The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] A ray of light that can truly shed insight falls on retrospectives such as the one we undertook yesterday when one first considers, so to speak, the negative side of the matter—namely, when one asks oneself, as we have, in fact, done quite often: What, in a deeper sense, are the impulses that have led humanity in the present into such catastrophic events—and, more importantly, into a certain catastrophic state of affairs, as is quite clearly evident in current conditions? — Of course, one cannot always immediately turn one’s gaze to the deeper foundations of current events. One will first turn one’s gaze to what I would call the more superficial layer of events. One will then be able to describe this or that, and such descriptions will by no means be wrong. This is something that must always be taken into account if one is to proceed in earnest from spiritual-scientific considerations. Such spiritual-scientific considerations do not mean that other perspectives are always incorrect. But today, in the present, they wish to point out in particular that it is not enough to remain at a certain superficial level of worldview, but that it is necessary to penetrate more deeply into the circumstances. Nothing particularly new is to be said in this vein today, but we should recall certain things which, when viewed as a kind of New Year’s perspective, are well-suited to helping us enter properly into this perspective that lies before us in many respects in a deeply unsettling way.

[ 2 ] You will recall how I have explained in recent days that one of the most important, indeed the most essential, aspects of understanding the present age is that humanity is, so to speak, on the threshold of a new revelation. It is the revelation that is to take place—and in a certain sense is already taking place—through the spirits of personality, who, if one may put it that way, are rising to the dignity of creators, whereas, as creators in the course of human history, we have so far been able to address only those spirits who are called the Elohim in the Bible, whom we call the spirits of form. Something creative, then, will emerge within that which human beings can perceive as they observe the external world.

[ 3 ] It is inherent in certain aspects of human nature that people initially resist acknowledging such an irrupting spiritual element. People, especially in the present, do not want to engage with such an irruption of a spiritual element. Now we must distinguish between two things, particularly when we consider this present new revelation. To make myself clearer, I would like to add the following.

[ 4 ] The famous Cardinal Newman said something remarkable when he was invested with his cardinal’s robes in Rome. At his investiture, he said that he saw no other salvation for the Church than a new revelation. That was decades ago, and various things have been said here and there around the world about this remarkable view of Cardinal Newman. But if one looks at what has been said about this by the Church and by those whose views are aligned with the Church’s creed, it has consistently been pointed out that one should not speak of a new revelation, but rather that one must hold fast to the old revelation. And above all, if anything is necessary, it is only that we understand the old revelation better than we have understood it so far.

[ 5 ] In these objections—raised from all sides against the cardinal’s statement, which thus reflected an intuition regarding the dawn of a new revelation—one can see how humanity resists such a revelation. Now, as I said, a distinction must be made between two things. The fact that people resist accepting such a revelation does not, of course, negate the fact that this revelation is coming. This revelation pours forth like a new wave of spirit through the events in which humanity is entangled. Humanity cannot, as it were, push this wave back from the earth. It pours over the earth. That is one fact.

[ 6 ] So, I would like to say that for some time now, especially since the beginning of the 20th century—or, to be more precise, since about 1899—we, as human beings going about our lives in the world, have been living within a new wave of spiritual life that is pouring into the broader life of humanity. And a spiritual researcher today is simply a person who acknowledges this—that is, who recognizes that something like this has broken into the life of humanity. That is the one fact.

[ 7 ] The other fact is simply that people—precisely given their current state—need a certain jolt, a certain burst of activity, to realize that such a wave is pouring into their lives. This has led to the significant situation where, on the one hand, this wave has truly poured into life and is present, but on the other hand, people do not want to notice it. They resist it. You must not view this fact in the abstract. For the centers, so to speak—the focal points—in which this wave discharges in much the same way as an electric current wave in a coherer in wireless telegraphy—the coherers in this realm are, after all, the human souls. And do not delude yourselves about this: the fact is that, by living on Earth—simply by being people of the 20th century—human beings are receiving devices for what pours into life in the manner described. A person may resist acknowledging this with their consciousness, but they cannot prevent their soul from receiving the wave, from the wave being within them.

[ 8 ] Now we must examine this very fact a little more closely. We must ask about the various assumptions we can now make, having engaged in these reflections for weeks on end. We must ask: What, then, is the most significant capacity of the human soul in our age? It is intellectuality. And while it is repeatedly and quite rightly emphasized that human beings should also cultivate their other soul powers—not merely intellectuality—such emphasis is made so intensely today precisely because people sense that intellectuality is the defining capacity of our age, and they feel that, since intellectuality is about to overwhelm them, they must not allow their other capacities to atrophy. Precisely because intellectuality plays such an important role in the Age of the Conscious Soul, there is so often such an intense emphasis today on not allowing feeling and sensation to atrophy—which is of particular importance in light of the striking fact that intellectuality plays such a major role.

[ 9 ] Now we must form a clear picture of this intellectuality. I have spoken about this intellectuality from a wide variety of perspectives. You may recall that even in public lectures I have not failed to convey what is necessary regarding the intellectual in the present age. For example, I have spoken of the fact that in our scientific worldview—which has, in fact, taken hold in all circles (everyone today thinks scientifically, even if they know nothing at all about the natural sciences)—we have something that makes particular use of intellectuality. Even when one experiments, even when one observes, one processes the experiments or the results of the experiments; one processes the observations through intellectuality. Precisely in the scientific worldview, to which humanity has become so accustomed in the present day—and from whose perspective it also wishes to view social life, for example—precisely in the scientific worldview, this intellectuality reigns and weaves completely. But how does it weave? I have often discussed the following question in public lectures: What kind of picture of the world does one actually gain through a scientific worldview? Ultimately, one comes to realize that what one can imagine of the world through the customary scientific habits of thought is not reality, but a phantom or a sum of phantoms—even our atoms and everything one imagines in the world of atoms. But even those who are more positivist in their outlook—who do not place much stock in the atomic hypothesis, such as Poincaré, Avenarius, or Mach—conceive of nature in such a way that their conceptions do not actually contain anything real in which nature plays a part, but rather a phantom of nature. This is connected to what I said here a few days ago: that the conceptual world in which we live today, in the age of the conscious soul, does not actually contain realities, but only images, reflections. And we have already gained an extraordinary deal simply by letting go of the superstition that when we read a book on the natural sciences or listen to a scientific debate, we are hearing about reality. If we become aware of what is being communicated to us there, we realize that it is actually only an image, a kind of phantom of reality. But what lives within such ideas—which are actually nothing more than ghostly images that do not connect with reality in the way that Goethe’s ideas of metamorphosis do—what lives there is, in a certain sense, something we are extraordinarily fond of, extraordinarily dear to us today. And we would like to capture reality within this ghostly web of ideas. All those people who today speak of a monistic worldview and the like, or who otherwise advocate a positivist worldview, actually believe—with a strange superstition—in the significance of these phantom-like webs of imagination. They believe they can extract an image of reality from what today’s scientific worldview provides them, which they simply cannot do. So people love this phantom-like nature of the worldview that can be formed at the present stage of human development. And the fact that, on the one hand, they love their world of imagination, while on the other hand this world of imagination provides only images—this is what dominates souls today. And the souls who are dominated in this way by their striving for imagination—they are the ones who resist the onslaught of a spiritual wave that is, after all, reality, and which cannot initially be grasped by the mere phantom web of ideas developed through natural science. One can only come to terms with these things if one is fully aware that this scientific mode of imagination prepares people to reject the positive spiritual reality that is entering the world. And that is why they resist—fearfully resist—the wave that I have described as coming in and spreading out, and which nevertheless lives in the souls of human beings.

[ 10 ] Thus, in people today—especially in those who set the tone—there is something that refuses to be swept up by this wave; there is something of the impact of this wave, but at the same time there is something in their consciousness that refuses to be swept up by it. One can often depict the structure of modern human beings in such a way that one says: If this is the human being, then here is one layer of the soul, and here is a second layer of the soul. Up here in this layer (see diagram, II) is consciousness—modern consciousness—which is trained particularly in the natural sciences. But the wave I am speaking of passes through the other layer (red). The point, then, would be for consciousness not merely to concern itself with what is mere fantasy, but for consciousness to allow what is down there to flow into itself, to take in what is down there.

[ 11 ] If you consider this, you will discover something that is of extraordinary importance, especially today, for understanding the constitution of the soul. For we would not have experienced this terrible catastrophe of war—or rather, the warlike manifestation of this catastrophe—since the catastrophe that reigns within humanity takes various forms and has different aspects; the war we have been speaking of is only one aspect—this war-related aspect of the catastrophe, that which has raged primarily over the last four and a half years—we could never have experienced it at all if this spiritual reality did not exist. One must look very closely at this spiritual reality if one wishes to understand it. One must ask oneself: What is actually going on with this wave that is sweeping through?

[ 12 ] This is a wave that, at first, lies, as it were, beneath the surface of what we usually pay attention to. One might ask: What actually lives in this wave, in which the spirits of personality are currently moving? — Certainly, the spirits of personality live there, seeking to reveal themselves anew as creators, but there are many other things living in this wave as well. For you see, you can simply imagine an ocean with ships sailing on it; within these ships there can be the most diverse personalities moving upon the waves—let them be our images of the spirits of personality. But the waves themselves are there, and they, too, represent something. In the ocean, we have, so to speak, merely the blind element of water, which, however, can also have its quirks. But in this spiritual wave of which I am speaking, something else is at work. What floods into the souls, what truly strikes at the very core of the souls—that is struggle; it is a cosmic struggle that, so to speak, unfolds behind the scenes of the present world. Human beings are entangled in this cosmic struggle. For the spiritual researcher, perceiving the spirits of the personality of which I speak is by no means—I might say—a completely comfortable, pleasant experience. It certainly cannot be described in such a way that one could say to a person: “I will make you a beholder of the spirit, because this offers you immense bliss, because you can float quite comfortably in spiritual contemplation.”—That is what most people would like. They would like to be given something like a refreshing drink when they are to enter the spiritual world today. They shy away from not receiving such a refreshing drink, from not receiving something about which they can say: “It makes me feel so at ease, so comfortable.” — That is precisely not what is at stake today; rather, what is at stake today is that one actually feels a struggle passing through one’s being—a struggle that is taking place behind the scenes of the world, a struggle that must take place because it is necessarily embedded in the course of world development, just as it must be.

[ 13 ] There are various aspects that characterize the development of this world as it is meant to be. I will mention just one. In earlier, pre-Christian times—around the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, after which this tendency began to wane—it was, at least to a considerable extent, a matter of course for attentive souls throughout the entire pagan world to have impressions of the existence of repeated earthly lives. This ancient way of life was fundamentally different from what we tend to imagine today. Isn’t it true that today we distinguish between people who have a formal education and those who do not? In earlier times, a distinction was made between people who were able to be attentive to repeated earthly lives and those who were not attentive to them. But this awareness waned, and I have often spoken of how it was precisely the task of Christianity to temporarily set aside this wave of development that awakens in people the awareness of repeated earthly lives. When one says such things, one usually exposes oneself to all sorts of misunderstandings. One is accused of contradictions, which—if one speaks at length—one would like to and can resolve oneself. I mentioned this again recently somewhere; immediately, someone wrote to me asking whether I didn’t know that reincarnation is discussed in the Bible itself. Of course, one finds references in my writings to where this is discussed in the Bible; that goes without saying. But the question is not whether, through a very broad interpretation, one can speak of reincarnation in the Bible. The overall structure of the Bible is such that reincarnation is not something explicitly stated in it—not something, one might say, that is laid out clearly. It is true that, as part of humanity’s necessary development, awareness of repeated earthly lives receded for a time so that human beings could become accustomed to taking their single earthly life seriously and intensely. But now we are, so to speak, witnessing a return to this concept; we have reached a point where we cannot move forward unless we turn our gaze toward repeated earthly lives. Now, once again, those spiritual elements that seek to instill in human beings an awareness of repeated earthly lives must wage a hard struggle behind the scenes of existence against those who wish to allow only the old elements and impulses into human consciousness. This is a significant struggle in which one must participate if one wishes to gain insight into what is taking place behind the scenes of human development—and of world development in general!

[ 14 ] One should not imagine that behind the scenes of sensory existence there is something where one can lie down and sleep so comfortably. Such are, as a rule, the notions of paradise held by materialistic people. They like to imagine that when the gate of “death” closes, they’ll have the opportunity to sleep a great deal. Because this sleep is also very comfortable, people prefer to imagine it that way. Well, you know that’s not how it is. But even behind the scenes of existence, it’s not the case that one could merely have the desire to satisfy all those impulses that one would like to indulge in out of personal selfishness. So one becomes a participant in a struggle, a real struggle.

[ 15 ] The situation is as follows: If people were not reluctant to observe this struggle, if they were willing to look behind the scenes of existence at the insights provided by spiritual researchers, then people today would view existence in an entirely different light. What I have always emphasized is this: We should develop an interest in one another; but this interest—how we are to develop it—is in reality inconceivable unless we allow spiritual science to shed light on our lives. Isn’t it true that when we enter into relationships with people—and every person enters into relationships with others—the reality is this: We get to know people we call good; we get to know people we find more or less indifferent; we get to know people we call evil, who do all sorts of things to us and through whom we experience all sorts of suffering. Certainly, in external life on the physical plane, there is no choice but to relate to these people. If, for example, someone slaps you, and you feel the urge to slap them back, you cannot relate to anything other than that person. But this view no longer suffices for the circumstances of our time. We must admit this to ourselves: this view truly no longer suffices for the circumstances of our time; rather, it is much more in keeping with the circumstances of our time to say today: “Some person is lying to me,” or “Another person is doing this or that.” Certainly, in physical life, one must focus on the person. But the important thing is to become aware of this: all manner of spiritual impulses are at work within people, and it is these that we are actually dealing with. Of course, if someone slaps you, you cannot return the slap to some demon that drove them to do it; you must hold fast to the person who stands physically before you in physical life. But what is so necessary—I would say, behind the scenes of existence—is really not enough to understand the world; in particular, it is not enough to truly grasp social life properly. In other words: People today cannot get by unless they truly recognize, behind what is physically happening, a spiritual world that is real and concrete. This is very important. For the most part, people are afraid of this.

[ 16 ] This fear is certainly not unfounded. Unless you are completely sober, unemotional people—and of course there is no one like that here—you will get something like goosebumps when you consider that you are, in fact, the stage upon which all manner of spiritual beings act, as is indeed the case. Once you become aware that you are the stage for the activity of all manner of spiritual beings, you get the feeling that you are being swallowed up by these spiritual beings, who are stuffing you full. You feel like a sack stuffed with all manner of beings. This feeling—these goosebumps—is certainly not unfounded; but it truly cannot be dispelled by denying the fact that one is such a sack, by, so to speak, shutting one’s consciousness off from it and making oneself blind and deaf to what is a reality. Help must be found in another way.

[ 17 ] Well, that is a very important fact. Suppose there is such a person—a person who is swept up in the tide of struggle but who is not inclined to value spiritual life, who surrenders himself in the most profound sense to the mindset of our time, a mindset built on the model of a scientific worldview. One really must confront these matters seriously, for in our present age one cannot receive a ray of light, but can only succumb to Rathenau-style pessimism, if one does not look at these things. Take the following example. Suppose a man like Ludendorff had become a professor of botany. He would probably have become an excellent professor of botany, would have achieved extraordinary things as a professor of botany, would, as they say, have become a famous figure—so famous that it might even have satisfied his ambition—but he would not have made such a large number of people unhappy as he did. Now, he wasn’t in a position where he was an innocent professor of botany—innocent, that is, in the context of the world; he probably would have tormented, to some extent, those who were supposed to take exams under him—but let’s assume he had become an innocent professor of botany in the context of the world; then things would have gone well. But that is not what he became; instead, he became a so-called strategist. And because of what lay within him—the ability to think only in terms of the phantom constructs of the natural sciences—he could not bring what was unleashing itself in his soul up into consciousness; for this way of thinking is not suited to bringing what is unleashing itself down there in the soul up into consciousness. And so he is the misfortune of a large part of humanity. Thus he is one of the thirty to forty people of the present day upon whom the catastrophe outwardly depends—a person who, in the position he occupies, simply resists the recognition of anything spiritual. But the time has already come when those people in positions of leadership who resist acknowledging the spiritual—who refuse to acknowledge that the spiritual plays a role, particularly in human life—can become a source of human misfortune. It is very important to face this fact squarely. Now, even if they were not initially in positions of leadership during this war-torn catastrophe, there are nevertheless a great many people today who, simply out of fear or for other reasons, push back against the wave of spiritual life that is flooding in through the spirits of the personality, because they wish to think solely in terms of natural science.

[ 18 ] That is why so many personalities are so difficult to understand today, and why so many are so misjudged. It is infinitely tragic that people like Ludendorff have been regarded as great figures. But the fact is that the point I have just made clouds our entire judgment of people. All sorts of demonic elements come into play in these people—elements that are attributed to them, but which they themselves actually reject—because they carry within their souls a mere phantom construct modeled on the natural sciences, and with this they are unable to grasp the matter. A person like the one I just cited as an example then indulges in all sorts of such things—as this individual did—to numb himself to the split in his personality, to what is churning and raging within. This is generally the case with very many people today. They numb themselves to what is actually raging within them when they find themselves in a certain situation in their outer lives, through this or that action they take; one beats up his neighbor, another writes a nonsensical botanical book, and so on. They numb themselves to what is actually raging within them—and whatever that may be—that threatens to cause their personality to disintegrate; simply under the influence of the inevitable events of the times, their personalities threaten to disintegrate, because they are afraid to throw themselves into the struggle that is now playing out behind the scenes in the world—a struggle on whose waves the spirits of personality seek to enter our time.

[ 19 ] Recognition of the spiritual requires coming to terms with the question we are now addressing. And here it is of immense importance to truly take seriously what is so often emphasized here: not to regard spiritual science merely as a theory. If you regard it as a theory, then you would be better off reading cookbooks and the like; for what is mere content in spiritual science is not actually the essential and important part. What matters is the way one must think in order to recognize spiritual science. It is a different way of thinking than the one derived from the view of nature commonly held today. There are, in fact, two ways of forming thoughts. One is the analytical, distinguishing way of thinking that plays such a major role in natural science today, where distinctions are made—careful distinctions. You find this approach setting the tone in natural science. Everything that is said, written, or done in natural science is influenced by this analytical, distinguishing way of thinking. People seek rigid definitions. And when someone says something today, they pin him down to rigid definitions. But rigid definitions are nothing more than distinctions between the things being defined and other things. This way of thinking is a kind of mask that is particularly favored by those minds that wish to tear us apart today, those who are right in the thick of this struggle. To put it trivially, one could say: A large number of the people who brought about the current catastrophe of war, and those who are still caught up in its consequences, are actually insane. But that, as I said, is merely a trivial observation. What is at stake here is understanding what is tearing their personalities apart. One must clearly distinguish this way of thinking—to which the various forces that tear people apart have access—from the other, which is applied solely in spiritual science. It is an entirely different mode of conception, an entirely different way of thinking. In contrast to the disintegrating one, it is a formative way of thinking. If you look more closely and follow what I am trying to explain in the various books on spiritual science, you will say to yourself: The difference lies not so much in what is communicated—that can be judged one way or another—but one should take note that the entire way of integrating the whole world, the entire nature of the concepts, is different. This approach is formative; it presents complete images; it seeks to create contours and, through contours, to convey colors. You will be able to trace this throughout the entire presentation: it lacks the analytical approach that characterizes all of today’s science. This difference in method must be emphasized just as much as the difference in content. So there is a formative way of thinking that is specifically cultivated and whose purpose is to lead into the supersensible worlds. If, for example, you take the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, in which such a path into the supersensible worlds is outlined, you will find that everything in it that engages the thoughts and ideas is oriented toward formative thinking.

[ 20 ] This is something that is necessary for the present. For creative thinking has a very specific characteristic. If you think in a dissecting manner, if you think the way today’s natural scientist thinks, then you think just like certain spirits of the Ahrimanic world, and therefore these Ahrimanic spirits can penetrate your soul. But if you adopt formative thinking—metamorphosed thinking, or, as I might also say, Goethean thinking, as it is manifested, for example, in the design of our columns and capitals and so on—if you adopt this formative thinking, which is also addressed in all the books I have sought to incorporate into spiritual science, then this thinking is closely bound to the human being. No beings other than those connected to normal human evolution are capable of shaping thought in the way that human beings do within themselves. That is what makes it unique. Consequently, you can never stray onto the wrong path if you engage in formative thinking through spiritual science. You can never lose yourself to the various spiritual beings that seek to exert influence over you. Of course, these beings do pass right through your being. But as soon as you think creatively—as soon as you strive not merely to speculate and distinguish, but to think in the way that modern spiritual science truly intends—you remain centered within yourself, and you cannot feel a sense of mere emptiness. That is why, from the standpoint of our spiritual science, the Christ impulse is so frequently emphasized—because the Christ impulse lies directly in the line of formative thinking. Nor can one understand the Gospels by merely dissecting them. Modern Protestant theology has clearly demonstrated what results from this approach. It dissects, but in doing so, it has lost everything, and nothing at all remains. The cycles that deal with the Gospels follow the opposite path. They build up something that takes shape, in order to advance toward an understanding of the old Gospels through these new forms. In fact, what is needed today—and this is by no means an exaggeration—is simply for a person to adhere to the mode of imagination, to the way of thinking of this spiritual science; then those demonic beings that roll in as accompaniments to the spirits of the personality with the new wave will be unable to harm him. Therefore, you can see what a great harm it actually is to humanity when it resists thinking in the spirit of spiritual science.

[ 21 ] As I said earlier: This wave cannot be stopped; even if people reject it, it will flood in, even if they resist it, even if they refuse to grasp it. Then what has, in a deeper sense, led to the catastrophe of the present will come to light: the failure to acknowledge the spiritual world. That is, after all, the deeper cause of today’s catastrophic events—and specifically, of today’s catastrophic states of mind. And since this is a struggle that rages within, there is no other means than to shape the human personality within oneself through formative thinking and thereby experience the struggle within the soul. Otherwise, the struggle will continue to play out in the outer world. That is why one must say: It is truly not right for people to refuse to turn their attention to this spiritual undercurrent of the current catastrophic world situation. For you will notice: There is something extraordinarily new in what has been said here; it involves reckoning with a new wave that is surging in, and which is to be brought to the people living in the present through a very special way of thinking. If one devotes oneself to thoughts modeled on the natural sciences, one simply cannot rise to the challenge of the present age. If one merely seeks to organize what exists here in the physical world, if one merely reflects on what exists here in the physical world and refuses to acknowledge anything else, then one only destroys. And one should not be surprised when the struggle—which one refuses to master in the spiritual realm—spills over into physical life, for it does indeed strike at human beings. And if people do not wish to fight it out in their souls, it pits one against the other, nations against nations, people against people. What happens here in the physical world can only be a reflection of the spiritual world: Either human beings approach the struggle by fighting it out in their souls—that is, by deepening themselves spiritually—or this struggle, which passes through consciousness as if through a sieve when one chooses to think merely as the present age does, discharges itself by sidelining the human soul in the outer world, thereby causing everything you are witnessing right now. When you reflect on such things, you will realize that it truly falls to humanity today to turn toward the spirit, and that this is necessarily foreshadowed by world events.

[ 22 ] Let us consider a time such as this, as it is presented to us at the turn of the year, when we should look ahead a little to what lies ahead—which truly lies before us in a sobering perspective. You see, my dear friends, this is what we must achieve: not to numb ourselves by trying to sleep through the prospects of the future. For this reason, I presented to you yesterday the outlook devised by a man who calculates—who does not judge things based on likes and dislikes, but who calculates them. I did this so that you might see what a calculating materialist arrives at in our time. Humanity is setting itself on a course toward something entirely different from actually getting serious about acknowledging the fact that, for the sake of humanity’s salvation, the spiritual world must be recognized. Anyone who understands the spiritual world and its relationship to the physical world knows that certain laws prevail—even if this is not a logical consequence—but the logical consequence lies precisely in analytical thinking, not in creative thinking, nor in the intuitive thinking I have described. You see, such laws do not operate externally in such a way that they are strictly quantifiable, but they are there. Just take, for example, a law like this—which, of course, also has exceptions—that—for the good of humanity—roughly as many men as women are born on Earth. Purely theoretically speaking, it could indeed happen—to the detriment of humanity—that in some century only one-twentieth of humanity would be men, and the rest would all be born as women! Such laws, then, which cannot be justified by ordinary logic but can only be understood through spiritual science—such laws do exist. But this is also one such law: To the extent that people imbue their souls with an appreciation of the spiritual, as I have described today, so that what is spiritual in a given age flows down into consciousness—to that extent can ordinary social life among humanity unfold, and to that extent can people rise above antisocial impulses, above that which works against socialization.

[ 23 ] People today simply lack the courage to truly allow the spiritual to enter their consciousness. But at least some people should know that what is at stake today is allowing the spiritual to enter their immediate consciousness. If you consider certain contemporary phenomena—I would say, contemporary fads—from this perspective, you will see how people today feel an urge to exclude from their consciousness any connection with the spiritual law of existence. And I demonstrated to you recently, when I spoke about aptitude tests, how such things—which can exclude this conscious connection—must be reckoned with even in practical action. There, people want to avoid, as much as possible, a direct, fundamental connection with the student’s aptitude; instead, they test memory and powers of comprehension through all sorts of external measures, so that they do not need to think. That is why people are so fond of mathematics. First, you establish a few rules, and then you calculate mechanically. There is no need to follow the details with your intellect. You wouldn’t be able to anyway. After all, you can perhaps picture three, four, or five beans side by side—even ten beans—but picturing twenty at a glance would already be quite difficult. But imagine if you had to picture a thousand or even a million at a glance! Yet you can calculate it quite well because you approach it mechanically; you don’t need to follow the details of what you’re doing with your intellect. But people today especially love it when you can prove something to them without them actually having to engage their intellect in the process. If you expect them to follow every single step of the proof, that is terribly unpleasant for people. Therefore, it is better for the matter itself to prove itself without human involvement. People would prefer to prove the matter—the spiritual world—in such a way that it reveals itself out there on its own: spiritualism and the like. It is unbearable to people that spiritual science makes the claim that one must truly be present, that one must be active in the individual stages. Without this, however, spiritual science is simply inconceivable. That is why people also love the symbols of the ancient esoteric sciences and the like. People love rituals about which they say: “They take place before our eyes, but we don’t need to follow them with our intellect; we don’t need to form a mental picture of what is actually happening there”—and so on. Yet this is precisely what modern spiritual science must have: this following of the individual.

[ 24 ] It is very strange: In Eastern Europe, we are seeing the emergence of what is actually awaiting the next epoch. There, especially in the East, all sorts of things are being done that show how people want to permeate with intelligence that which should actually only be encompassed by the web of intelligence. In the age of consciousness, where intelligence is meant to take effect, where everything is to be woven into the web of intelligence—it is precisely there that people are seeking to introduce intelligence. Just take, for example, the way propaganda has been waged, particularly in Russia, to gradually bring about the fall of the tsarist regime over the last two decades! In this enslaved, oppressed Russia, it was of course impossible to conduct entirely open propaganda. Anything distributed as propaganda literature would have been confiscated by the police. Public speeches were also forbidden. Nevertheless, in a relatively short period, from 1900 to 1904, sixty million anti-tsarist writings appeared in Russia. Of these sixty million pamphlets, only twenty to twenty-five percent were tracked down by the police; the rest made their way out, and an enormous volume of material appeared in the period leading up to the fall of the tsarist regime; a large portion of the people was thus prepared for this fall of the tsarist regime. What, then, is the reason that—despite the fact that everything that could be tracked down in any way was carefully confiscated by the police—barely a quarter of the sixty million pamphlets, all of which contributed to the revolution and the fall of the tsarist regime, were actually seized? This is because the leading figures of the agitation arrived at something very specific, which is immensely important today, but which people are absolutely unwilling to understand. However, if one understands it in the Ahrimanic sense, as these leaders do, then one can exert an immensely powerful influence. They realized that something expressed in the very same words can have a completely different effect depending on whether it is presented to a police officer who thinks staunchly in tsarist terms or to a person from the common people. The same sentences, which—if spoken in the right way—have a meek and docile effect on the police officer, can, under certain circumstances, have a terribly socialist effect among the common people. Admittedly, they did not write the kind of texts that are being written in Switzerland today—which are then confiscated—but rather they distributed books and pamphlets on botany and plants that, simply by the way they were written, prepared people’s minds in the most profound sense, so that Russia was truly ready for the revolution in 1917. Unraveling the mystery of why something one says affects one person quite differently than another is immensely important. Indeed, this is currently being studied with great care, and the research being conducted in this field is truly characteristic of our time. It is, in fact, something that resists most vehemently what is entering the world through the spiritual sciences. For example, I cannot imagine anything that resists the very primal element of the spiritual more strongly than books such as those by Nikolai Rubakin, who attempts to study the human soul in a completely new way—but precisely in a way that runs entirely counter to the vitality of spiritual science—so that, in a sense, one captures intelligence as it operates, but can exclude the activity of intelligence in that functioning. The striving of such a person is based on the assumption that in our time everything is supposed to happen intelligently, but one should not intervene everywhere through the exertion of subjective intelligence. That is why he has attempted the following in an extremely extreme manner.

[ 25 ] He organized a study of readers—people who read. He asks them to share which books are their favorites, what particularly resonates with them in those books, and how they have gained influence through them. And the questions posed to people in this process are phrased in such a way that one does not take into account their likes and dislikes regarding the books, but rather that these are set aside entirely, so that only the objective workings of the intellect are considered. That is one approach: he allows readers to dissect themselves in such a way that, simply through the questions he poses, they reveal things to him that enable him to look deeper into their souls than they do themselves.

[ 26 ] The other side of the matter is that, in thousands upon thousands of cases, he in turn has people analyze the books that are published by posing such sophisticated questions. It makes no difference whatsoever whether the book is mathematical, botanical, political, socialist, or anarchist—that is of little consequence, for that is the content, and people do not realize that the content is only one part of it. But he has people determine how the book affects them—through the beauty of its sentences, or because the author reveals a certain temperament, or writes in a boring way—in other words, all the qualities through which one comes to know the objectively prevailing intelligence, which is now statistically determined in the books. The whole approach is aimed at getting to know the intelligence at work within the age through its outward expression and its reception. If such a science were developed to a certain degree, one could even write a book about Jupiter—which would be a tremendously revolutionary book—and, on the other hand, a book about the right front leg of the May beetle, and this would serve the purpose just as well as the other book about Jupiter. For it is really not a matter of what one says, but of how one says it, because through this one comes to know what objectively acts as intelligence within humanity, yet of which people are not aware. One now acts not only subjectively—by not allowing one’s own intelligence to participate, as in arithmetic—but one acts within what functions as intelligence; not, however, in the way this intelligence is applied from person to person, but by completely shutting out subjective intelligence.

[ 27 ] One could establish a university today that, based on such a science, would set itself the task of conducting revolutionary propaganda simply by following the guidelines I have outlined to you. Such efforts exist at present. They all essentially amount to not bringing people into this age of intelligence, but rather to casting them out of it. It is the same force that does not want people to consciously perceive the spiritual world—using the consciousness that is already the consciousness of the present. But this is necessary. And only this can bring salvation to humanity in the present and in the near future: to boldly and courageously surrender to the spiritual world’s influence. Neither through aptitude tests nor by statistically analyzing books and readers will one arrive at what is striving to emerge from what is currently alive within human beings; rather, one must proceed differently. For what does all this amount to? To put it trivially, one could say: All these endeavors—especially those of Rubakin and others—boil down to the fact that people today actually want to break out of their own skin, because within that skin they are compelled to make use of their intelligence, yet apply it to spiritual life. Human beings want to step out of their own skin; they do not want to live within it, because they know that something living is flowing in. But it is unpleasant for them to become acquainted with this living force; so they want to step out. They want to objectify the intelligent being themselves, want to step out and sit beside themselves so that this wave can pass through them. But this is precisely what spiritual science aims for: a science that is not confined within the skin, because one should not escape from the skin in an illegitimate way through such experiments as I have described. People already have this urge. But in reality, people should absorb the knowledge that can be absorbed through common sense. One does not always have to become disembodied oneself in order to acquire knowledge that acts in the world in such a way that the action is independent of what one accomplishes through the sphere of influence of the body. That is the task of truth, and the rest are caricatures of the truth. But it is these caricatures of the actual spiritual task in the present that are causing the calamity of our time and leading us into dead ends.

[ 28 ] If one looks in this way at what prevails in our time, one understands why people who refuse to acknowledge the true spirit—but who, if they are honest, cannot bring themselves to turn a blind eye—come to realize what lies in store for humanity if it insists on clinging to materialism. And one must realize that turning toward the spirit is precisely what prevents one from having to become a pessimist. When one realizes how little people today are still inclined to enter the spiritual world in the way that spiritual science requires, one can already see where the deeper causes of the decline in our time lie.

[ 29 ] All sorts of Christmas items have appeared again in recent years. One would hardly believe that, given the solemnity of this time of year, such material—as has once again appeared in abundance—could be published. People write terribly well, they write terribly nicely, writing about how people should love one another. Although they hate one another as they have never hated before, they write about how one should love, how one should love one’s enemies, and so on. In short, they write just as the lady did who wrote the “Letters from a Woman to Walther Rathenau.” They write in such a way that, from an intellectual standpoint, the imagination underlying this writing unfolds in a very peculiar manner. People write about love for humanity, about Christianity, about all sorts of things. What they write is very beautiful, and the people who read it also find it wonderful. And yet it is nothing more than worn-out clichés that keep tumbling around in the mind or in the heart. And as they tumble and roll, the writer or the reader stands behind them, and then it has the effect of a sweet treat when one indulges voluptuously in the love of such words. One can dream so beautifully when one says: Christ spoke of love for one’s neighbor, Christianity must flourish once more—and so on. There is no need to engage with the concrete spiritual world from the depths of one’s soul, with one’s whole being, as spiritual science demands. But that is precisely what matters—that one eventually does something with these ideas. If these ideas are acknowledged in theory, yet people still do nothing but worship Wilsonianism or fall into national chauvinism and speak as people do today, then this catastrophic era will persist. And it will persist until people are willing to truly embrace the spiritual world as it must be embraced today: with awareness, concretely, without fear and without hesitation.

[ 30 ] So that when we look ahead to the new world year, on the one hand we see people engaging in prophetic politicking—merely to numb themselves—and founding leagues of nations intended to eliminate war from the world. Admittedly, people today are already beginning—even though they boast that a new “Congress of Vienna” must not come—to tell themselves that they would be glad if the Versailles Congress brought about as many months of peace as the Congress of Vienna brought about years of peace. Well, people simply like thoughts that numb them! The foremost thought that numbs humanity today is this: that now, after a few others have been ousted, Wilson is the right man for the future. He is the great man, isn’t he? A man who believes that fourteen abstract ideas are capable of transforming the world of earthly existence into a paradise! But it is convenient; it is precisely what can numb one. And it is more uncomfortable to tell oneself: If we are not to face a future like the one envisioned by Rathenau, it is necessary that as many people as possible come to a conscious recognition of the spiritual world. One would like to bring this about in at least a few souls, after having allowed oneself to be moved by such New Year’s Eve sentiments as we let pass through our souls yesterday: that the truth of these New Year’s Eve sentiments be experienced in the souls in such a way that they say to themselves: If one clings to what humanity has grown accustomed to in its thinking—and what truly prevails not among a single people but among all peoples across the globe—then Rathenau’s perspective is correct. — It need not be correct! It lies within human capacity that this perspective need not be correct. This can be the New Year’s reflection: to let one’s will prevail so that this perspective is not correct. For this, however, it is necessary to detach oneself from all the prejudices one still harbors within, by bringing forth what is most ancient once again in order to revel in it, so that one may engage much more fully with what is truly new.

[ 31 ] Whoever understands this will know where to seek the Spirit, and there will be hope for salvation in the future. Where the Spirit is not sought—whether one is victor or vanquished—there will be no salvation in the future! May the people of one part of the world demand these billions from the others; these billions will turn into glowing gold and have a destructive effect, while on the other hand, poverty—if inspired by the Spirit—will nevertheless lift people up to the heights toward which the future of human development is meant to lead.

[ 32 ] But this must be felt through an inner understanding of the workings of the Spirit. And no turning to anything external, no swearing allegiance to new idols—as is now taking shape—can save humanity; rather, only holding fast to the Spirit, remaining true to the Spirit, and acting in the Spirit.