| 151. Human and Cosmic Thought (1961): Lecture II
21 Jan 1914, Berlin Translated by Charles Davy Rudolf Steiner |
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| How is it that people puzzle for centuries over questions such as that of the hundred possible and the hundred real thalers cited by Kant? Why is it that people fail to pursue the very simple reflections that are necessary to see that there cannot really be any such thing as a “pragmatic” account of history, according to which the course of events always follows directly from preceding events? |
| The crudest kind of materialism—one can observe it specially well in our day, although it is already on the wane—will consist in this, that people carry to an extreme the saying of Kant—Kant did not do this himself!—that in the individual sciences there is only so much real science as there is mathematics. |
| 151. Human and Cosmic Thought (1961): Lecture II
21 Jan 1914, Berlin Translated by Charles Davy Rudolf Steiner |
|---|
The study of Spiritual Science should always go hand in hand with practical experience of how the mind works. It is impossible to get entirely clear about many things that we discussed in the last lecture unless one tries to get a kind of living grasp of what thinking involves in terms of actualities. For why is it that among the very persons whose profession it is to think about such questions, confusion reigns, for example, as to the relation between the general concept of the “triangle-in-general” and specific concepts of individual triangles? How is it that people puzzle for centuries over questions such as that of the hundred possible and the hundred real thalers cited by Kant? Why is it that people fail to pursue the very simple reflections that are necessary to see that there cannot really be any such thing as a “pragmatic” account of history, according to which the course of events always follows directly from preceding events? Why do people not reflect in such a way that they would be repelled by this impossible mode of regarding the history of man, so widely current nowadays? What is the cause of all these things? The reason is that far too little trouble is taken over learning to handle with precision the activities of thinking, even by people whose business this should be. Nowadays everyone wants to feel that he has a perfect claim to say: “Think? Well, one can obviously do that.” So they begin to think. Thus we have various conceptions of the world; there have been many philosophers—a great many. We find that one philosopher is after this and another is after that, and that many fairly clever people have drawn attention to many things. If someone comes upon contradictions in these findings, he does not ponder over them, but he is quite pleased with himself, fancying that now he can “think” indeed. He can think again what those other fellows have thought out, and feels quite sure that he will find the right answer himself. For no one nowadays must make any concession to authority! That would deny the dignity of human nature! Everyone must think for himself. That is the prevailing notion in the realm of thought. I do not know if people have reflected that this is not their attitude in other realms of life. No one feels committed to belief in authority or to a craving for authority when he has his coat made at the tailor's or his shoes at the shoemaker's. He does not say: “It would be beneath the dignity of man to let one's things be made by persons who are known to be thoroughly acquainted with their business.” He may perhaps even allow that it is necessary to learn these skills. But in practical life, with regard to thinking, it is not agreed that one must get one's conceptions of the world from quarters where thinking and much else has been learnt. Only rarely would this be conceded to-day. This is one tendency that dominates our life in the widest circles, and is the immediate reason why human thinking is not a very widespread product nowadays. I believe this can be quite easily grasped. For let us suppose that one day everybody were to say: “What!—learn to make boots? For a long time that has been unworthy of man; we can all make boots.” I don't know if only good boots would come from it. At all events, with regard to the coining of correct thoughts in their conception of the world, it is from this sort of reasoning that men mostly take their start at the present day. This is what gives its deeper meaning to my remark of yesterday—that although thought is something a man is completely within, so that he can contemplate it in its inner being, actual thinking is not as common as one might suppose. Besides this, there is to-day a quite special pretension which could gradually go so far as to throw a veil over all clear thinking. We must pay attention to this also; at least we must glance at it. Let us suppose the following. There was once in Görlitz a shoemaker named Jacob Boehme. He had learnt his craft well—how soles are cut, how the shoe is formed over the last, and how the nails are driven into the soles and leather. He knew all this down to the ground. Now supposing that this shoemaker, by name Jacob Boehme, had gone around and said: “I will now see how the world is constructed. I will suppose that there is a great last at the foundation of the world. Over this last the world-leather was once stretched; then the world-nails were added, and by means of them the world-sole was fastened to the world-upper. Then boot-blacking was brought into play, and the whole world-shoe was polished. In this way I can quite clearly explain to myself how in the morning it is bright, for then the shoe-polish of the world is shining, but in the evening it is soiled with all sorts of things; it shines no longer. Hence I imagine that every night someone has the duty of repolishing the world-boot. And thus arises the difference between day and night.” Let us suppose that Jacob Boehme had said this. Yes, you laugh, for of course Jacob Boehme did not say this; but still he made good shoes for the people of Görlitz, and for that he employed his knowledge of shoe-making. But he also developed his grand thoughts, through which he wanted to build up a conception of the world; and for that he resorted to something else. He said to himself: My shoe-making is not enough for that; I dare not apply to the structure of the world the thoughts I put into making shoes. And in due course he arrived at his sublime thoughts about the world. Thus there was no such Jacob Boehme as the hypothetical figure I first sketched, but there was another one who knew how to set about things. But the hypothetical “Jacob Boehmes”, like the one you laughed over—they exist everywhere to-day. For example, we find among them physicists and chemists who have learnt the laws governing the combination and separation of substances; there are zoologists who have learnt how one examines and describes animals; there are doctors who have learnt how to treat the physical human body, and what they themselves call the soul. What do they all do? They say: When a person wants to work out for himself a conception of the world, then he takes the laws that are learnt in chemistry, in physics, or in physiology—no others are admissible—and out of these he builds a conception of the world for himself. These people proceed exactly as the hypothetical shoemaker would have done if he had constructed the world-boot, only they do not notice that their world-conceptions come into existence by the very same method that produced the hypothetical world-boot. It does certainly seem rather grotesque if one imagines that the difference between day and night comes about through the soiling of shoe-leather and the repolishing of it in the night. But in terms of true logic it is in principle just the same if an attempt is made to build a world out of the laws of chemistry, physics, biology and physiology. Exactly the same principle! It is an immense presumption on the part of the physicist, the chemist, the physiologist, or the biologist, who do not wish to be anything else than physicist, chemist, physiologist, biologist, and yet want to have an opinion about the whole world. The point is that one should go to the root of things and not shirk the task of illuminating anything that is not so clear by tracing it back to its true place in the scheme of things. If you look at all this with method and logic, you will not need to be astonished that so many present-day conceptions of the world yield nothing but the “world-boot”. And this is something that can point us to the study of Spiritual Science and to the pursuit of practical trains of thought; something that can urge us to examine the question of how we must think in order to see where shortcomings exist in the world. There is something else I should like to mention in order to show where lies the root of countless misunderstandings with regard to the ideas people have about the world. When one concerns oneself with world-conceptions, does one not have over and over again the experience that someone thinks this and someone else that; one man upholds a certain view with many good reasons (one can find good reasons for everything), while another has equally good reasons for his view; the first man contradicts his opponent with just as good reasons as those with which the opponent contradicts him. Sects arise in the world not, in the first place, because one person or another is convinced about the right path by what is taught here or there. Only look at the paths which the disciples of great men have had to follow in order to come to this or that great man, and then you will see that herein lies something important for us with regard to karma. But if we examine the outlooks that exist in the world to-day, we must say that whether someone is a follower of Bergson, or of Haeckel, or of this or that (karma, as I have already said, does not recognise the current world-conception) depends on other things than on deep conviction. There is contention on all sides! Yesterday I said that once there were Nominalists, persons who maintained that general concepts had no reality, but were merely names. These Nominalists had opponents who were called Realists (the word had a different meaning then). The Realists maintained that general concepts are not mere words, but refer to quite definite realities. In the Middle Ages the question of Realism versus Nominalism was always a burning one, especially for theology, a sphere of thought with which present-day thinkers trouble themselves very little. For in the time when the question of Nominalism versus Realism arose (from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries) there was something that belonged to the most important confessions of faith, the question about the three “Divine Persons”—Father, Son and Holy Ghost—who form One Divine Being, but are still Three real Persons. The Nominalists maintained that these three Divine Persons existed only individually, the “Father” for Himself, the “Son” for Himself, and the “Holy Ghost” for Himself; and if one spoke of a “Collective God” Who comprised these Three, that was only a name for the Three. Thus Nominalism did away with the unity of the Trinity. In opposition to the Realists, the Nominalists not only explained away the unity, but even regarded it as heretical to declare, as the Realists did, that the Three Persons formed not merely an imaginary unity, but an actual one. Thus Nominalism and Realism were opposites. And anyone who goes deeply into the literature of Realism and Nominalism during these centuries gets a deep insight into what human acumen can produce. For the most ingenious grounds were brought forward for Nominalism, just as much as for Realism. In those days it was more difficult to be reckoned as a thinker because there was no printing press, and it was not an easy thing to take part in such controversies as that between Nominalism and Realism. Anyone who ventured into this field had to be better prepared, according to the ideas of those times, than is required of people who engage in controversies nowadays. An immense amount of penetration was necessary in order to plead the cause of Realism, and it was equally so with Nominalism. How does this come about? It is grievous that things are so, and if one reflects more deeply on it, one is led to say: What use is it that you are so clever? You can be clever and plead the cause of Nominalism, and you can be just as clever and contradict Nominalism. One can get quite confused about the whole question of intelligence! It is distressing even to listen to what such characterisations are supposed to mean. Now, as a contrast to what we have been saying, we will bring forward something that is perhaps not nearly so discerning as much that has been advanced with regard to Nominalism or to Realism, but it has perhaps one merit—it goes straight to the point and indicates the direction in which one needs to think. Let us imagine the way in which one forms general concepts; the way in which one synthesizes a mass of details. We can do this in two ways: first as a man does in the course of his life through the world. He sees numerous examples of a certain kind of animal: they are silky or woolly, are of various colours, have whiskers, at certain times they go through movements that recall human “washing”, they eat mice, etc. One can call such creatures “cats”. Then one has formed a general concept. All these creatures have something to do with what we call “cats”. But now let us suppose that someone has had a long life, in the course of which he has encountered many cat-owners, men and women, and he has noticed that a great many of these people call their pets “Pussy”. Hence he classes all these creatures under the name of “Pussy”. Hence we now have the general concept “Cats” and the general concept “Pussy”, and a large number of individual creatures belonging in both cases to the general concept. And yet no one will maintain that the general concept “Pussy” has the same significance as the general concept “Cats”. Here the real difference comes out. In forming the general concept “Pussy” which is only a summary of names that must rank as individual names, we have taken the line, and rightly so, of Nominalism; and in forming the general concept “Cats” we have taken the line of Realism, and rightly so. In one case Nominalism is correct; in the other. Realism. Both are right. One must only apply these methods within their proper limits. And when both are right, it is not surprising that good reasons for both can be adduced. In taking the name “Pussy”, I have employed a somewhat grotesque example. But I can show you a much more significant example and I will do so at once. Within the scope of our objective experience there is a whole realm where Nominalism—the idea that the collective term is only a name—is fully justified. We have “one”, “two”, “three”, “four”, “five”, and so on, but it is impossible to find in the expression “number” anything that has a real existence. “Number” has no existence. “One”, “two”, “three”, “five”, “six”,—they exist. But what I said in the last lecture, that in order to find the general concept one must let that which corresponds to it pass over into movement—this cannot be done with the concept “Number”. One “one” does not pass over into “two”. It must always be taken as “one”. Not even in thought can we pass over into two, or from two into three. Only the individual numbers exist, not “number” in general. As applied to the nature of numbers, Nominalism is entirely correct; but when we come to the single animal in relation to its genus, Realism is entirely correct. For it is impossible for a deer to exist, and another deer, and yet another, without there being the genus “deer”. The figure “two” can exist for itself, “one”, “seven”, etc., can exist for themselves. But in so far as anything real appears in number, the number is a quality, and the concept “number” has no specific existence. External things are related to general concepts in two different ways: Nominalism is appropriate in one case, and Realism in the other. On these lines, if we simply give our thoughts the right direction, we begin to understand why there are so many disputes about conceptions of the world. People generally are not inclined, when they have grasped one standpoint, to grasp another as well. When in some realm of thought somebody has got hold of the idea “general concepts have no existence”, he proceeds to extend to it the whole make-up of the world. This sentence, “general concepts have no existence” is not false, for when applied to the particular realm which the person in question has considered, it is correct. It is only the universalising of it that is wrong. Thus it is essential, if one wants to form a correct idea of what thinking is, to understand clearly that the truth of a thought in the realm to which it belongs is no evidence for its general validity. Someone can offer me a perfectly correct proof of this or that and yet it will not hold good in a sphere to which it does not belong. Anyone, therefore, who intends to occupy himself seriously with the paths that lead to a conception of the world must recognise that the first essential is to avoid one-sidedness. That is what I specially want to bring out to-day. Now let us take a general look at some matters which will be explained in detail later on. There are people so constituted that it is not possible for them to find the way to the Sprit, and to give them any proof of the Spirit will always be hard. They stick to something they know about, in accordance with their nature. Let us say they stick at something that makes the crudest kind of impression on them—Materialism. We need not regard as foolish the arguments they advance as a defence or proof of Materialism, for an immense amount of ingenious writing has been devoted to the subject, and it holds good in the first place for material life, for the material world and its laws. Again, there are people who, owing to a certain inwardness, are naturally predisposed to see in all that is material only the revelation of the spiritual. Naturally, they know as well as the materialists do that, externally, the material world exists; but matter, they say, is only the revelation, the manifestation, of the underlying spiritual. Such persons may take no particular interest in the material world and its laws. As all their ideas of the spiritual come to them through their own inner activity, they may go through the world with the consciousness that the true, the lofty, in which one ought to interest oneself—all genuine reality—is found only in the Spirit; that matter is only illusion, only external phantasmagoria. This would be an extreme standpoint, but it can occur, and can lead to a complete denial of material life. We should have to say of such persons that they certainly do recognize what is most real, the Spirit, but they are one-sided; they deny the significance of the material world and its laws. Much acute thinking can be enlisted in support of the conception of the universe held by these persons. Let us call their conception of the universe: Spiritism. Can we say that the Spiritists are right? As regards the Spirit, their contentions could bring to light some exceptionally correct ideas, but concerning matter and its laws they might reveal very little of any significance. Can one say the Materialists are correct in what they maintain? Yes, concerning matter and its laws they may be able to discover some exceptionally useful and valuable facts; but in speaking of the Spirit they may utter nothing but foolishness. Hence we must say that both parties are correct in their respective spheres. There can also be persons who say: “Yes, but as to whether in truth the world contains only matter, or only spirit, I have no special knowledge; the powers of human cognition cannot cope with that. One thing is clear—there is a world spread out around us. Whether it is based upon what chemists and physicists, if they are materialists, call atoms, I know not. But I recognize the external world; that is something I see and can think about. I have no particular reason for supposing that it is or is not spiritual at root. I restrict myself to what I see around me.” From the explanations already given we can call such Realists, and their concept of the universe: Realism. Just as one can enlist endless ingenuity on behalf of Materialism or of Spiritism, and just as one can be clever about Spiritism and yet say the most foolish things on material matters, and vice versa, so one can advance the most ingenious reasons for Realism, which differs from both Spiritism and Materialism in the way I have just described. Again, there may be other persons who speak as follows. Around us are matter and the world of material phenomena. But this world of material phenomena is in itself devoid of meaning. It has no real meaning unless there is within it a progressive tendency; unless from this external world something can emerge towards which the human soul can direct itself, independently of the world. According to this outlook, there must be a realm of ideas and ideals within the world-process. Such people are not Realists, although they pay external life its due; their view is that life has meaning only if ideas work through it and give it purpose. It was under the influence of such a mood as this that Fichte once said: Our world is the sensualised material of our duty.2 The adherents of such a world-outlook as this, which takes everything as a vehicle for the ideas that permeate the world-process, may be called Idealists and their outlook: Idealism. Beautiful and grand and glorious things have been brought forward on behalf of this Idealism. And in this realm that I have just described—where the point is to show that the world would be purposeless and meaningless if ideas were only human inventions and were not rooted in the world-process—in this realm Idealism is fully justified. But by means of it one cannot, for example, explain external reality. Hence one can distinguish this Idealism from other world-outlooks:  We now have side by side four justifiable world-outlooks, each with significance for its particular domain. Between Materialism and Idealism there is a certain transition. The crudest kind of materialism—one can observe it specially well in our day, although it is already on the wane—will consist in this, that people carry to an extreme the saying of Kant—Kant did not do this himself!—that in the individual sciences there is only so much real science as there is mathematics. This means that from being a materialist one can become a ready-reckoner of the universe, taking nothing as valid except a world composed of material atoms. They collide and gyrate, and then one calculates how they inter-gyrate. By this means one obtains very fine results, which show that this way of looking at things is fully justified. Thus you can get the vibration-rates for blue, red, etc.; you take the whole world as a kind of mechanical apparatus, and can reckon it up accurately. But one can become rather confused in this field. One can say to oneself: “Yes, but however complicated the machine may be, one can never get out of it anything like the perception of blue, red, etc. Thus if the brain is only a complicated machine, it can never give rise to what we know as soul-experiences.” But then one can say, as du Bois-Reymond once said: If we want to explain the world in strictly mathematical terms, we shall not be able to explain the simplest perception, but if we go outside a mathematical explanation, we shall be unscientific. The most uncompromising materialist would say, “No, I do not even calculate, for that would presuppose a superstition—it would imply that I assume that things are ordered by measure and number.” And anyone who raises himself above this crude materialism will become a mathematical thinker, and will recognize as valid only whatever can be treated mathematically. From this results a conception of the universe that really admits nothing beyond mathematical formulae. This may be called Mathematism. Someone, however, might think this over, and after becoming a Mathematist he might say to himself: “It cannot be a superstition that the colour blue has so and so many vibrations. The world is ordered mathematically. If mathematical ideas are found to be real in the world, why should not other ideas have equal reality?” Such a person accepts this—that ideas are active in the world. But he grants validity only to those ideas that he discovers outside himself—not to any ideas that he might grasp from his inner self by some sort of intuition or inspiration, but only to those he reads from external things that are real to the senses. Such a person becomes a Rationalist, and his outlook on the world is that of Rationalism. If, in addition to the ideas that are found in this way, someone grants validity also to those gained from the moral and the intellectual realms, then he is already an Idealist. Thus a path leads from crude Materialism, by way of Mathematism and Rationalism, to Idealism. But now Idealism can be enhanced. In our age there are some men who are trying to do this. They find ideas at work in the world, and this implies that there must also be in the world some sort of beings in whom the ideas can live. Ideas cannot live just as they are in any external object, nor can they hang as it were in the air. In the nineteenth century the belief existed that ideas rule history. But this was a confusion, for ideas as such have no power to work. Hence one cannot speak of ideas in history. Anyone who understands that ideas, if they are there are all, are bound up with some being capable of having ideas, will no longer be a mere Idealist; he will move on to the supposition that ideas are connected with beings. He becomes a Psychist and his world-outlook is that Psychism. The Psychist, who in his turn can uphold his outlook with an immense amount of ingenuity, reaches it only through a kind of one-sidedness, of which he can eventually become aware.  Here I must add that there are adherents of all the world-outlooks above the horizontal stroke; for the most part they are stubborn folk who, owing to some fundamental element in themselves, take this or that world-outlook and abide by it, going no further. All the beliefs listed below the line have adherents who are more easily accessible to the knowledge that individual world-outlooks each have one special standpoint only, and they more easily reach the point where they pass from one world-outlook to another. When someone is a Psychist, and able as a thinking person to contemplate the world clearly, then he comes to the point of saying to himself that he must presuppose something actively psychic in the outside world. But directly he not only thinks, but feels sympathy for what is active and willing in man, then he says to himself: “It is not enough that there are beings who have ideas; these beings must also be active, they must be able also to do things.” But this is inconceivable unless these beings are individual beings. That is, a person of this type rises from accepting the ensoulment of the world to accepting the Spirit or the Spirits of the world. He is not yet clear whether he should accept one or a number of Spirits, but he advances from Psychism to Pneumatism to a doctrine of the Spirit.  If he has become in truth a Pneumatist, then he may well grasp what I have said in this lecture about number—that with regard to figures it is somewhat doubtful to speak of a “unity”. Then he comes to the point of saying to himself: It must therefore be a confusion to talk of one undivided Spirit, of one undivided Pneuma. And he gradually becomes able to form for himself an idea of the Spirits of the different Hierarchies. Then he becomes in the true sense a Spiritist, so that on this side there is a direct transition from Pneumatism to Spiritism. These world-outlooks are all justified in their own field. For there are fields where Psychism acts illuminatingly, and others where Pneumatism does the same. Certainly, anyone who wishes to deliberate about an explanation of the universe as thoroughly as we have tried to do must come to Spiritism, to the acceptance of the Spirits of the Hierarchies. For to stop short at Pneumatism would in this case mean the following. If we are Spiritists, then it may happen that people will say to us: “Why so many spirits? Why bring numbers into it? Let there be One Undivided Spirit!” Anyone who goes more deeply into the matter knows that this objection is like saying: “You tell me there are two hundred midges over there. I don't see two hundred; I see only a single swarm.” Exactly so would an adherent of Pneumatism stand with regard to a Spiritist. The Spiritist sees the universe filled with the Spirits of the Hierarchies; the Pneumatist sees only the one “swarm”—only the Universal Spirit. But that comes from an inexact view. Now there is still another possibility: someone may not take the path we have tried to follow to the activities of the spiritual Hierarchies, but may still come to an acceptance of certain spiritual beings. The celebrated German philosopher, Leibnitz, was a man of this kind. Leibnitz had got beyond the prejudice that anything merely material can exist in the world. He found the actual, he sought the actual. (I have treated this more precisely in my book, Riddles of Philosophy.) His view was that a being—as, for example, the human soul—can build up existence in itself. But he formed no further ideas on the subject. He only said to himself that there is such a being that can build up existence in itself, and force concepts outwards from within itself. For Leibnitz, this being is a “Monad”. And he said to himself: “There must be many Monads, and Monads of the most varied capabilities. If I had here a bell, there would be many monads in it—as in a swarm of midges—but they would be monads that had never come even so far as to have sleep-consciousness, monads that are almost unconscious, but which nevertheless develop the dimmest of concepts within themselves. There are monads that dream; there are monads that develop waking ideas within themselves; in short, there are monads of the most varied grades.” A person with this outlook does not come so far as to picture to himself the individual spiritual beings in concrete terms, as the Spiritist does, but he reflects in the world upon the spiritual element in the world, allowing it to remain indefinite. He calls it “Monad”—that is, he conceives of it only as though one were to say: “Yes, there is spirit in the world and there are spirits, but I describe them only by saying, ‘They are entities having varying powers of perception.’ I pick out from them an abstract characteristic. So I form for myself this one-sided world-outlook, on behalf of which as much as can be said has been said by the highly intelligent Leibnitz. In this way I develop Monadism.” Monadism is an abstract Spiritism. But there can be persons who do not rise to the level of the Monads; they cannot concede that existence is made up of beings with the most varied conceptual powers, but at the same time they are not content to allow reality only to external phenomena; they hold that “forces” are dominant everywhere. If, for example, a stone falls to the ground, they say, “That is gravitation!” When a magnet attracts bits of iron, they say: “That is magnetic force!” They are not content with saying simply, “There is the magnet,” but they say, “The magnet presupposes that supersensibly, invisibly, a magnetic force is present, extending in all directions.” A world-outlook of this kind—which looks everywhere for forces behind phenomena—can be called Dynamism.  Then one may say: “No, to believe in ‘forces’ is superstition”—an example of this is Fritz Mauthner's Critique of Language, where you find a detailed argument to this effect. It amounts to taking your stand on the reality of the things around us. Thus by the path of Spiritism we come through Monadism and Dynamism to Realism again. But now one can do something else still. One can say: “Certainly I believe in the world that is spread out around me, but I do not maintain any right to claim that this world is the real one. I can say of it only that it ‘appears’ to me. I have no right to say more about it.” There you have again a difference. One can say of the world that is spread out around us. “This is the real world,” but one can also say, “I am clear that there is a world which appears to me; I cannot speak of anything more. I am not saying that this world of colours and sounds, which arises only because certain processes in my eyes present themselves to me as colours, while processes in my ears present themselves to me as sounds—I am not saying that this world is the true world. It is a world of phenomena.” This is the outlook called Phenomenalism. We can go further, and can say: “The world of phenomena we certainly have around us, but all that we believe we have in these phenomena is what we have ourselves added to them, what we have thought into them. Our own sense-impressions are all we can rightly accept. Anyone who says this—mark it well!—is not an adherent of Phenomenalism. He peels off from the phenomena everything which he thinks comes only from the understanding and the reason, and he allows validity only to sense-impressions, regarding them as some kind of message from reality.” This outlook may be called Sensationalism. A critic of this outlook can then say: “You may reflect as much as you like on what the senses tell us and bring forward ever so ingenious reasons for your view—and ingenious reasons can be given—I take my stand on the point that nothing real exists except that which manifests itself through sense-impressions; this I accept as something material.” This is rather like an atomist saying: “I hold that only atoms exist, and that however small they are, they have the attributes which we recognize in the physical world”—anyone who says this is a materialist. Thus, by another path, we arrive back at Materialism.  All these conceptions of the world that I have described and written down for you really exist, and they can be maintained. And it is possible to bring forward the most ingenious reasons for each of them; it is possible to adopt any one of them and with ingenious reasons to refute the others. In between these conceptions of the world one can think out yet others, but they differ only in degree from the leading types I have described, and can be traced back to them. If one wishes to learn about the web and woof of the world, then one must know that the way to it is through these twelve points of entry. There is not merely one conception of the world that can be defended, or justified, but there are twelve. And one must admit that just as many good reasons can be adduced for each and all of them as for any particular one. The world cannot be rightly considered from the one-sided standpoint of one single conception, one single mode of thought; the world discloses itself only to someone who knows that one must look at it from all sides. Just as the sun—if we go by the Copernican conception of the universe—passes through the signs of the Zodiac in order to illuminate the earth from twelve different points, so we must not adopt one standpoint, the standpoint of Idealism, or Sensationalism, or Phenomenalism, or any other conception of the world with a name of this kind; we must be in a position to go all round the world and accustom ourselves to the twelve different standpoints from which it can be contemplated. In terms of thought, all twelve standpoints are fully justifiable. For a thinker who can penetrate into the nature of thought, there is not one single conception of the world, but twelve that can be equally justified—so far justified as to permit of equally good reasons being thought out for each of them. There are twelve such justified conceptions of the world. Tomorrow we will start from the points of view we have gained in this way, so that from the consideration of man in terms of thought we may rise to a consideration of the cosmic.
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| 205. Humanity, World Soul and World Spirit I: Tenth Lecture
10 Jul 1921, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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| One need only turn against this theory of knowledge with a few lines here or there today, and someone will come along and say, “But Kant said...” People have become so wrapped up in Kantianism that they consider it a kind of Bible; at least many do. |
| I can't say he was listening, because he was usually asleep, and I don't know how many people can listen while sleeping, but I could tell at the time that he only woke up when he could somehow apply Kant. And once it happened that I repeated an argument – it wasn't even mine – in which it was said: If one really speaks of the thing in itself as being completely unknown, as Kant did, then it could consist of pins, so that behind the sensory phenomena there could only be pins. |
| 205. Humanity, World Soul and World Spirit I: Tenth Lecture
10 Jul 1921, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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Yesterday, in closing, I called attention to the fact that, since that time, according to the spiritual-scientific point of view, we have to reckon the evolution of mankind on earth as having made a circuit from Pisces to Pisces. When I have spoken in this connection of the evolution of mankind on earth, it must naturally be correctly understood. We speak of the overall evolution of mankind in such a way that we let it begin in the old Saturn time, and therefore it can naturally only be a partial evolution of mankind when we speak here of the evolution of mankind on earth. But one can imagine it this way: During the time of Saturn, the Sun and the Moon, man quite naturally took on a very different form, one that cannot be compared to the present form of man. And when we speak here of the formation of humanity on earth, it means that the preparations for this physical human formation began at the end of the Lemurian age, that it developed in the way I have described in my writings, in the Atlantean time, thus precisely in the time that represents such a full cycle of the spring equinox of the sun. Now let us discuss the conditions to which man was subject during this time, when he had, so to speak, returned to his starting point. I would like to present something schematically so that you have the complete picture of what I actually mean with these explanations. We cannot say that human evolution has taken place in such a way since the last Lemurian period, when the spring point of the sun was also in Pisces, that we can depict this evolution as a cycle that simply returns to itself. That would be wrong. We have to think of this cycle, because of course I am only giving a picture of the development, we have to think of it as a spiral. We must therefore imagine that, if the starting point of evolution lies in the ancient Lemurian period here, this evolution returns in such a way that man has naturally risen to a higher level of his being, but at this higher level, in relation to his relationship to the cosmos, has in a sense returned to his starting point in the present age. And how he had to live in these circumstances, let us bring that to mind today.  Some time ago, I gave a lecture to a small group in Stuttgart about a possible astronomical world view. I pointed out how, for a long time, the so-called Ptolemaic world view was regarded as correct by mankind. This Ptolemaic conception of the world is thoroughly ingenious, it is so, I might say, in certain line forms geometrically summarizes that which must be summarized if we want to express the view we have of the stars, their positions and their orbits, by pictorial representations. Then, for certain reasons, which I have often described, this Ptolemaic system was replaced by the Copernican system, which, with some important modifications, is still regarded today as essentially correct. In Stuttgart, I showed that this Copernican system is nothing more than a linear representation of what we see when we look into the cosmos with our eyes, telescopes or other instruments. I also showed that it cannot be said that this Copernican system is any more correct than the Ptolemaic system; it is only a different way of summarizing the phenomena. And I have then tried to summarize these phenomena myself, linking them to what man – who, after all, if, for example, the earth has a movement, must go along with this movement – can experience within himself. Today I want to present only the result to you; the other is not important for us today. If we begin to summarize these phenomena not in a one-sided way, as is the case with both the Ptolemaic and Copernican world systems, but if we take into account everything that is available to us, then we come to the conclusion that this summary will ultimately become so complicated that we can no longer get by with a simple world system, which we can represent with a pencil or a planiglobe. It is not at all possible, basically, to summarize things in as simple a way as one would usually like to summarize them. And one can indeed arrive at something very strange in this way, which I would like to present to you quite simply, because, however paradoxical they may appear to people of the present day, these things must be discussed. People believe that the science of the present is the most intelligent thing that has ever existed, and that basically nothing more intelligent could possibly be invented. And because of this belief, humanity is indeed heading for a terrible cultural fate. But the right thing must also be presented in a certain way. If you take into account more and more circumstances, you will end up in such a state of mind regarding the complexity of the world system that this state of mind is very similar to the one you have when you have just woken up and experience the chaotic images of the soul, which I said yesterday and the day before yesterday sit in us as an undercurrent. I have schematically drawn the human organism for you according to etheric body and physical body and said: These chaotic images emerge from it, which are actually always there even during the day. They can be found very effectively in dreamy natures, but everyone notices them at the bottom of their soul. And they can be particularly strongly noticed when a person submerges with his ego and astral body into his physical and etheric bodies in the morning. Now I do not mean these images themselves – these images are, of course, very poetic and imaginative for the people concerned, depending on their level of perfection or imperfection, or they are very chaotic, the latter being the more common case. But I am talking about the state of mind that a reasonably logical person experiences when they are accustomed to thinking logically and then find themselves immersed in this world of images. What is meant is the state of mind that comes to those who do not approach it with all the prejudices and simplifications that prevail when constructing world systems, but who approach it without prejudice. Then, in relation to what one ultimately achieves, in relation to the complexity, in relation to the interweaving, one enters into a similar state of mind. Of course, our time has brought it about – and that is even a great boon compared to the mental disposition of most people – that every schoolboy knows exactly: at the focus of an ellipse is the sun, the planets revolve around it, the fixed stars stand still, and so on. – Every schoolboy knows this, and it is tremendously simple. But if you approach these things without prejudice and without theoretical fuss, you do not find this simplicity. Instead, things become enormously complicated, and in the end you arrive at the kind of frame of mind I have described, in which you say to yourself: you have to move into something that transitions from the definite to the indefinite, from the definitely drawn lines into problematically drawn lines. You enter into a frame of mind that tells you: What you are taking into your head is basically an image, an image that is woven and that you can simplify, as when you, say, make a diagram of Raphael's Madonna. But just as you would not have the whole of Raphael's Madonna from that, you have just as little in the Copernican system what is actually in front of us in space in the form of an image that includes an infinity of details and particulars. Just when you are considering such a consideration, you will understand: If we have to say something like that to ourselves when we contemplate the phenomena of the universe, then we cannot actually stand face to face with reality as such; for we stand before what presents itself to us in a state of soul like the world of images that we encounter when we enter our body from the cosmos in the morning. So there can be no question of standing face to face with reality. These are the kinds of considerations that must be made if one wants to have an understanding in the full sense of the word of what it actually means: we live with our consciousness in the world of illusion, of maya. We also live in Maya with regard to the image we have of the universe and its phenomena. And finally, we can also observe the phenomena that the sensory world weaves around us, and we come to something similar. We do not, however, come to what a, I would say, clumsy theory of knowledge has come to at the end of the 18th and in the course of the 19th century, which always repeats: Yes, out there the phenomena are, for example, through mechanical and dynamic laws, or as one says recently, electrons, and they exert an impression on our senses, and that which is then perceived by us, that is only an effect of that which is out there; but that is just only the appearance for us. To speak of appearances to us in this sense is, after all, a clumsy theory of knowledge. With such a view, one can indeed have some strange experiences. One need only turn against this theory of knowledge with a few lines here or there today, and someone will come along and say, “But Kant said...” People have become so wrapped up in Kantianism that they consider it a kind of Bible; at least many do. They change this or that, but on the whole they consider it a kind of Bible. One can have the strangest experiences there. I once held courses on such questions in Berlin, it was in the winter of 1900 to 1901, the same winter about which Herr von Gleich has proclaimed that a certain Winter taught me about Theosophy – he has confused the winter of 1900 to 1901 with a Mr. Winter who is supposed to have taught me about Theosophy! I don't know whether he read it or was told that I once gave these lectures in winter, which were then printed, they were given in Berlin in the winter of 1900 to 1901, and so the word “winter” was taken for the name of Mr. Winter. Yes, this argument is no more intelligent than the other stupid and dishonest arguments of General von Gleich. But you see, at these lectures in Berlin there was also a dyed-in-the-wool Kantian. I can't say he was listening, because he was usually asleep, and I don't know how many people can listen while sleeping, but I could tell at the time that he only woke up when he could somehow apply Kant. And once it happened that I repeated an argument – it wasn't even mine – in which it was said: If one really speaks of the thing in itself as being completely unknown, as Kant did, then it could consist of pins, so that behind the sensory phenomena there could only be pins. But when I said this, the person in question jumped up as if stung by an adder and said: Behind the phenomena is not space and time. There are pins in space, so the thing in itself cannot consist of pins! — It is just one of the examples that one so often encounters when people believe that their Bible, their Kantian Bible, is somehow being touched. Now, it is not the case that any “things in themselves” throw effects into us, so to speak, which then merely trigger sensory qualities, so that we are actually only wrapped up in our sensory qualities; it is not like that. But something else is true. Please just take the following: Stand outside at, say, 11 o'clock in the morning and look at the surrounding area, but look at it carefully, not as some people draw it, because what they draw is nonsense, of course it doesn't reflect the appearance of the senses. Instead, look at it at 11 o'clock, at 12 o'clock with all its lighting effects. The whole sensory tapestry has changed completely by noon, by five o'clock, by eight o'clock. The picture around you is constantly changing. You are never dealing with anything but interwoven effects and impressions. A tree – what do you see of the tree? You see the reflected light, you may see the leaves moving in the wind, and so on. In short, you never see anything permanent. You simply see an objective appearance. While the clumsy theory of knowledge speaks of a subjective appearance, you see an objective appearance, and this objective appearance naturally also communicates itself to the eye. Just as the tree intercepts the light rays in a certain way, reflects them and so on, so the eye also has a certain relationship to the light rays, and we can say: the phenomenal, the apparent, the illusory , the Maja nature, which is spread out in the sense world around us, is of course also present in our subjective picture; but because it is objectively changeable, it is also changeable in the subjective picture. This is what I wanted to substantiate, for example, in the first section of my “Philosophy of Freedom” or in my booklet “Truth and Science” and so on. So even when we face the world, we are not dealing with a lasting, permanent reality; we are dealing with something that, one might say, is coming and going in the moment. We are dealing with appearances. And if we wanted to construct this image theoretically, we would come up with nothing more than the few lines in the Sistine Madonna. And so it is in everything we are immersed in. We are immersed in the world of phenomena, of Maja, but even though we are immersed in this world of Maja with all our perception, we are not dependent on this world. For it is quite clear to us when we emerge from the cosmos with our I and our astral body in the morning and submerge into our etheric body and our physical body, that what we are submerging into contains an objective, a truth. Certainly, what swirls towards us as chaotic images is only an appearance; but what we submerge ourselves in contains a truth. And in the moment when we submerge ourselves, whether we do so through: I want to move my limbs, or through: I want to bring my ideas into fantasy forms, or let's say through: I want to bring my ideas into logical thought connections – in what becomes us when we immerse ourselves in our body, in that, we know, we have something that does not depend on us, that we receive, that receives us. And the moment we wake up is the one that communicates our sense of being to us. This sense of being is, in a sense, something that permeates and runs through our entire thinking. But our thinking itself moves more in the world of phenomena, of appearance, of maya. And let us expand what I am presenting from ordinary experiences to include the whole person. Those who, with the help of such insights, as can be gained on the basis of my descriptions in “How to Know Higher Worlds”, can look at the whole person, will soon know how the human being, as a soul-spiritual being, goes through the state between death and a new birth, how it penetrates into the physical world, becomes embodied, in order to go through the state between birth and death, and then again a state between death and a new birth. I have developed some important details about these processes in the last lectures here. When the moment comes when one can look back into the world that lies before birth or before conception, one realizes that we have gone through the world that actually makes up our sense of being, the world from which our sense of being comes, between death and a new birth. One only acquires the right feeling for being, the feeling for being that is not subject to doubting or skepticism, when one looks back into this world of existence that lies before conception. But now something significant appears, as you can already gather from my Viennese lectures from the spring of 1914. I will now present it to the soul in a different form, namely, something appears that confronts us before the human being descends from the state between death and a new birth to his physical embodiment. During this time, the desire to be, the desire to exist, fades more and more from the human being. As he develops between death and a new birth, I would say that the human being passes through an absolute satiation with the feeling of being. That is one of the achievements that man acquires between death and a new birth, that after going through the first stages after death, he comes more and more, through the relationship to the world into which he then enters, to a strongly penetrating feeling of being, to a — if I may use the expression — being anchored in the being of the world. And this becomes stronger and stronger until a kind of supersaturation with the feeling of being occurs, and then, towards the end of the time between death and a new birth, I would say that a true supersaturation with the feeling of being occurs. I could also call it something else. I could say that a true hunger for non-being occurs in the human being. Those spiritual-soul entities that come down to earth as human beings actually show, before they come down to earth, a strong hunger for non-being. And from this state of mind or spirit, we could say: Because man hungers for non-being, he plunges into Maja in this state, into the world that we have before us both in relation to the world of stars and in relation to the earthly phenomenal world. There is a longing for this non-existent world, for this world, which one is in soul moods towards, as one is towards the chaotic images when one goes to their bottom, this world, which actually presents us with a different aspect in every moment. We are, after all, completely immersed in an illusory world, in a Maya world, as we immerse ourselves in this world. The soul and spirit want to submerge themselves in this Maya world, and that is what we are actually dealing with. The others are more or less side effects. This is the strongest impulse that lives in the spiritual-soul human being when he approaches earthly existence: this longing for Maya, this longing to live in the soft, permeable phenomenon, not in the saturated, intense being. And what then envelops the human being as an etheric body and as a physical body has been born out of the cosmos and is used to clothe the human being. In the last few days, I have described how the embryo in the mother's body is formed out of the cosmos. We must therefore imagine that the human being basically comes from a completely different world. There he acquires this hunger for existence, for life in the Maja, by approaching the physical earthly existence, and he is received by plunging into the Maja with his I and with his astral (see drawing, red, blue), of which the etheric body and the physical body (yellow, red) are formed in the maternal body through fertilization as its covering from the cosmos. The human being comes from a world that is not spatial-temporal, that cannot be found in space, but he is clothed in space with what is formed in the mother's body. He then emerges into this every time he wakes up. When falling asleep, he emerges from it. A rhythm of submerging into the physicality and of being drawn out of it is formed.  Today's ideas are actually such that one has great difficulty in dealing with them in relation to reality. This convergence, for example, of a completely different current that a person goes through before he comes to his embodiment, and the external that then envelops him, which of course has nothing essential to do with him before - as it really becomes, I have described on other occasions - this interaction, that can hardly be described by today's science in an appropriate way because it lacks the concepts for it. The same thing can be seen in another area. When a physiologist talks about light or color today, his main concern is to describe something that the eye does, to find out what it is. But in reality it is actually just as if someone wanted to describe any of the personalities sitting here and, above all, describe this carpentry workshop here because you walked in here. Basically, the light that enters the eye and takes effect in the eye has no more to do with the eye than you have with the carpentry workshop when you walked in and the carpentry workshop now also envelops you. If someone describes the carpentry workshop and you, they naturally describe it as a whole. But that is not the case. It is difficult to find the truth in the face of today's complicated ideas. And so we can say: that which is spiritual and soul in man comes into this world of the earthly primarily out of an urge for non-being. And every waking state, that is, every state that is experienced from waking up to falling asleep, is a new education for being, a re-impregnation of consciousness with being. The human being is in the state in which he is last between death and a new birth, I would like to say, so glad when he can arrive at his physical embodiment, he is so glad. I have often described to you how the brain floats in the cerebral fluid. If the whole weight, one thousand three hundred and fifty grams or something like that, were to press on the veins under the brain, the veins would be crushed, they could not exist; but the brain only presses with about twenty grams. Why? Because the brain floats in the cerebral fluid. And you know Archimedes' principle. Right, it was Archimedes who found it. He was once in a tub bathing and felt how he was getting lighter and lighter in the bath, and he was so pleased about this discovery that he immediately ran naked through the streets shouting: I've got it, I've got it!” — namely, that every body in a liquid loses as much of its weight as the weight of the water body that it displaces. So if you have a container of water and you put a solid object in it, it becomes lighter than it actually is outside the water, and it becomes lighter by the amount that the displaced water weighs, that is, by its own weight, if you think of it as being made out of water. So if, for example, there were a cube here and you thought of it as a water cube and weighed it, the actual cube would become lighter by the weight of the water cube. And so the brain becomes lighter, except for twenty grams, weighs only twenty grams because it floats in brain water. So the brain does not follow its full gravity. It is pushed upwards. This force that pushes upwards is also called buoyancy. Man looks forward to this, to coming into something that actually pulls him upwards, that really pulls him upwards. And he learns to be heavy again at twenty grams, and through heaviness we learn the feeling of being. Man is again imbued with the feeling of being between birth and death. And this is then developed and increased in the evolution after death. This is what, I would say, has so disappeared from the consciousness of modern humanity that the greatest philosopher at the beginning of this newer time, Cartesius or Descartes, coined the formula: Cogito ergo sum - I think, therefore I am. - It is the most nonsensical formula one can think of, because precisely by thinking, one is not. One is precisely outside of being. Cogito ergo non sum – is the real truth. Today we are so far removed from the real truth that the greatest modern philosopher has put the opposite in the place of truth. We acquire the feeling of being precisely when thinking feels itself in the organism, when thinking feels itself embedded in what is heavy. This is not just a popular image, it is reality in the face of appearances. But this can teach us how the human being, as he initially knows himself, goes down to earth in knowledge, actually submerges himself in the Maja and, within the Maja, learns what he needs again after death: the feeling of being. Now, when one describes what I have described to you now, then one has something that is specifically human in human development. This, I would like to say, rhythmic movement between the feeling of being and the feeling of not being can be visualized for meditation in the following way. You can say, when you live in mere thoughts: I am not. When one lives with reference to the will, which physically rests in the metabolic-limb-human being, then one says: I am. And between the two, between the metabolic-human being and the pure brain-human being, who says: I am not, when he understands himself, because that which lives in the brain are merely images; that which lies in between is the rhythmic alternation between: I am and I am not. For this, the external physical is breathing. The exhalation fulfills the breathing process with what comes from the metabolism, with carbon dioxide. I am – is exhalation. I am not – is inhalation. I am not
The inhalation is related to: I am not - of thought. Inhalation happens in such a way that we take in air into our ribs, pushing the water of the arachnoid space upwards and thereby pushing the cerebral fluid upwards. We bring the vibration of the breathing process into the brain. This is the organ of thought. The inhalation process transmitted to the brain: I am not. Again, exhalation, the cerebral fluid – through the arachnoid space – presses on the diaphragm, exhalation, the air impregnated with carbon, turned into carbonic acid: I am – out of the will. Exhalation: out of the will. All this, understood in this way, is a purely human process, because the person who wants to transfer it to the animal, because the animal also breathes, is just like a human being who takes a razor to cut his flesh because it is a knife. Of course animals also breathe, but animal breathing is something different from human breathing, just as a razor is something different from a table knife. Those who base their definitions on the outward appearance of things will never arrive at any kind of useful explanation of the world. Death is something different for humans, something different for animals, something different for plants. Anyone who starts from a definition of death will come to just as little of a useful explanation as someone who starts from the definition of a knife and says, for example, “A knife is something that is so fine on one side that it cuts through other objects.” Of course, that gives a nice general concept, but one cannot understand anything about what really is. So, these are specifically human processes that I have described to you. They are the human processes that man has gone through while the vernal point made the circuit from Pisces to Pisces. This is precisely the time in the evolution of the earth when man, in the leading parts of the nations, has gone through everything that I have described to you now, and which all tends to show how it actually happens, how man, human being, by descending into the physical world through birth, plunges into the maja, and with death is reborn out of the maja again, enriched by the feeling of being, which he needs for the further life after death. This is the most important fact: this being born through death with the feeling of being, while being born is the human being's spiritual-soul entity plunging into maya. It is precisely because we plunge into maya, that is, into a world of images, that we are free. We could never be free if we were in a world of facts with our consciousness between birth and death. We are only free because we are in a world of images. Images that are in the mirror do not determine us causally. A world of facts would determine us causally. What you bring to the image that hangs before you must come from you. The phenomena of the world do not determine us as human beings in what I called in my Philosophy of Freedom pure thinking, which does not come from the organism. What comes from the organism is, as you have seen, imbued with the sense of being, even if in the brain this sense of being is present in such a small percentage that it is about twenty to one thousand three hundred and fifty. One must look at this again and again, how man actually develops the longing for Maja by being born into earthly life, and how earthly life educates him to the feeling of being. That is what we have gone through during the time from the last Lemurian period into our period, where a sun cycle of 25,920 years, a great world cycle, has been gone through. Now, however, we are in the time in which development has returned to its starting point, but I have drawn it in such a way that I said: we have to indicate it schematically in a spiral (see drawing on page 170). The development of humanity has indeed returned to its starting point, but at a higher level. But what does this higher level mean? This higher stage means that we, as humanity, have always plunged into Maya with our birth and then, out of our physical existence, have gained the feeling of being. But the earth has also changed in the meantime; the earth today is no longer the same organism that it was in the Lemurian or Atlantean times. Today, as I have often stated, the Earth is already in a process of dissolution. Geology also knows this. Read about it in the beautiful geological works of Eduard Sueß, 'The Face of the Earth': the Earth is in a crumbling process, the Earth is in a dissolution process. This means that we will no longer have every opportunity to acquire the feeling of being in a sufficient way. And now that a cycle has been completed, as I explained yesterday and today, humanity is facing the danger of going through deaths in which it has developed too little sense of being, simply because our earth no longer provides the necessary intensity of the feeling of being. With this new period, which I have now explained to you as a period of the whole cosmos, the prospect opens up for humanity to pass through death with a feeling of lightness that is, if I may express it so, too great. Humanity may become more and more materialistic, and the consequence of this, if it becomes more and more materialistic, will be that it carries an insufficient feeling of heaviness or being through the gate of death. This is something that is already quite clear to those who are familiar with the conditions in the world today: souls today are carried through the gate of death by their own sense of non-being, so that they experience the opposite of what a person who falls into water and cannot swim experiences — they sink. These souls sink when they pass through the gate of death, due to the little weight they have. How the expression 'weight' is used in the spiritual world, that occurs at an important point in my Mysteries. They rise to the top and are lost. This can only be counteracted by people rising from concepts that can be easily acquired today and that figure in our entire lives, to that which must be achieved with a certain effort of physical life: that is, such concepts that are not produced by physical life alone, that are acquired through spiritual science. What do people who absolutely want to remain in today's thinking say about spiritual science? They say: Yes, what is described, for example, in this Steinerian “occult science”, that is fantastic, that is arbitrary, that cannot be imagined! Why do people say that? People can see chalk, they can see tables, they can see legs, and they can only imagine what has once presented itself to them in this way; they do not want to imagine anything other than what they have appropriated from the bellwether of external physical reality. They do not want to develop any inner activity in imagining. Anyone who wants to study Occult Science: An Outline must make an effort themselves. If he gapes at an ox, he has a reality, to be sure; he needs not make any effort, but only gape at it and then form a so-called concept, which is no concept at all. What it is about is that the concepts that are hinted at by spiritual science, for example by my “Occult Science” or “Theosophy” or by the other books, demand this inner activity. A large part of humanity, which is now more materialistic than ever because it wants to educate the world of ideas in a materialistic way, the spiritualists, would really rather not get involved in thinking through and working through Occult Science; they prefer to let themselves be by Schrenck-Notzing or others, where such lumps, shaped like human beings or the like, appear to them in such a way that they can remain completely passive; they do not need to make any effort at all. But in doing so, one becomes lighter and lighter and works against one's continued existence after death. However, by working one's way into the activity needed to penetrate spiritual science, one has to make a greater physical effort, connect more strongly with the physical than is the case today under so-called normal conditions. One must use stronger concepts. But in so doing, one also takes one's sense of being with one through death and is then equal to life after death. That is something, is it not, that today's man likes so much: to add nothing to what he encounters in life. If he is to add something, to be active, it immediately becomes uncomfortable for him. Outwardly, in our social lives, we have always striven to learn as much as possible and to learn according to the templates prescribed by the state; so that when we have happily reached the age of twenty-five or twenty-six and are ready to start our legal clerkships, we are then pushed into some scheme and entitled to a pension after so many decades; now we are safe. We are only in our twenties, but we are insured for life. We let our body retire – that is guaranteed from the outset – then comes the church, the church confession, which also demands nothing more than that we passively surrender to what is offered to us. And the church then retires our soul when we are dead; it insures us against it without our doing anything, except at most living in faith, just as our body was retired before. This is something that must be broken with if civilization is not to arrive at its decline. Inner activity, inner active participation in what man makes of himself, even what he makes of himself as an immortal being, is necessary. Man must work on his immortality. That is the one thing that most people would like to be magically removed. They believe that knowledge can only teach one something of what is so anyway, can at most teach one that man is immortal. There are those who say: Yes, I live here, as life exists here; what will be after death, I will see then. He will see nothing, absolutely nothing! For the argument is about as ingenious as that of the Anzengruber personality: “As surely as there is a God in heaven, I am an atheist!” — These things are of the same logic. The fact of the matter is that, with regard to the spiritual and mental, by taking it into our knowledge, we make the spirit mature so that after death it does not go through the opposite state of someone sinking in confusion, that is, of someone rising without essence. We must work on our essence so that it can pass through death in the right way. And the assimilation of spiritual knowledge is not just the assimilation of abstract knowledge, it is the penetration of the spiritual and mental life of man with the forces that conquer death. This is, after all, the essence of the Christian teaching. Therefore, a person should not merely believe in Christ, as a modern confession would have it, but should take to heart the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but Christ in me.” The power of Christ in me must develop and be cultivated! Faith as such cannot save the human being, but only the inner cooperation with Christ, the inner development of the power of Christ, which is always there if one wants to develop it, but which must be developed. Initiative and activity are what humanity will have to fill itself with. And it must realize that mere passive faith makes man too easy, so that in time immortality would die on earth. That is Ahriman's endeavor. And to what extent it is Ahriman's endeavor, we will then bring before our soul in a next lecture, because today we are in the midst of the battle between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic powers. And just as we have protected our unconsciousness to a certain extent, with the spring equinox marking a boundary, we will have to enter the next boundary in such a way that we place ourselves with full 1987 we place ourselves in that which interweaves the world's being: the battle of the Luciferic with the Ahrimanic spirits. Through spiritual science we are led into reality, not just into an abstract knowledge. More about this next time. |
| 235. Karma: Karma Impulses through Recurring Earth Lives
24 Feb 1924, Dornach Translated by Henry B. Monges Rudolf Steiner |
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| I have often been compelled to indicate the great contrast, in this regard, between Kant and Schiller. Kant, both in life and in knowledge, “kantified” [Kante in German means a hard edge or angle. (Note by translator)] everything. Through Kant, everything in knowledge became sharp and angular; and thus, also human conduct. “Duty, thou great and exalted name, thou who containest nothing of pleasure, nothing that curries favors ...” this passage I quoted in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity to the pretended vexation—not the sincere, but the pretended, hypocritical vexation—of many opponents, and I opposed to it what I must acknowledge to be my view: “Love, thou impulse that speaketh warmly to the soul. ...” |
| 235. Karma: Karma Impulses through Recurring Earth Lives
24 Feb 1924, Dornach Translated by Henry B. Monges Rudolf Steiner |
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Today I wish, primarily, to bring before you some of the more comprehensive aspects in the development of karma, in order to be able gradually to go more and more into matters of detail. If we wish to gain insight into the course of karma, we must be able to imagine how the human being gathers his whole organization together as he descends out of the spiritual world into the physical. You will understand, my dear friends, that in the language of today there are no suitable expressions for certain processes which are practically unknown to modern civilization, and that, therefore, the expressions employed here for what takes place under certain conditions can only be approximate. When we descend out of the spiritual into the physical world for an earth life, we have, to begin with, prepared our physical body by means of the stream of heredity. We shall see how this physical body is, nevertheless, connected in a certain sense with what the human being experiences between death and a new birth. Today, however, it will suffice if we are clear about the fact that the physical body is given to us from the earth; on the other hand, those members which we may describe as the higher members of the human being—the ether body, astral body, and ego—come down from the spiritual world. The human being attracts, so to speak, the ether body out of the whole universal ether before he unites himself with the physical body which is given to him by heredity. The union of the soul-spirit man—i.e. ego, astral body, and ether body—with the physical human embryo can ensue only through the gradual withdrawal of the ether body of the maternal organism from the physical human embryo. The human being, thus, unites himself with the physical germ after having attracted his ether body out of the common universal ether. The more precise descriptions of these events will occupy us later. At present we are to interest ourselves mainly in asking: Whence come the individual members of human nature which the human being possesses during earth life between birth and death? The physical organism comes, as we have seen, from the stream of heredity, the etheric organism out of the universal ether from which it is attracted. The astral organism—of which the human being remains, we might say, in all respects unconscious or only sub-consciously aware during his earth life—this astral body contains all the results of the life between death and a new birth. And it is a fact that between death and a new birth, according to what the human being has become through his preceding earth lives, he comes, in the most manifold way, into relationship with other human souls who are also in the life between death and a new birth, or with other spiritual beings of a higher cosmic order who do not descend to earth in a human body, but have their existence in the spiritual world. All that a man brings over from his former lives on earth according to what he was, according to what he has done, all this is met by the sympathy or antipathy of the beings whom he learns to know while he passes through the world between death and a new birth. What sympathies and antipathies he meets among the higher beings according to what he has done in his preceding earth life is of great significance for karma during this period; but, above all, it is of deep significance that he comes into relationship with those human souls with whom he was in relationship on earth, and that a peculiar reflection takes place between his own nature and the nature of the souls with whom he had this relationship. Let us assume that someone has had a good relationship with a soul whom he now encounters again between death and a new birth. All that the good relationship implies had lived in him during former earth lives. Then this good relationship is reflected in the soul, when this soul is encountered between death and a new birth. And it is really true that the human being during this passage through the life between death and a new birth sees himself reflected everywhere in the souls with whom he is now associated because he was associated with them on earth. If he did good to a human being, something is mirrored to him from the other soul; if he did him an evil turn, something is likewise mirrored to him from the other soul. And he has the feeling—if I may use the word “feeling” with the reservation made at the beginning of these observations—he has the feeling: “You have advanced this human soul. What you have experienced through advancing him, what you then felt for this soul, that impulse in your feelings which led to your attitude toward him, your own inner experiences in performing the deed that advanced this soul, come back to you from him. They are reflected to you from this soul. In another case you have injured a soul; what has lived in you during this injury is reflected to you.” And the human being has actually spread out before him, as though in a mighty and wide-extending reflector, his previous earth lives, but chiefly the last one, mirrored from the souls with whom he was associated. And we gain the impression, just in regard to our life of action, that all that is departing from us. We lose the ego-feeling which we had on earth in the body, or we really lost it a long time ago between death and a new birth. Now, however, the ego-feeling arises in us from this whole reflection. With the mirroring of our deeds, we come to life in all the souls with whom we were associated during our earth life. On earth, our I, our ego, was like a point. Here between death and a new birth, it is reflected to us everywhere from the periphery. This is an intimate association with other souls, but an association in accordance with the relations into which we have entered with them. And in the spiritual world all this is a reality. If we go through a room hung with many mirrors, we see ourselves reflected in each one. But we also know that the reflections—according to ordinary human parlance—are “not there;” when we depart they do not remain; we are no longer reflected. But that which is reflected there in human souls remains as something present. And there comes a time in the last third of the life between death and a new birth when we form our astral body out of these mirrored images. We draw all this together to form our astral body, so that, in truth, when we descend from the spiritual world into the physical, we carry in our astral body what we have taken up again into ourselves, in accordance with the reflection to which our actions of the former earth life have given rise in other souls between death and a new birth. This gives us the impulses which impel us toward or away from the human souls with whom we are born again at the same time in the physical body. In this way, between death and a new birth, the impulse for the karma of the new earth life is fashioned. I shall, very soon, have to describe the process more in detail by taking the ego into consideration also. And now we can trace how an impulse from one life works on into other lives. Let us take, for example, the impulse of love. We can perform our deeds in relation to other human beings out of that impulse which we call love. There is a difference whether we perform our acts out of a mere sense of duty, of convention, of decency, or the like, or whether we perform them out of a greater or lesser degree of love. Let us assume that during an earth life a human being is able to perform actions warmed through and through by love. This, indeed, remains as a real force in his soul. What he now takes with him as result of his deeds, what is mirrored there in the other souls, comes back to him as a reflection. And from this he forms his astral body with which he descends to the earth. There the love of the former earth life, the love which has streamed out of him and which now returns to him from other human beings, transforms itself into joy. So that, when the human being does something for his fellow-men that is sustained by love, something in connection with which love streams out of him and accompanies the deeds which advance his fellow-men, then the metamorphosis in the passage through life between death and a new birth is of such a character that what is outpouring love in one life on earth is, in the next earth life, transmuted, metamorphosed, into joy streaming toward him. If you experience joy, my dear friends, through a human being in one earth life, you may be sure it is the outcome of the love which you have shown for him in a former life. This joy now flows back again into your soul during earth life. You know this inwardly warming feeling of joy. You know what meaning joy has in life, especially the joy which conies from human beings. It warms life, it sustains life, we may say that it gives wings to life. It is karmically the result of love bestowed. In our joy, however, we again experience a relation to the other human being who gives us joy. So that in our former earth lives we have had something within us that made the love flow out from us; in our subsequent earth lives we already have, as a result, the inward experience of the warmth of joy. And that is again something that streams from us. A human being who is allowed to experience joy in life, is of importance to his fellow-men, has warming significance. A human being who has cause for going joylessly through life behaves differently toward his fellow-men from the one who is permitted to go through life joyfully. But what is experienced in joy in the life between birth and death is reflected again in the souls of the most various kinds with whom we were associated on earth and who are now also in the life between death and a new birth. And this reflection, which in manifold ways then comes back to us from the souls of the human beings known to us on earth, this reflection works back in turn. We carry it again in our astral body when we descend into the next earth life—we are now dealing with the third earth life. Once more it is instilled, imprinted, in our astral body. And it now becomes in its result the underlying basis, the impulse for a quick and ready understanding of human beings and the world. It becomes the basis for that soul condition which sustains us by virtue of our having the ability to understand the world. If we find the conduct of human beings interesting and can take joy in it, if we understand their conduct and take interest in it in a given incarnation on earth, then that directs us back to the joy of our previous incarnation, to the love of our still earlier incarnation. Human beings who are able to go through the world with a free and open mind, so that the free and open mind permits the world to flow into them, so that they have an understanding for the world, these are human beings who have gained this attitude to the world through love and joy. What we perform in our deeds out of love is altogether different from what we do out of a rigid and dry sense of duty. You know, indeed, that I have always emphasized in my books that the deeds springing from love are to be understood as the truly ethical, as the truly moral deeds. I have often been compelled to indicate the great contrast, in this regard, between Kant and Schiller. Kant, both in life and in knowledge, “kantified” [Kante in German means a hard edge or angle. (Note by translator)] everything. Through Kant, everything in knowledge became sharp and angular; and thus, also human conduct. “Duty, thou great and exalted name, thou who containest nothing of pleasure, nothing that curries favors ...” this passage I quoted in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity to the pretended vexation—not the sincere, but the pretended, hypocritical vexation—of many opponents, and I opposed to it what I must acknowledge to be my view: “Love, thou impulse that speaketh warmly to the soul. ...” Over against the dry and rigid Kantian concept of duty, Schiller coined the expression: “Gladly I serve my friends; yet alas, I do it with pleasure, wherefore it oftentimes vexes me that I am not virtuous,” For, according to the Kantian ethics, that which we do out of inclination is not virtuous, but only that which we do out of the rigid concept of duty. Now, there are human beings who, in the first place, do not attain to love. But, because they cannot tell their fellow-man the truth out of love (for if we love a human being we tell him the truth, and not lies), because they are unable to love, they tell the truth out of a sense of duty; since they cannot love, they refrain, merely out of a sense of duty, from thrashing their fellow-man, or boxing his ears, striking him, or doing something similar, when he does anything they do not like. There is, indeed, a difference between the deeds of love and acting out of a rigid sense of duty—which, to be sure, is absolutely necessary in social life, necessary for many things. Now, the deeds that are done out of a rigid concept of duty, or out of convention or propriety, because it is “the proper thing to do,” will not call forth joy in the next earth life, but in that they pass in the same way through the reflection by the souls, as I have described it, they call forth in the next earth life something which we might describe as follows: We sense that we are an object of indifference to other human beings. Many a person carries through life the sense that he is an object of indifference to other human beings and suffers from it. And rightly he suffers from it, if he is of no concern to other human beings, for human beings are there for one another, and the human being is dependent upon not being a matter of indifference to his fellow-men. What the human being thus suffers here is simply the result of the lack of love in a former earth life where he behaved as a decent human being because of the rigid duty which hung over him like the sword of Damocles—I will not say, a sword of steel, for that would be disquieting for most dutiful people, but just like a wooden sword of Damocles. We have now reached the second earth life. That which comes as joy from love becomes in the third life, as we have seen, a free and open heart, bringing the world near to us, giving us open-minded insight into all things beautiful and true and good. That which streams to us as indifference from other human beings, and what we experience thereby in one earth life, fashions us for the third, that is to say for the next earth life, into a human being who does not know what to do with himself. When such a person enters school, he is at a loss what to do with that which the teachers impart to him. When he grows a little older, he does not know whether to become a locksmith or Privy Councilor. He does not know what to do with himself in life. He actually drifts aimlessly through life without direction. In regard to his observation of the outer world, he is not exactly dull. Music, for instance, he understands well enough, but it gives him no pleasure. It is, after all, a matter of indifference to him whether the music is more or less good or more or less bad. To be sure, he feels the beauty of a painting or other work of art, but there is always something in his soul that irritates him: “What is the good of it, anyhow? To what purpose is all this?” These, in turn, are the things that make their appearance in karmic connection in the third earth life. Now let us assume, however, that out of hate or an inclination to antipathy a human being does certain injuries to his fellow-men. Here we may imagine every conceivable degree. One individual with criminal feelings of hatred may harm his fellow-men. Or—I am omitting the intermediate stages—he may be a critic. To be a critic, one must always hate a little—unless one is a praising critic, and such critics are few nowadays, for it is not interesting to show recognition of other people's work; it becomes interesting only when one can make fun of things. Now, there are all manner of intermediate stages. But we have here to think of human deeds which proceed from a cold antipathy—antipathy about which we are often not at all clear—or, at the other extreme, from hatred. All that is brought about in this way by human beings against their fellow-men or even against sub-human creatures, all this vents itself in soul conditions which in turn also mirror themselves in the life between death and a new birth. And then, in the next earth life, out of the hatred is born that which streams to us from the world as sorrow, as unhappiness caused from without, as the opposite of joy. You will reply: “But really, we experience so much sorrow; is that all due to hatred, greater or lesser hatred, in our preceding life? I cannot possibly imagine”—a man will be apt to say—“that I have been such a bad lot, so that I must experience so much sorrow, because I have hated so much.” Well, if we wish to think without prejudice on these things, we must become aware of how great is the illusion which gives us satisfaction and to which, therefore, we easily surrender if it is a question of our suggesting away from our conscious mind any feeling of antipathy against other human beings. People really go through the world with far more hatred than they think—at least, with far more antipathy. And it is a matter of fact that hatred, because it gives satisfaction to the soul, is not as a rule consciously experienced. It is eclipsed by the satisfaction it gives. But, when it returns as sorrow which streams to us from without, then we notice it, as sorrow. But just consider for a moment, my dear friends—in order to represent in a quite trivial fashion what is present there as a possibility—think of an afternoon-tea chatter, a real, a genuine gossiping tea party where half a dozen (half a dozen is quite enough) “aunts” or “uncles”—it can be uncles, too—or “cousins,” if you will, are sitting together discussing their fellows. Just think how many antipathies are unloaded on human beings, say, in the course of an hour and a half—often it is longer. While this antipathy pours out, people do not notice it; but when it returns in the next earth life, then it will, indeed, be noticed. And it returns, inexorably. Thus, in actual fact, a portion—not all; we shall still become acquainted with other karmic connections—a portion of what we experience in one earth life as sorrow caused from outside may very well be due to our feelings of antipathy in a former earth life. In connection with all this we must, naturally, always realize that karma, that some sort of karmic stream, must begin at some time, somewhere. So that, if you have here, for example, a succession of earth lives: a b c (d) and this (d) is the present life; not all pain, naturally, that falls to our lot from without need be due to our former earth lives. It may also be an original sorrow, which will work itself out karmically only in the next earth life. I say, therefore, that a large part of that sorrow which streams to us from outside is a result of hate which was brought into being in former earth lives. If we now proceed again to the third earth life, the result of what streams to us there as sorrow—but only the result of that sorrow which comes to us, so to speak, out of stored-up hate—the result of this sorrow which then unloads in our soul is, in the first place, a kind of mental dullness, a sort of dullness in the capacity of insight into the world. If you have a human being who confronts the world phlegmatically and with indifference, who does not confront the things of the world, or other human beings, with an open heart, the fact is, very often, that he has acquired this obtuseness of mind through the sorrow of a previous earth life, caused in his own karma. This sorrow, however, when it expresses itself in this way in obtuseness of soul must be retraced to the feelings of hatred which occurred at least in the second earth life prior to this one. We can be absolutely sure that stupidity in any one earth life is always the consequence of hatred in a certain former earth life. Yet, my dear friends, the understanding of karma shall not rest only on the fact that we comprehend karma for the purpose of understanding life, but that we are also able to comprehend it as an impulse of life, that we are conscious that with life there is not merely an “a, b, c, d,” but also an “e, f, g, h,” a, b, c, (d), e, f, g, h that there are also earth lives still to come, and that what we develop as the content of our soul in a present earth life will have its effects, its results, in the next earth life. If any one wishes to be especially stupid in his second earth life after this one, he need, really, only hate a great deal in this present earth life. But, if someone wishes to have a free and open insight in the second earth life after this one, he need only love with special intensity in this earth life. And insight into karma, knowledge of karma, gains real value only through the fact that it flows into our will for the future, that it plays a role in this will for the future. And it is true in every respect that the moment is now at hand in the evolution of mankind when the unconscious can no longer continue to be effective in the same way it was effective previously, while our souls were passing through previous earth lives, for human beings are becoming constantly freer and more conscious. Since the first third of the fifteenth century we have been in the age in which human beings are continually becoming freer and more conscious. Hence, those individuals who are human beings of the present time will have in a subsequent earth life a dim feeling of previous earth lives. And just as the modern man, if he notices that he is not very bright, does not ascribe this to himself, but to his natural lack of ability—the cause of which he usually seeks in his physical nature in accordance with the theories of modern materialism—so will the human beings who will be the re-incarnated human beings of the present time, have at least an obscure feeling which will worry them. If they are not very bright, they will feel that something must have taken place which was connected with feelings of hate and antipathy. And, if we speak today of a Waldorf School pedagogy, we must naturally take into account the present earth civilization. We cannot yet educate in complete frankness in such a way that we consciously employ repeated earth lives in education, for modern human beings have not yet even a dim feeling for repeated earth lives. The beginnings, however, that have been made just in the Waldorf School pedagogy, if they are taken up, will continue to develop in the coming centuries with the result that the following will be included in ethical, moral education: If a child has little talent, it is due to former earth lives in which it has hated intensely, and we shall then, with the help of spiritual science, seek out whom it might have hated. For the human beings who were hated, and against whom deeds were committed out of hate, must be rediscovered somewhere in the child's environment. Gradually, in coming centuries, the education of a child will have to be related far more definitely to human life. We shall have to see, in regard to this dull child, whence that is reflected or has been reflected in the life between death and a new birth, which goes through a metamorphosis resulting in unintelligence in this earth life. We shall then be able to do something to the end that in childhood a special love is developed for those human beings for whom the child felt specific hatred in former earth lives. And we shall see that through such a specifically aroused and directed love, the child's intellect, nay, the child's whole soul state, will brighten. It is not in general theories about karma that we shall find what can aid education, but in looking concretely into life in order to see what the karmic connections are. We shall soon notice that the fact that children are brought together in a school class by fate is, indeed, not something to be regarded with complete indifference. And when we shall have risen beyond the hideous carelessness that prevails in these things nowadays, when the “human material”—for so it is often called—which is thrown together in a school class is actually conceived as though it were thrown together by mere chance, not as though destiny had brought these human beings together,—if we shall have risen beyond this appalling indifference, we shall then gain a new outlook as educators, we shall then be able to perceive what strange karmic threads are spun from one child to the other as a result of former lives. And we shall then bring into the children's development that which can effect equalization. In a certain respect, karma is under the domination of an inexorable necessity. Out of an inexorable necessity we are able definitely to establish the sequence:
These are unconditional connections. Although it is true that we are confronted by an absolute necessity when a river follows its course, yet we have frequently regulated rivers, have given them a different course. So in like manner is it also possible to regulate, if I may say so, the karmic stream, to affect its course. Indeed, this is possible. Thus, if you notice that in childhood there is a tendency to idiocy, and if you then realize the necessity of guiding the child, especially of developing love in his heart, if you discover—and this should be possible even today for people with a fine observation of life,—if you discover to which other children the child is karmically related, and if you are able  to bring the child to the point of loving just these children, to perforin deeds of love for them, you will then see that you are able with love to give a counterweight to antipathy, and that you are able by means of it to correct this idiocy in the next incarnation, in the next earth life. There are educators, trained, as it were, by their own instinct, who often do some such thing out of their instinct, who bring dull-witted children to the point where they are able to love, and thus educate them by degrees to become more intelligent human beings. It is such things that make our insight into karmic connections of service to life.
Before we go further in considering the details of karma, yet another question will have to confront our souls. Just ask yourself: What is a human being really with whom—in general, at least—we may know ourselves to be karmically related? I must use an expression which is often used today rather ironically: such a man is a “contemporary”; he is on the earth at the same time that we are. If you bear this in mind, you will say to yourself that, if you are associated with certain human beings in one earth life, you were associated with them in a previous earth life also (generally speaking, at least; matters may, of course, be somewhat shifted). And you were, likewise, associated with them in a still earlier life. (See Figure V) Now, those individuals, who live fifty years later than you, were associated in turn with human beings in former earth lives. Generally speaking, the human beings of, let us say, the B series do not, in accordance with the thought we have developed here, come in contact with the human beings of the A series. This is an oppressive thought, but a true one.  I shall later speak about other debatable questions, such as arise, for instance, through the fact that people often say that humanity multiplies on the earth. Today, however, I should like to place the following thought before you; it is, perhaps, an oppressive thought, but it is none the less a true one. It is an actual fact that the continued life of men on earth takes place in rhythms. One shift of human beings—if I may put it so—proceeds, as a general rule, from one earth life to another; another shift of human beings does the same, and they are in a certain sense separated from one another; they do not come together during earth life. To be sure, in the long intervening life between death and a new birth they do come together; but for earth life it is, indeed, a fact that we descend to the earth with a limited circle of people. To be “contemporaries” has an inner meaning, an inner importance just for repeated earth lives. Why is it so? I can assure you, this question which, in the first place, may occupy us intellectually, has caused me the greatest imaginable pain in the field of spiritual science, because it is necessary to discover the truth regarding this question, the inner nature of the facts. And thus, we may ask ourself—forgive my using an example which really concerns me only as a matter of research—we may ask ourself the question: “Why were you not a contemporary of Goethe's? By your not a contemporary of Goethe's you can, according to this truth, conclude on general principles that you have never lived with Goethe on the earth. Goethe belongs to another shift of human beings.” What really lies behind this? Here we must reverse the question. But to do so we must have an open, liberal mind for human social relationships. We must be able to ask ourself a question—and I shall have very much to say in the near future about this question—we must be able to ask ourself the question: What is it really to be another man's contemporary? What is it, on the other hand, to be able to know of him only from history, so far as the earth life is concerned? What does this mean? Well, my dear friends, we must have an open, liberal mind in order to answer the intimate question: “How do matters stand with regard to all the inner accompanying phenomena of the soul when a contemporary of yours speaks to you, performs actions which come near you? How do matters stand?” And, after having acquired the necessary knowledge, you must then be able to compare this with what the situation would be were you to come into contact with a personality who is not your contemporary, perhaps has never been such in any life on earth, and whom you may, nevertheless, revere to the highest degree, much more, perhaps, than any of your contemporaries—what would be the situation were you to encounter this personality as a contemporary? In a word—pardon the personal note—what would the situation be, had I been a contemporary of Goethe? If you are not an indifferent kind of person—naturally, if you are an indifferent person and have no comprehension of what a contemporary can be, you cannot very well answer such a question—then you can ask the question: “How would it be if I, walking down the Schillergasse in Weimar toward the Frauenplan, had seen the fat Privy Councilor approaching me, say in the year 1826, 1827?” Now, we know quite well, we could not have stood it. Our contemporary we can stand. If the one with whom we cannot be contemporary were, nevertheless, our contemporary, we should not be able to endure him; he would, in a certain sense, act like a poison on our soul life. We endure him as a historical character, because he is not our contemporary, but our successor or predecessor. Of course, if we have no feeling for such things, they remain in the unconscious. We can well imagine that a certain man has a fine feeling for the spiritual and knows that, had he walked down the Schillergasse in Weimar toward the Frauenplan, and had he, as a contemporary, encountered the fat Privy Councilor Goethe with the double chin, he would then have felt himself in an inwardly impossible state. The one, however, who has no feeling for such things—well, he would, perhaps, have taken off his hat! These things, my dear friends, do not derive from the earth life, be- cause the reasons why we cannot be the contemporary of some particular man are not to be found within earth life, because here we must penetrate with our preception into the spiritual relationships. This is why, for earth life, such things appear at times paradoxical. Nevertheless, they are facts, most certainly facts. I can assure you that I wrote with genuine love an Introduction to Jean Paul's works, published in the Cotta'sche Bibliothek der Weltliteratur. Yet, if I had ever had to sit side by side with Jean Paul at Bayreuth—without doubt, I should have had a stomach ache. That does not hinder us from having the highest reverence. But such an experience comes to every human being, only, with most people it remains in the subconscious, in the astral or in the ether body; it does not take hold of the physical body. For the soul experience which must seize upon the physical body must, indeed, become conscious. But the following must also be clear to you, my dear friends: If you wish to gain knowledge of the spiritual world, you cannot escape hearing things which seem grotesque and paradoxical, because the spiritual world is different from the physical. It is, of course, easy enough for anyone to ridicule the statement that if I had been a contemporary of Jean Paul's, it would have given me a stomach ache to sit in his company. It goes without saying that for the everyday, banal, philistine world of earthly life ridicule is to be expected. But the laws of the banal, philistine world do not hold good for spiritual relationships. If we wish to understand the spiritual world we must accustom ourselves to think with other thought forms; we must be prepared to experience many quite surprising things. When, in our everyday consciousness, we read about Goethe, we may naturally feel impelled to say: “How I should like to have known him personally, to have shaken hands with him!” and so on. That is thoughtlessness, for there are laws according to which we are predestined for a certain epoch of the earth in which we can live. Just as we are preconditioned to stand a certain pressure of the air in our physical body, and therefore cannot rise above the earth beyond a certain height where the pressure is not agreeable, so is a man who is predestined for the twentieth century unable to live at the time of Goethe. These were the things which, at the outset, I wished to bring forward about karma. |