The Mystery of Death E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 753

Beschreibung

Speaking during the early stages of the First World War – with the Western Front just miles away and thousands of young men dying – Rudolf Steiner focuses on the subject of death. In particular, he addresses the difficult question of why some people die prematurely, particularly in youth. Steiner also speaks of the deaths of three of his acquaintances, having made contact with their living souls in the afterlife. He voices their own words and describes the first stages of their journeys after death. Rudolf Steiner strikes a second chord with the description of the task of Central Europe in the context of the various 'Folk-souls'. The influences of these spiritual entities are reflected in the culture and life of various peoples, but do not promote nationalism. In fact, nationalism can only be transcended when we understand and recognize our differences. This approach is based on phenomenology rather than value-judgements. The third main theme running through these lectures relates to understanding the impulses and connections active in history. Reaching beyond simple notions of 'fate', are we able to allow for the workings of the impulse of Christ?These extraordinary lectures, previously unpublished in English, are presented here with an introduction, notes and an index. Fifteen lectures, various cities, Jan.–Jun. 1915, GA 159

Leseprobe

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH

THE NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF CENTRALEUROPE AND THE EUROPEAN FOLK-SPIRITS

Fifteen lectures given to members of theAnthroposophical Society in various locationsbetween 31 January and 19 June 1915

TRANSLATED BY SIMON BLAXLAND-DE LANGEINTRODUCTION BY URS DIETLER

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

CW 159

Rudolf Steiner PressHillside House, The SquareForest Row, RH18 5ESwww.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2023

Originally published in German under the title Das Geheimnis des Todes Wesen undBedeutung Mitteleuropas und die europäischen Volksgeister (volume 159 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 third German edition (2005), edited by Urs Dietler

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 2005

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2023

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 643 2

Cover by Morgan Creative

Typeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Vishakapatnam, India

Printed and bound by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

CONTENTS

Introduction, by Urs Dietler

LECTURE 1

ZURICH, 31 JANUARY 1915

The Four Platonic Virtues and Their Connection with the Mysteries of Man’s Being—The Influence of Spiritual Powers upon the Physical World

The task of spiritual science. Regarding the death of two members. The further collaboration of the dead in the spiritual-scientific movement. The life after death. The destiny of the dead, especially those who die prematurely. Building up a moral life of humanity as a whole as a task of spiritual science. The four virtues referred to by Plato: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. Wisdom as an openness of the physical and spiritual worlds to one another. Connection with the brain. Bringing experiences from former incarnations. Courage and the power of the heart. The difference between the influence of forces in the brain and in the heart. Temperance as a life of moderation. The connection between the members of man’s being and the virtues. The guiding forces in the virtue of justice. Justice as the measure of the connection with the divine. The virtues and pedagogy. True monism. The influence of the Christ impulse in the Maid of Orleans. The living connection with the dead as a sign of the spiritual-scientific movement.

Pages 1-19

LECTURE 2

HANOVER, 19 FEBRUARY 1915

The Passing of a Human Being through the Gate of Death—a Transformation of Life

The influence in the spiritual world and within the Folk-soul of the etheric bodies of thousands of people who have died prematurely. The difference between an ascetic and a soldier fallen in battle. Consciousness after death: not a lack but an over-abundance. Perceptions at a cremation, time becomes space. Earthly life as a cosmic sense-organ for spiritual life after death. The one who has died speaks through the being of the living. Regarding the death of a member. The rigidity of the logic of earthly life. Concerning the fateful death of young Theo Faiß and the connection with the building in Dornach. Regarding the death of Fritz Mitscher. The working of Christ as a living power in the battle of Constantine against Maxentius and in the life of the Maid of Orleans. The dead as spiritual helpers.

Pages 20-42

LECTURE 3

BREMEN, 21 FEBRUARY 1915

Spiritual Science and the Riddles of Death—Deeper Connections of European History

War as an apparent process of illness. The encircling of Central Europe in 860 through two ring-like streams. The relationship of Central Europe to idealism. The task of Central European culture. The significance of many sacrificial deaths for the spiritual world. The influence in the spiritual world of the unspent forces of the etheric bodies of those who have died prematurely. The death of a member. The difficulty of self-knowledge. The working of the Christ impulse in the battle between Constantine and Maxentius and in the life of the Maid of Orleans. The initiation of Olaf Åsteson. The necessity of consciousness of the spiritual world.

Pages 43-52

LECTURE 4

LEIPZIG, 7 MARCH 1915

The Intimate Element of Central European Culture and its Aspirations

Concerning the present situation of Central Europe and the deeper reasons for the war. Regarding the connection of the cultures of the West, East and Central Europe with the members of man’s being. The necessity of bringing structure and substance to the ideas of German idealism. The enlivening of thinking through meditation, the penetration of higher beings into our thoughts. Hegel contra Newton, Goethe’s theory of colour, the case of Haeckel. Fichte and the task of Central Europe. Concerning consciousness in the life after death. The death of Fritz Mitscher. The necessary and living connection with the dead.

Pages 53-80

LECTURE 5

NUREMBERG, 13 MARCH 1915

The Entry of the Christ Impulse into Historical Events—The Bridging of the Gulf between the Living and the Dead

The development of spiritual forces for the forming of the future. The culture of the consciousness soul. The working of the Christ impulse in the life of the Maid of Orleans. The initiation of Olaf Åsteson. The overcoming of materialism and the need to connect with the dead. The destiny of young Theo Faiß in the vicinity of the building in Dornach. The death of a member and accompanying this person after death. The death of Fritz Mitscher. The bridging of the abyss between the living and the dead. The understanding of the heart for the task of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. The soul-nature of the East-European and the necessity of collaboration between the impulses of Central Europe and Eastern Europe. The barefoot world-conception in Russia.

Pages 81-105

LECTURE 6

NUREMBERG, 14 MARCH 1915

Moral Impulses and Their Results—The Relationship of the European Peoples to their Folk-Spirits—The Cultural Impulse of Eurythmy

The nature of a moral deed and the connection with the state of sleep. Guilt. Memory as subconscious reading. Pangs of conscience. The consequences of moral and immoral actions for world evolution. The necessity of supersensible knowledge and the consequences of materialism. The evolution of the Folk-soul archangels as exemplified by Italy, France, Great Britain and Germany. The connection with the sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul. The Russian people. The relationship between sport and eurythmy. Eurythmy as a counter-pole to a hardened school curriculum. The influence of thoughts upon those who have died prematurely.

Pages 106-127

LECTURE 7

VIENNA, 7 MAY 1915

Cosmic Influences upon the Members of Man’s Being—The Occult Foundation of the Christmas Festival—The Significance of Sacrificial Death

Some facts of imaginative perception in observing the sleeping state of human beings. The relationship of the physical and etheric bodies with the whole cosmos during sleep. The connection of the ego and astral body with the beings of the higher hierarchies during sleep. The working of the Folk-spirits during sleep and waking consciousness. The relation between spiritual science and vague mystical cosmopolitanism. The harmony of the many from the standpoint of spiritual science. The Earth as a soul-spiritual being. The Christmas Festival and the Festival of St John’s. The significance of materialism and its overcoming. The working of the Christ impulse in the year 312 during the battle between Constantine and Maxentius and in the life of the Maid of Orleans. The sacrificial death of young Theo Faiß. Thoughts regarding those who have died young.

Pages 128-148

LECTURE 8

VIENNA, 9 MAY 1915

The War, a Pathological Process—Central Europe and the Slavic East—The Dead as the Helpers of Human Progress

The nature of illness. The war as a pathological process. Kant and the limits of knowledge. The influence and evolution of the Folk-spirits as exemplified by Italy, Great Britain and Central Europe. Russian culture and its future. Pan-Slavism and the thinking of Solovyov. The working of Christ within the human ego. The symbol ICH. Materialism and its genius, Ahriman. Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe and the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Goethe’s theory of evolution. Darwin and Haeckel. The warning cries of those who have died prematurely. The death of the member Fritz Mitscher.

Pages 149-171

LECTURE 9

PRAGUE, 13 MAY 1915

Man’s Relationship to the Kingdoms of Nature and to the Hierarchies—Time-Spirits and Folk-Spirits—The Urging Voices of the Dead

The relation of the higher hierarchies to man. The perceptive world of animals. Man’s path through incarnations under different Time-spirits. The ages of the archangels and the Michael Age. Of retarded spirits, both ahrimanic and luciferic, and their influences in nationalism. The nature of the Folk-spirit of Central Europe. The symbol ICH. Language as an outcome of folk-spirituality. The connection of the Folk-spirit of Italy, France and Great Britain with the sentient, intellectual and consciousness soul. The spiritual foundations of the events of the war. The background to the appearance of the Maid of Orleans. The destiny of young Theo Faiß in the vicinity of the building in Dornach. The death of the member Fritz Mitscher and experiences associated with the cremation address. The unspent etheric bodies of those who have suffered premature death and the warning of the dead to the living. The working of the Christ impulse at the time of Constantine’s battle against Maxentius. Concerning an article about Rudolf Steiner’s book Theosophy.

Pages 172-198

LECTURE 10

PRAGUE, 15 MAY 1915

The Significance of the Position of Central Europe between East and West—Ahrimanic Inspiration and Spiritual Impulses—The Symbol of the Rose Cross

Characterization of the Group of cosmic man standing between the ahrimanic and luciferic principles to be displayed in Dornach. The luciferic principle of the East and the ahrimanic principle of the West, the position of Central Europe. One-sidedness in certain attitudes to religion and to science. Concerning Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe and the collection of fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. The symbol of the Rose Cross related to an ahrimanic and luciferic principle. The future of spiritual science.

Pages 199-211

LECTURE 11

LINZ, 18 MAY 1915

Christ in Relation to Lucifer and Ahriman—The Threefold Nature of this Form

The sculptural Group of the relation between Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman planned in Dornach. The influence of the Christ impulse in history. The entry of Christ into the Earth’s aura. The Earth as a soul-spiritual being. The Maid of Orleans and Olaf Åsteson. Asiatic and Russian culture. The materialistic conception of spirituality in America. Michelangelo’s Last Judgement and the sculptural Group in Dornach. Comparison of Frenchmen and Russians. The symbol ICH. The appearance of the etheric Christ and the working of Michael. The deeper antecedents of the events of the war. The destiny of the young Theodor Faiß in the vicinity of the building in Dornach. The karma of materialism. Goethe’s colour theory and Haeckel’s theory of evolution. The influence of the unspent etheric bodies of those who have died prematurely. The symbol of the Rose Cross.

Pages 212-237

LECTURE 12

ELBERFELD, 13 JUNE 1915

Spiritual Science as a Conviction—The Etheric Body as a Reflection of the Universe

Concerning the etheric bodies of those who have died young. The destiny of the boy Theodor Faiß in the vicinity of the building in Dornach. The Earth and the sleeping human being. The etheric body as a microcosmic structure. Resistances to spiritual science and the help through the influence of the etheric bodies of those who have died prematurely. Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman and the task of the pupils of the spirit. The sculptural Group in the Dornach building. Michelangelo’s Last Judgement in relation to the sculptural Group.

Pages 238-256

LECTURE 13

DÜSSELDORF, 15 JUNE 1915

Community above us, Christ within us

The inauguration of the group in Düsseldorf. The significance of group work, its significance for the spiritual world. The fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch as a preparation for the sixth. Three principles of the sixth cultural epoch: knowing the sorrow of the other (brotherly social togetherness), individual belief in freedom of thought, science as spiritual science (pneumatology). Development of the Spirit-self in the sixth cultural epoch. Tasks of group work. Community building today and in earlier times. The Russian people in the sixth cultural epoch and ‘Russian man’. Alexander Herzen and the longing of Russian intellectuals. The aspiration towards a group-soul quality. The thought-world and significance of Solovyov. Spiritual science and the Eastern understanding of Christ. The motto chosen for the group’s inauguration: community above us, Christ within us.

Pages 257-274

LECTURE 14

DÜSSELDORF, 17 JUNE 1915

Man’s Experiences after passing through the Gate of Death

A living development of spiritual science as a task and the riddle of death. Imaginative perception after death. On finding the point of balance between Lucifer and Ahriman. The view of death from the other side as a victory of spirit over matter. Perceptive faculties after death. The death of a member and the address at the cremation. The nurturing of a living connection with the dead. The war as an illness of evolution and its deeper causes. A defence of thoroughness against superficiality.

Pages 275-296

LECTURE 15

COLOGNE, 19 JUNE 1915

The Overcoming of Death through Cognitive Insight—Experiences ofthe Soul before Birth and after Death

The understanding of spiritual-scientific content and clarity of thinking. Concerning perception and memory, the lethargy of materialists. Self-knowledge before and after death. The connection of self-knowledge with the power of will after death. The forces of former incarnations. The nurturing of community with the dead. The death of the member Fritz Mitscher. Regarding certain forms of opposition to spiritual science. The influence of the etheric bodies of those who have died prematurely and the right attitude to it.

Pages 297-320

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Index

INTRODUCTION

IN the course of life, death appears as the outermost limit. There are few philosophers and no religions that try to avoid thinking about this frontier, and most of them are obsessed with it. As one becomes conscious of one’s own course of life, death for the most part appears abruptly but then with a sense of finality; and one understands the old saying that life exists in order to learn to die. And the many thousands who have died in the first, second and—according to certain voices—third, asymmetrical World War, which has already lasted for longer, extend the question of the significance of the ‘choir of the dead’, to which Conrad Ferdinand Meyer made his contribution, beyond the destiny of the individual.

There have always been voices that regarded death not as an end point but as a once-and-for-all transition. Fortified by a materialistically reductionist natural science, the twentieth century also brought forth empirical investigations which focused upon after-death states; and there arose a humane accompaniment of the dying in the context of ‘the after-life’ which developed into a considerable movement. Thousands of near-death experiences were collected, also those sounding a note that no one had hitherto wanted to hear. Because death has long been a taboo subject and the whole question of dying has been repressed, they thrust themselves on the threshold of people’s consciousness and pose the very question of life itself.

Rudolf Steiner gave the present 15 lectures for members in the first half of the war-year of 1915 in eleven different towns or cities. He speaks here about death and the destiny of all who had died young and also about the death of three members. As he spoke the words for the members who had died that he had received in living contact with the dead at the festivals of remembrance and described the first stages of their journeys after death, he opened up wholly new horizons of understanding with respect to the death of those who had died prematurely. The forces of the etheric body of such a dead person are available for a fruitful world-evolution if only they are perceived and appreciated in an appropriate way. The destiny of young Theodor Faiß, who died under tragic circumstances in the grounds of the Goetheanum, is described in particular detail. The etheric body of the young Theo could be perceived clairvoyantly as being active in the vicinity of the Dornach building.

Rudolf Steiner strikes a second chord with the description of the task of Central Europe in the context of the influences of different Folk-souls, with frequent references to what he had said in the ‘Folk-soul cycle’ in June 1910 in Christiania (Oslo). He makes a point of clearly emphasizing that the working of the ‘Folk-spirits’ makes its mark upon the manner of life and the cultural sensibility of the individual folk but does not have any nationalistic connotations. He expresses the view that there can only be a fruitful living together of peoples if differences are recognized and accepted but not made absolute. The harmony of a point of view that transcends nationality is to be won through differentiation. Probably because certain misunderstandings had arisen, he repeatedly points out that this way of characterizing things has to do not with value-judgements but with phenomenology, on the basis of which alone it is possible to see the whole picture and work together.

The third theme that Rudolf Steiner dealt with repeatedly in these lectures relates to the understanding of the impulses and connections active in history. In looking back at the twentieth century, which is beginning to emerge as an historical phenomenon, questions may be posed such as: How did there come to be a Berlin Wall? What is the significance of the emergence of what is referred to as ‘Pacific culture’? What role will China take over? How widely and how deeply can the evolutionary lines of such processes be investigated? According to Rudolf Steiner, most attempts at explaining historical dynamics—in cases where there are efforts to go beyond the workings of blind fate—do not go far enough. He himself in these lectures, for example, traces the situation of Central Europe around 1915 to the time around 860, during which a kind of ‘pincer movement’ through two streams arose. On the other hand, in his perspective the influence of a Jeanne d‘Arc or the battle of

Constantine against Maxentius around 312 can only be explained as to their deeper causes if the involvement of the Christ impulse is perceived.

While Rudolf Steiner was in 1915 undertaking six lecture-tours to Germany and Austria, a strong artistic impulse was living in Swiss-based Dornach. An initial beginning was being made to study scenes from Goethe’s Faust. In addition, Rudolf Steiner was working intensively with Edith Maryon on the models for the sculptural ‘Group’. He speaks in some of the present lectures about the significance of this Group, in a way that is clearly still wholly connected with the creative process.

In conclusion, some consideration may be given to the frequently asked question of how—80 years after Rudolf Steiner’s death—his books and lectures should be read from the standpoint of interpreting anthroposophical texts in our time.

If one studies the lectures assembled in this volume in their successive order and interconnections, one can make some interesting observations in this regard. Although we do not have here the developmental arc that was possible in the lecture-cycles (a series of lectures over a few days devoted to a particular theme), the present collection of lectures can profitably be investigated under its particular aspects. The relatively narrow time frame of half a year and the urgency of the questions addressed meant that most themes are repeated in the different lectures. After reading—say—the first five lectures, one may have the experience that one is increasingly ‘ticking off’ the information given in the lecture and speedily moving on to the next. Here it is, at the very least, advisable to direct one’s attention to how the lecture is being given: in what way is the theme being taken up, to what context is it related, how is it extended, abbreviated, intensified, how are the words formulated? Focusing on the form, however, leads one back to the content, which has now attained an expanded or new meaning that goes beyond mere information. Furthermore, it is rewarding to pay attention to themes that appear only once or twice. Was there a connection with the places or the community of the members present that came into play here; did not the genius loci together with the assembled members give rise to the characteristic mood and content of what was spoken?

Anyone who reads and works with the lectures of this volume in this sense will not only make interesting discoveries but also acquire faculties to come to know Rudolf Steiner’s work at a deeper level.

Urs Dietler2005

LECTURE 1

ZURICH, 31 JANUARY 1915

The Four Platonic Virtues and Their Connection with the Mysteries of Man’s Being—The Influence of Spiritual Powers upon the Physical World

OUR spiritual science has the task of removing for our consciousness, and indeed for our whole inner life, that gulf which extends for outward human consciousness between the physical world, where man abides between birth and death, and the spiritual world, where man spends the other part of his existence, the time between death and a new birth.

For someone who lives in spiritual science with every fibre of his soul, such a statement is both familiar and one that he takes for granted. But in the moment when I am speaking to you now, one may well say that it acquires a particularly sacred quality. We have, after all, recently lost a number of our dear friends and members through the grave events of the war, and we are about to accompany two friends upon their last paths here on Earth. Tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock we shall have here in Zurich the cremation of a dear member, Frau Dr Calazza,1 who left the physical plane this week, and we have just received the news that our dear friend Fritz Mitscher2 died around 5 o’clock this afternoon near Davos. With these two members, souls dear to us have left the physical plane. However, spiritual science shows us the way to understand that, in a far higher sense than we otherwise are able to understand, we do not lose such souls but remain connected with them.

A considerable number of souls who have belonged to us since the work in our movement began have already passed through the gate of death; and from those sources whence spiritual knowledge flows to us, it can be said that they have—in accordance with their respective powers—become faithful collaborators in the spiritual world. Indeed, with the full responsibility with which one can say something that is founded firmly on spiritual knowledge, I can say that we have in them gained pillars for our spiritual movement. Many have passed through the gate of death who worked within our spiritual movement and who look down upon that to which their love is directed. In the period between birth and death they have grown attached to the kind of aspiration which is pursued in our circle. They have left something behind them in our Society which is itself on the path between death and a new birth.

Just as the nature that surrounds us is a world upon which we look back, so can we look back upon our physical life from that moment which one can compare with a person’s birth. Immediately after death man passes through a condition that can be compared with embryonic life, with life in the mother’s body, except that this period in the life after death lasts only a matter of days and is therefore much shorter than embryonic life in relation to physical life. Then follows what can be compared with the entry into the physical world, with the taking of the first breath. This can be called the awakening in the spiritual world, of which it can be said that it is like an awareness that the will of the soul that has crossed the threshold of death is being received by the beings of the higher hierarchies. Just as a person emerging physically from the body of the mother into the physical world initially finds himself able to take in the outside air and then experiences the gradual awakening of his senses, so after death does there come that moment when the soul feels: the power of will which during physical life was contained within the limits of the physical body is now flowing from me out into the universe. And this soul then feels how this will is indeed received through the activity of the next higher hierarchy, the beings belonging to the hierarchy of the angeloi. This is like the taking of the first breath in the spiritual world and gradually growing into one’s spiritual surroundings; for this is what spiritual knowledge shows us.

I should like to speak about the destiny of those who have gone from us in the course of the years. I should like to cast an eye upon those who have developed a fondness for our spiritual movement and look down upon it as something of which they know that it speaks to human souls of that within which they are living also within physical life. To be able in this way to connect oneself in memory to earthly life is something that here in the physical world already belongs to the world of spirit. For those who have crossed the threshold of death, this is something of infinite value, of infinite significance. And when the stream that flows up to them from the physical world, which has its source in what they have experienced in our movement, is augmented by them as a tributary to a river, when the thoughts of those who were attached to them in love or from family ties are added to it, because it is based on spiritual relationships the community is far more intimate than it could otherwise be in our materialistic age.

Again we may say that in the case of many a person who has passed through the portal of death into the spiritual world, it appears to us as if he or she had done this out of intimate love for our spiritual movement, in order to be able to contribute stronger powers from the spiritual world. A considerable number of those who have gone from us have living in their souls the most wonderfully clear feelings about the need for our spiritual movement; and for someone who is able to acquire insight into the spiritual world, all those who have crossed the threshold of death and now look down at the movement with which they were connected are like the spiritual heralds of our movement, those who carry their spiritual standards before us, constantly calling to us: We were convinced while we were united with you of the necessity of this movement; but now that we have entered the spiritual world, we know that we can and must help at a time when this movement is needed.

This is something which those who remain behind on the physical plane who have lost relatives and friends will increasingly be aware of. For them what has been said can represent the deepest comfort of having everything that brings about a still deeper bond between souls, even if we are no longer in the position of being connected with those souls outwardly through physical eyes and physical words.

This spiritual movement of which we are to become participants has a great deal that it must bring. I should like today to choose a particular aspect out of the many things that it must bring to us. A time like ours, when outward culture—notwithstanding the last echoes of the old religions—is based wholly on a materialistic consciousness, can also only develop the impulses of moral life in a way that takes account solely of the life between birth and death. Among the many things that will emerge from our spiritual movement will be a new upsurge of humanity’s moral life, the whole life of the virtues. For human beings will learn to regard moral life, the life of virtue, from a standpoint that extends beyond birth and death and which reckons that the human soul passes through repeated earthly lives, that just as it lives its life between birth and death it has also passed through many lives and can hope in anticipation of further lives which it will live in future. When we have extended our frame of vision from one life to successive earthly lives, we shall have a more comprehensive and more appropriate conception of life together with a more appropriate and more comprehensive conception of virtue and the moral life.

When we speak of the human virtues, we can distinguish essentially four such virtues of which we can speak in ordinary language. As we shall indicate later on, there is one virtue that lives in the depths of the human soul but of which we should—as we shall see—speak as little as possible for reasons that are held sacred. All other virtues which exist in life and which together constitute moral life can be regarded as special cases of the four virtues that we wish to consider and which were fully described in antiquity.

Plato,3 the great philosopher of Ancient Greece, distinguished these four virtues because he was still able to derive his wisdom from the echoes of ancient mystery-wisdom. From this standpoint Plato was better equipped to distinguish the virtues than later philosophers and certainly than those of our times, where knowledge of mystery-wisdom has become so remote and so chaotic in nature.

The first virtue which we must consider if we are speaking of a moral life as it arises from a comprehensive knowledge of human nature is that of wisdom. However, this wisdom is to be understood in a somewhat deeper sense and as related more to ethics than one would normally understand it. We cannot say that wisdom is something that can, as it were, simply come to a person of its own accord. Still less is wisdom something that a person can learn in the ordinary sense. It is, moreover, not easy to characterize in a few words what wisdom should signify for us. If we pass through life in such a way that we allow what comes towards us in this life to influence us, if—prompted by the various events of life—we learn from the one event how we might have been able to respond to this or that more appropriately, how we might have used our powers more skilfully and effectively, if we take account of everything that befalls us in life, so that when we encounter something similar a second time we do not any longer respond as we did the first time but feel that we have learnt something; and if we maintain throughout our life the mood of being able to learn from life and of being able to regard everything that nature and life bring towards us in such a way that we learn from it—and, moreover, not simply by accumulating knowledge but by becoming inwardly better and richer—we will then have grown in wisdom, and what we have experienced will not have been without value for our life of soul.

Life will have been worthless for us if we have lived for several decades and continue at a later time to judge something that we have experienced in the same way that we evaluated it when we were younger. If we spend our life in such a way, we are very far removed from wisdom. Karma may have brought it about that we became angry when we were young and condemned this or that quality in other people. If we hold fast to this we will have made poor use of our life. The opposite will be the case if, in an instance where we formed a derogatory judgement in our youth, at a later stage of life we judge not disparagingly but with understanding and forgiveness, if we make the effort of wanting to understand. If we have an innate tendency to erupt with violent anger at certain things and if when we are older we are not led to blind anger as we were in our younger days, if the violence of our anger has been tempered by what life has taught us and we have become gentler, we have profited from life in accordance with wisdom. If we were materialists in our youth but have subsequently allowed the revelations from the spiritual world that our time has sought to impart to us to influence us, we will have employed our life in the service of wisdom. If we have closed ourselves to the revelations of the spiritual world, we have not lived our life in accordance with wisdom.

To be enriched in this way and to achieve a wider horizon may be called making use of life in accordance with wisdom; and what spiritual science wants to give us is fitted for opening ourselves up to life so that we may become wiser. Wisdom is something that opposes egotism in the strongest possible way. Wisdom is something that always reckons with the course of world events. We therefore allow ourselves to be instructed by the course of world events because we thereby free ourselves from the narrow judgement made by our ego. A wise person cannot actually judge egotistically, for if one learns from the world one learns to understand it, one learns to let the world correct one’s judgements, so that wisdom extracts us from narrow, limited points of view and brings us into harmony with itself. Much else could be said which could gradually provide us with a description of wisdom. We should not attempt to arrive at a definition of such concepts but, rather, open our hearts, so that we can become ever wiser also about wisdom itself.

Here in the physical world everything that a person has to experience in waking life has to make use of the instruments of the outward physical and etheric nature. As human beings between birth and death, it is only when we are asleep that our soul nature—in so far as it consists of an ego and astral body—is outside our physical and etheric bodies. When we are in a conscious, waking state, we avail ourselves of the instruments of our physical and etheric bodies. When we fill ourselves with wisdom, when we try to live in our actions and thinking, in our feelings and sensations, in accordance with wisdom, we make use of those organs of our physical and etheric bodies which are in a sense the most perfect in our earthly life, those organs that have needed the longest for their development, which were already prepared by Saturn, Sun and Moon and have come into our lives as a heritage and have reached a certain culmination.

I should like to present to you from another point of view an idea of what one can understand by more or less perfected organs. Let us on the one hand take our brain. The brain is not the most perfect organ, but we can regard it as more perfect than other organs; for it needed longer for its development than these other organs. Compare the brain with our torso, for which our hands extend. When we undertake to do something with our hands, we have the thought: I stretch out my hand, I take the vase, I retract my hand. What have I done? I have extended not only the physical hand but also the etheric and astral hand and a portion of my ego; but the physical hand went with them.

If I merely think and entertain only thoughts, clairvoyant consciousness can see that something like spiritual arms stretch out from the head, but the physical brain remains in the skull. Just as my etheric and astral hand belongs to my physical hand, so does something etheric and astral belong to the brain. The brain cannot follow, but the hands can do so. At a later time the hands will also become fixed, and we shall subsequently only be able to move their astral part. The hands are on the way to becoming what the brain is already today.

In earlier times, during the Old Sun and Moon periods, that which today extends as something purely spiritual or intellectual from the brain was also still accompanied by the physical organ. It has now been covered over by the skull, so that the physical brain is held fast within it during earthly evolution. The brain is an organ which has passed through more stages of evolution. The hands are on the way to becoming similar to the brain, for the whole human organism is on the way to becoming a brain. Thus there are organs that are more perfect and have evolved into something more self-contained, and those that are less perfected. The most perfected organs are needed by what we achieve by way of wisdom.

Our ordinary brain is actually used only as an instrument for the lowest form of wisdom, for earthly cleverness. But the more we acquire wisdom, the less we depend upon our cerebrum and the more activity is—unbeknown to modern anatomy—withdrawn to our cerebellum, to what is enclosed within our skull as a smaller brain resembling a tree. When we human beings have become wise, when we have attained wisdom, we do indeed find ourselves beneath a ‘tree’ which is our cerebellum4 and which then begins in a particular way to unfold its activity.

Imagine how a human being who has become especially wise extends the organs of his wisdom mightily like the branches of a tree. They have their source in the cerebellum, which resides in the hard covering of the skull; but the spiritual or intellectual organs extend outwards, and he is as a spiritual reality beneath the tree, the Bodhi tree.

Thus we see too that what we do in wisdom is the most spiritual aspect of our nature, or at least one of the most spiritual, for the organs are already at rest. When we do something with our hand, we must use a portion of our forces on moving the hand. When we make a wise judgement or decide something wisely, the organs remain at rest, no force is employed on a physical organ because in such an instance we are more spiritual, and those organs that we use on the physical plane in order to live wisely are those for which we need to use the least strength, those that are already the most perfected.

Wisdom is, therefore, something in the moral life which enables human beings to experience themselves in a spiritual way. This is associated with the fact that the wisdom that a person acquires enables him to derive the greatest possible fruits from his former incarnations. Because in the realm of the spirit we live in wisdom without any effort on the part of our physical organs, we are through a wisdom-filled life also most able to make what we have acquired in former incarnations fruitful for this life, in that we bring this wisdom over from former incarnations.

We have in German [and also in English] a good word for someone who does not want to become wise. We call him a Philistine. A Philistine is a person who resists any development of wisdom, someone who wants to stay as he is for his entire life and does not want to arrive at a different opinion about anything. But someone who wants to become wise makes the effort to bring the work that he has accomplished and accumulated in former incarnations into his present life. The wiser we become, the more do we bring into the present incarnation from earlier incarnations; and if we do not want to become wise, so that we elect not to cultivate further the wisdom developed in previous incarnations, then along comes one who gets rid of it altogether: Ahriman.

No one likes it better than Ahriman if we do not become wiser. We have the power to do so. We have acquired far, far more in previous incarnations than we think; we gained far more in the times when we were living through the old conditions of clairvoyance. Everyone could become much wiser than he does become. No one should try to persuade himself that there is not much that he could bring over from the past. To become wise means to bring forth what one has acquired in former incarnations so that one may be filled with it in this incarnation.

Another virtue—although it is difficult to describe it exactly in a single word—is that of courage. It represents the mood of soul that does not passively attend to life but is guided by the inclination towards active participation. One might say that this virtue derives from the heart. It can be said of someone who has this virtue in ordinary life that he has his heart in the right place. And this is a good expression for when we are able not timidly to withdraw from things that life demands of us but have the capacity to take ourselves in hand and know how to intervene where this is necessary. When we are in such a way inclined to press on with our activity in a confident and good-hearted manner—the expression ‘good-hearted’ is applicable to this virtue—we have something of the quality of this virtue. One could also say that this virtue is associated with a healthy feeling life that gives rise at the right moment to bravery, whereas its absence engenders cowardice. Naturally, this virtue can in the physical course of life be exercised only through certain organs. These organs, which include the physical and etheric heart, are not so perfected as those which serve wisdom. They are still on the way to becoming different and will in future indeed become so.

There is a great difference between the brain and the heart in their relation to cosmic evolution. Suppose that someone passes through the gate of death and then through the life between death and a new birth. His brain is altogether a work of the Gods. The brain is pervaded by forces which completely separate themselves from him when he passes through the portal of death; and for his next life the brain is built up entirely anew, not only in a material sense but also as regards its inner forces. This is not the case with the heart. The situation with the heart is that not the physical heart itself but the forces that are active within it continue in existence. These forces withdraw into the astral realm and into the ego, and also remain there between death and a new birth. The same forces that beat within our hearts also beat next time in our new incarnation. That which functions within the brain does not feature in a forthcoming incarnation. But the forces that inspire our heart also reappear in the next incarnation. When we contemplate a head, we can say: Invisible forces are working within it of which the brain is composed. But when a person passes through the gate of death, these forces are given over to the cosmos. When, however, we listen to someone’s heartbeat, we are hearing spiritual forces which are present not only in this incarnation but will also live in the next incarnation, having passed through death and a new birth.

Popular consciousness had a wonderful sense of such things. That is why so much importance was attached to the feeling of the heartbeat, not because the physical heartbeat is so greatly valued but because we perceive something far more eternal when we consider a person’s heartbeat. If we have the virtue of courage, of valiant good-heartedness, we can use only a part of certain forces for this virtue; and we must use the other part for the organs that serve as the instruments for it. These are organs for which we must still use a portion of such forces. If we are not courageous, if we do not develop the virtue of brave good-heartedness, if we let ourselves go, timidly withdraw from life and give ourselves over to the gravity of our own being, we cannot enliven those forces which must accompany the full expression of the virtue of courage.

For as long as we take a cowardly stance in life, the forces that should fire our heart remain inactive. They are a seed for Lucifer. He takes possession of them, and we do not have them in the next life. To be cowardly in the face of life means that one is providing Lucifer with a quantity of forces that we will lack when we want to build up our hearts, which are indeed the organs, the instruments of courage. We will come into the world with defective, underdeveloped organs.

The third virtue, which reckons with the least perfected organs that will acquire a form only in the future and of which they contain at present only a seed, is one that we may call temperance, circumspection or discretion.* It can also in one of its shades of meaning be referred to as ‘moderation’. Thus we have three virtues: wisdom, courage or good-heartedness and temperance.

One can be intemperate in the most varied ways, such as overeating or drinking to excess. This is the lowest form of intemperance. The soul is totally engulfed in bodily desires, and our life is dominated by the body. If, however, we take our desires in hand, if we directly command the body as to what it may and may not do, we are then temperate or, as one could also say, acting in moderation. And through such moderation we also maintain some order amidst those forces whose task it is to prevent the organs in question from falling prey to Lucifer in the next incarnation; for the forces that we expend through giving ourselves up to a life of passion we make available to Lucifer. This is most severely exacerbated by our passions, if our consciousness becomes submerged in a dreamy, drowsy state.

When we lose our sense of temperance or moderation, we always make forces available to Lucifer. He takes these forces, but he also takes from us the forces that we need for the organs of breathing and digestion; and our organs of breathing and digestion are adversely affected if we do not cultivate the virtue of moderation. Those who like to be carried away by their desires and give themselves up to their passions are candidates for being the decadent people of the future, those who will suffer from all possible aberrations of their physical body.

One can say that this virtue of temperance is dependent upon the least perfected organs of man’s being, upon the organs that are in the initial stage of development and must still essentially be transformed. When we consider our organs of digestion and all that is connected with them, we have to apply our ego, astral body, etheric body and physical body in order to set them in motion. With the organs that serve as the instruments for courage, the situation is different. In this case our ego remains more or less outside, in that we move freely; and only our astral and etheric bodies reach into the physical domain. When we come to the virtues that comprise wisdom, we keep the ego and astral body freely detached; for as we become wiser, we develop the organization of the astral body, we take hold of it. That is the essential point, that through becoming wiser we transform the astral body into the Spirit-self, and only the etheric body combines with the physical body. In the brain, the physical aspect of our being is accompanied only by the etheric; and whereas during waking life we are with respect to the rest of the body very closely connected in our physical organism at any rate with our astral nature, we retain for the brain the condition in which we are in sleep to the highest degree. Thus for the brain we are in the greatest need of sleep; for likewise when we are awake, our ego and astral body are outside the brain, and they have to make the greatest effort within themselves without having the support of the external organ.

Thus we find a connection between our human nature and the virtues. We can call wisdom a virtue that belongs to man as a spiritual being, where he is freely active with his ego and his astral body and his physical and etheric organs merely offer a kind of support. We can refer to courage as a virtue where a person is free only with his ego and has his supports in his astral, etheric and physical bodies. Finally, we can speak of temperance, circumspection or discretion where the seed within our ego is becoming free, where our ego is nevertheless bound to the astral, etheric and physical bodies and we work by means of it to free ourselves from these bonds.

But then there is a virtue which is the most spiritual of all. This most spiritual of virtues is connected with the whole human being. There is a function of human nature which we lose early and have only in the first years of childhood. I have often mentioned what I have in mind here. When we arrive on the physical plane, we are not in the position that we need for our human dignity. We crawl on all fours. I have pointed out that it is only through our own forces that we achieve the right situation of uprightness. Similarly, we develop through the forces that bring about speech. In short, in the first years of our life we develop forces which in all essentials—note the expression—draw us into the position that we have in the world as true human beings. We do not come into the world in such a way that we already find our ‘right’ orientation in it. We crawl. But we are rightly placed when we direct our head towards the stars. This corresponds to inner forces.

In later life we lose these forces. They cease to manifest themselves. Nothing any longer appears of a similar nature in human life to match the energy displayed in learning to walk and acquiring an upright posture. We become increasingly weary when it comes to our capacity of uprightness. If we begin early in the morning to live with our brain, we become tired when we have come to the end of the day; we are in need of sleep. When we are tired, that which gives us our upright posture in childhood itself remains somewhat weary and degenerates into feebleness; and anything comparable to the achieving of uprightness in childhood no longer happens in later life.

And how do we orientate ourselves in life when we learn to speak? Also when we are learning to speak, guiding forces are working with us. The same forces that we use in early childhood are, however, not lost in the course of later life. They remain available to us, but they are associated with a virtue, with the virtue that is connected with rightness, with what is right, with the virtue of all-encompassing justice, the fourth virtue. The same power that we use as a child when, from a being that crawls, we raise ourselves to uprightness lives in us when we have the virtue of justice, the fourth of those mentioned by Plato.

Anyone who really practises the virtue of justice puts every thing and every being in its right place, goes out from himself and into the others. This is what it means to live in all-encompassing justice. To live in wisdom means to derive the best fruits from the forces that we have stored up in previous incarnations. And if we had to point towards what was imparted to us in former incarnations, when divine forces still pervaded us, we must with justice further emphasize that we derive from the cosmos. We practise justice when we develop the forces through which we are connected, in a spiritual respect, with the whole cosmos. Justice represents the measure of a person’s connection with the divine. Injustice is, to all intents and purposes, equivalent to godlessness, to one who has lost his divine origin; and we blaspheme against God from whom we spring if we do any human being an injustice.

Thus we have two virtues, justice and wisdom, which direct us back to what we were in former times, in other incarnations, in the times when we ourselves were still in the womb of the Godhead. And we have two other virtues, which may be designated as courage and temperance, which point us towards later incarnations. We build up all the more forces for these the less that we give to Lucifer. We have seen how what is associated with courage and temperance goes into the organs and how the organs are thereby prepared for the next incarnation. In the same way moral life extends into future life if we fill ourselves with spirituality. Two virtues extend their life over past incarnations: wisdom and justice. Courage and temperance shed their light upon future incarnations.

The time will come when people will see clearly that they are throwing themselves into the jaws of Ahriman if they shut themselves off from justice and wisdom; and what they had in former incarnations, what belonged to the divine world, would be made available to Lucifer through intemperate or cowardly actions. What is seized by Lucifer is taken away from the forces available for building up our body in our next life.

We cannot practise wisdom and justice without becoming selfless, as has been indicated. Someone who is self-seeking can only be unjust; someone who is self-seeking can only be wanting to remain unwise. Wisdom and justice lead us beyond our self and make us members of the whole organism of humanity. Courage or good-heartedness and temperance make us in a certain sense members of the whole organism of humanity. Only by experiencing courage and temperance and expressing them in our lives do we ensure that in the future we shall engage with humanity as a whole with a stronger organism. What we would otherwise cast away to Lucifer will not then be taken away from us. Egotism is of itself transformed into selflessness when it is extended in the right sense over the whole horizon of life and man finds his place in the light of the fourth virtue. This is what spiritual wisdom will bring to the future of humanity and will extend to include ethics and the moral life. This will then also flow into methods of education. If wisdom and justice are understood in the way that I have indicated, one will want to learn throughout one’s life. One will see that one has to begin learning in the right way only when one is no longer young, whereas people nowadays think that when one’s youth is behind one there is nothing more to learn. In this way even the greatest and noblest fruits of art, of the great writers and poets of mankind, are lost. We would approach them most fruitfully if we were to take up these works again in old age. When people read Goethe’s Iphigenia or Schiller’s Tell, they usually think: We’ve already read that at school. But this is not right, for it should not be forgotten that these works have the greatest effect on us when we read them in old age; for it is then that they promote justice and wisdom.

Again, the education of children will be particularly fruitful if the virtue of courage and the virtue of temperance are seen in the right light. When it is a case of educating children, these virtues must be viewed in an individual way, in that children are again and again shown that they are to take hold of life in a good-hearted way, that they should not be afraid of everything or withdraw from all manner of situations, and that they embrace life with circumspection and moderation in order gradually to free themselves from their passions. An immense amount can be done for the education of children in this way. These things will be explained further as we proceed in our spiritual-scientific studies.

So you see that the laws in moral life which otherwise only apply to the outward, physical plane, to the life between birth and death, extend through spiritual-scientific observations to an endlessly wide horizon. The situation here is the same as it is in other areas of spiritual science. And yet humanity has also had to experience an extension of its horizons with respect to natural science. Giordano Bruno5 pointed out that there is not only one earthly life but that there are many earthly lives. Before Giordano Bruno people believed that there is a fixed boundary up in the sky. He made them aware that this is not so, that the blue of the sky does not constitute a limit. Spiritual science shows that birth and death are as such not really there at all and that we introduce them into life through the limitations of our understanding.

Thus the gulf between the physical and the spiritual can be spanned; and for those who establish a real, true monism, the things that have their foundation in spiritual science have a real existence. It may often happen that those who call themselves monists make their monism very simple. They take one part of the world and make it into a single entity by getting rid of the other half of the world. True monism comes about through allowing both halves to intermingle in a meaningful way. This happens through spiritual science—but not only that this impresses itself on our consciousness but arises for the whole of our life. We must increasingly come to the real knowledge as we look into the world that in what is around us, in everything that lives and is active everywhere, there is something supersensible, not only in what our eye beholds but also in what our reasoning powers that are bound to the brain perceive. There are spiritual forces everywhere, behind every phenomenon, behind the phenomenon of the rainbow, behind the movement of our hand, and so on.

If you read the cycle of lectures that I gave at the turn of the previous year in Leipzig,6 you will find how the Christ impulse worked through the Mystery of Golgotha, how Christ lives in the most important affairs of humanity and not only in what people have consciously known about. There have, for example, been quarrels about dogmas; but while people were arguing, the Christ impulse was living through everything and bringing about what needed to happen.

Let us take the figure of the Maid of Orleans7. This simple shepherd girl makes her appearance in European history. She appears in a remarkable way in that in her soul there live not only those forces that otherwise live within a person but that the Christ impulse is working in this personality, enlivening and sustaining her through its mighty influence. She became a kind of representative of the Christ impulse itself for her time. This she could only do because the Christ impulse had entered into her being.

You know that we celebrate Christmas at the time when the power of the Sun is at its least, in the deepest darkness of winter, because we can be convinced that at this time the inner light, the spiritual light, has the greatest intensity.