement in a very special sense. For in the course of the centuries the Michael Impulse must find its way into the world of men if civilisation is not to perish from the earth.

This was what I wanted to inscribe in your hearts in the lecture for which time was fortunately available today.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Karmic Relationships, August 21, 1924

Nowadays

 

Police Slog Through 40,000 Insipid Party Pics To Find Cause Of Dorm Fire

From a lecture by Rudolf Steiner given July 18, 1923:

"It takes inner work to really penetrate into the spiritual world, and for this kind of work the contemporary, educated world is too lazy.... People believe that these things have to be given to them outwardly, not that they have to work and conquer them inwardly. This indeed is in keeping with what people nowadays want--they want everything to be ready-made for them. As I have mentioned to you already, human beings these days want to put everything on film. They want to make a film of everything so that they can look at everything from the outside. If we want to make progress--real progress, spiritually--we must make sure that no matter what we take up from the world, we will work it through. Therefore, in the future, people will penetrate most deeply into the spiritual world who will as much as possible avoid having everything on film for their comfort. Rather they should choose to think everything through for themselves, to think along, so that when people tell them things about the world they will be participants in the thinking."




Isaiah 6

In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.

Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:

And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.

Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate,

And the LORD have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.

But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.

Abnormal Paths into the Spiritual World and Their Transformation

 

True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation

Lecture 9

Rudolf Steiner, Torquay

August 20, 1924

We began these lectures with an enquiry into our normal dream life and from here we moved on to a consideration of further states of consciousness which enable us to enter into worlds other than the one we inhabit between birth and death. Finally we discussed mediumistic consciousness, the consciousness which man experiences in a somnambulistic condition, for the mediumistic state is always of this nature.

Now both kinds of experience, those of the dream and of somnambulism, are conditions of the soul which are also found in their true form in normal life. It is only when they are intensified that they lead into true or false channels.

Today we will examine our dream life once again. We have seen that when man in normal consciousness passes over from the waking state into sleep, he is subject to dreams and that his astral body registers during the latter state an after-vibration of his experiences in the etheric and physical bodies. Then follow the chaotic, indeed extraordinary dream-experiences which only an Initiate can rightly interpret, because the man who does not penetrate more deeply into the nature of the spiritual world is simply bewildered by these normally chaotic experiences.

But we have also seen how, through exercises in meditation and concentration, the weft of dream life can be interwoven with the woof of higher consciousness. We therefore envisage man transplanted into the chaotic and wondrous world of dream; but he remains fully conscious in this dream life which is as real to him as ordinary life. Then he gains insight into another world where he can accompany the dead in their after-death existence. He feels that a world of much greater reality than our present world envelops him. The question now is: what is the real nature of the world he now contacts? I have already spoken about this, but today I would like to touch upon this question from a different angle.

I described how there once lived on Earth illustrious teachers who did not inhabit physical bodies, but only subtle etheric bodies, and were able therefore to incarnate in the ether surrounding the Earth. They instructed men through Inspiration and laid the foundations of the primordial culture on Earth. When we look back into these ancient times with the appropriate condition of consciousness, we find these primeval spiritual teachers sharing the life of mankind. Then they withdrew to the Moon sphere and today are only to be found in this sphere where they have subjected to their purposes all manner of beings who have never lived on Earth. They live amongst these elementary beings and work upon human beings who have passed through the gates of death, instructing them how to acquit themselves in relation to their karma. These are the Beings with whom we are concerned when we first enter the spiritual world. Just as we cannot ignore society and social relationships in our life on Earth, so we must cooperate with these other Beings in order to attain higher knowledge. And it is with the help of these Moon Beings who were once the primeval teachers of humanity on Earth and the beings whom they have taken into their service, that we investigate the spiritual world immediately adjacent to our own. It is there that we find the key to earlier Earth epochs and to the earlier incarnations of human beings. We can then discover personalities who once lived on Earth and with whom we either had, or had not, karmic connections. In order to illustrate this, I pointed out how, by further developing this level of consciousness, we gradually contact earthly beings such as Brunetto Latini, Dante, Alanus ab Insulis and others who are no longer incarnated on Earth today.

This state of consciousness is therefore an illumination, a translucence of the dream state. In ordinary life the dream state represents, so to speak, only the rudimentary beginnings of this state. Now it is very easy to show the difference between the Initiate and the man living at the ordinary level of consciousness.

Under normal conditions of sleep man's physical and etheric bodies are left behind, whilst his astral body and Ego are outside his body. In the dream state experience is solely the province of the Ego. The occurrences experienced in the dream belong, it is true, to the astral body which is still outside the physical and etheric bodies, but in terms of ordinary consciousness only the Ego can experience the dream.

The Initiate, however, experiences with his Ego and especially with his astral body. The difference, therefore, between the Initiate and the ordinary dreamer is that the latter only experiences with his Ego when he is outside his physical and etheric bodies, whilst the Initiate experiences with his astral body as well.

Now this mode of perception was developed to a high degree, especially in the ancient Mysteries, for the purpose of investigating the super-sensible worlds. It was further developed in a decadent form throughout the Middle Ages and later epochs. In modern times it has virtually disappeared. Isolated individuals, either by spiritual means or through tradition, have always received instruction from the ancient teachers in the Mysteries how to remain fully conscious in ordinary dream life. Individuals have at all times been able to penetrate into these worlds, but the attempt is fraught with danger. When the Initiate with Imaginative Knowledge is immersed in the normal dream world, he immediately has the feeling that he is losing touch with the physical world, that he is losing consciousness and sinking into a void. He feels as if solid ground were slipping from under his feet, as if he were no longer subject to the force of gravity. He experiences a feeling of inner release, a feeling that he is being swept away into a cosmic ocean, that he might easily lose control over himself because he is no longer firmly anchored.

The purpose of the spiritual exercises described in my book, >Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, is to obviate this danger. Whoever undertakes these meditations in the right way will find that he develops “wings” of the soul and that, having overcome gravity, he can now take wing. When the Initiate loses the physical and etheric ground beneath his feet and has not yet developed the “wings” of the astral body and Ego, a dangerous situation arises. Though I express myself figuratively you will understand my meaning. The dangers are real enough. If we prepare ourselves assiduously for the world we enter as a result of these exercises, all possibility of danger is excluded. We can gradually participate in these worlds just as we participate in the physical world through our physical and etheric bodies.

This was more or less the condition of man in earliest times. Today we have to achieve this condition through the practice of spiritual exercises. The make-up of primordial man was such that, in contrast to our waking consciousness, he enjoyed a natural condition of spiritual vision such as I have described amongst the Chaldeans and a condition that could not be equated with our dream state, but was a form of Imaginative perception. When confronted by another human being a man perceived not only his physical contours, but had a dreamlike impression of the aura around him. It was the true aura, not merely a subjective illusion. In addition to this gift for perceiving the aura of the physical body, he also possessed another faculty—for both are related to each other—which enabled him to perceive the aura of a spiritual being who is not incarnated in a physical body. And then he dreamed the form of the spiritual being.

Note the difference: if, in ancient times, a man looked at his physical counterpart, he imagined in a true dream the aura around him. If he met with a spiritual being, an Angel or an elementary being, he had, from the first, a spiritual perception of the aura and ‘dreamed’ the form belonging to it.

This is how the earliest painters worked, but we are unaware of it today. These painters saw the spiritual beings and ‘dreamed’ the corresponding forms. They depicted the Beings of the hierarchy of the Angels almost in the likeness of human beings, the Archangels with unsubstantial bodies, but with clearly defined wings and head; and the Archai solely with a winged head because this was the form they ‘dreamed.’ These insights were as natural to men of ancient times as it is natural to us today to see another's physical features. Since man has gradually lost his clairvoyance, he must reacquire it through spiritual training. But as clairvoyance was natural to primitive man, and relatively easy to regain through spiritual training, it has been the subject of extensive investigation over the years. There has always been an active interest in the world ruled by the Moon Beings and the Initiates of the ancient Mysteries, who were the true investigators, have much to say of this world, of their encounter with the dead, of the investigation into the Moon sphere and how the world appears from the perspective of the Moon sphere.

Copernicus established his heliocentric system from the point of view of the terrestrial consciousness only. The old Ptolemaic system is not erroneous; seen from the perspective of the consciousness of the Moon sphere its findings are correct. Now it is a characteristic of these investigators, i.e. the Initiates of the Moon sphere, that their activities are restricted to that sphere.

It is common knowledge to all of you that the present Anthroposophical Society was formerly a part of the Theosophical Society. The Theosophical Society which is similar to many societies of a kindred nature that have been founded in the course of recent years, has accumulated an abundant literature. If you refer to this literature you will find—whether rightly or wrongly is immaterial for the moment—that it describes the world of which I am now speaking, the Moon sphere, the world that we investigate in conjunction with the Moon Beings. When it was proposed that I should work in the Theosophical Society it had important implications for me—although I was faced with certain difficulties at first, for in the Theosophical Society I found investigations and a literature which were limited solely to this Moon sphere. Undoubtedly this material contains much that is incorrect, but much that is highly important and unique, especially in the writings of H. P. Blavatsky. But everything to be found in the writings of H. P. Blavatsky is determined by her association with the Moon sphere and her relationship with Initiates who elected to stay behind in this Moon sphere as an act of sacrifice.

I can assure you that I have come to know many of these Initiates and how such spirits penetrate into the Moon sphere but are indifferent to man's desire to develop further.

When I wrote my book, Occult Science—an Outline, in the years between 1906 and 1909, I described the Earth in its earlier incarnations of Moon, Sun and Saturn. [See Chapter IV: Man and the Evolution of the World.] My description did not end with the Moon incarnation; I traced the Earth incarnation as far back as the Saturn incarnation, whereas all the Initiates who spoke of these matters concluded their account between Moon and Sun; in reality, they traced the Earth incarnation only as far back as to the Moon sphere. Any suggestion that they should look back to still earlier incarnations of the Earth was met with indifference, sometimes even with a sense of disquiet. They declared this to be impossible, for the path was blocked by an insuperable barrier. It was of course, most important and not without interest to understand the reason for this. It soon became apparent on closer acquaintance that these Initiates had an aversion, an antipathy to the modern scientific outlook. When these Initiates were introduced to the ideas of Darwin, Haeckel and their followers they became most indignant and regarded them as childish and stupid and refused to have any truck with them. They were less antipathetic to the ideas of Goethe at first, but ultimately they found that he too spoke the language of the modern scientist and then they dismissed the whole affair.

In short, one could not appeal to the Initiates with such ideas. And it was in the years 1906 to 1909 when I first steeped myself in modern scientific ideas in order to impregnate them with Imaginations that I found it possible to penetrate to the Sun and Saturn spheres. I did not use these scientific concepts as a method of cognition after the fashion of Haeckel or Huxley, but as an inner motivation in order to overcome the limitations to which the Initiates were subject at a time when the modern scientific outlook did not yet exist and when therefore one could achieve higher consciousness only by impregnating the dream-world with Imaginations. In writing my Occult Science I attempted to imbue with inner meaning the fully conscious scientific outlook of Huxley and others which normally is only associated with the external world, and to impregnate the Imaginative world with it. Then it was possible to understand this whole sequence of Saturn, Sun and Moon and to investigate on Earth the old Initiate-knowledge.

I am describing this path to knowledge in order that you may understand how these things arise. You may perhaps say that this is a personal interpretation. But in this case the personal element is, in fact, wholly objective. The criticism directed against my book Occult Science is that it is written like a mathematical text-book, that I sought to avoid subjective interpretation and that I described with mathematical detachment the whole path of development I have been discussing. None the less this path is precisely as I have described it. Its origin lay in the circumstance that the modality of thought which has existed since the time of Copernicus and Galileo and which was enriched by Goethe was combined with the same disposition of soul that is normally present in Imagination. Thus it was possible to trace back this sphere that had always been accessible to the Initiates, to its origin in Saturn.

From this example you will appreciate perhaps how important it is to approach these matters not in a vague, haphazard fashion, but with clear and conscious deliberation, to introduce a note of caution where thoughtlessness so easily takes over. Under normal conditions the dream life is in contact with the Ego only, but here we have an example where it contacts the astral body also.

To the question: what is the difference between modern natural science and the information I have given in Occult Science? I would reply: the modern scientist can only appeal to the Ego and begins to dream the moment he surrenders his Ego, whilst I was able to take over into the dream life the concepts of natural science, to direct the astral body into the worlds I had to describe.

This is a path which can be described to you exactly and will serve as an example to indicate perhaps more precisely how the true paths differ from the false.

The condition diametrically opposed to the dream state is that of somnambulism and mediumism. The dreamer lives wholly in his Ego and astral body. Even though he has no conscious perceptions in the astral body, he nevertheless lives within it. He lives wholly in his Ego and astral body outside his physical and etheric bodies. He is thrust down into, immersed in his own being, and his own being is then affiliated to other worlds. Thus the dreamer is submerged, so to speak, in his own being and hence is immersed in the Cosmos and, to a certain extent also in his physical organism.

The precise opposite is the case with the medium and somnambulist. Man is only in a mediumistic or somnambulistic condition when his Ego and astral body are outside his physical and etheric bodies; but in this case, as I have pointed out, his Ego and astral body are possessed by an alien being.

Thus we have the medium or somnambulist with his physical being, but the Ego and astral body are outside the physical and etheric bodies. The Ego and astral body are suppressed, for another being takes them over. Consequently the medium cannot influence the physical and etheric bodies in the right way. Even when we are in dreamless sleep, for instance, we exert an effect upon the physical and etheric bodies. In waking life we permeate our physical and etheric bodies from within; in sleep we protect them from incursions from without.

This no longer applies to the somnambulist. The medium or somnambulist has no control over his physical and etheric bodies; they are, so to speak, deserted territory.

When a man is endowed with the constitution of soul that is normal for our time, it is the forces of the plants and minerals alone that have an influence upon his physical and etheric bodies. If the forces of the minerals, i.e. of the mineral Earth, did not influence our physical body, we should be unable to walk or move around, because we are dependent upon these forces. It is permissible to share the world of the mineral forces; that is the normal condition, but they must not enter into the etheric body.

The same applies to the plants. It is permissible for the forces of the plants still to work to a certain extent upon the etheric body, although not too strongly. But the forces that stimulate sensation in the animal and the forces of another human being should no longer be permitted to influence the physical body of man, and especially his etheric body. Because the physical and etheric bodies of the medium or somnambulist are deserted, the animal and terrestrial human forces work upon the medium or somnambulist. The physical and etheric bodies become influenced by suggestion. Just as thought passes from the dream into the environment, so in this case the will is detached from the human being and merges into the environment. We can suggest to the medium or somnambulist that he should stand up and walk; if we offer him a potato we can suggest that it is a tasty pear and so on. As human beings when we suggestionize the medium or somnambulist we make direct contact with the physical body, and hence with the etheric body. The medium and somnambulist bear within them in their etheric body their physical environment which should be reflected only in the physical body, as is the case with normal man. Normal man therefore surrenders himself in a dreamlike state to his inner spiritual world, the medium to the external world of nature.

Now mediumism or somnambulism is a normal condition in so far as the condition itself is normal. For the ability to move about, to seize hold of objects, to be able to perform any kind of external action is a magico-somnambulistic achievement on the part of everyone. But this activity must be limited to the physical body; it must not find its way into the etheric body, otherwise the normal passes over into the abnormal.

And so the dreamer lives entirely within his own being; the medium or somnambulist is outside his being. The physical and etheric bodies of the medium or somnambulist function somewhat after the fashion of automata and we can work upon them because his own Ego and astral body fail to provide for them. Consequently, just as in the dreamer an inner spiritual world is created, so in the medium or somnambulist there comes into being a union with the external world of nature, with the world of form and its origin, with all that is perceptible and all that is related to space and time.

When we sink down into the world of dream, we are immersed in the formless, in that which is in a state of constant transformation. When we penetrate with our physical and etheric bodies into the world where the somnambulist or medium is exercising his will under the influence of suggestion, everything is sharply defined; all that supervenes as the result of external influence is carried out with extraordinary precision.

This world is the exact antithesis of the normal world of dream; in the somnambulist it is a dream activity, a natural creation externalized. It is dreaming in action, activity in a dreamlike state, in place of dreaming in inner experience only.

From the standpoint of Initiation this antithesis is most interesting and significant. When the Initiate sinks down into the world of dreams in order to permeate it with Imaginations he meets with difficulties. I have already spoken of this. He feels that he is no longer subject to gravity, that he no longer has firm ground beneath his feet. When the Initiate enters into this world he must gain access to it consciously, whilst the somnambulist finds his way into it unconsciously—he feels that he may at any moment lose consciousness. He is always faced with this possibility, and he must take himself firmly in hand so that he maintains full consciousness. If, as Initiates, we penetrate more deeply into this world, we must proceed here as sensibly and intelligently as normal beings in the visible and tangible world. The Initiate must not betray the fact that, whilst he is living a normal life, he is at the same time living with full consciousness in a spiritual world. For were he to imagine for a single moment that he was detached from the physical world, he would begin to give himself airs and his fellow men would think him rather odd. And they would say: what madman is this! This may happen if he does not keep a tight hold on himself in order to preserve full consciousness as he passes through the spiritual world which is omnipresent just as the sensible world is omnipresent.

This opens up a sphere that has not been dealt with by the Theosophical Society, but which the “big guns” among the natural scientists have seized upon, namely, the sphere of psychical research. These researches are carried out by men with a scientific background and of limited potentialities who undertake statistical surveys and who experiment with mediums in order to ascertain the nature of the spiritual world. In all kinds of societies, and from different points of view, attempts are now being made to investigate objectively what processes are involved when a man moves his limbs or reacts, not with his normal consciousness, but with a diminished or totally obliterated consciousness, at a time when other beings have taken possession of his soul. The reactions of those whose consciousness has been damped down in this way are thus recorded.

The suggestion has even been made by enthusiasts for this kind of investigation that I, together with the fruits of my investigations, should put myself at their disposal in their laboratories in order that they may be able to investigate objectively the phenomena of the inner world. This is about as sensible as if someone were to come along and say: I understand nothing about mathematics so I cannot say whether the statements of mathematicians are true or false. The best thing for him to do would be to come to me in my psychical laboratory and I will make experiments with him to show whether he is a great mathematician or not.—That is approximately the situation. I am here speaking of a field of investigation at the present time in which no real attempt is being made to penetrate to the inner being of man, but simply to investigate somnambulism and mediumism from outside by methods that are a caricature of the scientific method. For if people really penetrated to the inner being of man they would realize that in mediumism and somnambulism they are faced by the external vehicle, an automaton consisting of physical and etheric bodies; that they are not investigating the spiritual reality, but that what they wish to investigate has deserted the external vehicle. They simply refuse to look into the more subtle aspects of the spiritual world. They often want to perceive the spiritual, not only through inner experience, but also in visible and tangible form.

This approach sometimes assumes other forms as, for example, in the Theosophical Society, at the very time when I had already described this path. They were looking for the spiritual figure of Christ in a physical body. They wanted to find a direct manifestation of the spiritual in the external world.

We must accept the physical world as it is and seek the spiritual where it really exists—in the physical world of course, but essentially in the spiritual spheres that permeate the physical world.

Here lies yet another region. Man in a healthy state feels impelled to bridge the gap between the region of inner experience and external perception, between the chaotic world of the dreamer and the abnormal world of the medium and somnambulist. Art is born of the union of these two worlds and their mutual fructification. For in art the external form is imbued with spirit and the spiritual content is clothed in external form.

Whilst the Theosophical Society was busy proclaiming an ordinary human being to be a spiritual entity, we in the Anthroposophical Society were impelled to direct the occult stream into art. The Mystery Plays and Eurythmy were born, and the art of Speech Formation was developed. [See list of literature] These and similar developments in the Anthroposophical Society were the fruits of the impulse to bridge the gap between the spiritual and the physical, so that consciousness bridges the chaotic world of dream and the chaotic world of the medium or somnambulist. In art these two worlds are consciously merged.

Some day this will be understood. People will understand the purpose of our endeavours when Speech Formation, as practised by Frau Marie Steiner, shall be restored to the level it once enjoyed when men were still instinctively spiritual. For them rhythm and measure in speech were more important than empty, abstract diction. These must be revived again. And Eurythmy restores to us again man unfolding before us through movement, man as he really is as a being of soul and spirit. This is what we learn from Eurythmy.

In art, therefore, we have had first of all to build a bridge from the world in which the dreamer wanders aimlessly to the world in which the medium or somnambulist blindly stumbles around. In our present materialistic age the dreamer is left to his solitary reflections and knows nothing of configurations and material forms which express and reveal the spiritual. And the somnambulist lives his life caring little whether he enjoys a medium's fame or whether he invents theories of an ideal State like the Bolshevists and, like the medium, projects all kinds of manifestations into the world around. Both dreamer and somnambulist share the life of the contemporary world without the slightest suspicion of the existence of the spiritual.

It is essential to find once again the bridge leading from the spirit into matter and from matter to the spirit. In the sphere of art we must first build this bridge so that we no longer stumble and drift along in a semi-conscious state, but develop a sense for art through spiritual movements which are not of the normal kind. Thus Eurythmy has its true, inner source in an impulse arising out of Initiation and all that we practise in the art of Speech Formation stems from the same source. And when the forthcoming Course on Dramatic Art¹ is held at Dornach we shall try to restore once again the spiritual image of dramatic art. For a long time attention has been focussed on how to present the actor on the stage with a maximum of realism. In the nineties discussions on this subject were simply comic. The question was discussed—and naturalism finally won the day—whether Schiller's characters should declaim their heroic lines with their hands in their trouser pockets because that was the contemporary fashion. There is every reason therefore for finding the right way to explore the spiritual world. It is a sound principle to follow the path of art.

It is most important to transcend the ancient Initiation-Science that was steeped in the Moon mysteries and everything pertaining to them and to develop that inner condition of soul that can only be reached when the achievements of natural science—I am referring in this context to the intellectual conquests of natural science—can be used to fructify the occult knowledge of the Initiate. On the other hand, it is equally important to make a special field of research the confused, dilettante experiments which are undertaken in order to ascertain what takes place in the ectoplasmic forms when, in trance condition, the somnambulist or medium is possessed by elementary beings. For these two paths are really one and the same, namely, the emergence from within the dream into conscious dreaming and the conscious apprehension of the external world which natural science knows only in its mineral properties—these, so-called psychical research proposes to explore in its dilettante fashion. Since we live in a scientific age it is important to pursue this path of spiritual investigation and also to explore spiritually that other realm which is the polar opposite of the world of dreams.

The somnambulist or medium produces phenomena to which we are not accustomed in ordinary life. His handwriting, movements, speech and sense of taste are not those of the normal man because his astral body and Ego are outside the physical and etheric bodies and we are dealing with a physical and etheric body which are deserted and are given up to the influence of the Cosmos. We are confronted with physical and etheric manifestations which do not reflect the normal workings of nature, but which proceed from the spiritual world. For after all it is immaterial whether we suggestionize the medium or whether the medium is subject to some stellar, climatic or metallic influence which he assimilates into his etheric body.

We must bear in mind that the vehicles of the medium are at the service of the spiritual for magical ends. We cannot study these manifestations without knowledge of the spiritual as the Society for Psychical Research would like to do by means of external experiments. We must look into their spiritual relationship. We must observe the phenomena produced by the medium or somnambulist and the spiritual basis behind them.

All these phenomena manifested through the medium or somnambulist are associated with other mediumistic phenomena. When in trance condition a medium performs some act under human or cosmic influence, i.e. when a physical and etheric body perform some act, then this is temporarily the same as the process which takes place, though determined by other factors, in the poisonous plants which are the source of disease in man. It is only the external, transient mask of disease that is revealed in the mediumistic, somnambulistic state. From a certain point of view—and we shall have to discuss this in greater detail in the course of the next lectures—we can see in the phenomena of mediumism and somnambulism (there is no necessity to do so, but it is always possible) what is happening in the person who is ill, because his Ego and astral body have withdrawn in some abnormal way from an organ, or from the whole organism, and have been replaced by other spiritual influences.

Since men were aware of this relationship in ancient times the Mysteries were always associated with medicine. And because people were not so inquisitive as today, they never felt the need to be interested in mediums and somnambulists, for they were familiar with their activities just as they were familiar with the conditions of disease. They approached these matters more from the medical point of view. It is a standpoint that we must acquire once again.

And the other path which approaches the spiritual through natural phenomena, through natural science, in dilettante fashion must be pursued in the right way. All phenomena and particularly everything that is expressed through the pathological states of men and animals must be reviewed again in the right perspective. Only then shall we be in a position to investigate the phenomena which the Society for Psychical Research would like to explore.

And this field of investigation has now been opened up by the Anthroposophical Society. We have been able to study pathological phenomena in such a way that through them the door to the spiritual world has been opened. This has become possible because Dr. Ita Wegman and I endeavoured to develop along the right lines this field of investigation that had been ignored by psychical research; and also because Ita Wegman possesses not only the knowledge of a qualified doctor, but also those intuitive therapeutic gifts which lead directly from observation of the clinical picture to spiritual insight and thence to genuine therapy.

Here, then, lies the path that must be followed in order to explore the region that I have indicated. Through our efforts we hope to develop a genuine Initiation-medicine, which itself is an Initiation-natural science. Thus the true path, in contradistinction to the many false paths, will be demonstrated to all. And the first volume of the book written by Dr. Wegman and myself will indicate the steps that must be undertaken. [See list of literature]

In this connection it would be well to point out perhaps that the differences between the true and false paths can best be illustrated by examples.

I said previously that a path to art must be found that will link once again the sphere of the spiritual with the sphere of natural science. I must now add that it appears to inhere in the conditions of modern civilization that we shall only find the right path to art when we have first explored the right path in relation to the investigation of natural phenomena, the path of spiritual science. For in the sphere of art today mankind is so far removed from building the bridge of which I have spoken that it can only be persuaded of the active permeation of art by the spirit when it can be finally convinced of the activity of the spiritual that can be seen especially in the genesis of the pathological; when there is clear evidence of how the spirit operates and reveals itself in matter. When mankind becomes aware of the activity of the spiritual in the kingdom of nature, then it may perhaps be possible to arouse sufficient wholehearted enthusiasm for the idea that the spiritual can be presented directly to the world in the form of works of art.

I will speak further on these matters tomorrow.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive August 20, 1924

Anthroposophy as a resalting of the Earth : The alchemy of the Logos : Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus

 

Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha

Lecture 7 of 17

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin

March 20, 1917

I should like today to introduce a sort of historical survey into this series of lectures, not so much for the purpose of making this an historical lecture, as of drawing attention to various matters concerning the Spiritual attitude of the present day, by which we are immediately surrounded.

In 1775 a very remarkable book appeared in Lyons, which even as early as the year 1782, found its way into certain circles of German Spiritual life, and the effects of which were much greater than is generally supposed. Above all, the result was such that it had to be more or less suppressed by that which was the principal impulse of the nineteenth century. This book is of the very greatest interest, more especially to those who in the interests of Spiritual Science wish to inform themselves as to what happened from the earliest times down to our own — I allude to Concerning Error and Truth, by Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (b. 18th January, 1743; d. 23rd October, 1803.). Anyone taking up this book today, whether in its own original language or in the careful German edition by Matthias Claudius, with its beautiful preface, — will find it extremely difficult to understand. Matthias Claudius himself admits this, even at the end of the eighteenth century. In his fine preface, he says: ‘Most people will not understand this book; I do not understand it myself. But what it contains has sunk so deeply into my heart, that I think it must be admitted into the widest circles.’ Least of all will those be able to make anything of this book whose knowledge is based upon those physical, chemical, and similar conceptions of the world taught today in the schools or acquired as ordinary education, and who have not even a smattering of real knowledge of these things. Neither will those understand this book, who base their present views of the times — we will not use the word ‘Politics’ — on what they glean from the ordinary newspaper, or from what is reflected from those newspapers into the magazines of the day. There are several reasons why I should refer to this book today, after the two public lectures I gave last week. In these I spoke of ‘The nature and the principles of man,’ and ‘The connection between the human soul and the human body,’ and referred to the way in which we shall some day speak of those connections, when the knowledge which can now be gained by Natural Science but cannot be utilised, is viewed in the right way. One who has a thorough knowledge of Spiritual Science cannot but be convinced that when the knowledge of Natural Science is rightly appreciated, it will no longer be possible to speak today, of the relation of the life of imagination, of feeling and of will to the human organism. It may be that in these two lectures a beginning has been made of what must come, though it may perhaps be postponed for a long time by the great resistance made in the external world, not by science but by the scientists themselves. However long a time it may take, it must eventually come about that people win consider the relation between man's soul and body in the manner outlined in those two lectures.

In those two lectures I spoke of these things as it is necessary to speak of them in the year 1917; I mean, taking all the investigations of Natural Science and other experiences of man into consideration. One could not have spoken in that way in the eighteenth century, for example. Such things would have been spoken of in a very different way at that time. The enormous significance of the fact which I have repeatedly alluded to is not sufficiently realised — that somewhere about the end of the first third of the nineteenth century, in the thirties or forties, a crisis of exceptional magnitude occurred in the development of European humanity, from the Spiritual aspect. I have often mentioned this, saying that the tide of materialism then reached its height. I have also frequently drawn attention to the frivolous way in which our own time is often called ‘period of transition.’ Of course, every time is a period of transition, and it is absolutely correct to say so of our own. The point, however, is not so much to declare that any particular time is a period of transition as to establish in what this transition consists. One will then certainly come upon certain turning-points which represent deep incisive moments of transition in the development of man; and one such, although it passes unnoticed today, occurred at the time mentioned. Hence it is easy to understand that we must speak in quite a different way about the riddles with which man is confronted now; we must use quite different expressions and study the subject from quite a different aspect than would have been the case in the eighteenth century. Perhaps no man in the eighteenth century spoke with such intensity as de Saint-Martin, calling the attention of the Natural Science of that day to problems similar to those we discuss here. In all that he said, de Saint-Martin stood in the fading light of the old age, and not as we do, in the glimmering light of a new age. Unless we consider the point of view of which I am about to speak, it might seem a matter of indifference whether one studied de Saint-Martin at all, whether one absorbed or did not absorb the peculiar form of ideas aroused in him by Jacob Böhme. Unless a very different, much more significant standpoint were in question, to which I am about to allude today, this might indeed be a matter of indifference.

Let us quote a concrete case. In endeavouring to point out the errors into which man may fall in his philosophy of life as well as to point out the road to truth, de Saint-Martin, in his book: Des erreurs et de la virite — uses in the most practical and objective way the ideas and conceptions current in certain circles up to and into the eighteenth century. By the way he writes it can be seen that he is thoroughly accustomed to make use of them. We find, for instance, that in trying to explain the relation of man to the whole cosmos and to ethical life, de Saint-Martin employs the three principal ideas which play so great a part with Jacob Böhme and Paracelsus: Mercury, Sulphur and Salt, the three chief conceptions by which people tried at that time to grasp the sense world and also man. In these three elements it was sought to find the key to the understanding of external nature and of man. Modern man, speaking in the sense of the Natural Science of today, (as one must and should speak) can no longer use these expressions in the same way; for it is now quite impossible to think in the same way of Mercury, Sulphur and Salt, as did a man in the eighteenth century. In speaking of these, a three-fold nature was in view, which a man of the present day, could only represent according to Natural Science by dividing man as I have done, into the metabolic man, the rhythmic man, and the nerve-man, of which three the whole man is composed; for every part of him belongs to these three. If one supposes that any one part does not belong to these three, as one might of the bones, the discrepancy would only be apparent, not real. A man of the eighteenth century knew that the whole complexity of a human being could be understood if one acquired a comprehensive grasp of Mercury, Sulphur and Salt. Now of course, when the ordinary man speaks of salt today, he refers to the white substance he has on his dinner table, or if he be a chemist, to the salts with which he works in his laboratory. In speaking of sulphur the ordinary man thinks of matches and the chemist thinks of all the many experiments he has tried in his retort for the transmutation of sulphur. As to mercury, one at once thinks of quicksilver and so on.

The men of the eighteenth century did not think in this way. Indeed it is today very difficult to imagine what lived in the souls of that time when they spoke of ‘Mercury, Sulphur and Salt.’ De Saint-Martin put the question to himself in his own way; Into what parts must I divide man, if I take his body as image of his soul? And he replied: First I must consider in man the instruments or organs of his thought. (De Saint-Martin puts this rather differently but we must translate a little, for the exposition would otherwise be too lengthy). I must first study man with respect to the organ of his head; what is the principal thing therein? What comes into consideration there? What is the really active agent in the head? (or as we today should say: in the nervous system? ) He replies: Salt. And by this he does not understand the white table salt, nor what the chemist understands by salt, but the totality of forces at work in the human head, when a man forms ideas. Everything in the nature of the external working of salt, he only regards as manifestation, as an external manifestation of the same forces as work in the human head. He then asks: What is the element that chiefly works in the human breast? According to the division of man I gave in the lecture last Thursday we should put the question thus: What works in the Breathing-Man? De Saint-Martin replies, Sulphur. So that according to him, everything connected with the functions of the chest is governed by those actions which have their origin in Sulphur, or that which is of the nature of Sulphur. He then goes on to ask: What is at work in the rest of man? (We today should say: in the metabolic man.) He replies: There Mercury works. Thus, in his own way, does de Saint-Martin compose the whole human being. By the way he throws things together, from time to time, disjointedly, we can see that he stands in the fading evening twilight of that whole system of thought. On the other hand we see that standing thus in the twilight, he was still able to grasp an enormous number of gigantic truths which could still be understood then, but are now lost. These he expressed by making use of the three conceptions of Mercury, Sulphur and Salt. Thus, in the book Des erreurs et de la verite there is a very fine treatise (which to the modern physicist is of course utter nonsense) on thunder-storms, on thunder and lightning; in which he shows how on the one hand one may use Mercury, Sulphur and Salt to explain the bodily nature of man, and on the other to explain atmospherical disturbances; at one time they are working together within man, at another time in the world outside. In man they engender what may perhaps spring up as a thought or an impulse of will, while outside in the world the same elements engender, for instance, lightning and thunder. As we have said, what is thus expounded by de Saint-Martin could well be understood in the eighteenth century; it belonged to the mode of thought of that time. To the present-day physicist it would be utter nonsense. But precisely as to thunder and lightning, there is a flaw in modern physics, which is obliged to be rather easy-going with respect to these. It teaches that when the clouds in close vicinity — the one charged with positive, and the other with negative electricity — discharge their electricity, a thunderstorm is the result. Any school boy a little brighter than his fellows would notice that before the teacher starts making electrical experiments, he carefully wipes any traces of damp from the instruments, for nothing can be done with electricity where damp is present. He may ask the teacher: ‘Are not clouds damp? How then can electricity be at work in these, as you say?’ The teacher probably replies; ‘You are a silly boy, you don't understand!’ He would hardly be able to give any other answer today. De Saint-Martin tried to explain how through the Salt in the air, Mercury and Sulphur may be connected in a special way, in a similar way to that in which saltpetre and sulphur are united in gunpowder through charcoal; so through a particular transmutation of the elements of Mercury and Sulphur by means of Salt, explosions can occur. This exposition, considering the laws of that time, is extraordinarily clever. I cannot now go into it more deeply; let us rather consider the question more historically. De Saint-Martin particularly proves in a very fine way that in certain properties of the clouds which lead to thunderstorms, one can verify the relation of lightning to salt, or what he called salt. In short, he fights in his own way the materialism which was then beginning to dawn, for he had behind him the basis of a traditional wisdom, which found in him an industrious worker. In so doing he strove to find an explanation of the world in general, and after having made the above-mentioned explanations in which he makes use of the elements, he passes on to an explanation of the origin of the earth. In this he is not so foolish as those born after him, who believe in a mist or nebula as the origin of all things and who think they can find the beginning of the world by means of physical conceptions. He starts straight away by using his imagination, whereby to explain the origin of the world. In the afore-mentioned book when he speaks on this subject we find a wonderful wealth of imaginative ideas, of true imaginations, which, like his physical ideas, can only be understood in connection with the age in which he lived. We could not make use of them today, but they show that beyond a given point he tried to grasp things by means of imaginative cognition. Then, having tried this, he passes on to the comprehension of the historical life of man. Here, he tries to establish how that can only be understood by allowing for the real Spiritual impulses from the Spiritual world which from time to time found their way into the physical plane. He then tries to apply all this to the deeper nature of man, by showing how what the Bible story relates of the Fall in Paradise, rests, according to his imaginative cognition, on definite facts, how man passed over from an original condition into his existing one. He then tries to understand the historical phenomena of his own time and of all the time embraced by history, in the light of the fall from Spiritual life into matter. I am not upholding this, but it must be mentioned; naturally I do not wish to put the doctrine of de Saint-Martin in the place of Spiritual Science, or our Anthroposophy: I am only relating history, to show how far he was in advance of his times. As one reads the book Des erreurs et de la virite, chapter after chapter, we come upon one notable remark. One sees that he speaks from a rich fullness of knowledge, and that what he gives out is but the outer rind of the knowledge that lives in his soul. This is indicated in various passages in which he says somewhat as follows: ‘If I were to go deeper into this, I should be giving out truths that I may not express.’ In one place he even goes so far as to say: ‘If I were to say all that could be said on this subject, I should have to give out certain truths which, as far as most people are concerned, are better left veiled in the profoundest darkness of night.’ A true Spiritual Scientist can read a great deal between the lines in these passages; he knows why these remarks appear at certain parts of certain chapters. There are certain things which cannot be spoken of by means of assumption. It will only be possible to speak of such things when the impulses given by Spiritual Science have grown into moral, ethical impulses, — when men have acquired a certain lofty-mindedness through Spiritual Science, which will enable them to speak in a different way about certain questions than can be done in an age in which such remarkable scientific figures as those of Freud and Konsirt live and move. But the day will come when it will be possible.

In the last third of his book de Saint-Martin passes on to certain political subjects. It is hardly possible at the present day to do more than indicate how the mode of thought here employed by him can be brought into relation with the way men ‘think’ as they call it, today; that is a forbidden subject. I can only say that his whole attitude throughout the last third of his book is very remarkable. If we read this chapter today — we must do so while bearing clearly in mind that the book was published in 1775, and that the French Revolution took place subsequently. This chapter must be thought of in connection with the French Revolution, one must read a great deal between the lines in this particular chapter. De Saint-Martin proceeds as an occultist, I might say. Anyone lacking the organ of perception for the profound impulses to be found in this chapter, would probably be quite satisfied with its introduction. For here de Saint-Martin says: ‘Let no one connected with the ruling powers of the earth, or connected in any way with the government, believe that I am trying to stand well with him. I am the friend of all and everyone.’ After having thus excused himself, he goes on to say things, compared with which Rousseau's remarks are mere child's play. But I cannot say any more about this.

In short, we must realise the deep incisive significance of this man, who had a school behind him, and without whom Herder, Goethe, Schiller and the German Romanticists cannot be imagined, as he himself cannot be thought of without Jacob Böhme. And yet, when one reads de Saint-Martin to day, allowing oneself to be influenced by what he says, one feels, as I have just said: that there would not be the smallest use in putting what one has to say to the public in the form in which de Saint-Martin put it. That would be no use now, when I try to give a picture of the world, as I did in the last two public lectures and shall again in the next, which must on the one side be correct on the basis of Spiritual Science, and on the other fully justified according to the most minute discoveries of Natural Science today. The mode of forming ideas which de Saint-Martin employed is no longer suited to the way in which men must think today, nor to the way in which they must, and rightly so, formulate their thoughts. Just as in travelling, when we pass from the domain of one language into that of another, in that moment we can no longer speak the language of the first, so would it be foolish today to use the form of thought of de Saint-Martin; more especially would it be foolish, because that mighty dividing line in Spiritual evolution which falls in the year 1842 (in the first third of the nineteenth century) lies between us.

By this you see, my dear friends, that it is possible in the Spiritual development of man, for a certain mode of thought to pass into the twilight. But in studying de Saint-Martin, one does not feel that what he says has an been exhausted. On the contrary one feels that there is in his works an enormous amount of still undiscovered wisdom, and that much might still be brought out of it. Yet on the other hand it was necessary in the Spiritual development of mankind that that way of thinking should cease, and another way of thinking should begin. This had to be. In the former the external world was only just beginning, it had only then reached its most external phases of materialism, Therefore we can only rightly understand what really happened, by surveying longer periods of time and applying to greater epochs what Spiritual Science wishes to stimulate in us; for of course what de Saint-Martin gave out at the end of the eighteenth century, being then but in its dawn, subsequently took a different form.

At that time something came to an end on the earth. Not only in a comparatively short time did the ideas ruling Jacob Böhme, Paracelsus, de Saint-Martin and others descend into the twilight, it being impossible to carry them on further; but a very curious change also took place in the manner of feeling. While in de Saint-Martin we see this phenomenon of the twilight of the human mind as regards the study of nature, the same phenomenon can also be traced in another way if we direct our attention to the almost parallel decline of theosophy, to the dimming and damping down of the theosophical philosophy of life.

True, de Saint-Martin is generally called a theosophist; but in speaking of him and describing him, I am thinking rather of a theosophy directed to Natural Science, a more religious form of theosophy then prevalent which was called by that name. Theosophy in the particular form in which it then reached a climax, ruled, I was going to say, in South Germany, though perhaps it would be more accurate to say in Schwabia. There, although it was then already on the decline, it had reached a certain maturity; and among its most prominent followers stand out the figures of Bengel and Ötinger, who were surrounded by many others. I will simply name those whom I know best: Friederick Daniel Schubart; Hahn, the mathematician; Steinhofer; the schoolmaster Hartmann, who had a great influence on Jung Stilling and even a certain influence on Goethe and knew him personally; and Johann Jacob Moser. A goodly number of remarkable minds in comparatively humble circumstances, who did not even form a connected circle, but who all lived at the time when Ötinger's star shone in the firmament. Ötinger lived almost through the whole of the eighteenth century; he was born in l702, and died in l782, as Prelate in Murrhard. A very remarkable personality, in whom was concentrated in a sense, all that the whole circle contained. It was an echo of this Theosophy of the eighteenth century which influenced Richard Rothe, Professor at the University of Heidelberg and other Universities. He wrote a fine preface to a book edited by Carl August Auberlen on the Theosophy of Frederick Christopher Ötinger. In this preface Richard Rothe, who represents a traditional echo of that circle, reminds us in his convinced acceptance of Theosophy, of those great Theosophists just mentioned; while on the other hand we can clearly see in the way he speaks of Ötinger in this preface, that he feels himself standing behind a period of twilight, even as regards those secrets of life with which he as theologist was concerned. The preface was written in 1847. I should like to quote some of it here, that you may see how in Richard Rothe (who was then in Heidelberg) lived one who looked back in thought to Ötinger, and saw in him a man who above all, in his own fashion, strove to decipher the Old and the New Testament; who tried to read them with theosophical understanding of the world. Richard Rothe looked back at that method of reading the Scriptures and compared it with the way he had been taught to read them, and which was then customary. (He only died in the sixties and was himself but an echo).

He compared the then manner of reading the Scriptures with the methods of Bengel, Ötinger, Steinhofer and the mathematician Hahn.

With respect to this Richard Rothe says something very remarkable: ‘Among the men of this school, to which Bengel with his Apokalyptica belongs, Ötinger occupies a foremost place. Not satisfied with the theology of the schools of his day, he thirsted after a richer and fuller and at the same time a purer understanding of Christian truth, The orthodox theology did not suffice him, it seemed to him but shallow; he wanted more than that; not that it asked too much of his faith, but that the deeper spirit within him wanted more than that. He did not object to the super-naturalism of the orthodox theology of his time, but considered rather that the latter did not take the supernatural seriously enough. His innermost soul rebelled against the spiritualism which reduced the realities of the world of Christian faith to mere abstractions, to mere thought-pictures. Hence his fiery zeal against all forms of idealism.’ ... Such a saying might appear strange, but it has to be understood. By idealism the German understands a system which only lives in ideas, whereas Ötinger as well as Rothe, strove for true Spiritual life. True Spirits were they, who pushed history forward, not like what Ranke and others with their pallid notions, have described as the so-called ideas of history. As though it were possible for mere ideas — one really does not know what word to use in speaking reality — possible for mere ideas to wander through history and carry the whole thing on further. The followers of Ötinger wished to put the living in the place of the abstract and dead. Hence Ötinger's fiery zeal against any idealism; hence too his realism, which, although that was not his intention, did actually, in his energetic search for ‘massive’ conceptions, tend towards materialism.

The conceptions he was trying to find were such as really grasped the Spiritual, not merely talking of an ideal archetype at the back of things, but real, solid (massive) thoughts and ideas, such as look for the Spirits behind created things.

Rothe continues: ‘His leaning to nature and Natural Science is intimately connected with this fundamental scientific tendency. The lack of appreciation, the tendency of the idealist to despise the world of Nature, were foreign to him; he felt that behind rude matter there was a very real existence; he was profoundly permeated by the conviction that without the world of sense there could be no real true existence, either divine or creative. This is a startling and new legitimisation of the authority of history, and we see not only in Ötinger but in the earlier contemporaneous Theosophists and especially in the philosophical writings of Jacob Böhme, the original scientific tendency of the time of the Reformation breaking through again, as shown in this thirst after a true understanding of the world of Nature.’ The kind of realism for which Ötinger longed, comes to ‘life in its innermost being in Christianity,’ (so says Richard Rothe) — ‘if transplanted into any other Spiritual movement it must become weaker, more especially as regards its own peculiar doctrine. It is capable of bearing a completely different, richer, Christian world of wonder than that of this idealism to which we have all been accustomed from childhood, which is governed by a fear of believing too strongly in the actuality of Divine things and of taking the word of God too literally. Indeed, this Christian realism demands just such a wonder-world as is unfolded in the doctrine of the Last Things. It cannot therefore, be led astray in its eschatological hopes by the compassionate shaking of the head of those who believe themselves alone to be in the right. For to Christian realism it does not seem possible to arrive at a thoughtful understanding of created things and their history, without clear and definite thinking as to the final result of the development of the world, which is the object and aim of Creation, for only thus can light and meaning come into men's conceptions. This Christian realism does not shrink from the thought of a real, bodily and, therefore, truly living spirit-world, and a real contact of that world with man, even in his present state. The reader admits how true this all seems in the pages of Ötinger.

This refers to a time in which men did not seek for the ideas of the world of nature, but for a living world of Spirit, and indeed Ötinger tried to bring all the treasures of knowledge then accessible to man to his assistance, for the purpose of establishing a living contact with the Spiritual world. What stood behind such a man as this? He was not like a man of the present day, who has above all the task of showing that modern Natural Science must allow itself to be corrected by Spiritual Science, for true knowledge to be attained. Ötinger strove for something different. He strove to prove that the Spiritual world must be contacted in order to attain an understanding of the Bible, of the Scriptures, and especially of the New Testament. Richard Rothe puts it beautifully:

‘In order to understand this, a man must assume that frame of mind (which was that of Ötinger) which admits in its whole consciousness, that, as regards the Holy Scriptures a full, complete and, therefore, real understanding of them is still lacking, that the explanations given by the Churches do not contain it.’ Rothe goes on to say: ‘Perhaps I can best make this clear by relating what has been my own experience for more than thirty years of the Bible and more particularly of the New Testament — and of the words of the Saviour and the Epistles of Paul. The more I study the Scriptures, with the help of the Commentaries, the more I am impressed with a lively sense of their exuberant fulness, not only because of the inexhaustible ocean of feeling which surges through them, but no less by the thoughts contained in the words that I encounter. I stand before them with a key put in my hand by the Church, which has tested it for many a century. I cannot exactly say that it does not fit, still less can I say that it is the right one. It has effected an opening, but only with the help of the power I use in the unlocking. Our traditional exegesis — I do not refer to the neological one — gives me some understanding of the Scriptures, but does not suffice for a full and complete understanding. It is certainly able to draw forth the general content of the thoughts, but cannot give any reason for the peculiar form in which the thoughts appear. It seems to me that there is a blossom flowering above and beyond the exposition given. This remains as an unexplained residue left behind the written word, and this puts the Bible Commentators and those to whom they refer in a very awkward position, however well they may have accomplished their task in other respects. As a matter of fact they have only allowed the Lord and His Apostles to say precisely what the Commentators wish them to say, and this they have done in so clumsy, or perhaps we should say in so wonderful a way that for those who read them, things are made unnecessarily difficult to understand. The very large number of books comprising our exegetic literature deserve a serious reproach, in that they speak with so little clarity and polish concerning such incomparably important things, and such an incomparably important object. Who does not feel that this blame is deserved? The true Bible-reader receives an unequivocal impression that the words are right, just as they are, — that this is no meaningless scroll, from which our commentators must first cut away the wild branches before being able to penetrate the power of the thoughts contained therein. He feels that the accustomed methods of these gentlemen, of sweeping away the dust from these documents on account of their great age before they interpret them, only tends to brush away the imperishable spring-like brilliance which has shone in eternal youth for thousands of years. Let the masters of the Bible commentaries laugh as much as they will, it still remains a fact that there is something written between the lines of the Bible text which, with all their art, they are not able to decipher; yet that is above all what we ought to be able to read, if we wish to understand the altogether peculiar setting in which, in the Holy Scriptures alone, the now familiar thoughts of Divine manifested truth are to be found, in characteristic contra distinction to anything else of the kind. Our interpreters merely point out the figures standing in the foreground of the Scripture pictures; they completely leave out of account the background, with its wonderfully formed mountains in the far distance, and its brilliant dark-blue sky flecked with clouds. Yet from this falls on each one of us that quite unique and magic light which gives illumination, when we have understood what to us is truly an enigma. The peculiar basic thoughts and conceptions which, in the Scriptures, underlie the unexpressed assumptions, are lacking; and at the time there is a lack of soul, of the inner connection of the separate element of the Bible thoughts, which should organically bind them together. No wonder then that there are hundreds of passages in our Bible which thus remain un-interpreted and which are never properly understood, not understood completely in all the minute details of their features. No wonder there are so many passages of which a host of different interpretations have been given, and which have been ceaselessly in dispute for countless ages. No wonder at all; for they are certainly all wrong, because they are all inexact, only approximate, only giving the meaning as a whole, not in detail. We approach the Bible text with the alphabet of our own conceptions of God and the world, in all good faith, as though it was so obvious that it could not be otherwise: we take it, for granted that the Bible Commentator, who, as a silent observer is at the back of all he thinks and writes and illuminates, is of the same opinion. That is, however, an unfortunate illusion, of which we ought to have been cured by experiences long ago. Our key does not unlock, the right key had been lost, and until we find it again our investigations will find no green branch. We lack a fundamental conception of the Bible not expressly given in the text itself, but as long as we make researches without the system which can be found therein and which is not in our schools, the Bible must remain a half-closed book. We should study it with different fundamental conceptions from those we now cultivate as the only ones possible. No matter what these are, or where they are discovered, one thing is very certain from the whole concord of the melody of the Bible in its natural fulness, these conceptions must be more realistic and more “massive.” This is my own individual opinion, and while far from wishing to force it on those to whom it is foreign, I cannot but believe that Ötinger would understand me and assure me it was the same with him. Among all the many protestations that will be raised against me, I can still reckon one, if not many of my contemporaries, who will stand by me in this; I refer to the celebrated Dr. Beek of Tübingen.’

Ötinger hoped to be able to reach an understanding of the Bible on trying to arouse conceptions of a still living nature in the twilight days in which he and de Saint-Martin also lived: he hoped to make these living to himself, that he might enter into a living connection with the Spiritual World, and would then be able to understand the true language of the Bible. His assumption was practically this — that with mere abstract intellectual ideas it was impossible to understand the most important things in the Bible and especially in the New Testament. He believed that one can only hope to understand the Now Testament if one realises that it has proceeded from a direct vision of the Spiritual world itself, that no commentaries or exegesis are necessary; but that above all one ought to learn to read the New Testament. With this object he sought for a Philosophia Sacra. He did not mean this philosophy to be of the pattern of those that came after, but one in which was inscribed what a man may really experience, if he lives in contact with the Spiritual world.

Just as today, we who wish to throw the light of Natural Science on the researches of Spiritual Science, can no longer speak like de Saint-Martin; neither can we speak of the Gospels as did Ötinger or still less like Bengel. The edition of the New Testament brought out by Bengel will still be of use; but for the Apocalyptics of which he thought so much, a man of our day has no use at all. In this, Bengel laid great stress on calculation; he reckoned out the periods of history by this means. One number he held of special importance. This alone of course is sufficient to make the man of modern ideas look upon Bengel as a lunatic, a fantastic or a fool; for according to his reckoning, the year 1836 was to be of special importance in the development of humanity! He made profound calculations! He lived in the first half of the eighteenth century, so that he was a century removed from 1836. He reckoned this out in his own way by considering things historically. But if one goes more deeply, into things and is not so ‘clever’ as the modern mind, one knows that our good Bengel was only six years out in his reckoning. His error was caused by a false rendering of the year of the founding of Rome, and this can easily be proved. What he had meant to arrive at with his calculation was the year 1842, the year we have given for the materialistic crisis. Bengel, the teacher of Ötinger, referred to that profound incision in time; but, because in his search for massive conceptions he went too far and thought too massively, he reckoned that in the course of external history -something very special would take place, something like a last day. It was only the last day of the ancient wisdom

Thus, my dear friends, we see at no very distant date from our own times, the decline of a theosophical age; yet today, if an historian or philosopher writes about these persons at all, he devotes at most a couple of lines to them, and these as a rule tell one very little. None the less these persons had in their day a very far reaching, profound influence. If today anyone tries to disclose the meaning of the second part of Faust and finds it as given in the many commentaries, we cannot be surprised that:

‘He who clings to shallow things alone  Must find his hopes all disappear,  He digs with eager hands for treasure  But only finds the poor earth-worms.’

In this second part of Faust there is an enormous amount of occult wisdom and rendering of occult facts, though expressed in truly German poetic form. All this would be inconceivable if it had not been preceded by that world of which I have given you only the two principal examples. The man of today has no idea of how much was still known of the Spiritual world but a short while ago, comparatively speaking, and of how much of this belief has been shed only in the last few decades. It is certainly extremely important once in a way to fix our attention on these facts, because we, who learn to read the gospels now with the help of what Spiritual Science can give us, are only just beginning to learn over again to read the Scriptures. There is a very remarkable sentence in Ötinger. In his writings we find it quoted over and over again, though never understood. This sentence alone should suffice to make a man who has insight say: Ötinger is one of the greatest spirits of mankind. That sentence is: ‘Die Materie ist das Ende der Wege Gottes.’ (Matter is the end of Gods path). It was only possible for a very highly-developed soul to have given such a definition of matter, corresponding so clearly to what the Spiritual Scientist also knows; such a definition was only possible from one who was in a position to understand how the Divine Spiritual creative-forces work and concentrate to bring about a material structure such as man, who in his form is the expression of an enormous concentration of forces. If you read what takes place at the beginning of the conversation between Capesius and Benedictus in the second Mystery Play, and how the relation of the Macrocosm to man is there developed, which causes Capesius to fall ill, you will be able to form an idea of how these things can be expressed according to our present Spiritual Science, translated into our words. This is the same as Ötinger expressed in his significant saying, which can only be understood when we rediscover it: ‘Matter is the end of God's path.’ Even here it is the case, as in the words of de Saint-Martin, that we can no longer speak in such words today. Anyone using them must be fond of preserving that which today can no longer be understood.

Not only have our conceptions undergone a great transformation, but our feelings too have very greatly changed. Just think of a typical man of modern times, one who is really a practical example of his age, and imagine what his impressions would be were he to take up de Saint-Martin's: Des erreurs et de la liberte and come upon the following sentence. ‘Man is preserved from knowing the principle of his external corporeality; for if he were to become acquainted with it, he could never for very shame look at an uncovered human being.’ In an age in which the culture of the nude is even encouraged on the stage, as is done by the most modern people, one could, of course, make nothing of such a sentence. Yet just think: a great philosopher, de Saint-Martin, understanding the world, tells us that a higher feeling of shame would make one blush to gaze upon a human form — to de Saint-Martin this seemed absolutely comprehensible. You will have observed that I wanted first of all to call your attention today to something extremely significant, which has now disappeared. Besides that, I wanted to call to your notice the fact that at that time a different language was spoken from the one we now speak. We are obliged to speak differently. The possibility of thinking in the way corresponding to that language has vanished. Both in Ötinger and de Saint-Martin we find that things were not thought out to their end; but they could be thought out further. They can be further discussed; though not with a modern thinker. I might go even farther, and say: We need not go into these things today when studying the Riddles of the world, for we must understand ourselves through the conceptions of our own day, not through former ones. For that reason I always lay so much stress on the necessity of connecting all our Spiritual scientific work with modern ideas. It is a remarkable phenomenon, that no matter how much we now try to fall back into those former ideas, yet they are not played out; they show in themselves that a vast deal more could be arrived at by thinking further along those lines. Because we today hold the curious belief that people have always thought just as we do today, we have no conception how closely those conceptions were connected with universal consciousness. The typical man, to whom I have already referred, thinks as follows: ‘I call the white powdered particles in the salt-cellar, salt.’ Now this man is wen aware that salt is called by a different name in different languages, but he assumes that it has always represented what we see it to be today. That, however, is not the case, even the most uneducated peasant in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and much later still, had a much more comprehensive conception of ‘Salt;’ he had a conception of which de Saint-Martin's was but a more concentrated form; he had not the present materialistic idea, and when he spoke of Salt he meant something connected with the Spiritual life. Words were even then not so material as they are today, they did not refer to a direct, separate substance.

Now, read in the Gospels how Christ says to His Disciples: ‘Ye are the salt of the Earth.’ Well now, if these words are read with the present meaning, we do not get the words spoken by Christ, for the word ‘Salt’ was then quite naturally understood as referring to the whole configuration of the soul A man may have a very broad mind on the subject, but that is not enough. To call forth in a man of today a like feeling, ‘Salt’ must be differently translated, This applies to many of the old records, but above all to the Scriptures. Many mistakes have been made in this very respect. So it is not difficult to understand why Ötinger made many historical studies, trying to get at what was concealed behind the value of words, and to get at the right feeling for them. Of course, at the present day a mind like his would be considered mad! He shut himself up in his laboratory, not merely for weeks but for whole months, making alchemical experiments and studying Cabalistic books, simply to find out how the words in a given sentence were to be understood; for all his strivings were directed to the meaning of the words of holy writ.

I have spoken of these things today to show that we must now speak in a different way, for we are standing at the dawn, as they then stood in the evening twilight; and I also want to approach them now from yet another standpoint. I should like to go back to the strange fact that according to the modern view of things, from which Spiritual Science as it develops must set itself free, it would appear useless to enter deeply into the nature of the ideas of the time of Bengel, Ötinger, de Saint-Martin, and others. For when we speak to educated people today we must speak of the metabolic body, of the rhythmic body, of the nervous system; we can no longer speak of the mercurial-body, of the sulphur-body and of the salt-body. For these conceptions, comprehensible to the age of Paracelsus, of Jacob Böhme, de Saint-Martin and Ötinger, would no longer be understood today. And yet it is not without value to study these things — and would not be so even if it were quite impossible to speak to the cultured today through these methods. I am willing to admit that it would not be wise to throw the old ideas of Mercury, Sulphur, and Salt into modern thought; it would not be well to do so, nor right. A man who can feel the pulse of his time would not fall into the error of wishing to restore those old conceptions, as is done in certain so-called occult societies which attach great weight to decorating themselves with old vignettes. Yet, none the less, it is of immense significance to re-acquire the language that is no longer spoken now; for de Saint-Martin, Ötinger, and in more ancient times Paracelsus and Jacob Böhme by no means exhausted it.

Why is this? Yes, why? The men of today no longer speak in that way; that language could fall into disuse and at the most one could study the historical phenomenon of how it was possible for an historic period not to live out its full life. How comes it about that there is still something remaining which might be carried further, but which has yet come to a standstill? How does this come about? What is the underlying cause? It might well be that if we could learn all there is to be learnt, even without including these conceptions, nobody would be able to understand us! Here, however, something comes to light which is of enormous significance. The living no longer speak of these conceptions and do not require to use them; but for the dead, for those who have passed through the portals of death, the language of these ideas is of all the more importance. If we have occasion to make ourselves understood by the dead or by certain other Spirits of the Spiritual world, we come to recognise that in a certain respect we need to learn that unexhausted language, which has now died out as regards the earthly physical life of the physical plane, It is just among those who have passed through the portal of death that what lives and stirs in these conceptions will become a living language, the current language for which they are seeking. The more we have tried to realise what was once thought, felt and understood in these conceptions, the better we are able to make ourselves understood to the Spirits who have passed the portals of death. It is then easier to have mutual understanding.

Thus then the peculiar and remarkable secret is disclosed: that a certain form of thought lives on this earth only up to a given point; it does not then develop further on the earth, but attains a further stage of perfection among those who pass into the intermediate life, between death and rebirth. Let no one suppose that all that is necessary is to learn what we can today about the formation of Sulphur, Quicksilver, (mercury is not Quicksilver) and Salt; these conceptions alone would not suffice for coming into relation with the dead through their language. But if we can take in these thoughts as did Paracelsus, Jacob Böhme, and especially the almost super-abundant fruitfulness of de Saint-Martin, Ötinger and Bengel, one perceives that a bridge is established between this world and that other. However much people may laugh at Bengel's calculations, which, of course, are of no tangible value to the external physical life, — to those living between death and rebirth they are of very great significance and meaning. For incisions in time such as that of which Bengel tried to calculate the date, and in which he was only six years out, are in that other world of very profound significance.

You see that the world here on the physical plane and the world of the Spirit are not so connected that one can form a bridge between them by means of abstract formulae; they hang together in a concrete way. That which in a sense, loses its meaning here, rises into the Spiritual world and lives on there together with the dead, while with the living it has to be succeeded by a different phase.

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0175/19170320p01.html