The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. On Self-Awareness

Following on from the Rosicrucian mystery “The Gate of Initiation”

[ 1 ] Most of those present know that, in addition to restaging last year’s production of the drama *The Children of Lucifer*, we have endeavored in Munich to present a Rosicrucian Mystery Play that seeks to portray, in a variety of ways, various aspects of what is connected with our movement. On the one hand, this Rosicrucian Mystery Play is, in a sense, intended to be a demonstration of how everything that animates anthroposophical life can flow into art. On the other hand, however, we must not forget that this Rosicrucian Mystery Play contains much of our spiritual-scientific teachings in a way that may only become apparent over the course of the years. And in particular, it must not be misunderstood that if one were to make some effort to read the things contained therein—not between the lines, for they are already, albeit in a spiritual way, within the words—if, that is, one were to make an effort to understand the Rosicrucian Mystery in this way to understand it in such a way that one would seek out these things in the coming years, then for many years to come it would not be necessary for me to give any lectures. Much of what I otherwise lecture on regarding any given topic would be found within it. However, it will prove more practical if we seek it out together than if a single person were to do so. In a certain sense, it is good that what lives in spiritual science is also present in this form.

[ 2 ] Today, building on the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, I would like to speak about certain peculiarities of human self-knowledge. To do so, however, we must recall—in a characterizing way—how individuality operates within the body of Johannes Thomasius in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play. Therefore, I would like this lecture, which is to deal with self-knowledge, to begin with a recitation of those passages from the Rosicrucian Mystery that signify Johannes’s self-knowledge.

Second scene

An open-air setting, rocks, springs; the entire surroundings are to be imagined in the mind of Johannes Thomasius as the subject of his meditation; later, Mary.

(It resounds from springs and rocks: O man, know thyself!)

Johannes:

For years now I have heard them,
These words so rich in meaning.
They resound to me from air and water,
They ring out from the depths of the earth,
And just as the structure of the giant oak
Mysteriously presses its way into the tiny seed,
So, at last, within
the power of these words,
What pertains to the nature of the elements,
To souls and spirits,
To the passage of time and eternity
Becomes comprehensible to my mind.
The world and my own being,
They live in the words:
O man, know thyself!

(From springs and rocks it resounds: O man, know thyself!)

And now! — it becomes
Terribly alive within me.
Darkness weaves around me,
Gloom yawns within me;
It resounds from the darkness of the world,
It echoes from the gloom of the soul:
O man, know thyself!

(It resounds from springs and rocks: O man, know thyself!)

It now robs me of myself.
I shift with the passing of the day
And transform into night.
I follow the Earth in its orbit.
I roll in the thunder,
I twitch in the lightning.
I am. — O, already vanished
I feel myself estranged from my own being.
I see my physical shell;
It is a foreign being outside of me,
It is far removed from me.
There floats toward me another body.
I must speak with its mouth:
“He has brought me bitter distress;
I trusted him so completely.
He left me alone in my grief,
He robbed me of the warmth of life
And thrust me into the cold earth.”
The one I left behind, the poor one,
I was that very one myself.
I must endure her torment.
Knowledge has given me the strength
To carry my self into another’s self.
O cruel word!
Your light is extinguished by its own power.
O human, know thyself!

(It resounds from springs and rocks: O man, know thyself!)

You lead me back again
Into the circles of my own being.
But how I recognize myself!
I have lost my human form.
I appear to myself as a wild worm,
Born of lust and greed.
And I clearly sense
How, like a delusional mirage
My own terrifying form
Has hitherto been hidden from me.
The wildness of my own being must devour me.
I feel, like a consuming fire
Those words flowing through my veins,
Which otherwise so powerfully
Revealed to me the nature of the sun and the earth.
They live in my pulses,
They beat in my heart;
And even in my own thoughts I feel
Those foreign worlds already blazing as wild urges.
These are the fruits of the word:
O man, know thyself!

(It resounds from springs and rocks: O man, know thyself!)

There, from the dark abyss, —
What creature stares at me?
I feel chains,
That bind me to you.
Not even Prometheus
Was chained so tightly to the rocks of the Caucasus,
As I am chained to you.
Who are you, terrifying creature?

(It resounds from springs and rocks: O man, know thyself!)

Oh, I recognize you.
It's me.
Recognition forges in you a deadly monster

(Maria enters; Johannes doesn't notice her at first.)

I, myself, a pernicious monster.
I sought to flee from you.
The worlds have blinded me,
Into which my folly fled,
To be free from myself.
I am blinded once more in my blind soul:
O man, know thyself!

(It resounds from springs and rocks: O man, know thyself!)

Johannes:

(as if coming to his senses, he sees Mary. The meditation gives way to inner reality)

Oh, my friend, you're here!

Maria:

I sought you, my friend;
Though I know full well,
How much you love solitude,
After so many people’s opinions
Have flooded your soul.
And though I also know,
That by my presence I cannot help my friend
At this time,
A dark longing
Drives me to you at this very moment,
Since Benedictus’ words, instead of light,
Have drawn such heavy sorrow
From the depths of your spirit.

Johannes:

How dear to me is solitude!
- - - - - - - - -
I have sought it so often,
To find myself within it,
When, into labyrinths of thought,
The suffering and happiness of mankind had driven me.
O friend, that is now over.
What Benedictus’ words first
Drew from my soul,
What through the talk of men
I had to endure,
Seems but small to me,
Compared to the storm
That solitude then brought me
In gloomy brooding.
O this solitude!
It drove me across the vastness of the world.
It tore me away from myself.
In that being to whom I brought suffering,
I was reborn as another.
And I had to suffer the pain,
Which I myself had first caused.
That cruel, dark solitude,
It then returned me to myself.
But only to terrify me
Through the abyss of my own being.
To me, man’s final refuge,
To me, solitude is lost.

Maria:

I must repeat these words to you:
Only Benedictus can help you.
The support we lack,
We must both receive it from him.
For know this: I, too, can no longer
Bear the riddles of my life,
Unless, through his sign,
The solution reveals itself to me.
The profound wisdom that over all life
Only illusion and deceit spread,
When our thinking grasps merely its surface,
I have often reminded myself of it.
And time and again it spoke:
You must recognize how delusion surrounds you,
However often it may seem like truth to you,
It could bear bitter fruit,
If you wish to awaken in another light,
That lives within yourself.
In the best part of my soul I am aware,
That even the heavy burden,
Which life has brought to you, my friend,
By my side,
Is part of the thorny path,
Which leads to the light of truth.
You must experience all the terrors,
That can arise from delusion,
Before the essence of truth reveals itself to you.
So speaks your star.
Yet through this star’s word it also appears to me,
That we must walk the paths of the spirit together.
Yet when I seek these paths,
A dark night spreads before my eyes.
And the night grows blacker still through many things yet,
Which I must experience
As the fruits of my being.
We must both seek clarity in the light,
Which may well vanish from the eye,
But can never be extinguished.

Johannes:

Maria, are you aware,
Of what my soul has just endured?
A heavy burden indeed
Has fallen upon you, noble friend.
Yet far removed from your nature is that power,
Which has so utterly shattered me.
You can ascend to the brightest heights of truth,
You can direct your steady gaze
Amidst the turmoil of humanity,
You will preserve yourself
In both light and darkness.
But for me, every moment
Can rob me of myself.
I had to immerse myself in the people
Who had just revealed themselves in words.
I followed one into the solitude of the monastery,
I heard in the other’s soul
Felicia’s fairy tale.
I was each one,
Yet I myself died within myself.
I would have to be able to believe,
That Nothing is the origin of beings,
If I were to cherish the hope,
That out of the nothingness within me
A human being might ever become,
Leads me from fear into darkness
And chases me through darkness in fear
The essence of wisdom’s word:
O human, know thyself!

(From springs and rocks it resounds: O man, know thyself!)

(The Curtain Falls)

Ninth Image

The same area as in the second picture. Johannes, later Maria.

(It echoes from the rocks and springs: O human, experience yourself!)

Johannes:

O human, discover yourself!
I have sought it for three years,
That courage-filled strength of the soul,
Which gives truth to words,
Through which the human, freeing himself, may triumph
And, by conquering himself, find freedom:

Oh, human being, experience yourself!

(From rocks and springs comes the call: O human, experience yourself!)

It announces itself within,
Barely perceptible to my inner ear.
It holds within it the hope
That, as it grows, it will lead the human spirit
From a narrow existence to distant worlds,
Just as the tiny seed mysteriously expands
The tiny seed
Into the proud trunk of the giant oak. — —
The spirit can enliven within itself,
What weaves in the air and in the water,
And what has solidified the earth’s foundation.
Man can grasp,
What in the elements,
In souls and in spirits,
In the course of time and eternity
Has taken hold of existence.
The whole being of the world lives in the soul,
When such power takes root in the spirit,
Giving truth to the word:
O human being, experience yourself!

(From rocks and springs resounds: O human, experience yourself!)

I feel—how it resounds in my soul,
Stirring, bestowing strength.
The light lives within me,
Brightness surrounds me,
The light of the soul sprouts within me,
It creates the radiance of the world within me:
O human, experience yourself!

(From rocks and springs resounds: O human, experience yourself!)

I find myself secure everywhere,
Wherever the power of the Word follows me.
It will shine for me in the darkness of the senses
And sustain me in the heights of the spirit.
It will fill me with the essence of the soul
For all time to come.
I feel the essence of the world within me,
And I must find myself in all worlds.
I behold my soul’s essence
Enlivened within me by my own power.
I rest within myself.
I gaze upon the rocks and the springs;
They speak the language of my soul.
I find myself in that being,
Whom I have brought into bitter distress.
From within it I call out to myself:
“You must find me again
And ease my pain.”
The light of the spirit will give me strength,
To live the other self within my own self.
O hopeful word,
You pour strength upon me from all worlds:
O human, experience yourself!

(From rocks and springs resounds: O human, experience yourself!)

You make me feel my weakness
And place me alongside God’s lofty goals;
And I feel blissfully
The creative power of that lofty goal
In my weak earthly self.
And from within myself shall be revealed,
That for which the seed is hidden within me.
I will give myself to the world
Through the life of my own being.
I will feel all the power of the word,
Which at first sounds soft to me;
It shall be like a life-giving fire to me
In the powers of my soul,
On the paths of my spirit.
I feel how my thinking penetrates
Into the depths of the world’s foundations;
And how it shines through them radiantly.
Thus works the germinal power of this word:
O human, experience yourself!

(From Springs and Rocks: O Human, Experience Yourself!)

From lofty heights, a being shines upon me,
I feel wings,
To rise up to him,
I want to free myself
Like all beings who have conquered themselves.

(From Springs and Rocks: O Human, Experience Yourself!)

I gaze upon that being,
I wish to become like it in times to come.
The spirit within me will be set free
Through you, sublime goal.
I will follow you.

(Maria joins them.)

The eye of the soul has been awakened in me
By the spiritual beings who have taken me in.
And as I gaze into the spiritual realms
I feel the power within myself:
O human, experience yourself!

(From Springs and Rocks: O Human, Experience Yourself!)

Oh, my friend, you're here!

Maria:

My soul drew me here.
I could see your star.
It shines with full force.

Johannes:

I can feel this power within me.

Maria:

We are so closely connected,
That the life of your soul
Lets its light shine in my soul.

Johannes:

O Mary, are you aware
of what has just been revealed to me?
I have found man’s first confidence,
I have gained inner certainty.
I feel the power of the word,
which can guide me everywhere:
O man, experience yourself!

(From Rocks and Springs: O Human, Experience Yourself!)

(The curtain falls)

[ 3 ] In the two images, “O Human, Know Thyself” and “O Human, Experience Thyself,” two stages, two levels of development in the unfolding of our soul, appear before our soul.

[ 4 ] Now I ask you not to find it at all strange when I say that I actually have no objection to interpreting this Rosicrucian mystery in the same way that I have occasionally interpreted other works of poetry in our circles. For in a certain sense, it may well be said that what I have often remarked in connection with other works of poetry that I have had the privilege of interpreting can come before our souls in a living, immediate way through this Rosicrucian mystery. I have never hesitated to say: Just as the plant, the flower, knows nothing of what the one who beholds the flower finds in it, so is what he finds in it nevertheless contained within the flower. — When I was asked to interpret the poem “Faust,” I explained that the poet, in writing it down, did not necessarily know all things immediately himself, nor did he feel them himself in the words that were later found therein. I can assure you that nothing of what I will subsequently connect to this mystery—and of which I nevertheless know that it is there—was conscious to me when the individual images were formed. The images grew out of themselves just as the leaves of a plant do. One cannot at all bring forth such a form in advance by first having the idea and then translating it into external form. It was always quite interesting to me when the paintings came into being one by one, and friends who had seen the individual scenes said it was strange that the result always turned out differently than one had imagined.

[ 5 ] Thus this mystery stands as a reflection of human evolution within the development of a single individual. I emphasize: it is impossible for concrete feeling to cloak itself in abstractions in order to represent anthroposophy, because every human soul is different from the next and, fundamentally, since it experiences its own development, must also be different. In all that is presented as a general teaching, we can receive only guidelines. Therefore, the complete truth can only be conveyed when one connects with an individual soul—a soul that embodies its human individuality with all its peculiarities. If, therefore, someone were to view Johannes Thomasius in such a way as to translate what is said about him in concrete terms into theories of human development, they would be doing something entirely wrong. If they believed they would experience exactly the same thing that Johannes Thomasius experienced, they would be very much mistaken. For what Johannes Thomasius is to experience in broad outlines applies to every human being, but to experience it in all its particularity—well, for that one must be Johannes Thomasius. And everyone is, in their own way, a “Johannes Thomasius.”

[ 6 ] Thus, everything is presented in a completely individual way. But this also ensures that, in connection with the particular form, what constitutes the development of the human soul is presented as truthfully as possible. To achieve this, it was also necessary to establish this broad foundation: that Thomasius is first shown on the physical plane, that reference is made to individual soul experiences—such as the one that must be significant, where, in a time not too distant, he abandoned a being who was devoted to him in faithful love. This happens often, but this individual event has a different effect on the one who is striving to undergo a process of development. It is a profound truth that the one undergoing development does not attain self-knowledge by brooding within oneself, but by immersing oneself in individual beings. Through self-knowledge, we must come to realize that we come from the cosmos. We can only immerse ourselves when we transform into another self. We are first transformed into that which was once close to us in life.

[ 7 ] It is an example of experiencing one’s own self in another when Johannes, having delved deeper into his own self, immerses himself—through self-knowledge—into another being, into the being to whom he has caused bitter pain. Thus we see how Thomasius immerses himself in this self-knowledge. Theoretically, it is said: If you want to recognize the flower, you must dive down into the flower. — But the best way to attain self-knowledge is when we immerse ourselves in the events in which we ourselves have stood in a different way. As long as we are within our own self, we go through the external experiences. In the face of true self-knowledge, what we think of other beings becomes abstraction.

[ 8 ] For Thomasius, what other people have experienced first becomes his own experience. There was a man, Capesius, who described his experiences. These experiences are such that one can see how they fit into life. But Thomasius takes in something else. He listens. His listening, however—as will be characterized later in the eighth scene—is of a different kind. It is as if, with his ordinary self, the person were not even present. Another, deeper power reveals itself there, as if it were he himself who were creeping into Capesius’s soul and experiencing what is taking place there. That is why it becomes so infinitely significant that he becomes estranged from himself there. It is inseparable from self-knowledge that one detaches oneself from oneself and merges into the other. That is why it is so significant for Thomasius that, after listening to these words [in the first scene], he must say: “/p”

A reflection of life in its fullness,
Which revealed me so clearly to myself.
That lofty spiritual revelation
Led me to feel
How many people harbor within themselves
But a single aspect of humanity,
While believing themselves to be a complete being.
To unite the many sides
Within my own self,
I boldly set out on the path,
That is shown here.
It has made me nothing.

[ 9 ] Why did he reduce him to nothing? Because, through self-knowledge, he has immersed himself in these other beings. Brooding over one’s own inner self makes a person proud and arrogant. True self-knowledge leads, first of all, through our immersion in another’s self, to suffering. In the first scene, Johannes follows people by listening to Capesius and hearing Felicia’s words in that other soul. He follows Strader into his monastic solitude. That is abstraction at first. He has not yet reached what he is now led to through pain in the second scene. Self-knowledge deepens through meditation on the inner self. And what was shown in the first scene reveals the deepened self-knowledge [in the second scene], which presents the concrete from the abstract. And the familiar words that we have heard resound for centuries as the maxims of the Delphic Oracle take on a new life for humanity, but initially a life of alienation from oneself.

[ 10 ] John, as one who recognizes himself, merges into all external beings. He lives in air and water, in rocks and springs, but not within himself. All the words that can only be uttered from the outside are actually words of meditation. And as soon as the curtain rises, we must imagine the words that, with every act of self-knowledge, resound much louder than can be portrayed on stage. Then the self-aware person immerses himself in the various other beings; through this he comes to know the things into which he immerses himself. And then the same experience he had earlier comes before his eyes in a terrifying way.

[ 11 ] It is indeed a profound truth that this self-knowledge, when it proceeds in the manner just described, leads us to view ourselves quite differently than we did before. It leads us, so to speak, to learn to perceive our ego as a foreign entity.

[ 12 ] For human beings, their physical body is actually what is closest to them. In our time, people feel much more connected to their bodies when they cut their finger than when, for example, a false judgment by a fellow human being causes them pain. How much more does it hurt people today when they cut their finger than when they hear a wrong judgment! And yet it cuts only into their physical shell. But the fact that we feel this—that we feel our body as a tool—only arises through self-knowledge.

[ 13 ] A person can already sense their hand as a tool to some extent when they grasp an object. But one learns to sense the same thing with this or that part of the brain. This inner sense of the brain as an instrument emerges at a certain stage of self-awareness. That is where the individual parts become localized. When we hammer in a nail, we know that we are doing so with a tool. But we also know that we are using this or that part of the brain to do so. As things become objectively foreign to us, we come to know our brain as something separate from ourselves. Self-knowledge fosters this objectivity of our physical shell, and eventually our shell becomes as foreign to us as our external tools are. Through this, we truly begin to live in the external world when we start to perceive our physical body as an objective entity.

[ 14 ] Because humans are aware only of their physical bodies, they do not realize that there is a boundary between the air outside and the air in their lungs. Nevertheless, they say that the air inside is the same as the air outside. If we take the substance of air, then it is both inside and outside. So it is with everything—with blood, with everything that is physical. Physically, however, it cannot be inside or outside; that is merely Maya. Precisely because the physical interior becomes an exterior, it truthfully extends into the rest of the world and the cosmos.

[ 15 ] The pain of feeling alienated was to be portrayed in the first scene recited today. The pain of becoming alienated by finding oneself in everything external. Johannes Thomasius’s own physical body is like a being that exists outside of him. But just as he feels his own body outside of himself, he sees the other body approaching—the body of the being he has left behind. It draws near to him, and he has learned to speak with this being’s own words. It says to him—his self has expanded to include it—:

He brought me bitter sorrow;
I trusted him so completely.
He left me alone in my grief,
He robbed me of the warmth of life
And cast me into the cold earth.

[ 16 ] But it is only then that the accusation truly takes root in the soul, when the suffering of another—to which we have bound our own self—must be articulated, because our own self has become submerged within another self. This is a deepening. There, Johannes is truly in the suffering because he caused it. He feels as though he has flowed into it and awakened again. What is he actually experiencing there?

[ 17 ] When we take everything into account, we find that the ordinary, average person experiences something similar only in the state we call Kamaloka. The initiate must experience in this world what the ordinary person experiences in the spiritual world. He must experience within the physical body what are Kamaloka experiences—things that are otherwise experienced outside the physical body. Therefore, all the qualities that can be perceived as Kamaloka qualities are present as experiences of initiation. Just as John plunges into the soul to whom he has caused suffering, so must the ordinary person in Kamaloka plunge into the souls to whom he has caused pain. Just as if a slap were returned to him, so must he feel pain. These things differ only in that the initiate experiences them within the physical body, while the other person experiences them after death. Whoever experiences them here lives in a completely different way than in Kamaloka. But even what a person can experience in Kamaloka can be experienced in such a way that he has not yet truly become free, so to speak. And that is a difficult task, to become completely free. The person feels as if bound to physical conditions.

[ 18 ] In our time, one of the most important experiences of development—which was not the case in the Greco-Roman era but has only now become particularly significant—is that a person can experience just how infinitely difficult it is to detach oneself from one’s own being. Hence, an important initiatory experience is expressed in the words where John feels bound to his own lower body, where his own being appears to him as a being to which he is chained:

I feel chains,
That bind me to you.
Prometheus was not so firmly
Chained to the rocks of the Caucasus,
As I am chained to you.

[ 19 ] This is something connected with self-knowledge, a secret of self-knowledge. We just have to understand it in the right way.

[ 20 ] The question regarding this mystery could also be phrased as follows: Have we actually become better people by becoming earthly human beings, by immersing ourselves in our earthly bodies, or would we be better people if we could remain solely within our inner selves, if we could simply shed these bodies? Those who are trivial-minded and opposed to spiritual life might easily ask: Why bother entering the earthly body in the first place? The simplest thing would be to remain above; then one would not have to endure the whole ordeal of entering it.

[ 21 ] Why have the wise powers of fate hidden us away? Intuitively, there is little to be explained by saying that divine-spiritual forces have been at work on this earthly body for millions and millions of years. Precisely because this is so, we should strive to become more than our inherent powers allow. Our inner powers are not sufficient. We cannot yet be as much as the gods have made us, if we merely wish to be what we are within ourselves, if we are not corrected by our physical forms. Life presents itself as follows: Here on earth, the human being is placed within his physical form; these forms have been prepared by beings through three worlds. Human beings must first develop their inner selves. Between birth and death they are evil; in Devachan they are once again better beings, received by divine-spiritual beings who permeate them with their own powers. Later, in the volcanic age, they will then be perfect beings. Now on Earth they are beings who indulge in this or that pleasure. The heart, for example, is so wisely constructed that it withstands for decades the assaults that man directs against it with his excesses, for example with coffee. Just as man can be today through his own power, so he now passes through Kamaloka. There he is to learn what he can be through his own power. And that is truly nothing good. If a person were to describe himself, he could not describe himself with the attribute of beauty. He must describe himself as John does [in the second image]:

But how I recognize myself!
My human form is lost to me.
I appear to myself as a wild worm,
Born of lust and greed.
And I clearly sense
How, like a foggy vision of delusion,
My own terrifying form
Has been kept hidden from me until now.

[ 22 ] Our inner self is stretched out, as if elastic, within our physical bodies and remains hidden from us. We actually come to know ourselves as a kind of wild worm when we undergo initiation. And so these words are now drawn from the deepest depths of feeling; they are words of self-knowledge, not of self-absorption:

It is I myself.
Knowledge forges you into a monstrous beast
Myself into a monstrous beast.

[ 23 ] Essentially, they are both the same thing—one as the object, the other as the subject.

I wanted to escape from you.

[ 24 ] But this escape only leads people back to themselves.

[ 25 ] And then there is that society that emerges—the one we find ourselves in when we truly look within. This society we find within ourselves consists of our own desires and passions, things that went unnoticed before because every time we tried to look within, our gaze was diverted to our surroundings. For compared to what we so wanted to look into, the world is a beautiful world. There, in the illusion, the Maya of life, we stop looking within ourselves. But when people talk all sorts of nonsense around us, and when it has become too much for us, then we flee into solitude. And this is very important for certain stages of development. There one can and should gather one’s thoughts. This is a good means of self-knowledge. But there are still experiences where we enter into society, where we can no longer be alone, where precisely there those beings appear—within us or outside us, it matters not—who do not let us be alone. Then comes that experience one is meant to have. This solitude brings precisely the worst company:

I have lost man's final refuge,
I have lost solitude.

[ 26 ] These are real experiences. But do not let the intensity and power of these experiences become a source of temptation for you. Do not believe, when such experiences are presented with such intensity, that one should feel fear and dread. Do not believe that this is meant to distract anyone or cause them to submerge themselves in these waves. One does not experience them with the same intensity as John, because he was meant to experience them for a specific purpose—in a certain sense, even prematurely. Normal self-development follows a different course. Therefore, what occurs tumultuously in John must be understood as an individual experience. Because he is this individuality that has suffered shipwreck, everything can unfold much more tumultuously in him as he goes through these laws. He comes to know them in such a way that they throw him deeply off balance. But by depicting this here for John, one thing is meant to be awakened: namely, the feeling that true self-knowledge has nothing to do with trivial phrases, that true self-knowledge cannot help but lead first through pain and suffering.

[ 27 ] Things that once brought people refreshment take on a different aspect when they appear in the realm of self-knowledge. We can certainly yearn for solitude, even if we have already attained self-knowledge. But in certain moments of self-knowledge, solitude can be what we lose when we seek it in the way we knew before—in moments when we then flow out into the objective world, where the solitary person suffers the most intense pain.

[ 28 ] We must learn to perceive this pouring out into other beings in the right way if we wish to feel what is contained in the drama. A certain aesthetic sensibility pervades it; everything in it is spiritually realistic. Anyone who thinks realistically—a truly aesthetically sensitive realist—feels a certain pain when faced with an unrealistic portrayal. Even what can bring great satisfaction at one level may be a source of pain at another. This depends on the path of self-knowledge. A Shakespearean drama, for example—something that is already a great achievement of the external world—can be a source of aesthetic satisfaction. But a certain moment in one’s development may arise when one can no longer be satisfied by it, because one feels one’s inner self torn apart as one moves from scene to scene, because one no longer sees the necessity for one scene to follow another. One may find it unnatural that one scene is placed next to another. Why unnatural? Because nothing holds two scenes together except the writer Shakespeare and the spectator. In the sequence of scenes there is an abstract principle of causality, not a concrete, essential one. This is the characteristic feature of Shakespeare’s dramas: that nothing is suggested which karmically interweaves and holds them together.

[ 29 ] The Rosicrucian drama has become realistic—spiritually realistic. It places great demands on Johannes Thomasius. Without playing an active role in any significant capacity, he is present on the stage. It is within his soul that everything unfolds, and what is depicted there is the development of the soul, the real experience of what is experienced in the soul’s development.

[ 30 ] Johannes’s soul realistically weaves one image out of another. Here we see that the realistic and the spiritual do not contradict each other. The materialistic and the spiritual do not necessarily need each other, but they can contradict each other. But the realistic and the spiritual need not contradict each other either, and something spiritually realistic can be greatly admired by a materialist. Shakespeare’s plays can certainly be conceived of as realistic in terms of an aesthetic principle. But you can also understand that an art that goes hand in hand with spiritual science ultimately leads to the point where, for the one who experiences his self within the cosmos, the entire cosmos becomes an I-being. Then we cannot bear it if anything in the cosmos stands in opposition to him that is not related to the I-being. In this regard, art will learn something that leads it to the I-principle, because Christ first brought us the I. This I will express itself in the most diverse fields.

[ 31 ] But this concrete human aspect manifests itself in the soul in yet another way, and is again distributed outward. If someone had asked back then: Which person is Atma, which is Buddhi, which is Manas? — It would be a dreadful art, a terrible art, if one were forced to interpret the depiction as follows: This figure is a personification of Manas.—There are theosophical bad habits that strive to interpret everything in this direction. Of the work of art that would have to be interpreted in this way, one might say: Poor work of art!—In any case, compared to Shakespeare’s plays, this would be fundamentally wrong and ridiculous.

[ 32 ] Such things are teething problems in the development of theosophy. People will eventually grow out of them. But it is still necessary to draw attention to these matters from time to time. It might even happen that someone sets out to identify the nine aspects of human nature in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

[ 33 ] And yet, in a certain sense, it is true that what constitutes a unified human nature is, in turn, distributed among different people. One person has this particular spiritual coloring, another that. Thus, we can see people before us who represent different aspects of the totality of human nature. But this must be conceived realistically; it must arise from human nature itself. In the way people encounter us in the world, they represent the various aspects of human nature. And as we develop from incarnation to incarnation, we become a totality. If the underlying fact in question is to be represented, then the whole of life must be dissolved.

[ 34 ] Thus, in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, the figure intended to represent Mary in a certain sense is dissolved into the other characters who surround her as companions, together forming a single “I” with her. In particular, one can see qualities of the feeling soul in Philia, qualities of the intellectual or emotional soul in Astrid, and qualities of the conscious soul in Luna. The names themselves already reflect this. All the names are such that they are imprinted in a way that is entirely essential to the individual beings. Not only in the words themselves, but in the way the words are arranged—namely, where the spiritual is to take effect in Devachan, in the seventh picture—there, what is meant to characterize the three figures of Philia, Astrid, and Luna is precisely graded. What the seventh image begins with is a better characterization of the feeling soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul than can usually be expressed in words. There one can show people what the feeling soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul are. In art, one can show the stages in the way these three figures are depicted. In the human being, they flow into one another. When they are separated from one another, they present themselves as Philia places herself within the universe, as Astrid places herself within the elements, as Luna flows out into self-action and self-knowledge. And because they place themselves there in this way, the Devachan scene contains everything that is alchemy in the true sense. The whole of alchemy is contained therein. One need only discover it little by little.

[ 35 ] However, it is not merely present in the abstract content, but in the interplay and essence of the words. Therefore, you should not only hear what is said—and certainly not merely what the individual speaks—but how the soul forces speak in relation to one another. The feeling soul pushes its way into the astral body; we are dealing with a weaving astral presence. The intellectual soul pushes its way into the etheric body; we are thus dealing with a weaving etheric presence. We see how the conscious soul pours itself into the physical body with an inner firmness. Thus, that which acts in a soulful way, like light in the soul, is given in the words of Philia; that which acts in an ethereal, objective way, so that one faces true things, is given in Astrid; that which gives inner firmness, so that it is connected to the physical body, is given in Luna. We must feel this. Let us hear the soul forces in the seventh image:

Philia: (Soul of Feeling)

I wish to fulfill myself
With the clearest light-being
From the vastness of the worlds,
I wish to breathe into myself
Life-giving sound-substance
From the distant ether,
So that you, beloved sister,
May succeed in your work.

Astrid: (Intellectual Soul)

I want to weave together
Radiant light
With muffling darkness,
I want to condense
The life of sound.
It shall sound sparkling,
It shall sparkle resoundingly,
So that you, beloved sister,
May guide the rays of the soul.

Luna: (Consciousness Soul)

I wish to warm the substance of the soul
And wish to strengthen the ether of life.
They shall condense,
They shall feel one another,
And, existing within themselves,
Sustain themselves,
So that you, beloved sister,
Of the seeking human soul,
May create the certainty of knowledge.

[ 36 ] I would like to point out that in Philia we have: “That you, beloved sister...,” whereas with Astrid we move into something more subdued, more profound: “That you, beloved sister...,” “That you...,” “That you...”. And now, with Luna, we have interwoven it with something even more weighty: “The searching human soul.” There, the U is so interwoven with the neighboring consonants that it achieves an even greater density.

[ 37 ] These are the things that can actually be characterized. It all comes down to the “how”; that must be noted. Let us compare the words Philia goes on to say:

I pray to the spirits of the world,
That the light of their being
May delight the soul’s senses,
And the sound of their words
May bring joy to the spirit’s ear

with the very different ones that Astrid speaks:

I want the currents of love,
That warm the world,
To flow into the heart
Of the consecrated one

[ 38 ] It is precisely where these words are expressed that the inner weaving and essence of the devachanic world element are manifested.

[ 39 ] We must realize this about such things—and that is why I mention it—that when self-awareness begins to dawn in the outer fabric of the world and its beings, it is essential to abandon all one-sidedness, and that we learn to feel, in a way we might otherwise only experience in a philistine manner, what is present in every aspect of existence. What makes us human beings rigid beings is that we are bound to a point in space and believe we can express truths through words. But words are what are least capable of expressing the truth, because they are bound to physical sound. We must, I would say, empathize with the expression. Therefore, it is essential that such an important process as Johannes Thomasius’s process of self-knowledge can only be truly experienced when he then courageously attains and seizes self-knowledge. This is the next step after self-knowledge has struck us down: that we begin to take into ourselves what we have learned from the outside—by understanding the cosmos as akin to us, after we have recognized the essence of beings—and that we courageously dare to live what we have recognized. It is only half the story that we submerge ourselves, like John, into a being to whom we have caused suffering, whom we have cast down into the cold earth. For we now feel differently. We gather the courage to make amends for the pain. Then we immerse ourselves in this life and speak differently within our own being. This is what first confronts us in the ninth image. Whereas in the second image the being called out to John: “/p”

He brought me bitter sorrow;
I trusted him so completely.
He left me alone in my grief,
He robbed me of the warmth of life
And cast me into the cold earth

[ 40 ] the same being in the ninth vision, after John had found himself in the place where all self-knowledge leads, called out to him:

You must find me again
And ease my pain.

[ 41 ] This is the other side: first the devastating aspect, then the balancing aspect of the experience. Then the other being calls out to him:

You have to find me again.

[ 42 ] There is no other way to describe this elevation of the experience of the world, this filling of oneself with the experience of the world. True self-knowledge in emerging within the cosmos could not be described except with the words with which John awakens. Naturally, it must begin this way, in the second image:

I’ve been hearing them for years now,
Those words so full of meaning.

[ 43 ] Then, after he has sunk into the earth’s depths, after he has become one with the earth’s depths, the power arises in the soul to bring forth words in this way. That is the essence of the ninth image:

I have sought it for three years,
That courageous spiritual strength,
Which gives truth to words,
Through which man, by freeing himself, can triumph
And, by conquering himself, find freedom.

[ 44 ] These are the words: “O human being, experience yourself!” in contrast to the words in the second image: “O human being, recognize yourself!” Thus, the same image confronts us again and again. While at one point the image leads downward:

The world and my individuality,
They live in these words:
O man, know thyself!

[ 45 ] then it's the other way around. It changes. The image reflects the inner process.

[ 46 ] So you, too, have heard that terribly devastating word:

Maria, do you realize,
What my soul has just endured?
- - - - - - - - - -
I have lost man’s final refuge,
I have lost solitude.

[ 47 ] The ninth image then shows how the being first gains confidence and then certainty. This is congruence. It must not be a matter of constructs, but of natural experiences. Through this, we are to feel how, in a soul such as that of Johannes Thomasius, self-knowledge crystallizes into self-experience. We are also to feel how this experience of Johannes Thomasius extends to individual human beings and thus his own insight into all humanity, in whom a part of his being is expressed in the individual incarnations. Finally, there stands in the Temple of the Sun an entire society, all like a tableau, and all together they are a single human being. The qualities of a single human being are distributed among them all; it is, in essence, a single human being. But a pedantic person would have to say: There are too many parts; there should be nine instead of twelve. — But reality does not create itself in such a way that it is in harmony with theories. And yet it is more in harmony with the truth than if one were to have the individual members of the human being line up in a regular fashion.

[ 48 ] Let us now imagine ourselves in this Temple of the Sun. There are individual people who have been placed there exactly as they truly belong together karmically, just as karma has brought them together in life. But if we now imagine Johannes here and picture each individual character reflected in Johannes’s soul, and every person as a soul quality of Johannes—what then happens when we grasp this as reality? Here, karma has indeed brought these people together as if at a crossroads. Nothing is without intention, purpose, or goal; rather, what individual people have done signifies not merely a single event, but each represents a soul experience of Johannes Thomasius. Everything unfolds twice: in the macrocosm and in the microcosm of Johannes’s soul. This is his initiation. Just as Mary, for example, relates to him, so does one vital link of his soul relate to another link of the soul. These are absolute congruences, strictly carried out. What is an external action is, within Johannes, an inner process of development. What the Hierophant expresses in the third image is meant to happen there:

Here, within this circle,
A knot forms from the threads
That Karma weaves as the world comes into being.

[ 49 ] It has taken shape. And this knot, so neatly tied, shows where it all leads. On the one hand, absolute reality—how karma weaves—but not a pointless weaving. We have this: the knot as the process of initiation in the soul of John, and we have the whole situation such that a human individuality still stands above all these people: the Hierophant, who intervenes, who guides the threads. We need only think of the Hierophant and his relationship to Mary.

[ 50 ] But it is precisely here that we can see that this process is something that can shed light on self-knowledge, at this point in the third image. Stepping out of the self is no joke. It is a very real process: the inner force leaving the human shell. Then these human shells remain and become a battleground for lesser powers. Where Maria sends down the ray of love to the Hierophant, this can be depicted in no other way than: down below, the body, seized by the power of the adversary, says the opposite of what is happening up above. Up above, a ray of love shines down; down below, a curse arises. These are the contrasting scenes: in Devachan, where Mary describes what she has truly done, and in the third image, where, below, as the body is being left, the cursing of the demonic powers against the Hierophant takes place. Here we have two complementary images. It would truly be quite terrible if one had to construct them from scratch.

[ 51 ] I have thus based today’s lecture on a scene from this Mystery Drama, and I hope that we have been able to draw on it to highlight some of the specific characteristics that underlie initiation.

[ 52 ] The fact that certain things had to be emphasized strongly in order to describe the actual events of the initiation should not discourage you or make you lose heart in your pursuit of the spiritual world. The description of the dangers serves only to steel people against the forces at work. The dangers are real; pain and suffering lie ahead of us. It would truly be a poor endeavor if we were to seek to ascend to the higher worlds, so to speak, in the most comfortable way possible. It is not yet possible to reach the spiritual worlds as comfortably as one might roll along in modern trains, as external material culture does with regard to external life. What is described here is not meant to discourage you, but rather, by familiarizing yourself in a certain way with the dangers of initiation, your courage is to be strengthened.

[ 53 ] Just as with Johannes Thomasius, whose condition rendered him unable to hold a paintbrush—a condition that turned into pain, and then pain into insight—so everything that causes suffering and pain will be transformed into insight. But we must earnestly seek this path. We can only do this if we try to realize that the truths of spiritual science are not so simple. These are such profound truths of life that one can never finish grasping them precisely. It is precisely the example of life that allows us to grasp the world, and one can speak even more precisely about the conditions of development when depicting the development of John than when depicting the development of any human being at all. In the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, development is depicted as it can be in every human being—that is, solely as a possibility of how it can be real. When one depicts Johannes Thomasius, one is describing a single individual. But in doing so, one deprives oneself of the opportunity to describe development in general.

[ 54 ] I hope you will take the opportunity to say that, strictly speaking, I have not yet told the whole truth. We have two extremes and must find the nuances between them. I can only offer a few suggestions. These must then live on in people’s hearts and souls.

[ 55 ] In the reflections I shared on the Gospel of Matthew, I said: Do not try to memorize the exact wording, but rather, when you go out into the world, look into your heart and soul to see what those words have become. Do not merely read in cycles, but also read earnestly within your soul.

[ 56 ] But for this to happen, something must first be given from the outside; something must first have entered within. Anything else would be a self-deception of the soul. Understand how to read this in the soul, and you will see that what has sounded from the outside will still sound within in many other ways. That would be the true anthroposophical endeavor: if what is spoken were understood in as many ways as there are listeners.

[ 57 ] No one who wishes to speak about spiritual science can ever try to be understood in only one way. They wish to be understood in as many ways as there are souls. Anthroposophy can certainly accommodate this. But one thing is necessary. I am not saying this to make a trivial point. One thing is necessary: that every single way of understanding is correct and true. It may be individual, but it must be true. Sometimes the individuality of a view consists in the fact that the opposite of what is said is understood.

[ 58 ] So when we speak of self-knowledge, we must also bear in mind that it is more useful to speak in such a way that we seek our faults within ourselves and the truth outside ourselves.

[ 59 ] It is not said: Seek the truth within yourself!—The truth is, in fact, found outside. One finds that it is poured out into the world. We must free ourselves through self-knowledge; we must pass through such stages of the soul. Solitude can be a very poor companion. But we can also feel all our weakness when we sense in our soul the vastness of the cosmos from which we were born. Then, however, we take courage. Let us dare to experience what we recognize.

[ 60 ] Then we will find that, indeed, from the loss of the last hope of our lives will spring forth life’s first and last hope—that hope which, as we find ourselves in the cosmos, allows us to overcome ourselves and find ourselves anew:

O human, experience the world within yourself!
Then you will have found yourself,
transcending yourself,
and truly discovered your true self.

[ 61 ] When we experience these words as lived experiences, they become stages in our development.