Between Death and Rebirth E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

In an absorbing series of lectures, Rudolf Steiner discloses factors in a person's life on Earth that will influence their experiences in the spiritual world after their death – and conversely, factors in the spiritual world that will affect their next life on Earth. Steiner focuses on the period in the afterlife when the individual has been through kamaloka – the purgatorial place where the soul is purified. Once the soul has been cleansed of its astral sheath, it becomes open to cosmic influences, expanding into the planetary sphere. Now it can begin preparation for reincarnation – for a new human life on Earth. Steiner addresses the vital relationship of the living to the dead – in particular, how those on Earth can influence the souls of the dead. He also speaks on themes of 'Sleep and death', 'The seven-year life cycles of man', and offers a 'Christmas gift' in the form of a lecture on Christian Rosenkreutz and Gautama Buddha. He ends with a mighty picture of the Mystery of Golgotha: Jesus Christ's death on the cross was only seemingly a death; in reality it enabled the momentous birth of the Earth-Soul.Long out-of-print, the freshly-revised text of the ten lectures in this new edition is complemented with an introduction, notes and appendices by Professor Frederick Amrine, and also features an index.

Leseprobe

BETWEEN DEATH AND REBIRTH IN RELATION TO COSMIC FACTS

Ten lectures given in Berlin between 5 November 1912 and 1 April 1913

TRANSLATED BY E. H. GODDARD, D. S. OSMOND AND FREDERICK AMRINE

EDITED BY FREDERICK AND MARGOT AMRINE

INTRODUCTION BY FREDERICK AMRINE

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

CW 141

Rudolf Steiner Press

Hillside House, The Square

Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2021

Originally published in German under the title Das Leben zwischen dem Tode und der neuen Geburt im Verhältnis zu den kosmischen Tatsachen (volume 141 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand notes that were not reviewed or revised by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on the fifth German edition (1997), edited by H. R. Niederhäuser

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1997

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 593 0

eISBN 9781855846265

Cover by Morgan Creative

Typeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Vishakapatnam, India

Printed and bound by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note

Introduction, by Frederick Amrine

LECTURE 1

BERLIN, 5 NOVEMBER 1912

All the forces of the soul must be activated if the essence of anthroposophy is to be grasped. Subjects must be studied constantly from new perspectives. Since the last third of the nineteenth century, the soul need only be duly prepared and revelations will flow from the spiritual world. Activity in the physical world, quietude in the spiritual world. Since 1899, spiritual influences must take effect inwardly instead of being occasioned by outer events. These lectures will deal chiefly with the life after death when the Kamaloka period is over. After death, relationships between individuals continue as they were during life on Earth. Homer’s seership. Michelangelo and the Medici tombs in Florence. Our attitude to spiritual knowledge can establish the seeds of a true morality. Companionship or isolation in the planetary spheres after death depend upon moral and religious attitudes of soul in earthly life. For karmic adjustments, return into the physical body is essential.

Pages 1-18

LECTURE 2

BERLIN, 20 NOVEMBER 1912

Consciousness of the ‘I’ acquired as the result of contacts and collisions with the external world and with the body when waking from sleep. Between birth and death a human being may reduce the value of his ‘I’ as the result of causing suffering to others. Effects of the destruction thus caused remain in one’s astral, etheric and physical bodies; the forces able to repair the damage to these sheaths cannot be drawn from the Earth but only from the planetary spheres after death. Particular qualities acquired on Earth determine whether companionship or isolation will be experienced by the soul after death when passing through the spheres of Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Experiences during initiation closely akin to those undergone during the life after death. Understanding of every human soul without distinction of creed necessary for initiation as it is in the Sun sphere. The meeting between Abraham and Melchizedek contains a deep secret of the evolution of humanity. The distinction between Christianity and other faiths. The Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled for all human beings, not only for those who call themselves Christians. ‘Ye shall be as Gods’—difference in implications of these words if uttered by Lucifer or Christ. Forces needed for renewal of the etheric body in the next incarnation must be drawn from the solar sphere, for renewal of the astral body from the other planetary spheres.

Pages 19-35

LECTURE 3

BERLIN, 3 DECEMBER 1912

Relationships established during existence on Earth cannot, to begin with, be changed during the life after death. From the possible suffering caused by this realization the power is acquired to change conditions in later karma. Those living on Earth are able to have a great influence on those who have died. Reading to the dead. Opposition to anthroposophy in the upper consciousness may take the form of longing for it in the subconsciousness. Necessity of mediation between the physical world and the spiritual world. Possibilities that do not become reality on the physical plane exist as forces and effects in the spiritual world. Actual experiences are only a fractional part of the possibilities. The purpose of anthroposophy is fulfilled in the creation of an actual link between the physical and spiritual worlds. The relation of the soul to the body. Analogy of the plant and its connection with the Sun. The human being belongs to the Universe, not only to the Earth. Only during the last four centuries has consciousness of this connection been lost. The Christ Impulse imparts feeling of kinship with the macrocosm. A twelfth-century allegory. Reference to Chapter IV in the book Esoteric Science.

Pages 36-50

LECTURE 4

BERLIN, 10 DECEMBER 1912

After death the human being draws forces from the stellar world to the extent to which he developed moral and religious qualities during life on Earth. Humans are not meant to witness what happens to them during sleep, i.e. the restoration of forces used up during waking life. Processes of cognition lie within the field of human’s consciousness, but the life-giving process does not. The expulsion from Paradise. The purpose of life between death and rebirth is that forces may be drawn from the stellar world for shaping the following incarnation. Difference between the life after death and the condition of sleep is fundamentally one of consciousness only. Direct astronomical vision in ancient Egypt, but no logical thinking. In the Graeco-Latin epoch there was only remembrance of what had formerly been direct vision. By the time of Copernicus human beings had eyes only for physical globes in space. Kepler’s spiritual insight into the connection of certain events with heavenly constellations. Anthroposophy is a torch by which the spiritual world is illumined for us from a certain time onwards during life after death. Forces once drawn from the stellar worlds must now be drawn from human beings’ own souls. This is the mission of the Earth.

Pages 51-66

LECTURE 5

BERLIN, 22 DECEMBER 1912

A special lecture given ‘as a kind of Christmas gift’ on the subject of Christian Rosenkreutz and Gautama Buddha: their missions and achievements in the spiritual history of mankind.

Pages 67-78

LECTURE 6

BERLIN, 7 JANUARY 1913

In our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the sixth is prepared in the souls of human beings by increasing understanding of the Christ Impulse and of the Mystery of the Holy Grail. The latter is connected with the mission of Buddha in the Mars sphere referred to in the preceding lecture. Of the members of the human being it is the ‘I’ or ego which, basically speaking, passes through all the periods of existence between birth and death and death and rebirth. But this ‘I’ must not be confused with the ‘I’ recognized in earthly life. The true ‘I’ is the actor in the processes of learning to walk, to speak and to think. There is a natural correspondence between the true human form and those faculties. The human form stems from the Spirits of Form. These Spirits are opposed by backward luciferic Spirits who suppress the consciousness proper to the ego. The bodily organs are pervaded by the Spirits of Form quite differently in each case. Contrast between the head and the rest of the physical body. At a certain stage of development, physical mobility can be held still while complete mobility of the corresponding etheric organs is maintained. Between death and rebirth man experiences the higher ‘I’ of which he is unconscious during earthly life between birth and death.

Pages 79-87

LECTURE 7

BERLIN, 14 JANUARY 1913

Cyclic seven-year periods in life. Coming of the second teeth marks the culmination of the formative process which works from within the human being. Growth, however, continues until checked by forces working from outside (see diagram). The work of the ‘regular’ Hierarchies and of the luciferic beings belonging to those Hierarchies. Essential changes take place in the course of time both in life on Earth and after death. ‘Public opinion’ and its influence. St Paul’s profound esoteric knowledge exemplified in his teaching of the ‘first Adam’ and the ‘second Adam’. Progressive dimness of the human life of soul after death until the Mystery of Golgotha, when the new impulse was given to spiritual life. The Baptism by John the Baptist and its effects. In the life of soul, human beings were under the leadership of the Third Hierarchy to a far greater extent than was the case after the Mystery of Golgotha. The power and influence of the luciferic beings have no significance in human life after death. The effect of Buddha’s influence in the Mars sphere. In the future it will be characteristic of those who are to become spiritual leaders on Earth that a fundamental change takes place in their whole character when they have reached a certain age. This is the result of the Buddha’s influence in the Mars sphere during their life between death and rebirth. Rosicrucianism has always recognized this.

Pages 88-104

LECTURE 8

BERLIN, 11 FEBRUARY 1913

The greatest mysteries of existence are within humans themselves. The thoughts conceived by divine and spiritual beings in the past live on in the present mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, just as our memories continue into our present life. With our memory we grasp a tiny corner of creation, namely what has passed over from creation into existence. From the viewpoint of sleep we behold what is hidden from waking life. Results of destructive processes during waking life are repaired during sleep. Processes of destruction in the organism are the precondition of the life of soul. Experiences during the life between death and new birth. At a certain point there is a reversal of vision. Everything that was outside us in life on Earth becomes our inner world. Preparation of the body of the future earthly existence. When the soul encounters in the spiritual world that which bears a new life germinally within it, this is an experience of the moment of the last death in reverse. Vision of spiritual realities gradually lost by human souls in the course of evolution. Human beings are now beginning to be interested only in what is sub-sensory, e.g. vibrations, wavelengths, the working of forces. The mission of anthroposophy is to counter the withering of our inner spirituality.

Pages 105-118

LECTURE 9

BERLIN, 4 MARCH 1913

Spiritual investigation discloses that the supersensible forces needed by humans in order to mould their bodies and also our destiny are received by us from the beings of the Hierarchies whom we contact between death and rebirth. Rejection of spiritual ideas in earthly life means loneliness and darkness in the spiritual world after death, also inability to mould the physical organs efficiently for the next incarnation. Individuals after death are approached by luciferic or ahrimanic beings according to their attitude to spiritual knowledge whilst on Earth. The power exercised by ahrimanic beings during a soul’s life after death can be recognized in characteristics of three successive incarnations. An example: egotistic mysticism in one life, hypochondria in the next, defective thinking in the third. Acting out of love rather than merely out of a sense of duty enables contact to be made after death with spiritual beings who send down to the physical world forces that promote health. Life in the spiritual world depends upon the mode of our life in the physical body on Earth. Relationship with the Buddha can be established during the life between death and rebirth, even if there had been no contact in earthly life, but this remains an exceptional case. Nothing can replace the significance of our connection with the Earth. Words of Leonardo da Vinci. Anthroposophy can bridge the gulf between the living and the dead.

Pages 119-134

LECTURE 10

BERLIN, 1 APRIL 1913

Reference to the book Theosophy,Chapter III on ‘The Soul World’, ‘The Soul in the Soul World after Death’, ‘The Spiritland’, ‘The Spirit in Spiritland after Death’. These descriptions are more closely related to inner conditions of the soul, whereas in the present course of lectures the descriptions are of great cosmic conditions and the functions of the planetary spheres. Experiences of the soul after death in Kamaloka and final discarding of longings connected with earthly life. Passage through the planetary spheres. Quotation from the book Theosophy with special reference to experiences in the region of Mars and the mission of Buddha. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Brahmanism was absorbed into Buddhism in the cultural life of India. Events on Earth are reflected images of happenings in the heavens. The fruits of the soul’s experiences beyond the Saturn sphere between death and rebirth make progress of culture on Earth possible. The stream of spirituality which has its centre of gravity in the Mystery of Golgotha comes from Old Sun. The death on Golgotha was only seemingly a death; in reality it was the birth of the Soul of the Earth.

Pages 135-149

APPENDICES:

1. Ahriman and Lucifer

2. Rosicrucianism

3. The Hierarchies

4. Representation

5. Michelangelo and the Medici Tombs, by Margot Amrine

6. The Etheric and the Astral Bodies

7. Friedrich Schiller

8. Cosmic Evolution

9. Platonism and Aristotelianism

10. Nicholas of Cusa

11. Emil Du Bois-Reymond

12. Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Index

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

AT the time Rudolf Steiner gave these lectures, he was developing his anthroposophy under the auspices of the Theosophical Society, of which he was the head of the German Section. Thus he used the words ‘theosophy’ and ‘theosophical’. However, from the beginning these terms were used in the sense of his own research, which he referred to as anthroposophy. On account of a later statement by Rudolf Steiner, these terms in the Collected Works have generally been replaced by ‘spiritual science’, ‘anthroposophy’, or ‘anthroposophical’.

INTRODUCTION

WAS STEINER A RACIST? A GERMAN NATIONALIST? FREUD AND STEINER

THIS cycle of lectures raises, to my mind, two salient issues. One is very much a matter of public interest and public debate: namely, whether Rudolf Steiner was a racist and a nationalist. The other is more an internal issue for anthroposophists that seems to have been settled, but I would like to unsettle it. That is the question of the relationship between Rudolf Steiner and Freud.

Between Death and Rebirth offers abundant direct evidence bearing on the former question, but only indirect evidence bearing on the latter. Nevertheless, this is a good occasion to address both issues. Both questions deserve much fuller treatment than will be possible here: please consider what follows a down payment on more extensive studies that will be forthcoming.

Was Rudolf Steiner a Racist?

At time of writing (2021), this is undoubtedly the most burning question facing anthroposophists. Paradoxically, I see the focus on this issue as something positive. It is a chance to clarify an important question that anthroposophy has raised. It is also a sign of anthroposophy’s growing prominence, that anthroposophy is beginning to enter the mainstream. The mainstream is an arena of contestation, and the first signal that one has arrived is typically that one is attacked.

I will not try to answer this question definitively; it is far too complex. Much depends on whether one views racism in relative or absolute terms. Steiner was born in 1861. Viewed absolutely, there are probably only a dozen figures in this generation, and fewer if any in earlier generations, who were not racist. To take a notable example, Abraham Lincoln fails to clear this bar. Then the question becomes whether one really wants to dismiss—to ‘cancel’—the individual in question entirely on the basis of a few racist remarks, despite their many positive contributions. My own stance on this issue is decidedly relativist. After all, it seems more than a little arrogant to assume that effectively nobody was virtuous in this regard in the past, while we have attained the correct and final answer. What appears virtuous today will undoubtedly be seen as deficient in retrospect at some indeterminate time in the future. There is no room for supposed absolutes. But I realize that I would have to work very hard to make this case persuasive, and I will not try to accomplish that here.

What I will try to do, however, is to answer this question on the evidence provided by Between Death and Rebirth. And here we find ourselves in a fortunate situation. The evidence is overwhelming that Steiner was not only not a racist, but that he was arguably among the most progressive figures of his generation.

Relevant passages can be found throughout the cycle, but let us simply focus on Lecture Two, which offers important statements on this issue from the perspective of the life after death. Let us take three quotes, which are quite self-explanatory:

Humanity today is still divided into groups determined by their religious tenets and views of the world. But it is through what is thereby formed in our souls that we prepare our understanding of and possibility for contacts in the sphere of Venus. Hindu, Chinese, Islamic, or Christian religions prepare the soul in such a way that in the sphere of Venus it will understand and be attracted to those individuals whose souls have been moulded by the same religious tenets. Esoteric investigation shows clearly that whereas today, humans on Earth are divided by race, descent, and so forth, and can be distinguished by these factors—although this will change in the future and has already begun to do so—in the sphere of Venus, in which we live together with other human beings, there are no such divisions.

If we are to fare well in the solar sphere between death and a new birth, it is essential to be able to understand not merely one particular group of human beings, but to understand and find points of contact with all human souls. In the solar sphere, we feel isolated, like hermits, if the prejudices of one particular faith render us incapable of understanding a human being whose soul has been filled with the principles of a different faith. An individual who on the Earth regarded only one particular religion as valuable is incapable in the solar sphere of understanding adherents of other religions.

It is therefore essential that initiation should be preceded by a thorough understanding of every religious faith spread over the Earth, and also an understanding of what is taking place in every individual soul, regardless of the creed or system of thought to which they adhere. Otherwise, whatever has not been met with understanding becomes a source of suffering, as if towering mountains were threatening to crash down upon us; as if explosions were discharging their whole force upon us. Whatever lack of understanding has been shown to human beings on Earth due to our own narrow prejudices has this effect in the spiritual worlds.

So clearly our aspirational ideal is to understand and appreciate all human beings without prejudice of any kind. Even on Earth, the division into races is becoming less and less relevant, and will disappear completely at some unspecified point in the future. Indeed, this ideal needs very much to be fulfilled, with dire consequences attending on those who fail. Here Steiner’s take on race could not be more unambiguous. He was surely one of the most enlightened thinkers of his generation.

Was Rudolf Steiner a German Nationalist?

This question is far simpler, and I do not hesitate to make a definitive pronouncement. Steiner is absolutely not a German nationalist.

The case can be made very simply and effectively by scanning his major works for the word: ‘deutsch’. Surely readers will agree that someone who never refers to his nationality can hardly be accused of being a nationalist. (True, Steiner was born in Austria, and ended his life in Switzerland; but throughout his entire theosophical and anthroposophical career, he was based in Germany or just across the border in Dornach, and he had identified strongly with the German faction in the ‘culture wars’ while residing in Austria.)

Let us begin by scanning the four ‘basic books’ of anthroposophy. In The Philosophy of Freedom, we find precisely one occurrence of the word deutsch, and that is in a footnote to another book—i.e. someone else’s work—with that word in the title. How to Know Higher Worlds contains no occurrences. Theosophy contains four, but two are footnotes to other works; one is a characterization of another philosopher as ‘German’; and the last refers to the German language. In the massive tome Esoteric Science there are five mentions: four in footnotes to other books, and one a reference to the territory millennia previous that now is occupied by Germany. That is it.

Now let us go to the other end of the spectrum, to two late projects that are inarguably central to Steiner’s oeuvre: the six volumes of Karmic Relationships and the Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts. The project of Karmic Relationships, comprising no less that 82 separate lectures, contains a smattering of occurrences, all innocuous. Many are footnoted references to others’ publications, and several refer to aspects of the thought of the many figures whose karma Steiner discusses. An especially interesting cluster can be found in Vol. 3, where Steiner discusses at some length the interesting case of young children who do not yet know or care about their nationality. The Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts show only one occurrence, and that is again in a footnote referencing someone else’s work.

I think this can stand as a representative sample of Steiner’s most important work. Sceptics are invited to scan Steiner’s other works, as I have done. This can be accomplished relatively easily using the Russian-language website: http://bdn-steiner.ru/modules.php?name=Ga, where all books and cycles are available in the original German in pdf form. Simply scan each for ‘deutsch’.

So how can this charge have ever been raised in the first place? I think that it was mounted chiefly by Peter Staudenmaier in his book of 2014.1 In addition to publishing this substantial work with a reputable press, Staudenmaier has been quite a noisy (and much less balanced) presence on the Internet. I think it is fair to say that he has become a spokesman for opposition to Steiner.

I feel highly ambivalent about this book. (Nothing further will be said here about his various Internet exploits.) Staudenmaier’s study is not chiefly about Steiner himself, but rather mostly about various other anthroposophists’ relationship to fascism in the years after Steiner died in 1925. I have not yet verified all the many footnotes, but suffice it to say that this work is apparently well researched, and even if only half of what he claims is true, then these years were a very dark episode indeed for anthroposophy. Perhaps paradoxically, I view this as a great service to the anthroposophical movement, which needs to face squarely the misdeeds of many anthroposophists during these years.

Only the first section of the book, a quarter at most, is about Steiner himself. Here my response is very different. Steiner is characterized in a way that must be fundamentally rejected. Staudenmaier charges Steiner with having been a German nationalist. Yet nowhere is Steiner quoted to that effect; instead, Staudenmaier quotes various anthroposophists who claimed that Steiner was the ‘savior of the German nation’ and so forth. That anthroposophists viewed Steiner in this way was highly unfortunate, but it was also clearly an inaccurate assessment of Steiner’s contributions.

Staudenmaier states, for example, on p. 20: ‘The mature Steiner looked askance at what he termed “national chauvinism,” but his viewpoint was itself embedded in a series of nationalist assumptions about the spiritual mission of Germany’. This passage is marked with a footnote that cites a reference for the positive half of the assessment, but Staudenmaier cites no reference for the negative half. Chapter One, entitled ‘Germany’s Savior,’ Rudolf Steiner on Race and Redemption’, begins by arguing that ‘At the height of his public renown in the early 1920s, Rudolf Steiner’s followers referred to him as “Germany’s Savior,” confident that future generations would one day view the founder of anthroposophy with awe’. Or later in the same chapter: ‘Steiner’s apotheosis as “Germany’s Savior” and his transition to a messianic figure in the eyes of his followers crested in the chaotic aftermath of World War One’ [30]. And on page 36: ‘This is the intellectual backdrop against which his later anthroposophical followers cast him as Germany’s would-be Savior’.

One wonders whether this seeming sleight-of-hand could be anything less than deliberate. Is it possible for Staudenmaier actually to have read Steiner dispassionately and to have arrived at this conclusion? The result seems to be an act of academic mischief, and I am surprised that his book passed peer review.

Ships in the Night

There are numerous strikingly Freudian passages throughout this cycle of lectures, but it should suffice to quote solely from Lecture Three:

Let us think of two friends living on Earth, one of whom comes into contact with anthroposophy at a certain time and becomes an anthroposophist. It may happen that because of this, the friend rages against anthroposophy. You may have known such a case. If the friend had been the first to find anthroposophy, they might themselves have become a very good adherent! Such things certainly happen, but we must realize that they are very often clothed in maya. Consequently it may happen that the one who rages against anthroposophy because the friend has become an adherent is raging in their surface consciousness only, in their ego-consciousness. In their astral consciousness, in their sub-consciousness, they may very likely not share in the antipathy. Without realising it, they may even be longing for anthroposophy. In many cases it happens that aversion in the upper consciousness takes the form of longing in the sub-consciousness. It does not necessarily follow that an individual feels exactly what they express in their upper consciousness.

Impressions are also produced in our soul, either of sympathy or antipathy. Even trifling reflection can teach us that we are living as it were on the surface of the sea without the faintest idea of what is down below on the seabed. As we pass through life, we get to know external reality only.

If you were to observe your dream-life more closely, or the strange moments of transition from waking life to sleep or from sleep to waking life, if you were to observe with greater exactitude certain dreams which are often quite inexplicable, in which certain things that happen to you appear in a dream-picture or vision, you would find that these inexplicable pictures indicate something that might have happened and was prevented only because other conditions, or hindrances, intervened. A person who through meditation or some other means makes their thinking more mobile, will have moments in their waking life during which they will feel that they are living in a world of possibilities; this may not be in the form of definite ideas, but of feelings.

In many places throughout his lectures, Steiner dismisses Freud, sometimes brusquely. Yet without mentioning Freud, he often argues in a surprisingly Freudian vein, as here. Thus I would suggest that the negative assessment of Freud upon which anthroposophists have generally settled needs very much to be re-evaluated. It may be that Steiner misunderstood how close to Freud he actually was. Let us put the two men side-by-side.

Freud and Steiner were of course rough contemporaries. (Freud was five years older.) Both were residents of Vienna. Most importantly, each sought to raise the unconscious to consciousness, expanding the notion of science as such. But the parallels run even deeper.

Both Freud and Steiner went out of their way to attend lectures by Franz Brentano at the University of Vienna, and both admired Brentano intensely. Freud attended no less than five courses of lectures by Brentano. When Brentano died in 1917, Steiner would write a lengthy obituary in which he claimed that Brentano’s philosophy had been close to anthroposophy in many regards.

Moreover, the private circles in which Steiner was moving overlapped with Freud’s professional circles. From 1876 until 1882, Freud worked in von Brücke’s laboratory together with Josef Breuer. In 1885, Freud took advantage of an extraordinary scholarship he had won to study with Charcot in Paris for five months. On returning to Vienna, he developed a great interest in Breuer’s ‘talking cure’, and Breuer generously shared his patients with Freud while Freud devoted many years to laboriously building up his own practice. In 1887, Freud displayed his great affection for Breuer’s wife, Mathilde, by naming his first child after her. Eventually, Freud co-authored with Breuer his first book, Studies on Hysteria, in 1895, which included the famous case study on Anna O.

Meanwhile, Steiner was moving in Jewish circles in Vienna. He lived from 1884 to 1890 with the family of Ladislaus and Pauline Specht, who were prominent Jews, and he felt especially close to the wife. Steiner assumed care of their severely challenged son, and worked a minor miracle by bringing the boy, who was considered uneducable, to the point at which he graduated from Gymnasium, and eventually became a doctor. (The lessons Steiner learned from this episode would prove invaluable later, when he developed Waldorf pedagogy.)

Pauline Specht had known Josef Breuer all her life, and she took Steiner along many times to the Breuer’s salon. We know that Freud attended the salon as well. So Freud and Steiner surely must have met, and they were both so obviously brilliant that they cannot simply have ignored one another. Moreover, Steiner’s success in treating the younger Specht would surely have interested Freud very much, given that he was also exploring alternative modes of healing pathological conditions. Strangely, however, I have been able to find no record of any such encounter! This is a very great puzzle. As early as 1891, Freud’s relationship with Breuer began to change, and by 1894, scientific contacts with Breuer had ceased. Eventually, there was an irrevocable split between Freud and Breuer, undoubtedly caused by Breuer’s unwillingness to go along with Freud in ascribing to sexuality a major role in explaining various behaviours. And indeed, Steiner often echoes Breuer in his later discussions of psychoanalysis. But this cannot have been the reason for Freud and Steiner failing to meet: Steiner left Vienna for Weimar in 1890.

Steiner and Freud seem to have passed one another like ships in the night. But I would contend that they were natural allies, who each had a great deal to learn from the other. The standard line of interpretation is that Freud never abandoned his training, which had been thoroughly materialistic, and that he was notoriously adverse to occultism.2 There is some truth to this: perhaps it was because science seemed to Freud antithetical to spirituality in all its forms; he simply could not imagine what Steiner would go on to develop as ‘spiritual science’. But his early and enthusiastic reception of Charcot, who was the antithesis of a materialist in every regard, should already have led scholars to be highly sceptical of this one-sided interpretation. Steiner could have helped Freud to rid himself of scepticism in esoteric matters once and for all. More specifically, he could have steered Freud from the relatively limited perspective of a personal unconscious to recognize the existence of a macrocosmic unconscious—what one might call ‘the unconscious of nature’. Which is to say, the spirit.

For his part, Freud could have brought at least three things to the table. First, although of course Freud was not Steiner’s equal as a clairvoyant, he was very much Steiner’s equal in the penetration and rigour of his thinking. It is easy to imagine Steiner and Freud bringing out the very best in each other. Secondly, Freud had an enormous stylistic gift generally, and a gift for popularization in particular. After all, Freud won the prestigious Goethe Prize, and he was a finalist for the Nobel Prize in literature. He is widely considered one of the finest German prose stylists. With all due respect, this was not Steiner’s strong suit. Finally, because Steiner eventually had to collaborate with the theosophists after trying a number of different avenues, his spiritual psychology was framed in the alien discourse of theosophy, which made it nigh impossible to build bridges to the nascent field of psychology. Freud could have given him a much more suitable vocabulary.

I have quoted Lecture Three as an example of ways in which Steiner was close to Freud. We can also quote many passages from Freud that are surprisingly close to Steiner. Chapter 7 of The Interpretation of Dreams contains numerous instances where Freud repeatedly gropes his way right to the threshold of anthroposophy.

The first is the concept of ‘unconscious purposive ideas’. Like Steiner, Freud declares that the conscious, rational part of our thinking is only the tip of the iceberg. More importantly, thinking is shown to be anything but brain-bound. Rather, it expands beyond the conscious self into a realm that is only apparently indeterminate. In fact, unconscious ideas are always purposive:

For it is demonstrably wrong to say that we are being borne along an aimless flow of ideas when we relax our reflectiveness and let the involuntary ideas come to the surface, as we do when we are interpreting dreams. It can be shown that the only purposive ideas we are able to relinquish are the ones known to us, and the moment they cease, unknown—or, as we would loosely say, unconscious—purposive ideas take over and then determine the course taken by the involuntary ideas. There is no way that our own influence on the life of our psyche can bring about a kind of thinking without purposive ideas, nor am I acquainted with any state of psychical disorder that might do so. In this respect the psychiatrists have dispensed with the stability of the psyche’s interconnected structure much too soon. [343-344]

In another extraordinary passage, Freud attempts to locate the psyche apart from anatomical considerations, which is to say: spiritually, not materially. He compares the psyche to a compound microscope or telescope:

The idea it puts at our disposal is that of location in the psyche. Let us put aside into the fact that the psychical apparatus we are dealing with here is also familiar to us as an anatomical specimen; and let us take care to avoid being tempted to define the psychical location in broadly anatomical terms. We shall remain on psychological terrain, bearing in mind only to follow the requirement that we should think of the instrument serving the functions of the psyche as acting like a compound microscope, say, or a photographic apparatus. The psychical location then corresponds to a place within this apparatus where one of the preliminary stages of the image comes about. In the microscope and telescope, as we know these are partly hypothetical locations, places where no tangible component of the apparatus is sited. [349]

Moreover, Freud achieves an astonishing insight into the relationship between dreams and what Steiner calls ‘atavistic clairvoyance’. They are a remnant of an older form of consciousness, to which we regress during the night:

The dream, which fulfills its wishes along short, regressive paths, has preserved for us a mere sample of the psychical apparatus’s primary—discarded—way of functioning, discarded, that is, as inexpedient. It seems banished to the night, that once governed our waking, when the life of the psyche was still young and helpless, rather as we find the primitive adult weapons, the bow and arrow, which the human race has laid aside, in the nursery still. Dreaming is a part of the—surmounted—childhood life of the psyche. [370]

There are a vast number of passages in Freud and Steiner that could be juxtaposed. Perhaps this brief treatment is enough to reopen the question of Freud’s and Steiner’s close relationship.

*

Freud eventually became famous, but that fame brought a host of annoyances. One was that Freud was constantly being asked by reporters for a one-sentence explanation of psychoanalysis. Finally, he came up with: ‘Es soll Ich werden’; ‘Id shall become ego’—i.e., the unconscious shall become conscious. Would this not stand as a suitable short characterization of anthroposophy as well?

Frederick Amrine

July 2021

LECTURE 1

BERLIN, 5 NOVEMBER 1912

IAM very glad to be able to speak here again after a comparatively long absence. Those of you who were present at our meeting in Munich earlier this year3 or have heard something about my Mystery Play,4The Guardian of the Threshold, will have realized what the attitude of the soul must be if an adequate conception is to be acquired of the content of anthroposophy or, let us say, of esotericism.

Various things have been said previously about the luciferic and ahrimanic beings.5 The aim of The Guardian of the Threshold was to show that the essential nature of these beings could be revealed only by studying them very gradually and from many different aspects. It is not enough to form a simple concept or give an ordinary definition of these beings—popular as such definitions are. My purpose was to show from as many different sides as possible the part played by these beings in human lives. The play will also have helped you to realize that there must be complete truthfulness and deep seriousness when speaking of the spiritual worlds. This, after all, has been the keynote of the lectures I have given here. It must be emphasized all the more strongly at the present time because there is so little recognition of the seriousness and value of genuine anthroposophical endeavours. If there is one thing that I have tried to emphasize in the lectures given over the years, it is that you should embark upon all your anthroposophical efforts in this spirit of truthfulness and earnestness, and become thoroughly conscious of their significance in cosmic existence as a whole, in the evolutionary process of humanity, and in the spiritual content of our present age. It cannot be emphasized too often that the essence of anthroposophy cannot be grasped with the help of a few simple concepts or a theory briefly propounded, let alone a programme. The forces of the entire soul must be involved. But life itself is a process of becoming, of development. Someone might argue that we can hardly be expected to ally ourselves with the anthroposophical movement if we are immediately faced with a demand for self-development and told that we can only hope to penetrate slowly and gradually to the essence of anthroposophy. We might ask how we can decide to join something for which we can prepare only slowly? The rejoinder to this would be that before humans can climb to the highest summit of development, we already have in our heart and in our soul the sense of truth which has led us as a whole to strive for such development, and we need only devote ourselves open-mindedly to the sense of the truth, with the will for truth that lies in the depths of our souls unless prejudices have led us astray. We must avoid empty theories and high-sounding programmes. We are able to sense truth where it genuinely exists. Honest criticism is therefore always possible, even if someone is only at the very beginning of the path of attainment. This, however, does not preclude us from attributing supreme importance to anthroposophical endeavour.

In our present age there are many influences which divert us from the natural feeling for truth that is present in our souls. Over the years it has often been possible to indicate these misleading influences and I need not do it again today. My purpose is to emphasize how necessary it is—even if there is already some knowledge of anthroposophy—to approach and study things again and again from constantly new sides. One example of what I mean is our study of the four Gospels. This autumn I brought these studies to a conclusion with a course of lectures on the Gospel of St Mark.6 These studies of the four Gospels may be taken as a prime example of the way in which the great truths of existence must be approached from different sides. Each Gospel affords an opportunity to view the Mystery of Golgotha7 from a different angle, and indeed we cannot begin really to know anything essential about this Mystery until we have studied it from the four different viewpoints presented in the four Gospels.