The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. The Intimate Element of Central European Culture and the Central European Aspiration

[ 1 ] We are living in grave, fateful days. And very few souls look forward with full confidence to what these fateful days will bring us earthlings; above all, the significance of what is being expressed through the events of these days is not speaking with full force within the souls. Yet it is precisely those who, as human souls, are striving to immerse themselves more and more in what is to be incorporated as impulses into the development of human culture—the development of spiritual culture through the demands of Spiritual Science—who should feel, with their deepest sensibility and deepest feeling, a connection to what is unfolding so grandly and powerfully on the one hand, and so painfully, and so sorrowful, that is unfolding around our souls. What is taking place is, after all, something that is fundamentally unprecedented not only in kind but also in degree within the conscious history of human development, something that is deeply penetrating and profoundly transformative in every aspect of life on Earth. And one need only bring to mind what it means—and this is indeed the case today for every person in Europe and also in many parts of the rest of the world’s population— to stand right in the midst of the course of such momentous events, to feel that this is precisely a time not only eminently suited, but also eminently demanding, for the soul to free itself and become ever freer from mere life within its own self, within its own ego, and to strive to share in what passes through humanity as a common destiny. The soul will be able to learn much in our present time if it knows how to connect in the right way with the current of events. And it will be able to free itself from much that is narrow-minded and selfish if it knows how to do this. For such great, such mighty things are taking place that almost any thought of oneself in our time must appear as a theft that our soul commits against life and the common destiny.

[ 2 ] The people of Central Europe, in particular—what immense questions must they be asking themselves about things they are, in essence, only now beginning to learn! The people of Central Europe can come to realize how they are actually misunderstood, indeed how they are hated. And these misunderstandings, this hatred—they did not, after all, first erupt with the outbreak of war; they have merely become noticeable since the outbreak of war. Therefore, the outbreak of the war and the course of the war can only be, as it were, that which makes the Central European soul aware of how, in a certain sense, it must feel more or less isolated in relation to the feelings and sensibilities of those people who, all around this Central European population, truly do not stand by them with understanding feelings and sentiments. If only—and this would be so desirable, especially now—one could kindle in the souls devoted to Spiritual Science a deeper interest in the great events of life, which lead the soul out from the horizon of its ego to the vast horizon of human and earthly events! If only one could deepen the gaze, the entire outlook of these souls—precisely because they have taken Spiritual Science into themselves—in the recognition of the all-encompassing forces, and lead them out of their interest in the narrower forces concerned solely with the individual human being! For truly, when one hears the world today—especially the world surrounding us Central Europeans—speaking, when one reads the strange things said about the impulses that are said to have led to this war, then one has the feeling that the obligation to judge from broader perspectives has actually been lost to humanity, very, very much so in our materialistic age, so very lost that one sometimes has the impression that people have learned nothing at all, but that for them, history essentially began only on July 25, 1914. It is as if people knew nothing of what has transpired in the interplay of forces among the world’s population and what, arising from this interplay, led to the grave entanglements that finally ignited and flared up in the flames of war. No sooner does one speak of what is called the encirclement by the previous English king, who united the European powers around Central Europe, so that through this union of the human forces surrounding it, nothing else could ultimately arise but what did arise. One need only go back a few years, or at most a few decades, and try to create mental images of how what is now so fateful and painful around us came to be.

[ 3 ] But the issue runs much, much deeper than that. When speaking of encirclement, one must say: What has taken place recently in the encirclement of the Central European powers is the final stage, the final step in an encirclement of Central Europe that began a long, long time ago—as early as the year 860. Back then, when those people came down from northern Europe—the same people who stood before Paris in 860 as the Norman population—part of the force that was to play out in Europe flowed into the Romanic current in western Europe, which had flooded the west of Europe from the south. We have a stream of human forces that flows from Rome through Italy and Sicily, across present-day Spain, and through present-day France. And the Norman population, which moves down from the north and stands before Paris in 860, is overwhelmed by what has come from ancient times as the Romanesque current, and is absorbed into this Romanesque current. The powerful force within this current stems from the fact that the Norman population was submerged by it. But what emerged in the West as foreign to Central European culture stems from the Romanic current that flowed in. This Romanic current did not, after all, come to a halt in present-day France, but proved powerful through its dogmatically rationalistic nature and its inclination toward materialistic thinking, not only to flood France, but also, when the Normans subsequently extended their reach toward the lands that are now Anglo-Saxon, it was decisive that what was added there to the Angles and the Saxons was not what the Normans had brought from north to south, but rather what they had absorbed from the south. Even within the British element, it is the Roman element that thereby actually stands in opposition to the Central European essence without understanding. And this Norman element, interwoven with the Romance element, then continued its course down the Greek coasts as far as Constantinople. So that we see a stream of Norman-Romance culture flowing down from the European north toward the west, encircling Central Europe in a serpentine fashion, extending its tentacles as far as Constantinople. We see the other wave, which came down from the north, flowing eastward and penetrating the Slavic element. The first Norman waves were called “Ros” by the Finnish population living at that time in what is now Russia, from which the name “Russians” is derived, a name that thus echoes the designation the Finns gave to the Norman population. We see these Nordic peoples extending into the Slavic element, advancing ever further into it, and at the very moment when the Normans stood before Paris in 860 and their Romanization began, we see the Norman element plunging into the Slavic current and, on the other side, extending all the way past Kiev and down to Constantinople. And the circle is complete! The Norman forces are moving down from the north, on the one hand toward the west, becoming Romanized, and on the other hand toward the east, becoming Slavicized, and they converge from the east and the west in Constantinople. And in Central Europe, enclosed as in a cultural basin, lies what remains of the original Germanic culture, fertilized by ancient Celtic influences, which is then distinctly present as an element in the most varied nuances within the population that identifies itself as German, Dutch, or Scandinavian. Thus we see how ancient this encirclement is.

[ 4 ] In this Central Europe, what we might call an “intimate culture” is now taking shape—a culture that was never able to develop in the same way as the culture of the West or the culture of the East, but which had to take a completely different course. If we compare what has developed culturally in Central Europe with what has developed in the West, we must say that in the West—and this can be seen in both the smallest and the largest aspects of this culture—a culture developed whose fundamental character can be traced from the British Isles through France and Spain, into Sicily and Italy, and all the way to Constantinople. There, a certain dogmatism, a rationalism, and a longing to clothe all that one gains in knowledge in simple rationalistic formulas developed as a fundamental trait of the culture. A drive developed to see things as the intellect and the senses must see them. A drive developed to simplify everything. Let us take a case that may be familiar to us as adherents of Spiritual Science: the division of the human soul into three parts: the soul of feeling, the soul of understanding or the emotional soul, and the soul of consciousness. The human soul can in reality only be understood if one knows that it consists of these three parts. Just as light cannot be understood without recognizing the color nuances in their origin from light, and without knowing that it is divided into the various color nuances we see in the rainbow—on one side the red and yellow rays, on the other side blue, green, and violet—and if one does not know this, one cannot study light as a physicist, just as one cannot study the human soul, which is infinitely more important; for everyone should be a human being and everyone should know about the soul. Whoever does not feel within their own soul that this soul expresses itself through the three members—the soul of feeling, the soul of understanding or the emotional soul, and the soul of consciousness—confuses everything within the soul. We see this in modern university psychologists, how they confuse everything within the soul, just as one simply confuses the color nuances of light; and in their immense arrogance, their scientific hubris, they consider themselves particularly learned when they confuse everything in the life of the soul, whereas one can truly know the soul only if one is able to truly understand this threefold division of the soul.

[ 5 ] Although the sentient soul is, at first glance, that which, so to speak, gives life to the drives and the more sensually oriented impulses—in our present earthly existence, that which we might call the more sensual aspect of the human being—this sentient soul nevertheless contains, in its deeper parts, the eternal driving forces of human nature, those forces that endure through birth and death. The intellectual or emotional soul contains half the temporal and half the eternal. The consciousness soul, as it is now, contains primarily the human being’s orientation toward the temporal. It is therefore understandable that the people who develop their folk-souls through the soul of consciousness—the British people—have, according to a very beautiful saying by Goethe, nothing of what constitutes profound reflection, but are instead directed toward the practical and outward competition. It is perhaps not a bad thing to recall such matters from time to time, for those who participated in German intellectual life were not blind to these things, but always spoke very clearly about them. Thus, Goethe once said to Eckermann—it was a long time ago, but one can see from this that great Germans have always viewed things in their true light—when the conversation turned to the philosophers Hegel, Fichte, Kant, and a few others: “Yes, yes, while the Germans struggle to solve the deepest philosophical problems, the English are primarily focused on the practical and nothing else. They lack any sense of reflection. And even when they—as Goethe said—make grand speeches about the morality of freeing the slaves, one must ask: What is ‘the real object’ in all this?” — And on another occasion, Goethe wrote—which is very telling—that it speaks volumes that even Walter Scott once admitted that, even if the English had taken part in the battles against Napoleon, it was more important for them than all the liberation of peoples that was spoken of at the time to “see a British object before them.” A German philologist has succeeded—and what is there that the diligence of German philologists cannot achieve?—in finding the passage in the nine thick volumes of Walter Scott’s biography of Napoleon to which Goethe alluded at the time, and there one does indeed find as Walter Scott himself admits, that while the British did participate in the battles against Napoleon, the underlying motive was to gain a British advantage—that is, as he puts it, “to secure the British object.” — It is indeed a statement by the Englishman himself; one simply had to look for it. These things are interesting for broadening one’s horizons a bit today.

[ 6 ] One must therefore understand, I said, that the human soul consists of these three parts; or rather, that the human self acts through these three aspects of the soul, just as light acts through the various shades of color, particularly in the three kingdoms: the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. Then one will come to realize that, because human beings possess these three soul nuances, they can—and indeed must, in the course of human progress—assign a great ideal to each of these soul nuances; that the ideal of these soul nuances is a great ideal, but each of these ideals is intended precisely for one of the soul nuances, not for the whole soul. And only when human beings allow themselves, through Spiritual Science, to recognize the corresponding ideals for the individual soul members will what can be the true ideal of human salvation and the harmonious coexistence of human beings on Earth come to pass. For human beings must strive to have a different soul ideal for that which is primarily connected with their feeling soul—for that which they, so to speak, live out within the scope of the physical plane—than the one they live out through the intellectual or emotional soul, and yet another ideal for that which they live out through the conscious soul. One of these ideals ennobles one aspect of the soul, while the other ennobles another aspect. If one cultivates one aspect of the soul particularly through the brotherhood of human beings on Earth, one must cultivate the other through freedom, and the third through equality. Each of these three ideals relates to a specific aspect of the soul. In Western Europe, all of this was muddled together, and it was simplified by the rationalists, by this rationalism that wants everything in neat formulas, in neat dogmas, that wants everything to be clear to the intellect. Through this dogmatism, the entire human soul was simply taken as one and spoken of in terms of freedom, brotherhood, and equality. Here we see how a fundamental impulse toward the rationalization of culture is embedded in the West. And we could demonstrate this in great detail. For example, highly educated French people in particular may take issue with the fact that, say, in my Mystery Dramas, the language is chosen in such a way that even five-foot iambs are used, but no rhymes. The French mind cannot comprehend that the inner driving force of language at this stage does not require rhyme. It strives for systematization, for what forms an external framework, and it says: “But one cannot write verse without rhyme!”

[ 7 ] But this is also true of external life; it is true of everything. In the West, one must categorize and systematize; one must neatly box everything away. Just consider for a moment what a dreadful thing it was, at the beginning of our endeavors in Spiritual Science, that because many of our friends were still influenced by the English theosophical movement, in every branch one entered, one would repeatedly find all sorts of systems written down on cards, charts, and so on, neatly arranged at the top: Atma, Buddhi, Manas, then all sorts of things laid out crosswise and lengthwise, which had been systematized and boxed in like that. Consider how we bowed under the yoke of this dogmatism and how difficult it was to replace it with the inner methods of development that we must have in Central Europe: that one thing emerges from another, that concepts advance in inner experience! Systematization, these mnemonic devices of the mind that reduce everything to very specific formulas, is of no use. What effort it took to show that we are dealing with a transition from one thing to another, with a logical structuring and forward progression, with a living, organic shaping! I could extend this description to all branches of life, but then we would have to stay together for days on end.

[ 8 ] This, then, is what we find in the West as the one part of the current that encircled Central Europe. And when we turn to the East, we must say: there we are dealing with a longing that presents precisely the opposite—the longing to let everything vanish today into a fog of obscurity, into a primitive, elemental mysticism, into something that cannot tolerate the immediate, concrete expression of clear ideas and clear words. We do indeed have two serpents—the symbol is absolutely accurate—one extending from north to southeast, the other from north to southwest, and which become entangled with one another as they approach Constantinople. And enclosed within them is what we might call the intimate Central European spiritual current, this Central European spiritual current in which, wherever it appears in its original distinctiveness, the head can never be separated from the heart, nor thinking from feeling.

[ 9 ] This is not yet fully apparent in our Spiritual Science today, because we must strive—if not for a conceptual system—then at least for concepts of development. One does not yet realize that everything we strive for is not merely intellectual observation, but that the heart and the whole soul are connected to everything everywhere, that the heart is always permeated throughout—for example, when the mind describes the transitions from Saturn to the Sun, from the Sun to the Moon, from the Moon to the Earth, and so on—that the heart is present in the description everywhere, and that one can be deeply moved there, that one can ascend to the highest heights and dive into the deepest depths with all one’s heartfelt feeling, and then rise again. One does not yet realize today that what is only seemingly described in concepts must at the same time be written with the blood of the heart if it is to correspond to Central European spiritual life. This intimate element of Central European culture is unable to conceive of the spiritual without the ideal, nor the ideal without the spiritual. To recognize the spirit, and at the same time to enter into a kind of marriage of the soul with the spirit in an intimate way—it is this moment that most intensely characterizes the Central European essence. Therefore, this Central European essence can use that which descends into the deepest depths of sensory perception and sensation to become a symbol of the Most High. And it is deeply significant that Goethe, having let the life of not only the typical German but the typical human being—the life of Faust—unfold before his soul throughout his entire life, concludes his poem with the words:

Everything that is fleeting
Is merely a parable,

[ 10 ] and his last words were:

The Eternal Feminine
Draws us upward.

[ 11 ] Here, a cosmic mystery is expressed through a sensual image, and it is precisely in this sensual image that the intimate character of Central European culture finds its expression—that wonderfully intimate character which we find so beautifully expressed, for example, in Novalis, who is at once delicate and spiritually elevated to the highest heights. Just look at the translations that have been made here and there of this last sentence: “The Eternal Feminine / Draws us upward,” particularly the French translations, and you will see what has become of this sentence! Admittedly, it has often been explained rather poorly by the French, but they don’t count when it comes to understanding Faust.

[ 12 ] The intimacy of the spiritual life—that is what the Central European being strives for in the most profound sense, and that is what is enclosed by the Midgard Serpent in the East and West. And we must go that far in order to connect fully, in our innermost being, with what is actually happening! Then, precisely from this Central European essence, we will acquire objectivity, so that we may stand before the great events of our present not from the same impulses from which things are judged in the East and West, but from truly supranational human impulses. Then we will begin to understand why the Central European population is so misunderstood, even hated, by those who surround it. Of course, we must be able to view with all humility what Central Europe has to offer as a mission for all of humanity. We must be able to attain a mindset that does not become arrogant, yet we must also secure a clear view of what needs to be accomplished in Central Europe.

[ 13 ] The Central European population has been imbued with a national spirit that has always been rejuvenating. It reached its zenith in the ideals of Lessing, Schelling, Hegel, Fichte, Goethe, and Grimm. But all that which already existed there lived more in a striving toward idealism. This must now gain further life, gain a more concrete life. The profound ideas of German idealism must be given substance through that which can come from the spiritual realm, and through which they are first elevated from mere ideas to living beings of the spiritual world, through which we can then find our way into this spiritual world ourselves. The greatness of the Central European task is what must now inspire German hearts, and the awareness of what must be defended on all sides, toward those sides where the Midgard Serpent holds the circle tightly closed. It is especially fitting for us, who stand on the ground of Spiritual Science, to view what is truly taking place today in such a higher sense. And we cannot take the innermost impulse of our Spiritual Science seriously enough if we do not find our way into such an impersonal conception of the spiritual-scientific striving, if we do not feel how this spiritual-scientific striving is connected in each individual with the entire Central European striving, as it must be connected with the whole substance of this Central European striving. We must be clear that much of what we must envision is still only present in embryonic form, but that Central European culture, in particular, is called upon to allow these seeds to unfold into blossoms and fruits.

[ 14 ] Let me give just one example. When a person tries to make progress little by little through meditation and concentration, through intimate work on the development of their soul, then all the soul’s powers take on a different form than they do in ordinary life. Then, in a sense, the soul forces become something else. When a person truly works diligently on their development, through concentration of thought and other means, as described in the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* , then the person comes to understand—to grasp vividly, I would say, to experience vividly—that at the very moment they approach the real spiritual world, they no longer think as one must in ordinary life. In ordinary life, one thinks in such a way that thoughts begin to live within one. When facing the sensory world, one knows: This is me, and the ‘I’ has the thoughts. One connects one thought with another and thereby forms a judgment; one brings the thoughts together and lets them drift apart. In my book titled *The Threshold of the Spiritual World*, I compared the unfolding of thoughts to sticking one’s head into a world of living beings. Thoughts begin to tingle and crawl within; they become, if I may say so, living beings, and it is no longer we who bring one thought to another; they move from one to the other, one grasps the other and detaches itself from the other—the life of thought begins to come alive. Only then, when thoughts, as it were, begin to become shells and vessels that contract within a small space and then again expand, sack-like, only then can the beings of the higher hierarchies slip into our thoughts—only then! Thus our own life, our entire thinking, changes when we settle into the spiritual world. Then one begins to perceive how, on the other planets, not humans as on Earth, but other beings live; how the other planets are populated by other beings. These other beings of the other planets, so to speak, penetrate our now-living thinking, and we no longer think about the beings of the other worlds and spheres of existence, but they live within us, united with our own self. Thinking has thus become a completely different soul force; it has developed from the point where it stood into a different soul force, into that force which acts and grows beyond ourselves and becomes one with the world, which is the spiritual world.

[ 15 ] Here we have an example of what humanity must come to realize if it is to develop the condition in which it now lives into a higher one for the future of the Earth. It must truly become common knowledge that such thinking is possible, and that it is only through such thinking that human beings can become acquainted with the spiritual world. To this end, not everyone needs to become a spiritual researcher, just as not everyone needs to become a chemist to understand the achievements of chemistry. Yet even if there are only a few spiritual researchers, everyone can, through unbiased thinking, perceive and grasp the truth of what the spiritual researcher says. But it must become clear that there are soul forces within the human being that remain unnoticed during life, which, when the human being passes through the gate of death, of their own accord become what they become in an initiate. When the human being passes through the gate of death, thinking becomes a completely different soul force: it intervenes in the being. It is a constant reaching out of antennae, and the higher worlds are within these antennae, and one experiences them oneself.

[ 16 ] There was, however, a leading intellectual figure of the 19th century who, through his wit—for he was indeed witty—contributed significantly to the establishment of the materialist worldview: Ludwig Feuerbach. He wrote a book titled *Thoughts on Death and Immortality*, and it is interesting to read the following passage from this book. There Feuerbach says, for example: The highest thing a human being can develop within himself is his thoughts. He cannot develop higher spiritual powers than thoughts. If he could develop higher soul forces than thoughts, then that which lives among the inhabitants of the starry worlds could penetrate his mind, and instead of thoughts, he would have in his mind the effects and deeds of the beings that are on the planets. — This seems so absurd to Ludwig Feuerbach that he naturally considers anyone who speaks of such things at all to be mentally ill. Consider how interesting it is that a person who becomes a materialist precisely because he rejects higher soul forces should arrive at an understanding of the nature of the soul force that constitutes the higher development of thought. He even describes it, but he has such a hopeless fear, such a hopeless dread of this development, that precisely because it must be as he suspects, he declares this spiritual power to be an impossibility, a fantasy.

[ 17 ] Spiritual development in the 19th century is so close to what must be strived for, yet at the same time so far removed from it, because although it is, as it were, propelled from within toward what should be strived for, it cannot penetrate into the deeper realms, since it must regard them as absurd, since it truly fears them—fears them colossally. As soon as it even senses what is to come, it is afraid. Central European spiritual life must come to its senses; then we will achieve that which, emerging from this Central European spiritual life, will overcome this fear. That which seeks to suppress this Central European spiritual light has become too strong.

[ 18 ] Let me give a few examples to illustrate this. Hegel, the German philosopher, raised his voice in vain against the overestimation of Newton. If you listen to any physicist today—you can read what I am saying in many popular works—you will hear: Newton is the great authority on the theory of gravity, a theory through which the cosmos first became explainable. — Hegel said: What did Newton actually do? — He clothed what Kepler, the German astronomer, had expressed in mathematical formulas. For there is nothing in Newton’s works that Kepler had not already said. Kepler created from that perspective in which, so to speak, the whole soul is at work, not just the head alone. Newton, however, brought the whole thing into a system and thereby made all sorts of mistakes, for example, the doctrine of the sun’s action at a distance, which is of no use for assessing planetary motion. With Newton, it is truly as if the sun had physical arms, and these arms were stretched out to attract the planets. — But the German philosopher warned in vain that Central European culture would be overwhelmed by British culture in this field.

[ 19 ] To give another example: Goethe established a theory of colors that arose entirely from Central European thought and that can only be understood once one begins to recognize the connections between the physical and the spiritual. The world has not adopted Goethe’s theory of colors, but rather Newton’s. — Goethe established a theory of evolution. The world has not grasped it, but has instead accepted only what has been presented in a popularly materialistic way in Darwinism as a theory of evolution, as a theory of development. One might say: To reflect on the powers possessed by the Central European human being, who is encircled by the Midgard Serpent—that is what matters, not to bow down to what is brought in by rationalism and empiricism!

[ 20 ] You see the colossal task that lies before us; you see the grandeur of the ideal. It goes completely unnoticed because it is still, I might say, lost in the flow of events, once the Central European essence is asserted. I do not know how many have noticed what follows. When, for the reasons also mentioned yesterday in the public lecture, our movement in Spiritual Science had to free itself from the specifically British orientation of the Theosophical Society, and when, long ago, what is now unfolding in the war had, so to speak, already taken place in the spiritual realm—and had preceded and taken place for good reasons—I discussed and explained the whole matter at that time on the basis of certain signs. There are foolish people who wish to pass judgment on what our Spiritual Science movement is, and who have often said: Well, this Central European Spiritual Science movement, too, did indeed originate from what it received from the British Theosophical Movement. I would like to remind you, however, that I have recounted—I say this not for personal reasons, but because it characterizes the situation, the very essence of the matter, through a single symptom—how, before I had any external connection with the British Theosophical Movement, I gave lectures in Berlin that were later published in my work *Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life*. In this work, one will find no trace of any Western influence; rather, everything is developed purely from Central European spiritual life, from the spiritual, mystical movement of Meister Eckhart to Angelus Silesius. And when I first came to London, one of the leading figures of the Theosophical Society at the time, Mr. Mead, who had read the book—which had already been translated into English in many chapters—said that this book actually contained the whole of Theosophy. — To the extent that people admitted they could go along with us, we were of course able to unite with the whole matter; but nothing else was done either.

[ 21 ] This is what matters: that we remain true to our duties toward Central European intellectual culture and that we never stray from them! From one side or the other, people have sent back the medals, diplomas, and the like to the English. Perhaps that is the less important matter. What will be important is only when we send back Newtonianism and English-tinged Darwinism—that is, when we liberate Central European spiritual life from them. And for this, there is much to be learned from the way in which—free from all other influences—Central European spiritual life has asserted itself precisely as Spiritual Science. But one must reflect on this, must take the essential into account, and must stand firmly on this ground. It is very peculiar how mysterious things actually appear.

[ 22 ] Just consider the following case: Throughout his entire life, Ernst Haeckel essentially strove to steer the German worldview in directions that were entirely influenced by British thought and the British character. British thought and British empiricism flow through Ernst Haeckel’s writings. And now he rails most vehemently against England. These are processes taking place in the subconscious of the Central European soul; they are also things closely connected to karma in such a soul. Just consider what it means when Haeckel stands before the world and says that he himself accomplished the first great deed of the great researcher Huxley by coining the phrase about the similarity of human bones to animal bones; how he, Haeckel, then pointed to the great shift in the conception of human descent, and how he incorporated into the theory of evolution nothing but what came from the West—and when one then sees how he is now being pressured to rail against that very thing which has shaped his entire spiritual life. It is the most tragic event of the present day imaginable for such a soul. It is intellectual dynamite, for it effectively shatters all the pillars upon which such a soul stands.

[ 23 ] And so one looks into the depths of what is actually taking place at the moment, but also into the terrible things to which we must remain alert. Only when one truly views things in this way will one be able to take them in, looking beyond the narrow horizon within which they are so often viewed today. Above all, one will be able to draw a great lesson—and this will be the most beautiful, yet at the same time the most humbling and sublime lesson: the lesson of what the ruling, active, essential world spirit has destined for the Central European people, who are now, entwined by the Midgard Serpent, enclosed as in a fortress, surrounded on all sides by enemies. Only when what is happening becomes for us a great symbol of the deepest workings and essence of the world will we be freed from a self-centered view of the grave, fateful events of the present. And only then will we feel how we must make ourselves worthy of what Fichte, for instance, also spoke of in a time when Germany stood in fateful days, in the “Addresses to the German Nation,” where he wished to speak, as he puts it, “for Germans pure and simple, of Germans pure and simple,” and spoke in the manner in which one had to speak at that time—simply of Germans, simply to Germans. But just as Fichte spoke at that time of all that constitutes the German mission, the German sphere of duty, so too is the hardship we experience today, surrounded by hostile enemies, precisely what we must experience as the dawn of Central European consciousness. Indeed, a phrase found at the end of Fichte’s speeches may be applied today to mean that it is said: For the salvation of humanity, the spiritual worldview must flow into the souls. And the world spirit looks to those who dwell in Central Europe to become the mouthpiece for what it has to say and bring to humanity in continuous revelation.

[ 24 ] Without arrogance, without hubris, without national egoism, one can thus look upon that which the sons of Germany and Central Europe as a whole must defend with their very lives, blood, and souls. But one must also become aware of this. Only then can what is beneficial to humanity emerge from the immense sacrifices that must be made and from the suffering that ensues. For we stand at an important threshold, at a significant threshold, and one could characterize this threshold in human development by saying: In the future, the gulf must be bridged between the physical and the spiritual, between the physically living and the spiritually living, between the earthly and that which lies beyond earthly death. The time must, so to speak, come upon us when not only are the souls alive who walk about in physical bodies, but when we feel ourselves integrated into that greater world to which also belong the souls who, disembodied between death and new birth, live in the world we broadly call our own. People’s gaze must be directed beyond what only sensory-physical eyes can see. We are indeed standing on the threshold of this new experience, of this new consciousness. And what I told you about the expansion of consciousness, about the development of consciousness toward higher levels—this must become a common view. Central European culture is prepared to make this a common view; it is truly prepared for it.

[ 25 ] I have shown you how even the finest minds of the 19th century still fear, even today, to bring into their consciousness what lies in the depths of the soul; yet, drawing solely on their earthly spiritual powers, they are not yet able to direct their attention toward it. That realm of thought is indeed there, into which the supersensible forces and supersensible beings reach, and this realm of thought opens up immediately when a person has passed through the gate of death. Materialists are afraid to admit to themselves that human consciousness can thus be expanded, that the barrier between physical and spiritual experience—between what lies on this side of death and beyond death—can truly fall. And because they are afraid, they reject it as fantastical, dreamlike, even as a sign of mental illness. But one will come to realize that when a person has passed through the gate of death, they merely develop the powers they already possess between birth and death. They simply operate at such depths that the person cannot perceive them. They bring about things within them that are indeed taking place, but to which attention is not directed in ordinary life. Physical-earthly life could not be carried out with the powers of which a person is aware—with these powers of thinking, feeling, and willing alone. If a person could only think, feel, and will as they do now, they would never be able, for example, to shape their body in such a way that the brain would fit their predispositions. For this, formative powers had to intervene. But these already belong to what the soul no longer perceives in physical experience, to a consciousness that is more comprehensive than the limited sphere of consciousness we have in ordinary life.

[ 26 ] When a person passes through the gate of death, they do not lack consciousness; rather, they initially live in a state of consciousness that is far richer and more profound than the consciousness experienced here in physical life. For the body cuts out a fragment of a more comprehensive consciousness and shows only what can be shown—and even then, only as a reflection. But what lies within the body and what a person carries through the gate of death actually possesses a comprehensive consciousness within itself. And when a person has passed through the gate of death, they are within this comprehensive consciousness. They do not have too little, but on the contrary, too much, too rich a consciousness when they pass through the gate of death. I spoke about this in my Vienna lecture series at Easter 1914. A person has a richer consciousness after death, and when, some time after that often-described review brought about by the etheric body has passed, they enter a kind of sleep-like state, this is not a true state of sleep, but a state brought about by the fact that the person is in a richer consciousness there than here. And just as our eyes are dazzled by an abundance of light, by an overflow of light, so is the human being dazzled by the overflow of consciousness, and they must first learn to orient themselves. This apparent sleep consists solely in the person orienting themselves within this abundance of consciousness in such a way that they can then attune the abundance of consciousness down to what they can already bear according to the results of their life. That is the essential point. We have not too little, but too much consciousness, and we awaken when we have adjusted our ability to orient ourselves to what we can bear. What occurs after death is thus a dampening of the abundance of consciousness down to a bearable degree. You must make such things clear to yourselves through the details of the Vienna Cycle.

[ 27 ] Today I would like to illustrate this with just two examples close to home. I could cite many such examples, for many of our friends have passed through the gates of death, both recently and in the past. But due to the particular nature of the circumstances—precisely because these are final deaths—these reflections are, so to speak, more immediate, and I would like to use such examples as a starting point to speak to you about what can touch our hearts so deeply, because it has happened in our own midst, within the circle of our Spiritual Science movement.

[ 28 ] We recently lost a dear friend from the physical plane, and it fell to me to speak at the cremation on behalf of the soul that had passed through the gate of death. It so happened that, through the impulses of the spiritual world—which speak clearly enough in such a case—it seemed to me, as if of its own accord, a necessity to characterize the distinctive nature of this dear friend’s soul. So there we stood—it was in Zurich—before the cremation of a dear member of our Spiritual Science movement. Truly, without my intending it, during the somewhat longer period that had elapsed between the onset of death on a Wednesday evening and the cremation on Monday morning—it is understandable that the soul’s review through the etheric body had already ceased— the need arose from the spiritual world to begin and conclude the words I was to speak at the coffin with words that would characterize the inner essence of this soul. This inner essence of the friend who had passed away in the prime of life was truly such that one had to immerse oneself in this essence and, through identification with it, create it inwardly and spiritually; that is to say, one had to let one’s thinking sink into the soul of the deceased and allow what was weaving within the soul of the deceased to flow into one’s own thoughts. Then one was able, as it were, with regard to this soul, to describe what the soul was like in life and what it is still like now after death. And it arose naturally to clothe this in the following words. I had to say the following words at the beginning and at the end of the cremation:

You walked among us.
The gentle grace of your being
Spoke of the quiet power in your eyes
A peace that enlivens the soul,
Flowed in the waves,
With which your gaze
To things and to people
Carried the weaving of your inner self;
And it permeated this being
Your voice, which eloquently
Through the manner of the word more
Than in the word itself
Revealed what lay hidden
In your beautiful soul;
Yet the devoted love
Of sympathetic people
Revealed itself fully, wordlessly — —
This being, which, with noble, quiet beauty
Proclaimed to the creation of the world’s soul
A receptivity of feeling.

[ 29 ] Thus, the nature of this soul emerged through its identification with the soul in the days leading up to the cremation, after the review through the etheric body had ended. The soul had not yet found a way to orient itself within the excess of consciousness. It was, so to speak, asleep as the body faced cremation. The cremation speech had been delivered—these words at the beginning and at the end. Then it was that the flame—that which looks like a flame but is not—seized the body, and while the body was seized by this, which looks like a flame but is only the rising warmth and heat, it was then that a moment of awakening came over the soul. And now one could see how the soul looked back upon the entire scene that had unfolded among the people who were present at the cremation. And this soul looked back in particular upon what had been spoken; then again began the natural sinking back into the overflow of consciousness—one might say: into unconsciousness. Later, a moment could be perceived when such a looking back occurred again. This then lasts for an ever-longer time, until finally a complete orientation within the abundance of consciousness can take place.

[ 30 ] But one important thing can be gleaned from this. It became apparent, in fact, that because words were spoken during the cremation that came from her own soul, these very words sparked in her a sense of reflection—that there was something awakening within those words. And from this we can learn that one of the most important things after death is to survey one’s own experiences. In a sense, one must begin with self-knowledge after death. Here in earthly life, one may indeed lack self-knowledge, one can lack it so greatly that what a man who was no ordinary person—nor merely an ordinary writer, but a famous professor of philosophy, Dr. Ernst Mach—not Ferdinand Maack, whom I would not mention—confesses in his *Analysis of Sensations*, a very famous work, is true: As a young man, I was once walking down the street and suddenly saw in a mirror a person coming toward me. I thought: What an unsympathetic, repulsive face. How astonished I was when I discovered that I had seen my own face in profile. — He had thus seen his own face, which he knew so little that he could pass this judgment. And the same professor recounts how it happened to him later, when he was already a famous professor of philosophy, that after a long journey he boarded a bus quite exhausted; a man also boarded from the other side—there was a large mirror opposite—and he confesses his thoughts quite sincerely, saying that he had thought: “What kind of shabby, unsympathetic schoolmaster is getting on here?”—And once again he recognized himself, and he adds: “So I knew the typical appearance of the species better than my own.”—This is a fine example of how little a person knows himself in life, even based on his outward appearance, unless he happens to be a coquettish woman who often looks in the mirror. — But one knows one’s psychological peculiarities far, far less. One overlooks them much more. One can become a famous contemporary philosopher without self-knowledge. But a person needs this self-knowledge once they have passed through the gate of death.

[ 31 ] Human beings must therefore look back precisely to the point in their development from which they have passed through death, and they must recognize themselves there. Just as a person living in the physical world, looking back with the ordinary powers of life, can never perceive their own birth—just as this birth never stands before the ordinary powers of the soul (for there is no one who can look back to their physical birth through the ordinary powers of the soul)— so it is necessary that at every moment the moment of death be present, to which one looks back. Death always stands before one’s eyes as the last significant event. This death, seen from the other side, seen from beyond death, is something entirely different from what it is on the physical side. It is the most beautiful experience that can be beheld at all from the other side, from the side of life between death and new birth. It is that which appears as the glorious image of the eternal victory of the spiritual over the physical. And because it appears as such an image, it is the constant awakener of the highest powers of human nature when that human nature is in the spiritual experience between death and new birth. This is why, when the soul looks back, when it seeks to look back, it must first look upon itself. Precisely in these cases we have recently experienced, it was so clear what gave rise to the impulse to characterize this soul in a special way, in order to meet her in this urge to have herself before her in self-knowledge when looking back. Thus the so-called living interacts with the so-called dead. And such correspondence will come more and more from the so-called living to the so-called dead.

[ 32 ] Another case we have experienced recently is that of our dear friend Fritz Mitscher. Although Fritz Mitscher may be less well known to our local friends, he has nevertheless made an impact on many other anthroposophists through his lectures, through what he has accomplished in a wonderful way from friend to friend, and through the way he immersed himself in anthroposophical life, so that his approach in particular must be described as exemplary, exemplary for the very reason that he, whose soul forces were directed toward undergoing and absorbing a scholarly education, strove to encompass all that he sought to gather through his scholarly aptitude—in accordance with his nature—through the intimate nature of his soul life, and then to integrate it into his worldview based on Spiritual Science. This kind of work is what we need in particular, as we seek to carry forward into the future, in a blessed way, what the ideals of Spiritual Science are. We need people who seek to penetrate with understanding what modern culture is, in order to immerse it in the stream of spiritual culture; who, in a sense, make the sacrifice of immersing modern culture in the stream of the spiritual. Here too—and I am speaking only of things that have arisen out of necessity through karma—karma has brought it about that I had to speak at the cremation. And here too, out of inner necessity, it arose that I should characterize the being of our dear friend again at the beginning and at the end of the cremation speech. And so I had to characterize this being:

A hope that brings us joy:
Thus you entered the field,
Where the spirit’s blossoms on Earth,
Through the power of the soul,
Wish to reveal themselves to the seeker.

Your longing was deeply connected
To those who love truth;
To create from the light of the spirit,
Was the solemn goal of life,
Which you pursued tirelessly.

You cultivated your beautiful gifts,
To walk the bright path of spiritual knowledge
Unperturbed by the world’s contradictions
As a faithful servant of truth
To walk with sure steps.

You exercised your spiritual faculties,
So that, brave and persistent,
On both sides of the path
They pushed error away from you
And created space for truth.

To shape your self into a revelation
Of pure light,
So that the soul’s solar power
Might shine powerfully within you,
Was your life’s concern and joy.

Other concerns, other joys,
They scarcely touched your soul,
Because knowledge, as light,
That gives meaning to existence,
Appeared as the true value of life.

A hope that brings us joy
Thus you entered the field,
Where the spirit-blossoms of the earth
Through the power of soul-being
Wish to reveal themselves to inquiry.

A loss that pains us deeply,
Thus you vanish from the field,
Where the spirit’s earthly seeds
In the bosom of soul-being
Matured in your sphere of perception.

Feel how we gaze lovingly
Toward the heights that now
Call us onward to other work.
Extend to the departed friends
Your strength from the realms of the spirit.

Hear our souls’ plea,
Sent to you in trust:
We need here for our earthly work
Strong power from the lands of the spirit,
For which we thank our departed friends.

A hope that brings us joy,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Let us hope that, far yet near,
You shine upon our lives, never lost,
As a soul-star in the spiritual realm.

[ 33 ] That night, the soul—which, incidentally, had by no means yet found its bearings—responded of its own accord, as if in answer, with something connected to the words that had been addressed to its essence during the cremation. Words like these are spoken in such a way that one’s own soul truly writes them down without being able to do much about it. They are written through orientation toward the foreign soul, from within the foreign soul. And it was completely unconscious to me, absolutely unconscious, that two stanzas are constructed in a very special way, until I heard the words from the soul of a friend who had passed through the gate of death:

To shape my self into a revelation
Of pure light,
So that the soul’s solar power
Might shine powerfully within me,
Was my life’s concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys,
They scarcely touched my soul,
For knowledge appeared to me as light,
That gives meaning to existence,
As the true value of life.

[ 34 ] Only now did I realize why these verses are structured this way; I recited them exactly as they are written:

To shape yourself into a revelation
Of pure light,
So that the soul’s solar power
May shine powerfully within you,
Was your life’s care and joy.

[ 35 ] But every “you” came into Me, every “yours” returned to Me; thus transformed, thus spoken by the soul through its own being, they returned.

[ 36 ] This is an example of how this correspondence takes place, of how the mutual relationship between the world here and the world there already exists in the time after death. That this awareness may penetrate human souls is linked to the purpose of our Spiritual Science movement. That the world of those who live between death and a new birth may become a world in which we know ourselves to be with them—this is what Spiritual Science will give to humanity, thereby expanding the world beyond the narrow realm of reality in which human beings currently stand. But this is intimately connected with what is to be in Central Europe. And whoever has listened carefully will find, precisely in the words addressed to Fritz Mitcher’s soul, what is deeply connected with this purpose of our Spiritual Science movement, for the words are spoken out of a deep inner necessity:

Hear the plea of our souls,
Sent to you in trust:
For our earthly work here,
We need the strong power from the realms of the spirit,
For which we thank our departed friends.

[ 37 ] It is sometimes the case—though not in reality, but rather in terms of the times that have passed—that one might doubt whether the souls incarnated here on earth will truly do enough for the good of humanity and the earth in terms of the spiritual understanding of the world that is truly necessary. But those who are fully and actively engaged in the spiritual scientific movement cannot despair for this reason, because they know that the forces of those who have ascended into the spiritual worlds—having strengthened themselves here by taking Spiritual Science into themselves—are working into the stream in which we stand in the body. And it is like communicating with the soul of a friend who has passed through the gate of death, when one calls out to her what one owes to the friend’s power for a spiritual movement; when one can, as it were, communicate with her in order to remain united with her forces, so that we always have her among us, so that she continues to work among us. It is not merely a matter of taking in ideas, concepts, and mental images in Spiritual Science; it is not merely about that, but rather that we create a movement, a spiritual movement here on earth, into which we truly bring the spiritual forces.

[ 38 ] It seems only natural to us at this very moment, inspired by the sentiments that may be stirring in our friends here, to turn our thoughts to the soul of the one who has always devoted his energies to this branch of our work. That we too may feel connected to him, that we may know ourselves united with his powers even after he has passed through the gates of death—for this we rise from our seats. Our friends in Leipzig all know of the dear soul of whom I speak, and they have surely turned their thoughts, with moved hearts, toward this soul.

[ 39 ] These were the mental images I felt it was my duty to share with you today, now that we have had the opportunity to be together. These words were inspired by the awareness that the difficult and fateful days in which we live must be succeeded by days that will pass peacefully over the earth, in which the forces of peace will be at work. But given the extent to which so much will be profoundly transformed by what is now happening in the life of humanity on earth, indeed, must be transformed, we who profess Spiritual Science must be particularly mindful of how much depends on the fact that on the soil for which so much blood is shed, for which souls now so often pass through the gate of death, on which so many fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, must take place what can be accomplished by those whose souls may be illuminated by the future-assured thoughts of Spiritual Science.

[ 40 ] Yes, those thoughts that arise from an awareness of the living connection between the human soul and the spiritual world will have to rise from the earth up into the spiritual heights. Souls will now enter these spiritual worlds, and it will be spiritual forces brought forth precisely by our fateful days. Consider how many, in the prime of their lives, are passing through the gate of death at this time! Consider that the etheric bodies of these people, who pass through the gate of death between the ages of twenty and thirty, and between thirty and forty, are etheric bodies that could have sustained the physical body here for decades to come. These etheric bodies are separated from the physical bodies, yet they still retain the powers within them to work here for the physical world. These powers will continue to reign in the spiritual worlds, separated from the etheric bodies that have passed through the gate of death while still unspent. Radiant and bright, the spirituality from the unspent etheric bodies of the heroic fighters will come for the spiritual healing and progress of humanity. But what flows down from there will have to meet with what can flow forth in thoughts from the souls that have been able to become spiritually conscious through Spiritual Science. Therefore, we may summarize the thoughts we have brought before our souls today summarize in a few words that depict the connection between the consciousness sustained by spiritual scientific thought and the events of our time, expressing how the space for the coming era of peace must be filled with thoughts that ascend from souls into the spiritual worlds—souls who have passed through Spiritual Science. Then what is being fought for and won in our time with such great sacrifices, with blood and death, will be able to bear blossoms and fruit in the true sense, when souls are found who turn their minds upward into the spiritual realm with spiritual awareness. Therefore, reflecting on these days that bear such a heavy burden of destiny, we may say:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the forsaken,
From the sacrifices of the people
The fruit of the spirit grows—
Guiding souls with spiritual awareness
Toward the realm of the spirits!