Biography: Freedom and Destiny E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 400

Beschreibung

The path of an individual human life - our biography - is something of a mystery. Despite the abundance of published biographies and autobiographies of celebrities and historical figures, the scientific study of human biography remains in its infancy, with little understanding of the inherent laws in the path of an individual's life. Yet as Rudolf Steiner shows here, every biography, regardless of the individual's fame, perceived importance or outer success, is ruled by archetypal influences, patterns and laws. This broad-ranging anthology addresses some critical and as yet unanswered questions: What effects do education - and in particular contrasting education methods - have on later life? How do the various periods of life relate to each other? Do the effects of events on the individual become evident immediately, or is their true impact delayed - perhaps by decades? To what extent can an individual shape the stages of his or her biography? How much freedom of choice do we have, and how much of life is predetermined? Out of the higher knowledge Rudolf Steiner acquired from his spiritual research, he described the human individuality as a being with a continuing existence - before birth and beyond death. This eternal being experiences many varied conditions and situations, the effects of which are observable in our biography. This book addresses these and other issues such as freedom and destiny, the effects of heredity, illness, and the impact of education, offering answers based on a profound knowledge of the human being.

Leseprobe

RUDOLF STEINER (1861–1925) called his spiritual philosophy ‘anthroposophy’, meaning ‘wisdom of the human being’. As a highly developed seer, he based his work on direct knowledge and perception of spiritual dimensions. He initiated a modern and universal ‘science of spirit’, accessible to anyone willing to exercise clear and unprejudiced thinking.

From his spiritual investigations Steiner provided suggestions for the renewal of many activities, including education (both general and special), agriculture, medicine, economics, architecture, science, philosophy, religion and the arts. Today there are thousands of schools, clinics, farms and other organizations involved in practical work based on his principles. His many published works feature his research into the spiritual nature of the human being, the evolution of the world and humanity, and methods of personal development. Steiner wrote some 30 books and delivered over 6000 lectures across Europe. In 1924 he founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world.

BIOGRAPHY

Enlightening the Path of Human Life

RUDOLF STEINER

Compiled and edited by Erhard Fucke

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2012

Originally published in German under the title Vom Lebenslauf des Menschen by Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart, in 1996

Translated by Pauline Wehrle

© Verlag Freies Geistesleben 1996 This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2009

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 299 1

Cover by Andrew Morgan Design Typeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

Contents

Introduction by Erhard Fucke

1. Asceticism and Illness

2. Human Character

3. The Spiritual-scientific View of Human Biography

4. Our Age as Individuals and Our Age as Members of Humanity in General

5. The Necessity for New and Mobile Ideas. The Spirit of the Cosmos and the Spirit of Nature

6. Which Impulses Work to Counterbalance the Principle of Heredity?

7. The Rejuvenating and Ageing of Humankind

8. The Twofold Nature of the Human Form

9. An Art of Education Founded on Real Knowledge of the Human Being

10. Education at the Age of Puberty

11. Relationships of People of Different Age Groups

12. A Person’s Age as an Organ of Understanding

Sources

Further Reading

Note on Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures

Introduction

Nowadays, becoming conscious of your own biography throws up a great many questions. One of these questions is even being discussed in popular magazines: the many aspects of the mid-life crisis. This is really a bit of a misnomer. The crisis does not appear until after the middle of life, as people become aware of advancing age. The prosaic knowledge that death is one of life’s certainties is now no longer merely a thought but is actually experienced as a projection of the person’s own ageing. This awareness leads inevitably to having to make up one’s mind how one is personally going to tackle the problem.

There are other questions, which, despite being discussed less frequently, are just as disturbing—for instance the after-effects of the wrong education in childhood, or the results of being overburdened by short unconnected lessons, which has a similar effect to the division of labour. There has as yet been very little research done on the resulting deformations that do not become evident until much later in life. Therefore we know even less about the possible means of avoiding these. What this is actually telling us is that we lack a real understanding of the path of life.

The biographies of people of historical importance have always attracted a wide readership. There is no lack of biographies of statesmen and artists, described down to the last detail. Yet despite this abundance of biographies hardly anything exists in the way of a theory of biography, its inherent laws. What we understand by this is the elucidation of those laws which form the basis of every biography, whether these concern important or historically unimportant people.

All human beings are appointed a typical span of time—the human chronotype—which distinguishes them from those of every other living species. Yet as, one and all, we pass through the gate of death we frequently do so in a time span radically contradicting our chronotype. Everyone experiences the course of their life divided into periods of time offering distinct possibilities, but which exclude others; although these—if you look at biography as a whole—are appropriate for other sections within our life periods. When scrutinized, a biography has an ordered time structure, although the underlying reasons for this cannot be adequately explained. This strikes us as being all the more astonishing, seeing that every single person has their own life cycles, and grasps the possibilities these offer, or suffers from their inherent resistance to these possibilities.

So one of the tasks a theory of biography would have to deal with would be to elucidate the conditions attached to the various ages of life, so as to get a more conscious grasp of them.

A further task would be to clarify how the various periods of life relate to one another. Why is it that deformations do not become evident the moment they occur, but only much later on, as long as 30 years later? Are there rules that determine the influence the environment contributes to the character of a person’s biography? And is there a similar possibility—a conscious one in this case—of the personality influencing the shaping of the stages of biography? What does freedom of choice depend on, and to what extent does this have to conform to prescribed rules?

Just as a plant does not give us a finished picture of itself in advance, but we only appreciate its true nature when all its stages have shown themselves in the course of time, human beings, similarly, show themselves to our inner eye only when we look at the many very different ways they have of expressing themselves in the fabric of biography.

Out of the higher knowledge Rudolf Steiner acquired as a visionary he described the human individuality as a being with a continuing existence. Birth and death make their appearance within it as transformations of this existence. This long-lasting being, together with the life organism and soul organization, goes through very varied conditions. The effects of these conditions are observable in our biography.

The essence of the human organization and also of the individuality had their beginnings at the spiritual level. Even the processes, which their image and development have passed through, point beyond the biographical frontier of birth and death.

These few points have been made solely for the sake of drawing attention to the many diverse aspects that have to be considered if we want to get to the bottom of the phenomenon of biography. Nothing else is so intertwined as this is with a knowing of the human being through spiritual experience, in other words the whole of anthroposophy. Rudolf Steiner never dealt on the whole with the specific theme of biography, yet his whole output contains points of reference. This has made it particularly difficult to choose lectures on this subject. Therefore an effort has been made to follow lecture themes beyond the framework of the lectures and give guidelines about Steiner’s works. We have tried to show the reasons for our choices and point the way to further reading. Here is just a brief survey of the selection.

Whether we like it or not, people’s mental faculties, drawn from the natural development of their bodily organization, are in decline today. They have now to be strengthened by the activating of soul-spiritual forces. This is called spiritual-scientific training. The first lecture in our collection, given on 11 November 1909, covers the essential points of such a training. The lecture is called ‘Asceticism and Illness’.

Our character, which develops in the course of our life, can also nowadays only evolve by way of self-education on the principle of such schooling. The reasons for this conclusion are given in the second lecture, held on 14 March 1910.

The third lecture, given on 28 February 1907, describes how the course of life as a whole can be seen as an ordered division into a number of periods of equal length, which acquire the characteristic stamp of the various age groups as people’s bodily organism on the one hand and soul-spiritual organization on the other take them through different conditions.

The first three lectures included here were public lectures given in Berlin. The nature of these does not call for any special knowledge of spiritual science; the lectures themselves provide the basis for their understanding. Rudolf Steiner held them in order to bring the results of spiritual science into cultural life in general. They deal with themes of all kinds, which every contemporary person can feel a need to understand.

The fourth and fifth lectures (29 May and 5 June 1917) give a historical picture showing how the conditions applying to age groups nowadays did not apply in other cultural periods, but were different then. They tell us about the sort of things that were everyday knowledge in those days and what the social conditions were like. And they also tell us about the special tasks we are presented with today, of consciously helping our biographies to take shape. In these lectures the emphasis is on the problem of how to grow old with spiritual awareness.

The following three lectures (from 8 to 12 January 1918) concern this particular individual and social problem. In the last lecture especially (12 January 1918) certain circumstances are pointed to that have to be taken into account in education up till the age of 21, to prepare the young people for the ageing process and to enable them to go through it wisely.

These last five lectures we have mentioned (and the fragment of a lecture included at the end of this publication) were given to members of the Anthroposophical Society. It was taken for granted that the audience consisted of people familiar with the basic elements of spiritual science. Accordingly, their character is very different from that of the public lectures. In lecture cycles of this kind Rudolf Steiner put together for members of the Anthroposophical Society various aspects of a general theme. He wanted right from the start to stimulate in his audience a certain creativity of thought in their understanding of what he brought them, something he considered essential in every approach to spiritual-scientific study. The lecture of 5 June 1917 shows in an exemplary way how Rudolf Steiner familiarized himself with contemporary publications, making use of them to characterize the ruling spirit of the times. Rudolf Steiner wanted to help people really to understand the present time. According to him, the present time of his day—that of the First World War—was only comprehensible if at the same time one learns to make an assessment of large historical connections. And he says in the following lecture, given on 19 June 1917, and belonging to the same lecture cycle but not included here: ‘So I have been trying from various points of view to draw your attention to the lengthy periods of time, an understanding of which is the only thing that can make the present time comprehensible, namely the whole period since the time of Atlantis.’ That he does not want to stop at a mere understanding of this is shown in a further passage taken from the same lecture: ‘There is certainly a real and fully justified need for people of the present time not to remain asleep to the present age, in that they fail to take notice of the numerous winds of change affecting us nowadays for comparatively short periods, but to get to know what is required for the purpose of helping to further the spiritual and cultural currents available in our time.’ In an exemplary way we can read this endeavour from the very title of the third lecture of this group of five lectures: ‘Which Impulses Work to Counterbalance the Principle of Heredity?’ It is not only a matter of observing, but in the last resort of using our initiative. If we want to carry this out with other people, and yet be in harmony with the momentum coming from the spirit, these people must recognize the nature of this momentum. The last three lectures of this group are from the middle of a lecture cycle. These too began in 1917 and also revolve around the above-mentioned themes. But now the historical consequences of the Mystery of Golgotha are placed in the centre of the picture. An interpretation is pursued of the ways in which human beings remained dependent on the cosmos by way of the Mysteries, and the consequences of this are drawn with respect to the consciousness soul age. The first of these lectures picks up a question which Rudolf Steiner hinted at, at the end of the previous lecture—6 January 1918 (not printed here). The reference to earlier presentations of the theme occurring at the beginning of the second lecture applies to the two lectures printed here, of 29 May and 5 June 1917.

The last three lectures (8 April 1924, and 17 and 18 June 1921) supplement this aspect in different ways. They give advice to teachers as to how to recognize this task and carry it out. They also point out which symptoms of illness occur in later periods of life if the teachers do not fulfil their educational task satisfactorily. This leads to the recognition of additional connections that are visible between people in different seven-year periods, despite the fact that spiritual science sees these periods as having a different character. Becoming conscious of this gives clues as to how people of different age groups can profit by social contact. But if this is disregarded, an opposite effect can occur, and leads to there being conflict between the generations, as was seen typically in the youth movement.

This group of three lectures was given to teachers. The first of these was given at the opening of an educational conference at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart in April 1924, which was attended by 1700 people. This series of public lectures contains the most profound statements Rudolf Steiner gave on the subject, and these include preliminary suggestions for future teacher training. The following two lectures were given in 1921 to the teachers of the Stuttgart Waldorf School. This series of lectures starts with reflections on the work up until then, and indications as to how this work could be improved and intensified. The second part is about the future inclusion of the tenth class and the educational demands of the upper school. It is characteristic of Rudolf Steiner’s procedure that straight away he looks at this concrete and therefore defined task in the light of present-day phenomena, shedding light on the forces at work in them with observations that have a bearing on them.

And finally there is part of a lecture, which is complete in itself, and which was given on 16 August 1924, the last year of Rudolf Steiner’s public activities. He shows that even where spiritual researchers are concerned the laws applying to the seven-year periods hold true. They use these when in a state of heightened consciousness as organs for acquiring knowledge, gaining access to various fields of experience in higher knowledge. Just how difficult it is to put into concise words a description of the central theme of this lecture cycle is possibly evident in the opening statement Marie Steiner wrote in the preface to this series of lectures: ‘This lecture cycle, the last one Rudolf Steiner held, contains his farewell to his earthly work; for if someone announces such things to the people of today he is already distancing himself from them in time.’ A theme that is particularly relevant for our time is dealt with in this series of lectures in precise detail: the clear distinction existing between spiritual-scientific methods of research and the quite different forms seen in the phenomenon of mediums.

Erhard Fucke

1. Asceticism and Illness

Lecture given in Berlin on 11 November 1909

Human life swings like a pendulum between work and relaxation. In today’s lecture we are going to look at the human occupation called asceticism, which is reckoned to be either work or a leisure activity, according to people’s particular outlook on life. To look at this matter logically and in an unbiased way we would have to pursue it to the stage where it takes hold of a person’s life, either benefiting or harming it. This is just the way spiritual science approaches it, but with the prerequisite that asceticism is understood in its highest sense and any kind of misuse of it is rejected.

To start with, most people have, justifiably, a rather incorrect idea of what the word ‘asceticism’ ought to mean. According to the Greek origin of the word we could just as well be talking about someone who engages in athletics as someone engaging in asceticism. At the present time the word asceticism has acquired its particular shade of meaning through the form it assumed during the Middle Ages; and for a number of people the word has taken on the colouring which, for example, Schopenhauer gave it in the course of the nineteenth century. Today, the word again acquires a certain flavour from all sorts of influences coming from oriental philosophy and religion, by way of what the West so often calls ‘Buddhism’. So today’s task will be to look into human nature for the true origin of what asceticism is. As has been shown from previous lectures spiritual science is ideal to bring clarity into this area, because its basic principles are connected with a quality which even in the Greek meaning of the word expresses what asceticism is.

Spiritual science, spiritual research, has a quite definite attitude with regard to human nature. It is based on the assumption that at no point along the path of human development are we permitted to say that we have reached the limits to knowledge. The question as to what human beings can and cannot know, a question that in the widest of circles people feel justified in asking is, from the spiritual-scientific point of view, a question that is not being asked in the right way. Spiritual science does not ask what we can know at a particular stage of human evolution, what are the actual limits that apply to our knowledge at any particular time, what do we still not know—because our mental faculties are not adequate. These are not the kind of questions spiritual science asks. It bases itself firmly and confidently on the fact of evolution, especially the evolution of the forces in the soul. It says that the human soul is capable of evolving. Just as the future plant is asleep in the seed until forces inside the seed, together with those that work from outside it, release it, similarly, there are always hidden forces and capacities in the human soul. And what at a certain level of development human beings cannot know as yet they will know when they have progressed further in the development of their previously hidden spiritual capacities.

Which forces can we acquire for ourselves, forces of deeper and deeper understanding of the world, leading to wider and wider horizons? This is the question spiritual science asks. Instead of asking where our limits of knowledge are, it asks how human beings can develop their capacities in the process of evolving, so as to get beyond the respective boundaries. Spiritual science does not set a wall around the horizon of human knowledge, but in all its methods and all its ideals it is geared to broadening this horizon ever further. And spiritual science will not be vague about this. It will speak out quite clearly about how human beings can reach beyond the kind of mental capacities given us in the course of our evolution without our having anything to do with it, so to speak, as we were not consciously involved in acquiring them. For, to begin with, our mental capacities deal solely with the world presented to us by our senses and understood by our reason. With the help of the forces asleep in our soul people are able to get further than this and enter worlds that are not offered to the senses and that our sense-bound reason cannot reach. To prevent our being reproached right from the start for being obscure, we will mention a few points about acquiring higher knowledge, which you can follow up in great detail in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment.

When we speak about human beings having to reach beyond our given mental level we must not wander off into the blue, but find our way into a new world from the firm ground on which we are standing. How do we do it?

Nowadays, normal life alternates between two conditions, being awake and sleeping. Without going any further into the characteristics of the two conditions today, we can say that as far as we know with our ordinary knowledge the difference is that it is whilst we are awake that our senses and our sense-bound intellect are kept busy. This is how we acquire our knowledge of the world outside; and during our waking hours the outside world holds our attention. When we are asleep we are withdrawn from the outer world. Considering the matter logically, everyone should be able to realize that it is not totally ridiculous if spiritual science says that an actual part of us separates in sleep from what we call the physical human being. For according to this world perception the visible, touchable part of our person is only one part of the human being. A second member of our being is the so-called etheric or life body. The physical and etheric body remain in bed whilst we are asleep. Apart from these members there is what we call the body of consciousness, or—don’t be put off by the expression—the astral body, the part in which we feel happiness or sadness, joy or pain, our impulses, desires and passions. And in addition we also have the part that makes a human being the crown of creation: the ‘I’, the ego. These last two parts of the human being separate off in sleep from the physical and etheric body. If we think about it logically, we may realize that it is not so absurd when spiritual science says that our feelings and mental judgements cannot possibly disappear overnight, and have to be recreated all over again every morning, but continue to exist. If you want to, you can think of this departure of the astral body and the ego merely as a picture. But it is an undeniable fact that the ego and astral body withdraw from what we call the physical and etheric body.

Now the strange thing is that it is just these inner members of the human being, the astral body and the ego, where we have our thoughts and feelings, which descend in sleep into undefined darkness. So what this is actually telling us is that this inner part of the human being (normal life being as it is today) needs to be stimulated by the world outside it in order to be conscious both of itself and of the outer world. So we can say that from the moment this influence from outside stops having its enlivening effect on our consciousness human beings are unable to remain conscious. Now if in ordinary life we human beings were able to stimulate these inner organs ourselves, strengthen and enliven them to the extent that we could be conscious without the stimulus of our senses or our intellect, we would then be able to perceive something other than what our senses show us. However paradoxical this may sound, if human beings were able to produce a state that was similar in a way to sleep but essentially different, they would be able to see and know at a level perceived by the inner eye. This condition would be similar to sleep in that we would not depend on being stimulated from outside, and different from it in that despite this lack we would develop an active inner life.

According to experience of a spiritual-scientific nature human beings can reach a condition the correct term for which would be clairvoyant. And I will now give you one example among the many by which people can acquire clairvoyance.

To reach this condition safely we must start in the outside world. This outer world gives us our thought images that we call true if we get to the point where our mental images correspond to outer reality. But by means of this truth we cannot get beyond the sense world. So it is up to us to bridge the gap between what we see with our senses and what is not acquired through the senses, yet offers truth. Among the preliminary exercises for this kind of knowledge is the practice of picturing symbols. Let us look at an example of a symbol we could use—one that is usable for spiritual development—and proceed in the form of a conversation that could come about between a teacher and a pupil.

To get his pupil to understand a particular symbolic picture the teacher might say something like this. ‘Look at a plant, the way it takes root in the soil, then grows upwards, sprouting one green leaf after another, until it blossoms and fruits.’ (Let me stress that we are not concerned just now with the natural-scientific aspect. For, as we shall see, we are not dealing with the difference between plants and human beings but with finding useful symbolic images.) The teacher might then say: ‘Now visualize a human being. Human beings have capacities that plants do not have. They experience impulses, desires and passions, and a mental life that can take them all the way from primitive emotions and urges to the greatest moral ideals. When we compare human beings with plants, only scientific fantasy could ascribe to plants a consciousness similar to that of human beings. But instead of this, we could say that plants, at their lower level, have a certain advantage over human beings. There is a kind of certainty about their growth, without the risk of deviating, whereas human beings can at any time depart from their proper development. Human beings’ whole make-up is riddled with instincts, desires and passion, which can drag them into wrongdoing, lies and deceptions. Plants are free of all this; it is their nature to be pure and chaste. Human beings would have to purify their whole life of instinct and desires before they could hope to be as pure and virtuous, on a higher level, as the plant is, in its certainty and stability, on a lower level.’ Now we can proceed to the following picture. Plants contain green colouring matter, chlorophyll, which saturates their leaves with the colour green. Human beings have red blood, in which their instincts and passions are embedded. This is a sort of higher stage, although along with this they have to put up with qualities that plants have not yet acquired. Now we could say that human beings should set themselves the goal of reaching a stage where they would possess the kind of inner certainty, the self-mastery and purity of which plants, at a lower level, set such a good example. So we could now ask ourselves: What do human beings have to do to rise to such a stage?

They have to govern their instincts, desires and passions by bringing them under the control of their will. They have to grow beyond themselves, subdue what formerly had control over them, and lift to a higher level what was at the mercy of their lower nature. This is the way human beings have grown beyond the plants. What they have acquired since the plant stage must be regarded as something that has to be overcome or, to use the same expression, to be subdued, to raise it to a higher level of life. This is the way our human future will take shape, and which Goethe described in these beautiful words:

Whoever cannot say

Die and renew thyself!

On our dark earth will be

A mournful guest!

Or, to put it in rhyme:

If you have not grasped, in you,

This dying and rebirth,

What a sorry soul are you

Astray upon this earth.

This could possibly mean that the emphasis is not on subduing our instincts and passions but on purifying and refining them, by subduing the part of them that has taken over control. So human beings can say with regard to the plant: There is something in me which is on a higher level than a plant, but I need to subdue and overcome it. To make a symbol for the part of us needing to be overcome we will take the part of the plant that is no longer living, the dry wood, and set it up in the form of a cross. But then we must get to work on sublimating this red blood containing our instincts and desires so that it becomes a pure expression of our higher being, of what Schiller called the higher Self in us. Our blood will then become, as it were, an image of the pure sap of the plants.

And now the teacher would go on to say: ‘Let us look at the blossom, where the sap, rising stage by stage from leaf to leaf ultimately achieves colour in the red flowers of the rose. Let the rose become the model of our purified blood: whereas sap pulsates through the red rose without any trace of passion, our instincts and desires should become the expression of our pure ego nature.’ And we round off the picture of the wood of the cross symbolizing what has to be overcome by adding a wreath of red roses to the cross. We now have a picture, a symbol that did not come to us solely from an arid intellect, but through summoning all our feelings we have been given an image of life striving upwards to a higher level.

Now someone can come along and say: ‘Your idea is your own invention; it is meaningless! The picture you invent of a black cross with its red roses is absolute nonsense!’ Of course, there is no doubt about it that this picture, looked at even with the inner eye of someone aspiring to rise up to the spiritual world, is an invention. It has to be! For this picture is not intended to portray something that can be recognized by our physical eyes as existing in the world outside. If this were the case, we would not need it. We would be satisfied with the impressions we receive from outside, and which we only have to copy. But the picture we are creating, even though its elements have been taken from the outside world, is assembled according to particular feelings and ideas coming from our own inner self. And we have to be conscious that with every step we take we follow the thread of the inner processes; otherwise we would soon find ourselves fantasizing. People aspiring to ascend to higher worlds by inner contemplation and meditation do not live just in abstract pictures but in a world of feelings and ideas, which have arisen in them by constructing such pictures. These pictures awaken in them a number of inner soul processes and, by excluding what comes from outside, they concentrate with all their forces on contemplating these pictures. Then they will notice, if they are patient and persistent—for it takes a long time, yet it will happen—that they will receive from these pictures something that has the potential to grow. They will notice that their inner life is changing, that a state of being is actually arising which is in some ways comparable to sleep, yet while sleep brings the fading away of thought and feelings the meditative devotion to these images will awaken new forces in them. So by way of these thoroughly unrealistic symbols human beings awaken inner forces; and they will find that they can work with these.

Of course, people can make objections for another reason. Even if you do acquire this ability and think you have really entered the spiritual world, how can you be sure that it is reality? This can only be proved by experience, just as the external world can only be proved by experience. Mere mental pictures are totally different from perceptions, and people will confuse the two categories only if they have lost touch with reality. A certain misunderstanding is becoming a habit nowadays, especially in philosophically inclined circles. Schopenhauer, for instance, in the first part of his philosophy, begins with the statement that the world exists only in people’s minds. Now you can tell the difference between what you see and what you picture in your mind, with the help of your watch. As long as you are looking at it, actually seeing it with your physical eyes, it is your perception; then turn away, and you will have a picture of it in your mind’s eye. Now it is a mental picture. You will very soon learn in practical life to know the difference between a perception and a mental picture, or you will be lost. If you think of a red-hot iron, however hot you picture it, it will not burn you. But if you were to take hold of it, you will notice soon enough that a perception is something different from a mental picture.

It is similar in the world of the spirit. When we waken the forces and faculties that were dormant in us and a world is round about us that was previously unknown, and now shines out at us as though from dark spiritual depths, someone who is an amateur in this realm might say that it could be auto-suggestion, some kind of illusion. But people who have experiences in this field will certainly be able to distinguish between reality and mere invention, just as on the physical level people can distinguish between a mental image of a hot iron and a real iron.

So we see that there is a possibility to bring about another kind of consciousness. I have sketched a single example of how to bring dormant faculties to life in the soul by means of inner exercises. Of course, while people are in the process of doing the exercises they do not yet see a spiritual world: they are fully engrossed in awakening their faculties. This can sometimes take not only years, but also whole lifetimes. However, eventually these efforts produce the result of learning to use these new faculties of knowledge in the spiritual world, just as people learnt to use their eyes with the help of unknown spiritual powers for seeing the externally visible world. Working on the soul in this way, these efforts to prepare the soul to enter a world people have not yet reached, but to which they shall gain access by means of the faculties they are developing and which will act as the key to it, this path of soul training is the real meaning of the word ‘asceticism’, or in the Greek language the word means ‘to practise’, to develop a skill, change dormant forces into active ones. This is the original meaning of the word ‘asceticism’. And it could have that meaning today, if we don’t pull the wool over our eyes and hang on to a mistaken use of the word, as has happened for centuries. We shall understand the real meaning of it as described here only when we bear in mind that the purpose of developing these skills is to open up a new field. And we shall best understand it if having applied the word ‘asceticism’ so far solely to the spiritual field we now apply it to particular activities in the outer world.

Just as the word ‘asceticism’ can refer to the development of spiritual skills, we can also apply it in daily life if we want to acquire certain skills but are not as yet using them where they will ultimately belong. Strange as it may seem, there is an obvious example of where the word can be used in its true meaning, and it will also become clear to us why the wrong use of the word can lead to harmful effects. Using the term correctly in outer life we can call the directing of military manoeuvres ‘asceticism’, and this is absolutely in agreement with Greek usage. The way in which the personnel and equipment are deployed and tested, so as to be ready for real combat when needed, is asceticism, is ‘exercising’. As long as the military forces are not being used for their final purpose but are being tested in advance for efficiency and calibre, what is taking place is an ascetic exercise. So the directing of military manoeuvres has the same relationship to real warfare as asceticism to life.

Human life, as I said at the beginning, swings back and forth between work and leisure. But there are certain things that are in between, and one of these is play. Play, when it really is play, is actually the opposite of what actually can be called asceticism. From its opposite, we can very well see what the essence of asceticism is. Playing is an activating of strength against something outside you, giving immediate gratification. This gratification itself, what we are actually playing with, is not what we would call the unyielding substance of the outside world where we do our work. What we are doing when we play is using our energy against a soft, malleable substance that responds to our efforts. Play is only play as long as we do not meet with the resistance of outside forces, like we do when we are working. So play has to do directly with the energy that is being transformed. And it is the activating of these energies that produces the gratification. Playing is not preparing us for anything further; it is its own reward. Exactly the opposite is the case where real asceticism is concerned. No gratification is had from anything that is outside us. What is important is not the outer combinations we make, not even combining the cross with the red roses, but the inner forces arising within us, the transformation taking place in our own selves, which will be useful in life only when the process is complete. Renunciation comes into it because we are doing inner work while knowing that at first we are not to be stimulated by the outer world. We are working on ourselves, activating our forces so that they can engage in the outside world. So play and asceticism prove to be opposites.

What part does asceticism play in our lives?

Let us pause in the region where asceticism is used both in a good and a bad way, in the event of a person aiming to ascend to higher worlds. Let us put it this way. If an avenue for information about the higher worlds opens up to someone, whether through reports given by another person or by way of historical documents, then possibly the first reaction might be: ‘There are these statements and communications about the higher worlds, but at present I don’t understand them. I haven’t got what it takes.’ Then again there are others who don’t say at all that they wish they could accept what is being offered. They say: ‘I reject them, and do not want to have anything to do with them.’ What is the reason for this? It happens in the first place because a person like this is actually rejecting asceticism, and doing so for the very reason that he feels he has not got the strength to develop in himself the higher forces in the way described. He feels too weak to do so.

I have stressed again and again that it is not even necessary to be clairvoyant oneself to understand the findings of clairvoyant research. Clairvoyance is of course necessary for the actual research, but once this has been done everybody with an unprejudiced mind can understand the findings. An unbiased mind and sound reason are to start with the best instrument for judging reports about the spiritual world. A genuine spiritual scientist will always agree that if there was anything he was afraid of it would be of people who accept communications of this kind without thoroughly testing them with their reason. He is never afraid of those who do not allow themselves to be put off, for it is one’s own power of reason that is the key to understanding.

But it is possible that some people feel too weak to gather the strength to understand these reports. In this case they reject them out of an appropriate urge for self-preservation. They feel that it would confuse them to take these reports on board. And basically everybody who rejects spiritual-scientific ideas does so for reasons of self-preservation. They are aware that they are incapable of doing the exercises—of practising asceticism. The urge for self-preservation convinces people that if these things were to get hold of them they would upset them. ‘My mind would be full of them, but I would not be able to do anything with them. So I will reject them.’ This is how it is with a materialistic outlook that won’t go a step beyond what is offered by a science that is presumably based on facts.

But there is another possibility. And here we touch on a dangerous side of asceticism. People can have a kind of longing for information about spiritual matters yet lack an inner urge and obligation to test this by means of reason and logic. They may feel that a kind of sensationalism attaches to these matters. So they go for it. In this case they are not affected by the urge for self-preservation but by the opposite, a sort of urge for self-destruction. For if people accept something they do not understand, and have no intention to apply reason to it, they will be swamped by it. This is the province of blind faith, of all communications from the invisible, spiritual realm accepted on authority. This kind of acceptance corresponds to an asceticism that arises not from a healthy urge for self-preservation but from a pathological urge for self-destruction, to drown in a flood of revelations. Where the human soul is concerned this has a significant shadow side. It is asceticism in a bad sense when someone gives up all effort, choosing to live in faith and in total reliance on others.

This attitude has of course frequently been cultivated at many times. But we must not include here everything that looks like blind faith. For example, we are told that in the old Pythagorean Mystery Schools a much-respected phrase was: ‘The Master said so!’ But this never meant: we believe it just because the Master said so! To his students it meant something like: ‘The Master has said this, and he is asking us to think about it. Let us see how far we get with it when we work energetically on it!’ ‘Believing’ does not always imply a blind faith, nor has it to come from an urge to self-destruction. If you trust another person enough to listen to him reporting on spiritual research it does not mean you do so out of blind faith. You may have discovered that the person is really serious about what he says, that he expresses what he says in strictly logical form. You also have evidence of the fact that in other areas too he is logical, and does not talk nonsense. Therefore on the basis of these other observations you have good reason to believe that even when he is talking to you about things of which you are still ignorant he has an equally sound basis for his statements. So you can say with confidence, as the pupils of Pythagoras did before you: ‘I will work at it! What he tells me can be a kind of guiding star to help me acquire the wherewithal to understand these things for myself.’

If this healthy basis of trust is lacking, and people follow their fascination for these messages without wanting to understand them, they will drift into a wretched condition that can hardly be called asceticism. Whenever people simply accept something in blind faith without having the will to understand it better and better, that is, to get to the bottom of it, if they blindly take on board someone else’s will they will gradually lose the sound frame of mind that is the centre of our inner certainty and supplies the necessary support for our confidence in the Tightness, the wholesomeness of life. Telling lies and showing a tendency to get things wrong will occur in people who are unwilling to apply reason, and they seem virtually to prefer to drown, to lose themselves in the things they are told. Those who do not keep hold of a sound sense for truth will soon find that they are losing the capacity to think straight in the real world too. So we should consider very seriously, when approaching the spiritual world, that through these sins of omission we can easily fall into a way of life in which we no longer have any real feeling for what is right and true. Those who are serious about the need of practice and are willing to make the effort can’t afford not to keep in mind what has just been said.

Now we can go even deeper into what can be called an ascetic training of the forces of our inner life. Up until now we have only been considering people who are not really capable of developing their inner forces in a sound way. On the one hand they turn their backs on developing such forces for reasons of self-preservation, and on the other hand what they turn their backs on is not the work done to acquire these forces but the work expected of them for strengthening their power of reason and judgement. What we are dealing with all the time is people’s addiction to remaining stuck with their present views and opinions.

But let’s look at the other possibility. Someone tries in earnest to develop his inner capacities; he does the exercises that have been described. There can again be a double result. To start with he can seem to be a model student, getting the results one hopes to see when the challenge is taken up seriously and with proper respect. A person can only be brought to the point of developing his inner forces to the extent that he is capable of doing something with them, something really worthwhile, meaning that on the one hand it can be a matter of working on himself, doing exercises (which I say more about in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment)