Eternal and Transient Elements in Human Life E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

In what has been referred to as 'the most advanced course in anthroposophy', Rudolf Steiner addresses one of the great questions of our time: the role of evil in human development. He speaks of the year 666, when three time streams intersected – the familiar linear stream and two 'lateral' streams – and the reoccurrence of the 666-year rhythm in history. At the heart of this mystery is the being Sorat ('the beast'), who attempted to flood humanity with premature spiritual knowledge by inspiring the scholars of the ancient Academy of Gondishapur. Although responsible for the saving of Aristotle's works, Steiner describes how the Academy generated tremendous but dangerous gnostic wisdom, which eventually spread through the Christian monasteries and inspired Western scientific thought. Its immediate negative impact, however, had to be counteracted by the Prophet Muhammad and the founding of Islam. In contrast to the 666-year rhythm in history, the 333-year rhythm is connected to the healing forces of the Mystery of Golgotha. The year 333 was a central point in the post-Atlantean age, but also a pivotal moment in establishing the Christ Impulse and the new equilibrium it brought to humanity, allowing people to gain wisdom through their own efforts. Such wisdom enables insight into three key areas: supersensible knowledge of birth and death; understanding of an individual's life; and the ability consciously to confront the adversarial beings of Lucifer and Ahriman. Steiner addresses a host of additional themes, including occult Freemasonry in Anglo-American countries; materialism in the Roman Catholic Church; prophetic and apocalyptic vision; dualism and fatalism in pre-Christian times; and the delusion of time and space. Seeking to awaken his listeners to the urgency of the tasks ahead of them, he urges that spiritual understanding be enlivened with enthusiasm, fire and warmth of heart.

Leseprobe

ETERNAL AND TRANSIENT ELEMENTS IN HUMAN LIFE

The Cosmic Past of Humanity and the Mystery of Evil

ETERNAL AND TRANSIENTELEMENTS IN HUMAN LIFE

The Cosmic Past of Humanity and the Mystery of Evil

Fifteen lectures given at Dornach, Switzerland, from 6 September to 13 October 1918

ENGLISH BY ANNA MEUSS

INTRODUCTION BY ANNA MEUSS

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESSCW 184

The publishers gratefully acknowledge the generous funding of this publication by the estate of Dr Eva Frommer MD (1927-2004) and the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain

Rudolf Steiner PressHillside House, The SquareForest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2015

Originally published in German under the title Die Polarität von Dauer und Entwickelung im Menschenleben (volume 184 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on Helen Finkh’s transcript of her shorthand records, which were not reviewed by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on latest available (third) edition (2002), edited by Johann Waeger and Robert Friedenthal

Sketches within the text are by Hedwig Frey, based on Rudolf Steiner’s blackboard drawings

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 2002

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2015

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

The right of Anna R. Meuss to be identified as the author of this translation has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988

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

ISBN 978 1 85584 485 8

Cover by Mary GiddensTypeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

CONTENTS

Introduction, by Anna Meuss

LECTURE 16 SEPTEMBER 1918

Dualism and fatalism. The connection between birth and death in the macrocosm. Riddle of old Moon. The sun as creator of conscious life. Historical prospects. Characteristic figures in history. Augustine and Saint-Simon, demonology, metaphysics, positivist science. (The soldier, the civil servant, the industrialist.) Auguste Comte—Roman Catholic Church without Christianity. Schelling— Christianity without a church.

LECTURE 27 SEPTEMBER 1918

The nature of sleep: interaction between I and higher hierarchies. Delusion about life and delusions of the mind. The history of the concept of truth. The ideals of the present will be the natural world of the future. Inner relationships: world of the gods and theocratic order; metaphysical concepts and civil service order; philosophy and industrialism. Bentham and utilitarianism. German Goetheanism.

LECTURE 38 SEPTEMBER 1918

Man in the fourth development, the mineral world. Plant world, animal world, human world are the fifth, sixth and seventh developments; before that the three elemental worlds existed. Man extending into the divine world or the eighth development. Time a delusion. Use of the term ‘time’ in historical evolution. Newton, Leibniz, Marx. Humanity must work its way through, initially in the historical field, from the sham history of sequence in time to the real events that are behind the reality perceived through the senses.

LECTURE 413 SEPTEMBER 1918

Dualism in present philosophies of life and fatalism of pre-Christian times. Radical change in the state of the human soul in the course of time. The hallucinatory nature of the intellect and the illusory quality of the natural order. Dreamlike idea of the spirit, prophetic vision and taking the apocalyptic view. Cosmic hatred and cosmic common sense, e.g. in language and in thinking; luciferic and ahrimanic influence. Thinking is seed of the future. Acting out of the will bears within it awareness of infinitely far distant past. Acting out of the will we are basing ourselves on the past; thinking we base ourselves on the future.

LECTURE 514 SEPTEMBER 1918

How man relates to the cosmos. Relationship of the different periods of human life to one another. Understanding life as a task. Life truths that are not in accord with one’s wishes. Relationship between human being acting out of the will and thinking human being. Grasping what has been thought before in the second half of life. Intellectuality tinging modern people’s state of mind of soul. The horizons of modern man do not extend to far distant spaces in time; other levels of insight need to be gained if we are to investigate the origins of the world. The concept of time—evolution and perspectives. Spiritual science takes one from duality to trinity. Wisdom for life based on thinking that is in accord with reality.

LECTURE 615 SEPTEMBER 1918

Human life in spirit and soul as thinking, feeling and doing. Man’s cosmic orientation. The world scale beam. Relationship of temporal to eternal. The region of eternity—the upper. The region of transience—the lower. Elements side by side in the spirit. Mingling of things that take place in time and in eternity; keeping them apart needs initiate knowledge. Emanationist and creationist philosophy. We grasp reality when the two flow together in a living way, the one for the region of spirit and soul, the other for the region of body and soul, and in this way escape the dualism.

LECTURE 720 SEPTEMBER 1918

Tripartite space as image of tripartite Godhead. Concrete experience of space and of time in earlier times and the abstract way in which the three dimensions are seen today. Divine cosmic intelligence, cosmic feeling and cosmic will interwoven with space. Threefold space as image of the divine trinity, time as image of the one god. Monotheism is based on the old experience of time; sentience of the trinity goes back to the old experience of space. Duality of above and below, order in spirit and order of nature.

LECTURE 821 SEPTEMBER 1918

The two streams of reality which are behind our life. The development in time of the human being in body and soul, the experience of space for the human spirit and soul in the realm of eternity. The battles of the one against the other in cosmic realms. Our relationship to the world appears to us only in form of an image. The contradistinction between ahrimanic and luciferic aims; human beings must find their way through this spiritual battle. Initiation science teaches them to develop cosmic sentience. We do not understand this life unless we see it in dualistic terms; but we must learn to establish balance in natural and in social life between growing rigid, frozen and growing volatile, between straight line and irregular line. Life is made up of a precipitate and a retrograde movement and the state of equilibrium must be found. The law of the pendulum swing applies. Our building in Dornach represents the state of balance in the universe; this takes it out of Ahriman’s and Lucifer’s realms—oneness in manifoldness, manifoldness in oneness. The secret of the state of balance must show itself in place of the old feeling for space and time.

LECTURE 922 SEPTEMBER 1918

Maya reality—two worlds coming together which are at loggerheads with one another. The lower nature of man, bearer of unconscious inner life, grows more and more spiritual with the materialistic way of life but is exposed to the influences of luciferic spirits because higher nature is not having an influence. Conversely purely ecclesiastical and idealistic ideas encourage the material aspect of lower nature which is then exposed not to the influences of head nature but to ahrimanic influences. The science of human social life and historical life needs to be penetrated by a spiritual science which builds the real bridge between natural and spiritual order.

In the human microcosm the I corresponds to the macrocosmic mineral world. The polar opposite to the crystallizing tendencies of minerals is the dissolving tendency inherent in the human form; it is reflected in the human corpse, i.e. in the power of form in dead human bodies which dissolves the crystallizing tendency of the earth. Again a bridge is built between two streams in the world. Natural science does not do so. And the bridge from natural science to human science also comes from here. The law of polar opposites is accepted as the basic law not only for gaining insight into the natural order but also in the human order and the order of the spirit.

Cancers developing in modern civilization. The materialism of our time was encouraged by the increasing rigidity of the Roman Catholic Church and also by occult Freemasonry in Anglo-American countries with its luciferic character.

LECTURE 104 OCTOBER 1918

The relationship between the lower levels of human existence and the spiritual powers of the hierarchies. Subconscious and conscious elements. In the evolutional stream given directly by the Spirits of Form, the power of coming upright, which influences the human form, influences our I; at the same time the lateral streams of the luciferic and ahrimanic spirits intervene in course of time. Considered in the light of human life, the influence of the luciferic powers causes hyperconsciousness to enter into the conscious mind. Luciferic fantasies in human beings and the degree of their justification; the extreme leads to evil. Ahriman’s influence extends into everything which comes up from the subconscious in human beings. Spirits of Form govern the earth; they influence us through the spirits that serve them, especially the Archai. Higher spirits that lag behind disguise themselves. Realization of non-space in space through configuration, and also of spatial elements in space through those disguises as an ahrimanic counter-image. How we relate to the realm of eternity. The special position of the Spirits of Form as the only ones among the timeless hierarchies to be in time. Luciferic spirits assume disguise to enter into time. Death as balancing power, as counterweight in their moral impulses to inherited similarity of form. Reading life in the three great letters.

LECTURE 115 OCTOBER 1918

Historical development in the fifth age. Lucifer active in this, Ahriman in the subconscious powers of the soul. The balance between them is never perfect. Polar opposition of Semitic and Greek civilizations. Ancient knowledge of man in the mysteries was wholly bound up with the state of balance between the luciferic and ahrimanic powers. At the time of the Mystery on Golgotha the ahrimanic powers were slightly stronger, as also from the sixteenth century onwards. Human inner life was consequently pushed towards abstraction. Human beings would no longer have been able to be sentient of their individual nature, gaining wisdom not concerning themselves but concerning nature. The Christ impulse made it possible for human beings to use their inner powers to grasp themselves as individuals. The ability to see oneself as an individual made one into a ghost, also losing understanding for the individual nature of others. The Christ impulse brought a different stream into earth evolution, addressing the most profound depths of the inner human being. Man would only develop these powers from inherent resources during the Venus metamorphosis. The enlightened among the dead can inspire human beings with Venus wisdom. That is how the Gospels were given by inspiration in the second century.

LECTURE 126 OCTOBER 1918

The inspired Gospels could present the truth because the powers of understanding for the Mystery on Golgotha only developed fully in life after death. Three things said by Tertullian. Death and heredity are the two phenomena in the life of humanity which cast light on the Mystery on Golgotha. They are not part of human nature in so far as human beings belong to the world perceived through the senses. Human life proceeds in equilibrium between opposites. Because heredity was ranked among natural phenomena, original sin shifted to the moral field, a disparagement of the human will. Human thinking was then also ruined; intellectual rabbinical and social interpretations took the place of vision in the spirit. The same applies for death. The origin and end of man must not be grasped with the kind of rational thinking that is suitable for the natural world. If it had not been for the Mystery on Golgotha, a philosophy of life which had gradually grown corrupt could no longer have overcome man’s identification with his nature in the sensible sphere. There would have been more and more mistaken views of heredity and death and the gates to the supersensible world would finally have closed completely. The Mystery on Golgotha provided the counter-thrust—resurrection, meaning metamorphosis of death, and birth as supersensible fact. Humanity is challenged to gain supersensible insight and so grasp the things which the rational mind, being a pupil of sensuality, is unable to grasp.

LECTURE 1311 OCTOBER 1918

Development of spiritual soul with natural-scientific way of thinking. Our ancestors’ belief in ghosts and the ghostly nature of natural science. Limits of insight into nature. Richard Wahle as exponent of present-day humanity; his intuitive perception of the way ghosts are thought up for facts of nature. Task of spiritual soul is to recognize that our natural-scientific spectres are not real but merely pointers to realities which we must look for; otherwise we will not gain enlightenment about the human being and become spectres to ourselves. The year 666 is an important nodal point in human evolution where three streams come together, the normal linear stream and two lateral streams; the chaos in our world hides this from us. Sorat (the beast) and its projected aim to flood humanity with spiritual soul knowledge gained not in inner development but through ahrimanic revelation. This was prevented by the Mystery on Golgotha, which established equilibrium and limited the emancipation of drives.

LECTURE 1412 OCTOBER 1918

It will be the task for our present age that we gain independent individual nature by self-education. This was predestined for humanity by the divine spirit of their origin. The luciferic and ahrimanic powers work against it. The true ranking value of events and their spiritual background. Justinian banishing the Greek schools of philosophy in 529. The schools driven out of Edessa by Leo the Isaurian. Establishment of Gondishapur Academy. Aristotle translated from Greek to Syrian and from this to Arabic, which ‘saved’ his works. Tremendous but dangerous gnostic, ahrimanic wisdom flowed out from Gondishapur, though its effect was reduced (blunted) by the coming of Muhammad. This blunting of Gondishapur wisdom, though its intentions were taken along, reached European monasteries and became the natural-scientific way of thinking. Scholastics of the West fighting against Arab scholars. Our knowledge of the natural world will have to be ghostly unless we penetrate through to the spirit. There one first comes across Ahriman, then Lucifer. Human beings must gain wisdom by their own efforts, under the guidance of Christ Jesus. They will then find three things:

1)Supersensible insight into birth and death; they then know that our self was not allowed through the gate of birth, only our image.

2) Knowledge of the life of a person—only the form remains, the substance consumes itself—and about the powers of growth and renewal that give health. The rainbow as an example of the spectral, ghostly character of the natural phenomena. If we see through the ghostly aspect we find rhythmical natural orders everywhere. Penetration of the rhythms of nature will lead to a true science of nature, knowledge of the harmony of those rhythms will lead to new technology. The precondition is that we strive with real purpose to develop a completely selfless social order. For the rhythmical technology is identical with the healing power which calls for absolute conscientiousness also for things that are not remarkable.

3) To be able to face up consciously to Ahriman and Lucifer.

LECTURE 1513 OCTOBER 1918

Historical preparation for spiritual soul development. The year 333 as central point in post-Atlantean age, and important pivotal point in the new equilibrium established at that time. What were things like in Rome at the time of the Mystery on Golgotha? Augustus wanted to force civilization back to a stage where the things human beings can gain through the rational soul would be obscured; they were to have the ancient glories of Persian and Egyptian times again. Sentience was to be cultivated of the ancient rites of those times and people were to revive awareness of the divine world and harmony with it in a semi-hypnotic state. The aim was to leave intelligence aside. What, then, becomes of the part of the soul that seeks to develop spiritual soul? Rhetoric. The Roman Catholic Church has preserved this Augustinian impulse. The sacred quality of the great ancient rites must be given new life through the science of the spirit with anthroposophical orientation. The desire for sacramentalism which showed itself even in the nineteenth century must be encouraged with a new perception of the Christ. The concept of our building in Dornach is to create forms that show what is intended out of the great demands of our age. We must bring sacramentalism into our study of nature and let the power of the Christ enter into it. We must then also let this be present in the things we do in the social sphere.

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

INTRODUCTION

Background to this volume

1918 seems to have been a year of summing up and preparation. From 1910 to 1917 Rudolf Steiner had published at least one book a year. No new work appeared in 1918 but a remarkably large number of earlier works were revised or partly re-written—Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, Goethe’s Philosophy of Life (world view), Theosophy, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, Goethe’s Conception, Road to Self Knowledge, Threshold of the Spiritual World, and Riddles of Philosophy. By the time the war ended almost all the works Steiner had written so far were available in print.

Rudolf Steiner lectured in Dornach and Berlin and in a relatively large number of other places. He gave twelve lectures in Munich, eight in Stuttgart, six in Vienna, and also spoke in Hamburg, Nuremberg, Leipzig, Prague, Heidenheim and Ulm. This established a basis for the work after the war.

The arts were also encouraged. Eurythmy was developed to the point where it would be possible to give a relatively large number of public performances the next year. The smaller eurythmy performances given in Stuttgart, Munich, Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna and Hamburg in 1918 may have been in preparation for these. Numerous internal eurythmy performances were given in Dornach in the autumn and winter. Painting the right dome of the Goetheanum and work on the Group Sculpture also continued.

Rudolf Steiner returned to Dornach on or around 12 August and stayed there until April 1919.

On 17 August Steiner thanked the members and staff in Dornach for their devoted work during his absence and reported briefly on the work and his experiences in Germany (see CW 183, Human Evolution, A Spiritual-Scientific Quest). The following day he gave the first of the Dornach autumn lectures, speaking of the idea of the threefold nature of the human being, the polarity of space and time, the difference between ahrimanic and luciferic principles in relation to history and the study of man from many different points of view (CWs 183 and 184).

At the eurythmy performance of Twelve Moods on the 5th anniversary of laying the foundation stone for the Goetheanum, on 20 September, Rudolf Steiner again spoke of the obligation to stand up for the cause of anthroposophy.

On 27, 28 and 29 September, he discussed Goethe’s approach to nature and his philosophy of life and Faust II, esp. the Classical Walpurgis Night (CW 273). There followed a eurythmic and dramatic performance of the Classical Walpurgis Night from Faust II (29 September).

On 8-10 and 15-17 October, Rudolf Steiner went to Zurich. As in the previous autumn, he gave four public lectures, speaking about anthroposophical research methods and about insight into inner life, social and historical life. He prepared thoroughly for these lectures. He also gave two lectures for members on the work of the angel in the astral body and on finding the Christ (CW 182).

Reading the lectures in CWs 183 and 184, it is evident that in spite of all positivity, Rudolf Steiner was deeply troubled by the state of the Anthroposophical Society and was concerned for its future. Members clearly had no idea of what that future might be and what needed to be done to bring it to realization. He warned against making compromises and said that what was needed was not mere intelligence to understand the things of the spirit but above all, and most urgently, that people met them with enthusiasm, fire and warmth of heart. ‘We need people who stand up for them with all their hearts and minds’ (CW 183).

A style that is difficult to read

Rudolf Steiner’s heaviness of heart can be sensed in the lectures in this volume. There is sometimes a hesitancy, as if he had inwardly to overcome a reluctance to speak, evident in the often tremendous length and complexity of sentences. The lectures are not easy to read. I have divided many of the long sentences but not all, for it is also my duty as a translator to give readers the ‘feel’ of the original. The text is based on the shorthand record taken down by professional stenographer Helene Finkh, which means that the German original is very close to Rudolf Steiner’s actual words.

The volume has been said to be ‘the most advanced course in anthroposophy’, and readers will no doubt find it a challenge. It may need several readings of a sentence or paragraph to get a grasp of what they convey, and it may sometimes be helpful to sleep on them and read them again the next day.

Acknowledgement

I am greatly indebted to David E. Jones who has patiently read through every lecture for me, picking up any typing errors I had failed to see. We also discussed some aspects of terminology, which I have found most helpful.

Anna R. Meuss, September 2015

Bibliography

Christoph Lindenberg, Rudolf Steiner, eine Chronik

Peter Selg, Rudolf Steiner 1861-1925, Lebens- und Wirkgeschichte, vol. 2

LECTURE 1

6 SEPTEMBER 1918

I’D like to go more deeply into some of the things we have been considering here this summer,1 and we’ll add some historical details and also some factual things in the next few days. Today I intend to draw your attention to some historical facts and then present you with some conclusions drawn from a deeper study of these, and particularly from the revelations of some historical figures.

Initiates of the mysteries have through the ages always said one thing, rightly so. It is that if one does not know how to judge the two streams in philosophical life properly, two streams we have been considering—idealism and materialism—one will be in danger of either falling through a trap door into a poky little cellar hole, or coming to a dead end in the search for a philosophy of life. The cellar has been considered by initiates of all times to be dualism, where one does not find the bridge from ideas, spiritual thinking tinged with theory, to the sphere of matter, of material things. And the dead end one may reach in following different ways of looking at the world, when one does not manage to balance idealism against materialism, is what initiates call fatalism. In more recent times there has been a definite tendency to take a dualistic view and on the other hand to be fatalistic, though there are things which those taking the present-day views fail to admit or do not even realize.

To begin with I would like to take one individual who lived in the evening twilight of the fourth post-Atlantean era—just in general outline—with reference to the philosophy of life, and then look at others who are more characteristic of our present-day philosophy of life, of the fifth post-Atlantean era.

One highly characteristic figure with regard to western philosophy of life was Augustine of Hippo2 who lived from 354 to 430 of the Christian era. Let us recall some of Augustine’s thoughts, for, as you can see from the dates, he lived in the evening twilight of the fourth post-Atlantean era which came to a conclusion in the fifteenth century. It is clearly evident that this conclusion was approaching, starting from the third, fourth, fifth and sixth post-Christian centuries. Augustine gained impressions of many different philosophies of life. We have spoken of this before. Above all Augustine came to know Manichaeism and scepticism. His soul took in all the impulses which one gains when on the one hand one sees all that is ideal, beautiful and good, everything that is filled with wisdom, and then also everything which is bad, evil. And we know that in Manichaeism people sought to manage—putting it crudely, but it can also be put in this way—with these two streams in the philosophies of life, so that in a way they accepted eternal polarity, opposition persisting for ever between light and darkness, good and bad, wisdom-filled and evil.

In Manichaeism, people only managed with this dualism by connecting certain ancient, pre-Christian concepts with this acceptance of the polarity of phenomena in the world, and above all connected certain ideas which can only be understood if one knows that in earlier times people used an atavistic clairvoyance to see into the spiritual world, ideas that those visions were similar in content to the impressions gained through sensory perception. Having taken in such ideas, I’d say, of the supersensible as seemingly sensible, Manichaeism gave the impression for many people of making the spiritual material, of envisaging the spiritual in forms that are sense-perceptible. This is a common mistake made also in more recent philosophies, including more recent theosophy, as I’ve been telling you the other day.3 Augustine gave up Manichaeism for the very reason that he could no longer bear the way things were made sensible, material. That was one of the reasons why he gave it up.

Augustine then also went through scepticism, which is a justifiable philosophy of life in so far as it makes people aware that merely considering anything which is to be gained from the sense-perceptible world and the experiences and events in the sense-perceptible world will not tell them anything about the supersensible. And if one then also holds the view that one cannot gain the supersensible as such, one will doubt if truth is to be found at all. Augustine also went through this doubt about knowing the truth. He gained the most powerful impulses from this.

Now in order to make you understand what really gave Augustine the position he had in western philosophy, I have to refer to the main element in his point of view, a point from which all the light shone out that lived in Augustine, and was indeed the main point in his later, his last, philosophy of life. It is the point which we may characterize as follows. Augustine realized that human beings can only be certain, truly certain, with a certainty free from all delusion, if they refer to their own inner experience. Everything else can be uncertain. It is impossible to know if the things we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, things that make an impression on any of our senses truly are constituted the way our senses make us assume. We cannot even know what this world actually looks like if we close our eyes and ears and other senses to it. That is how people think who think in the Augustinian way about the outside world, which they can experience. They think that this outside world, which they can experience as it presents itself to human beings, could not provide true certainty, that nothing can be gained from it on which one might base oneself as a fixed point in a philosophy of life. But with regard to the things which people experience inwardly—irrespective of how they do so—being with them directly, it is the individual himself who lives in the ideas, the feelings inside him; one knows that one is right within one’s inner life. For a thinker like Augustine the fact, inwardly experienced, is that with regard to anything human beings inwardly experience as truth they can be under no delusion. You may think that everything else which the world says may be deceptive, but there can be absolutely no doubt that the ideas, the feelings that live in us are really and truly experienced by us in our inner life.

This solid basis for accepting one truth about which there can be no doubt was one of the starting points in Augustine’s philosophy of life.

In the fifth post-Atlantean era this point was taken up in a most striking way by Descartes,4 who lived from 1596 to 1650, already in the dawn, therefore, of the fifth post-Atlantean era. For Descartes, too, saw this element which remains when all else is in doubt as the starting point, and he put it in the well-known words ‘I think, therefore I am’. And he was really wholly in accord with Augustine in taking this view.

Now the situation is that when it comes to one’s philosophy of life one always has to say: ‘Someone who is in the stream of human evolution at some point in time will have certain views. There will be certain aspects of his views of which he is not aware. People who come later will see them.’ We might say that those who come later are privileged to see something in a fuller and truer sense than someone who has to say certain things at a particular time in human evolution. This is a fact that cannot be denied. And it is good, as I have mentioned on previous occasions, if people who are taking our anthroposophical point of view will consciously and thoroughly realize the following. The knowledge of spiritual things one is able to gain at the present time, however distinctive it may be, must not be taken as a sum of absolute dogmas. It has to be clearly understood that there will be others at a later time who will see a greater truth in such things as we are able to present today than we are able to see for ourselves. This is indeed the basis for humanity’s cultural evolution. And any obstacle to, all inhibition of cultural advance ultimately depends on people not being prepared to admit that they would really like to be given truths that are not the truths of a particular era but are absolute, timeless dogmas.

Today in particular we are able to look back from our point of view on Augustine, and we’ll have to say to ourselves: ‘If one takes the Augustinian point of view, one will have to be very clear in one’s mind that he assumed uncertainty as to the truth in all external revelations, but genuine truth in experiencing the things that live in our soul.’ It calls for a degree of courage for someone to take this point of view. Perhaps one would not need to speak of this in the decided fashion in which I have to do it, if it were not the case that exactly in our time courage would characteristically be lacking when it comes to philosophies of life. This courage to which I am referring shows itself in two directions. One is that like Augustine, you boldly admit: ‘You will have genuine certainty only with regard to anything you experience inwardly.’ Then there has to be the other pole of this courage, and at the present time this is indeed lacking. One must then also have the courage to admit to oneself: ‘The revelation of external things through the senses does not have this genuine certainty of their being real.’ It does need inner courage in our thinking to say that there is no genuine certainty about external reality, which is considered to be absolutely certain in modern materialism. On the other hand it needs a degree of courage to say to oneself: ‘Genuine certainty comes only if one is really aware of one’s inner experiences.’

Yes, even in our day this has been said again and there are people who ask others—people who want to develop a philosophy of life— to have this courage which shows itself in two ways. Yet we have to think differently about this today if we really want to get to the bottom of things, and there we see the whole historical position held by Augustine for the people of today, and that our thinking about the matter has to be somewhat different. For today we have to know something which Augustine or Descartes did not consider—I have discussed this in the part of my book The Riddle of Man5 where I was referring to Descartes—today we have to say: ‘The idea that one might arrive at a satisfactory philosophy of life by grasping the direct inner life of man, the way people experience it today, this idea is refuted every time we go to sleep.’ Every time someone falls back into the unconscious state of sleep in our day he or she will be deprived not of the absolute, true certainty of inner experience of which Augustine spoke, but of the reality of this inner experience. The reality of this genuine experience is always lost from going to sleep to waking up again. Today human beings experience the inner life in a slightly different way from the way people did as late as the fourth post-Atlantean era, and even in the evening twilight of Augustine’s day. Today they have to say: ‘However clearly, however exactly a certainty may be inwardly experienced, it still offers no certainty for life after death for the simple reason that we see reality sink down into the unconscious sphere every time we sleep, and the people of today do not know if it does not also sink down into unreality.’ So today we may no longer conclude that things inwardly experienced in seemingly absolute certainty cannot be called in question. In theory none of it can be called in question, but the fact of sleep goes against this.

Turning our attention to what has just been said we will immediately see how Augustine was able to arrive at this view and did so with much greater justification than Descartes later on who really was more or less only repeating Augustine’s statement. Some late echoes of the old, atavistic clairvoyance still existed for the whole fourth post-Atlantean era, including the time when Augustine lived. Sadly, far too little of this is taken note of in history today, and little is known of it. But throughout the whole of the fourth post-Atlantean era very many people knew from personal experience that there is a spiritual life, for they saw it in their visions. But during that fourth era they mostly saw it because it entered into their sleep life, and that was different from the way it was in the second and third eras. We may therefore say that in the fourth post-Atlantean era it was different from the way it is now in the fifth era when sleep means being wholly unconscious. In the fourth post-Atlantean era people still knew that from going to sleep until waking up was a time when the ideas and feelings they had in their waking hours acted in other forms. The waking life of truth went down, as it were, into the dim conscious awareness of sleep life. And they knew that the inner truth they experienced held not only truth but also reality. For they knew moments in the life of sleep when the things one learns in the inner life were present as real and not merely abstract life. It is immaterial if someone may be able to demonstrate even today that Augustine would have been able to say from personal experience: ‘I know that the things we experience inwardly as true but unreal exist for the time from going to sleep to waking up.’ But it was certainly possible in Augustine’s day to gain such a view and base oneself on it.

If you now extend what I have been saying with regard to the subjective human principle and generalize it for the whole macrocosm, this will take you to something different. You then discover the element from which this subjective principle actually arose in earlier times, namely in the fourth post-Atlantean era, and what has made it possible. In pre-Christian times—the Mystery on Golgotha marks the boundary between the ancient atavistic views and later new ones which are still evolving today—people were still able to adhere to certain living mystery truths. The truths from the mysteries which I mean here are truths relating to the great secret of birth and death. Some initiates considered the secret of birth and of death to be a secret which should not be made known to the world because the world was not yet ripe for it. But within the mysteries, some view was also held in pre-Christian times on the connection between birth and death in the macrocosm, man being part of this in the whole of his essential nature. During that time before Christ, it was through the mysteries that attention was above all directed towards birth, towards all that was being born in the world. Anyone familiar with the old philosophies of life will know that the emphasis was on being born, on coming into existence, shooting and sprouting. And I have, of course, made it clear on several occasions that the opposite came with the Mystery on Golgotha. I used the following words: ‘Consider that about six hundred years before Golgotha Buddha, who in human evolution represents something like the ending of the pre-Christian philosophy of life, did among other things develop his views on seeing a corpse. Death is suffering—and it was like an axiom for Buddha that suffering must be overcome; the means had to be found to enable one to turn away from death. It was the corpse from which the Buddha turned away to arrive at something which, albeit spiritualized, was to him nevertheless something in which one can get a sense of shooting, sprouting life.

Looking at life in other regions six hundred years after the Mystery on Golgotha we see that seeing the dead body of the Christ on the cross was not something people would turn away from but something they would turn towards, something they would look upon with all their heart as the symbol that would solve the riddle of the macrocosm in so far as it related to the human being and his growth and development.

This is a very special relationship within those twelve centuries: six hundred years before the Mystery on Golgotha turning away from a corpse led to something that was to be an elevating principle in the philosophy of life; six hundred years after the Mystery on Golgotha the symbol of the cross had evolved, a turning towards death, towards the dead body to find there the strength to arrive at a philosophy of life that would cast a light also on the progress of man. Among the many things which characterize the tremendous change that came with the Mystery on Golgotha is this Buddha symbol of turning away from the dead body, and the Christ symbol of turning towards the dead body which is seen as the dead body of the most sublime spirit ever to have appeared on earth.

It truly was the case that in a certain respect the old mysteries placed the riddle of births at the centre of philosophies of life. In doing so the mysteries, which sought to convey mystery knowledge and not just superficial views, did at the same time present the human soul with a profound cosmological secret. They directed attention to the principle connected with the life of births in world evolution. And you will not be able to understand the life of births in world evolution unless you go back to the ancient riddle of the Moon. We know, of course, that before the earth came to be earth it was embodied as the old Moon. Various phenomena connected with our present moon, the late descendant of the old Moon—you can read it up in my Occult Science, an Outline6—have to be seen as late echoes of events that happened in the time of the old Moon, a time which preceded Earth evolution.

There would be no births, none in all the realms of nature in Earth evolution if the laws of the old Moon did not apply, or rather those of its late descendant which is the earth’s satellite. Every birthing in all the realms of nature and in humanity is connected with the moon’s activities. And it was in connection with this that the ancient Hebrew initiates considered Yahweh to be a moon god, Yahweh as the god who controls all bringing forth. It was understood that cosmologically the laws of the moon governed all bringing-forth processes in all realms of nature. They were thus able to speak of a profound secret in cosmology, symbolically as it were, saying: ‘As the light of the moon shines on the earth, all shooting, sprouting life, all births, come from the principle represented by the moonlight.’ In the highest mysteries of pre-Christian times people did not turn to the light of the sun but to the sun’s life as it was reflected by the moon when speaking of the secret of births. The particular nuance given to pre-Christian philosophies of life in their depths had arisen because in the old mysteries people knew the secret of the moon.

The light of the sun was considered to be something veiled, something not very good for people unless they were well prepared, for it was known that it is delusion, maya, to think that the sunray coming to earth called forth the shooting, sprouting life forms in the different realms of nature. It was known that getting born did not depend on the life of the sun but rather the other way round, being scorched, the diminishing of life did so. The mystery secret was that the moon lets life forms be born and the sun lets them die. However much people were venerating the life of the sun for other reasons in the pre-Christian mysteries of old, they venerated it as the ground and origin of death. The fact that life forms must die cannot be ascribed to the Sun which we know from Occult Science to have been the second embodiment of the Earth, but we can ascribe it to the present sun which we see on the horizon in all its glory.

Well now, the end of life, which is the opposite of those births, is connected with the life of the sun. But there is also something else, something that was not so important in pre-Christian times but has become particularly important in post-Christian times: all conscious life is connected with the life of the sun. And the conscious life which human beings go through in a life on earth, that conscious awareness which shines out particularly in the fifth post-Atlantean era, which is our own, is intensively connected with the life of the sun. We merely need to consider this life of the sun from the spiritual point of view, just as we have been doing in the lectures given earlier this summer.7 Yes, the sun is the creator of death, the scorching life in the cosmos and also for human beings, but it is at the same time also the creator of conscious life. This conscious life was not so important in pre-Christian times because they still had the atavistic life in clairvoyance inherited from the old Moon. Conscious awareness has become important in post-Christian times, more important than life itself. For the goal of Earth evolution can only be achieved if this conscious awareness is gained in an appropriate way. Human beings have to accept this conscious awareness from the one who gives us not only this but also the life of death, not the life of births.

It is with this that through the Mystery on Golgotha the Son of the Sun, the Christ entered into Earth evolution, going through the living body of Jesus of Nazareth, the power as it were, which has become the most important principle in Earth evolution. This is connected with profound cosmic secrets. ‘From your sleep life,’ the initiates at the old mysteries would say to their disciples, ‘a sleep life into which the powers of the moon enter even when you are awake— we know, of course, that human beings are partly asleep even in their waking hours. The life of the moon tinges this life of sleep just as the silver sickle of the moon tinges the darkness of night.’ Christian initiates have to say to their disciples: ‘Seek to understand that conscious awareness shines out from waking life because the powers of the sun enter into it just as the sun shines on all life on earth from morning to night.’

The change came with the Mystery on Golgotha. In pre-Christian times it was most important to perceive the origin of life. Now it has become most important to perceive the source and origin of conscious awareness. It is only by knowing how to connect the cosmological truth to which I have been referring with the true certainty that lives in our souls—that is, only by grasping spiritual science inwardly—that we will be assured of the reality of the spirit within the principle which otherwise does not assure reality in this inner life.

We cannot get far with the means available to Augustine, the means available to those who base themselves on Augustinian principles. Every sleep confutes the genuine certainty of our inner experiences. It will only be when in addition to these inner experiences we come to experience their reality that we can gain a genuine, firm foothold on the soil of these inner experiences.

Anything we think, anything we feel in our present life on earth is not real in this present life on earth—even today there are some scientific thinkers who acknowledge this. It is unreal for the present time. The strange thing is that our most intimate experience, where the truth shines out for us beyond all doubt, is not real in the present time, but it is the actual perpetuating seed for our next life on earth. We may speak of this principle, of which Augustine spoke and for which in his case there was no guarantee, as the seed for our next life on earth. We may say: ‘It is definitely true that the truth shines out within us but does so as something which is not real. Today it is still unreal, but in our next life on earth this unreal principle which is seed in its unreality will be fruit, a fruit which will bring the next life to life, just as this year’s seed in a plant will bring the visible plant to life next year.’ We have to overcome time; only then will we find reality in the things we are able to experience inwardly. We would never be the human beings we are meant to be if at the present time the inwardly experienced truth did have the same reality as the outside world. We would never be able to be free. Freedom would be completely out of the question. Nor would we be individuals. We’d be part of the natural order. Anything happening within us would happen of necessity. We only are individuals, and indeed free individuals, because on the billows of necessary developments there arises, like a miracle, the unreality of our inner experiences, something which will only be outward reality of the kind we see in the world around us in our next life on earth.

That is the deceptive quality of time—something which still lives in people’s fantasies today—people do not consider that anything which inwardly shines out as unreal in one life on earth will be real in the next. Well, this is something we’ll be considering further tomorrow and the day after.

We see how from the point of view we are able to gain today we can survey Augustine’s point of view and see something in his way of looking at things, as it were, which he himself was not yet able to see. Thus Augustine is perhaps especially significant for us as someone in the evening twilight of the fourth post-Atlantean era because he was with particular precision pointing to the ideal, conceptual stream in world events, seeking to find a fixed point in that ideal stream in world events. That is what Augustine tried to do. All we want to do today is to state this historical fact.

In his time people had not yet understood that a tremendous change had come with regard to the Mystery on Golgotha and to death. For it is only from this Mystery of Death that the true consolidation of the absolute certainty of the truths experienced within the human soul can then well forth.

We’ll now take a big leap and characterize another individual, just as we have been talking about the characteristics of Augustine during the evening twilight of the fourth post-Atlantean era. We are going to consider characteristic individuals of the fifth post-Atlantean era in a particular respect. I’ll select two of them. One of them, and beginning with him we can characterize what emerged for humanity in the fifth post-Atlantean era in one particular respect, was Henri de Saint-Simon,8 who lived from 1760 to 1825. The other, a follower of Saint-Simon, was Auguste Comte,9 who lived from 1798 to 1857. Augustine was someone who made every effort, using all means his insights had provided, to consolidate Christianity. Both Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte had grown utterly confused about Christianity. It will be easiest for us to get an idea of the thinking of Auguste Comte, and in a sense also of Saint-Simon, by considering some of Auguste Comte’s main ideas, at least in a schematic way.

Auguste Comte was very much a representative for a particular kind of philosophy of life, and it was only because people were not much concerned about the way in which the different philosophies fit into people’s way of life that someone like Auguste Comte was studied as a rarity in history. What people don’t know is that basically, though perhaps not everywhere, people have been influenced by, in a way been pupils of Auguste Comte, though this is not what matters. Deep down in their thinking they are of the same mind as Auguste Comte. So we are able to say that Auguste Comte is representative of a major part of people’s approach to life in the present time.

Auguste Comte said: ‘Humanity has evolved. It has evolved in three stages and has now reached the third stage. If we observe people’s inner lives through these three stages we find that at the first stage people’s ideas inclined mainly towards demonology.’ This means that the first stage of evolution in the Comptian sense would be demonological. ‘People imagined that spirits were active, taking effect, behind the natural phenomena which are perceived through the senses.’ You’d have to think of them the way people always imagine spirits to be in ordinary life. Demons are suspected to be everywhere—big ones and small ones. That was the first stage.

Then, having developed a bit further, people began to move from the demonological view to a metaphysical one. Where they had originally imagined demons, elemental spirits or the like behind all phenomena, they now thought of understandable reasons put in abstract terms. People turned metaphysical when they did no longer want to believe in demons. The second stage was therefore metaphysics. Certain concepts were thought up and connected with one’s own life, and people thought that they would get to the ground and origin of things with such concepts.

Humanity has now also gone beyond this stage and entered into the third stage. Auguste Comte assumed, and this was very much in line with the thinking of his teacher Saint-Simon, that wanting to learn about the ground and origin of the world people no longer look to the demons, nor to metaphysical concepts, but merely to the sense-perceptible reality provided by positivist science. The third age is thus one of positivist science. People are meant to consider the things revealed to them in external scientific discoveries as enlightening and leading to a philosophy of life. They were to seek enlightenment about themselves in the same way in which mathematical enlightenment casts light on dimensions in space, physics on systems of forces, chemistry on the structure of matter, biology on the systems of life. In his great work on positive philosophy Auguste Comte sought to give a complete picture of the harmony of everything which the different sciences can tell us, saying that this alone was worthy of man in his third stage of development. He did consider Christianity, saying it was the most sublime development, but nevertheless only as the final phase in demonology. Metaphysics followed. They provided a sum of abstract concepts. But according to Auguste Comte, only positive science arrives at something that is truly real, also offering an existence worthy of humanity. He therefore wanted to establish a Church based on positivist science, to organize people in social systems which were based on that positivist science.

Auguste Comte did in the end arrive at some very strange ideas. I’ll just take some characteristic elements today. He spoke a lot about establishing a positivist Church. This positivist Church—if you study this you will get to know the man’s thinking—was also meant to introduce a kind of calendar. There were to be a great number of anniversaries dedicated to such figures as Newton or Galileo as representatives of positivist sciences. Those days of the year were to be devoted to the veneration of the individuals concerned. Other days were to be given to calumniating individuals such as Julius the Apostate or Napoleon. This, too, was to be regulated. Life in general was to be largely regulated according to the principles of positivist science.

If you know life you’ll know that not many people want to put the ideals of Auguste Comte into practice. But that is sheer cowardice, for in truth people do think the way Auguste Comte did. If you study the image presented by his positivist Church you will certainly gain the impression that the structure of that Church is exactly the same as that of the Roman Catholic Church, although Auguste Comte’s positivist Church lacks the Christ. And this is what is so strange. We have to consider it utterly characteristic that Auguste Comte was looking for a Roman Catholic Church without Christianity. He arrived at this by letting the three stages—demonic, metaphysical and positivist—enter into his soul. We might say that he considered all the trappings of Christianity that evolved in the course of history up to his time as something that was very good. But he wanted to remove the Christ himself from that Church of his. Basically that is the essence of Auguste Comte—a Roman Catholic Church without the Christ.

This is highly characteristic for the dawn of the fifth post-Atlantean era. Someone who had taken up Romanism, was thinking in a Romanist way, and at the same time was entirely thinking in the way of the fifth post-Atlantean era with its anti-spiritual character had to think the way Auguste Comte did. Auguste Comte and his teacher Saint-Simon are therefore absolutely characteristic of the dawn of the fifth post-Atlantean age. But much would be decided in this fifth post-Atlantean era. And therefore the other nuances which are also possible also came up. As I said, I want to give you some glimpses of history today. We’ll then develop things on that basis.

Schelling,10 who lived from 1775 to 1854, is in remarkable contrast to Auguste Comte. He is equally characteristic, as it were, of the dawn of the fifth post-Atlantean era. Today I cannot even schematically go into Spelling’s philosophy, highly differentiated in itself of course, but I’d like to refer to a few things that are characteristic.

I said that in the evening twilight of the fourth post-Atlantean era Augustine’s position was to consider the one stream, the ideal one, in such a way that a fixed point might arise from it where he might take his position. We now enter into the fifth post-Atlantean era. In its dawn we have figures like Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte who were looking for the firm base in the other, the purely natural, material order of positivist sciences. This gives us the two directions—Augustine on the one hand, Auguste Comte on the other. Schelling used the means available in the fifth post-Atlantean era to look behind the things one is able to see in the world for a bridge between the ideal and the real, the ideal and the material. You’ll find the main points in my book The Riddle of Man. He showed tremendous energy in looking for a way of reconciling these opposites. Initially he only developed abstract ideas. By starting from the same base as Johann Gottlieb Fichte,11 he made some progress and tried to come to something in the world that was ideal and real at one and the same time. There followed a time in Spelling’s life when he felt it was impossible to arrive at such a bridge using the means of abstraction which had evolved in the course of time in that era. It seemed to him that this was impossible. One day he said to himself: ‘People really have only gained these concepts for understanding the natural order outside on the basis of modern scholarship. But we have no concepts for anything which is behind this outer natural order, the sphere where a bridge can be built between the ideal and the real.’ And it is most interesting that one day Schelling admitted that it seemed to him that the academics of recent centuries had come to a secret agreement that they would exclude anything deeper from their philosophy of life, anything that would lead to true and genuine life. One would therefore have to go to the non-academic people. This was also the time12 when Schelling considered the works of Jakob Boehme.13 There he found the spiritual deepening which led to the last, the theosophical period in his life from which has come the beautiful work on human freedom, the beautiful work on the gods of Samothrace, on the Cabeiri, then his Philosophy of Mythologies and Philosophy of Revelation.