The Fall of the Spirits Of Darkness E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Speaking towards the end of the catastrophic Great War, Rudolf Steiner reveals the spiritual roots of the crises of our times. Since 1879, he says, human minds have been influenced by backward angels, 'spirits of darkness', who – following their defeat in battle with Archangel Michael – were forced out of the heavens and 'fell' to the earth. This war in the spiritual worlds had consequences, and it is essential that people today are sufficiently awake to the retrogressive influences around them. In a positive sense, we can choose freely to engage with the spirits of light, who seek to emancipate human beings from bonds of race, nation and blood.In this extraordinary series of lectures, Rudolf Steiner throws light on hidden aspects of world affairs. With the Bolshevik Revolution having just taken place, he discusses events in Russia and humanity's attempts to build theoretically perfect social orders. Steiner also speaks about the roles and spiritual backgrounds of significant individuals, such as the mystics Johann Valentin Andreae, Vladimir Soloviev and Saint-Martin, the American and British politicians Woodrow Wilson and Lloyd George, and world-historic figures including Charles Darwin and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.The new edition of this classic work features a revised translation, notes and extensive appendices by editor Frederick Amrine, plus a new introduction by Christopher Schaefer.

Leseprobe

THE FALL OF THE SPIRITS OF DARKNESS

THE SPIRITUAL BACKGROUND TO THE OUTER WORLD: SPIRITUAL BEINGS AND THEIR EFFECTS, VOLUME 1

Fourteen lectures given to members of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach between 29 September and 28 October 1917

TRANSLATED BY ANNA MEUSS, FIL, MTA REVISED AND EDITED BY FREDERICK AMRINE

INTRODUCTION BY CHRISTOPHER SCHAEFER

RUDOLF STEINER

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

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2022

Originally published in German under the title Die spirituellen Hintergründe der äußeren Welt. Der Sturz der Geister der Finsternis. Geistige Wesen und Ihre Wirkung Band I (volume 177 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand notes that were not reviewed or revised by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on the fourth German edition (1985), edited by H. von Wartburg

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1985

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2022

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 638 8

Cover by Morgan Creative Typeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Vishakapatnam, India Printed and bound by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note

Introduction, by Christopher Schaefer

LECTURE 1 DORNACH, 29 SEPTEMBER 1917

Insight into the events taking place in Russia at the time. Metaphysical world influencing current events. Sukhomlinov’s failure as a sign of the times. Papal Note. Connection between materialistic attitudes and powers of destruction.

Pages 1-12

LECTURE 2 DORNACH 30 SEPTEMBER 1917

Discrepancy between intellectual and moral development. The human organization in sleep and in the waking state. Wisdom-filled impulses projecting from the realm of sleep into everyday life. The spiritual and social impulse in the works of Johann Valentin Andreae. Humanity getting younger, with Lloyd George as typical representative of his time.

Pages 13-25

LECTURE 3 DORNACH, 1 OCTOBER 1917

Present habits of thinking not in accord with reality. Christ’s words: ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ Search for perfection is materialistic illusion—Woodrow Wilson as ‘saviour of the world’. Right attitude to the truths of spiritual science when these are made known—deviations from this. Two measures which had become necessary with regard to private interviews.

Pages 26-41

LECTURE 4 DORNACH, 6 OCTOBER 1917

The elemental spirits of birth and death. Their activity in the service of the gods. Rule over these spirits passing into human hands—a similar process in Ancient Atlantis. Inevitable transformation of virtues into faults, and of constructive powers into destructive ones. Ricarda Huch instinctively aware of this. A modern tendency: to take a stance rather than go through the effort of finding the truth.

Pages 42-54

LECTURE 5 DORNACH, 7 OCTOBER 1917

Changes in the way the environment is experienced, from Ancient Greece to the present time. Earth dying and bodies withering away—these facts reflected in Eduard Suess’ geological work and in Franz Brentano’s psychology. Inner life of man separating from physical body. Augustine’s and Calvin’s dogmas of predestination. Eugenics as an echo of Atlantean practices. Psychopathology as a sign of the times. Medicines used to ‘get rid of the spirit’.

Pages 55-68

LECTURE 6 DORNACH, 8 OCTOBER 1917

Living world of thought around us and dead thoughts within us. The head as a legacy from old incarnations of the Earth—rest of the body as manifestations of cosmic Hierarchies condensed by luciferic influences. Spiritual bonds with environment and interpretation of dreams during fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Need for inspired ideas on social aspects—Jacob Boehme and Saint-Martin aware of this. Importance of intuitive and prophetic faculties for the teaching profession.

Pages 69-83

LECTURE 7 DORNACH, 12 OCTOBER 1917

Lack of ‘weight’ in the usual historical texts. Luther as someone belonging to the fourth epoch but who lived at the beginning of the fifth. Consciousness awakened on account of deception in the past. Need to overcome illusion in future. Trial by fire as part of the inner path today. Significance of the concept of karma in education. Harmful nature of premature intellectual development. Right attitude to those who hold different views. Relationship between teacher and pupil as an inner one.

Pages 84-100

LECTURE 8 DORNACH, 13 OCTOBER 1917

Present desire to find simple, unified concepts. Inadequacy of such concepts in the face of reality. Rudolf Kjellén’s and Albert Schaeffle’s analogy between organism and State not acceptable. Social life of the whole Earth as an organism. Abstract theories refuted by reality. West looking to the past. Wilsonianism. East breaking with the past. Abstract nature of theosophical ideals and the need for genuine knowledge.

Pages 101-116

LECTURE 9 DORNACH, 14 OCTOBER 1917

Battle between the Archangel Michael and the ahrimanic powers from 1841 until the autumn of 1879. Fall of the spirits of darkness and its consequences: individual people taking hold of materialistic impulses—statement made by Henri Lichtenberger as symptomatic of this. Bacterial diseases and moon influences as consequences of similar battles in earlier periods of earth evolution. Examples of ahrimanic way of thinking in modern science. Influence of spiritual world on actions of people today. Mirroring of events in the world of the spirit in this world. Soloviev and perception of the Russian folk spirit.

Pages 117-128

LECTURE 10 DORNACH, 20 OCTOBER 1917

Many ideals far removed from reality. Certain ideas spread in the eighteenth century and their consequences. Wilhelm Weber’s Thirteen Lindens. Prejudice, ignorance and fear helping the ahrimanic powers. Modern science studying the past, and the need to gain perception of what lies in the future. James Dewar’s views as example of inadequacy of notions held at the time. Activity of ahrimanic spirits in monistic theories. Need to bring spiritual thinking into physical sciences. Need to transform education. Significance of happy childhood memories for adult life.

Pages 129-143

LECTURE 11 DORNACH, 21 OCTOBER 1917

Growing inwardness of inner life—science-based civilization becoming more external. New impulses in education to counteract ahrimanization of inner life. Relationship of humans and animals to Sun and Moon currents. Thoughtfully told tales, based on animal and plant world, as an educational necessity—partly achieved in Brehm’s work. Impoverishment of ideas through specialization. Example of a genuine connection made between impulses to observe given in spiritual science and a specialist field: Roman Boos’ book on the Collective

Agreement. A valuable essay by Boos contrasted with empty phrases used in another essay in the same issue of the journal Knowledge and Life.

Pages 144-158

LECTURE 12 DORNACH, 26 OCTOBER 1917

Spirits of darkness cast down, and this the cause of events which happened at the time. Mission of spirits of light in earlier epochs of earthly evolution: promotion of blood bonds; mission of powers of darkness: to free human beings from those bonds—the situation reversed in the nineteenth century. Darwinism as an impulse from the past; Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis as a power for the future. Human beings tied to the Earth through heredity, getting free of the Earth by becoming spiritual. Indianization of Europeans living in America and the way to overcome this tendency.

Pages 159-172

LECTURE 13 DORNACH, 27 OCTOBER 1917

The intentions of the spirits of darkness: greatest possible development of human acumen and limiting human relationship to the spirit to spiritistic methods. Michael’s victory provides possibility for human beings to connect with the spirit—counteraction from spirits of darkness. Events in nineteenth century as consequences of the battle in the world of the spirit. Oswald Marbach and Goethe’s Faust. Woodrow Wilson as ‘world schoolmaster’. Goethe’s achievement brought to expression in a poem by Marbach.

Pages 173-187

LECTURE 14 DORNACH, 28 OCTOBER 1917

Angels and archangels and their role in history and in the human organism. Physical reproduction to cease in the sixth or seventh millennium. Aims of spirits of darkness in relation to humanity growing younger. Fritz Mauthner and Darwinism. Discrepancy between life of thought and life of will—its effect on modern social democracy. Relative newness of history as a science and need to bring in the life forces of anthroposophy. Maeterlinck’s book on bees. Illusory talk of democracy. Francis Delaisi on democracy and world of finance. Alexandre Millerand and Raymond Poincaré as examples of financial concerns influencing political activities.

Pages 188-206

APPENDICES:

1. The First Goetheanum

2. Ahriman and Lucifer

3. The Etheric and the Astral Bodies

4. Cosmic Evolution

5. Rosicrucianism

6. Woodrow Wilson

7. Friedrich Nietzsche

8. Franz Brentano

9. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer

10. The Hierarchies

11. Herman Grimm

12. Charles Darwin

13. Ernst Haeckel

14. Platonism and Aristotelianism

15. Goethe’s Scientific Work

16. Friedrich Schiller

17. Fritz Mauthner

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Index

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

FROM February to September 1917, Rudolf Steiner stayed in Germany, mainly in Berlin. Since 1914, Germany had been involved in the worldwide military conflicts of the First World War. The year 1917 was to prove to be a decisive year in the course of the war: on the one hand, there was the declaration of war by the United States of America on Germany and, on the other hand, the Russian Revolution took place, which culminated in the Bolsheviks taking power.

Despite German successes in Eastern and Southern Europe, the Central Powers could no longer win the war. Otto Graf Lerchenfeld knew that too, and through his uncle, Hugo Graf Lerchenfeld, he had an insight into the real course of events—his uncle was the Bavarian envoy in Berlin and first representative of Bavaria in the Bundesrat, the state chamber of the German Reich. He asked Rudolf Steiner for advice on how to lead Germany out of the war in an honourable way. In talks that took place in Berlin in June and July 1917, and to which Count Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz was later invited, Rudolf Steiner developed his idea of the threefold structure of the social organism as a necessary prerequisite for a successful path to peace. However, this idea, which was presented in the form of memoranda to various representatives of the leading circles of the Central Powers, did not receive any significant attention.

When Rudolf Steiner returned to Dornach at the end of September 1917, it was clear that the leading circles in Germany were incapable of presenting their own realistic peace programme and ending the war on this basis. On 29 September, Rudolf Steiner resumed his regular lecturing activities for members in Dornach. In the lectures that he held over the following five weekends, and that are printed in this volume (CW 177), he spoke about the spiritual background of external world events, in particular about the work of the spirits of light and darkness. At the same time he also began to carve the wooden sculptural group, working mainly on the design of the figure of Ahriman.

On the following weekends, he continued lecturing in Dornach; he also gave lectures in Zürich, Basel and St Gallen on the workings of spiritual beings. All these other lectures are published in Secret Brotherhoods (GA 178), The Influence of the Dead on Destiny (GA 179) and Ancient Myths and the New Isis Mysteries (GA 180). These four volumes of the complete edition were combined as a series (in German) under Marie Steiner’s title ‘Geistige Wesen und ihre Wirkungen’ (‘Spiritual beings and their effects’).

An overview of the events of 1917 is given in the chronicle compiled by Hella Wiesberger in Das Jahr 1917. Im Gedenken an ein geistes-und weltgeschichtliches Ereignis, No. 16 in the Beiträge zur Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe (‘The Year 1917. In Memory of an Intellectual and World-Historical Event’).

INTRODUCTION

THESE lectures, given by Rudolf Steiner in the autumn of 1917, took place at a time when World War I had reached a stalemate. The Entente powers, primarily Britain, France and Russia, and the Central powers of Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, had exhausted themselves. Millions of lives had been lost in the lethal trench warfare of the years between 1914 and 1917. A generation of men were killed, leaving grieving wives and families and signaling the destruction of nineteenth century European culture and society. Rudolf Steiner was deeply affected by this unprecedented human suffering and was asked countless times to provide verses and prayers for the departed souls.

1917 was also a watershed year in human history as it was in the spring of that year that the United States overcame its isolationist tendencies and entered the war; and it was in the autumn that the Bolshevik party of Lenin and Trotsky overthrew the Tsar, creating the Soviet Union, thereby heralding the beginning of the bipolar world which was to characterize much of the later twentieth century. The withdrawal of Soviet Russia from the war in early 1918 gave the Central powers a temporary reprieve, but the overwhelming economic and military power of the United States gradually turned the tide of war and led to an armistice and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in March 1919.

The violence, destruction and chaos in Europe unleashed by the war moved Rudolf Steiner to engage in a heightened level of inner and outer activity which is almost impossible to comprehend given its extent, its depth, and its many levels of political, social and spiritual work. Indeed, the time between 1917–22 was the high point in Steiner’s efforts to obtain a just peace, to provide a new imagination for a healthy threefold society in Germany and Europe, and to provide the psychological, social and spiritual insights necessary for humanity to avoid the later catastrophes of fascism, Nazism and World War II.1

At a practical level Steiner sought to influence the conditions and nature of the armistice discussions between the warring powers by preparing two memoranda, one for the young Austro-Hungarian Emperor Karl I, and the second for the German Emperor, Wilhelm II. Both men received these proposals in 1917 and wished to integrate them into their negotiating positions but were persuaded not to do so by their advisors. Steiner proposed a peace based on the creation of a threefold federal state for Germany and Austro-Hungary and the acknowledgment of mutual responsibility for the war through the competing treaty alliance structures that all parties had participated in.

When this effort failed, Steiner turned to directly influencing the negotiating process for the Treaty of Versailles by printing the personal war diaries of General Helmuth von Moltke, the head of the German general staff in 1914, as it described the complex process of mobilization, clearly indicating that Germany had not been the first, the main or the only aggressor in this process. After 10,000 copies had been printed, on the day before they were to be sent, the surviving head of the Moltke family forbade publication, thereby blocking this effort to call into question the ‘war guilt clause’ which the allies pinned on Germany and Austro-Hungary in the Treaty, and which many observers see as a prime factor in the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.2

Undaunted by these failures, Steiner issued an Appeal to the German Nation, taking out adverts in leading newspapers promoting a threefold democratic, federal state; he also founded the League for the Threefold Social Order and gave public lectures throughout Germany to large numbers of people who were searching for alternatives to communism and fascism.3

Central to Steiner’s practical work in social reform was his spiritual research and his articulation of a threefold imagination of the human being, relating the psychological functions of thinking, feeling and willing to the physiological systems of the nerve-sense system, the working of heart and lung, and the metabolic-limb system. As the human being is the creator of the social world and this reflects his consciousness and nature, so society should be based on this structural principle in which cultural life would be based on the freedom of individuals, political-legal life on equality, and economic life on cooperation and sisterhood and brotherhood. Just as the three physiological systems are semi-independent yet serve the totality of the human being, so too should each of these spheres be independently administered yet serve the totality of society and the true needs of human beings.

While this threefold imagination for a healing of society had already formed the basis of Steiner’s memoranda to the German and Austro-Hungarian governments in 1917, it was further developed and described in detail in a series of essays in the spring of 1919 under the English title Toward Social Renewal. Other lectures and essays by Steiner on the Threefold Social Order available in English include The Social Future, The Renewal of the Social Organism and Spiritual Science as a Foundation for Social Forms.4

As is often the case in Steiner’s work, there is a symmetry, an inner balance between outer and inner activity. So, while his outer work on social reform was supported by the lectures and written work described, it was immeasurably deepened through his examination of modern consciousness, the working of social and anti-social forces in the human being, and the influence of spiritual beings in history and on the human soul. This found expression in lectures such as ‘How Can the Soul Needs of the Time be Met?’, Social and Anti-Social Forces in the Human Being, The Work of the Angels in Man’s Astral Body and The Inner Aspect of the Social Question.5 To quote one remarkable paragraph from the last of these lectures;

In this epoch the Christ declares to us: Make new your ways of thinking [as his forerunner John the Baptist said, ‘Change your thinking’], so that they may reveal to you man’s threefold nature which demands also that your social environment on earth shall have a threefold membering.6

During the time that Steiner was undertaking this tremendous effort to save Europe from the devastating consequences of ‘the Great War’, he was also supervising the building of the first Goetheanum, in which citizens from all the warring nations were peacefully participating, as well as working on the large statue of the Representative of Humanity, picturing the being of Christ balancing the opposing spiritual forces of Lucifer and Ahriman. In 1918 he was also asked by Emil Molt to found a new school for workers’ children and so began his work on the founding of the first Waldorf School in 1919 in Stuttgart, Germany, and his support of a worldwide educational movement free of state control.

Preceding these many initiatives to heal a war-torn Europe, Steiner gave two key series of lectures to members of the Anthroposophical Society to help them understand the spiritual background to the war, and to limit their national prejudices. The first were the lectures he gave in Dornach and Basel in December 1916, called The Karma of Untruthfulness, Vols. I and II. In these lectures he described the corruption in politics and the media as well as the working of occult brotherhoods in human history, in particular their effort to weaken and divide Central Europe.7

The second were the fourteen lectures he gave in the autumn of 1917, contained in this volume, The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness. These two series of lectures are intimately related and together provide an invaluable resource for understanding the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. (Indeed, I was rereading them in order to understand our present crises at the time I was asked to provide this introduction.)

Central to understanding our time and the content of these lectures is the imagination of the Archangel Michael, who Rudolf Steiner describes as the Spirit of our Age, combating the dragon and holding his forces pinned to the earth, an image most appropriate to the time that Steiner gave these lectures. As described in lecture 12 of this volume:

The event I have been referring to in the preceding lectures, the occasion when certain spirits of darkness were cast out of the spiritual realm and down into the human realm in the autumn of 1879, holds great importance. We have to reflect again and again what it really means to say that a battle raged for decades in the spiritual realms. The battle started in the early 1840s and ended when certain spiritual entities, which had been acting like rebels in the spiritual world during those decades, were vanquished in the autumn of 1879 and cast down as dark spirits into the realm of human evolution. They are now among us and the effect of this is that they send their impulses into our view of the world, not only into the way that we think about the world, but also into our inner feelings, our will impulses and even our temperaments. Human beings will be unable to get even a partial understanding of the significant events of the present time and the immediate future, unless they are prepared to recognize the relationship which exists between the physical world and the spiritual world and take as much account of important events like this as they do of natural phenomena.8

The positive result of this battle in the spiritual world was that from the end of the nineteenth century, from the end of the Dark Age, Kali Yuga, in 1899, new spiritual impulses and knowledge were available to humanity and that a growing interest in spirituality began to manifest in our time. Anthroposophy, the spiritual science developed by Rudolf Steiner, was one manifestation of this new Michaelic wisdom.

The negative consequences of the descent of ahrimanic spirits into human souls and institutions have been ever more visible in our time, and they form much of the content of these lectures. The further spread of materialism, the dominance of technology, the growth of egotism, and the corruption of institutional life are all outcomes of this battle. To my mind one cannot imagine the immense destruction and suffering of the twentieth century, with its two world wars, its multiple efforts at genocide, its global economic exploitation of nature and human life, without recourse to this deeper understanding of the increased presence of evil in human life, so clearly described by Steiner in these lectures.

In a disturbing passage in Lecture 4, Steiner indicates that the elemental spirits, who in the past guided processes of life and death, are now active in technology, finance and commerce and no longer work on behalf of human well-being:

In earlier times, the elemental spirts of birth and death essentially served the divine spirits who guided the world; since our day—and this has been going on for some time now—the elemental spirits of birth and death are serving technology, industry and human commerce. It is important to let this disturbing truth enter into our souls with all its power and intensity.9

In a later lecture given in Berlin in 1922, Steiner describes the efforts of the fallen powers of darkness, the ahrimanic powers, to mechanize the spirit (think of AI), to vegetablize the soul (think of media, propaganda, advertising, politics), and to animalize the body, thereby undermining our human future.10

When I seriously take in what is happening in the world today and become aware of the spiritual insights which Rudolf Steiner and other spiritual teachers have provided about the darkness living in our times, I am confronted with the question: What can I do, how can I serve the good in these difficult times? While we each need to find our own way of working with this questions, there are helpful perspectives sprinkled throughout these lectures. One of these is to see clearly what is happening around us, to be awake with a sense of interest and a heart filled with compassion. ‘Let your eyes become seeing eyes in the light of the inner feelings of which we have spoken today.’11 Another is to recognize that when we become genuine students of the spirit, we gradually transform ourselves and become threats to the ahrimanic forces active in the world:

If we consider this in all seriousness we can feel: filled with spiritual wisdom we go through the world in a way which allows us to establish the right relationship to the ahrimanic powers; doing the things we do in light of this, we build a place for the consuming fire of sacrifice for the salvation of the world, and a place from which a terror of darkness radiates out over the harmful ahrimanic element.12

Most important, I think, is to recognize that the central spiritual task of our times is this meeting with evil, with the imbalance in ourselves and in the world so that we can awaken to the spirit in us, and through this find a living relation to the healing power of the Christ Being. As Steiner makes clear in his lectures From Symptom to Reality in Modern History:

Human beings must assimilate these forces of evil which are operative in the universe. By so doing we implant in our being the seed which enables us to experience consciously the life of the spirit.13

This means working on ourselves, seeing how the forces of darkness live in us and in the world, engaging in meditative work and avoiding the many divisions, splits, adversarial groups and conflicts which plague modern families and society. The responses to Covid-19 and the Covid vaccines are a good example of how the divisive tactics of the ‘unrighteous prince of this world’ distract us. These lectures are a bracing tonic to sharpen our attention, to open our hearts and to work with others in creating a society which serves human freedom and well-being. We can start with this daunting task by bringing our attention to building and sustaining healthy relationships with our friends, family, colleagues and community, remembering Steiner’s ‘Motto of the Social Ethic’:

The healing social life is only found,

When in the mirror of the Human Soul

The whole community finds its reflection,

And when in the community, the virtue of each one

Is living.14

And perhaps like Leonard Cohen, the Canadian songwriter and singer, we can inwardly raise our fist while singing Hallelujah as we meet the issues of our time.

Christopher Schaefer Ph.D.

September 2022

________________

1 I have found Edward Udell’s essay, ‘Rudolf Steiner and Social Threefolding during and after the First World War’, in Martin Large and Steve Briault (editors), Free, Equal and Mutual: Rebalancing Society for the Common Good, Hawthorn Press 2018, to be the most useful, condensed account in English of Steiner’s efforts to influence the outcome of the war and bring about a new ordering of European Society (pp. 75-96). The most complete account in German is Hans Kuhn, Dreigliederungs Zeit: Rudolf Steiners Kampf fuer die Gesellschaftsordnung der Zukunft, Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, Dornach 1978.

2 Udell, p. 83.

3 Udell, pp. 82-83.

4 Rudolf Steiner: Towards Social Renewal, Rudolf Steiner Press, Sussex 1999, The Social Future, Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY 1986; The Renewal of the Social Organism, Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1985, Spiritual Science as a Foundation for Social Forms, Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY 1998.

5 Rudolf Steiner: ‘How Can the Soul Needs of the Time be Met?’ The only printed English version of this important lecture that I am aware of was published by Rudolf Steiner Publications in Blauvelt, NY, in a volume of lectures called Results of Spiritual Investigations, 1971. Also, Rudolf Steiner, Social and Anti-Social Forces in the Human Being, Mercury Press, Spring Valley, NY 1986; Rudolf Steiner, The Work of the Angel in Man’s Astral Body, and Rudolf Steiner, The Inner Aspect of the Social Question, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1974.

6 Rudolf Steiner, The Inner Aspect of the Social Question, p. 34.

7 Rudolf Seiner, The Karma of Untruthfulness, Vol I-II. Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1988.

8 Rudolf Steiner, The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness, p. 159.

9The Fall of the Sprits of Darkness, p. 46.

10 Rudolf Steiner, ‘The Mechanization of the Spirit, The Vegetation of the Soul and the Animalization of the Body’, Berlin, 12 Sept. 1919. Typescript, Mercury Press, pp. 8-9, GA 193.

11The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness, p. 142.

12The Fall of the Spirts of Darkness, p. 142.

13 Rudolf Steiner, From Symptom to Reality in Modern History, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1976, p. 118.

14 Rudolf Steiner, ‘Motto of the Social Ethic’, in Verses and Meditations, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1972, p. 117.

LECTURE 1

DORNACH, 29 SEPTEMBER 1917

IT is a matter of deep satisfaction to me, as I think you know, to be with you again for a while, for this is the place where we are able to create a visible sign1 of our intentions and of the will to come closer and closer to a true knowledge of the spirit in our studies and in our work in anthroposophy.

The quest for knowledge is intimately bound up with the most inward aspect of the human being, and every now and then we must therefore enquire into the essential nature of our will and intent. In the light of the present situation, woeful as it is, it seems the answer to this question must be a negative one. For more than three years, we have seen something spread across the world that I need not discuss in detail, at least to begin with, for we are all aware of it and feel it deeply. The events now taking place are the opposite of our own intentions, which have come to expression in this very building.2

Again and again we must try to see clearly which stream of spiritual development we wish to see taken up by humanity, and today we have to say it is the opposite of the stream which has led to the terrible tragedy of these last years. This is something we may call to mind again and again when we give deep and full consideration to the events now raging all over the world. We may say to ourselves that it appears as if time were drawn out and had become elastic, as if the things we remember from before this madness took hold of the world happened not just years but centuries ago.

There will, of course, be many today—as there always have been—who may be said to sleep through the events of the day, people who are not fully awake to what is going on today. But when those who are awake look back on what went through their minds four or five years ago and left an impression, they will feel more or the less the way one does when one lets the mind dwell on an old book or a work of art that was created hundreds of years ago. Events which meant something to us before this madness came on the world now seem to have happened an infinitely long time ago.

Anyone who was awake—through anthroposophy—was, of course, able to appreciate what was coming even before these events developed. Many of our friends will remember the almost routine answer I gave to questions asked over and over again after my public lectures from the beginning of this century. The question, you may remember, was: ‘According to the statistics, the world population is increasing; how does this relate to the idea of repeated earthly lives? The increase in population is rapid. How can one reconcile this with the anthroposophical finding that these are always the same souls?’ My answer always had to be: It does look as if the statisticians are right and the world population is increasing; but we have to take a longer view and consider much longer time-spans if we are to do justice to the question. And I would always go on to say that a time may well come, sooner than we may expect, when people discover to their horror that the population can also decrease.

It is not always possible to give plain and simple answers in anthroposophy. People have not yet reached the point where they are able to take truths in the right way, and some things can only be hinted at. Read through the lectures given in Vienna not long before this catastrophe came on our world and you will find the passage where I spoke of the social cancer that is gnawing away at the evolution of humanity.3 This and other things were said in order to indicate what was going to happen in human evolution and to challenge people to reflect. For we need to reflect on these things if we are really and truly to wake up. We need to be awake and alive for the sake of humanity. If anthroposophy is to fulfil its purpose, its prime task must be to rouse people and make them really wake up. Merely knowing what is going on in the physical world, and knowing the laws that human understandings are able to perceive as operative in this world, is no more than being asleep in a higher sense. Humanity is only fully awake when people are able to develop notions and ideas of the world of the spirit. This is all around us, just as air and water, the stars, the Sun, and the Moon are all around us. When we are physically asleep we are wholly given up to the internal processes that go on in the body during the night and have no idea of anything in the external sensory world around us. We are asleep in exactly the same way when we are wholly given up to the physical environment, and to the world and the laws of the intellect, and have no idea of the world of the spirit that is all around us.

Humanity has made great play of its intellectual progress and scientific achievements in the last few centuries, and it has been particularly insistent on this at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Yet, strangely enough, the unconscious and instinctive life was never more prominent than it is at this time. Up to the present time, this instinctive and unconscious element has increasingly taken hold of humanity. Failure to see the spiritual reality and take account of the element of the spirit is ultimately the cause of this terrible world war. Nor can it be said that through these years—years that have turned into centuries for anyone who is awake in them, as I have said—humanity has learned an adequate lesson from the terrible events around us. Sadly, it has to be said that the opposite is the case.

What is the characteristic element to be found day by day, hour by hour, when we take note of what people think, or rather pretend to think and pretend to want? It is that, fundamentally speaking, no one in the world knows what they want, and no one realizes that people’s perfectly justifiable aims, whichever form they may take in the minds of individual nations, would be achieved so much better if they did away with these terrible wars in which so much blood is shed. People do not realize that these terrible events with their bloodshed are really not necessary as a means of helping them to achieve their aims.

These events have a mysterious background, but if you consider some of the things said in our anthroposophical lectures over the years, even if they have only been touched on lightly, you will find perfectly clear statements, also with reference to the most significant of recent events. Consider also what has been said in these very rooms, especially in the last few years, on the character of the Russian people and the difference between the Russians and the peoples of Western and Central Europe.4 You will find that you need the things which have been said here to gain understanding of an event that appears to have entered with such vehemence, an event that is now usually called the Russian Revolution. It has burst forth as though it were a karmic vengeance, the inner meaning of which is quite clear, although the word ‘vengeance’ must be taken as a technical term and not at all in a moral sense.

Not only the Russian people, but those of Europe and the whole world, will have to reflect for a long time to come on the events in Eastern Europe, events much more mysterious than we are inclined to think. Something has come to the surface that has been preparing for centuries. The new element wanting to take shape is something completely different from what is actually happening. Later generations will be able to use the events that will be taking shape in Eastern Europe over the next decades to make visible the difference between maya5 and reality. For you see, the generations of today are taking what is happening now for the real thing, when this is in fact still waiting in the wings, and they are wrong in taking it for real, for something quite different wants to make its appearance.

The people in the West are ill-equipped to understand what wants to come to the surface. Why are they so ill-equipped? Strange as it may seem to people today—not to you but to the ordinary, average individual; as anthroposophists, you are not ordinary, average people of today—the present age is more than any other age demanding the one thing people least want to have: anthroposophical understanding. Strange as it may sound to the ordinary, average people of today—order will not be created from the chaos of the present time until a sufficiently large number of people are prepared to recognize the truths of that science. Such will be the karma of world history.

If people insist that this war is just like the wars of the past and that we’ll be making peace just as peace has been made before—let them talk; let them believe. They are the people who love maya and do not distinguish between truth and deception. Let them make an apparent ‘peace’—order will only arise from the chaos that fills the world today when insight based on anthroposophy dawns in human minds. You may feel in your hearts that it will be a long time before such order comes; you may think it will be a long time before people are prepared to let the dawn of such a science arise, and you will be right. You have to accept that it will be a long time before order arises from the chaos. For it will not come until an anthroposophical mentality penetrates human hearts. Everything else will be mere appearance, everything else will be only an apparent peace, within which flames will be enkindled anew, for order can only come when it is understood how this chaos has arisen.

Chaos has arisen because reality is considered in an unspiritual way, and the world of the spirit cannot be ignored with impunity. You may believe that you can ignore the spiritual world with impunity; you can think it is enough to live with thoughts and ideas that are wholly derived from the sensory world. It is what people generally think today, though this does not make it true. No! The most completely and utterly wrong idea humanity has ever cherished is—to put it trivially—that the spirits will put up with being ignored. You may consider it egotistical and selfish on their part, but the terminology is different in their world from here in the physical and sensory world. Egotism or not, the spirits take their revenge if they are ignored here on Earth. This is a law, an iron necessity. One way to characterize the present time is to say that the present human chaos is the revenge of the spirits who have been ignored for too long.

I have often said, both here and elsewhere: A mysterious connection exists between human consciousness and the destructive powers of decline and fall in the universe. Each can, or indeed must, take the place of the other in the following way.

Let us assume there was a time, say during the last twenty or thirty years of the nineteenth century, when people put the same effort into their quest for the things of the spirit as they have put into achieving material knowledge and material actions during those twenty or thirty years. What would have happened if they had endeavoured to recognize the world of the spirit and used this to give a character, a foundation, to the physical world, rather than follow mere instinct and chase after more and more knowledge of a kind that has seen its ultimate triumph in the creation of instruments of murder and found its be-all and end-all in people enriching themselves with nothing but material goods? What would have happened if people had sought to gain spiritual knowledge and spiritual impulses for their activities in the social sphere? It would have meant that the powers of destruction were paid off! If people had been more awake and not asleep in the last decades of the nineteenth century, there would have been greater awareness and therefore no need for destruction in the first decades of the twentieth century. Spiritual awareness simply has to be greater than purely sensual and material awareness. If this had been the case during the last decades of the nineteenth century, the powers of destruction would not have had to intervene in the early decades of the twentieth century.

This is brought to realization most insistently, most penetratingly—epistemologically—and perhaps most cruelly, to the perceptive mind when you meet many of the dead who have entered the world of the spirit either during the last decades of the nineteenth or the first decades of the twentieth century. Many of them have been caught up in the hustle and bustle and search for material values here on Earth and never had the opportunity to let spiritual impulses arouse awareness. Many have gone through the gate of death without even a notion of the thoughts and ideas that point to spiritual impulses. If they had had the opportunity to take in spiritual thoughts and ideas before they went through the gate of death they could have taken these with them. It would have been something they needed after death, but they were not in a position to have it.

Anyone who knows the history of ideas of the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century also knows that people actually no longer knew how to use the term ‘spirit’. It has been used to describe all kinds of things, but not the true spirit. Those souls therefore had no opportunity of knowing the spirit whilst here on Earth, and they have to take the consequences. Having gone through the gate of death and entered the world of the spirit, they are thirsting for—well, what are they thirsting for, these souls who lived in materialism here? They are thirsting for destructive powers in the physical world! Those are the dues and they must be paid.

There is no easy way of dealing with these things. If we want to know the realities in this sphere, we must acquire a feeling for what in the Egyptian Mysteries6 was called ‘iron necessity’. Terrible as it may be, it was necessary that destruction should spread, for those who had gone through the gate of death were longing for the destructive powers in which they are able to live, seeing they did not receive what was due to them and had been deprived of spiritual impulses while on Earth.

Order cannot arise from the chaos until humanity decides to give room to such grave truths in their souls and also let these truths enter into the ideas that apply in the world of politics today. And if these truths sound pessimistic to you and make you think that humanity is still a long way from achieving all that is demanded, as I have indicated, you are indeed right. But let this justifiable pessimism become a challenge to become awake and to try, whatever your place in life may be, to awaken souls so that anthroposophy can send out its impulses. It cannot yet be done to any great extent, but we must have the real, honest desire to make people consciously aware in such a way that they are able to understand this concrete fact: longings have arisen in the dead in recent times, and those longings are being met with events which are truly horrifying for those of us who are alive here on the physical plane.

Just think how easy it is for some people to present their friends with an image of the region into which human beings enter when they have gone through the gate of death. Consider the unctuous sermons preached in the churches—with politicians now actually following the example of these sermonizers—and the facile notions people have of the world of the spirit, and you simply cannot help realizing how far removed from reality is the facile vanity of many of today’s leading figures. Compare the speeches of such leading figures—their lives show that they do anything but lead and that they are guided by all kinds of forces of which they are completely unconscious and which are not the right forces—compare this with what is really needed at the present time, and you will realize the immense gravity of the present situation.

Right next to our physical world lies another, non-physical or spiritual world, and this has never before influenced our world as intensely as it is doing at the present time. People are not aware of this, however; they do not even notice when things get heart-stoppingly fearsome and terrible. Intensely illuminating words are heard in the world today; they should set vast numbers of people thinking. But people never notice, or at least they do not show it if they do.

Some of you will remember that on a number of occasions in the last three years7 I have said that when the history of this ‘world war’ will be written in the future—unfortunately present-day critics have not done so, though it could be done fairly easily—it will be impossible to use the method which has produced the legend, the fairy tale, or call it what you will, which currently goes by the name of ‘history’. This was produced by ‘scholars’—as the world calls them—sitting in libraries for months, years and decades and studying diplomatic records in order to write their histories. Inevitably, a time will come when most of these histories will have to be pulped. In fact, no one will be able to write the history of these last years by such a method unless they are literally off their heads.

The causes of the chaos will not be apparent to the people who have been writing histories until now, but only to people who have a real feeling for what it means when a miserable individual of our time has to face a court and is forced to sum up the condition he was in at the time by flinging down before the world the lamentable statement: ‘First one thing happened, then another, and that was the moment when I went out of my mind!’ It was Sukhomlinov who spoke these pitiful words.8

Many people had gone out of their minds at that time, not just Sukhomlinov. What kind of moments are these in world events when the only way of describing them is by confessing that one has gone out of one’s mind? They are moments when Ahriman9 and his cohorts gain access to the human race and to human thoughts. For as long as people watch over their conscious minds and their consciousness is not in any way clouded or weakened, neither Ahriman nor Lucifer have access to it. But when it is damped down and one needs to use the phrase ‘I have gone out of my mind’, that is the moment when Ahriman and his cohorts enter the stage. The things that happen then will not appear in diplomatic records—little of what it says in those records in recent decades makes real sense, by the way. Leaving this aside, the things that have happened in our time and have led to chaos are not merely human actions, but above all the actions of ahrimanic spirits seeking to gain access by reducing human awareness. Some of you know very well that soon after the present catastrophe broke on the world I pointed out that when we speak of the origins of this catastrophe in time to come, we must not do so on the basis of written records; instead we shall have to point to real facts through which ahrimanic spirits gained access to the stage of human events.

These things must be taken in all seriousness; they have to be seen as concrete realities and not merely as abstract formulations. People who do not know anything about it may well laugh when one says that Ahriman gained access to human evolution. They may well laugh at people who say this, but the day will come when world history laughs them to scorn for having laughed at others today.

We certainly cannot say that the judgements, ideas and notions to be found on the surface in recent years show any degree of maturity. People even failed to understand when eighteen months ago it was pointed out somewhere that something might soon happen of which due note should be taken; it should not be taken lightly. Concrete examples given as an indication of what was likely to happen were never taken in the right way; people were not sufficiently awake in their minds to do so. Now the event has come. And people fail to realize that something is taking root deeply in a certain soil. People are taking it as something which—well, because a certain number of statements take up so many lines, people accept they have a number of statements made in that particular number of lines. They are not at all interested in looking for the roots of such statements, but simply take things at their face value.

I think you know what I mean. You know I am referring to the Papal Note10 as something I had seen coming for eighteen months. I have looked around a great deal to see if I might not find someone who has expressed their views on this Note, or asked the kind of question that should have come to mind.

Let us remember that the idea of the State as we know it today has been dawning since the sixteenth century. In some parts of the world peculiar people known as ‘historians’ are speaking of States as something which have existed for I do not know how long. But they know little about real history. The present-day idea of a State is no more than four or five hundred years old, and something entirely different existed in earlier times. It is important to know this and be really clear about it. The priestly element, which is to be found in Rome, is indeed older than our modern States. It had its justification in its own day, when it brought about many things in the world. I have tried to find out if people are asking themselves the question: What does it really mean that the modern structures which have developed over four or five centuries cannot find a way of achieving order out of their own resources, and look back to the old priestly element as something to be discussed in the way people generally discuss things today?

It would interest me to know if anyone faced with the question as to whether it is a good idea to skate on ice when it is only one millimetre thick would actually answer in the affirmative. Relative to what we are really dealing with, the concepts on which people base their opinions when a priestly element brings impulses into modern life today are like a one-millimetre layer of ice covering the water. The things people write and say today are like someone skating on ice that is not more than one millimetre in thickness. No one is trying to understand what is happening; no one is prepared to see that what matters is not to take a document and look at the statements it contains, but to know that a statement can mean something totally different, depending on the source from which it comes.

Everywhere today we are faced with the need to warn people in all seriousness to look to the origins, to see how things are related, to look for realities and not to the way things look on the surface. Surely it cannot be that difficult for anyone to admit: I see the way things are, but I do not yet understand them and therefore I will not say anything to interfere. Considering the incredibly superficial level of education, it is not at all surprising when people are able to understand and have an opinion on everything. People find it really difficult to admit that they cannot judge an issue and need to get a basis for their judgement before they give an opinion. In fact, it hardly ever comes to their minds that one has to have a basis upon which to form an opinion.

Infinitely much depends on real insight into the driving forces, especially for the immediate future. It has to be realized that the chaos will certainly not be reduced if—speaking hypothetically—the Churches were to succeed in establishing even the initial stages of apparent order. The worst error we can fall into would be to say: It does not matter where peace comes from, even if it is from the Pope. The point is, it may actually cause no harm at all to have peace initiated by the Pope; the question is how those who are involved see the issue.

Again and again we need to be really clear in our minds that the present time is literally challenging us every hour, indeed every minute, to wake up. Anthroposophy as a science of the spirit can only be understood by those who are able to grasp that humanity is being asked to make a clear decision. Either the spirit is understood or the chaos continues. A papered-over chaos would be no better than the carnage we have today. If we are unable to come up with anything better than materialism and again materialism, even a heightened materialism, in the next few years, and if it were to happen that the events of the last three years, to which humanity has failed to wake up and take notice, were to lead to a new rush for material goods—many people are longing for this as something that comes with peace—then souls would once again go through the gate of death and thirst for destruction here on Earth. There would be no end to the destruction.

All it needs is to get an idea, a feeling, an inner impulse for the need to turn to the things of the spirit! Then we shall progress, depending on the extent to which this is achieved. Anyone who wants to gain a little understanding of the present position, and looks at our time in the light of the serious truths we have been considering, must develop a reasonable degree of feeling for all the terrible, hopelessly commonplace and superficial things that are now being written and said in this world.

Imagine a band of children smashing up all the pots and plates, glasses and everything in the house. The adults who see this happening are considering how to stop it, for the children keep running to the larder and all over the house to find more things to smash. Finally the adults have an idea as to how they can stop it. A number of people who are watching, people who actually consider themselves to be the teachers of these children, find a solution: they take care that everything breakable is collected and smashed to pieces—and that, they think, should put an end to it all! I do not know how many people would not consider those teachers to be fools. This is the kind of situation where people would see the truth. Yet there are people who consider themselves to be wise and who say to the whole world: Carnage must continue until peace comes; everything has to be broken, so there will be nothing left to smash in the world. This is considered wisdom. Go on murdering people for as long as you can and you will stop the murder. This is wisdom!

For anyone who has even a spark of logic it is no longer wisdom when the teacher says to a band of children: To make sure nothing else gets smashed up, I will quickly get people to collect all other breakable objects and smash them; I reckon nothing else will get smashed after that. Why do people call this foolishness and the other thing political foresight? Because people’s thinking stops at the very point where it should be most intense, which is where their thoughts relate to great questions of destiny.

We shall continue with this tomorrow, and consider some serious spiritual truths.