"O Man, Know Yourself!" Wrestling against the rulers of the darkness of this world

 

"Valor transposed into the spiritual, bravery transposed into the spiritual, is love."
— Rudolf Steiner

Ephesians 6:10-12

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.

Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

  

The New Spirituality and the New Christ Experience

Lecture 7 of 7

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland

October 31, 1920

I tried yesterday to describe to you something of how European conditions are bound to develop in the near future, and we saw that the course of European development, of modern civilisation generally, will inevitably be bound up with the disappearance of what, in many areas of our modern times, is still considered by people to be the easiest way and of value. From the way in which I had to speak yesterday it will be clear to you that, for many who would rather go through the coming times in a comfortable sleep, with a sleeping soul, there is a very disagreeable awakening in store. I do not say—I mentioned this yesterday already—that the prophecies of those who see the most central matter of the near future as lying in such external things as the differences between Japan and America must be absolutely correct. But what must be regarded as imminent is what I characterized for you in a few brush-strokes as the great spiritual battle between East and West, in which the true culture of Middle Europe, as we have come to know it in recent weeks, will be wedged. Strange as this may sound it is out of the modern world-conception, based on science, that the most intense need will have to arise for what I have called the Christ-experience soon to come. We learnt yesterday how little experience of the Christ there really is at the present time. The course of human evolution has brought it about that ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, and particularly in recent centuries, all that can properly be called experience of the Christ has fallen into complete decadence. We saw, too, that because of the impossibility of adhering to the old prohibition against reading the Gospels—which, in theory, is indeed still maintained by the Catholic Church against humanity's demand to be able to receive and read the Gospels—an experience of Christ has not been able to develop. And we have already pointed out how the particular constitution of soul that is becoming prevalent in modern civilization will again lead to experience of the Christ, just as remnants of the old instinctive clairvoyance could lead to it at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. But one has to be clear that just as other crucial, incisive events in human evolution came about in ways other than is expected among philistine circles; so, too, what one must call the Christ-experience of the first half of the twentieth century will come in an unexpected way. And this experience will have a clearly definable connection with the modern outlook on life based on science.

Consider the following. Since the middle of the fifteenth century the constitution of people's souls has become quite different from what it was before that time. History does not take this into account because external history ever and again remains at the surface of things. But especially during the period between the middle of the nineteenth century and our own time, the soul-constitution of humanity as a whole has undergone a fundamental change. This also has been taken into account far too little because people habitually stick to what was once instilled into them. At most, one can notice a breaking out from this clinging by force of habit to what has been inculcated when one observes with a wakeful soul the outlook on life of today's younger generation, and compares this with the outlook of their eiders when they were in their youth. The difference between older people and the youth of today has been depicted again and again, particularly by poets; and if people did not encapsulate themselves in their habitual ideas so that nothing can penetrate which conflicts with their usual habits of thought they would soon see what an immense gulf there really is between those who are old today and those who are young.

On the other hand there is a terribly reactionary, conservative element in human evolution today. It is the belief in the authority of popular science. And this is connected with the fact that popular science has totally captivated the general consciousness. People underestimate this today. Just think how rapidly, especially in the last decades, ideas which have become familiar through nineteenth-century scientific development have taken universal hold, right down to the least educated classes. Certainly there are many who still cling to a certain piety, a piety that wants to know nothing of what is laying hold of humanity through modern scientific thought. But for the most part there is a terrible dishonesty rooted in this piety; a refusal to face what is spreading here and which one can only define as the materialism of modern humanity evoked by natural science. The spread of this materialism will not be checked in the near future as some deluded scientists seem to think. On the contrary, it will increase with furious speed and we shall see how, out of the chaos of modern civilization, this materialistic mood will become stronger and stronger. And if sufficient preparation has been made, if the aims of spiritual science are fulfilled—so that children at school are given a stimulus for the right kind of development—then out of this materialistic mood, out of this chaos, individual souls can emerge who will have a very strong sense of something which I should now like to describe, although I have done so in different ways and at different times before.

When someone acquainted with the modern scientific outlook on the world, observes it with awakened eyes of the soul, he cannot fail to realize that one of its most distinguishing features is that it is incapable of comprehending the human being. The human being, as such, is actually entirely excluded from the conception of the world based on modern science. We had occasion here recently to consider the scope of the various branches of scientific learning when we held our course for scientists and we saw that none of these has anything to say about the real nature of man. We need only give one characteristic example: take the usual theory of evolution expounded under the influence of Darwin or Weismann¹ or others. It demonstrates the evolution of the living creature from the simplest to the most perfect and lays down the view that man also derives his origin from this line of evolution. But actually it takes into consideration only that element of man that is animal. It considers man only so far as to be able to say that any organ, any structure in man, derives from the corresponding organ or structure in the animal line. Science ignores the extent to which the animal-element in man appears in a modified form, the extent to which the animal-nature in man differs from that of the animal world. The ability to keep man himself in view has been completely lost by science; man is left out. Science has developed scrupulous methods. It has established a certain discipline that is necessary if one means to enter into discussions on world-views. But this science has not been capable of raising man's power of understanding to the point where man himself becomes comprehensible. There is no place for the human being in the scientific thought of today and thus he presents an ever-greater riddle to himself. Only a very few people are aware of this today and these few can certainly be clear about it theoretically. But there is, as yet, no unified feeling for it. Such a feeling will arise with vigour from properly conducted elementary education. The children will come out of properly conducted elementary school in such a way that they will already have the feeling: 'We have a science which is born out of modern intellectuality, but the further we enter into this science, the more we learn of nature, the less we understand of ourselves, the less we understand of the human being.'

This intellect, which was the principal soul-force developing in recent centuries—and is so still today—this intellect creates a complete void in man, so to speak, as regards his perception of self. And yet, on the other hand, we hear the demand that man should stand solely on the basis of his own being. This comes forward as, I should say, a fundamental social demand. Side by side with the inability of the science of recent times to account for the human being, we have, on the other side, claims of all kinds coming not from any scientific impulse but from the depths of human instinct—demands that man be able to raise himself to an existence worthy of the human being: that he should be able to feel what his real nature is. While on the one hand we have more and more demands of a practical kind, on the other we have the increasing inability of science to say anything about the human being's own nature. Such a discrepancy in human experience would have been quite impossible in earlier times of human world-view development.

If we turn once more to the ancient oriental outlook we must Say, from what we have been able to indicate of this, that the human being knew then that he descended from spiritual heights; that he lived, before he entered into physical existence through conception and birth, in a spiritual world. He knew that he brought with him from the spiritual world something that was still in him, something that came out in childhood as disposition, as aspiration, and remained with him through the whole of his life on earth. In ancient times every oriental knew that what worked its way out of his soul during childhood, in youth, was a dowry from the spiritual worlds which he had experienced before entering into physical existence. To be aware theoretically that one has passed through a spiritual life of this kind before one's life on earth has no very great value, but a lively feeling for it is worth a great deal; it is something of the greatest value to feel that what has been growing and developing in one's soul since childhood comes from the spiritual world.

Today, however, this feeling has given way to another. It has given way, both in the individual and more especially in the social life, to another feeling entirely. And there is something important here which must be looked at. More and more there weighs down upon the human being, half unconsciously, the feeling of his inherited characteristics. Anyone who is able to view this impartially sees how the human being-today actually feels that he is what he is through his parents, his grandparents and so on. Unlike the human being in ancient times he no longer feels that what flames up in him from childhood onwards, comes from those depths in which is rooted that which he received from his spiritual experiences before. his life on earth. On the contrary he feels in himself the characteristics inherited from parents, grandparents and so on. The first thing people ask about a child nowadays is from whom it has got this or that characteristic. And the reply, however, is seldom that the child has it as a result of this or that particular experience in the spiritual world. People look instead to see whether it comes from the grandmother or grandfather, and soon. The more this emerges in individual people—not merely as a theory but as a feeling, a feeling of dependence on purely earthly inherited characteristics—the more oppressive and dreadful will it gradually become. And this feeling will increase in strength very rapidly. In the decades ahead it will intensify to the Point of becoming unbearable, for it is connected with another feeling, a certain feeling of the worthlessness of human existence. This will arise more and more: that the human being will feel his existence to be worthless if he cannot feel it to be anything other than the sum total of what has been implanted in his blood and in his other organs by physically-inherited characteristics. Today what is emerging here is still, to a certain extent, mere theory, although there are poets who have already expressed it as experience. But it will emerge as a feeling, as a sense, and it will then become an oppressive characteristic in the feeling-life of civilized humanity. This experiencing of oneself in the purely inherited characteristics will lie like a weight on the soul. It is here that the inability of natural science to give man an understanding of himself shows itself in all its poverty; the human being no longer feels himself to be a child of the spiritual world but merely a child of characteristics inherited in the course of earthly physical existence.

All this is very forcibly manifest in social life. You have only to think of the demands that have arisen as the outcome of a gigantic piece of political stupidity which has spread through the world in recent years! This folly slowly gathered strength during recent centuries and then came to a climax in our own day. The great crisis of the second decade of the twentieth century was ushered in when those who were supposed to be leading the several nations—who at any rate held positions which imply leadership and yet understood nothing of the situation mankind is in - when these people began talking about organizing mankind according to the will of its individual nations. It was indeed in our recent times that national chauvinism was aroused in its very worst sense. And it is national chauvinism that is ringing through the whole civilized world today. This is merely the social counterpart of the utterly reactionary world-view that tries to trace everything back to inherited characteristics. When one no longer strives to fathom one's nature as a human being and to fashion the social structure in such a way that this human nature can be at home in it; and when one strives, instead, to bring it about that the social structure corresponds only with what men are as Czechs, Slovaks, Magyars, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Poles and so on, then one forgets all spirituality. Then all spirituality is excluded and people try to order the world solely in accordance with characteristics inherited through the blood because they have come more and more to the point of having no content at all in their concepts. This had to happen because this twentieth century had to give us a taste of the fact that there can be a man, marvelled at by vast numbers as a world-leader, even though there are no concepts in his words whatsoever—that there can be a man like Woodrow Wilson² who utters words which no longer contain any concepts. It is for this reason that people have had to fall back upon something entirely devoid of spirit—on blood relationship, on the blood-related characteristics of the nations. All that has resulted from this is that peace treaties have been made in which people who know absolutely nothing about the conditions of life in the modern civilized world have determined the shape of the maps of the countries of that world. Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the materialism of modern times, its denial of everything spiritual, than the emergence of the principle of nationalism.

This, of course, is a truth which for many people today is highly unpleasant. And this is why so many lies have to be harboured in the deeper regions of the soul. For if one does not face honestly the fact that by establishing an order of the world based only on blood-relationship one is denying the spirit, then one is lying. And one is also lying when in such circumstances one then claims to be inclined towards some kind of spiritual conception of the world.

And now let us look at the way the evolution of the world is going today. Everything that is welling up out of the chaotic instincts of humanity denies the spirit utterly. I put you through a trial yesterday. In order to spare your delicate nerves, which I noticed yesterday to some extent, I will not add any more trials, although they could easily be added. Thus we see on all sides how man has lost insight into the true nature of his being. And let us now consider from a spiritual-scientific standpoint the counter-image of what I had to describe as a feeling that is surging up.

You know that spiritual science shows how our earth-planet, upon which the human being has to experience his present destiny, is the re-embodiment of three preceding conditions and how we have to look forward to three subsequent embodiments so that our earth, schematically, is in a midway state.

Now we know from what is described in my Occult Science³ that what the human being bears today as his physical body is essentially an inheritance from the first, second, third and fourth conditions. What he bears as his etheric body is a result of the second, third and fourth conditions. What we call his astral body is the result of the third and fourth conditions. And now, in our present earth-evolution, the 'I' is appearing. And there will appear in the future, when the earth enters its next stages, what today is indicated in the human being only in germ—spirit-self, life-spirit and actual spirit-man. These will have to be elaborated in the human being, just as physical body, etheric body and astral body have been elaborated, and just as the 'I' is being worked on at the present time. But you will know, if you reflect on how much of this cosmic-earthly evolution can be brought to you, that during earth-evolution only the germs of spirit-self, life-spirit and spirit-man will be able to evolve; for we shall have to wait for the transformation of the earth into its three following conditions for them to appear fully. And from the descriptions I have given in my Occult Science you will see that, essentially, spirit-self is the transformation of the astral body into a higher stage, that life-spirit is the transformation of the etheric body to a higher stage and spirit-man is the transformation of the physical body to a higher stage. This transformation of the physical body, however, will not take place until the seventh condition—nor, correspondingly, the transformation of the other members. Today, however, the human being can already understand that this has to happen. He can already embrace the thought that it must happen. Indeed, the human being can grasp still more today if, without prejudice, he gets beyond the limitations of natural science and directs his soul's gaze upon its own nature. He will have to say to himself: 'It is true that, during earth-existence, I cannot attain spirit-self in my astral body, nor life-spirit in my etheric body nor spirit-man in my physical body, but what I have to do is to prepare, to prefigure, them in my soul. And by developing the consciousness-soul now I am preparing myself to take spirit-self into it in the next, the sixth, culture-epoch. I know that I cannot yet bring spirit-self into my entire astral body, but I have to bring it into my consciousness-soul. As a human being, I must learn to live inwardly in the way that I shall one day live when the earth has passed over, through a certain cosmic development, into its next stage of evolution. And I must prepare for these future conditions, at least inwardly, while still in earthly existence. I must prepare myself, in germ, inwardly so that in the future I shall be able to shape my outer form in the way which it is my task, even now, to understand.'

Now try and sense clearly what is really involved here. The human being is already growing into spirit-self, as I have often explained. The human being is growing into states of consciousness of which he must say that they are really of such a nature that, during the period of earth-existence, they cannot emerge fully. These states of consciousness try to transform him even as regards his external sheaths—his astral body, etheric body and physical body—but, as earthly man, he cannot achieve this. He has to say to himself: 'I must pass through the rest of earth-evolution continually feeling that I am preparing myself inwardly for conditions of being I cannot yet develop'. In future it will have to be the normal thing for a human being to say: 'I see the being of man as something which, in its inner nature, grows beyond what I can be as earthly man. As earthly man I am forced, in a sense, to feel myself as a dwarf compared with what the human being really is.' And out of this dissatisfaction, which properly educated children will begin to have in the very near future, this feeling will arise: The children will feel that, despite all our intellectual culture, people are still not able to solve the riddle of man. Man is missing from what can be known intellectually; he has no place in the social structure. Everything that will develop out of the foolish Wilsonian formulas, and out of any other form of chauvinism that spreads over the world, will be quite unworkable. Through all such things modern civilization is heading towards impossible situations. However many more national states you set up you will provide only so many more seeds of destruction; and it is just out of everything that is loaded onto human souls as a result of modern civilization that the feeling I have just described from another point of view will proceed. The human being will say to himself: The being of man that lights up inwardly for me is something much higher than anything I can realize externally. I must bring something quite different to the world. I must bring something quite different into the social structure, something that is recognized as coming from spiritual heights. I cannot entrust myself to the social science derived from natural science.' But the human being must sense the inner schism between his dwarf-like existence on earth and the experience that lights up within him of himself as a cosmic being. Out of all that modern culture—this much-praised, idolized culture of today—can give the human being, a twofold feeling will develop. On the one hand he will feel himself as belonging to the earth; on the other he will say: 'But the human being is more than an earthly being. The earth cannot fulfill the human being at all; if it a to fulfill him it will have first to transform itself into other conditions.' In reality the human being is not an earth-being. In reality the human being is a cosmic being, a being belonging to the whole universe. On the one side the human being will feel himself bound to the earth; on the other he will feel himself to be a cosmic being. This feeling will weigh down on him. And when this is no longer mere theory but is experienced by individual human beings whose karma enables them to grow beyond the trivial feelings of today - when humanity comes to feel disgust at the thought of purely inherited characteristics and at the emotions engendered by chauvinism and turns against all this—only then will a kind of reverse begin. The human being will feel himself to be a cosmic being. As though with outstretched arms he will ask for the solution to the riddle of his cosmic being. This is what will come in the next decades: as though with outstretched arms—I mean this, of course, symbolically—the human being will ask: 'Who can decipher for me my nature as a cosmic being? Everything that I can establish on earth, all that the earth can give me, all that I can get from the natural science that is so highly valued today, accounts for me only as an earth-being and leaves the true being of man as an unsolved riddle. I know that I am a cosmic, a super-earthly being. Who can unravel for me the riddle of this super-earthly being?'

This will live in the human soul as a question rising up from a fundamental experience. In the decades to come, even before we reach the middle of this century, this question will be more important than anything else or any other feelings people may have. And the expectation, the longing, that there has to be a solution to this human riddle—the riddle that the human beings are, after all, cosmic beings. This feeling towards the cosmos -that one day it must reveal what cannot come from the earth—all this will create a mood to which the cosmos responds. Just as the physical Christ appeared at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha so the spiritual Christ will appear to humanity. He alone can give the answer because He is not in some indefinite place but must be recognized as a Being from beyond the earth who has united Himself with earthly humanity. People will have to understand that the question of cosmic man can be answered only if He who unites Himself with the earth from out of the cosmos comes to their aid. This will be the solution of the most significant disharmony that has ever arisen in earth-existence; the disharmony between the human being's feeling as an earthly being and his knowledge that he is a super-earthly being, a cosmic being. The fulfilment of this longing (Drang) will prepare man to recognize how, out of grey spiritual depths, the Christ-Being will reveal Himself to him and will speak to him spiritually, just as, at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, He spoke to him physically. The Christ will not come in the spirit if human beings are not prepared for Him. But they can be prepared only in the way I have just characterized, by sensing the discrepancy I described, by the schism weighing terribly heavily upon them from which they feel: 'I must regard myself as an earth-being. The intellectual development of recent centuries has created the conditions which make me appear as an earth-being. Yet I am no earth-being. I cannot but feel myself united with a being who is not of this earth; a being who, not with theological mendacity but in very truth can say: "My kingdom is not of this world".'⁴ For man will have to say to himself: 'My kingdom is not of this world.' And this is why he will have to be united with a being who is not of this world.

It is directly out of the sciences which, as I have said, will take possession of the popular consciousness with tremendous speed that something must be developed which will direct mankind towards the new manifestation of the Christ in the first half of the twentieth century. This, of course, could not have happened in the constitution of soul in which the civilized world was before 1914 when all talk of ideals, all talk of spirituality, was fundamentally a lie. Deep need will have to make human beings' search for spirituality a true one. And the Christ will appear only to those who renounce everything that spreads falsehood over earthly life. And no social question will be solved that is not thought out in connection with this spiritual-scientific endeavour that enables the human being to appear in truth once again as a super-earthly being. The solutions to our social problems will be found to the degree in which human beings are able to feel the Christ-impulse in their souls. All other solutions will lead only to destruction, to chaos. For all other solutions are based on the conception of man as an earthly being. But precisely in our own day the human being is outgrowing the constitution of soul which permits him to think of himself as a purely earthly, physical being. The new experience of the Christ will arise out of the attunement (Gestimmtheit) of human souls and out of their need.

But awareness must all the more be directed towards everything that hinders the approach of this new Christ-experience.

We had to refer directly to attacks on our own affairs and have seen that here also people take up an attitude towards the emerging spiritual science such that they fight against it out of an inner untruthfulness.

One experiences something in this area today which must be kept in view completely impartially. Almost every day at the moment spiritual science is, as it were, killed off at least once. The most recent of these death-blows was the one dealt by a theology professor, Karl Goetz, in agreement with another Doctor of Divinity, a certain Heinzelmann.⁵ I will disregard the fact that this Doctor of Divinity, Karl Goetz, has made an attack on spiritual science, or 'so-called spiritual science' as he terms it, for example in his newspaper article—we are having to get used to these things more and more here in Dornach. But one can also look from another point of view at everything that has been perpetrated by this Doctor of Divinity, Goetz. One can look at it from the point of view of how lacking in knowledge is this official 'erudition which has the education of contemporary youth in its care. One can deduce from this that there is an attack here on spiritual science. But one can look at the following, and I will highlight a few characteristic points—although only from the newspaper article—which, according to this attack, are supposed to occur. The methods of knowledge in spiritual science are referred to here by a man whose profession it is to speak about Christology, who gains his daily bread by educating youth in Christology. This man says, about the methods used to gain knowledge in anthroposophical science, that the Imaginations sought are the result of when the mental activity of forming ideas is artificially inhibited and suppressed. He says that the nervous energy saved in this way is then used to produce the mental images which anthroposophists call Imagination and Intuition.

So, just take a look at what this man says: Artificially constrained and repressed mental-picturing activity and, in the process, saved neural energy! One can disregard the fact that this man can of course only speak of saved neural energy as a vague hypothesis—for no one in science today can picture anything under the term of 'saved neural energy'. But he nevertheless talks of artificially constrained and repressed mental-picturing activity. Has this man in his 'scientific conscientiousness'—I choose the words carefully in this case and thus say in inverted commas, in his 'scientific conscientiousness'—ever really occupied himself with what, for example, is applied here as the methods of knowledge for coming to Imagination? Is it possible to speak here about constrained or repressed mental-picturing activity? Now, if he decided to look at some anthroposophical literature this man would be able to answer this. Those mental pictures which he considers to be his normal ones are indeed not repressed. Had he only tried a little to find out whether distorted mental pictures ruled the day while our School of Spiritual Science course was being held he would not speak about mental-picturing activity being suppressed here. There is still plenty of unsuppressed mental-picturing life here which, at least with regard to many a specialized science, is well able to understand what this man can understand. One simply cannot speak about suppressed mental-picturing activity [in this connection]. And if he had ever acquainted himself in his 'scientific conscientiousness' with what is described as the path into the spiritual worlds, he would have seen that nothing is artificially suppressed here but that things are freed. The case here is that this man has not understood a single word of what is contained in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—How is it Achieved?. And he knows nothing of the methods of spiritual science other than what, in accordance with his constitution of soul, he can gather from the meditation successes of a bunch of old cronies. This is what is working under the name of 'scientific conscientiousness' in official science.

He goes on to say that through holding back these constrained mental pictures—people are supposed to imagine something here like mental pictures being dammed up like water—that, through this holding back, Imaginations come to life and appear like perceptions of the senses. Well, I would like to count up the pages where, again and again in my books, I have said that Imaginations have no similarity with pictures from the senses, with sense-perceptions. This is dealt with quite extensively. So what is ruling in this 'scientific conscientiousness'? The lie—which, albeit may arise from impotency, from inability. But this lie is spreading with tremendous speed in theology, philosophy, history, jurisprudence and similar branches of teaching. Modern humanity should take note of this fact. For it is in this fact—not in speeches that Woodrow-Wilsonism fabricates out of words empty of content—that the causes lie for steering us into chaos.

Then comes another good bit—as I said, I can only discuss this from the newspaper article. It says then that because these Imaginations, which have come to life through suppressing the mental-picturing element, arise involuntarily they are therefore described as being experiences free of the body. Again, in his 'scientific conscientiousness', he has never directed his mind to the fact that, as has been shown, nothing arises involuntarily but that in the spiritual-scientific act of knowing the voluntary mental picture is enhanced. Perhaps this man has got his information from a spiritistic or mediumistic nursery. If so, he should stay with his spiritism and mediums and keep away from things he does not understand and does not wish to understand.

And he says further that what personifies Imagination is that which is evoked through the split in consciousness. This is a lack of conscience and a twisting of everything that is portrayed in my books as the methods of knowledge of spiritual science! This man thereby prepares the ground in order to say, in his own way, that spiritual science may not be hostile towards Christianity, but is culturally valueless. And then comes the really good bit: spiritual science, he says, is culturally valueless for telepathy will never replace the telegraph, thought-reading will never replace the telephone nor magnetic healing-power replace medicine!

Thus, although during our course here at the—Goetheanum we spoke about medicine and truly excluded all dilletantism about magnetic healing-powers, and although in truth we referred to medicine very seriously, a doctor of theology nevertheless gives a talk in our immediate neighbourhood after the course has ended about how the whole endeavour of spiritual science consists in trying to substitute medicine with magnetic healing-forces. And with this sort of talk a present-day doctor of theology enjoys success with the present-day public! And he enjoys success when a Heinzelmann-hobgoblin^T1 then jumps to his aid—a modern hobgoblin—and adds that one cannot find Christ through spiritual science but only through the Gospels. Now someone should just ask this hobgoblin: Which Gospel? One should ask him: What have you done to the Gospels with your theology? You have brought it about that the whole of Christology has vanished from modern development. And now that this mess has been created, we hear people from that corner saying: For Christianity we don't need what comes from spiritual science, we only need the simplicity of the Gospels. Is this not a most fundamental falsehood? It is a lie, knowing what modern criticism of the Gospels has come up with, to stand there and say: Our salvation for eternity must come from the Gospels without a science of the spirit.

What is it then that is coming from this corner? It is a denial of the Christ. And the most vigorous deniers of Christ today are the theologians. Those who want to prevent a true concept of the Christ from arising today are the theologians! And as long as it is not realized that this new experience of the Christ in the twentieth century will have to arise in such a way that the theology of all denominations denies him, the Christ will not come. He will appear again to human beings when those who are counted as his followers—the modern Scribes and Pharisees—have denied him completely.

It is not easy to see through these things with full strength, for one always also sees then how little the people of today are inclined to reckon with insights of this kind. The opponents are ready at their posts. They are developing all the intensity of battle. Our battle—what we are capable of—is weak, very weak and our comprehension of Anthroposophy is in many respects very sleepy. This is the great pain which weighs down these days upon someone who sees through things. One feels it so often when one says something in answer to the problems of our times—something for a social healing of our times—and people receive it as though it were barely anything other than a magazine article that was spoken rather than written. One would like to call upon people to awaken, to carry what can come from spiritual science into the way they shape all aspects of life. But, instead, one sees how people just let life run its course; how they look at those who direct life out of falsehood, and listen, greedy for entertainment, to what they receive from spiritual science as though it were nothing but a magazine article that was spoken rather than written. What must still arise is this: a deep, holy seriousness in receiving spiritual science and the disaccustoming of oneself from what induces people to receive spiritual science like any other literary product, albeit one in which one can amuse oneself all the better because it is a guarantee for one's longing for life after death. There is today a terrible gap between what is necessary in receiving spiritual science and what is actually there. You see, one can disregard an attack on Anthroposophy like that of Goetz or Heinzelmann. One has only to look at their abilities to ask: How was it that the pick of humanity was such that it brought these people to positions of this kind? Until one puts this question most intensely to oneself, until one is prepared to look where things are lacking, we will not make progress. All declaiming about social ideals or the like is useless if one is not prepared to look at this element that is living as a fundamental principle in our present time. For the damage of our time has its source in our perverted spiritual life which has gradually gone very deep into untruth but is completely unaware of how deeply in untruth it lives. How great is the contrast between what is necessary and the way in which what is spoken here is taken up! It is not intended to be a magazine article; it is meant as a force for life and people will have gradually to accustom themselves to understanding it as such.

This is what, in both a positive and negative sense, I wanted to say to you today concerning—to use a trivial word—the spirit of the age. This spirit of our age should be a spirit of expectation; the spirit which, out of expectation, develops an understanding for the great experience of the twentieth century that is born of deep need. But without also looking, in truth, at everything that is blocking this experience, people will not be able to meet it. If people today want, out of complacency, out of inner pleasure-seeking, to bow down to tradition—and if people do not want to be aware that, bowing down like this, they burden the day with a deep untruth—then people will not make themselves mature and ready for the Christ-event of the twentieth century. But everything depends on this maturity. Everything depends on our overcoming theological talk about Christ so that, in all reality, we can move forward to an understanding of Him.

"Valor transposed into the spiritual, bravery transposed into the spiritual, is love."
— Rudolf Steiner

Ephesians 6:10-20

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.

Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;

And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,

For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.

  

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

'Fate' and 'soul' are two names for one concept.

 

My guess: October 13

"'Fate' and 'soul' are two names for one concept."  — Novalis

Continued:

Our own permanent being, our true self, is our karma

Love stands in the Center

Related:

Max Sun

Where bliss reigns, fear must vanish

 

Thank you, Carol Grayson!

What the world needs now is Anthroposophy! The New Spirituality, lecture 6 of 7

  

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland

October 30, 1920

If an understanding for what one can call the reappearance of Christ is to find its place in the soul in the right way it is necessary to create a preparatory understanding for the course that the Christ-idea, the image people have had of the Christ, has taken in the course of human development. We remember that human development has proceeded from a constitution of soul which we have often called a kind of instinctive perception; a clairvoyance which was dim and dreamlike. And we have, on repeated occasions, characterized the different epochs of human development in such a way that we have placed the corresponding form of this constitution of soul into different times.

Today we will remind ourselves that there were still strong remnants of this old clairvoyant condition of humanity existing at the time of the occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Mystery of Golgotha is to be understood in the first place as a fact, but as a fact which, in its inner essence, can never be grasped by the intellect which since the middle of the fifteenth century has constituted the soul-life of modern civilization but which was already prepared for in Greek and Roman times. Thus one can say: During the course of Greek and Roman history, when the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished on the earth, there were still strong remnants of the ancient clairvoyance existing in many people. Other people had already lost this clairvoyance—were already definitely in the beginnings of an intellectual development. This was particularly so in the Romans. And one can therefore say that, in its reality, in its essence, the Mystery of Golgotha was grasped at first only by those who still had a remnant of the old clairvoyance. It could be described—the symbolism too could be indicated—by those who had these remnants. This instinctive clairvoyance was a particular characteristic of the ancient oriental peoples and existed essentially in its last remnants above all in these peoples. And Christ Jesus, too, did, after all, walk on the earth among oriental people. Thus the Mystery of Golgotha was understood first of all through the remnants of ancient oriental wisdom. And when this Mystery of Golgotha moved towards the West—to the Greeks and the Romans—one could receive what was related by those people who, out of the remains of the old clairvoyance, had understood what had really come to pass on the earth. And in order that there could be a perception through an 'eyewitness' of the soul there arose in St Paul, through a particular enlightenment which came to him at a late period of his life, a clairvoyant state through which he could convince himself of the truth, of the genuine nature, of the Mystery of Golgotha. What St Paul was able to relate out of his conviction—what those who had preserved the remains of an old clairvoyance could bring forward concerning the Mystery of Golgotha out of an ancient oriental wisdom, could be received by people as news—could be clothed in the form of the germinating intellect. Intellect itself, however, was not able to penetrate the Mystery of Golgotha. The way in which those who still had remains of the old clairvoyance spoke about the Mystery of Golgotha is called Gnosis. And, if I can put it so, the form of speaking about the Mystery of Golgotha in the way that was possible with these remnants of old clairvoyance—this was Christian Gnosis. And the presentation of the Mystery of Golgotha then reached posterity in the way I have described in my book Christianity as mystical Fact. Thus the first understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha was attained through these remains of the old clairvoyance; through the ancient, instinctive oriental perception. One could say that this ancient oriental perception was preserved up to the Mystery of Golgotha to such a degree that a truly human grasp of this Mystery could find a place before the intellect broke in and understanding for the Mystery of Golgotha could no longer be found. Had the Mystery of Golgotha come during the full flowering of the intellect it would, of course, have made no impression on humanity at all.

Thus the tidings of the Mystery of Golgotha lived in the accounts of the old clairvoyants and, basically, as you know from my Christianity as Mystical Fact, the Gospels are nothing other than accounts concerning the Mystery of Golgotha gained through clairvoyance. But then there spread out over humanity's development the wave which had already taken root in Greece, as I have described to you, which had its source particularly in Rome and which can be seen as the wave that prepared the later intellectuality but in which this intellectuality already lived. Dialectical-legal thinking spread out and, in turn, led to civic-political thinking. This spread from the South into those northern regions where, as I related yesterday, there was still a nature-based economy. Central European civilization, nourished at first by Rome, took shape primarily in the sign of the intellectual, the dialectical-legal, development of the human soul. In the midst of everything that occurred here people could no longer themselves behold the Mystery in the sense of the old spirituality, but received the accounts, the traditions, and clothed these in the forms of their own soul-constitution. People clothed it more and more in dialectics. Through Rome the Mystery of Golgotha became clothed in dialectics. Out of what was Christian Gnosis, which still relied on vision, there took shape the pure dialectical theology which went hand in hand with the establishing of the European Empire that later became [nation] States. But the first great Empire was actually the secularized ecclesiastical 'Empire of the Church', permeated by Roman judicial forms. Many external facts show how this dialectical-legal, political thinking, in which the old oriental direct perception clothed itself, spread out over Europe.

Charlemagne, for example, was a vassal of the Pope who had bestowed on him his title of Emperor. And when one studies the whole extent of the rulership of Charlemagne, one finds among the forces through which his rulership spread an ecclesiastical-theological influence. It was a kind of theocratic empire that spread there but it was everywhere permeated by dialectical-legal forms. The clergy were the bureaucracy. They held the offices of the State and united in their person the political and ecclesiastical elements. The old spiritual life based on spiritual vision—which, as you know, had abolished the spirit in 869—this old spiritual life moves over entirely into a political Church-Empire which extends over the greater part of Europe.

You know from history and from what I have related here from the spiritual-scientific point of view how this continuous cross-flow of the Roman ecclesiastical element, and that which tried more or less to free itself from it, produced conflicts, and how these conflicts really form a great part of medieval history. But one must look at the immense difference that exists between the whole social structure of the Middle Ages, which then dissolved into the modern states, and the social structure of the ancient Orient which was entirely permeated by the spirit, by the old instinctive clairvoyance, and all that this brought with it.

From what source did this ancient oriental vision receive its content? It was—one cannot put it differently—'inborn' (Angeborensein); for the sages of the Mysteries sought as their pupils those who had inborn faculties of such a nature that they were able to come to this instinctive perception. Out of the great mass of people those were chosen in whose blood it lay to have such vision. Thus one simply knew that in the human beings that were sent as children from the spiritual worlds into this physical world came remnants of the experiences in those spiritual worlds. (I am still speaking of the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha approached or was already accomplished.) In one individual these came less; in another, more. With the blood, so to say, echoes from the experiences in the spiritual worlds came in. Those who had the largest number of instinctive memories of experiences before birth or conception were the suitable pupils for the Mysteries. They were able to comprehend and see, or, rather, were able through comprehending vision to recognize the intentions of the gods regarding human beings, for they had experienced this before birth and had an instinctive memory of it in this life on earth. And they were sought out by the wise men of the Mysteries, by the priests, to be placed before humanity as individuals who could bear witness to the will of the spiritual world with regard to the physical world. It was human beings such as these who were the first ones able to speak about the Mystery of Golgotha. One can certainly say that this was a very different way of placing a human being in the social order. He was placed in this social order by the gods themselves through the recognizing of this fact by the Mysteries.

The inborn faculties based on the action of the blood then gave way to the medieval wave. Human beings then had nothing, or they had less and less, of what is brought into the physical world at birth from the spiritual worlds. Certainly the people who counted had nothing of this. Nothing but an instinctive memory remained. So upon what basis could a social structure be founded? What could this be founded on in the dialectical-legal age? It could only be founded on authority—the authority claimed above all by the Popes of Rome. It was this authority that took the place of that which the priests of the ancient Mysteries had beheld and recognized as being sent from the spiritual worlds. In ancient times decisions were made as to what should happen in the social life according to what was brought from the spiritual worlds. This could now only be decided in that certain people—that is the Roman Popes and, by extension, the individual vassal princes of the Popes, the kings and other princes—were ascribed with a certain authority on earth, and ascribed through legal justification, by formal, legal right. Men must now command, since the gods no longer commanded. And who was to command had now to be established through external law.

Thus arose the medieval principle of authority and one can say that into this principle was also incorporated the whole perception of the Mystery of Golgotha which one only received as an account. At most one could clothe it in symbols, in which, however, one only had images. A symbol of this kind is the mass with the sacred Last Supper and all that the Christian could experience in the Church. In the Last Supper he had directly present, according to his comprehension, the entry of the Christ-force into the world. The fact that this Christ-force was able to stream into the physical world for the believers was subject to the authority which in turn proceeded from the ordinations of the Roman Church.

But what was developing here as the dialectical-legal Roman element also bore in its bosom, as it were, its other side. It bore the continuous protest against authority. For when everything is based on authority, as was the case in the Middle Ages, then there also already comes to expression in the human being that which is to come in the future: inner protest against authority. This inner protest against authority came to light through the most diverse historical phenomena, through such people as Wyclif,¹ Hus² and so on, who set themselves against the bare principle of authority, who wished to comprehend Christ out of their inner being—for which, however, the time had not yet come. In fact, one could only give onself up to the illusion that one grasped Christ out of one's own inner being.

Those men who still made their appearance as mystics in the Middle Ages also spoke of the Christ, but they did not yet have the Christ-experience. But they did have the old accounts concerning the Christ. And this rebellion against authority became stronger and stronger and because of this the urge to fortify this authority also naturally became stronger and stronger. And the strongest exercise of power to fortify this authority—to put, in a sense, everything that proceeds from the Mystery of Golgotha only on a basis of authority and permanently so—came from Jesuitism. Jesuitism has nothing more of the Christ. Jesuitism already contains in itself a complete rebellion against the original understanding of Christ. The first understanding occurred in Gnosis with the remains of the oriental clairvoyance. Jesuitism took up only the intellectual-dialectic element and rejected the Christ-principle. It did not develop a Christology but a fighting doctrine for Jesus: a Jesuology. Even though Jesus was seen as one reaching beyond all human beings, that which led to the Mystery of Golgotha through Jesuitism was nevertheless to be something founded purely on authority.

Thus was prepared the situation which then came about, with its culmination in the nineteenth century, in which the Christ-impulse as something spiritual was completely lost—in which theology, in wishing to be a modern theology, wanted to speak only of the man Jesus. But as this whole development took its course it gave rise to many difficult conditions. Take the fact that the existing accounts concerning the Mystery of Golgotha were taken up by the Roman principle into a purely juristic dialectics; that they were taken up through external symbolism which could be explained. It was then impossible to let these accounts, as they existed, come into the hands of the faithful. Thus the strict forbiddance for those of the Roman faith to read the Bible. This was the most important fact right into the later Middle Ages; that the faithful were forbidden to read the Bible. It was considered by the priesthood and the leading Catholic circles that it would be the most frightful thing if the Gospels were to become known among the broad mass of the faithful. For the Gospels originate out of a completely different constitution of soul. The Gospels can only be understood through a spiritual constitution of soul. A dialectical soul-constitution can make nothing of them. It was therefore impossible for those times, in which the intellect and dialectics were prepared, to allow the masses access to the Gospels. The Church fought furiously against the Gospels becoming known and regarded those who went against the prohibition of reading them as the most flagrant heretics; like, for example, the Waldenses and Albigenses. These claimed the right to teach themselves about the Mystery of Golgotha through the Gospels. The Church opposed this because it knew full well that the way the Church itself presented the Mystery of Golgotha was irreconcilable with a common knowledge of the Gospels. For the Gospel in its true form actually consists of four Gospels which contradict one another. They knew that if they gave out the Gospels to the great mass of the faithful, the faithful would straightaway be confronted with contradictory accounts which, with the dawning intellectuality, they could only grasp as something to be understood as one understands things of the physical plane. After all, with an event on the physical plane one cannot understand why it ought to be described in four different ways. For an event that has to be understood by higher forces one is concerned with how it looks from this or that view, since it must always be seen from different sides. I have often said that this holds true even for dreams. People can dream the same thing; that is to say the same thing can take place within them but the pictures that are formed can differ in the most manifold ways. Thus for someone who stands in a spiritual relation to the Mystery of Golgotha the contradictions are of no significance. But the people at the dawn of the Middle Ages did not stand in a spiritual relation; they stood in the sign of dialectics right into the lowest classes of the people. And for dialectics one could not simply give out a fourfold mutually contradictory account of the Mystery of Golgotha. And when Protestantism emerged and the Church could no longer maintain the prohibition of the Bible, there arose that discrepancy in European life which then led to the modern theology of the nineteenth century which finally erased from the Gospels everything that was contradictory. And what the Gospels have now become is, in the end, really just a well-picked carcass. The most meagre that has appeared, the most plucked, are the things which the famous Schmiedel has discovered. He considers the only genuine places in the Gospels are those where someone is not praised, where something disapproving is said, and dismisses everything else. And thus there arose the descriptions of Jesus of the theologians of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, who only wanted to describe Jesus the man and believed that with that they could still remain within Christianity. An intellectual-dialectical age could only remain within Christianity by prohibiting the Gospels. With the Gospels a dialectical-legal age could only have the effect of gradually eliminating the figure of Christ completely.

Modern humanity has actually developed under this untruth. This humanity has absolutely no inkling that, fundamentally, it lives under the principle of authority but continually denies that this is so. There is hardly a stronger stamp of the belief in authority than exists among those who accept modern official science as the standard for the world. Just look how easily people are satisfied when they are told somewhere that something has been 'scientifically proven'. They know nothing more about this proof than that it has been stated by someone who has been to grammar school and university, has become a lecturer or professor and has therefore been appointed again by authority. This is how this is promulgated. And then what gets out among people in this way is supposed to be true science. Just try sometime to hold in mind for yourself everything that people accept nowadays as being true, proven science. In the last analysis it rests upon nothing other than a pure principle of authority, on absolute faith in authority—it is only that people delude themselves about this. This is the belief in authority that has replaced the other way of ordering the social structure which was derived from the Orient.

And one must grasp what hatred developed within those circles who had no understanding at all for the Mystery of Golgotha, who had only tradition continued through authority, and were terrified of the Gospels becoming generally known among the masses. One must grasp the hatred that became ever stronger and stronger and especially in Jesuitism was developed into a complete system—a hatred for Gnosis. And even today we still see how theologians get hot under the collar whenever there is any talk of Gnosis! We have to understand this on the basis of the development of European humanity. One must, for example, understand the development of the universities. How have the universities developed? One should look at history from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. They developed out of the Church. The monastery schools have become universities. Everything that was taught had to have the stamp of approval from Rome and only what had received this stamp was to be believed. The thought that it had to be approved by Rome was gradually lost but the thought that it had to be approved by something remained. And thus there remained the principle of authority even in those who no longer believed in Roman authority. And this continuation of the Roman authority-principle, but without a belief in Rome itself, is the mentality of our universities today. It is also the mentality in Protestant countries. The Catholic Church only fights on for its authority, with the exclusion of everything spiritual; it calumniates everything that goes beyond its dialectical-legal mode of thinking, calumniates everything which resists being fitted into the social authority principle. One must only understand how deeply this has penetrated into the soul-constitution of those human beings living at the dawn of our modern civilization. In this way the majority lost the power to face the truth for themselves and in the last resort this has produced the great confusion; the frightful chaos in which we are now living.

But at the same time we are now living,in an age in which a faculty of vision, of supersensible perception, is again being prepared. It is the wish of spiritual science to prepare for this faculty which humanity must take hold of again. Not the old instinctive vision, but a supersensible perception founded on full consciousness. Theology professors and others fight against this perception; they confuse it with the old Gnostic visionary gift and say all sorts of things they do not understand themselves against this modern faculty. But this new vision is rising up as a necessity which must take hold of humanity. And it is into this faculty of vision that a true comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha can shine again.

Thus, the course of man's image of Christ is as follows. The Mystery of Golgotha takes place at a time in which remnants of the old clairvoyance still exist. Human beings can still just about understand it. They set down this understanding in the Gospels. Christianity moves westwards and it taken up by Rome in the dialectical spirit. It is understood less and less. People talk in words about the Mystery of Golgotha; in words that are merely words so that the faithful are also quite content when they are in church and the priest speaks words in a language they do not understand. For it is not a matter for them of understanding but a matter, at most, of living in the general atmosphere which is directed to the Mystery of Golgotha. And the real connection of human beings with the Mystery of Golgotha is lost. It is lost more and more. At a certain point in the Middle Ages people begin to debate the significance of the symbol in which the continuous communication of the Mystery of Golgotha had clothed itself. People begin to debate, for example, the significance of the Last Supper. But as soon as people begin to debate something it means they no longer understand it. What lives in the evolution of humanity lives as experience; as long as people have the experience they do not dispute it. When the conflict over the nature of the Last Supper arose in the Middle Ages the very last traces of understanding for the Last Supper were gone—the play of dialectics had already taken possession of it. And so the modern life of humanity unfolded until the prohibition of the Bible could no longer hold. In theory, all Catholics are still forbidden to read it. Theoretically they are allowed to read only that extract that is prepared as if the Gospels were a unity. Even today it is strictly forbidden for Catholics to occupy themselves with the four Gospels because, of course, the moment one goes into the four gospels with the modern spirit, where they are read in the same way one reads an account of the physical plane, they fragment into shreds. It is irresponsible when people who are fully aware of this and who have also experienced how in the course of the nineteenth century, under the philologizing of theology, the Gospels have been destroyed—when these people have the cheek, it cannot be called anything else, to say that Anthroposophy explains the Gospels in an arbitrary way, that it reads all sorts of things into them. These people know that the connection with the Mystery of Golgotha is lost if the Gospels are not understood in a spiritual sense. One experiences people getting up onto the platform and again and again gabbling from a Catholic or Protestant point of view about how Anthroposophy puts things into the Gospels although they know perfectly well that if no spiritual comprehension is given to the Gospels they must radically destroy the Christian constitution of soul. If people would only pay more attention to how the majority of those who utter such nonsense about Anthroposophy are really only concerned with keeping their office in the most comfortable way, in the way they learnt in their youth—if people knew that in these theologians there is living not the slightest feeling for truth but only fear of losing their comfortable way of comprehending things—then we would get much further in rejecting the sort of Frolinmeyers and similar people who no longer possess the slightest spark of any sense of truth.

What is to be saved today is the Mystery of Golgotha itself. And preparation must be made so that this Mystery of Golgotha may shine forth again to human imagination. For it cannot shine forth to the intellect. The intellect can only dissolve it. The intellect can either only wipe it from the world with its art of philology or preserve it by a tyrannical authority in the Jesuitical sense which does not strive for truth but only for a comfortable life. For those, however, who strive for truth the path today leads towards Imagination; that is to conscious perception of the spiritual world. And the important thing is that, from the vantage point of this conscious perception of the spiritual world, One should be in the position to comprehend once again the whole being of humanity. Above all, it is essential that all human education and instruction be given from this point of view.

We know that until the age of seven, until the change of teeth, the child lives in imitation. Imitation is, in fact, nothing less than a continuation of what, in a completely different form, was present in the spirit world before birth or conception. There, in the spiritual world, one being merges into another and this is then expressed in the child's imitation of the people around it, as an echo of its spiritual experiences. Then, from the seventh Year, from the change of teeth up to puberty, comes the child's need for authority. What still lives in childish imitation lived in a certain way in the whole human nature during the ancient oriental culture. Those who worked out of the Mysteries worked with such a powerful force that other human beings followed them, as the child follows the grown-ups in its environment. Then came the principle of authority. And now the human being is growing out of this principle and is growing into that principle which begins to show itself after puberty—although of course in a personal, individual way, different from the way it is in the development of humanity as a whole. Today the human being is approaching the time when it will be necessary to develop in himself something which cannot be developed of itself. The child comes into the world as an imitator. In the ancient oriental social life it also came into the world as an imitator. But what lived in the child as the principle of imitation remained active even into the time of authority: the time of discerning judgements, remained active with regard to social affairs and everything that was encompassed as the religious life. The authority-principle in the ancient Orient applied only to the immediate environment. The greater affairs of life remained in the form of child-like experience.

These larger affairs of life then came into the times of the Middle Ages. The authority-principle prevailed and now, for the first time, a withdrawl from the authority-principle asserted itself—the principle of individual judgement arose. All that was developed for the affairs of the religious life, the artistic life -for human life in general that goes over and beyond the immediate elementary affairs of nature—could be found in the child, who brought it with him into the physical world from the spiritual worlds through the blood. When the authority principle still held sway, one only needed to build upon something which, with a certain necessity, developed out of the still quite unconscious etheric body. Today, when the principle of independent judgment is appearing, there arises an enormous new responsibility for pedagogy and didactics. There arises the fact that one must look in the growing child towards what will emerge. When a child reaches the age of fifteen the astral body is born in him. There is born in him that which carries into the world—now not unconsciously but in a more and more conscious way- the experiences of the spiritual world.

The time is approaching when in all our education and training we must look to what emerges from the child when he is in the fourteenth, fifteenth years of life. This was not of such great importance in all earlier times for it is connected with what lives independently in the human being which he does not bring with him through birth and which he cannot receive through authority but must really draw out of himself. And in order that he may draw it out of himself rightly we must take care that the child has the right upbringing and education up to the fourteenth, fifteenth years so that in those years he can then develop the astral body in the right way. Education and training take on a completely new significance in our modern time and, in fact, there should be no more teaching without insight into the relation of the human being to the spiritual world. That is the battle that is arising.

The sense of 'I' which pressed to the surface of human consciousness in the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe asserted itself, as it were, out of still instinctive depths. In Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, however, this sense of 'I' dealt only with what man experiences between birth and death and had nothing to do with what is the super-physical human being. I said yesterday that the Mid-European was cut off by Turkey and by the influence of Peter the Great from anything oriental. But what continued to hover before the Mid-European as a revelation still lived on as an inheritance. This was really only understood out of the clairvoyance of the ancient Orient but still had its echoes in Asiatic Russia, the Russia not yet Europeanized. Revelation is still alive today in Asia although in a completely decadent form. A sense for revelation is there still. The intellectual, the purely dialectical element, belongs to the West and is only developed today for the economic life. The Mid-European element was always hemmed in between these two—the Western intellectualism, still entirely restricted to the earthly economic, human reason that wishes to occupy itself only with external experience, and the oriental revelation. And the clouds gathered ever more threateningly since only a kind of rhythmic balance existed between revelation and reason. What the great Scholastics of the Middle Ages had sought to hold apart—a rational grasp of the outer sense-world and supersensible revelation—collided increasingly into one another as the modern age arose. And we see this mutual interlocking particularly in the first half of the nineteenth century when the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe was born. We see then how the Western element expands in the second half of the nineteenth century; how, to a certain degree, the whole of Europe, even up to Russia, is Anglicized, and how the crushed condition, the devastated state, of Central Europe is an external sign of a deep inner process which humanity today is unwilling to grasp. Everything that is hemmed in between West and East is razed to the ground, is dashed to pieces, and does not know what to do. It lives in upheavals; talks of all sorts of things by which, somehow or other, progress can be made—but talks, however, nothing but nullities. This is expressed right into small details. There is an utter inability to cope with economics under the old conditions. What do people do? They either squeeze out of the old what is still left by a dreadful tightening of taxation or they fill what is lacking by printing worthless notes; millions of bank-notes a week. And though it is perhaps only a symbol, there nevertheless stands before the soul of individual people the following: a decadent clinging to revelation in the East, the nullity of the Centre and the rationality of the West, still bogged down in economics. And yet they talk as if of a future perspective—as though the Centre were simply not there—of the great conflict that lies ahead between Japan and America. People, of course, picture this purely physically. This also signifies something of immense profundity. And when the decadent element existing in the East and that which is as yet unborn in the West clash together through ignoring the Centre—then the sense of 'I' which came to expression in the Centre is submerged in that chaos that arises through the crushing from East to West. Contemplation of the 'I' vanished with the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe. It has ceased to exist since the middle of the nineteenth century. And what people tried to create as political structure out of the upheavals—that, too, lies on the ground today. Impossible political structures spring up like that of Czechoslovakia which, quite certainly, in the long run cannot live and cannot die. These impossible structures can only spring up through the fact that peace is made by the people of the West who have no idea what the conditions for life are in the Centre. In Zurich people listen to someone or other who comes from Paris and holds forth to them brilliantly, as one says, on the unity of the Slovak and the Czech elements. The listeners are astounded at what such a professor makes known about the predestination of Czechoslovakia, because they have no idea of the conditions for life in the East and because they do not know that what is brought into being there is only the squeezing element, the crushing together of East and West. People still cover their eyes so as not to see what the external symptoms are saying. You won't believe how, even here in Central Europe, scenes take place—though at the present time still very much towards the East—where remnants of the troops who carried the war on their shoulders appear here and there. They are now officers although there is no justification for this under present conditions. They make innocent women dance naked before them and then thrust bayonets into their bellies. Such scenes actually take place at the command of people who, incidentally, fought bravely in the war.

Before all these things the deluded men of the West, who conclude a peace of which they understand nothing, cover up their eyes. They do not see how, in what is actually going on, significant things proclaim themselves. And, for the most part, people go on with life as though nothing were happening in the world at all. And thus, one could say, things are driven into the very narrowest corner of the consciousness. That which once brought forth such idealistic heights—such ideas as one finds in Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel—in reality no longer exists in public life. And when it tries to assert itself, as here in the Goetheanum, it is slandered. Trumped-up slanderous stuff crops up everywhere; people cite it as something which they pretend to understand and must pass judgment on. Something is developing into nullity which a century ago was still radiant spirit-life. And above this the clouds are rolling together from the East and the West.

And what is the meaning of this that must come to expression In the most frightful way in coming decades? What is its Meaning? On the one hand it is the challenge to stand firm on the ground that would give birth to the new life of the spirit. On the other hand it is the sign in the heavens of that which has been spoken about among us for some time: the approach of the Christ in the form in which He must be seen from the twentieth century onwards. For, before the middle of this century has passed, the Christ must be seen. But before that, all that remains of the old must be driven into nullity, the clouds must gather. The human being must find his full freedom out of nullity and the new perception must be born out of this nullity. The human being must find his whole strength out of the nothingness. It is but the desire of spiritual science to prepare him for it. This is something of which one may not say that it desires to, but that it must desire to!

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive