The Human Spirit E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

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

Beschreibung

'To live in truth, to wish to be true in one's whole being, will be the watchword of the future.' – Rudolf Steiner. In the midst of the lies and propaganda of the Great War, Rudolf Steiner struggled to convey the truths of the human spirit. The 'truth' asserted by partisan interests, he suggested, was invariably tinged with dishonesty – whether the outright mendacities of politicians and rulers (Steiner refers here to the machinations of the British Empire), or the manipulative techniques of secret societies, intent on securing and shoring up their own power. In relation to the latter, Rudolf Steiner highlights how, whilst we tend to reject overt authority nowadays, we succumb more easily to its covert forms in the 'received wisdoms' we often unthinkingly adopt. In seeking to help his audiences discern the spiritual struggle unfolding behind outer events, Steiner describes how the intrigues that led to the war were based on intentional deceit, which served hidden aims of which the public was mostly kept in the dark. In contrast to the divisiveness of untruth, truth is based on a realization of the interconnectedness of all things – of interdependence between the realms 'below' and 'above' us. The 'I', upon which all evolution on earth is predicated, signifies an overcoming of egotism and narrow interests, together with the imaginative embrace of all beings. Its spiritual reality – that descends to us from non-material worlds and towards which we evolve through earthly lives – is the epitome of truth. Amidst many other topics covered here, Rudolf Steiner speaks about The Qur'an and the Mystery of Golgotha; Henry VIII, Thomas More and the Church of England; the Jesuits and their State in Paraguay; Freemasons, esoteric symbols, and handshakes; Madame Blavatsky's occult imprisonment by Anglo-Saxon brotherhoods; Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov; and the occult literature of Papus and Lévi.

Leseprobe

THE HUMAN SPIRIT

Past and Present—Occult Fraternities and the Mystery of Golgotha

THE HUMAN SPIRIT

Past and Present—Occult Fraternitiesand the Mystery of Golgotha

Twelve lectures given in Berlin between 13 February and 30 May 1916

TRANSLATED BY MATTHEW BARTON

INTRODUCTION BY MATTHEW BARTON

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESSCW 167

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

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

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2015

Originally published in German under the title Gegenwärtiges und Vergangenes im Menschengeiste (volume 167 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand transcripts and notes that were not reviewed or revised by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on the latest available (second) edition (1962), edited by Robert Friedenthal and Wolfram Groddeck

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1962

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 482 7

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

CONTENTS

Memorial verse

Introduction, by Matthew Barton

LECTURE 113 FEBRUARY 1916

The Human Spirit Past and Present

LECTURE 27 MARCH 1916

The Human Soul and Spirit

LECTURE 328 MARCH 1916

Glimpses into the Deeper Impulses of History

LECTURE 44 APRIL 1916

Symbol, Handshake and Word

LECTURE 511 APRIL 1916

Humanity's Primordial Revelation

LECTURE 618 APRIL 1916

Easter Reflection

LECTURE 725 APRIL 1916

The Lies in Modern Life

LECTURE 82 MAY 1916

Thomas More's Utopia

LECTURE 99 MAY 1916

Rite and Symbol: The Jesuit State in Paraguay

LECTURE 1016 MAY 1916

The Powers that Oppose the Spirit. Fundamental Truths of Christianity

LECTURE 1123 MAY 1916

A Passage from the Jewish Haggadah

LECTURE 1230 MAY 1916

Homo economicus

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

During the war years, Rudolf Steiner spoke the following memorial words before every lecture for members of the Anthroposophical Society that he gave in countries affected by the conflict.

My dear friends, we here remember the guardian spirits of those who stand on the great battlefields of current events:

Spirits, guardians of your souls,

May your wings bring

The petitioning love of our souls

To earthly human beings

Entrusted to your protection

So that, united with your power

Our plea shine out, bring help

To the souls it loving seeks.

And turning also to the guardian spirits of those who have already crossed the threshold of death during these dire events:

Spirits, guardians of your souls,

May your wings bring

The petitioning love of our souls

To human beings in the sphere

Entrusted to your protection

So that, united with your power

Our plea shine out, bring help

To the souls it loving seeks.

And the spirit whom for years we have sought to approach through our science of the spirit, the spirit who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha for the earth's redemption and for the freedom and progress of humanity, may he be with you in your arduous duties.

INTRODUCTION

The word ‘truth’ is used by all of us in all kinds of contexts and situations, and, it has to be said, often in a way that unconsciously serves our own less than comprehensive view of it. It is a word that figures frequently in this volume, and Steiner uses it, I feel, to challenge us in our often slapdash and partisan requisitioning of the word. For him, truth has to be continually sought, as if digging down through manifold strata of appearance to find a reality—another vital word for him—that underlies and encompasses all narrower perspectives. The ‘truth’ asserted by a partisan interest is invariably tinged with dishonesty, whether this be the outright mendacities of politicians and rulers (Steiner refers here to the machinations, in his day, of the British Empire, but similar intrigue clearly continues unabated) or equally—and often in collaboration with the former— the manipulative techniques of ‘secret societies’ intent on securing and shoring up their power.

In early 1916, when these lectures were given, the conflict of partisan interests had of course assumed very violent forms— entrenched positions all too aptly reflected in the actual trenches of the First World War. Truth, as we know, is the first casualty of war; but the machinations that had led to it (along with incompetence in high places) were not just untruth by omission but, in Steiner's view, intentional deceit that served hidden aims about which the public was mostly in the dark. By this time, however, the ‘spirit of 1914’, characterized by one Berlin professor at the time as a ‘great single feeling of moral elevation, a soaring of religious sentiment, in short, the ascent of a whole people to the heights ... ‘, must have started to pale as the horrors of the protracted war began to be felt by civilians too. It was in this year also that Steiner gave his lectures on ‘the Karma of Untruthfulness’, speaking out against the frenzy, hatred and propaganda that were still ubiquitous, and trying to help his audiences to discern the spiritual struggle unfolding behind outer events.

Truth is never, it seems, easy, comfortable or superficial. ‘Realities’, says Steiner ‘speed ahead of us while our knowledge hems them in like a dress too small and tight.’ It can be sought therefore only by a willingness to review and revise our assumptions, to reappraise our fixed positions, whether these be unconscious habits of materialistic thought, with which our education has ‘equipped’ us, or our habitual efforts to (wrongfully) constrain and control others’ thoughts and actions by insisting on the ‘truth’ of a limited point of view. In relation to the latter, Steiner highlights how, while we tend to reject overt authority in modern culture nowadays, we easily succumb to its more covert forms in the received wisdoms we adopt unthinkingly.

It is terribly difficult to be sure when we possess the truth, not least since the word ‘possess’ itself suggests an unwillingness to revise our purchase on it. But Steiner offers hints about how and when we can sense its presence in us: not just in our words themselves, or the views they express, but (and he reiterates this) the very way we use words, our tone, our tact in using them, and our apprehension of the scope and limits of language. Can we place words into a room of others, or a community of readers, in a way that does not insist too forcefully on one point of view but instead invites a free and mutually enlarging response? Another place where we can look for truth is in, say, art and architecture: in buildings whose inner purpose is reflected in their outer forms; or in painting that allows the spirit— rather than merely naturalistic reproduction of the world—to speak through it. These are also metaphors of our own congruency, of inner belief, intuitions or feeling corresponding to their outer expression. Utilitarian buildings and naturalistic art, made shallow in their echo of merely earthly imperatives, suppress non-material realities and, in Steiner's view, become part of our ‘cultural illness’: a disjuncture which divides us from ourselves and the deeper sources of our life and health.

In a key lecture in this volume Steiner shows that truth goes hand-in-hand with a sense of (perhaps unfashionable) gratitude for our place in the world—a realization of the interconnectedness of all things, of interdependence between all the realms both ‘below’ and ‘above’ us. This sense of humility clearly takes us further and deeper than mere economic exploitation of the earth's resources, and a limited view of ourselves as, primarily, ‘Homo economicus’. Steiner thinks the partial truths of Darwinism ultimately need huge revision. Ideas of the ‘selfish gene’ (Dawkins) fail to recognize that, in the magnificently enlarged sense in which Steiner uses it, the ‘I’ upon which all evolution on earth is predicated signifies an overcoming of egotism, and the imaginative embrace of all other beings. The spiritual reality of the ‘I’ that descends to us from non-material worlds, and towards which we evolve through earthly lives, is the epitome of truth. ‘To live in truth,’ says Steiner, ‘to wish to be true in one's whole being, will be the watchword of the future.’ But since to do this means facing ourselves with courage and unsparing honesty, we can be sure that it will be anything other than a comfortable undertaking.

Matthew Barton, October 2015

LECTURE 1

13 FEBRUARY 1916

WE will hear a recitation of poems by Friedrich Lienhard and Wilhelm Jordan, and following this I would like to reflect on contemporary life from an anthroposophic and literary perspective. This will end the evening. First, though, I wish to say a few words by way of introduction.

Friedrich Lienhard1 is a modern poet who, we can say, has to some degree come close to spiritual science through his own endeavour. On 4 October last year, 1915, Friedrich Lienhard celebrated his 50th birthday. In Dornach we joined our voices to the numerous good wishes from far and wide that were sent to this spirit-filled poet; and it is my belief that we have particular reasons to look a little more closely at the content and artistry, the poetic nature, of Friedrich Lienhard, who in some ways has affiliated himself with our movement, and regards it favourably. He himself says that he was born in French Alsace and that he experienced some difficulties in wrestling his way through to what he calls his world-view—which he increasingly sought to bring to the light of day, to develop and elaborate, from a central European, German quality. In his poems he really sought to unfold the authentic impetus of this central European, German nature. In this poet there lives something which he felt to have an intimate affinity with his being, and which, as I have tried to describe, he sought and strove for. An element lives in him whose value may perhaps only properly be understood from the artistic and spiritual perspective of spiritual science. In Lienhard's poems we have, above all, wonderful descriptions of nature: lyrical nature poems, but of a very distinctive kind. When he tries to write human utterances, though, these are also nature poetry. Here too there is something that emanates from human nature in an immediate and natural way, and reveals the spirit within natural existence. What is this due to? It originates in something that we may perhaps only properly heed in Friedrich Lienhard if we consider not only the content, the thoughts expressed in his work, but also the intrinsically artistic form they are embodied in. And this is true of all art, although nowadays it has vanished entirely from human awareness in respect of art, and poetry in particular. In the feelings, the thoughts that arise and develop, flare and fade, in this distinctive swelling of his soul experiences, as they come to expression in poetic language, we find something like the sway of an elemental spirituality, a sympathy of the poet's soul with what, as we see it, lives elementally in the etheric world in nature behind merely sensory existence, what lives in the etheric world when human nature comes to natural expression—as for instance in the utterances of a child's soul life. If we study the words of Friedrich Lienhard it really seems as if elemental spirits arise and move through them—these spirits who, as we know, stream and warm through all natural phenomena, live and weave within them. And this streaming and warming, this weaving life of elemental beings in nature, enters and lives in the words of such a poet, who truly understands how to live in harmony with the spirit of nature.

Furthermore, through his capacity to grasp contexts of great scope relating to humanity and the cosmos, with which he has a great, feeling affinity, he seeks—without ever lapsing into narrow nationalism—to encompass the driving, active powers and beings of national culture; yet he does so not by focusing on a randomly individual element, but by drawing on the whole sway and surge of the folk-soul principle, placing individual figures into the great, spiritual context of national life and culture. Thus Friedrich Lienhard can comprehend and portray a figure such as Father Oberlin2 from Steintal in Alsace, someone spiritualized by a kind of atavistic clairvoyance, and do so in a vividly three-dimensional and yet simultaneously intimate, soulful way. Out of this same impulse he knew how to re-invoke ancient figures of the gods and bring them back into the present. He does not do this, though, by simply taking the content of the old heroic sagas and legends but by really trying to find the means, in modern idiom, to reawaken the tide suffusing this ancient life, whose waves still lap at the shores of our own times. In a sense, therefore, Friedrich Lienhard is really one of our most elevated poets. Other modern poets have sought to distance themselves from all real art, from spirituality, by focusing on the naturalistic and realistic in their work, in what they see as a new style. The real poet does not seek to create something new by naturalistic means, though, but by grasping the eternal stream of beauty afresh, anew, in a way that allows art to remain art. And real art, therefore, can never be devoid of spirit.

No doubt it is due to this also that Friedrich Lienhard has come closer to what he calls ‘Paths to Weimar’. For a long time he was the editor of a periodical called Paths to Weimar which appeared at irregular intervals, in which he tried to engage with the great ideas and artistic impulses of the great period at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, to discern, as we may find in our concluding reflections, what was of real worth in this era that has now been completely or at least largely forgotten. By this means he sought to deepen his own, later artistic culture, to make it more inward; and thus wonderfully inward poems eventually emerged from this endeavour, such as those about St Odile and other figures. He connects all such things in a genuine, authentic way with the Christian impulses that surge through humanity. And it is remarkable how he so finely and subtly approaches an element—not through the outward content of his poetry, but by drawing on elemental qualities and beings to sustain it—which seemed to have been lost entirely from German poetry. When you hear the recitation you will notice this in certain passages in the form of alliterative art, alliteration.

This alliteration, and its affinity with the whole nature of central European, German folk culture, leads him close to another poet who, partly by his own fault and yet chiefly by the fault of our era and its aberrations, has met with little understanding. The second part of the recitation will be devoted to this poet, Wilhelm Jordan,3 who, through stave rhyme or alliteration, sought to renew what he calls the ‘resonant stream of speech of ancient days’. It was intrinsic to his nature to reintroduce this form of ancient poetry into the modern era, seeking to raise it above the small scope of the everyday to encompass great and moving impulses. And it has to be said that it is a terrible shame—although Jordan himself was partly to blame for this—that a poem such as ‘The Demiurge’ has remained so neglected. It is a poem which truly attempts to connect the world-moving spirit principles with the life of humanity on earth. In the 1850s, partly due to Wilhelm Jordan himself, it remained neglected. He is partly at fault himself since he did adopt something of the naturalistic, scientific mode of looking at the world, and this spoiled a good part of his endeavours. In his poem ‘Nibelungen’ much was spoiled by the fact that he allowed naturalistic principles of inheritance to hold sway, the material powers of descent from one generation to the next, rather than what older eras saw as much deeper principles. He places too great an emphasis on what passes down through the blood instead of from soul to soul. By this means, certainly, Wilhelm Jordan paid his tribute to the modern naturalistic and scientific mode. But at the same time this deprived his works of what, in a former era, gave human artistic endeavours their great spiritual impulses, preventing them from sinking into inartistic barbarism, which later frequently came to replace former spiritual principles. Today we can see how Wilhelm Jordan's efforts are ridiculed. But we, for our part, should let great impulses work upon us, wherever they appear, for the time will come when such impulses will need to fulfil a certain mission in the whole, universal evolution of humanity.

Certainly, the poet Friedrich Lienhard meets with great and widespread acknowledgement. But what we, in our circles, can find in his work, and should seek to discover, will primarily be what carries his artistic endeavours forward into the future upon and along with the wave of spiritual-scientific endeavours. And now let us first hear Friedrich Lienhard's poems, and then some passages from Wilhelm Jordan's Nibelungen poem, the legend of Siegfried.

[Recitation by Frau Dr Steiner of the following poems by Friedrich Lienhard: ‘Faith’, ‘Morning Wind’, ‘Forest Greeting’, ‘The Light Creative’, ‘Lonely Rock’, ‘Did you learn of it too?’, ‘All the delicate flower bells’, ‘Soul Migration’, ‘Elfen Dance’, ‘Summer Night’. Songs of St Odile: ‘Autumn on Mont Saint Odile’, ‘Saint Odile’. Recitation from Wilhelm Jordan's ‘Nibelungen Song’.4]

It is always good to experience the art of poetry, of this kind particularly. In Friedrich Lienhard we have a poet who tries still to bear into the present era soul experiences of a spiritual, idealistic nature, who is strong enough still to unite these with experiences of the natural world. Here we can still sense that in art how you say things is more important than what is said. How wonderfully he conjures a feeling of enchantment in the area surrounding Mont St Odile, and how beautifully he conveys an immediate, lyrical apprehension of the feeling which this patron saint emanates from the region and from the monastery there. The legend, according to which she was once persecuted by her cruel father, but, blinded by him, gained the mystical ability through this very fact to heal the blind and give them back their sight, forms the centre of this poem around which everything else revolves. Everything of a true, mystical nature that relates to this legend, lyrically interwoven with the natural world around Mont St Odile in Alsace, comes to expression in the poems by Friedrich Lienhard that you have just heard. But there are many, many more poems of such power, and at the same time of such intimacy and subtlety by this same poet. The elemental powers resonating from his works does, in turn, give us cause also to recall the much denigrated and neglected poet Wilhelm Jordan.

The small sample we heard today will have shown you how this poet tries to create the figures he places before us out of the great, spiritual weft of life and at the same time to combine this with all we meet in outward physical life: a union of the latter with what weaves and lives in the surging spirit world. It seems to me that in Wilhelm Jordan's work we can, particularly, discern, how the poet's soul unites with world-historical currents, so that artistic, poetic endeavour embodies for us a striving that infuses the spiritual streams of evolution.

The last time we were here together, last Tuesday,5 I felt the need to ask what would happen to human evolution on earth if no spiritual influx could enter what is given us by purely external, physical existence. Not only in external fields of knowledge, of science, and in social existence and so forth, but also in the artistic realm, it becomes strikingly apparent that we are living in critical times: we are experiencing a crisis (a word connected with ‘critical’) though not in the sense used by the diminutive literature of today. If the living nature of spiritual science does not encompass human soul life, art, which cannot exist without spirit, will be lost to humanity, must fade from us, no longer resonating as it still does from figures such as Wilhelm Jordan, and as poets such as Friedrich Lienhard seek to invoke it. As yet, human beings do not recognize the threat of artistic decline, since in many respects, here also, the intoxication and somnambulistic dreaming I spoke of last Tuesday still hold sway. Much of this could be discerned if people had the organs of vision to perceive it. It would be an excellent thing if more and more people could, through a true feeling for the science of the spirit, gain insight into the significant fact that the art of acting—that really did survive until quite recently—is now sinking into a slough of despond in forms that are anything other than artistic. Rheinhardtian principles6 prefigure what art will become if nothing remains but an increasingly pervasive self-encapsulation from all spiritual life and spiritual feeling. It is very sad to see today how great a number of people can still regard the spectacles of Rheinhardtism as any kind of art.

To see clearly in this field we do need a strong impulse that can emerge from an artistic sensibility kindled by spiritual science. Modernity in art, as it is called, is often nothing more than a confused delirium. If we really try to comprehend modern life, we can actually identify the place, if you like, where an existence entirely consumed by materialism collapses into the swamp of art or, seen from another perspective, into oblivion of everything that really constitutes art. You see, in order for a real sense of art to keep taking root in humanity's further evolution, what originated in the past and for example lives also in Lienhard's poems, a kind of nature pantheism and spirit pantheism, needs to develop more tangibly and specifically: people must learn to comprehend the multiplicity of life in a way that enables them to perceive the etheric, astral and spirit alongside and within sensory reality. Without such perception humanity will remain blind, especially in relation to art. And specifically in terms of artistic vision, the world will, one might say, come to expression only as the rough-hewn external reality of the senses; artists will look at this outer reality and describe it directly as it is.

But in fact you cannot give descriptions of this kind, echoes and reflections of sensory reality, without at the same time conveying something that clouds our sense of life with unclarity, offering dream states and befuddlement in which, basically, we never quite know what we are dealing with. Today this dizzy delirium in relation to the phenomena of life is frequently regarded as subtle psychology. It often pains me to see how few people have the capacity to feel things strongly enough in this domain, and in some way or other to resist it. The artist has to develop an eye for the deeper life of the world, to look at others with the soul organs which humanity's evolution has developed in us, and to be able to say: Here is a human being, with such and such a nature, and he experiences this or that—one person dwells more in his physical body, another more in the I, yet another more in his astral body. We need a living feeling for the different characters and characteristics of human beings, informed more by the physical, or the etheric, or the astral, or the I. And if people cannot develop this perception today, but try to describe human beings—in poetry say—all that emerges is the kind of delirium now widely regarded as art.

One must be able to get a hold of the essence of significant phenomena so that we awaken understanding of what actually is. Let us imagine that we meet four people who have some kind of karmic connection with each other. If four such people are brought together, we can understand how karma has involved them in certain relationships with each other, but also how the stream of karma flows through the course of evolution and how these people, due to their karma, have sought to place themselves into the world in a certain way. We can never understand anything from perspectives possible today if we are unable to perceive these karmic connections in the world.

Let us turn for a moment to the four brothers Dmitri, Ivan, Alyosha and Smerdyakov in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.7 If we can see with an eye of soul then we find in these four brothers really four types whom one can only fully understand in terms of the karma that has brought them together. A current of karma brings four brothers into the world, making them the sons of a typical modern rascal amidst degenerate surroundings. They choose this karma, and are introduced into this environment as the four sons of this rogue. Yet side-by-side we see they are each different in nature. In fact we can only understand them if we know that in one of them, Dmitri Karamazov, the I predominates, while in a second, Alyosha, it is the astral body. In Ivan, the etheric body is predominant, while in the fourth, Smerdyakov, the physical body holds full sway. If we can consider the four brothers from this perspective, then their life is illumined for us. And now reflect how a poet with the gifts of Wilhelm Jordan, and with a spiritual world-view that would accord with our times, would place four such brothers alongside each other, how he would succeed in comprehending their spiritual foundations and underlying constitutions. What does Dostoyevsky comprehend? Nothing more than that these four brothers of his are simply the sons of a very typical, drunken layabout from a certain stratum of society. The mother of the first son, Dmitri, is a half-hysterical adventuress who, having had enough of the drunken old layabout Karamazov, can no longer endure him; she beats him then leaves him with this elder son, Dmitri. But everything is seen only in terms of physical heredity—he is simply the offspring of a wastrel and a walloper. All is described reductively, as if the author were a modern psychiatrist who only considers the coarsest principles of heredity and has no sense of spiritual factors at work. He presents us merely with the ‘burdens of inheritance’. Then we have the two next sons, Ivan and Alyosha, born to a second wife since naturally these ‘burdens of heredity’ must act differently in these two figures. Their mother is not half but wholly hysterical, given to continual fits of sobbing and crying. Whereas the old drunkard's first wife often beat him, he now beats her. The fourth son, in whom everything of a physical nature predominates, is Smerdyakov, a kind of hybrid between wise humility and idiocy, of real stupidity and yet also great acuity. He too is the son of the typical layabout, but his mother is dumb, the village idiot named ‘stinking Lisaveta’ whom the old drunkard rapes and who dies giving birth. Naturally no one knows this is also his son. Smerdyakov stays at home, and now all the scenes between these figures unfold as the novel develops. Dmitri, due to the ‘burden of heredity’, naturally becomes a person in whom the subconscious I storms and rampages, driving him on through life so that he staggers about without direction. In the way he is described it is clear that he is not a healthy, spiritual figure but a sensualist and hysteric. But this derives also from inevitable modern developments, which militate against anything that can originate in a spiritual world-view: everything that does not really know what it wants, unclear instincts, which can equally well become either the loftiest mysticism or the worst, criminal excess. Indeed, fuelled by the unconscious, there is an easy transition from one to the other; and all this Dostoyevsky embodies in a sense in Dmitri Karamazov. He wants to describe a Russian, since invoking the true nature of Russians is always his aim.

Ivan, the next son, is a rationalist and more western-oriented. Dmitri knows nothing of the culture of the West but is rooted fully in Russian instincts. Ivan was in Paris, has studied widely, absorbed a western perspective and world-view, and, as Dostoyevsky portrays him, is filled with materialistic ideas which he discusses with everyone: ideas of western materialism but tinged with Russian musing and reflection. In his discussions with people, the fog of instincts is interwoven with all kinds of ideas about modern culture. Should one be an atheist or not, he wonders. Can one accept a God, or not? He concludes that one can, after all, accept the existence of God. Yes, he says, I accept God—that is his ultimate position, but he cannot accept the world. If he accepts God, then he cannot accept the world, since this world, as it is, as it appears, cannot have been created by God. I accept God but not the world, he says.

The third son, Alyosha, joins a monastery at a young age. The astral body predominates in him, and it is also apparent that all kinds of instincts are at work in him, develop in him, through mysticism too. It becomes clear that, like his elder brother Dmitri, he too has a potentially criminal nature and is in thrall to the same instincts, although in him these take a different form, making him into a mystic. Criminality is only a particular elaboration of the same instincts which, diverted in a different direction, can call forth fervent prayer and faith in the divine love pervading the world; both come from a lower realm, from the lower instincts of human nature, but develop in different ways.

Naturally there is absolutely no objection to portraying such characters artistically, for all reality can become a subject for art. But what counts is the manner of portraying it, not the content itself. These figures must be fully imbued with the living nature of the spirit. Due to the idiosyncratic circumstances I have often described here in relation to Russian culture, what comes to expression in Dostoyevsky, in particular, is the form human evolution must take if Russian life adheres to a spirituality that develops in merely natural ways. Recently I made a distinction between this and the development of spiritual conditions. From the very outset, Dostoyevsky was the embodiment of anti-German sentiment, and instinctively refused to allow anything of western European culture to flow into his soul. He sought to go no further than to grasp cosmic forms and figures in a kind of delirium, letting them pass him by, and carefully avoiding seeing anything spiritual in the physical throng of humanity that surged before his inner gaze. Instead of grasping his characters through profundities of soul, he brought them forth from the subterranean realms of purely physical nature, which in him was pathological. And this had its effect upon those who had forgotten their capacity to raise themselves to the spirit. A powerful effect was exerted upon them by the, let us call it, pathological bubbling and boiling that acts in human guts and innards which Dostoyevsky's nature was able to transform artistically, but to the exclusion of anything spiritual. This had its effect. Otherwise, of course, a mere description or characterization would be nothing but that, a straw blaze, a wooden portrayal. But since it emerged from a subconscious that was pathological, that acts hysterically, it became interesting— specifically by virtue of the paradox arising if one gives oneself up to purely physical existence without a spark of spiritual life, but does so with feeling; for that is something Dostoyevsky possesses to the highest degree.

And then we have interwoven into The Brothers Karamazov that remarkable episode about the Grand Inquisitor, before whom, as it is presented to us, the reincarnated Christ appears. This is presented as a novella by Ivan Karamazov incorporated into the book. The reincarnated Christ appears before the Grand Inquisitor—a worthy representative of orthodox Christianity, who is fully conversant with the nature of Christianity in his age. Picture this: a Christian, a true proponent of orthodox Christianity, faces the reincarnated Christ. He clearly has no other option, this Grand Inquisitor who represents ‘proper’ and ‘lawful’ Christianity, than to have the reincarnated Christ locked up! That is the first thing he does, for it is his task to hold inquisitions. It becomes apparent that the Grand Inquisitor, who represents due and lawful religion, knows what Christianity in our era requires. He sees that the Christ has come again and now stands before him. Yes, you are surely the Christ, he says to him—I am rendering this very roughly—but in the concerns of Christianity that we must represent, you have nothing to say, for you understand absolutely nothing about it. What you accomplished—did it do humankind any good, did it make human beings happy? It was left to us to make something proper out of the one-sided impracticality you brought us. If your form of Christianity alone had come amongst humankind, then people would never have found in it the salvation we have brought them. You see, to really bring human beings salvation one needs teachings that influence them. You thought that the teaching must be true, but such things get nowhere with humankind. The most important thing is that people should believe the doctrine they are taught, that it is given them in a way that compels them to believe. It is we who have established this authority.

Yes indeed: there was really nothing else to be done than to deliver up the reincarnated Christ to the Inquisition. In the Christianity that the Grand Inquisitor represents, you see, there is no room for the Christ if he should be so tactless as to reincarnate. The idea is grandiose, and executed in still more grandiose fashion. But it is interjected into a novel that is only a hysterical reflection of reality, offering nothing of the great impulses at work in the universe, offering no vision of anything spiritual in the author's mind but only an external counterfeit of Christ reincarnated and crushed by the Grand Inquisitor.

Such things relate to many other matters, and those who seek to comprehend the very pulse of spiritual science need to feel these affinities and not regard life too superficially. There are various things that can characterize the current state of our culture. We need only think, for instance, of two books8 that appeared not long ago, one of which is called Jesus, a Psycho-Pathological Study and the other Jesus Christ from a Psychiatric Perspective. Here the message of the Gospels is, as it were, laid out on the psychiatrist's couch. Particular passages are subjected to an examination and diagnosed—in particular the words of Christ Jesus himself—to show the pathological state of this individual who stands at the beginning of modern evolution. The psyche of Christ Jesus is diagnosed as pathological. So here we have, already, the ‘case’ of Christ examined in line with the dictates of modern psychiatry.

But we must see such phenomena in a broader context. How many people really feel the full idiocy of a culture where such things surface, really feel all the ramifications of such ideas? Again and again, after all, we have witnessed a renowned psychiatrist to whom folk all run for treatment. He writes innovative works on psychiatry and is accorded great acclaim. There are pupils or colleagues of his who, still following closely on his heels, write psychopathological studies of Goethe, Schiller, Nietzsche and all sorts of other figures who have a place in history, write also about Christ Jesus himself. And as we cross the threshold of the psychiatrist or any other scientific observer with misplaced reverence, with unthinking faith in their authority, we are allowing ourselves to be conveyed upon a current that leads, in extreme, to caricature, to idiocy and distortion. To try to see living contexts clearly is no doubt something that many experience as uncomfortable and seek to avoid; yet it is necessary to kindle such efforts.

We really make no headway at all by gathering together here and, with a certain desire for sensation or mystical enthusiasm, simply allowing spiritual science to act upon us. We make progress instead when this spiritual science lives in us, and we learn to observe life in terms of the impulses this spiritual science can kindle in us. We are not yet practitioners of spiritual science because we allow words about elemental spirits or hierarchies and so forth to stream over us once a week like cold—or maybe warm, I have no idea—shivers down our back. We practise the science of the spirit, instead, by bringing these things to life within us, relating them to all aspects and details of life. Truly, in observing the quagmires of modern art we can feel a sense of distaste and disgust—or would do if we do not aspire, like theosophists, to let universal human love prevail, and therefore avoid calling these quagmires by their proper name.

It is curious how reluctant people are nowadays to really open their eyes. Naturally, individuals are not at fault as such—it is the fault of the whole of modern culture. It becomes extremely hard for an individual to see such things clearly, for state education often tries to conceal or ignore things such as those I have spoken of during this rather disconnected, episodic evening. People in a sense are drawn away from reality, blinded to it. In this respect we really live at present in one of the greatest eras of human schooling, and must not overlook what we are given to learn. Think for a moment of the lack of discrimination that exists about the ways in which people relate to each other. For instance, the principle that no differences exist should not lead us to try to erase and confuse all distinctions and nuances— as it led the director of the Theosophical Society when she sought to discount the differences between diverse religions, leaving Hinduism shining in especial glory. Otherwise she muddied the differences, employing a logic that I have often compared with someone saying that they should use all the condiments on the table indiscriminately. This way of treating all religions in the same way, seeing no differences between them, is more or less like saying that salt, sugar and pepper are all condiments and can be used indiscriminately. Just try putting pepper in your coffee, sugar in your soup or curry powder on your dessert, and you will find that there is a difference! But it is this logic, similarly, which blinds people to the real and specific nature of evolution.

Many things are muddled like this, so that people are persuaded into a nebulous, foggy kind of dream state. All too easily one is misunderstood when one says these things. And for this reason I will expressly state how greatly, as you know, I esteem Tolstoy.9 But this does not mean we should forget that there lives in Tolstoy something, of course, that should not simply be equated with western European culture, painted in one uniform grey with it. In the past, in lectures on Tolstoy, I have often drawn attention to such distinctions. One can admire the greatness of a man like Tolstoy without overlooking aspects of his work that have been ignored. When Tolstoy was still widely read, in particular his first great works, people might—though only might—have seen in him a great spirit of the East, a great Russian author, who was however full of the bitterest hatred towards German culture, who disparaged it and disdained it. This was not remarked upon, because the early translators of Tolstoy into German left these passages out, or modified them. The unexpurgated translation by Raphael Loewenfeld10 arrived too late in the day, and by that time German literature had adopted a falsified Tolstoy.

Either one should really be fully conversant with things or refrain from judgement! Judgement must be founded on real knowledge. There is no need to overestimate Tolstoy. Clear discernment will show that, besides his greatness as a writer, he was also very much rooted in his national culture, and emerged from this. We should not just follow the lead of modern small-minded journalists who, while acclaiming the greatness of, say, Goethe or Schiller, use the same words to rave about Dostoyevsky. They do so without any sense that, compared with Wilhelm Meister or Elective Affinities, or also the works of Lienhard, even a novel like The Brothers Karamazov is second-rate in terms of the aesthetic principles we have developed from a previous era. We can form clear, precise, tangible views and judgements when we gain insight into what is; and today we live at a time when we must hone our judgement, gain such insight. In our times, mutual hatred between nations is growing ever greater. If we wish to make judgements, we have to learn to see how this hatred can develop from what has long, long existed.

These things must be stated so that we develop amongst ourselves something of a feeling for the importance of spiritual-scientific endeavour. It is easy to feel rather bitter whenever some newspaper or journal or book prints disparaging and foolish words about theosophy, whereas it would be so important to really grasp the very fundamental efforts and endeavours of spiritual science—without being fanatical about it of course, but just to accord it its proper place in modern culture. We must recognize that people today cannot really embrace spiritual science, cannot love what it is seeking to achieve because they cannot even take the few simple steps needed to get beyond the most extreme frivolity which today pervades most of our cultural life. To engage in serious reflections in a serious time would seem a justified endeavour. Which moment of world history, after all, would be more suited for it than this, a moment in human evolution excessive in its dreadful, terrible nature, though naturally it presents us with great and necessary challenges and developmental opportunities. What moment would be better fitted than this hour of need? To bring this home to us we need only reflect that in just one large-scale battle in June or July last year, on the northern part of the Western Front, as much ammunition was used as in the whole of the German-French war of 1870/71. Experts in such matters estimate that we will soon reach a point in these current conflicts when munitions expended will equal that of all previous wars since gunpowder was invented!

This is a grave time, and not one that can permit us to overlook the great spiritual crisis, too, through which humanity's evolution is now passing. The state of things is so dire that it would be unforgivable to avoid looking carefully at the whole importance of what human evolution requires, if we are able to do so by approaching these matters through the teachings of spiritual science.

LECTURE 2

7 MARCH 1916

RETURNING to various matters we have been speaking of recently, and have often spoken of in the past, I would like to expand on some of these things and, to begin with, make certain comments about the inner nature of the human being, our being of spirit and soul. As you know, we can identify an aspect of our inner life that we refer to, in abstract terms, as the etheric body. Whereas the human physical body can be perceived by the outer senses, by external science which is dependent on reason and sensory observation, the etheric body is supersensible in nature. Then we also speak of the next level of the human being as the astral body. We should recall here our frequent emphasis on the fact that our inner life is not something entirely unknown to us. In the physical world, within our corporeal existence, we also perceive our thinking, feeling and will. We experience them inwardly, and also experience them illumined and irradiated by the I. We can say that this thinking, feeling and will is something we inwardly perceive. But we cannot say—as you will gradually have become accustomed to thinking—that we actually perceive our astral body nor that we actually perceive our I. You see, this I of which we speak, as we showed in the course of our recent lectures, which returns to unconsciousness every time we fall asleep, is only a picture of the true, real I. In a sense, then, we can conclude that along with this I, our thinking, feeling and will are similarly only an expression, a manifestation of our true inner nature, just as the physical body is a manifestation or expression of the spiritual aspect we call the ether body. Naturally we are pleased when we can nicely compartmentalize any field of knowledge, box it up and store it away in neat categories. Many are happy to possess the really extremely phenomenological knowledge that the human being consists of physical body, ether body, astral body and I. But in fact—and I have often stressed this here—these four designations are not much more than words, verbal expressions. If we wish to proceed to real observation then in a sense we must always go beyond the confines that are so easily set by these terms.

Of course one can speak generally and say that thinking, feeling and will occur within the astral body. But this encompasses the reality of thinking only in a very one-sided, very abstract manner. As we stand, initially, within the physical world, the impulse for our thinking does indeed lie in the astral body, even in the I. But thinking develops as picturing capacity, as thought, only by virtue of our mobile etheric body. Here, as physical human beings, our whole thinking would remain unconscious for us if the astral body did not send its impulses of thinking into the etheric body, whose mobile character absorbs and incorporates them. And every thought, in turn, would simply fade without memory if we did not also have a physical body. We cannot say that the physical body is the bearer of memory; the etheric body is. But for us human beings in the physical body, the thinking that remains available to us in the etheric body would fade and disappear as dreams do if it could not inscribe itself into the physical matter of the physical body. In other words, it is only by virtue of our physical body that our thoughts can impinge upon this body.

So you can see what a complex process this thinking really is. Its impulses originate in the astral body, or even already in the I. And then these impulses communicate themselves to, and continue on into the etheric body, there calling forth thoughts, which in turn engrave or inscribe their traces into the physical body. By inscribing themselves in this way they can in turn be drawn forth again from memory during physical life.

Now let us once again consider something we have frequently addressed here—the actual nature of memory for us here in the physical body. We have experiences, don’t we, and we process them; we move on from them, and a time may come when we know more or less nothing of them, hardly relate to them. But then a time comes again when we draw such experiences forth from ourselves, from our inner life; and then, in the form of memories, we become aware again of what we once experienced.

It is perfectly right to think, initially, that this memory process belongs to us, to our soul. When we walk along the road, gather in social groups, no one can see with outward, physical sense organs what experiences we have had and what memories we bear within us. We bear this within our soul. One can put it like this: the envelope of the physical body is like a cloak within which, in our soul, we store our concealed memories. They belong to us, and throughout our lives we work upon ourselves in this way. In a sense we make the outer world into our inner world. And then we bear this outer world with us through our lives in the form of memories. We bear these memories with us as our most intrinsic possession. But it would be a serious mistake to think that this bearing of our memories through life encompasses the whole process. That is not so. Darwin, for instance, was right to study whether creatures such as earthworms have a special task;11 and he found that they do not exist only for the sake of it, but, in boring through the ground, have a vital part to play in soil fertility. Such things are acknowledged by science as a domain of certain knowledge. There is nothing to object to here, for it is good if science engages with specific phenomena. The problem comes when whole world-views are derived from such things. Naturally we must recall here the proverb about the man who digs eagerly for treasure but is happy merely to find earthworms.12 Translated into spiritual terms, we can ask this: Is the human activity, by means of which we continually form experiences into thoughts and preserve them in memories, of no significance at all for the rest of the universe? Is this process of memory really only one that occurs within our own confines?

The materialist will inevitably say that this process of course occurs only within us. At death we lay our physical body in the grave, and everything we preserved as memory is then of course over, like a flame extinguished. I will not try to refute this materialistic assumption here—we have often done so in the past. I want to consider something else instead, asking this: Is it not possible that our process of thought and remembering is after all very, very different from what unfolds for us in our memory? While we think, while we form thoughts from our experiences and preserve them as memories, not only are we preoccupied with our thoughts but the whole world of the hierarchies—the third hierarchy, that of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai—is also preoccupied with our thoughts. We do not think only for our own sakes, and preserve these thoughts within us, but in doing so at the same time we create a field of activity for the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. We think that our thoughts live only within us, but in fact these three spiritual hierarchies are preoccupied with these thoughts of ours. The least important aspect of our thoughts is the one we are aware of. Even when we have forgotten our thoughts, they are still within us. And just as we on earth concern ourselves with our machines or with our eating and drinking, so the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai concern themselves with a fabric, a tissue spun and woven from our thoughts. They work continually upon our thoughts. In other words the aspect of thought activity we are aware of is only the side of it turned towards us. There is another, hidden aspect. This ‘far side’ of thinking, which we do not see, appears thus to spiritual vision: whereas we possess our thoughts within us, from without the spiritual beings I have spoken of are preoccupied with our thoughts and weave them in a way that can, when we recognize this, show us that our thinking process is certainly not something unnecessary to the cosmos. It is not for us alone but is embedded in the whole of cosmic evolution. It contributes to new substance continually being interwoven with world evolution. If we were not born as a separate person, if we had not developed thoughts and preserved memories, at our death the fabric that can be woven from our thoughts, that we do not weave ourselves, would be lost to cosmic evolution.