The Relativity of Knowledge; Spiritual Cosmology

The Living Gifts of Anthroposophy. Lecture 2 of 7.

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, April 1, 1918:

When I tried in the last lecture to explain the influence exercised on man by the part of the Earth on which he as physical man develops, I had chiefly in mind to point out very distinctly that the whole Earth is an organism, an ensouled organism, permeated by spirit. For, as an organism has its separate, distinct differentiated members, each of which has a special task, — the arms have not the task of the legs, nor the heart that of the brain, and so on, if we consider the Earth as one whole, as in ensouled organism permeated by spirit, each part of the Earth has its own special task. The special task of the separate human organic members is perceptible in the form of these separate members. The arms are formed differently from the legs, the heart from the brain. This difference is not so marked as regards the Earth with respect to the physical. To an external materialistic geographer, who observes the separate continents or any other parts of the Earth arranged according to this or that point of view, it does not occur straight away that these different parts of the Earth have different sorts of activity; that only occurs to one who can, to a certain extent, grasp the nature of the psychic and spiritual element of the Earth. To understand this, really signifies rising concretely to the perception that the Earth is an ensouled, spiritual organism, and that man, living on Earth as physical man, is a member of this organism. All kinds of questions arise if one takes this into account, and he looks at the life of man as if it only ran its course once between birth and death, will not come to any very reasonable conclusions about them. For man, as physical man, can indeed only become a member of a particular part of the Earth. He would therefore be condemned to be quite specialized and differentiated by this particular part of the Earth, and would in a sense not be able to be in any way a complete whole, but only a part of the Earth's organism. On the other hand an important discovery results from this insight into the ensouled spiritualized part of the Earth; the discovery that the real deep or being of man, to which he says “I,” can in the real sense, only be connected indirectly with this differentiation of man over the Earth, that's the psycho-spiritual kernel of man's being in a sense only dwells in what is us specialized through the peculiarity of the Earth. Thus man can obtain, from this very circumstance, the knowledge that his spiritual-psychic kernel cannot subsist in what immediately confronts us in man; that with which, in a sense, man confronts us, can only be the “dwelling place,” the dwelling place of man determined by virtue of the special circumstances of the Earth. I do not mention this because it might appear to those already acquainted with spiritual science as a very weighty truth; of course it cannot be that. But it is to show that a real searching into and pondering over the relationships of the Earth can lead man to build himself up in spiritual science, by this means, in a purely logical manner. For the belief that Spiritual Science can only be comprehensible to one who sees into the spiritual world, must be swept away as one of the most fatal prejudices. This is a prejudice which has over and over again to be taken into account. I might say, for the satisfaction of all the comfort-loving ones who, because they like to believe that they could never acquire clairvoyant cognition, would like to represent Spiritual Science chiefly as a kind of provisional arrangement, or as something which does not concern mankind at all, that in truth, comprehensive, penetrating thought can really understand the spiritually scientific. Only the thought must be really accurate and comprehensive! It must be prepared to relate the phenomena of life to what Spiritual Science confirms. He who brings what is within his grasp in the way of knowledge of the characteristic traits of the different nations of the Earth, and of the different inhabitants of the Earth, to bear upon what Spiritual Science says, will soon acknowledge that what was here explained in the last lecture is verified. We must really relate what life offers to this knowledge; we must be ready to test, free from prejudice, the teachings of Spiritual Science by the experience of life; then a reasonable penetration of the matter will lead to the acknowledgment of Spiritual Science.

It is very important to emphasize this at the present day. For we may say that traditions, containing many of the truths of Spiritual Science, are far more numerous than is usually believed. There is a certain opinion, however, which was fully justified up to the approach of the recent historical age — but which has also been propagated in our own times by many who possess Spiritual Scientific knowledge — the opinion that one should not communicate publicly certain deeper knowledge about life. I have often explained the reasons which people who know something of these things have, for thus withholding these communications, and I have also pointed out why these reasons no longer hold good at the present day. In a certain respect however these facts present a difficulty. For not only have we the opposition to Spiritual Science of by far the greatest part of mankind to contend with, but we also have to contend with the opinion of those who do know something; — the opinion that one who gives publicity to things which come from the fountain of Spiritual Science as one gives publicity to other truths, is wrong. Those who believe that the veil of secrecy over certain things must not be raised, will be healed of this error when they recognize the importance of what has been said, certainly in a somewhat scientific form, but clearly enough, it seems to me, in the foreword and introduction to my book “Riddles of Man.”

It is necessary to comprehend that the conception of truth and righteousness which most men still have today, will indeed have to be overcome. Most men have the idea: One thing is right — and another is wrong. But I must emphasize the fact over and over again, and have also done so more particularly in the preface to “Riddles of Man,” the man's separate view of things from one particular side is like a photograph of an object from one side only. If one photographs a tree, first from the one side and then another, the second picture is still a picture of the same tree, only it looks different. Now today, when men have become so very abstract, when they have become so accustomed to the theoretical, in spite of believing themselves to be men of reality, one view of a thing is reckoned at us all-comprehensive, as comprising the whole reality. People believe that it is possible to express reality in thoughts — or in something else. They are particularly arrogant in this belief of being able to express the reality by means of thought. I mean the “arrogant” somewhat in the following sense. People say, “We today have the Copernican world-conception ... but with regard to the men who lived before Copernicus (this is not expressed so abruptly, but still they think it) they were all children (indeed we might say ‘duffers’), for they did not yet have the Copernican world-conception. That alone is correct, all the other world-conceptions are false.” This is an attitude which must be overcome. Even the Copernican world-conception is just one view, it is one definite way of making pictures, thoughts and ideas of things. Certainly there are men to-day, who oppose Spiritual Science as soon as they observe that it gives one a view, a real and regular view of a thing, by placing something else in opposition to it. No one will contest this who knows that there are different points of view about a thing. Today, however, many people wish for something else, something quite special, which may be compared somewhat to the person in the room saying: “When we have lighted up the room from one point and look at it from there, this gives only the view in perspective; it is not the reality; let us turn out the light and make the room quite dark and touch everything separately, then all who have thus touched the things will have the same opinion.” We all know that when we look at the room in the light, one who stands there has this view, and another who stands somewhere else has that view and so on. So today certain ideal of natural science would be to turn out the light and only ‘touch’ everything. Spiritual Science must certainly “turn the light” on to that. Thus the different points of view implies something surveyed from different places.

Now more especially by us should the effort be made to go about trying to form opinions from different points of view. This has already been striven after for many years. Many might object that the one contradicts the other, but that is precisely the essential thing, that in the above-mentioned sense of view should contradict another; for thereby we get an all-round view of a thing, which is what we want. But this is not at all easy, or people would prefer to have a little book, as slender as possible, in which a whole world-philosophy is tabulated. Or, if they wish to have world-philosophies discussed, they would like to have the same thing reeled off, over and over again. Of course this cannot be. Our printed cycles are increasing, are becoming more and more numerous, so that things may be illuminated from different sides, that we may obtain concepts and views from various sides, which only then give a complete picture of reality. We must certainly offend people in a certain respect (and what has just been said will make this comprehensible to you) if we have to repudiate more and more the accepted prejudices, by the truths of Spiritual Science. But chiefly when we thus ‘sin’ against the demand of certain occultists notched to communicate important things publicly, we must speak about things which shock people, perhaps even anger and excite them; for these things, like many others, give offense for instance to all those who say that things can only be ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect.’ Rather must we acquire the view that in the successive stages of the evolution of mankind there can never be a condition in which one can really say: “Now we have the absolute truth in regard to any particular matter for thought,” or: “We now know, what is absolute untruth.” There cannot be absolute truth or absolute truth. Searching great conceptions of life do not originate in order at last to give men what is ‘correct,’ so that they may now look arrogantly upon their forefathers as upon children; they spring up from very different reasons.

Let us call to mind something we all know. In the 15th century of our era, mankind entered the fifth cultural epoch of the Post-Atlantean development, which we call that of the “development of the human Consciousness or Spiritual Soul.” What especially appeared in the fifth cultural epoch began with the 15th century A.D. Till then it was the Intellectual or Rational Soul which, in the course of the cultural development of mankind was specially developed. In order then that the Spiritual Soul might arise, certain thoughts, certain kinds of concepts, took on a quite distinct character. Not because the Copernican world-philosophy is the absolutely correct one — I have affirmed often enough that it had to appear; and that in a certain respect it is the right one for us in accordance with the times I shall declare again and again — not because it is the absolutely correct one did it appear, but because it serves the evolution of man, in that he can best attain the development of the Spiritual Soul if he allows the Copernican world-philosophy to enter his flesh and blood, if he reaches the point of being able to calculate certain constellations of stars through the Copernican world-philosophy, as has been done in more recent times.

What is then really good in the Copernican world-philosophy? Not that at last it has told us the truth in contradistinction to the ‘untruth’ of former centuries, but that it erected a spiritual wall between Earth and Heaven, between the physical world and the spiritual world. Of course this appears frightfully paradoxical, something which excites opposition as a matter of course among those who have the above-mentioned prejudices. But it is true that man has begun to conceive the circumference, a cosmic circumference of the Earth in the Copernican manner, in that by transferring the Copernican conceptions into the circumference of the Earth, he has constructed this spiritual wall which he cannot get through. He is cut off from the spiritual thereby, and can remain with his concepts limited to the environs of the Earth, and there he develops the Spiritual Soul. Thus, in order that man should limit himself as ‘egotistically’ as possible to what is earthly, the Copernican world-philosophy, which erects its virtual wall around the Earth, fell to his lot. The more completely the Copernican world-philosophy is developed, and more certain is it that, through external perception, man is cut off from the spiritual world; but it also becomes the more necessary that he should again through inner perception, and by animating his inner life, find the connection with the spiritual. Remarkable things, very remarkable things run parallel. When such things are uttered, it is rather difficult to follow them, but if in the whole wide world there are none but the anthroposophists to understand them, they must take all the more trouble to do so.

There exists today a something like a “Theory of Knowledge;” that particular philosophical science which is based on Kant is called “Theory of Knowledge.” Yet this theory of knowledge is really — one might say — a nail in the coffin of human knowledge. Take a main thought about the ordinary theory of knowledge which as a rule runs in the minds of people today. It is said: Over there is an object: but what is out there is really only the vibration of ether, it has nothing to do with color or sound but is the movement of the smallest particles in space. The air moves out there, soundless; these concussions of the air approach our ear, — Schopenhauer spoke somewhat disrespectfully of the theory of knowledge, he said that these concussions ‘drum’ on the ear — and afterwards become what we call ‘sound.’ All is silent without, there are merely ‘concussions’ in the air. Then there are waves of ether outside. They strike upon the eye. But the matter does not end there; the waves strike upon the eye and the image is produced on the retina. Man knows nothing of this image, however, until it is investigated by science. The processes continue further with the optic nerve. These can only be of a material nature however; they go as far as the membrane covering the brain and there a quite mysterious process takes place. Then the soul comes in to make a concept of what is outside, of what is ‘dark and silent,’ a shining and colored concept, a warm and cold concept and so on; it creates the objects there within itself, and ‘dreams’ the whole world.

It is very remarkable that that is the road along which the Theory of Knowledge would penetrate from the external material world to the human spirit. But what is really the substance of this Theory of Knowledge? It is strange: if one remains at the things which have sound and color (the Theory of Knowledge calls what uneducated people believe ‘simple realism’), then at least one has a resounding and a colored world. But now, through the Theory of Knowledge, one brings this world for example before one's eyes. One has the image on the retina; within one has only the continuation of the image in the workings on the optic nerve; in the cerebrum there is nothing of the outer world, but the inner being charms forth the whole world again from the ‘vibrations.’ This makes one feel it is Baron Münchhausen again drawing himself up by his own tuft of hair! First, everything is eliminated and one has nothing left but brain-vibrations; and afterwards the soul recreates the outer world which has first been put away; then like Münchhausen, one lays hold of oneself by one's own tuft of hair and draws oneself up. But this is ‘basic philosophical knowledge,’ anyone who has not this, does not stand at the height of present-day knowledge.

If we try to follow up the whole diversified world as far as man himself, what have we finally? The processes in the membrane covering the cerebrum are not nearly as complicated as those in the optic nerve; they are the simplest of all. If we investigate how the world is in man we come to something extremely simple. We look for the spirit, but yet only come to a spirit which ‘dreams’ the world. There we must make a leap for so far no one has succeeded in distilling the spirit. In the quest of the spirit we come first to the brain vibrations, and we must then make something, which is nothing. This is the method science has followed in order to get to the spirit from the external sense-world.

On the earth we have many different conditions of life, and of life-influences, before the manifold variety of which we stand in respect and awe. Then we observe the difference in human beings in the different parts of the world — no matter whether the individual human characters are sympathetic or unsympathetic to us — if we consider the differentiations in mankind, we find that it is really as diversified as the sense-world outside is in its relation to man. In that bygone period in which the so-called childish ‘duffers’ lived, men try to understand the multiplicity of the Earth by rising to Heaven, by rising from the sensible to the spiritual. This they no longer do today. As we ascend farther and farther away from the diversified Earth, we have the same feeling as if we were coming from the external sense-world to the human Spirit through the eye and the brain; we come to what Copernicanism represents to us as the great Spiritual Cosmos. Just as the physiological theory of knowledge adopted the method of erecting a barrier in the vibrations of the brain in order to avoid coming to the human soul by way of the outer world, so in the same way does Copernicanism board up the world spiritually in the direction of the spiritual world. If we wish to realize the value of a world-conception we must know the point of view from which it is conceived. The point of view of Copernicanism does not pretend to place the true in the place of the false, once and for all; but it ‘boards up the world with planks’ so that man shall cultivate his consciousness soul within this ‘earthly tenement.’ This is the secret of the matter. We must look at these things in cold blood and with energy. We must first be able to shatter in our own selves that on which the easy-going people, who accept the world-philosophies of today, believe themselves to stand so firmly. As long as we are not able to shatter this in ourselves, as long as we are not able to see that really through Copernicanism the world is ‘boarded up with planks’ — so long shall we not reach the point of acquiring a relationship to Spiritual Science, for which many things are necessary.

Just imagine for a moment what the Cosmos consists of, apart from the Earth. According to the Copernican world-conception, it is a calculation! It can never be that to Spiritual Science but something that presents itself to spiritual cognition. Why have we a geology which believes that the Earth has only evolved from the purely mineral world? Because the Copernican world-conception has to produce the present-day materialistic geology. For it has nothing in itself which could prove that the Earth, from the point of view of the Cosmos or spiritual world, might be conceived as an ensouled, spiritualized being. A universe as conceived by Copernicus could only be a dead Earth! An animated ensouled and spiritualized Earth must be conceived as coming from a different Cosmos, really from quite another Cosmos from that of Copernicus. But of course one can only mention a few features of the Earth's being, as it appears when viewed from the Cosmos

Is it a quite unreal conception to imagine the Earth's being as coming from the Cosmos? It is no unreal conception, it is a very ‘real’ one. A conception which, for example, once existed in the imagination of Herman Grimm, but he excused himself immediately after having written it. In an essay written in 1858 he says: “One might imagine — (but he immediately adds: I am not presenting an article of faith, this is only a fancy picture) — that when the soul of man is freed from the body it moves around the Earth freely in the Cosmos and that in this free movement it would observe the Earth from the outside; what happens on the Earth would then appear to man in quite another light.” That was the fancy of Hermann Grimm.‘Man would become acquainted with all occurrences from a different point of view. For instance he would look into the human heart “as into a glass beehive.’ The thoughts arising in the human heart would spring up as from a glass bee-hive!” That is a fine picture. And he pictured further that this man who had hovered around the Earth for a time, and had looked at it from the outside, now reincarnated on the Earth. He would have a Father and Mother, a Fatherland and everything usual on the Earth, and would have to forget everything he had experienced from another point of view. And if he were perhaps an historian in the sense of today (Hermann Grimm is here describing from a subjective point of view) he could not then do otherwise then forget what went before, for one cannot write history with the other concepts.

This is a fancy which comes very close to the truth. For it is absolutely true that the human soul between death and rebirth is, as it were, floating around the Earth, and — as I have often depicted — conditioned by karmic relations, it looks down upon the Earth. The soul that has altogether the feeling that this Earth is an ensouled and spiritualized organism — and the prejudice that considers it as something without soul, something purely geological, ceases. And then the Earth becomes very greatly differentiated; to man's perception between death and rebirth it becomes so differentiated that in fact the East looks different from the American West. It is not possible to speak about the Earth to the dead, as one would to geologists; for the dead do not understand the geological conceptions. But they know that looking down from cosmic space at the East — from Asia across into Russia — the Earth appears as if covered with a bluey sheen; blue or bluish-mauve. Thus does that side of the Earth appear, seen from cosmic space. When we come towards the Western Hemisphere, to the American side, it then appears as more or less a fiery red. There we have a polarity of the Earth, as seen from the Cosmos. Of course the Copernican world-conception cannot of itself give this; but it is another perception, from a different point of view. It will be comprehensible to anyone who has this point of view, that this Earth, this ensouled Earth-organism, appears different in its Eeastern half from its Western half, when viewed from outside. In its Eastern half it has a blue covering, in its Western it has something like a flashing-forth from within outwards; hence the fiery red seen externally. Here you have one example by which man between death and rebirth can direct himself by what he then learns. He learns to know the configuration of the Earth, it's a different appearance when seen from the Cosmos and the spiritual world; he learns to realize that on one side it is bluish-violet, on the other fiery red. And in accordance always with the spiritual needs which he will develop from his karma, this knowledge decides for him where he will reincarnate. Of course one must imagine things as being much more complicated than this; but from such conditions does man between death and rebirth, develop the forces which occasion him to reincarnate in a child body having a certain inheritance.

I have only mentioned two modifications of color, but there are of course other modifications besides those of color, many others. For the present I will only mention that in the center between the East and the West, for example, in our regions, the Earth is more of a green shade when seen from outside. So that this gives us a three-foldness which can throw a deal of light on the way in which man can determine, by what he beholds between death and rebirth, whether he is to appear in the East or West or elsewhere on the Earth.

If we bear this in mind we shall gradually gain the idea that in the relations between the man incarnated here in the physical body and the discarnate man, certain things come into play which, for the most part, are not taken into consideration at all. If we go into a foreign land and wish to understand the people, we must learn their language. If we wish to understand the dead you must gradually acquire the language of the dead. But this is at the same time the language of Spiritual Science, for it is spoken by all the so-called living and all of the so-called dead. It is this which passes to and fro between us and the beyond. It is particularly important to acquire pictures such as these of the universe, and not mere abstract concepts. We get a picture of the Earth if we imagine a sphere hovering in space, on the one side glowing bluish-mauve, on the other burning a flashing reddish-yellow, and between these a green zone. Pictorial representations gradually carry man over into the spiritual world. That is the point. One is of course obliged to set up pictorial representations when speaking seriously of the spiritual world, and it is further necessary not merely to think of such pictorial representations as a sort of fiction, but to make something out of them. Let us once again recall the bluish-violet glimmering Orient and the reddish-yellow flashing Occident. Here various differentiations come in. When a dead person in our present era observe certain places, then from the place which here on Earth is known as Palestine, as Jerusalem, something with a golden form, a golden crystal form, is to be seen in the middle of the bluish-mauve color and this becomes animated. That is the Jerusalem as seen from the spirit! This it is which also in the Apocalypse (speaking of imaginative conceptions) figures as the heavenly Jerusalem. These are not ‘thought-out’ things, they are things which can be observed, seen spiritually. The Mystery of Golgotha appeared like what physical observation precedes when the astronomer directs his telescope to space and beholds something which fills him with wonder like, for example the flashing-up of new stars. Seen spiritually, from the Universe, the Event of Golgotha was the flashing-up of a star of gold in the blue aura of the Eastern half of the Earth. Here you have the Imagination for what I developed at the close of my lecture the day before yesterday. It is really a question of acquiring, by means of such Imaginations, ideas of the Universe which bring the human soul into union with the Spirit of the Universe.

Try to think with someone who has passed over, of the crystal form of the heavenly Jerusalem building itself up into golden splendor in the bluish-violet aura of the Earth, and that will bring you near to him; for that is something which belongs to the realm of the Imaginations into which she entered at death: “Out of God we are born, and in Christ we die.”

There are means by which we can shut ourselves off from the spiritual reality and there are means by which we can draw near to it. We can shut ourselves off from spiritual reality by trying to ‘calculate’ it. Certainly mathematics do belong to the realm of the spirit, pure spirit; but in their application to physical reality they are the means of cutting us off from the spiritual. In so far as you calculate, just so far do you cut yourself off from the spirit. Kant once said: “There is just the same amount of science in the world as there is mathematics.” But one might also say, from the other point of view, which is equally justifiable, that there is darkness in the world to the same degree as man has succeeded in judging the world by means of calculation. We approached the spiritual life when we press on from external perception, and particularly from abstract concepts, towards Imaginations, to pictorial ideas. Copernicus has led man to calculate the universe; the opposite perception must lead men once more again to picture the universe, to imagine a universe with which the human soul can identify itself, so that the Earth appears as an organism shining into the universe, blue-violet, with the heavenly Jerusalem radiating golden light on the one side, and the yellowish-red flashing on the other side.

Whence comes the blue-violet on the one side of the Earth-aura? When one sees this side of the Earth-sphere, the physical part of the Earth disappears from external view, the aura of light becomes transparent, and the dark part of the Earth disappears. This creates the blue which penetrates through. You can explain the phenomenon from Goethe's theory of color. But because in the Western Hemisphere the inner part of the Earth flashes up — flashes up anyway which verifies what I described the day before yesterday: namely, that in America man is determined by the subterranean element, by what is under the Earth — for that reason the inner part of the Earth rays out and flashes like a red-yellow shimmer, like a reddish-yellow sparkling fire radiating into the Cosmos. This is only meant to be a picture sketched in quite fine outlines, but it should show you that it is indeed possible to speak, not merely in ordinary abstract thoughts, but in very, very concrete concepts about the world in which we live between death and rebirth. Finally, all this is adapted to prepare our souls to obtain a connection with the spiritual world, with the higher Hierarchies; with that world in which man lives between death and rebirth. But I intend to speak specially about this tomorrow; today I should only like to mention just one other thing.

The present era of human evolution, the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, which exists for the development of the Spiritual or Consciousness Soul, contains manifold secrets. One of these is especially well guarded by those who believe that such truths should not yet be communicated to the humanity of to-day. This again is somewhat difficult. But since in the whole wide world there is no one else inclined to receive such things, you must really condescend to recognize them. In the course of this culture epoch, which began in the 15th century of our era, a remarkable longing began to make itself felt in men, along which lives chiefly in the subconsciousness, but must ever more and more be brought up into consciousness. This longing proceeds from a very definite cause.

I have often said that man is a twofold being. He is a being composed of many more than two parts; but particularly he is a twofold being, and consists as such as head and the rest of the body. The head is in particular that to which we should apply the Darwinian theory, the head is that which can be traced back to animal forms. During the Old Moon period man had animal forms, not those of the present animal kingdom, a more spiritual, etherical animal form. This has hardened into the human head, and now, when animals on the Earth are developing as they are, man is not developing under the same conditions as were suitable for the head, for that he has inherited; but, according to the requirements of the rest of his body. This however does not descend from the animals. The head descends from the animals, but only from the etheric animals. We therefore carry an animal nature in our head, but it is an etheric animality. That entered men's unconscious nature in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. They noticed more and more that there is something of the animal in man, but they could no longer think of it as anything spiritual. They got it into their heads that man must have ‘animal’ feelings, and this culminated in the Darwinian theory of the descent of man from the animal. This was not only expressed in the Darwinian doctrine of descent. The animal has a different perception from man; it stands in a more intimate connection with things than does man. Man is the superior being of the Earth just because he has cut himself off from the things so as to be obliged to build a bridge again from himself to them. The animal experiences the outer world much more inwardly than does man; if it were philosophically inclined it would not speak of ‘boundaries of knowledge,’ because there are no boundaries to knowledge for the animal such as those of which man speaks; these only exist because of the higher organization of man. The animal feels in a sense the whole universe within it through its group-soul; it has no boundaries of knowledge, knows nothing of them. Man began to feel more and more that he carries an animal within him. He did not wish to conceived this relation spiritually, supersensibly, etherically; he thought man was related to the animals physically. He then wanted to have a knowledge subconsciously, such as the animal has. He was however obliged to prove that he could not have that. The animal lives with the ‘thing in itself.’ The ‘thing in itself’ is unknown to man, when he says: “I should really like to be an animal, I should like to be as well off as the animal, but I cannot be as well off.” To affirm a ‘thing in itself’which limits our knowledge, proceeds from the longing of man feel himself animal, while he yet knows that he cannot have such a knowledge as the animal. This is the secret of Kantism. What can be said of the boundaries of knowledge is intimately connected with the impulse of modern humanity towards the consciousness of the animal. The Ancients knew that the animal has no boundaries of knowledge; for that reason they considered it good fortune to understand, for example, the language of the animals. You all know the fable connected with this.

That is one thing which the Ancients knew: that the animal has no boundaries of knowledge, in the sense in which man has them in modern times. But they knew something else as well: they knew that the beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angels are free beings, beings with freedom of will. And they knew that man is on the way to become an Angel. When the Earth shall have completed the Jupiter-stage man will have reached the stage of the Angel. He is now on the way to freedom. Freedom is developing within him. But what is left for the epoch which is gradually appearing with the evolution of the Spiritual Soul, if mankind turns away from his evolution to the stage of the Angels? There remains only the thought: freedom is an illusion! Man, in respect to his activity, is subject to the necessities of nature. To the degree in which boundaries of knowledge are erected does man turn away from his development to freedom. This is intimately connected with what has appeared — only in a coarser way —in the declaration of the descent of man from the animals; whereas in reality man has a very complicated descent, as I have often explained.

Today I have burdened you with some of the more difficult concepts. But they were necessary, and tomorrow we shall be able to speak principally on the connection between the present earthly life in the physical body and the life between death and rebirth, from a certain point of view. The concepts will then not be so difficult; but what you were so good as to listen to today in respect to more difficult concepts will help you tomorrow in regard to others.

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/GA/GA0181/19180401p02.html

Rejoice! And Be Exceeding Glad!

Anandamayi Ma

The gift of Heaven is one of true abundance: a limitless fortune that is neither owned nor sold. 

Fresh forces of promulgation, of sustaination, and, of the continuum-momentum, are without tire, without fatigue, without stop.

The meaning of the name of Heaven is: replenishment. It is the ever-flowing fountain; and, paradoxically, through death one will find, that it is the very home of everlasting youth.

For nothing dwindles or dies in the spiritual realms. The depleted are fulfilled, and the shapeless become regenerated. Thoughts and hopes are the sprites of a cosmic dance that joyously twirl those starry lit fields in the ever morn.

Yes! everyone is Irish in Heaven! (a joke)

Revelation, not intoxication, enlights the mind with cheer and wonder. 







Source: "Cherry Picking" from Christianity Is Esoteric

Folk Souls and the Mystery of Golgotha

The Living Gifts of Anthroposophy. Lecture 1 of 7.

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, March 30, 1918:

All those who received in the right way what was stated in our last lectures, as to the way in which the human soul can to a certain extent determine its relation to the super-sensible worlds, and can of itself bring about that relationship, need not on the other hand be alarmed by the fact that it is also the simple truth that the human being, as such, is dependent in a certain sense on the whole universe, on the whole of his environment. Between these two things human life really oscillates; it swings backwards and forwards between the free establishment of a relation to the super-sensible world, and its dependence on the environment, on the whole universe; and this, by virtue of the fact that man, between birth and death, is bound to a particular physical body. During the next few days we will discuss part of this dependence on the universe, in a special connection: one which may come very near to the human soul at the present day. Above all it will have become clear from much that we have made our own through Spiritual Science, that the whole earth which we as collective humanity inhabit, is a kind of huge living being, that we ourselves stand within this great living being, as members of it; in various lectures I have spoken of the separate phenomena of the life of this great living being which is our earth. The life of the earth is expressed in manifold ways. Among others it is expressed in the fact that certain relations exist between the different parts of the earth and the man who lives upon the earth. As true as it is that, on the one hand, the human race is a unity (which indeed is a very superficial truth), so it is also true that the separate parts of the human race distributed over the different parts of the earth differ according to these domains and are dependent on them. Not only is this the case on account of the many forces which external natural science and geography investigate, but they are also dependent on many other, more secret forces of the separate parts of the earth's surface. There exist certain inner relations between man (with these the superficiality of natural science is not concerned) and the ground which he inhabits, part of the earth from which he springs. This can best be observed from the fact that such relationships become established in the course of shorter or longer historical periods. This might already be seen in the change which takes place in Europeans who emigrate to America and settle there; for although of course the period of the settlement of Europeans in America is still so short that what here comes into consideration is at present but a mere indication, it is nevertheless strongly and distinctly indicated. The external configuration of the Europeans alters (as already said, this is up till now only indicated) when they inhabit America; perhaps not once, but certainly in the course of generations. In the form of the arms and hands for instance, and also in the shape of the face, the Europeans gradually grow to resemble the old Red Indians, they gradually take on the personal characteristics of the old Red Indian Race. You must of course not take this too literally, but simply as hints for further observation.

Roughly speaking, these things are what first of all draw our attention to certain connections between the great organism of the earth and the different members of this organism, in fact the different sections of the earth's population. We know well that man during his life on Earth is connected with super-sensible beings, beings of the Higher Hierarchies. We know that what we call a “Folk-Soul” is not that unreal abstraction of which materialistically-minded men speak today, we know that the “Folk-Soul” is a kind of Archangelic-Being. We need only read the cycle on the Folk-Souls given in Christiania to learn that a Folk-Soul is a concrete, real being, in whom man is to a certain extent embedded during his life. Man stands in constant connection, through his being, with higher and lower beings of the Higher Hierarchies. We will look into this connection today and in the next few days from one point of view (we can indeed only speak of such things at all from certain points of view).

In order rightly to comprehend subjects such as the substance of this lecture we must make clear to ourselves that to the spiritually-scientific observer of the world, what is in the materialistic sense called matter or substance does not exist at all; a really searching observation proves that this too resolves itself into spirit. I have often made use of a comparison which should make clear how these things are ordered. Take water. It can freeze, then it is ice and looks quite different. Ice is ice, and water is water; yet ice is also water, only in another form. It is somewhat like this as regards what is called matter; it is spirit in another form, spirit passed over into another form, as water into ice. Hence in spiritual science we have the spiritual in the view even when discussing material processes. Spirit is active everywhere. The fact that the activity of the Spirit is expressed also in material processes is due to a special form of manifestation of the Spirit. But everywhere there is activity of spirit, thus even when we study the more material phenomena we are really referring to forms of activity of the spirit, as they appear in a certain sphere as external, more or less material processes.

In man, material processes are continually taking place which really are spiritual processes. Man eats. He thereby takes into his own organism substance of the outer world. Solid substances which become liquefied are taken into the human organism, and thereby undergo a transmutation. The human organism indeed consists of all sorts of substances, which it receives from without; and not only because it receives these substances but in the very act of receiving them, they also go through a certain process. The warmth of the body is conditioned by the warmth it receives, and by the processes which the received substances undergo in our organism. We breathe. In breathing we take in oxygen; not only do we take in oxygen, but through the fact that our breathing-process is under the same ruling as are the processes in the outer world, in the atmosphere, we are subject to the rhythm of the whole universe. (I have even presented this relationship numerically.) Thus through the rhythmical processes which we undergo in our organism, we also stand in a certain relationship with the environment. In fact it is the case that the very influences for instance, which are exerted on individual human beings by the Folk-soul, are brought about through these processes, these happenings, by which the outer events in Nature affect us and continue to work on in us. We do not merely breath in oxygen, for something spiritual lives in the oxygenised breath. We do not merely eat; substances are transmuted in us, but this material process is at the same time a spiritual one, and the Folk-Spirit can live in this process of taking in substances and digesting them. The fact of our Folk-Spirit living with us is by no means merely an abstract thought, for the life of the Folk-Spirit is impressed on what we do in our daily life and on that which is accomplished in our organism. Material processes are at the same time the expression of spiritual workings. The Folk-Spirit must take this indirect way of entering us; through the food and so on.

The different Folk-Spirits, whom in the course of the lectures on the Mission of the different Folk-Souls we have distinguished according to other points of view, work, with regard to what I have just indicated, in different ways upon mankind; and the individual characters of the nations of the Earth are thereby differentiated. The various characters of the different nations depend on their Folk-Spirits. But if, from a spiritual-scientific point of view, we follow the by-paths along which the separate Folk-Spirits work, the following result becomes apparent.

Man breathes. He thereby stands in constant connection with the surrounding air; he breathes it in then he breathes it out. If, in a particular case, on account of the configuration of the Earth and for reasons of various kinds, the Folk-Soul chooses the by-path of breathing and by means of that, calls forth the special configuration and characterization of the nation in question, we can say that the Folk-Spirit works ‘through the air’ on the people concerned. In fact this is the case to an especially marked degree among those people who have at any time inhabited the Italian Peninsula. On the Italian Peninsula the air is the medium for the workings of the Folk-Spirit of the people. We may say that the air of Italy is the means, the medium, through which the Folk-Spirit impresses his workings on the people who inhabit the Italian Peninsula, in order to give then the particular configuration through which they are just the Italian nation, and formally worthy old Roman nation and so on. Thus we can investigate apparently material workings in their spiritual foundations, if we follow the methods of Spiritual Science.

Now one may raise the question: How is it with other Folk-Spirits? If we look around at other regions of the Earth, what methods do the Folk-Spirits adopt in order to bring the particular configuration of the nations to expression? Among the people who have inhabited the France of today or who still inhabit it, the Folk-Spirits work along the by-path of the fluidic elements, through everything which not only enters the body as fluid, but which also works in it as fluid. Thus the Folk-Spirit vibrates and moves in the process by which liquid contracts the organism and works upon it, and thereby determines the character of the people. This is the case among the people who formerly inhabited the France of today as well as those who still do inhabit it.

Now we do not grasp the matter completely if we only look at this relationship of man to his environment from one side. That would indeed give a very one-sided conception. It must here be remembered what I have often said, that “Man is a two-fold being;” his head and the rest of his organism, each work for themselves. In reality the working of which I have just spoken in reference to the Italian and the French peoples, affects only the rest of the organism, and not the head. From the head another activity goes forth. Only through the cooperative working of the activity which proceeds from the head with that which comes from the rest of the organism, does that which then impresses itself upon the Folk-character come fully into force. The activity which proceeds from the head is neutralized, as it were, by that which proceeds from the rest of the organism. Hence we might say, as regards the Italians, that together with what they breathe in with the air and which regulates the rest of the organism except the head, there works also from the direction of the head, the nervous system of the head in its spiritual differentiation, insofar as man is ‘nerve-man of the head.’ In France this is different. What lives in the organism as “rhythm” is a particular rhythm for the whole organism and different from that of the head; the head has its own rhythm. While in Italy it is the nervous activity of the head which works in combination with what is acted in man by the air, in France it is the rhythm, the rhythmical movement of the head — the vibrating of the rhythm in the head combined with what is effected by the fluidity in the organism. Thus the Folk-character is built up through the particular combination of what takes place in the head of the individual man with what the Folk-Spirit brings in from the environment.

From this we can see that it is possible to study what is spread out severally over the Earth's organism, if we allow ourselves to observe these things from a spiritually-scientific point of view; for, as a matter of fact, mankind will never understand the characteristic configuration all over the world if such things are not taken into consideration.

Let us enquire further as to the different Folk-characters, the British, for instance. As the Folk-Spirits of the Italian race works through the air, and that of the French through the watery element, so the Folk-Spirit of the British race works through everything earthly, principally through the salt and its combinations in the organism. Solidity is the principal feature; the watery element works in the French national character, in the British it is the solid, the salty element which is active through everything which enters the organism, through air as well as through food. This brings about the peculiar form of the British Folk-Character. But here again something neutralizing works from the head upon what comes from the environment. Just as “rhythm” is in the rest of the organism as well as in the head, so is also digestion, assimilation, and the rest of the organism and in the head as well. As the organism of the head accomplishes its metabolism, this process of the transmutation of substance is combined with the salty element in the organism, and that brings about the British Folk-Character. Thus the earth-element in connection with the metabolism of the head, determines the British Folk-character. We may say that while the Folk-Soul works through the salty element, it is opposed by the characteristic quality of the metabolism of the head. You will be able to study all the separate features of national character if you look at these particular metamorphoses in the modes of activity of the Folk-Souls.

Let us go further into the West. In America things are again different. There a subterranean element is at work. While in the British organism we have to do with the earthy, with the salty, in the American Folk-Character an underground element is active, something that vibrates under the earth; that has there a very special influence on the organism. The Folk-Spirit works on the national character of the American people particularly through the underground magnetic and electric currents. And something from the head strains towards these underground magnetic and electric currents and neutralizes their influence: toward them streams what is actually Human Will. That is the characteristic feature of the American Folk-Character. While of the British national character we must say that it depends essentially on the earthy element, inasmuch as man takes it into his organism and it comes into reciprocal action with the metabolism in the head, so, inasmuch as the Will impresses itself in the case of the American, it works in him together with something which comes from underground, and this determines the American Folk-Character. With this is also connected what I have mentioned in a public lecture (The historical life of mankind and its problems, 14th March 1918). Man can only with his whole free personality stand in relationship with the element above the Earth and down to the Earth. If he is influenced by underground Folk-Soul activities, he is not forming his Folk-Soul in freedom, he is then, as it were “possessed” by the Folk-Soul. I have shown in the public lecture that the Americans may even say the same thing as a Central-European, Herman Grimm, also says; and yet it is not the same thing. While we notice in Herman Grimm how everything is humanly acquired and won, with Woodrow Wilson it is as though he were humanly possessed by it. From that you can see one thing (this is important because at our present time it is necessary to face these things). When today, two or three men say the same thing, it is considered purely from the point of view of ‘content,’ it is looked at in the abstract. But two men may say the same thing in substance, and the remark made by the one may sound exactly the same as the other, yet the one man may have fought out, conquered things in his soul, and the other may utter them as the result of ‘possession.’ The content is often not at all the essential thing. What matters is the degree in which what a man says is his ‘own,’ the acquisition of his own soul, instead of having perhaps acquired it through being possessed. That is the important point. Today people have only a sense for the abstract. We can see in Herman Grimm that what he says has been gone over and over many times in his soul, and we might take sentences from Wilson's works and write over them “Herman Grimm” or vice versa; but that is not the point. Herman Grimm worked something out, Woodrow Wilson says something which comes to him through being possessed by underground beings. These things must be recognised; we need not approach them with emotion and passion, they can be recognised quite objectively.

Let us enquire further, and describing a circle round Germany, look for the moment towards the East. Something characteristic confronts us there when we observe the Easterner who has first gradually to lift himself out of chaos, and will only then rise resplendent in his original form. As the Folk-Spirit works in Italy through the air, in the French people through water, in the English through the earth-element and in the American through an underground element, so does the Folk-Spirit work in the Russian Slavonic element through the light. In actual fact the Folk-Spirit on whom the East depends works in the vibrations of light. When once that which in the future will grow up in the West shall have loosened itself from its embryonic coverings, it will be seen that the method of working of the Folk-Spirit in the European East is quite different from that of the Folk-Souls in the West. For although I must say that the Folk-Spirit works through the light, yet the curious thing is that it does not work directly through the light vibrating on to men, look through the light which is first sunk into the ground and is then reflected back thence. This light which rises again from the ground is that of which the Russian Folk-Spirit makes use, to work upon the Russian. It does not work upon the whole organism, but directly upon the head, on the character of thought, on the manner of forming concepts, sensations, etc. Thus here the method of the Folk-Spirit is exactly the opposite of that in the West, where he works from the rest of the organism and something strikes against him from the head. In the East he works through the light. The light streaming back from the ground is there the medium for the Folk-Spirit, and that works particularly on the head. And the counteraction now comes from the rest of the body, and especially from the organism of the heart. This counteraction now operates as a reversed process towards the head and alters the working which proceeds from there. (It is still in chaos today, still in its embryonic coverings.) It is the rhythm of the breathing which strikes towards the head and counteracts what comes from the Folk-Spirit by way of the light. What comes out in the Near East has presence to a still higher degree when we go further East. It is the special characteristic of the Far East that there the Folk-Spirit works also partly through the light which is taken up and reflected from the Earth and which works upon the head, but works also through that which is no longer light, and is indeed not visible at all: the Harmony of the Spheres, which vibrates through everything and which, to the spiritual humanity of the Asiatic East, is equivalent to a working of the Folk-Spirit, in that Folk-Spirit works directly through the Harmony of the Spheres which, however, is reflected from the Earth and works upon the head. In opposition to this works the rhythm of the breath, and therein lies the secret of the fact, that seekers of the Spirit in the East have always tried to come into connection with the Spirit through a special development of the breathing. If you study Yoga you will see that it requires one to develop the breathing in a special way. This rests on the fact that the individual tries to find a spirituality through the Folk-Spirit; — as a member of the whole of humanity, not as an individual — he seeks it in a manner which really belongs to the character of this nation. Thus the further east we go, the more do we find this. Of course it would be seen in more or less refinement in the activities of this Folk-character, and also in deteriorations in these activities, how sometimes a deviation becomes evident. Individual nations and whole races may be subject to these deviations to a pronounced degree; and that a disharmony, for instance, appears when the activity of the head of accords with that in the rest of the body, and so on. But to enter into these various disharmonies is perhaps not to be specially recommended to-day, as for this or that reason a nation is bound to love certain other nations today, circumstances demand this; and much might be received with the feeling instead of with the understanding and perhaps then be misunderstood. At a later date, perhaps we may be able to speak about Eastern peoples and similar problems.

Now the question can be raised: How do the Central European nations stand? We are speaking more of geographical relationships, not considering Central Europe in a social-political sense. I have not answered the questions according to racial relationships, but as you see spiritually-geographical relationships. We cannot speak of a ‘Central Europe,’ to which neither France nor Italy belongs. The chilly air of the Folk-Soul Working in Central Europe is that — in a sense in which I have explained to working in other realms for air, water, and the salty element — the influence works here in a direct manner through warmth. The Folk-Spirit in central Europe chooses the by-path, the medium of warmth; and it is moreover not a rigidly determined medium, it can be individualized. There may be people in Central Europe in whom this working of the Folk-Spirit may be different, sometimes acting from the remainder of the body and sometimes from the head, according to whether the heat comes directly from the outside air or through nourishment or breathing. All these forms of heat are a medium for the Folk-Spirit. That which here counteracts this effect is again warmth; so that in Central Europe, warmth, in so far as it works externally, is a medium for the Folk-Spirit; and what meets it is again a self-created warmth coming from within. Therefore we may say that what works in the body through the Folk-Spirit as warmth is met by the special warmth of the head, and when the warmth of the Folk-Spirit works through the head, warmth for the rest of the body streams towards it. Warmth is attracted to warmth and it depends principally on the greater or lesser liveliness of the senses, or indeed of the power of perception. A man of lively disposition looks lovingly at things around him, develops more warmth of his own; a man who is casual and superficial, who does not feel much, but passes lightly over everything, develops less warmth of his own. This sympathy with the environment, when a man keeps an open heart and eye for his surroundings, strikes against the warmth working through the Folk-Spirit, so that warmth strikes warmth. This is the peculiarity of the methods of working of the Folk-Spirit in Central Europe, and much in the nature of the Folk-character comes from warmth being intimately associated with warmth. The other ways of working are not all so related; the will is not related to the electrical element in the same manner nor the salty element to the assimilative process in the head, nor are the other workings mentioned. But warmth produces the European character, which is also expressed in fact of the people being more or less able to ‘enter into’ everything. (We do not wish to speak of the relative value of this, but only to characterize; so everyone may take this as he wishes — as virtue or as vice. ) Warmth to warmth: this makes a man pliant, plastic, capable of making himself at home everywhere even among foreign peoples. If we follow up history, we see how the different German tribes have been absorbed into foreign peoples and have taken on a foreign element. This consideration will strengthen all that has just been said.

In what has been gone into today, the great contrast between the Asiatic East and the American West also becomes very clearly apparent. One might say that the light, and even to what lies above the light in the etheric, is the means made use of by the Folk-Soul in the East in order to approach man, even if it be reflected light from the earth; the subterranean element, that which works beneath the earth, is in the West. This can lead us deeply into the organic soul-life of the whole organism of the earth and its association with mankind. In this there is absolutely no intention to wound any part of the Earth's population or to flatter any other; yet it is true that on the one hand in the East, the evolutionary streams are directed towards the spiritual, in the west downwards towards gravity, chaining man to the Earth. (Whether this agrees more or less with the American national character, I leave it for each one to judge for himself.) A rising tide — I might say — in the East, and ebbing back, a working into the Earth, in the West. Such is life. Of course man does not grow like, or accommodate itself to earthly conditions all at once, but in the course of time, in the lapse of generations. Thus when a European goes to the East and has children, and his children themselves have children, the conditions holding sway there compel these circumstances to develop. They work in the human being. It is really a fact that, as our physical organism and arm will always grow out of the shoulder but never a nose, so there will never be good Yogis in America. Yoga may be transplanted there; but we also raise all sorts of plants in glass houses, that is not the point in question, but rather what is intended in the orderly continuity of evolution itself. All this is ordered and appointed. Natural-scientific biology by no means explains the nature of earthly conditions. For this we must go into the different ways of working of the Folk-Souls, by considering, as we have to-day, how the unmanifested comes to expression in what is manifest.

Man is thus involved in the methods of working which are in connection with the Earth. If you take this into account it will on the one hand perhaps have a very depressing effect on your soul; it is depressing to see that man is really so very dependent on the forces connected in the manner described, with that corner of the earth on which his karma placed him in one incarnation. Of course, it is part of his own karma that he should be placed to there. Yet for all that the circumstances I have described have something perhaps of a depressing nature, and it becomes still more so, if we do not take all the circumstances into account, for if we go back to the former periods of the Earth's evolution, we find that the further we go back the greater the dependence, of which I have spoken, and the more mankind is differentiated by such impulses over the surface of the Earth. Yet the Earth's evolution bears within it the possibility by which men are indeed able gradually to overcome this dependence, at any rate in their inner life if not in outward form.

What then would have had to happen — let us inquire — what would be conceivable as having to take place, in order that this dependence upon a spot of earth might be lessened in any sort of way, that man might rise in some way out of the necessity here characterized, to a certain freedom?

For that, something must have occurred during the evolution of mankind on Earth which would directly counteract this dependence of man on his own part of the earth. We have now discussed all the impulses which make man here dependent on his plot of earth. I said that something had to happen to counteract this dependence, something which would as it were smite these relationships in the face. You are to understand that this force which would appear on the Earth, which would be different from all that works through man's dependence, would have a compensating, neutralizing effect on these relationships. What can this be?

At the beginning of our era the Mystery of Golgotha took place. In the course of time we have discovered many things about it. But we need only bring before our souls one quite casual, ordinary, universally-known characteristic of the Mystery of Golgotha, to see that even through something which lies so much on the surface of things, this Mystery of Golgotha takes its place in the Earth life as a unique event. Christ Jesus lived among a people having a very decided national character, everything the nation does is done from a pronounced national character. But that which happened to Christ Jesus, which fulfills itself out of the Folk-character, — the Mystery of Golgotha, the death on Golgotha, stands in complete contradiction to this character. For the people in the midst of whom the Mystery of Golgotha takes place, neither acknowledge, nor recognize Christ-Jesus personally or individually; but kill Him, and cry: Crucify Him! Crucify Him! Something takes place which only has meaning if thought of in contradiction to what can arise from the character of the people as something that they of themselves reject, annul and destroy. This is the secret of the Mystery of Golgotha. It has therefore no national character, it does not grow from out of the Folk-character, it contradicts all that we have hitherto characterized as dependence of man on his national character. It is an event, a happening on earth, which has nothing to do with the Folk-character, because only that in it which destroys — death — has anything to do with this Folk-character. For this Event is neither connected with the Jewish Folk-character nor with the Roman Folk-character working in the same land; for the Jews cry: Crucify Him! and the Romans can find no fault in Him! That is, they do not know how to deal with what is going on before them. The whole thing is quite beyond what can take place through the Folk-character. Thereby the Mystery of Golgotha becomes an event which, if you study it deeply, you can pair with none other. Of course there have been martyrs elsewhere, but they did not become such from the motives which hold good for the Mystery of Golgotha. The more you study the Mystery of Golgotha, the more you will find that it came about just because it has nothing to do with any Folk-character but because it has connection with the whole of humanity. Therefore we may really say, that on the one hand we have that principle in the evolution of mankind which so extends over humanity that works in a differentiating manner; then something grows out of one of these differentiations which does not belong to it, but has precisely as its peculiararity the fact that it is independent of the Folk-character, that is the point. In every respect we must recognize more and more as the essential point in the Mystery of Golgotha that it must be understood individually if it is to be understood aright. As we understand it more and more, we shall gradually say: We can grasp earthly positions, human relationships in this or that way, but the Mystery of Golgotha stands by itself; it must specially be understood as something unique, it cannot be taken otherwise if it is to be understood. Look into any sphere whatsoever. We have today looked into the sphere of the Folk-Soul which works in humanity, we can explain all things in the realm of the Folk-Soul from the beginning of humanity on Earth until today excepting the Mystery of Golgotha and what is connected with it. And we would be able to find all sorts of domains of which we might say that on the one scale there is everything else, and on the other the Mystery of Golgotha and its consequences. I have often declared that learned theologians must admit today that an “historical proof” of the Mystery of Golgotha is not to be found which can be recorded in history. One does not record events in history of which no historical proofs are to be found; only the Mystery of Golgotha! For that alone shall be a super-sensible one; there shall be no “historical proof” for that! The Mystery of Golgotha shall be accepted by no man who demands only historical, material proofs. It only works aright on the man who has developed so far as to allow something to be counted as historical, of which there are no proofs. Evolution will so proceed that the external proofs of the Mystery of Golgotha will be washed away, will disappear; criticism will wash them away. But a spiritual understanding of the evolution of mankind will consider this Mystery of Golgotha as the very pivot of all earthly events. It must be grasped spiritually, must be recorded spiritually, in the process of the history of mankind. That is just its secret. Men will gradually cease to look for historical proofs, but rather for the possibility of understanding that, on this one occasion, a super-sensible comprehension of an Event which is enacted sensibly on the physical earth is necessary, in order that man may grasp its connection with the earthly historical development of humanity, in the full sense of the word.

Of this we shall speak further in the next lecture.

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/GA/GA0181/19180330p02.html

How To Be Happy

"There is no path to happiness. The path itself is happiness."

 — Gautama Buddha

"Eternity" by William Blake

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the wingèd life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity's sunrise.

"Die and Become" — the words inscribed on the Holy Grail

Related post: http://martyrion.blogspot.com/2016/12/aum-gold-13-ways-of-looking-at-my-guru.html

"Nothing gold can stay" by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.   

May Day!

This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Psalm 118:24

The poor we will always have with us
and they'll always be comedy gold.

Related post:  "Namastree: I salute the tree in you!"

Confidence in Life and Rejuvenation of the Soul: A Bridge to the Dead

Earthly Death and Cosmic Life. Lecture 7 of 7

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, March 26, 1918:

To study the matter further we must refer to what has already been brought forward.

When the subject under discussion is the relation of souls in human bodies to discarnate souls between death and rebirth, the chief thing is to direct the spiritual vision to the ‘psychic atmosphere’ in which they must meet in order to establish a relationship between them. We found that there must be a certain disposition of soul on the part of the living which, as it were, forms a bridge to the knowledge of the so-called dead. This disposition of soul always betokens the existence of a certain psychic element, and it may be said that when this element exists, when its presence shows the suitable feeling of the living, it is possible for these relations thus to come to pass.

    We had to show that this possibility of a blending in the psychic atmosphere is created by the living through two directions of feeling; the first of which may be called the feeling of universal gratitude to all life's experiences. The general relationship of the human soul to its environment falls into an unconscious part and a conscious part. Everyone knows the conscious part; it consists in man's following what meets him in life with sympathy and antipathy and with his general perception.

    The subconscious part consists in developing, below the threshold of consciousness, a better and more sublime feeling than any we can develop in ordinary consciousness. This feeling can only be described as the knowledge always in the hidden subconscious part of the soul that we must be thankful for every experience of life, even the smallest. Our difficult experiences may for the moment cause us pain, but to a wider view of existence, even painful experiences so present themselves that, not in the surface regions but in the subconscious soul, man can be thankful for them, thankful that life is unceasingly supplied with gifts from the universe. This exists as a real subconscious feeling in the soul.

    The other direction of feeling is that we must unite our own ego with every being with whom we have anything to do in life. Our actions extend to other beings, some, it may be, even inanimate; but wherever we have done anything, wherever our being has been united with another in action, something remains; and this remainder establishes a permanent relationship between our being and everything with which we have ever been connected. This feeling of kinship is the foundation for a deeper one, a feeling generally unrecognized by the higher soul: a feeling of oneness with the surrounding world.

    Those feelings — of gratitude and of union with the environment with which one is karmically united — can come to more and more conscious fruition. To a certain extent a man can awaken in his soul what lives in these feelings and perceptions; and to the degree in which this is done, he qualifies himself to build a bridge to souls living between death and rebirth. Their thoughts can only find the way to us when they are able to penetrate through the realm of the feeling of gratitude which we develop; and we can only find the way to them by fostering in our souls, at least to some extent, a feeling of communion. The fact that we are able to feel gratitude towards the universe enables such a mood to enter our souls. When we wish to enter into relation with the dead in any way, then because we have cultivated this disposition, because we are able to feel it, the way for the dead to reach us is opened; and because we can feel that our being lives in an organic community of which it forms a part, as our finger forms a part of our body, we become ripe to feel the same gratitude to the dead when they are no longer present in the physical body, so that by this means we can reach them with our thoughts. Only when we have acquired something of a disposition of gratitude, a feeling of communion, can we apply them in given cases.

    These experiences are not the only ones; subconscious perceptions and moods are of many kinds. All that we develop in the soul opens out the path to the world in which dwell the dead between death and rebirth. Thus there is a very definite feeling existing subconsciously, but which can be gradually brought into the consciousness, a feeling which we may put alongside of the feeling of gratitude; it becomes lost to man in proportion as he degenerates into materialism, although to a certain degree it always exists in the subconsciousness and is never rooted out, even by the strongest materialism. Enrichment, enhancement and an ennobling of life, however, depend on man's raising such things from his subconsciousness to his consciousness. The feeling here referred to can be called universal confidence in the life which flows through and past us — confidence in life!

    In a materialistic view of life, this disposition to confidence in life is very difficult to find. It resembles gratitude to life, but is quite another feeling alongside of it; for confidence in life consists in a steadfast disposition of soul, so that life, however it may approach us, has under all circumstances something to give us, so that we can never degenerate to the thought that life could have nothing more to give us. True, we pass through difficult and sorrowful experiences, but in the greater life relations these present themselves as something that most enriches and strengthens us for life. The chief thing is that this enduring disposition existing in the lower soul should be raised to the higher — the feeling: ‘O Life! Thou raisest me and bearest me, thou providest for my progress.’

    If such a disposition were fostered in educational systems a tremendous amount would be gained. It is even good to plan our teaching and education so as to show, by individual examples, that life deserves our confidence — just because it is often so hard to understand. When a man considers life from such a standpoint, asking: ‘Art thou worthy of confidence, O Life?’ he finds much that otherwise he would not find in life. Such a mood should not be considered superficially; it should not lead to finding everything in life brilliant and good. On the contrary, in particular cases this very ‘confidence’ in life may lead to a sharp criticism of evil and foolish things. When a man has not confidence in life, this often leads to his avoiding the exercise of criticism towards what is bad and foolish, because he wishes to pass by the things wherein he has no confidence.

    It is not a matter of having confidence in particular things; that belongs to another sphere. Man has confidence in one thing and not in another, according as the things and beings present themselves; but the point is for him to have confidence in the general life, as a whole, in the common relationships of life, for if he can draw up any of the confidence always present in the subconsciousness, a way is opened for the real observation of the spiritual guidance and wise disposition of life. Anyone who is observant, not in theory but with feeling, says again and again: ‘As the occurrences of life follow one another, they mean something to me when they take me into themselves; they have something to do with me in which I can have confidence.’ This prepares him for the real gradual perception of what spiritually lives and weaves in these things. Anyone who has not this confidence closes himself to this.

    Now to apply this to the relations between the living and the dead. When we develop this disposition of confidence, we make it possible for the dead to find his way to us with his thoughts; for thoughts can, as it were, sail on this mood of confidence from him to us. When we have confidence in life, faith in it, we are able to bring the soul into a condition in which the inspirations, which are thoughts sent to us by the dead, can appear — gratitude towards life, confidence in life as described, belong in a sense together. If we have not this universal confidence in life as a whole, we cannot acquire sufficient confidence in anyone to extend beyond death; it is then simply a ‘memory’ of our confidence.

    We must realize that if this feeling is to meet with the discarnate dead, no longer incorporated in a physical body, it must be modified, and different from the perceptions and feelings which are extended to friends in the physical body. True, we have confidence in a man in the physical body and this will be useful for the conditions after death; but it is necessary that this confidence should be augmented by the universal, common confidence in life, for the relations of life after death are different. It is not only necessary to ‘remember’ the confidence we had in him in life, but we need to call forth freshly animated confidence in a being who can no longer waken confidence by his physical presence. For this it is necessary that we should ray something into the world, as it were, which has nothing to do with physical things; for the above-described universal confidence in life has nothing to do with physical things.

    Just as this confidence places itself side by side with the feeling of gratitude, so something else places itself beside the feeling of oneness which is ever present in the lower soul and can be raised to the higher. That again is something which should receive more consideration than it does. This can be done when the element of which I am about to speak is given consideration in the educational systems of our materialistic age. A great deal depends upon this. If man is to take his right place in the world in the present cycle of time, it is necessary for him to develop a faculty which must be cultivated from knowledge of the spiritual world, not from an undefined instinct — we might even say he must draw up something from the lower soul which came of itself in earlier times of atavistic clairvoyance without any need of cultivation and which, though a few scattered remains still exist, is now gradually disappearing, as is all else derived from olden times.

    What a man needs in this respect is the possibility through life itself to rejuvenate and refresh again and again his feelings towards what must be encountered in life. We can so squander life that after a certain age we begin to feel more or less ‘tired,’ because we have lost the living share in life and are not able to bring sufficient zest to it for its phenomena to give us joy. Just compare the two extremes: the grasp and acceptance of experience in early youth — and the weary acceptance of life's phenomena in later age. Just consider how many disappointments are connected with this. There is a difference in whether a man is able to make his soul forces take part in a continual resurrection so that each morning is new to his psychic experience, or whether, as it were, the course of his life has wearied him for the appreciation of its phenomena.

    It is specially important to consider this in our time, so that it should gain an influence in the systems of education. With respect to such things we face a significant turning-point in human evolution. Our judgment of earlier epochs is framed under the influence of the modern science of ‘History,’ which is fiction of a strangely distorted kind. It is not even known how it has come about that training and education have been so directed that in later life man does not retain what he should. Under the influence of the present method the most that we produce in later years of life from the faculties exercised during our youthful education is a mere memory. We remember what we learnt, what was said to us, and as a rule we are contented if we do but remember.

    We do not, however, notice that many mysteries underlie human life, and in this connection one significant mystery. Reference has already been made to it in former lectures from another point of view. Man is a manifold being. We will first observe him as a twofold being. This twofold nature is expressed even in his outer bodily form, which shows us man as a head, and as the remaining part. Let us first divide man in this way. Were we to keep this difference in structure well in mind, we should be able to make very significant discoveries in natural science.

    If we observe the structure of the head purely physiologically, anatomically, it presents itself as that to which the more material history of evolution, known as the Darwinian theory, may be applied. In respect of his head, man is placed, as it were, in the stream of evolution; but only in respect of his head, not as regards the rest of his organism. In order to understand the descent of man, we must think of the head alone, disregarding the proportion in size, and consider all attached to it. Suppose evolution took such a course that in time to come man developed certain additional organs of still greater significance; this development, this metamorphosis, might go even further. This was actually the case in the past: man was, long ago, actually a head-being only, developing little by little and becoming what he is today. What is attached to the head, although physically larger, only grew there later. It is a younger structure. As regards his head, man is descended from the oldest organism; all the rest grew later.

    The reason why the head is so important to the present man is because it remembers former incarnations. The rest of his organization is, on the other hand, a preliminary condition for later incarnations. In this respect man is a twofold being. The head is organized quite differently from the rest of the organism. The head is an ossified organ. The fact is that if man had not the rest of his organism, he would certainly be very spiritualized — but a ‘spiritualized animal’ only. Unless the head were inspired thereto, it would never feel itself as ‘man.’ It points back to the old epochs of Saturn, Sun, and Moon, the rest of the organism only to that of the Moon, and indeed to the later part of that period; it only grew on to the head-part and is really in this respect something like a parasite.

We may well think of it in this way: the head was once the whole man; below, it had outlets and openings by which it fed. It was a very peculiar being. As it developed, the lower orifices closed to the environment, and therefore were no longer able either to serve for nourishment or to bring the head into connection with the influences streaming in from the environment; and because the head also ossified above, the remaining part of the body then became necessary. This part of the physical organism only came into being at a time when it was no longer possible for the rest of the animal creation to take form.

It may be said that this is difficult to imagine. The only reply is that man must take the trouble to realize that the world is not so simple as some would like to believe, some who prefer not to think much in order to understand it. In this respect men experience a number of ideas by which they claim that the world is easy to understand, and they have very remarkable views. There is an abundance of literature by those who hold Kant as a great philosopher. That is due to the fact that they understand no other philosophers, and have to exercise much thought-force to understand Kant. As he was to them the greatest philosopher (in their own opinion men often consider themselves to be the greatest geniuses!) they can understand none of the others. It is only because Kant is so difficult to understand that he is regarded by them as a great philosopher. With this is connected the fact that man is afraid to regard the world as complicated, as requiring the power of thought for its comprehension.

These things have been described from various points of view, and when some day my lectures on ‘Occult Physiology’ are published, men will be able to read how it can be proved by embryology that it is foolish to say that the brain has developed from the spinal cord. The opposite is the case: the brain is a transformed spinal cord of former times, and the present spinal cord is only added to the brain as an appendage. We must learn to understand that what seems the simplest part of man has come into being later than what seems the more complicated; what is more primitive and at a more subordinate stage has come into being later.

This reference to the twofold nature of man is made here in order to explain the rest, which is the outcome of this duality. The consequence is that as regards our soul life, which develops under the restrictions of the bodily nature, we ourselves are included in this duality. We have not only the organic development of the head and that of the rest of the organism, but also two different rates, two different velocities, in the development of the soul. The development of the head is comparatively rapid, and that of the rest of the organism — we will call it the development of the heart — is about three or four times slower.

The condition for the head is that as a rule it closes its development about the 20th year; as regards the head we are old at 20; it is only because we obtain refreshment from the rest of the organism, which develops three or four times as slowly, that we continue our life agreeably. The development of our head is quick, that of the heart, of the rest of the organism, three or four times slower; and in this duality we live our earthly life. In childhood and youth our head organism can absorb a great deal, therefore we study during that time; but what we then received must be continually renewed and refreshed, must be constantly encompassed by the slower evolutionary progress of the rest of the organs, the progress of the heart.

Now let us reflect that if education, as in our age, only takes into consideration the development of the head, it is because in training and education we only allow any rights to the head; the consequence is that the head is only articulated as a dead organism into the slower progress of the evolution of the rest; it holds this back. The phenomenon that at the present time man grows old early in his soul and inner nature is chiefly due to the system of training and education. Of course we must not suppose that at the present time we can put the question: How shall we arrange education so that this shall not happen? This is a very important matter which cannot be answered in a few words, for education would have to be altered in almost every respect, for it would not be a question of memory only, but of something with which man could refresh and revive himself.

Let us ask ourselves how many today, when they look back to an achievement in childhood, upon all they experienced then, upon what their teachers and relations said, are able to remember more than: ‘You must do this,’ are able to plunge again into what was experienced in youth, looking lovingly back to the handclasp, to every single remark, to the sound of the voice, to the permeation with feeling of what was offered them in childhood, experiencing it as a continual fount of rejuvenation? It is connected with the rates of development we experience within us that man must follow the quicker development of his head, which closes about the 20th year, and that the slower progress of the heart, the evolution of the rest of him, has to be nourished throughout his life. We must not only give the head what is prescribed for it, but also that from which the rest of the organism can again and again draw forth restorative force for the whole of our lives.

For this it is necessary that every branch of education should be permeated by a certain artistic element. Today, when people avoid the artistic element, thinking that to foster the life of fancy — and fancy carries man beyond mere everyday reality — might bring fantasy into education, there is no inclination whatever to pay attention to such mysteries of life. We need only look to certain spheres to see what is here meant — for it does, of course, still exist here and there — and we shall see that something can be realized in this way; but it must be realized by man's again becoming ‘man.’ This is necessary for many reasons; we shall draw attention to one of them.

Those who wish to become teachers today are examined as to what they know — but what does this prove? As a rule only that the candidate has for the time of the examination hammered into his head something which — if he is at all suited for that particular subject — he has been able to gather from many books, day after day acquiring what it is not in the least necessary to acquire in that way. What should be required above all in such examinations is to ascertain whether the candidate has the heart, mind, and temperament for gradually establishing a relationship between himself and the children. Examination should not test the candidate's knowledge, but ascertain his power, and whether he is sufficiently a ‘man.’

To make such demands today would, I know, simply mean for the present time one of two things. Either it would be said that anyone who demands such tests is quite crazy, such a man does not live in the world of reality; or if reluctant to give such an answer, they would say: ‘Something of the kind does take place; we all want that.’ People suppose that results come about from this training, because they only understand the subject in so far as they bring their consideration to bear upon it.

The foregoing is intended to throw light from a certain side upon something which the lower soul always feels, and which is so difficult to bring up into the higher soul at the present time; something which is desired by the human soul and will be desired more and more as the time goes on — so that we may see in the right light the fact that the soul needs something wherewith continually to renew the power of its forces, so that we may not grow weary with our progressing life, but are always able to say, full of hope: ‘Each new day will be to us like the first one we consciously experienced.’

For this, however, we must, in a sense, not need to ‘grow old;’ it is urgently necessary that there should be no occasion to grow old in soul. When we observe how many comparatively young people there are who are dreadfully old and how few regard each day as a new experience given them, as to a lively child, we know what must be achieved and given by a spiritual culture in this domain.

Ultimately the feeling here meant is the feeling which acquires the perennial hopefulness of life and enables us to experience the right relation between the living and the so-called dead. Otherwise the facts which should establish our relationship to one of the dead remain too strongly in the memory. A man can remember what he experienced with his dead during life. If, however, when the dead is physically absent we cannot have the feeling that we can always revivify what we experienced with him during life, our feeling and perception are not strong enough to experience this new relationship that the dead is still present as a spiritual being and can work as a spirit. If a man has grown so deadened that he can no longer revive anything of the hopefulness of life, he can no longer feel that a complete transformation has taken place. Formerly he could help himself by meeting his friend in life; now the spirit alone can come to his help. He can meet him, however, if he evolves this feeling of the ever-enduring stimulation of the life-forces, in order to keep the hopefulness of life fresh.

It may seem strange to say so, but a healthy life, especially healthy in the directions which a man might develop here (unless he be in a clouded state of consciousness), never leads to the consideration of life as anything of which he can be tired; for even when he has grown old, a thoroughly sound life leads him to wish to accept each day as something new and fresh. Sound health does not lead a man to say when old: ‘Thank God my life is behind me;’ rather does he say to himself: ‘I should like to go back forty or fifty years and pass through the same circumstances again!’ — This is the man who has learnt through wisdom to cheer himself with the thought that what he cannot carry through in this life, he will do more correctly in another. The sound man does not regret anything he has experienced, and if wisdom is needed for this, he does not long to have it in this life, but is able to wait for another. The right confidence in life is built on vigorously maintained life-hopes.

These then, are the feelings which rightly inspire life and at the same time create the bridge between the living here and the dead yonder: gratitude towards the life which greets us here; confidence in its experiences; an intimate feeling-in-common; the faculty of making hope active in life through ever fresh springing life-forces. These are the inner ethical impulses which, felt in the right way, can supply the highest external social ethics; for ethics, like history, can only be understood in the subconscious realm.

Another question in regard to the relationship of the living to the dead frequently arises: What is the real difference in a relationship between man and man when incarnated in physical bodies, and between them when one is in a physical body and the other not, or when neither is in a physical body? In respect to one point of view I should here like to mention something of importance.

When we observe the ego and actual soul life — also called the astral body — by means of spiritual science (the ego, as we have often heard, is the youngest, the baby among the principles of  man's organization, whereas the astral body is somewhat older, though only dating from the Moon evolution) we must say of these two highest principles that they are not as yet so far advanced for man to rely on them alone for power to maintain himself independently of other men. If we were here with one another — each only as ego and astral body — we should be together as though in a sort of primordial jelly. Our entities would merge into each other; we should not be separate and would not know how to distinguish ourselves one from the other. There could be no possibility of knowing whether a hand or leg were one's own or another's (the whole matter would then of course be quite different; we cannot really thus compare the circumstances). We could not even properly recognize our feelings as our own.

To perceive ourselves as separated men depends on each one having been drawn out of the general fluid — as we must picture a very early period — like a drop; and in such a way that the individual souls did not flow together again, but each soul-drop was held together as though in a sponge. Something like that really occurred. Only because we as human beings are in etheric and physical bodies are we separated from one another, really separate. In sleep we are only separated by a strong longing for our physical body. This longing which draws us ardently to the physical body divides us in sleep; otherwise we should drift through one another all night long. It would probably be much against the grain of sentimental minds if they knew how strongly they come into connection with other beings in their neighborhood. This, however, is not so very bad in comparison with what might be if this ardent longing for the physical body did not exist as long as man is physically incorporated.

We might now ask: What divides our souls from others in the time between death and rebirth? Well: as with our ego and astral body between birth and death we belong to a physical and etheric body, so after death, until rebirth, we are part of quite definite starry structures, in no way the same; each one of us belongs to quite a distinct structure. From out of this instinct we speak of ‘man's star.’ This starry structure, taking its physical projection first, is peripherally globular, but we can divide it in many ways. The regions overlap each other, but each belongs to another. Expressed spiritually, we might say that each belongs to a different rank of Archangels and Angels. Just as people here are drawn together through their souls, so between death and rebirth, each belongs to a particular starry structure, to a particular rank of Angels and Archangels; their souls all meet together there. The reason this is so, but only apparently (for we must not now go further into the mystery), is because on Earth each one has his own physical body. I say ‘apparently’ and you will wonder; but it is surprising when investigated how each has his own starry structure and how these overlap.

Let us think of a particular group of Angels and Archangels. In the life between death and rebirth, thousands of Angels and Archangels belong to one soul; imagine only one of all these thousands, taken away and replaced by another, and we have the region of the next soul.

In this diagram two souls have, with one exception, which they have from another realm, the same stars; but no two souls have absolutely similar starry structures. Thus men are individualized between death and rebirth, by having each his special starry structure. From this we see upon what the separation of souls between death and rebirth is based. In the physical world, as we know, this division is effected by the physical body. Man has his physical body as a shell, as it were; he observes the world from it, and everything must come to the physical body. All that comes into the soul of man between death and rebirth stands, as regards the relation between his astral body and ego, in a similar way in regard to a starry structure, as here the soul and the ego stand with regard to the physical body. Thus the question as to how this severance comes about is also answered as above.

From these considerations we have seen today how we can work upon our souls in forming certain feelings and perceptions, so that the bridge of communication may be formed between the so-called dead and the living. What has just been said can also attract thoughts, perceptive thoughts and thoughtful perceptions, which can in their turn have a share in the creation of this bridge. This takes place by our seeking more and more to form a kind of perception with regard to some particular dead friend which when we have experienced something in the soul, can bring up the impulse to ask ourselves: How would the dead experience what I experience at this moment? By creating the imagination that the dead experienced the event side by side with us and making this really a living feeling, man gauges in a certain respect either how the dead has intercourse with the living, or the dead with the dead, when we consider the various starry realms given, in relation to our own souls or to each other. We can here surmise what interplays between soul and soul through their assignment to the starry realm.

If we concentrate through the presence of the dead upon a directly present interest, if in this way we feel the dead living immediately beside us, then from such things as have been discussed today we become more and more conscious that the dead really do approach us. The soul will develop a consciousness of this. In this connection we must have confidence in life that these things are so; for if we do not have confidence but are impatient with life, the other truth obtains. What confidence brings is drawn away by impatience; what man might learn through confidence is made dark by impatience. Nothing is worse than if by our impatience we conjure up a mist before the soul.

Source: http://www.webcitation.org/5zQtnjNXU