Paths and Goals of the Spiritual Human Being E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Speaking to audiences in Denmark, Germany and France, Rudolf Steiner discusses a wide range of topics: from positive and negative human soul capacities, true self-knowledge and karma, to changes in human consciousness, from ancient times to the modern era – all in the context of the incarnation of Christ on earth.The lectures illustrate the diversity of Steiner's approach when speaking to different audiences. Reflecting on the polymath Novalis, for example, he is urgent about the responsibility of spiritual science to help humanity awaken to the new age. A few months later, talking of Hegel and deploring the fact that an interest in spiritual matters often fails to be accompanied by an equal interest in logical thought, Steiner uses a dispassionate, philosophical tone. But throughout the lectures he is consistent in his view that spiritual science does not reject conventional science. Trained philosophical thinking leads to different conclusions than materialism, he says, but there is nothing in the field of spiritual science that need be rejected by rigorous scientific thought.Although the lectures were given to a variety of audiences, ideas recur from different perspectives and in different contexts, with strong thematic links binding them together. These include the relationship between philosophy and science; the nature of clairvoyance; Christ's presence in the etheric realm; reincarnation and karma; the mystery drama The Portal of Initiation; Christmas and its symbols; and the transformation of consciousness that occurred when Christ incarnated physically on earth.In the final lectures, Rudolf Steiner speaks inspiringly about the Christmas festival, contrasting the feeling of inwardness that people used to experience with the hectic cultural environment of modern cities. However, this does not lead Steiner to be nostalgic about the past. Rather, he states, we should seek to recreate a mood of inwardness in a new way, appropriate to our modern age and consciousness. These lectures give us the tools to bring such a contemporary spiritual approach to our lives.

Leseprobe

PATHS AND GOALS OF

THE SPIRITUAL HUMAN BEING

PATHS AND GOALS OFTHE SPIRITUAL HUMAN BEING

LIFE QUESTIONS IN THE LIGHT OF SPIRITUAL SCIENCE

Fourteen lectures held in various locations between 23 January and 27 December 1910

TRANSLATED BY CHRISTIAN VON ARNIM

INTRODUCTION BY CHRISTIAN VON ARNIM

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS CW 125

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

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2015

Originally published in German under the title Wege und Ziele des geistigen Menschen, Lebensfragen im Lichte der Geisteswissenschaft (volume 125 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand transcripts and notes, not reviewed by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on the latest available (second) edition of 1992 edited by Wolfram Groddeck and Edwin Froböse

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1992

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

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

ISBN 978 1 85584 472 8

Cover by Mary Giddens Typeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

CONTENTS

Editor's Preface

Introduction, by Christian von Arnim

LECTURE 1STRASBOURG, 23 JANUARY 1910 ON THE INAUGURATION OF THE NOVALIS BRANCH

Novalis and spiritual science.

The influence of Schiller and Fichte on the young Novalis. Combination of spiritual striving and sense of reality in Novalis. Inner truthfulness—the prerequisite for spiritual experience. The appearance of Christ in the etheric and the associated task of spiritual science.

LECTURE 2HAMBURG, 26 MAY 1910

The philosophy of Hegel and its connection with the present time.

Hegel's youthful friendship with Schelling and Hölderlin. Grasp of the absolute idea in the Phenomenology of the Spirit and its further presentation in the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Hegel's monism in contrast to Leibniz's Monadology. Spelling's theosophy. Victory of the materialistic way of thinking in the mid-nineteenth century. New methodological approaches in Solovyov and Boutroux. Strict discipline in the thinking opens the path to the supersensory.

LECTURE 3COPENHAGEN, 2 JUNE 1910 (FIRST LECTURE)

Paths and goals of the spiritual human being.

The chasm between the modern soul and de-deified nature. The price of the conquest of the external world was desolation in the soul. Mysticism and occultism as two different types of path to the spiritual in human beings and the world.

LECTURE 4COPENHAGEN, 4 JUNE 1910 (SECOND LECTURE)

External life affirms the information of the spiritual researcher. Karmic effects within the same life on earth. Overcoming egoity by the mystic. The laws of numbers, a guide for the occultist. Understanding the world from twelve different perspectives.

LECTURE 5COPENHAGEN, 5 JUNE 1910 (THIRD LECTURE)

Human beings live in the physical human environment. Processing of external experiences through the astral body, of extrasensory ones through the I. Assimilation of spiritual science through enthusiasm and love. The influence of soul processes on the aura. Guidelines on the lecture topic.

LECTURE 6MUNICH, 26 AUGUST 1910

The state of philosophy and science today.

The necessity of an epistemological foundation for spiritual-scientific knowledge. Greatness and weakness of Hegel's philosophy. The path from pure thinking to supersensory experience. The significance of the spiritual and philosophical activity of Carl Unger. Non-Euclidian geometry as an attempt to overcome the sensory world. Chapter 13 of the Philosophy of Freedom and its correspondence in an arithmetical formula. The mechanical theory of heat and the energy principle as examples of a misleading interpretation of scientific observations. Fertilization of physiological research through spiritual knowledge.

LECTURE 7BASEL, 17 SEPTEMBER 1910

Self-knowledge following from the Rosicrucian mystery The Portal of Initiation. The soul experiences of Johannes Thomasius, an individual manifestation of inner laws of development. True self-knowledge through immersion in other beings. Kamaloka experiences of the initiate. Own desires and passions are experienced as beings. The difference between the aesthetic principle in Shakespeare's dramas and the spiritual realism of the Rosicrucian drama. Representation of the totality of the human being through the bearers of individual human components.

LECTURE 8BERLIN, 31 OCTOBER 1910

Some things about the Rosicrucian mystery The Portal of Initiation.

The developmental process of the Rosicrucian mystery through three times seven years. Karmic threads behind physical events. The individual karma of Johannes Thomasius is crossed by cosmic karma. The abandoned physical envelope is taken over by powers of the tempter. Reality and Maya of the astral world. Language in the description of the nature and processes of the spiritual world.

LECTURE 9NUREMBERG, 13 NOVEMBER 1910

The wisdom of the ancient documents and the Gospels. The Christ event.

The development of the world and human nature in the myths and sagas of ancient peoples. The human being as a moral soul being in the Old Testament. The inability of today's scientific thinking to understand the handed-down evidence of an original revelation. The prerequisites for such an understanding is the penetration into the events in Palestine underlying the Gospels. Empedocles and the tragedy of his knowledge and his rebirth in the modern age. Cicero, the apologist of perfect reason. The experience of St Paul on the road to Damascus. Jeshu ben Pandira, the great herald of Christ.

LECTURE 10LEIPZIG, 21 NOVEMBER 1910

The imagination as the preliminary stage of higher soul abilities.

Schiller and Goethe on the truth of imagination. The difference between low-level clairvoyance and spiritual-scientific knowledge. The correspondence between the world of ideas and the laws underlying the world of the senses. The development of soul forces through concentration. Rosicrucian meditation. The trained clairvoyant learns objective spiritual facts through inner images. The real basis of the imagination in the spirit.

LECTURE 11BREMEN, 26 NOVEMBER 1910

Questions of life in the light of reincarnation and karma.

Diminution of the value of the human being through jealously and lies. Jealousy is a consequence of the luciferic influence on the astral body, lies a consequence of the ahrimanic influence on the etheric body. Masked jealousy becomes censoriousness, suppressed mendacity superficiality towards the truth. Karmic consequences of jealousy and lies in the same and in the next incarnation. Giving help out of empathy contributes to overcoming the luciferic and ahrimanic impulse in human development. The feeling of community before Christ through looking back to the common spiritual origin of humanity, after Christ through looking at the spiritual goal of humankind.

LECTURE 12MUNICH, 11 DECEMBER 1910

Karmic effects. Anthroposophy as practice in life.

Mendacity and jealousy infringe the general human characteristic of empathy. Their harmful effect on the astral body and etheric body. Negative virtues which are fought against can appear in a different form. Karmic effects of sympathy and satisfaction. The difference between the incarnations before and after the Christ event, illustrated using the individuality of Empedocles. Anthroposophy has to become practice in life.

LECTURE 13BERLIN, 22 DECEMBER 1910

The Christmas festival in the course of time.

The disharmony between the Christmas mood and the cultural environment. Last echoes of a deeper sense of the meaning of the Christmas festival. Old Christmas plays in the German-language enclaves of Hungary. The descent of human beings through the Fall and their ascent again through Christ. A new Christmas mood can grow out of spiritual science.

LECTURE 14STUTTGART, 27 DECEMBER 1910

Yuletide, the symbols of the Christmas festival and the world-historical mood as understood by anthroposophy.

The eternal comes to expression in ever new forms in the transient. The experience of the course of the year by the pre-Christian population of northern and central Europe. The festival of the birth of Jesus as new content for the feelings. The inner connection between the Paradise play, Christmas play and Three Kings play. The spiritual understanding of the Christmas festival will be followed by the great Easter festival of humanity.

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

EDITOR'S PREFACE

At the time of these lectures, Rudolf Steiner and his anthroposophically-oriented spiritual science was still part of the Theosophical Society as it then was, and used the words ‘theosophy’, ‘theosophical’ etc. to describe his own independent spiritual research. He subsequently indicated that these terms should be replaced by ‘spiritual science’ or ‘anthroposophy’ etc. unless the reference was specifically to the theosophical stream which had its source in H.P. Blavatsky or referred in a comprehensive sense to a view for which the term ‘theosophy’ was commonly used in the history of thought, as is the case for example in Jakob Boehme, Swedenborg, Novalis or Schelling.

Alongside his public lectures, Rudolf Steiner in 1910 gave six great lecture cycles (GA 119–123 and 126) for the members of the Theosophical Society as it then was as well as numerous individual lectures. Those of which a transcript was made can be found within the complete works as follows: the lectures in which the same subject was presented in different places are compiled in the volumes Das Ereignis der Christus-Erscheinung in der ätherischen Welt, GA 118, and Exkurse in das Gebiet des Markus-Evangeliums, GA 124.

The remaining lectures, on a wide range of subjects and given for a variety of reasons, are contained in chronological order in the present volume. It was no longer possible today to determine the detailed circumstances for all of the lectures and why they were given, with the exception of those listed below.

Strasbourg, 23 January 1910: Here Rudolf Steiner spoke at the inauguration of the Novalis branch which was founded on 22 October 1909. The name ‘Novalis’ for this branch was chosen by the seven founding members. Hamburg, 26 May 1910: This lecture on the philosophy of Hegel was given during the Hamburg cycle on Manifestations of Karma (GA 120). It was not originally included in the programme and it is not known for what reason it was given.

Copenhagen, 1–4 June 1910: These lectures were given on the occasion of the inauguration of the Rudolf Steiner branch. The theosophists in Copenhagen formally belonged to the Scandinavian Section of the Theosophical Society (Adyar). It is therefore remarkable that in 1910 they named their newly founded branch after Rudolf Steiner. On 20 March 1910, the branch secretary, Evelyn Neckelmann, wrote to Marie Steiner-von Sivers on behalf of the members: ‘I would like to begin by letting you know that we founded our new lodge on 11 March (1910) and since our group has set itself the task of studying theosophy as presented by your Rudolf Steiner, we have given it the name “Steiner Lodge”.’ The request to Rudolf Steiner to speak at the official inauguration had already been made in January on occasion of his visit to Lund/Sweden; it was undoubtedly made to the spiritual teacher and not the general secretary of the German Section. The subject matter and titles of the lectures were set by Rudolf Steiner. In a letter from Evelyn Neckelmann of 3 May 1910 it says: ‘And we are particularly pleased about the prospective three lectures “Paths and goals of the spiritual human being”.’

Munich, 26 August 1910: In mid-August 1910, Rudolf Steiner's first Mystery Drama, The Portal of Initiation, was performed in Munich which was followed by the lecture cycle on Genesis, Secrets of the Creation. The lecture about the current state of philosophy reproduced here was given on the last day of the event and was not originally included in the programme.

After the Munich events, Rudolf Steiner travelled to Bern to speak there about the Gospel of Matthew (GA 123). Before his return to Berlin, he spoke in Basel about The Portal of Initiation on 31 October 1910.

Rudolf Steiner gave more than the lecture of 13 November 1910 reproduced here in Nuremberg; he also spoke on 12 November 1910 on the subject of ‘Morality and Karma’. This lecture has been printed on the basis of short notes in Beiträge zur Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe No. 45. Michael Bauer—then branch leader in Nuremberg—wrote to Marie Steiner-von Sivers on 18 November 1910: ‘These days with the Doctor could not have offered more. We experienced cognitive delights.’

INTRODUCTION

This volume of Rudolf Steiner's complete works contains the lectures he gave on a variety of occasions throughout 1910. These lectures do not fit into the other volumes given in that year, all of which are built around a theme or a major lecture cycle. In this sense, the topics which are discussed in these lectures do not pursue a common thread and build on one another as a lecture cycle would, but are unconnected except in the sense that they follow the broader themes which Rudolf Steiner discussed at that time.

Yet although they may not always be connected in their chronological sequence, there are thematic links between a number of the lectures in this volume: themes such as the relationship between philosophy and science; Steiner's mystery drama The Portal of Initiation; reincarnation and karma; Christmas and its symbols; Christ's presence in the etheric realm; the transformation of consciousness which had to occur once Christ had incarnated physically on earth; and the nature of clairvoyance. Ideas recur from different perspectives and in different contexts.

The lectures illustrate the diversity of Steiner's thinking and the different registers he used when speaking to different audiences on different topics. For example, in the first lecture, in the context of a reflection on Novalis on occasion of the inauguration of the Novalis Branch in Strasbourg, he urgently speaks towards the end of the lecture about the great responsibility of spiritual science to help humanity open its spiritual eyes now that the Kali Yuga, the dark age, has ended.

A few months later he uses a dispassionate, descriptive philosophical—not, in his own words, anthroposophical—lecture about Hegel to deplore the damage which is done by the fact that often in anthroposophical circles an interest in supersensory things fails to be accompanied by an equally strong interest in rigorous thinking. Such logical thinking can be particularly well trained by studying Hegel's philosophy, he tells his audience. In fact, when he touches on Hegel again in lecture 6 he is just as critical of the lack of trained philosophical thinking among some of the scientists of his day, leading them to misinterpret scientific observations.

Steiner uses the opportunity in a number of these lectures to emphasize that spiritual science, like any other science, is based on the facts and findings of scientific research; it stands on the ground of scientific facts. Where it differs from materialistic science is in the interpretation of those facts. Anthroposophy does not in any way reject conventional science, he is at pains to point out, and the findings of science should be accepted. It is in their interpretation that modern science can go wrong and cannot necessarily be accepted. Trained philosophical thinking leads to different conclusions from materialism, Steiner says. Conversely, there is nothing in the supersensory field which is the subject of spiritual science that would need to be rejected by a strictly trained thinking.

But of course, Steiner's insistence that every scientific thought needs to be rigorously tested is only one aspect of what is discussed in these various lectures. They range over a wide field, not just of human soul capacities—including negative ones—and true self-knowledge and how that can affect human karma over several incarnations; they also discuss the changes in human consciousness and spiritual insight from ancient times to the modern era, including in the context of the incarnation of Christ on earth.

In the last two lectures at the end of December about the Christmas festival, Steiner contrasts the feeling of inwardness which in the past village inhabitants felt at this time of the year, as they prepared to perform the traditional Christmas plays, with the modern cultural environment of our cities, with its trams and cars and so on. He refers to the incongruity of a tram driving through a street where a traditional Christmas market has been set up. But that does not lead him to call for a return to a time which has passed and has had its day. On the contrary, we should seek to recreate that mood of inwardness in a new way in our time—in a way which is appropriate for the modern age and modern consciousness.

Because it deals with such a disparate collection of themes, we can see in this volume that Rudolf Steiner made the knowledge and findings he obtained from spiritual science available in many different forms. At the one end of the spectrum there are the strictly philosophical lectures such as the ones about Hegel. At the other end, in the lectures in which he discusses the content and creation of one of the Mystery Dramas—The Portal of Initiation, or the Rosicrucian mystery as he called it in these lectures—he sets out deep insights about human beings, their development and spiritual existence.

And it is in the artistic form that we find such knowledge expressed in its essence. As Steiner puts it, if the Mystery Dramas were understood in the right way it would not be necessary for him to give any lectures for many years to come. All the things expressed in ‘stammering speech’ in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, How is it Achieved? or Occult Science, An Outline could be found in a much more intensive and true-to-life form in the Rosicrucian mystery.

In this sense, art and the imagination, as in lecture 10 Rudolf Steiner describes Schiller recognizing them in Goethe, lead us to the ‘archetypal foundation of things’ and to our fulfilment as human beings.

Christian von Arnim, May 2015

LECTURE 1

STRASBOURG 23 JANUARY 1910, ON THE INAUGURATION OF THE NOVALIS BRANCH

CIRCUMSTANCES have dictated that a number of our friends here in Strasbourg have founded a second branch alongside the one that is already in existence. It is to bear the significant name ‘Novalis Branch’. The friends from other places who have lovingly come to Strasbourg today have shown through their visit that they understand that branches can also exist alongside one another in a town, and that the many different ways of working in various fields do not need to exclude what we have to call the harmony and concord which must rule among all those who see themselves as members of our society as it is spread across the globe. And so let us also add this branch to the great stream which we call spiritual science.

You, my dear friends from the Novalis Branch, have chosen a significant name as a signature, a symbol for your work. The name of Novalis belongs to a personality who most recently—that is in its last incarnation—worked in the eighteenth century, a personality through whose whole being there flows, whose whole being is filled with what we consider to be a sense which understands the spirit, of spirituality. And in this way you have shown from the beginning that you want spiritual science to be something which is filled with immediate life, which you seek in all the places where it can be found, not just in this period or in another period but as it lives through all periods, as it can flow into the world through one personality or another in many different ways.

In Novalis in particular we can see how the striving for knowledge of the spirit is something which can penetrate through and interweave with our ordinary everyday life. Of course, if we wanted to throw a light on the sources of the theosophical spirit in Novalis then we would have to shine it into earlier incarnations of this noble spirit. And from these earlier incarnations it would become clear to us how those things have transferred into the incarnation of Novalis which can only be theosophical spiritual life in the most profound sense. But even if we just look at the Novalis who barely reached the age of 30 and who lived at the end of the eighteenth century, if we only observe this one incarnation, even then it can become clear to us that knowledge of the spirit is not something that raises human beings up into a dreamy, fantastical world, which draws them away from direct reality, but we can see in many different ways particularly in Novalis how the spirit of reality, how real life is given its value and true content by being penetrated with spiritual science.

Novalis came from the nobility of central Germany which had a certain what I might call materialistic piety—because that exists, too— but not what one can really describe as a longing in the heart for real, living spirit. Now in order to fulfil Novalis’ karma in the right way, it happened that Novalis’ father, the old Hardenberg, in old age—even if he was not imbued with spiritual life, but because he joined the Herrnhuter sect, a Pietistic sect—was filled with pious feelings in certain respects. And Novalis grew out of this milieu of central German nobility which, as I said, at least had enough of the spirit so that even the old Hardenberg in his later years was able to come to a certain piety in the spirit, even if it was sectarian—this is what Novalis grew out of. He grew into—not what his family wanted, because that would have been some military or diplomatic post—he grew into a great period, into the time in which great, mighty spirits were at work with professorships at a central German university in Thuringia.

Thus at that time he would still have been able to hear Schiller lecture about history in Jena. Even if the scholarly historians of today say that Schiller was not on a scholarly level as a historian—what history should be in life, spiritual life flowing through the whole of human development, that is what Schiller provided for the souls who heard him in Jena when he taught history. A great personality spoke through Schiller. The spirit spoke through this personality, it awakened the spirit.

And another teacher was there when Novalis was young, another teacher who through the great energy of his spiritual life did things in the field of philosophy which belong to the whole of humanity but which are still little understood today. Fichte was at work at the time that Novalis was making his way into life. He worked in such a way that his whole bearing, Fichte's bearing, had something spiritual. It might be considered as something superficial. But anyone who has a feeling for these things will not consider it superficial that Fichte, when he gave his lectures in a dark lecture theatre in the evening and a candle was burning on his lectern, extinguished the candle with the words: so, my dear listeners, now the physical light has been extinguished, now it is only the spiritual light that shall burn in this space.

Demonstrating as if by magic the relationship between the spiritual and the physical not just to the soul but also in front of our eyes at the right moment, that has immense meaning for such receptive souls as that of Novalis. Such a soul can thereby become capable of receiving a belief in the spiritual life which cannot be shaken by anything. It flows through the soul with a noble sentiment which then remains throughout life when a Novalis in particular comes into such an environment. We cannot say that Novalis was someone airy-fairy. Those who believe that he was airy-fairy do not understand Novalis. No, the spirit living in Novalis said—it can be read in his writings today1—the sleeping and waking states of human beings are two different things. When human beings are awake then they have combined in them the inner soul—that is the name in the terminology of the time of what we would call the astral body today—with the external body. The body enjoys the soul (nice words which Novalis uses to express the relationship between the physical and the astral body). And in sleep the soul is in a looser relationship with the body—Novalis says—and the body digests the soul when human beings are asleep. That once again is a nice, brief, concise description of a relationship which we also encounter in spiritual science. It is lovely when Novalis on one occasion writes in his notes:2 ‘We are always surrounded by a spiritual world. Wherever we are there are always spiritual beings around us. It is simply up to human beings to externalize their self in such a way that they obtain an awareness of the spiritual beings who surround us wherever we are.’

And once again it is nice the way that he shows a profound understanding of the progress of esoteric human development and writes: ‘In ancient times people tried to guide the soul into higher development through mortification and so on. In modern times that has to be replaced by strengthening the soul: energy of the soul. The soul has to obtain power over the body through being strengthened, it must not be weakened as a result, and then has to exercise a certain sovereignty.’

We could continue talking about Novalis like this for hours. Although we would not find a spirit who can express himself in the words and teachings as can be given by spiritual science today, we would find a spirit who in his own words expresses exactly the same thing. He was not someone airy-fairy, a fantasist. Even if his poetry followed the highest trajectory we can imagine and leads us into the highest worlds of feeling, Novalis was—and this applies to someone who did not reach the age of 30—a practical spirit who studied at a mining academy, a mathematician through and through, who experienced mathematics as a great poem in accordance with which the divine spirit wrote the world, but who showed himself to possess all the practical skills that a mining engineer needs.

Novalis was a spirit who despite such a practical outlook was able to implement for his feeling life, for his heart, directly in life what he possessed as theosophical sentiment. Truly, what we know as his relationship with Sophie von Kühn must not be seen as something connected with sensuality. He loved a girl who died at the age of 14. He really only started to love her passionately when she had already died. He felt that now he lived with her in the realm in which she had been since her death. He decided to follow her into death. His further life was a life together with a personality who was physically dead. All of this shows us what Novalis grew into through the strong feature of his spiritual nature.

We can see in Novalis how as human beings we really only need to have one characteristic to have a sense for the spirituality which brings us spiritual science. We only need one characteristic and this one characteristic is very difficult for human beings. People do not easily find access to spiritual science because it is so difficult for human beings. If we put a name to this one characteristic then it appears to people as if everyone had it. Yet it is this characteristic whose absence prevents human beings from finding access to spiritual science: truthfulness, an honest acceptance of what really is in the deepest depths of our soul. Many people apparently have it—in their own opinion. Yet Novalis in particular presents an example of how there needs to be only one moment of true honesty and how human beings would have to admit to themselves through this one moment of true honesty what the spirituality in the world can mean for human hearts.

Novalis’ father had a certain trait of spirituality otherwise he would not have joined the Herrnhuter sect. But his soul was not as free and honest as is meant here. That was prevented by what lived in his soul from the outer physical world. The physical world with all its preconceptions did not permit him to get up into the spiritual world. But his son did have this truthfulness. What could be more obvious than that the father could have no idea of what lived in his son? The physical world with its division and lack of harmony—its untruthfulness which erected a partition here between what the young Novalis really was and what the old Hardenberg wanted to be but could not be because of his lack of real inner truthfulness—this physical world with all the things which it turns human beings into did not permit him to recognize the importance of his son while he was alive. His son had been dead for a few weeks and the old Hardenberg was in his Herrnhuter community. The community sang the song: ‘What would I have become without you, what would I not be without you.’ And as this song was being sung—the old Hardenberg had not heard it before but at that moment everything ignited which existed as spirit in his soul.

He was given over to the great impression which streamed from this song and at that moment his soul grown honest was filled with cosmic spirit, with spiritual life. And when the meeting had come to an end, the old Hardenberg asked someone who had written this song which had moved him so deeply. So he was told: ‘It is by your son.’ It was first necessary that everything which came from the physical plane was forgotten for a moment, and then there lived in him briefly—without knowing about the person who had introduced it—pure truthfulness, pure objectivity without the preconceptions of the physical plane. In this way spirit would find spirit if we faced each other soul to soul without the obstacles which come from the physical plane. At the moment in which human beings can find the soul of the other and the soul of the world in pure devotion to the truth, at every such moment they must be penetrated by what we might call theosophical spirituality.

What we can call theosophical spirituality is not just based on some theory, some teaching, although we must never forget that for us human beings who are born to think a teaching is indispensible. But the essence of theosophy does not lie in the teaching. Anyone who wanted to emphasize that the teaching was superfluous and the only important thing was to cultivate what we call general brotherly love would have to have impressed on them that pontificating about general brotherly love cannot bring about such general brotherly love anywhere in the world. If we only pontificate about love, then, for someone who knows about life, that is no different to telling your stove: ‘Dear stove, it befits you, your stovely love to make the room warm.’ But the room remains cold however much we pontificate about love. But if we give it materials to make heat, wood and fire, then wood and fire are transformed into heat and the room is warmed up. The fuel for the human soul is the great ideals, the great thoughts we can assimilate, through which we recognize the connections in the world, through which we can learn the secrets of human destiny and human life.

These are not thoughts which only fill us theoretically but which make us inwardly warm and the result of theosophical wisdom is love. And just as certainly as the stove warms the room because it heats up and not because it is being preached at, with the same certainty the teaching of the great thoughts which are at work in the world will make the soul loving. Because that is the secret of real wisdom that it is transformed in the soul into love through its own strength. Anyone who has not yet found the path from wisdom to life only shows that they have not yet advanced far enough in wisdom. But anyone who would believe that the thoughts we assimilate about the evolution of the world, the evolution of humanity, about karma and so on were of no consequence for human beings should keep making it clear to themselves in their soul that these are not just human thoughts, that these are not just thoughts which we are the first to think, but that it is these thoughts which penetrate our soul which the divine spirits have used to build the world.

It is not our thoughts which appear before our spiritual eye in spiritual science but the thoughts of the divine architects, the divine spirits of the world. What the gods of the world thought to themselves before the creation of the physical world is what we reflect in our thinking about spiritual science and in this way investigate what has flowed from the divine beings into the activity and development of the world to which we belong. And what the gods have thought is divine light. And anyone who does not want to think what the gods have thought does not, even though they do not know it, orient themselves towards the light but towards darkness. The only possible basis for a real development of the human soul is the one in which we start from what are the divine thoughts of the world. The spirits of the world have not given us these embryonic faculties for us to leave them lying fallow. They have been given to us so that we develop them. And since in this developmental cycle of humanity the thinking is our most important and outstanding ability, we have to start with the thinking. But we must not stop at the thinking. That leads us gradually to transform spiritual science into an attitude which allows us to understand the secrets of how knowledge leads to character traits, to traits of the mind. Knowledge properly understood leads to real traits of character, of mind.

We can use a single example to make that clear for ourselves, can use it to make clear for ourselves that we human beings go through a sequence of ever new incarnations. What would be the purpose of those incarnations, if they were not intended to make human beings ever more perfect? We have to look back from our present incarnation to previous incarnations and have to tell ourselves: we have become what we presently are because in the course of one incarnation after the other various characteristics have been placed in our soul; our soul has again and again assimilated forces and gathered experience. What is integrated into our soul in one incarnation then emerges in the following incarnation.

We have now become the way we were prepared in previous incarnations. But then we can pause for a moment and say: we not only look back to the past but we look forward to the future, to later, more perfect lives. What would this human life through all these incarnations be if we could not tell ourselves: the further we develop into the future, the higher the stages which will have been achieved by what today is located in us as our I.

We can only guess at what we can still become because otherwise we would already be like that. We have to ascribe to ourselves the capacity to climb ever higher. But we have to look into the future with awe and reverence; we have to tell ourselves, even if we are able to understand this or that, are able to experience this or that in the world: the greater faculties which we can obtain will allow us to experience and understand many other things.

It is impossible for someone who inscribes such a thought as has just been expressed in their soul to say: I can decide today what is true or false, I can make an ultimate judgement about what is true or false. The only thing which is befitting for such a person to say is: if I could make that decision today already then it would be impossible for even higher faculties to arise in me in the future. And if that is transformed into an attitude it will give us the modesty at every moment of our development the truly dignified humility which we need to be true human beings. In this way a knowledge of reincarnation is transformed into a sentiment, a feature of our character: into dignified humility, into true modesty.

We could put it as follows. Anyone who understands today that they pass through a sequence of incarnations and keep rising higher in their development would have to be a fool if they were to say that they were perfect; or if they were to say: it is not necessary for me to learn today because tomorrow I will experience things of a quite different order of magnitude. Knowledge turns into real features of our character. And looked at in the right way, every spiritual-scientific insight turns into a feature of our character. But it is possible for us to understand that should we not be able to use our powers at any stage of our existence then these powers would not have been given to us from the spiritual world. If we wanted to wait until the world has reached its state of perfection, thinking that we first had to be so perfect that we had ultimate knowledge and experience, then we would not have to pass through different incarnations. In other words, we have to be clear that we have to use our cognitive powers in every incarnation. We must not say: I only want to obtain knowledge in the next incarnation or at the end of my existence. For all our humility and modesty, we should use the powers we have.

Thus a justified human sense of self is set alongside the humility and modesty which flows directly out of our being penetrated with the divine-spiritual and it says to us: it is true that our knowledge will only be perfect when we have reached a high stage, but we can make it perfect precisely by being aware today already of our human dignity and using our powers today already. In this way our character will obtain something which can be compared with a set of scales. We can place on the one side of the scales humility and modesty and on the other side a justified sense of self, courage in making judgements, and can say: we have reached a certain stage in cognition, in self-consciousness. In short, we will find that whenever we simply try to introduce into our feelings what spiritual science teaches, the teachings or theories of spiritual science are transformed in our soul because they contain the thoughts of the divine spirits, are transformed in our soul, in our character, in our endeavour, our feeling.

This can show us that in spiritual science the teaching, the theory may not be the main thing but that it is the kindling, we might say, for the development of the human soul. That it is the thing which is intended to bring out higher characteristics in our soul. And anyone who demands this characteristic without knowledge lives in the worst form of deception, in self-deception, the self-deception which has entered human evolution because in the course of earth development other beings have also entered and been involved in our evolution—beings which were not just harmful but also useful. But however useful they were in that they brought us freedom and a sense of self, we nevertheless have to be clear that these gifts from the so-called luciferic beings, freedom and sense of self, must not degenerate to become extreme and radical because then they become pride and arrogance. And pride and arrogance applied to knowledge lead such knowledge into darkness. Knowledge is acceptance of the divine light, of divine thoughts. Rejection of knowledge is something which leads into darkness, and neither can it lead to higher characteristics in the soul. If we look at spiritual science in this way, then we will recognize it as one of the most important matters in humanity. We will recognize it as something which we do not just for our own sake but because we are aware of our duty towards humanity and its development.

We live today in a time which is not completely unimportant; we live in an important time. It is true that people who live in a given period often say that they live in a transitional period. Every period of human development has already been described as a transitional period, but not all of them have been such important transitional periods. But of our time today it can truly be said that it is a transitional period. In what respect is that the case? Let us look at the character of another transitional period. A transitional period in human development occurred, for example, when the predecessor of Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, appeared. When John the Baptist appeared he told people what was later repeated by Jesus Christ in the significant words: ‘Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’3

What does that mean? We will understand what that means if we recall that human beings, as they developed from incarnation to incarnation, underwent various characteristics in their soul. In ancient times of our past human beings did not yet possess the characteristics and soul faculties which they have today. It was possible for all human beings in ancient times to develop a dull, hazy, dreamlike clairvoyance, to look into the spiritual world. All human beings had the possibility not just to see the physical but look into the spiritual world. But human beings in the time when such clairvoyance was widespread did not yet have something which they have today: a clearly developed self-consciousness. Human beings at that time could not yet in a clear way say to themselves ‘I am’. A firm stance at the centre of our inner being could only be obtained in that the ancient clairvoyance disappeared for a while. Human beings had to put up with separation from the spiritual world in order to develop a clear self-consciousness here on the physical plane.

Later on such clairvoyance will once again develop together with self-consciousness so that the two characteristics will occur together again and human beings will possess them again. So we can look back to a time in the distant past. At that time it was possible for human beings if they did not pay attention to the physical, if they closed their eyes and turned away from the physical and made their ears ignore the sounds, that they then looked into the spiritual world and were able to obtain direct certainty of the existence of the spiritual world. These characteristics waned and were increasingly replaced by the ability of thinking, the ability of self-consciousness, to draw conclusions, of independent judgement, those things which make up our daytime consciousness today. We can put an approximate date on the time when it gradually happened that the ancient clairvoyant faculties disappeared completely from human faculties. Before about the year 3101 [BC] almost all people on earth were still endowed with a hazy clairvoyance. Then, from that year onwards, it began to decrease more and more, it became increasingly weak.

But that made ego-consciousness, self-consciousness, judgement, drawing conclusions, self-aware thinking grow. So the light of spirituality grew dark and that which is the human I dawned and became brighter and brighter. The interior of human beings became brighter but spirituality grew darker. That is the year in which what oriental philosophy calls the Kali Yuga, the dark, black age, began. Something was there which—at the time that John the Baptist appeared as the predecessor, followed by Jesus Christ—reached a crisis, we might say, a decision. They had to tell humanity: you now have to learn that there is spirituality although you do not see such spirituality with any spiritual eyes. You have to learn that the realms of heaven are here. You have to understand this from out of your I. That is why Christ had to incarnate into a physical body because self-consciousness in the Kali Yuga was only able to perceive the spirit on the physical plane.

That time was a transitional period. The old faculties had disappeared. If people at the time had not heard the call of the Baptist, of Jesus Christ, they would have declined at that stage and not managed to progress any further. Those who heard these voices had to recognize the god who had descended as far as physical corporeality. They understood that the realms of heaven had come close to the I.

Christ was in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth for three years. That was the time in which human beings were only able to see with physical eyes when a god descended to them.

We are once again living in a transitional period, in a crisis. The Kali Yuga came to an end in about 1899. And now new characteristics are developing in human beings even if they do not know it. New characteristics are developing in human souls in a natural way. It is no proof to the contrary that so many people know nothing about it. A hundred years after Christ Tacitus4 still referred to an unknown sect of the Christians; and in Rome people still told, after Jesus Christ had fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha 70 to 80 years beforehand, of a sect which was supposed to live in a side street and was led by a certain Jesus. The most important events had passed by innumerable people.

If people fail to perceive something, it is no proof that this most important, crucial and incomparable thing does not exist. Since about 1899 faculties have been developing unnoticed in human beings which will emerge in the mid-thirties of the twentieth century, in about 1933 to 1937. Then these soul faculties will emerge in a whole range of people because their time has arrived; faculties of etheric clairvoyance will arise. They will be there. Just as there were people with an extremely developed ego-consciousness when Christ was there, there will be people in our century who will see not just with physical eyes but who will experience as a natural development what strives to come down from spiritual levels so that soul and spiritual faculties will emerge from their soul and they will enter etheric existence. And the fortune of these people will be to understand the new world they will see.

One thing is true, and as such important for our souls, when Jesus Christ said: ‘I am with you always, even unto the end of our earth cycle.’5 He is here. Since that time he has been in our earth environment. And when the spiritual eyes open they will see him, will see him like Paul saw him in the event at Damascus. That is something which will happen in about 1933, that he will be seen as an etheric being, as a being which, although he has not descended to physical existence, can be seen in his etheric body because a certain number of people will then ascend into the etheric. But these people will lack understanding if they have not been prepared through spiritual science for what they will see. That is why we are living in a transitional period, because we are growing into a new way of seeing.

Spiritual science has the responsible task of preparing human beings for the great moment in which—although he will not appear in the flesh, that was only possible once—he is here, and he will return in a form in which those whose eyes have been opened will see him in the world which is only visible to clairvoyant eyes. Human beings will grow upwards towards him. That is what the return of Christ will be: a growing upwards of human beings into the sphere in which Christ is. But they would stand there uncomprehendingly if they were not prepared through spiritual science for this great moment. Such preparation must be serious because it is full of responsibility. Humanity has to be prepared that more will be seen than was seen hitherto unless human beings take this faculty into darkness and make it wither—because that could also happen, that the twentieth century passes by without leading to the fulfilment of this goal. We have the responsible task of preparing human beings for this great moment through spiritual science. But we must prepare human beings spiritually, make them understand that only the spirit will encounter Christ with opened spiritual eyes. A materialistic view might believe that Christ will appear once again in a physical body. But that would not be spiritual but materialistic. If we human beings believed that, we would not have the will to work our way up to the spirit.

That is why in this time certain prophecies from the Book of Revelation will be fulfilled. Counting and building on the materialistic spirit, individuals will appear in a physical body who will say that they are the reincarnated Christ. And those will fall victim to them who have not been led to a proper understanding through spiritual science, because Maya will be great and the possibility of self-deception immense. Temptation will grow to become enormous. Only a knowledge of the spirit which is aware of its responsibility will bring human beings to an understanding of what is meant to happen.

These reflections were intended to show how spirituality through spiritual science is meant to work in individual human souls and that a knowledge of the spirit is a task of our time because we can say of our present time: important things lie ahead of us. But because the most important things might be completely overlooked by humanity in the darkness, because the great moment could pass without human beings seeing it, that is why spiritual science has to act in the right way. Penetrating with our spirit what has been communicated to us by spiritual research will provide the spirituality in each branch which we need in order to develop our own souls to an ever higher level so that we can serve humanity more and more.

Let us seek to reflect often that the saying applies to our time as much as it did at the time of Christ: repent ye, because the time is at hand. If at that time the words were ‘the kingdom of heaven is at hand’, today we have to look prophetically into the immediate future and say: because the human I is close to the kingdom of heaven. Let us prepare ourselves through the right kind of spiritual science so that we can enter worthily into the kingdom which calls on us. And we ourselves can only prosper if we find the way to the kingdom of heaven. If we digest what we have as experiences on earth and in turn allow what we experience in higher spiritual existence to arise again, offer it as a great sacrifice at the altar of divine existence, then we fulfil in dignity our purpose as human beings to the fullest extent. Let your activity here be imbued both by the spirit of Novalis and the spirit of spiritual science itself, which has come before our soul, and you will see that your activity will take a good course. Because if our activity is imbued with such an attitude, then what we call the light of the Masters of Wisdom and Harmony of Feelings6 will flow into it while we are gathered in our branches. We are never without the help of these advanced individualities when we come together with the right attitude in our branches. May such a spirit unite you! May such a spirit, which at the same time is the spirit of the Masters of Wisdom, ensoul you! Act in this spirit and your activity will be part of the great work of spiritual science. Your activity will be part of the attitude which must penetrate the whole world.

LECTURE 2

HAMBURG, 26 MAY 1910

WE will engage today not in anthroposophical but in purely philosophical reflections. They can however be fostered in an anthroposophical group, because although the subject matter of spiritual science is the result of experiences in the supersensory world turning these experiences into a comprehensive systematic conception of the world requires sharp and, indeed, also trained thinking which deals conscientiously with every single point. And if it is the case that untrained thinking can cause a lot of damage in external science, it is the case specifically in the anthroposophical movement that—more so than through inaccurate observation—even greater damage is caused because an interest in supersensory things does not go hand-in-hand with an equally strong interest in logical thinking. And such purely logical thinking can be trained particularly well through a reflection on the thinking of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.7

Such a reflection will also be able to throw a certain light on our present time. People talk from time to time about going back to Hegel but we cannot say that our time has the intellectual prerequisites which would advance an understanding of Hegel. The whole of Hegel's thinking grew out of a time in which there was the most intense interest in deriving the foundations of all knowledge and existence from perspectives of the highest order. And it is no coincidence but a deep necessity that Hegel lived in a time in which these foundations of the highest order were sought in the greatest variety of fields.

Hegel was born in Stuttgart on 27 August 1770. He became a student at the Tübinger Stift (1788–93), that institution which played such an important role in the development of German intellectual life at the time. His fellow pupils included Schelling,8 who towered over him and outshone him for such a long time, and the deep-natured Hölderlin,9 who was soon to descend into madness—even if not because of his deep nature. They formed what might be described as a trefoil: the deep-natured Hölderlin seeking in mystical light and shade, Schelling with his energetic sharp thinking and brimming-over imagination, and the somewhat ponderous Hegel extracting his thoughts onerously from out of his soul. Schelling and Hegel subsequently worked together again at Jena University which at the time was a hothouse of intellectual life. Schelling thrilled his listeners with the mighty sweep with which he dealt with intellectual problems; he even thrilled those who did not by inclination seek to penetrate the questions of existence.

Schelling pointed to something which goes beyond all thinking in human existence, to the, as he said, intellectual intuition10 which he thought of as a primal ability to look into the substrates of existence. Hegel was a fellow lecturer of his (1801–6). Even at this time still his thinking was ponderous because he wanted to make each thought never comprised more than it was intended to mean. And it is this slow penetrating ponderousness of his thinking which makes Hegel not at all easy to understand to begin with.

Then came the sad time of 1806.11 During this time Hegel undertook, as he himself put it, the actual great intellectual journeys of discovery. As the cannons thundered at Jena he concluded the first of the works to emerge from a detailed, incredibly profound collection regarding the spirit, the Phenomenology of Spirit. This is a work which is unique in the whole of world literature. Hegel wanted particularly to clarify for himself the experiences which the soul can have when it ascends from subordinate perspectives, as it were, to the highest, to what Hegel calls the constitution of the spirit in itself. To begin with we live in the most dulled possible connection with the external world in which every this or that, every tree and every house is something with which we live together, every opinion is something in which we live. Only when we start to reflect on this and that does perception arise. From perception we then get through the thinking to an initial sense of self, an obscure inkling of the self. Only then do we get to the first flashes of a real consciousness. But here the I is still spellbound within its surroundings. It works its way out of this enchantment through the content which it is meant to have solely out of itself in that it leaves more and more of what is connected with the external world. In this way self-consciousness comes about and thus the interpenetration, the interweaving of self-consciousness with the spirit. It becomes spirit itself, grasping itself within itself, becoming spirit growing conscious within itself.