The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eleventh Lecture

[ 1 ] Today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, I will give three consecutive lectures—today I will make some remarks that may serve as a foundation for certain perspectives on the relationship between human beings and the entire universe, and on life in general.

[ 2 ] If we consider the human soul as it reveals itself to us in its development here in its life within the physical body between birth and death, we may notice, among other things, that in order to complete this earthly life between birth and death, the soul must acquire two qualities—one might say, two complexes of forces. We have, of course, drawn attention to such matters on several occasions.

[ 3 ] What must be acquired, on the one hand, is memory. Just imagine if memory were not one of our earthly characteristics! You need only consider for a moment how different our inner life would be if we could not look back on our past days and bring up from, so to speak, indeterminate depths, what we have experienced since a certain moment in time after our birth. The connection between these experiences is, in fact, necessary for us to be able to have our sense of self in the appropriate way. I have often drawn attention to this. But you all know that this memory only arises at a certain point in our earthly life and that it does not exist beforehand, so that our experiences prior to the point in time to which we can recall fall into oblivion. We can therefore say: From a certain point in our physical life on Earth onward, our soul life in relation to our physical life becomes such that we can always keep our experiences present within us through memory, to a greater or lesser extent.

[ 4 ] This memory can only develop under the influence of our earthly life, and one of the tasks of our earthly life is to develop this memory. During the long course of evolution, when we were lunar beings, we did not possess it in this way. It is only through the incorporation into our being of the Earth organism, with its forces from the mineral kingdom, that memory can develop. In its development, it is essentially a result of the interaction between the human soul and the physical Earth body. In the spiritual world, memory as we now develop it in the physical Earth body is needed only from the Earth era onward. The reason it was not needed until the Earth era is that, for example, in the power of that dreamlike clairvoyance which was characteristic of human beings in the ancient Lunar era, there was something else that could, in a sense, take the place of today’s memory. Just imagine: If every time you experienced something, that experience were written down somewhere accessible to you—the next experience as well, and so on—you could simply always look at the place where the experience is recorded. You would be able to look outward, because the experience would be recorded in the external world. And this is indeed how it was for the kind of experience that human beings went through during the ancient Lunar Age. In a certain fine-etheric substance, what was experienced through dream consciousness—that ancient, dreamlike clairvoyant consciousness—was, so to speak, engraved. Everything that human beings still experienced in such a way that they took it in through their dreamlike clairvoyant consciousness was inscribed into the substance of the world. And the activity of the human soul—which could be compared to today’s memory—was such that one always turned one’s clairvoyant, dreamlike gaze, as it were, toward the engravings in the fine-etheric substance of the world. Just as we see objects in the external world today, so did the Lunar human beings see their own experiences, which had left their traces. One need only, as it were, look around to see how one had lived one’s way through the substance of the world, and one would find inscribed in that substance what had been the object of that ancient, dreamlike, imaginative consciousness.

[ 5 ] This, then, was a completely different way of coexisting with the world than it is today. Just imagine that everything that ever becomes a thought for you now trails behind you like a comet’s tail, so that it could be thought by you again; then you would have transferred into your present life of thought what was truly present during that ancient, dreamlike state of consciousness. This state had to come to an end because human beings were to become individuals, to embody an individuality. But he can do so only if what he experiences in his soul remains his soul’s own property—if it is not directly engraved into the substance of the world, but only into his own fine etheric individuality, into his etheric substance. As long as a human being lives on Earth, his etheric body is always drawn into a state of co-movement whenever he develops his consciousness in the waking state. And this movement finds its limits in the form of the physical body. In a sense, it cannot extend beyond the boundary of the skin. And so, throughout the entire life between birth and death, the fine etheric substance—in which thoughts, images, and emotional and volitional experiences move along—remains, as it were, rolled up within the physical body. And when the physical body is shed at death, the whole, as we have often described, unrolls and is now communicated to the world’s etheric substance, so that we now, after death, begin to look back upon what has been engraved into our etheric individuality, which now, after death, merges into the world’s etheric substance.

[ 6 ] Just as is the case with memory—which, as indicated, is developed through the resilience of the physical body—so too is the case with that which is, in turn, important for our earthly life, so that we may acquire what is right within it.

[ 7 ] What we must acquire during our earthly life, apart from memory, are habits. Even habits such as those we have during our earthly life were not yet present in the same form during our lunar life. We had neither memory in its present earthly form nor the ability to acquire habits during our lunar life. If you observe human development from childhood onward, you will see how habitual actions are acquired only gradually through the repeated and constant repetition of certain actions. Because we receive guidance in this regard during our upbringing, these actions become habitual. And we perform them—after first having to acquire them—in a more soul-mechanical way once they have become habits.

[ 8 ] Developing habits in the right way during our time on Earth is essential for the development of the “I.” What did we have instead of habits when we were beings of the ancient Lunar Age? Back then, whenever we were to perform any action, whenever anything was to happen through us, we were under the direct influence of some being from the higher spiritual world. We were always guided in what we did by impulses sent into us by the beings of the higher world. We had no need for habits then, for what we were to do was, so to speak, accomplished through us by the beings of the higher world. We were much more a link in the entire organism of the hierarchies than is the case now during the Earth era.

[ 9 ] We would never have been able to develop the power of freedom if we had remained in a situation where impulses from higher spiritual beings had to come into play for every detail of our actions. Only by being, so to speak, released from the sphere of the beings of the spiritual worlds and finding ourselves in a position where, after repeatedly doing something, we can turn it into a habit so that it then comes from within ourselves—only in this way is the capacity for freedom planted within us. Indeed, the attainment of the possibility of freedom for human beings is intimately linked to the acquisition of habitual behavior.

[ 10 ] When we enter physical existence through birth, we come from a world in which—even during our time on Earth—we find ourselves, in a sense, in a situation similar to that of our time in the lunar phase, when we were under the strong influence of higher spiritual impulses up there in the spiritual world, which we had to pass through before descending into earthly existence through birth. There, ever higher spiritual beings guide us toward what we must accomplish in order to prepare our earthly existence from within the spiritual world, so that it may unfold in accordance with karma. And upon entering the physical body, we are torn away from that world, where there are no habits, but only continuous impulses from the higher spiritual beings. In a sense, when we enter physical existence, we still experience an echo of the state in which we were in the spiritual world. And this echo is expressed in the fact that, as children, up until about the age of seven, we are guided less by habits and more by the influence of imitation. We imitate what is demonstrated to us, and at first we actually imitate things under the direct influence of that demonstration. This is an echo of what was necessary for us in the spiritual world. In the spiritual world, it was necessary for us to receive an impulse for every single activity. Therefore, as children, we initially surrender to these direct impulses and imitate. And only over time does independence—the ability to act independently within our inner life—emerge, just as the ability to act out of habit does.

[ 11 ] Memory and habit are important ingredients of our inner life; they are significant and, in a sense, are metamorphoses—transformations of entirely different realities in the spiritual world. Memory is a transformation resulting from the formation of lasting traces of imaginative dream experiences; habit arises from a breaking away from the impulses of higher spiritual beings.

[ 12 ] When one considers something like this, as we have just done, reflecting on such matters gives one a certain understanding—one that is necessary—of the entirely different nature of the world that lies beyond the threshold, as opposed to the world that lies on this side of the threshold. For this must be emphasized again and again: Beyond the threshold, everything is different. Even if we strive to characterize the spiritual world by applying certain words that are in common use for the physical world, we must nevertheless make it clear to ourselves again and again that we can only gain adequate, accurate conceptions of the spiritual world only by gradually reshaping these conceptions of the spiritual world to be as different as possible from our conceptions of the physical world.

[ 13 ] At the same time, however, an analysis such as the one just presented gives us insight into the importance and the essence of our physical existence on Earth. It is utter nonsense to believe that physical existence on Earth is something that human beings may regard as insignificant. I have already drawn attention to this error from various perspectives. Physical life on Earth plays just as vital a role in the overall development of humanity as all other phases of human development. The fact that, as part of our soul’s development, we have a physical body and, through this physical body, undergo certain earthly experiences under the influence of memory and habit, provides us with lasting, eternal achievements. Little by little, through repeated earthly lives, we assimilate these achievements. Therefore, time and again, as we pass through the period between death and a new birth, we must, in a sense, return to what we are accustomed to from the Moon; we must, in a sense, relinquish the power of memory—which we do immediately after death—and surrender to the substance of the world that which we have engraved only within ourselves during our earthly life. And we must once again surrender ourselves to the impulses of the higher spiritual beings, so that we may then, in the earthly body, transform these abilities—the ability to follow the impulses of higher spiritual beings—into habitual actions.

[ 14 ] Here, however, is another point where I would like to draw your attention once again to something I have said many times before, but which, in essence, cannot be emphasized enough because it is very, very important. We acquire memory and habitual patterns during our earthly life. Let us first consider memory. When viewed as we have just done, it appears to be a natural achievement of earthly existence. As you know, no matter how weak a person’s memory may be, they will always develop the power and capacity for memory. Let us imagine for a moment that nothing else were to happen in the development of our memory other than what is entirely natural—what is precisely right for developing it as it is meant to develop through the influence of the physical Earth organism, which is permeated by the mineral realm. In that case, we would develop this memory differently than we actually do. We actually do much more than that, and you all know that we do much more. Perhaps it would be better to say that much more is done to us in the process of developing this memory. We memorize. From a certain point in our childhood development, we are required to memorize. There is a difference between simply acquiring our memory as it comes naturally, so to speak, and being required to do more than what comes naturally. If we read a poem often enough, if it is recited to us often enough, we eventually retain it. But our education today is not content with that; rather, we are required to memorize the poem. We are even punished if we have not memorized it when we were told to do so. This is particularly the case in the current cycle of human development.

[ 15 ] Please, don’t misunderstand me! No one should think that I’ve been railing against memorization today or saying it should be abolished. I’m not saying that! The reality of our times is such that certain things must be memorized, because our developmental cycle represents a very specific way of training our memory.

[ 16 ] But what happens to our soul when we rely on memorization to aid the natural assimilation of material to be remembered? In this case, Lucifer is invoked. And it is indeed the Luciferic force that is invoked to aid the memory in this way. Let me emphasize this once more: Do not say now, “Oh, Lucifer—we must guard against him! So from now on, let’s do away with all memorization for our children!” — That is precisely the bad habit that some people acquire: they believe, time and again, that we must guard against Lucifer and Ahriman, that we must do everything to ensure that Lucifer and Ahriman do not get close to us. — They’ll get even closer if you guard against them! Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces must be reckoned with in the development of the world. They must be incorporated into the development of the world, and the only question is that this be done in the right way.

[ 17 ] Let us consider this specific case: Why must a Luciferic force be invoked in this way when it comes to memory? In a way that is no longer at all conscious to humanity today, memory had a completely different strength in ancient times—though not so long ago—of human development than it does today. It takes us a relatively long time to master a longer work of poetry. The ancient Greeks did not need that long; a large number of them knew the Homeric epics from beginning to end. But they did not memorize them in the way we do today. The power of memory in that era was simply developed differently. What actually happened back then during this fourth post-Atlantean epoch? In a sense, it was a repetition of what had occurred to an even greater degree during the Atlantean epoch itself—and what I have already described in the essays dealing with Atlantean development. That which had come over from the Moon—a force enabling people to trail behind dreamlike, imaginative experiences like a comet’s tail—this force, so to speak, shifted from an external force, active in interaction with the world, into the inner realm. Through this transition inward, memory developed in Atlantean humans as a first glimmer of something that the world of that time seemed to give them of its own accord. And during the Atlantean era, human beings truly did not need to exert much effort to develop memory, for it was as if what had been a force in their external interaction with the world was flowing inward into the human being. And this was repeated during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. In a sense, there was an inner repetition of what had previously taken place in the interaction with the world, without the human being having to do anything.

[ 18 ] Now that humankind has entered the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, it must exert ever greater effort to make the power of memory its own. For memory to contribute to human individualization and freedom, what came naturally during the Atlantean era—and was repeated in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch—must be actively appropriated. Whenever, later on, something is appropriated that actually corresponds to an earlier power—that is, whenever memory is aided by powers that were once natural—we are dealing with a Luciferic influence. By artificially introducing into our time what was natural in the Greek era—the self-evident process of memory—it becomes Luciferic. But by allowing this Luciferic element to step before your soul in this way, you sense the role that Lucifer plays in human evolution. You must sense it when things are described in this way. In the Greco-Latin era, he was, so to speak, still subject to certain limits. He was still in his proper place. Now he is no longer in his proper place in the same way. Now, in order to further develop memory, human beings must enter into an alliance with him. Human beings must, of their own accord, do for their memory what happened to them without their intervention during the Greco-Roman era. But as a result, what happened to them during the Greco-Roman era becomes a Luciferic act today.

[ 19 ] But the moment a Luciferic activity arises, the other side of the scale, so to speak, also comes into play: the Ahrimanic. And while on the one hand we rely on memory—that is, call upon Lucifer to aid our memory—humanity has increasingly developed the other, Ahrimanic support for memory: writing things down. For as I have often hinted, this was still a genuine feeling among people of the Middle Ages: they regarded the art of printing, in particular, as a “black art.”

[ 20 ] But all this external assistance to memory is something Ahrimanic. Again, I am not saying that it is right to flee from everything Ahrimanic, although perhaps within our circle we go too far in invoking Ahriman in this very area. We love him far too much!

[ 21 ] But that is precisely the task of human beings: to develop a state of balance, so that they do not believe they can simply escape Lucifer and Ahriman! Rather, their task is to boldly, courageously, and powerfully acknowledge that both types of beings are necessary for the development of the world, and that in their own development they must use the forces coming from the Ahrimanic and Luciferic sides for their own activity—but that they must establish a balance between Ahriman and Lucifer in the most diverse areas. Ahriman and Lucifer must be kept in balance, and we must structure our activities in such a way that they can be kept in balance. For this reason, the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements also had to intervene during the development of the Earth. And from our recent reflections, we know that the significant symbol of the intervention of the Luciferic element is to be found at the beginning of the Old Testament, where Luciferic forces intervene in Earth’s evolution indirectly through the woman, and where, indirectly through the woman, the man is led astray. In this symbol, the intervention of the Luciferic element—which we place in the Lemurian epoch—is symbolized in the Bible.

[ 22 ] This was followed, during the Atlantean period, by the intervention of the Ahrimanic element in the Earth’s evolution. And just as it took human understanding during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch to arrive at the biblical interpretation of the Luciferic symbol, so it took the fifth post-Atlantean epoch to present, as it were, the counter-symbol—as I have mentioned before—to the human soul in a way that, while still insufficient today, has already been sufficiently hinted at. Ahriman has the figure of Faust at his side, just as Eve had Lucifer; just as Lucifer approaches the woman directly, so Ahriman approaches the man, Faust. And just as the man, Adam, is seduced indirectly through Eve, so the woman, Gretchen, is deceived indirectly through the man, Faust. For Gretchen’s seduction is based on being deceived, because Ahriman is at work—whom we can describe, in contrast to the seducing spirit Lucifer, as the spirit of lies. This is one of the designations we can use: Lucifer the Seducer, Ahriman the Liar.

[ 23 ] There are many things in the world that exist for the sole purpose of protecting humanity from Luciferic temptation. The rules, guidelines, and moral impulses described here exist to protect people from Luciferic temptation, as do institutions within human development, and so on. What is still less developed today, one might say, is that which enables people to guard themselves in the right way against the Ahrimanic fall—the fall into untruthfulness.

[ 24 ] Everything that is Luciferic in human beings has to do with passion and emotion. In contrast, everything that asserts itself as Ahrimanic within human development has to do with untruth and deceit. And in our present age, it is necessary not only for human beings to be armed against Luciferic temptations, but also for them to begin arming themselves against Ahrimanic temptations.

[ 25 ] This is, in a sense, already contained in the impulses of the Faust poem—how a human being can fall prey to Ahriman even through a misunderstanding of words. Goethe beautifully depicts for us in the Faust poem how Faust has passed through various Ahrimanic dangers. Although Lucifer and Ahriman are colorfully intermingled, for the reasons indicated today and earlier, Goethe rightly chose Ahriman over Lucifer for his Faust epic. In what you experience in the first and second parts, there is already much that is Ahrimanic, right up to the point where it plays into the misunderstanding of words. At the end of the second part, Faust says there is talk of a ditch; but the talk is of a grave! A ditch—and a grave! The impulse of Ahriman resonates right down into the misunderstanding of words. Goethe achieved this in an extraordinarily subtle way: wherever he had genuine Ahrimanic impulses—arising more instinctively than consciously—he was able to weave the untruth, that which is most askew in life, clearly and sharply into the Faust epic. It is extremely important to recognize this.

[ 26 ] Just as memory and habitual patterns are, so to speak, metamorphoses—transformations of modes of activity—in the spiritual world, so too is what we have further assimilated for the spiritual world a transformation of what we assimilate here in the physical world, of what we shape here. Let us consider something that, in a sense, first appears in the physical world. We have, after all, characterized memory and habitual patterns as products of transformation, as metamorphoses of spiritual experiences from earlier times. But what first appears in the physical world is, for example, the relationship of our imagination to external objects. The objects are all around us. We form images of them in our imagination. And the correspondence between the images we form in our imagination and the objects themselves is what we call physical truth, the truth of the physical plane. Something is not true on the physical plane if we express it as an image in such a way that it has no correct counterpart on the physical plane. When we speak of physical truth, it consists entirely in the fact that what we imagine corresponds to the reality of the physical plane. For such a relationship to truth to occur, it is absolutely necessary that we live in a physical body and perceive external things through it. It would be utter nonsense to believe that such a correspondence with truth could have already taken place on the ancient Moon. This is an achievement attained during earthly life. And it is precisely through our acquisition of the physical earthly body that this correspondence between our conceptions and external objects first comes about. But this is how Ahriman’s sphere of activity is defined. How is it defined?

[ 27 ] It is precisely in something like what has just been said that you can sense the interrelationships between the spiritual and the physical worlds. Ahriman has his rightful role in the spiritual world and is also meant to send certain influences into the physical world. But he must not enter the physical world! For the realm that ensures our perceptions—which we acquire in the physical body—correspond to external objects must be withheld from him. If he brings into earthly life the activities he still had during the Lunar Age, he disrupts the correspondence between our perceptions and external objects. So he must, so to speak—if I may express myself symbolically—keep his hands off the way in which human beings bring their perceptions into correspondence with what exists as external objects or external facts. But he does not do this, Ahriman; he truly does not! For if he did—if he kept his hands off—then there would be no lying in the world!

[ 28 ] Now, I don’t know whether it is necessary to prove that people do, in fact, lie in the world. But if people do lie in the world, that is proof that Ahriman is active in the physical world in a way that is not befitting him. This activity of Ahriman in the physical world is precisely what human beings must overcome. You might, of course, easily say: There is much that is beautiful in the world, but some things are also amateurish; a truly perfect God would have been able to create human beings in such a way that they would never be tempted to lie. This God would have said to Ahriman: ‘You have no business in the physical world!’ — But since this God was unable to keep Ahriman out of the physical world, then God is not so perfect after all! One could say that. — And there is not only Ahriman, who even takes a certain pleasure in acknowledging the evil on earth in the sense we have heard from him again today, but also philosophers who derive a pessimism from the bad qualities of human beings. There were pessimistic philosophers in the nineteenth century; indeed, there are even some who advocate not merely pessimism, but “miserabilism.” This is certainly a worldview that exists! Julius Bahnsen advocates not merely pessimism, but “miserabilism.”

[ 29 ] Why, then, was Ahriman actually permitted to enter the physical world? I showed you an example of this in one of my recent reflections: he was permitted to enter to a great extent. Isn’t that right? A procedure was arranged that unfolded exactly as I described it to you: not just ordinary observers, but thirty law students and young lawyers—that is, people who are supposed to prepare themselves to judge human actions later on—were spectators at this procedure, which was thus strictly prescribed, where every single detail of what was to happen was known in advance. Now, if after such a procedure these thirty people are asked about it and twenty-six describe it incorrectly while only four describe it correctly—and even those four not entirely, but only approximately—then you can see from this what is involved in establishing the correct relationship between human perception and the external physical reality. Thirty people can sit watching an event that unfolds according to a predetermined program, just as it was stipulated beforehand, and twenty-six of them describe it completely wrong! There you see Ahriman at work! There you see how he is present! But what if he weren’t there? We would certainly be like lambs in a certain sense, for the impulse to form no other conception than what we have before us as fact would be within us, and we would always allow only what we have observed as fact to pass through our speech. But we would have to do so! There would be no question of freedom! We would have to do it; it could never be otherwise, and we could never become free beings. In order to speak the truth as free beings, we must have the ability to lie; we must acquire the strength, so to speak, to defeat the Ahriman within us every time. He must be there so that he “provokes and acts” and “works as the devil.” Then you sense how he must be there, Ahriman, and how the error lies solely in following him so directly rather than viewing him as the one who provokes and acts and works as the devil—and who is overcome. The “flight” that some speak of, that long-faced resignation: But isn’t that perhaps something Ahrimanic? I must not go along with that! — as it is meant in many cases, it signifies nothing other than a complacent turning toward Lucifer in bondage.

[ 30 ] The key is to recognize where all the forces are that must be overcome. In a sense, we need Ahriman on one side and Lucifer on the other to bring about a balance between them.

[ 31 ] I wanted to preface this today as a preliminary observation, because it must serve as the foundation for certain perspectives that are to open up to us tomorrow and the day after tomorrow regarding a humanistic worldview and outlook on life.