The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today I would like to continue the topic I have been addressing over the past two days. The aim is to recognize, from the developmental stages that have led to the spiritual life of the present, how, on the one hand, the anthroposophical worldview becomes a necessity, and how, on the other hand, it must also be understood that this anthroposophical worldview has opponents. I do not wish—and this is understandable—to go into a specific characterization of this or that opponent at this very moment, but I would like to address the topic as generally as possible, because the point is not at all to focus on this or that opposition, but rather because the point is actually that the Anthroposophical Society, if it wishes to exist as such, must become aware of its position in spiritual life and must contribute to its own consolidation. I am not saying anything particularly new today, for it was only a few weeks ago that I explicitly stated that this consolidation of the Anthroposophical Society is a necessity.

[ 2 ] We must be perfectly clear about how anthroposophy fits into a contemporary civilization whose history, for Europe and America, actually only goes back to the time I have often spoken of: roughly the 4th century A.D. This 4th century A.D. lies precisely in the middle of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. I have often pointed out that the spread of Christianity—and the entire way of understanding Christianity—in the very first three to four Christian centuries was fundamentally different from what it was later on.

[ 3 ] Today, when we trace history backward, we often think that we look at modern times, go back to the Middle Ages, arriving, for example, at what is called the Migration Period, then at the Roman Empire, and then we go even further back to ancient Greece—and we actually think of and feel about ancient Greece in much the same way as we feel about what has existed as later European history since, say, the Roman Empire. But that is not the case at all. There is actually a deep chasm between what still stands with a certain vitality before the consciousness of modern people—namely, the period leading back to Roman times—and what preceded it as Greek life. Let us just sketch out the matter very briefly in our minds. When we consider the Greece of Pericles, Plato, or Phidias—or even the Greece of Sophocles and Aeschylus—then what underlies this Greek culture as a state of mind goes back to the ancient mystery culture, to an ancient spirituality. And above all, this Greek culture still contained much of what I characterized yesterday as a living experience of the actual processes taking place within the human soul—what I referred to as the salt, sulfur, and mercury processes. We must be clear about the fact that Greek thought and feeling were close to the human being, whereas the later period, beginning in the 4th century A.D., had already paved the way for what was to come and manifested itself so characteristically in the three figures I have mentioned over these two days: the loss of the human being to human consciousness.

[ 4 ] I said that figures such as Bruno, Jakob Böhme, and, in a certain sense, Lord Bacon as well, struggled to gain an understanding of the human being. However, this struggle was unable to truly grasp the human being. If we go back beyond Roman times to the Greeks, then this very talk of the alienness of the human being ceases to make sense, for the Greeks knew themselves to be human beings situated within the cosmos. The Greeks did not have this concept of nature that arose later—the concept that ultimately led to the view of nature as a mechanism. One could say of the Greeks: they saw the cloud, they saw the rain pour down, they saw what emerges from the earth as liquid rise again in mists, and they observed the movement of their own blood with a special vividness when they looked within themselves with a gaze that was still concretely sharpened. And they did not perceive such a profound difference between the rising and falling water in nature and their own blood circulation as was perceived later. The Greeks still grasped something of what lies in the words: the world within the human being, the human being within the world.

[ 5 ] These are matters that cannot really be taken seriously enough, for they lead into the state of the soul, which, after all, exists only in fragments outside of history. One must not forget how, in the 4th century A.D., efforts began to thoroughly destroy all remnants of the clairvoyant culture. Certainly, humanity today knows a great deal that has since been unearthed. But one should not forget how that which later provided the impetus for Western culture arose from the ruins of ancient Hellenism—that expanded Hellenism which was not confined to Southern Europe but extended all the way to Asia. One should not forget that in the period between the middle of the 4th and the middle of the 5th century, countless temples burned down—temples that contained immensely significant, pictorial elements, precious elements in relation to everything Hellenism had developed. Modern humanity, which relies solely on external documents, no longer sees any of this. One must recall the words of a writer from that time, who wrote in a letter: “The old era is coming to an end. All the individual sanctuaries that can be found in the fields—for the sake of which the farmers work their fields—are being destroyed. Where are the people working in the fields to find joy in their labor?”

[ 6 ] It is impossible to imagine today just how much was destroyed during those centuries, from the mid-4th to the mid-5th century. The destruction of external monuments went hand in hand with the effort to eradicate Greek intellectual life, which was carried out in its most severe form with the closure of the Academy in Athens in 529. Indeed, just as one can look back on Roman civilization, one cannot look back on Greek civilization in terms of external history. And it is certainly true that an infinite amount of Western civilization throughout the entire Middle Ages and up into modern times is, let us say, owed to the Benedictine Order, for example. But St. Benedict, after all, first destroyed the pagan shrines at the very site where he founded the mother monastery of the Benedictine Order. All of that had to disappear first—and it did.

[ 7 ] It is indeed difficult to understand—if one applies, so to speak, normal human emotions—how such an impulse toward destruction could have swept across all of Southern Europe, the Near East, and North Africa at that time. This only becomes understandable when one realizes that the very consciousness of humanity at that time had changed; that, in fact—as I have often said—the saying that nature, or the world in general, does not make leaps is entirely incorrect. Such leaps do occur in history. And the state of mind of civilized humanity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. was something entirely different from what it later became.

[ 8 ] But now I would like to draw your attention to something that can illustrate to you quite clearly what this transformation is actually like. Today, when we speak of the alternating states of waking and sleeping, we must say: The physical body and the etheric body remain in bed, while the “I” and the astral body go out; the soul-spiritual aspect goes out from the physical and etheric bodies. — In a certain period of ancient Indian thought, one would not have said this; rather, the opposite would have been stated. During sleep, it would have been said, the human soul-spiritual aspect penetrates deeper into the physical body, becoming more submerged within it. — In other words, the exact opposite.

[ 9 ] Very little attention is paid to this. I simply want to point out that, for example, when the Theosophical Society was founded, the people who founded it had heard some spiritual truths from the Indians and had made what they heard there their own. They heard, for instance, about the separation of the “I” from the astral body. Certainly, the Indians said this back then; in the 19th century, they naturally spoke of it, for in India one can often observe what is real. But when people in the Theosophical Society claim that this was also ancient Indian wisdom, that is nonsense, for the ancient Indians said precisely the opposite: the soul-spiritual aspect penetrates more deeply into the physical body when a person sleeps. And that was also the case in earlier times. And in a certain sense, the Greeks were still quite aware of this—that during sleep the spiritual-soul aspect takes a greater hold of the physical body than is the case during wakefulness—for this is part of the development of humanity.

[ 10 ] Today, since we must describe things based on our immediate spiritual perception, we are justified in saying: The ancient sages, as well as the Greek people, possessed an instinctive clairvoyance that was dreamlike. We describe this from our own perspective. For the people of that time, however, this was not dreamlike. They felt as though they were just awakening into this state of clairvoyance. It was precisely a greater intensity of their consciousness when they perceived the world in powerful images, as I described yesterday. But at the same time they knew: they were penetrating into the innermost being of the human being and seeing what was taking place within the human being, and they knew—because the human being is in the world—that these were worldly processes. And then they knew: In sleep, the human being plunges even deeper into their physical body. And in deep sleep, this consciousness then became dull, hazy—in short, unconscious. And people attributed this to the influence of the physical body, which envelops the soul and actually leads it into a state of sinfulness. And it was precisely out of this view that the ancient sense of sin arose. This sense of sin actually traces back—if we do not consider it in its Jewish form—to paganism, where it arises from an awareness of being submerged in the physical body, which does not allow the soul enough freedom to live in the spiritual world.

[ 11 ] But if you think through everything I am describing to you here, you will say to yourself: This older person was aware that he was a spiritual being, that he lived as a spiritual being within a physical body. It never even occurred to him to call what he saw physically in a human being “human.” The word “human” actually goes back to a meaning like “the thinker.” So it was not the one who can be seen with a more or less red or pale face, with two arms and two legs, who was the human being, but rather the one who dwelt as a spirit-soul within this dwelling place of the physical body.

[ 12 ] And a remnant of this awareness of the spiritual-soul-endowed human being, translated into the realm of art, was indeed very much present in Greek civilization as a whole—in that wonderfully sculptural and artistic form of Hellenism. And even if the external temple system, even if the cults, were in many respects in a state of immense decadence, one may still say that within the destroyed images of the gods and temples there were representations that pointed to that ancient state of the soul. I would like to say: the ancient spiritual-soul consciousness of humanity was inscribed in powerful script within the forms of what had been destroyed.

[ 13 ] If, with the very same consciousness—not in a subsequent incarnation, where consciousness is always somewhat altered, but with the very same consciousness he possessed back then—a mystery initiate from ancient Greece were to return to us today and discuss these matters with us, he would say: “You modern people, you are all asleep!” — Yes, that is what he would say: “You modern people, you are all asleep! We were awake, for we were awake in our bodies; we were awake as spiritual beings in our bodies.” We knew that we were human beings because, within our bodies, we were distinct from those bodies. What you call waking is, for us, sleeping; for while you are awake and direct your senses toward the outer world and explain something about the outer world, you are, in fact, asleep with regard to your human nature. You are the ones who are asleep; we were the ones who were awake.

[ 14 ] That’s what he would say. And from a certain point of view, he would be quite right. For today it is like this: We are awake from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep, as we say, when we are in our physical body as spiritual-soul beings. But then we know nothing at all about ourselves; in that sense, we are asleep with regard to ourselves. But when we are inside the world that is outside of us, that is when we sleep—namely, from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up. That is when we must learn to be awake. With the same intensity with which the people of old were awake within their bodies, modern human beings must learn to be awake outside their bodies when they are truly inside the external world.

[ 15 ] This shows that we are in a transitional state. As humanity, we have fallen asleep in relation to the old state of wakefulness, and we are now at the very moment when we are to awaken to the new state of wakefulness. And what, then, does anthroposophy aim to be in this regard? Anthroposophy is, after all, nothing other than this: that it was the first to recognize that human beings must learn to be awake outside of themselves. And now it comes and shakes modern humanity—whom the old human being would call a sleeper—it shakes modern humanity, and they do not want to wake up.

[ 16 ] Anthroposophy sometimes feels just like Gallus next to the sleeper Stichl! Anthroposophy draws our attention to the fact that the little forest birds are singing. “Just let them sing,” says the present, “they’ve got little heads, they’ll be asleep in no time,” and so on. “The heavens are already rumbling!” “Oh, let them rumble—they’re old enough for that.” Of course, this isn’t always expressed in exactly those words; rather, anthroposophy says: The spiritual world wants to come in—wake up! — Oh, just let the light of the spirit shine—it’s old enough for that! — In fact, this is how it is: Anthroposophy seeks to awaken the sleeper. For what modern civilization demands is precisely an awakening. And humanity wants to sleep, wants to keep sleeping.

[ 17 ] And I would like to say: in Jakob Böhme, because he was fully in tune with folk wisdom; in Giordano Bruno, because he was part of a spiritual community that, at that time, had still preserved much from ancient times; in them, a memory of the ancient state of wakefulness certainly lived on. In Lord Bacon, in fact, lies the impulse to justify the new sleep. This is—grasped even more deeply than we were able to do in the previous two days—the defining characteristic of our time. The human being of the present cannot be as awake with regard to the understanding of the human being as humanity of ancient times was. For he does not, as it were, penetrate deeper into his physical body—as the ancient human did when he slept—but rather he steps out of it while asleep. But he must learn to step out of his physical body even while awake, for only in this way will he be able to recognize himself as a human being once more. Yet the urge to preserve sleep is, after all, very strong. “Hey, the cart drivers are already honking on the street.” “Oh, just let them honk—we’ve still got a long way to go.”

[ 18 ] Du Bois-Reymond—not Gallus from the Nativity Play, but Du Bois-Reymond—says: Human beings have limits to their knowledge; they cannot penetrate natural phenomena or the mysteries of natural phenomena; they must set limits for themselves. Yes, but, says anthroposophy, one must strive on and on and on! The impulse toward spirituality is already resounding. — Well, says Du Bois-Reymond —, let it resound; it still has a long way to go before natural science, at the end of the world, will have fathomed all of nature’s mysteries.

[ 19 ] In many respects, one finds there a justification for sleep. For talking about the limits of our understanding of nature is precisely a justification of sleep in the face of humanity’s encroachment on nature. And the present age certainly has no shortage of sleep aids—this, too, has been discussed here on numerous occasions. Today, people may well want to listen only to what can be made vivid—very vivid, perhaps even made vivid right away with a film. But they do not like it when something is presented that requires the listeners to engage their minds, something that also involves inner thought. For in reality, people strive to let the mysteries of the world be revealed to them in dreams, without actively engaging their minds in the process. Yet this is precisely the path to awakening: to begin with thinking, for thought must be developed through activity. That is why I emphasized this kind of thinking with such energy, particularly in my Philosophy of Freedom decades ago.

[ 20 ] I’d like to draw your attention to something, my dear friends. I’d like you to recall some of the dreams you’ve had, and I’d like to ask you: Have you never had a dream in which you were a bit of a rascal—or at least did something you’d be ashamed of if you’d done it in broad daylight the way you did it in your dream? I’m sure you have. Now, of course, there may be many sitting here who have never had such a dream, but they can hear about it from others, for there are bound to be some who know that sometimes we dream of things we wouldn’t want to repeat while awake—things we would be ashamed of. Yes, apply that now to the great sleep—which we might also call the “sleep of modern civilization”—where people essentially want to have all the world’s mysteries revealed to them in their dreams. Now anthroposophy comes along and says: “Stichl, wake up!” — Now people are supposed to wake up! I can assure you that there are many things—many of the things done in this “sleep civilization”—that people would not do if they were awake; it’s the same with that. Of course, you’ll say: “Well, who’s supposed to believe that?” — But the dreamer doesn’t think about that either when he’s up to his shenanigans in a dream—how it actually looks when he’s awake. But unconsciously, this very fear exists—that there are many things one wouldn’t be allowed to do if one were to wake up. Of course, I don’t mean this in a philistine or narrow-minded way; rather, I mean that much of what is considered perfectly proper today would be viewed quite differently if one were to wake up.

[ 21 ] And there is a profound fear of this. It would no longer be so easy to dissect the liver right next to the brain! One would feel utterly ashamed of certain research methods, especially if one were to awaken to anthroposophy. How, then, can you expect people to awaken just like that, overnight—especially when they are deeply immersed in such methods! One notices, in a strange way, the defense of sleep. Just think for a moment what immense joy a dreamer experiences when he dreams something that comes true in a few days! You need only have paid close attention to the immense joy that superstitious dreamers feel when what they have dreamed comes true—and it does come true sometimes—they experience immense joy. Well, the “civilization dreamers” calculate according to Newton’s law of gravity, using the formulas that have been further refined by mathematicians, which predict that Uranus has a specific orbit. But the orbit doesn’t match the formulas. They dream that there must be disturbances caused by a planet that might still be out there. It’s all just a dream, after all, because such calculations are actually made without the intense impulse of inner certainty. And when it comes true—Dr. Galle did indeed discover Neptune: the dream came true. This is even cited today as something that virtually justifies the scientific method—that, well, let’s say, someone calculates Neptune in a dream, and then it comes true. It really is just like with dreamers when something they dream about comes true. Or take Mendeleev, who even calculated an element based on the periodic table. This kind of dream isn’t even that difficult, because when you set up the periodic table and one element is missing—when there’s an empty spot—it’s actually quite easy to fill it in and describe a few of its properties. But it is, first and foremost, a dream! If it comes true, then it follows the same method as with the dreamer, when he sees that a few days later it comes true—that the matter is verified. Yes, the dreamer usually doesn’t say that it’s verified, but in scholarly language, one simply says that the matter is verified.

[ 22 ] One must first truly and thoroughly understand how this modern civilization has become, in fact, a “sleeping civilization,” and how an awakening is necessary for humanity. But then, precisely these tendencies toward slumber in the present must be clearly discerned by those who have a genuine urge toward spiritual science. Those moments must occur that often occur in the dreamer when he knows he is dreaming, when he knows: “I am dreaming.” And so humanity today should have a special sensitivity to such a powerful statement—I have often referred to this statement—as was once expressed by the energetic philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte: “The world that lies spread out before humanity is a dream, and what humanity thinks about it is a dream within a dream.”

[ 23 ] But one must not, in turn, fall back into something akin to Schopenhauerian philosophy. For it is of little benefit to a human being to merely point out, from an epistemological perspective, that everything is a dream. The task is not to realize that one is dreaming—many people today would like to prove quite clearly that one is dreaming, and that human beings are incapable of anything other than dreaming, for if they ever reach the limits of these dreams, then the thing-in-itself lies just beyond, and it cannot be approached. Eduard von Hartmann, an otherwise excellent thinker, has often spoken interestingly about these dreams in contrast to what is reality. He makes it clear that human beings actually dream everything they have in their consciousness; yet everything is grounded in a “thing-in-itself” of which human beings know nothing. Thus Hartmann, who took things to the extreme, speaks, for example, of the table in itself, as opposed to the table we have before us: the table we have before us is simply a dream, and behind it lies the table in itself. Indeed, Hartmann distinguishes between the table as a phenomenon and the table in itself, between the chair as a phenomenon and the chair in itself. But he is not at all aware that, ultimately, the chair on which he sits has something to do with the chair in itself, for one cannot sit comfortably on the chair as a phenomenon—on the dreamed-of chair—just as the dreamer must lie in a real bed. But all this talk about the world being a dream can only be a preparation for something else. To what? Well, to awakening, my dear friends! It is not a matter of realizing that the world is a dream, but rather of doing something—as soon as we even suspect that the world is a dream—to awaken! And that awakening begins with the energetic grasping of thought, with active thinking. And from there, one then enters into everything else.

[ 24 ] You see, it is precisely this—what I have just described—this impulse toward awakening, that is a necessary impulse for the present. Certainly, what appears here as anthroposophy can be presented to the world. But if an Anthroposophical Society is to be a society at all, then this society must represent a reality. Then the individual who lives within the Anthroposophical Society must experience this Anthroposophical Society as a reality. And he must be deeply imbued with this desire to awaken, and not—as is often the case—immediately regard it as an insult when someone says to him: “Come on, get up!” — That is indeed necessary. And that is what I would like to repeat once more in just a few words.

[ 25 ] The misfortune that has befallen us should, first and foremost, serve as a wake-up call to take action within the Anthroposophical Society so that it may become a reality. This real essence is precisely what we have been sensing ever since that time I described here a few days ago at the end of the Christmas Course. The living current flowing from person to person within the Anthroposophical Society—that must be present. A certain lack of love has so often replaced mutual trust in the most recent phase of the Anthroposophical Society, and if this lack of love continues to gain the upper hand, then the Anthroposophical Society will simply have to fall apart.

[ 26 ] You see, the construction has indeed brought many extraordinarily beautiful qualities of the anthroposophists to the surface; but this should have been accompanied by a vital revitalization of society itself. Quite rightly, many beautiful qualities were mentioned at the end of our recent course—qualities that emerged during the construction and during the night of the fire. But these qualities need guidance; above all, they require that everyone who has a role to play—including within the Society itself—not bring into the Society what is so common today, but rather that everyone, above all, carry out everything they have to do for the Society with genuine personal interest and commitment. And this personal interest and this personal commitment—unfortunately, they are precisely what is lacking when individuals do one thing or another for society.

[ 27 ] After all, no service rendered to society—that is, by one person for another within society—is insignificant. Even the smallest act becomes valuable simply by being in the service of a greater cause. Yet this is something that is so often forgotten. Society must surely view it with the greatest, highest satisfaction when a tremendous misfortune calls for the exercise of the very finest qualities. But we should not forget how, for many people, diligence and perseverance—and especially interest and personal commitment to one’s duties—so easily wane in the course of daily tasks, and how many of the things one sets out to do one day are so quickly forgotten. That is why I wanted to emphasize the full magnitude of the contrast between anthroposophy and the world, because people consistently overlook how this opposition should be assessed.

[ 28 ] One must understand that opposition exists in a factual sense; one must grasp this from the objective course of world events. Sometimes, however—and I have indeed spoken about this publicly—I am astonished at how little inner empathy there is when opposition degenerates to the point where it is simply teeming with objective untruths. We must remain objective in our positive defense of anthroposophy when it comes to factual matters. But we must also truly be able to rise to the task of understanding that anthroposophy can only exist in an atmosphere of truthfulness; that we must therefore also develop a sense of what it means when so much untruthfulness and objective slander is directed against that which asserts itself in the field of anthroposophy. That is where we truly need inner life. And today we have ample opportunity to awaken to this. Then the impulse of awakening may perhaps extend to other areas as well. But when one sees someone sleeping while the flames of untruth are raging everywhere, one need not be surprised if the Stichl continues to sleep as well.

[ 29 ] So what I would like to characterize on a large scale—and what I am characterizing on a small scale today—is this: Think, feel, and meditate on awakening. In these times, when slander is pouring in through the window, some people long for all kinds of esotericism. Yes, my dear friends, esotericism is here. Seize it! But what is, above all, esotericism within the entire Anthroposophical Society is the will to awakening. This will to awakening must first take root within the Anthroposophical Society. Then it will become a source of inspiration for the awakening of the entire present-day civilization.