The Mission of the New Spirit Revelation E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

'What would we be without love? We would inevitably become isolated and gradually lose all connection with our fellow human beings and our fellow creatures in the natural world.' – Rudolf SteinerIn this rich, previously-untranslated collection of lectures, Rudolf Steiner approaches and illumines the figure of Christ from manifold directions and perspectives. Christ, the being of love, is for the body of the Earth what the heart is within our individual organism. Given throughout 1911 – the year before Rudolf Steiner split from the theosophists citing fundamental disagreements over the true nature of Christianity – the lectures reflect Steiner's intensifying emphasis on the central deed of the Christ being in Earth evolution, whilst in tandem demonstrating the truths of reincarnation and karma. He reveals profound vistas of human development and paths of advancement over many lifetimes, in which Christ is to be our steadfast companion and exemplar. Lectures include: 'Faith, Love, Hope'; 'Original Sin and Grace'; 'The Effect of Moral Qualities on Karma'; 'The Importance of Spiritual Enquiry for Moral Action'; 'Wisdom, Prayerfulness and Certainty in Life'; 'The Birth of the Sun Spirit as Earth Spirit'; 'The Threefold Call from the World of Spirit'; 'Christmas – A Festival of Inspiration'; 'The I at Work Upon the Child and How this Relates to the Christ Being'; 'Ossian and Fingal's Cave', and many more. Translated by Matthew Barton, this volume features an introduction, notes and index.

Leseprobe

THE MISSION OF THE NEW SPIRIT REVELATION

THE PIVOTAL NATURE OF THE CHRIST EVENT IN EARTH EVOLUTION

Sixteen lectures given at various locations between 5 January and 26 December 1911

TRANSLATED BY MATTHEW BARTON

INTRODUCTION BY MATTHEW BARTON

RUDOLF STEINER

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

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2021

Originally published in German under the title Die Mission der neuen Geistesoffenbarung, Das Christus-Ereignis als Mittelpunktsgeschehen der Erdenevolution (volume 127 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 second German edition (1989) that was edited by Wolfram Groddeck, Edwin Froböse, Anna-Maria Baiaster and Ulla Trapp

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1989

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2021

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 586 2 EISBN 978 1 85584 623 4

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

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note

Introduction, by Matthew Barton

LECTURE 1 MANNHEIM, 5 JANUARY 1911The Diverse Eras of Humanity’s Evolution, and their Effect upon the Human Bodily Sheaths

Internalization of the soul faculties in the period between Augustine and Calvin. In the scientific age, a turning of soul powers outwards; this will be followed by a spiritual culture. Paracelsus as an example of the need to understand the world anew in every era. Religion, science and society must change as the configuration of our supersensible sheaths alters from epoch to epoch. The transition necessary in our time from the personal to the impersonal is apparent, in its declining and degenerating aspect, in the separation of money circulation from the personality; and in its upward trajectory, in the turning of the personality toward inspiring powers. Modern faith in authority and fear of ghosts. Dogma enters religion. Aristotle misunderstood. Spiritual science can lead us to religious experience, to spiritual integration of science and to a new practicality. Anthroposophy and Antisophy. A proverb by Fichte.

LECTURE 2 WIESBADEN, 7 JANUARY 1911The Effect of Moral Qualities on Karma

How teachings of karma can prove themselves in daily life. Envy can be traced to luciferic influence, lies to ahrimanic influence. Suppressed envy becomes fault-finding within a single incarnation; suppressed mendacity becomes shyness. In the next life on earth this will lead to bodily defects. Wonder—a function of the astral body. The proper mood of soul for an educator. The causes of long-lasting youthfulness and premature ageing. The fairy tale of the stork is the image of a reality.

LECTURE 3 FRANKFURT, 8 JANUARY 1911The Inwardness of the Human Soul and its Relationship to the World

The sentient soul mediates reception of outward sense impressions. In the rational or mind soul the I awakens. Detachment from the world through the consciousness soul. Split between opinion and affect. The angel intervenes at the border between consciousness soul and rational or mind soul, the archangel between the rational soul and the sentient soul. When we relate to our surroundings, we are invigorated by the spirits of personality. Luciferic beings oppose the angels, and ahrimanic beings oppose the archangels. Without the adversarial powers, the human being could not develop freedom. Following the consciousness soul, the mind soul and the sentient soul are also to become ripe for freedom. The moral responsibility of the members of a spiritual movement.

LECTURE 4 MUNICH, 11 FEBRUARY 1911The Connection of the Bodies of the Human Being with Humanity’s Evolution and Human Biography. The Son of God and Son of Man

The loose connection of the etheric and astral body to the physical body in the Egyptian cultural period made it possible for the powers of higher beings to stream in. The human being’s exterior was a reflection of his soul. Harmony of the beauty of the soul and of the body in Greek times. In future, the human being will have to draw powers consciously from the spiritual realm. The child’s changing form. The art of the Greeks and the art of the future. The need to absorb spiritual ideas. The work of the I upon the bodies in the early years of life. The wisdom of the childlike soul in the ancient Indian epoch. The soul and spirit of the child in the first three years is the Son of God, the bearer of the I consciousness is the Son of Man. The decay of the earth corresponds to the drying up of the physical human body. The Face of the Earth by Eduard Suess.

LECTURE 5 BASEL, 23 FEBRUARY 1911Wisdom, Prayerfulness and Certainty in Life

It is not enough to acquire theoretical truths of spiritual science. The meaning of our passage through successive cultural epochs. Numerical relationships and spiritual laws. The periodicity of life according to Wilhelm Fliess. Death and new birth. Patience and equanimity—the preconditions for spiritual development. Ancient wisdom must be replaced by Christ-imbued spirit knowledge. The mood invoked in the description of the planetary stages in Occult Science, an Outline. Fichte on the connection of the human being with the eternal. The pervading of the astral body with wisdom, the etheric body with prayerfulness, and the physical body with assurance in life; the meaning of these for earth’s evolution.

LECTURE 6 ZURICH, 25 FEBRUARY 1911The I at Work Upon the Child and How this Relates to the Christ Being

In the first three years of life the I, under the governance of higher beings, sculpts the brain. As the I becomes conscious, its connection with the world of spirit is extinguished. The twofold Son of God and Son of Man. The shape of the skull, a result of former incarnations. Enlivening the powers of the Son of God at a later age. Healing through laying on of hands. The connection between the Son of God in the human being and the Christ event. The deeper meaning of biblical proverbs. Three distinctions between the human being and the animal. An angelic being lived in John the Baptist as precursor of Christ Jesus. The earth as the body of humanity.

LECTURE 7 ST. GALLEN, 26 FEBRUARY 1911The Influx of Spiritual Insights into Life

The harmful effects of actions that are morally wrong. Ideals have a healing effect upon the astral body. The inadequacy of popular books on soul health. Overcoming materialism in life with a soul imbued by spiritual truths. The connection to our surroundings through the etheric streams of our hands. The etheric function of the thyroid. The relationship of the I to our environment in sorrow and laughter. Christ-permeated spiritual science engenders assurance in life.

LECTURE 8 BERLIN, 3 MARCH 1911Ossian and Fingal’s Cave

Fingal’s Cave—a cathedral fashioned by nature. The revival of Ossian’s songs by MacPherson and their effect upon the spirit of European culture. The core of Celtic folk culture in ancient Erin. In the song of the bards elemental passions were combined with the power of ancient clairvoyance. Fingal’s battle song. The courageous deeds of battle were a preparation for deeds of spiritual life. Address following a performance of Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture.

LECTURE 9 BIELEFELD, 6 MARCH 1911The Importance of Spiritual Enquiry for Moral Action

Immoral actions not only harm ourselves but humanity as a whole. Insight into our unity as human beings with the earth organism provides an enormous ethical impulse. As materialistic consciousness gains ever greater sway, antipathy to moral sermons increases. Christ as the archetype of the human being. The physical consequences on Jupiter of immorality and resistance to Christ. True wisdom emanates morality.

LECTURE 10 PRAGUE, 28 MARCH 1911Aphorisms on the Relationship between Spiritual Science and Philosophy

The need for precise philosophical formulations. Whereas modern philosophy is an abstract pursuit, anthroposophy builds a bridge from spirit to physical reality. Concepts formed in relation to sense perception must harmonize with concepts gained from spiritual, supersensible perception. The relation of the content of consciousness to reality. The I is more comprehensive than the sphere of subjectivity. The principle that nothing transpersonal can enter the subjective sphere is true only to a limited extent. Masked materialism in conventional epistemology. Knowledge as a duty.

Reflections to complement the lectures on Occult Physiology’.

LECTURE 11 MUNICH, 3 MAY 1911Original Sin and Grace

Almost all traditional religions have lost their true depths. The human being succumbed to luciferic temptation before the I entered us. We sank ever deeper in subsequent I development because the astral body became culpable. The ongoing influence of the luciferic influx on heredity. The ‘original sin’ allowed by the world order led to our descent from spiritual heights into physical, material existence, in order that we may evolve as free beings. The personality, within which astral drives live on the one hand, and abstract ideas on the other, must strive upward again to the spirit, where it will be filled by a higher personal principle, the Christ impulse. In this way, grace becomes the compensation for original sin.

LECTURE 12 COPENHAGEN, 5 JUNE 1911The Mission of the New Spirit Revelation

The longing for true self-knowledge. The symbol of the Rose Cross. True and false tolerance. Knowledge of reincarnation and karma in relation to life’s occurrences. The meaning of recurring lives on earth. Merely intellectual knowledge must be replaced by spiritual insight. The Christ event as the unique pivot of evolution. The danger of error and the victorious power of truth.

Introductory Words for the cycle ‘Spiritual Guidance of the Human Being and Humanity’

LECTURE 13 VIENNA, 14 JUNE 1911Faith, Love, Hope

Socrates said that virtue could be taught. The earth’s past and the past of humanity in its threefold nature. The I is our human present. The human future. The triad of faith, love and hope corresponds to the three fundamental powers of the soul. As human beings we remain united with our deeds. The idea of recurring lives on earth in Lessing’s The Education of the Human Race. The truths of spiritual science—a living nourishment for the human soul.

LECTURE 14 BERLIN, 19 DECEMBER 1911Symbolism and Imagination in relation to the play

The Soul’s Probation The transition in Capesius’s life to a spiritual outlook. The fairy tale of the miraculous spring. The world of the fairy tale as a mediating realm between clairvoyance and the rational world. The story of the Clever Cat as an example of fairy tale’s world-historical nature. Imaginative clairvoyance in ancient times. End-rhyme is the poetic form of mind- or rational-soul culture, whereas alliteration embodies a will-emphasizing, sentient-soul culture. Jordan’s Nibelungen, an attempt to renew old conditions. Language has to be returned to its origin in imaginative perception.

LECTURE 15 BERLIN, 21 DECEMBER 1911Christmas—A Festival of Inspiration

The thought of Easter points us to conquering powers of the future while the thought of Christmas directs us back to our human origins. Originally, 6 January celebrated the birth of Christ in Jesus. In the fourth century, as ancient knowledge faded, the festival of Jesus’ birth came to replace that of the birth of Christ in Jesus. In the Jesus boy of the Luke Gospel lived a soul who had not participated in humanity’s downward trajectory. The connection between ‘Adam and Eve Day’ and the festival of the birth of Jesus. The spiritual, cosmic significance of the Holy Nights.

LECTURE 16 HANOVER, 26 DECEMBER 1911The Birth of the Sun Spirit as Earth Spirit

The Christmas tree as a symbol of the inner, spiritual light. ‘Jericho’ and the ‘Crossing of the Jordan’ symbolize stages of initiation. The Gnostics still understood the Christ mystery. Unconscious wisdom prevailed in the shifting of the festival of Christ’s birth from 6 January to 25 December: instead of the appearance of the god in a human body, henceforth people celebrated the incarnation of the innocent human soul who descends from divine, spiritual heights. The experience of the thirteen nights in the Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson.

APPENDIX HEIDENHEIM, 30 NOVEMBER 1911The Threefold Call from the World of Spirit

Destructive and life-creating powers. The first call from the world of spirit resounded from Mount Sinai, the second from John the Baptist, the third from spiritual science. How these three calls are reflected in child development. Penetration of the human sheaths with the power of faith, love and hope.

Notes from a lecture for the inauguration of the Heidenheim branch group

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Index

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

THE current volume comprises single lectures by Rudolf Steiner given in various locations to members of the Theosophical Society, as it then was, in 1911. Marie Steiner gave the following Introduction to the Bielefeld lecture of 6 March 1911 when it was first published in the Newsletter (‘What is happening in the Anthroposophical Society. News for members. Supplement to the weekly journal Das Goetheanum’), and this can also serve as a Preface for the other lectures in the volume:

In 1911, Bielefeld was one of the smaller branch meetings. Unlike other groups that had been established for longer, it rarely had the good fortune to welcome Dr Steiner for more intimate lecture events. And yet it was often the case that his rare visits and addresses at such group meetings contained, as if in essence, what he expounded at much greater length in many lectures at the larger centres. What he said on such an evening could have a special intensity. Something like a strong, spiritual aura could emerge, and reverberate long afterwards, even in the very midst of an overwhelming throng of subsequent events and new spiritual tasks. This is particularly true of his lectures on the Christ event. Unfortunately most transcripts from that time have the character of notes, often providing only half and sometimes even only a quarter of the text. But reading between the lines you can get a sense of the substance contained there and feel it pervading you. Those familiar with Dr Steiner’s mode of speech will not find it too difficult to reconstruct much of what is missing; and we can repeatedly feel astonishment at the wealth of newly emerging perspectives.

The huge errors to which the Theosophical Society succumbed in its efforts to diminish the significance of the Christ event and to equate it with, or subordinate it to, other avatar appearances, necessitated a clean break between the two spiritual streams. This could only be done by making official the original name that Dr Steiner had already given to the esoteric Christianity of his spiritual science. When separation from the Theosophical Society became unavoidable, instead of the much-loved word ‘theosophy’—to which he had dedicated the whole strength of his commitment in order to increase popular regard for it, and which also, in previous centuries, had been a common designation in the West for the science of the spirit—he now chose the key term ‘anthroposophy’. The aim of this was to prevent identification of the spiritual stream that he represented with the theosophical movement. The necessity for this was one dictated by outer circumstances at that time. Yet there is no contradiction between the two terms, at most only a clearer delineation, since true theosophy leads to true anthroposophy, and vice versa. The human being as harmony of the creative cosmic word, as solution of the riddle of the world, is also the content of anthroposophy. As we raise our consciousness to the divine, we also submerge ourselves in the divine. Human and divine consciousness, theosophy and anthroposophy become one.

INTRODUCTION

WHILE the lectures in this volume were all given in the year 1911, they span the whole course of that year and were held in many different places, so that they cannot essentially be regarded as a single series, nor as anything like the linear elaboration of a theme. Much richer than that, they approach and illumine the figure of Christ in many different ways and from many different perspectives. Since 1909, Steiner’s lectures had testified to a growing preoccupation with the centrality of Christ, which put him and his followers in the German section at odds with the Theosophical Society. 1911 was the year before Steiner finally split from the theosophists and founded the Anthroposophical Society over that very issue, and his intensifying emphasis on the central deed of Christ in Earth evolution can be seen at the same time as an assertion of the integrity of his vision in the face of strong opposition.

At roughly the same time as Steiner, in these lectures, was opening up profound vistas of human evolution and paths of development in which Christ is our steadfast companion and exemplar, much of the rest of the world was held spellbound by continuing human advances and endeavours in outward realms. In 1911, the hull of the ill-fated Titanic was launched, and Scott of the Antarctic, in his similarly ill-fated expedition, was struggling toward the South Pole. Despite the undoubted heroism of Scott and his companions, these two historical images can stand, perhaps, as a kind of admonition to the human race that physical exploit and technological advances can only take us so far, and cannot be the ultimate meaning and goal of our evolution. A different direction, a great deepening of our nature is needed if we are to unfold our full potential.

In Lecture 4 in this volume, Rudolf Steiner speaks of a future time, one perhaps already beginning to be ours, when the human etheric and astral bodies—which we can think of, in a kind of shorthand, as our very life and soul—will become so fully bound, chained to the physical body and the world’s physical reality that we lose our human capacity for self-mastery and self-determination, which are after all spiritual capacities.

In these present ‘interesting times’, marked by ubiquitous alarm at a pandemic that has led, whether with good cause or not, to draconian, externally imposed societal controls and the most intent focus on physical survival, we may already gain more than an inkling of how thoughts and fears of bodily disease are gaining ascendancy over life and soul, relegating all other values and virtues to the vanishing margins of our existence, rendering extremely difficult our creative self-expression, our free, life-enhancing association with each other, and our very human rights themselves. As physicality alone increasingly encompasses us, says Steiner in the same lecture, we will find it ever harder to develop mobile thoughts and concepts or absorb new, creative ideas. Looking around in the world at present, it does indeed seem as if we are becoming stuck in certain fixed ways of regarding our reality, in grooves of orthodoxy that are ever harder to question, in rigid and linear forms of thought—about, say, viruses as ‘enemy’ and the need to combat them in more or less military fashion rather than seeing the whole ecological context of our now sorely unbalanced relationship with the planet, of which this pandemic may be a salutary symptom, an awakening call.

To many it might seem perverse and airy-fairy in the extreme to suggest, as Steiner does here, that such conditions as we have brought upon ourselves must be addressed first and foremost by turning consciously to the spirit, connecting with far broader dimensions in which life and soul are not a luxury afforded to the few but the nurturing ground of our being. What we develop inwardly as connection with realities greater than the immediate physical realm, says Steiner in Lecture 5, has value and importance for the whole planet, and can lead to an entirely different, sustaining view of the world and our place in it, countering the aridity and desiccation he speaks of as a corollary of outlooks that are solely materialistic.

Unlike previous ‘war’ situations, when communities pulled together and people often developed a heightened sense of caring for one another, one of the striking characteristics of our current plight is the way in which we are being divided from each other—‘social distancing’, the enforcement of face masks, avoidance of contagion. Such measures are presented as ‘social’ duty: we are told they are to protect others from ourselves. But this inversion of the whole concept of social interplay, this isolation of the individual and the fear to which it testifies, is really at odds with the idea so vividly presented here by Steiner that we are nothing as separate individuals, that we actually cannot gain anything from self-protection and self-isolation, even if supposedly to benefit others. As has become apparent, we are not ‘all in this together’: the wealthy have known how to use their advantage, with some huge corporations of course even benefitting greatly from the crisis, while poorer folk have suffered the brunt of the pandemic, often losing their livelihoods altogether in lockdown situations. There is a crass immorality at work here but, as we can read in this volume, immoral action anywhere on earth is like an abscess that makes the whole body sick, and, since this will ultimately come home to roost, it is an illusion to think we can gain advantage for ourselves alone. Extending this thought, Steiner develops the overarching, all-embracing idea—or rather living picture—of the reality of Christ who, he says, is for the body of the whole Earth what the heart is within our individual organism. Here all the threads come together in Steiner’s invocation, from many different angles, of the exemplar and epitome of humanity, of a figure toward whom we can slowly work our way; of a reality that can descend upon us as, and only if, we raise ourselves through inner endeavour that nurtures in us qualities such as hope, love and trusting but also clearsighted vision of the future.

To me it seems that the polar contrast to authority externally imposed, and authority blindly followed—as urged upon us all at present—is the cultivation of love. ‘What would we be without love?’ asks Steiner. ‘We would inevitably become isolated and gradually lose all connection with our fellow human beings and our fellow creatures in the natural world.’ In a world increasingly manifesting traits of lovelessness—of isolationist self-protection and compliance not only with authoritarian rulers but with the ‘authority’ of a rigid worldview, as well as destruction of the planet of which we should be benevolent, loving custodians—these lectures are extraordinarily timely. They can help us broaden our vistas again and affirm our creative spirits in community with the whole world, physical and spiritual, of which we are a continually evolving part.

Matthew Barton March 2021

LECTURE 1

THE DIVERSE ERAS OF HUMANITY’S EVOLUTION, AND THEIR EFFECT UPON THE HUMAN BODILY SHEATHS

MANNHEIM, 5 JANUARY 1911

IT has been some time since we were able to hold a branch meeting here in Mannheim, but today we may take up this task once again. Over the past few months, my dear friends, you have been attentively and eagerly absorbing the more important ideas and insights of our spiritual-scientific worldview. It is therefore perhaps not inappropriate to speak today about something that, on the one hand, can direct our gaze to the whole scope of our spiritual-scientific movement, but on the other also gives us the opportunity to evaluate a little the spiritual knowledge we have acquired, in particular as it relates to the human being and his evolution; to appraise it, if you like, in the service of something to which all human beings should be dedicated and which, for anthroposophists in particular, should assume a distinctive form by virtue of their insights, by virtue of the feelings that they can gain through the spiritual-scientific worldview. As you know, my dear friends, humanity’s evolution advances, progressing through eras and epochs, and each such era and epoch has its own particular mission. In the history of humanity we can distinguish longer and shorter eras, and in each period, in turn, there are particular points at which the true task and mission of this age must not be neglected or overlooked—when it must be fully embraced. In successive eras, as we can discern, tasks are required by the worlds of spirit, tasks particular to this or that epoch; and then, for us human beings, it is a matter of acting rightly so as to know something about these tasks, so as to take up into our souls an awareness and knowledge of these tasks.

We live in an age when it really is an urgent matter for a number of people to gain knowledge once again of what, today or in our present era, needs to be done first and foremost in the spiritual domain. I would like firstly to draw your attention to just two epochs that closely concern us, one of which belongs to the past and much of whose spiritual riches and effects still extend into our present age. The second epoch, on the other hand, has scarcely begun. We stand at the beginning of a new era, a shorter cycle or epoch of humanity; we stand as it were, at a critical juncture, and this is why it is especially important to understand the nature of these two eras a little. The first comprises roughly the epoch that began with Augustine,1 and ended as the sixteenth century was dawning. In esoteric science we regard this period as extending from Augustine to Calvin. Then comes a subsequent era comprising the period from Calvin2 through to the last third of the nineteenth century. Now we stand again at the beginning of an era with new challenges and tasks, and meeting them will be extraordinarily important for humanity’s immediate future. Let us therefore form a picture of what commonly and especially occurs at the start of new periods in evolution. As one era passes over into the next, something grows old, outmoded, and something new and fresh dawns. Something goes into decline while the other is germinal, starts to root and grow, begins to shine like the dawn of a new day—the sunshine of a new era that is arriving. And the distinctive thing about such a transitional period—as you know, people speak in various ways of ‘transitional eras’, but today it really can be said that a transitional age is arriving—is that human culture must start to be informed with new forces.

To characterize this I want to consider a great mission for all humanity: the rise of Christianity. If we picture how Christianity arose, we must say that those at the pinnacle of culture rejected it. Yet these same cultural leaders had reached a point of decline. Try to form a picture of Roman culture and its incipient decline, and try also to picture the kinds of communities to whom Paul preached: they were people who, with naivety if you like, but also with fresh powers, stood outside the prevailing culture, and harboured a living sense of what must come. They did not really figure amongst that culture’s full flowering. New forces were coming to birth but appeared sometimes even amongst the lowest orders of society. Having developed for a period, the complex social existence of higher, influential echelons of society must decline again, and in particular the prevailing knowledge and disciplines with their concepts, ideas and so forth arrive at a point when they can no longer develop. Then something new emerges inevitably, rises from the people, and we can observe a radical change at work. In certain respects today we again stand at such a moment of upheaval. The scientific ideas achieved with such dedication have actually come to a point where anyone with insight must say they are faltering. The scientific concepts and ideas promoted and perpetuated by the mainstream are now on the brink of decline. And in fact the whole way in which people pursue cultural life, the mainstream of this cultural life, is in great decline. I’d like to outline very roughly and bluntly the symptoms of this decline which is really proceeding apace now, symptoms that can be observed by those who have any awareness of it.

If one has participated in cultural life in the past, as it came to expression in literature, books and so forth, and in science, then one will have grown up with a certain sense of seriousness in regard to these pursuits, a seriousness that is nowadays already seen as outmoded—a seriousness that is no longer understood. The whole tone of weekly journals, for instance, was very different in the 1870s from what it has become. If we can say this, it was far, far more dignified. In those days, within the cultural mainstream, people held very particular views about our relationship to drama, to lyric poetry and so on. In those days, too, you could write poetry or drama of less strict standards—plays, for instance, that were written for little festive occasions, more as light entertainment or for fun. Sometimes these showed talent. Students, especially, performed plays that showed talent. But as one grew older, and gained an overview of literary schools, one found that works were now valued that had once been regarded as having only ephemeral value. These same things gained literary and cultural acclaim. I don’t wish to cause offence by naming names. Today we have reached a point where published trivialities are now the order of the day—whole bookshops are filled with them. Even 30 or 40 years ago, writers would have thought it a waste of ink to write such stuff. When you’re in the midst of a transition and upheaval like this, you don’t judge things severely enough, but cultural historians will one day characterize the end of the nineteenth century in such terms. We are currently facing a deterioration in traditional cultural life, and this could easily be demonstrated by the decline in scientific theories. We should not be surprised therefore if what is now to arise as a new spiritual and cultural movement, and is to give human evolution a new impetus, meets with little interest from mainstream culture; when those who move in the latter circles regard anthroposophists* as associations of semi-idiots, as, largely, very uneducated folk, and so on and so forth. This is inevitable in every age of transition. Fresh forces have to rise up from below, and what springs and germinates in this way will become essential in a subsequent era to really develop a new upward momentum.

Now, I spoke of two eras. The period from Augustine to Calvin was primarily one in which all human soul forces, all human powers, sought to become more inward. In all fields, a greater inwardness was apparent during these times. Outward science was pursued to a lesser degree, and the human being focused less on outward laws of nature and natural phenomena. At the beginning of this period, with Augustine himself, who in a sense prefigured our own spiritual-scientific view of the human being’s configuration, we find the idea of the influx of supersensible powers that employ the human being as their instrument. In the further course of this epoch, we encounter remarkable mystics such as Meister Eckhardt, Susos, Johannes Tauler3 and many more. While outward science receded during this period, there comes to the fore another, singular way in which people encompassed nature with a brilliantly intuitive gaze. We see this enhanced in figures such as Agrippa of Nettesheim. Then we encounter others, like Paracelsus and Jakob Boehme,4 who appear as the fruits of this deepening of the human soul during those centuries. Such a current in culture can only last for a certain period. It rises, culminates, reaches its zenith and then declines again. Usually, every such current is superseded by something that in some respects appears as its counter-image.

Indeed, the subsequent centuries are like a counter-image of this current. Gradually, humankind forgets the picture of the human soul’s inwardness. Times arrive when science achieves its endless triumphs. Great figures such as Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo appear, followed in the nineteenth century by those such as Julius Robert Meyer, Darwin and so on. A plethora of outward facts holds sway.

And yet people at the beginning of the new epoch are different from those who come later. Someone like Kepler, for instance, who exerted such a decisive influence on the physical sciences, was a pious man, and felt deeply and inwardly committed to Christianity. He discovered three laws—known as Kepler’s three laws—which basically are nothing other than laws of time and space clothed in mathematical formulae.5 In other words they are something entirely mechanical; and yet this same man spent far more time than he did on these discoveries in explaining the configurations of the cosmos at the time of the Mystery in Palestine: the interrelated positions of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars at the time Christ was born. It was on such matters that Kepler’s thoughts were focused. He bequeathed to humanity his purely mathematical discoveries about the science of astronomy. But what he carried inwardly in his deepest heart remained his own inmost concern in an age that served only outward life.

Or consider Newton.6 Universally known for his discovery of the laws of gravity, his Christianity is scarcely ever mentioned—Haeckel for instance ignores this when he speaks of Newton’s decisive influence. Yet Newton was such a firm Christian that he wrote a commentary on the Apocalypse in his quietest and most sacred moments. But he could not bequeath this to humanity. Instead he left us with the purely mechanical law of gravity in an era that was dedicated to an outward grasp and comprehension of natural phenomena. And this era ended with the last third of the nineteenth century.

At this point an era begins that must necessarily appear as a counter-image to the preceding one. And the task of preparing this new direction, which is to work on so that everything we have often spoken of may arrive, falls to the spiritual-scientific worldview, which must once again engender a deepening of the human soul. Every age must work in a different way from previous ones. It would be mistaken simply to study what was once the right approach in the epoch extending from Augustine to Calvin. We can dwell upon such times, but we must know that today, following the era of natural science, we have to seek the world of spirit in a different way. Now is there anything, apart from abstract considerations, that can enable us to discern the need to grasp the world anew in every succeeding epoch?

Consider Paracelsus, for instance. He really is an unfathomable mind for our modern, very trivial and external forms of enquiry. He had deep insights into the secrets of healing, of medicine. It is possible to learn things of wonderful grandeur from Paracelsus if you study what he had to say about healing various illnesses. But let us imagine that a physician at the very pinnacle of our modern culture were to study Paracelsus with a view to making practical use of his directions. In relation to certain major things, this would lead to very true results and insights. But some things would be of no use any more to a modern physician. If he were to use some of the medicines that Paracelsus recommends, this would be of no use since human nature has changed already since the sixteenth century. This is because everything in the world changes and progresses. Outward things do not conform to the gradual development of our arbitrary knowledge. They advance; and it is our task to follow their progress with our knowledge and powers of enquiry. We have to learn anew continually, as Paracelsus learned. And if we proceed as faithfully as he did, we will, in some respects, find quite different results than he did. In our era, the tasks that face us are very much spiritual ones.

Now I would like to outline in broad strokes how, as it is written in the stars, human culture must progress in the near future. It is not up to human beings alone to give this culture its direction. Old views will not be able to match the radical change in actual circumstances. Things take their course, and spiritual science has the task of describing this course; it shows us how we can understand our era.

We stand at the dawn of an entirely new form of human life and thinking. Human culture has three especially important aspects, which are: religion, science and, thirdly, human society and co-existence in general, the feelings that people develop for each other, all that unfolds in social community. These three aspects are the most significant, and so it is especially important to trace, in succeeding epochs, what form these three aspects must assume—religion, science and social co-existence. And here there are certain requirements that we must simply understand as human beings, which do not lie within our power to determine.

Why must religion, science and social community keep changing from epoch to epoch? They do so simply because human nature changes. It is not insignificant to learn how our human nature consists of various levels or aspects. That we consist of physical body, life body and astral body with sentient soul, rational or mind soul and consciousness soul should not be a merely theoretical consideration, knowledge that can be acquired by just a few as a handy classification. We learn about these because they have a deep significance for human life. And you can have an inkling of this deep significance if you think back to the predominant role, say, of the sentient soul during the Egyptian and Chaldean era. Higher beings primarily worked upon this aspect of human nature. And in the Greco-Roman period, the period during which Christianity first arose, all influences upon humanity from divine, spiritual heights were working upon the mind soul. And today these influences work upon the consciousness soul. We will understand nothing at all of the human being’s relationship to the great powers at work in the world if we do not know how this human nature is configured. What after all are we preparing as we concern ourselves today with spiritual-scientific insights? In our time, the consciousness soul is primarily being cultivated. All outward thinking and knowledge, all utilitarian thinking—this thinking that accords with principles of usefulness—depends in a certain respect upon developing the consciousness soul. And this is already being permeated by the intrinsic light of the spirit self. Now the remarkable thing is that in our age we have two currents that flow side by side: one that is tumbling into decline, and one that is now rising towards a future blossom. The one that is tumbling towards decline has not yet reached its nadir. And from this still grow great human discoveries that will have a huge future. This also has its blessings. It is true that humanity will long continue to reap blessings from what is moving towards decline. But the kind of thinking that invents zeppelins is one wedded to decline, whereas the form of thinking that concerns itself with the configurations of human nature is that of humanity’s future.

But these two do have a common meeting ground, as we can see in all realms. I’d like first of all to offer you a very practical example, that of monetary transactions. During the nineteenth century this changed to a very considerable degree. There was a huge turnaround. If you look at the period directly preceding the last third of the nineteenth century, all financial speculation attached to the individual person. It was Rothschild’s purely financial and speculative genius that conducted money everywhere to and from financial centres. And if we study the history of the large banking companies, we find exemplary instances everywhere of how monetary transactions arose entirely in accord with the type of human nature that was founded on the consciousness soul, on the individual person. Then this changed. But nothing much is said about it since it is still in its infancy. Nowadays, by contrast, it is no longer the consciousness soul that predominates exclusively in financial transactions; today we find a kind of aggregation or centralization: share capital, the company, the association—something that goes beyond the individual person.

Try to see what is only now just beginning but will increasingly become apparent. Today it is almost irrelevant which person is in charge. The processes that people have developed for monetary transactions are already working in an impersonal way, are acting by themselves. Here, in a descending momentum, you can see how the consciousness soul reaches over toward the spirit self.

Here it manifests in a current of decline; but it manifests in the current of regenerating life where we seek what a committed individual has achieved; where we seek through Inspiration to gain the help of the powers who will once again furnish us with Inspiration from the world of spirit. Here too we pass from the personal to the transpersonal. Thus we can discern common characteristics in our era both in the currents of decline and regeneration. Especially however we must beware of attending too much in any era to what emerges as authority. As long as we lack spiritual insight, this can seriously mislead us.

This is particularly true in one area of human culture, the field of materialistic medicine. Here we can discern the decisive influence of authority, and the ever increasing claim to authority, which is in fact far, far more dreadful than any kind of medieval tyranny. We find ourselves in the very midst of this tendency, which will keep increasing. People may mock the ghosts of medieval superstition, but we can ask if anything much has changed. Has this fear of ghosts faded? Aren’t people actually far more afraid of ghosts than they were back then? What happens in the human soul when people are told they carry 60,000 bacilli on their hands, is far more terrible than generally acknowledged. In America statistics have been calculated about how many such bacilli can be found on a man’s moustache. At least the ghosts of medieval times were, one might say, decent ghosts; but modern bacilli-ghosts are too minuscule to grapple with. The fear invoked by them is only just beginning, and leads, in health matters, to people succumbing to a really terrible belief in authority.

Everywhere we see the character of this transitional era. It becomes apparent if we can observe phenomena in the right way.

But now let us ask what the doctrines and revelations of anthroposophy teach us about the further development of these three major areas of life. How must things develop in future, and how do we need to work so that the creative, fruitful spirit self can be rightly introduced into the consciousness soul, in a spiritual way? The prophetic stars—that is, the teachings of spiritual science—tell us the following: in the whole way in which people have tried in preceding centuries to introduce religion into human culture, it is a mingling of two things, one of which cannot be called religion at all in the strict sense, while the other is indeed religion.

What is religion in reality? We must characterize it ultimately as a mood of the human soul: a mood that opens to the spiritual, to the infinite. We can characterize it well by starting with its simplest manifestations, though these can later be raised, enhanced, to the highest level. If we walk across a meadow and our soul is open to all that grows and blossoms there, we will feel a sense of joyfulness for the glories revealed there in flowers and grasses, for each gleaming bead of dew. Finding such a mood within ourselves, so that our heart opens, is not yet religion. It can only become religion if this feeling intensifies into a sense of the infinite behind the finite, of the spirit behind sensory reality. If our soul feels communion with the spirit, this mood corresponds to that of religion. The more we can intensify this sense of the eternal within us, the more we cultivate religion within ourselves or others.

But in a necessary evolution, such impulses that lead human feeling and sensibility from the transient to the everlasting, have become mingled with certain views and ideas about the nature and properties of the supersensible realm. And in consequence religion has in a sense become linked with what is really the science of the spirit, with what must be regarded as a science. And today we see how, in this kind of ecclesiastical faith, religion can only be sustained if certain doctrines are preserved at the same time. Yet this gives rise to what we can regard as rigid dogmas, fixed adherence to certain ideas about the world of spirit. Such ideas ought naturally to develop and progress since the human spirit itself progresses. True religious feeling ought to rejoice at such progress, since it reveals the glories of the divine, spiritual world in ever more grandeur.

True religious feeling would not have delivered Giordano Bruno up to the stake. Instead it should have said: How great is God that he sends such people to earth and reveals such things through them. Then, alongside the religious aspect, it would inevitably also have acknowledged the realm of scientific enquiry, a field that extends both to the outer world and the world of spirit. Progress must necessarily adapt to the human spirit which itself progresses from epoch to epoch. As the sixteenth century arrived, a great change occurred in relation to this quest for knowledge. Before the age of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, what was taught in universities and great centres of learning had assumed strange forms. Aristotle7 is certainly a great source of wisdom, but what he accomplished embodied the greatest learning in his own time. The medieval period greatly misconceived his thought, and ultimately no longer understood at all what he had meant. And yet his doctrines continued to be followed and taught.