The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. Faust's Entry into the Spiritual World

following a eurythmic-dramatic performance

[ 1 ] Today, we began with the scene in *Faust* in which the Earth Spirit appears to Faust, preceding the Easter scene. Eight days ago, we were able to explore many thoughts related to *Faust* that may be meaningful to those who wish to approach the laws of the world and the life of the world from a perspective of Spiritual Science. It is truly not to offer you explanations of Goethe’s *Faust* that I have, both last time—on Easter Sunday—and this time here, taken up this poetic creation of Goethe’s; but rather because, through the artistic images that confront us in *Faust*, the human soul can truly perceive something of what must be called the soul’s development into the spiritual worlds—what can be called a “living-into” of the spiritual worlds. To the extent that we can, so to speak, immerse ourselves in *Faust* from a perspective on Spiritual Science, we may well offer one or two reflections on this poetic creation. After all, Goethe’s *Faust* is essentially the expression of Goethe’s striving toward the spiritual world—that is, the expression of how, at an important turning point in recent history, a spirit as profound as Goethe’s sought to enter the world that we are striving to reach through our deepening understanding of Spiritual Science.

[ 2 ] Last time, we were able to see for ourselves that Goethe lived in an era when it was truly not yet possible to find one’s way into the spiritual worlds in a clear—I would say unambiguous—manner. We have seen that truths such as the significance of Lucifer and Ahriman still hovered before Goethe’s soul as an unclear insight— one might say, like a vague premonition of the spiritual world; and we were able to see that the two figures of Lucifer and Ahriman had converged in the figure of Mephisto—that Goethe thus had before him in Mephisto an indistinct entity that he could not approach at all in a clear, Spiritual Science sense. And so it is precisely in this striving of Goethe’s, as expressed in *Faust*, that we can see with what seriousness and with what inner conscientiousness—one might say, with what sense of responsibility toward our own soul—we should pursue that which is meant to open up deepening in Spiritual Science for us. When a mind of such depth encounters such difficulties on the path to what so many, many people today are already seeking, there is truly an opportunity to learn a great deal precisely from Goethe’s own searching and striving. One might wish that everyone who has delved even a little into the findings of our Spiritual Science would return to this document, to Goethe’s *Faust*, which is a document from the dawn, not yet from the time after the sunrise of spiritual scientific endeavors. I said last time that Goethe needed the maturity of his later life to emerge from the state in which his soul had been during his youth. Goethe’s soul cannot be content merely to see in the world what the physical eyes see, what the intellect bound to the brain perceives. And what lived and stirred within his soul, seeking the deeper spiritual foundations of life—he gave form to this in the striving Faust, who is not a likeness of Goethe, but who truly and artistically brings certain aspects of Goethe’s striving and Goethe’s life to life. And so, particularly in the Earth Spirit scene, we have before us one of the oldest sections of *Faust* that Goethe ever wrote.

[ 3 ] The last time I spoke about Goethe’s *Faust*, I did so in such a way that, if I were misunderstood—as I often am—one might go so far as to say that I had called *Faust* a flawed work of art, or even that I had spoken harshly about *Faust* on more than one occasion. And someone particularly imaginative might say that I’ve undergone a shift in my view of Goethe, since I used to be an admirer of Goethe and have now shown myself to be someone who criticizes him. Well, I need not mention that I do not revere Goethe any less than I ever have, that he strikes me as the most magnificent mind of modern times. But what constitutes reverent devotion to a personality should never lead us to a blind sense of authority; rather, it should always preserve for us a clear view of what we have recognized as the truth.

[ 4 ] One might say that *Faust* was pieced together—if not glued—from various parts, and one could say that Goethe, at the time he wrote the earliest parts of *Faust*—as early as the 1770s—was truly incapable of writing the later parts; that he truly had to mature first in order to move from his longing for the spiritual world to what might be called his understanding of Christianity. It was only the maturity of life that led Goethe to artistically develop the Faust who seeks the spirit world in such a way that this Faust comes to be sustained in life through the memory of Easter—indeed, that this Faust even comes to take up the Gospel and begin translating the Gospel of John. When one hears some people today say that they need no spiritual insight to fathom the depths of Christianity—that Spiritual Science is therefore unnecessary, since Christianity can already be sufficiently understood through what every pastor proclaims from the pulpit, and that mere faith must prevail, especially in this form of Christianity— and if one compares such a state of mind with what must be said about Goethe—who, as one of the deepest minds, needed decades to mature into his understanding of Christianity—then one can grasp the immense arrogance, the immense conceit, that lies within people who, speaking conceitedly and arrogantly of the simplicity of their minds, reject what they do not need—the content of Spiritual Science, which, in their view, they do not need.

[ 5 ] In the Earth Spirit scene, we see a glimpse of what occupied Goethe in his youth—in his thirties, and also in the last two decades of his life. From this Earth Spirit scene and from what preceded it—the so-called first Faust monologue—we can see how Goethe immersed himself in what is known as occult-mystical literature, and how he sought, through what this literature offered him, to find the spiritual world in meditation and meditative devotion. We see him, precisely in the scene that has been presented to us today, right in the midst of his search through meditation, which arises for him from the hints he gains—as is stated here—from an occult -mystical book—an ancient mystical book by Nostradamus—and how, through his meditation inspired by this mystical text, he strives to ascend into the spiritual worlds.

[ 6 ] Let us try to create a mental image of what kinds of worlds Faust—and thus Goethe as well—actually wants to ascend to. If the human soul has truly managed to strengthen its inner power to such an extent that the spiritual-soul core of the human being is freed from the instrument of the physical body—if the soul has, so to speak, slipped out of the physical body using powers that are completely imperceptible to it in ordinary, everyday life—what will —not the physical body itself within its spatial boundaries, but physical life, with which the human being remains spiritually connected after all, because a ray or stream flows toward this physical life—what does this physical experience become for the human soul? Even in the life between death and a new birth, a ray or stream of spiritual life extends back through time to what we have lived through on Earth, as you can gather from descriptions in earlier lectures; so there is always something like a spiritual reaching out—or even more than a spiritual reaching out—back to what constitutes physical experience. What, then, does this physical experience become for the human soul that has been freed from the use of the instrument of the physical body? I would say: The entire physical experience becomes a soul organ for the human being who has stepped outside of this physical experience. Physical experience becomes, as it were, an eye or an ear; the whole human being becomes a sense organ—a spiritual sense organ—an organ, one might say, now of the entire Earth, looking out into the cosmos. — In order for our eye to see physical objects, we must be outside our eye; the eye must be embedded, as it were, like a kind of independent organ within the eye socket, which is even enclosed by bony walls, so that the eye is a relatively independent organ. In a similar way, the ear is also enclosed. Likewise, the entire physical apparatus of the brain is enclosed within the cranial cavity and separated from the rest of the human body. Human physical experience must be so enclosed that it becomes a kind of sensory organ—a kind of eye or ear—through which the human being, who stands outside of what constitutes his or her physical experience, looks out into the vast expanse of space.

[ 7 ] What is experienced there can also be described this way: one can say that one is now in the world that is described in the book *Theosophy* as the world of the soul. This is the world one first enters when one has the experience of being outside the body with the soul that has become independent, and of having one’s own physical experience outside of oneself. In the Vienna lectures of April 1914, I described how, even in the life between death and a new birth, a person possesses—through their last earthly life—a spiritual-soul sensory organ with which to perceive the rest of the world; that is to say, through this earthly life, they perceive the rest of the world. In this world, we also find our departed loved ones for a considerable time after death, until they ascend to another world, which can only be reached through a later stage of the soul’s development—even for the human initiate. In this world into which we enter, many things must strike the observer. One can only speak in general terms about this world. You must piece together from the various lectures what characterizes this supersensible world. What strikes the soul most immediately is that, as it has become free from the body and is settling into a new world, it now first sees the stars fade away—it feels the stars fading. The soul settles into an elemental world, so that it now weaves with the sea of air, surges along with the warmth surging through the world, and radiates outward with the light; and since the soul radiates outward with the light, it cannot see external objects through the light. Therefore, the sun and the stars fade away, and the moon, with its light, fades from the soul’s sight. It is not a matter of external observation in which one then finds oneself; it is a shared experience of the elemental world. And at the same time, it is a shared experience of what is called the power of historical events, of historical becoming. In this world, one can see unfolding what history truly does in human life.

[ 8 ] In its further meditative development, the soul can then strive toward a higher experience. There, it is no longer merely its own experience that becomes a spiritual-soul sensory organ, but rather the entire Earth becomes a sensory organ. To put it quite paradoxically—but you will understand me—the human soul must advance to a state of experience in which one can say: The human being is now something in which the entire globe is embedded, just as the eye or ear is embedded in our body; and just as we normally see with our eyes and hear with our ears, so do we perceive the universe with the entire Earth and its experience. — Then we become aware that what physicists say about the sun and the stars is mere materialistic fantasy. The stars have already gone out; the sun and the moonlight have gone out in the preceding world. But now we realize that where we supposed the sun to be, there is a community of spirits; that wherever we supposed a star to be, there is a spiritual world. And as we recall our earthly life, we realize that what physicists speak of is a fanciful materialistic fantasy; for when stars or suns appear to us, it is because somewhere in the spiritual world there is the seat of a spiritual community, just as the Earth is the seat of a community of human beings. But just as one would not perceive the physical bodies of a distant star—only the human souls—so too can it not be said that anything up there among the stars could be of interest to us that is not of a spiritual-soul nature. But what we see, we must create a mental image of, as it were, the vapors of the Earth’s atmosphere colliding with what enters it; and the physical eye can see nothing of what the star truly is, but only the vapor that the Earth itself emits into outer space. Everything we see as the starry sky is nothing but a web woven from the material—albeit the ethereal material—of the Earth itself; it is a curtain that the Earth draws across what lies behind it. But when the soul comes along and extends itself into this world, then it perceives that out there are not these fantastical stars—these materialistic, fantastical stars of which physicists speak—but living beings, living communities of beings, floating up and down, weaving back and forth in outer space, passing gifts from above to below, and in turn, gifts are passed from below to above. If one translates the words into spiritual terms:

How everything weaves itself into a whole,
How one thing works within another and lives!
How the forces of heaven rise and fall
And pass the golden buckets to one another!

[ 9 ] — forces, but now in the sense that we speak of primal forces —,

With wings fragrant with the scent of blessings
Penetrating from heaven through the earth,
Resounding harmoniously throughout the entire universe!

[ 10 ] But if we create a mental image of all of this in spiritual and emotional terms, then we have, roughly speaking, the world into which the soul projects itself.

[ 11 ] If we now create a mental image of what Faust had, during the time he is presented to us here, of all that has just been described? He has opened an old book, written by someone who recorded an ancient worldview in symbols: this provided the symbol of the macrocosm. But Faust, of course, is not able to project his soul out into worlds where the beings in the cosmos unfold their great events. Faust is not able to ascend there. He sees only the symbol written down by someone who has reached that realm—the symbol of the macrocosm. But a dream, a hunch, is evoked that this symbol means something. So imagine deep within your soul that you had never heard of Spiritual Science, that you had the symbol before you, but that you had a hunch that someone once saw something similar—something you, too, would like to see—then you are right there within Faust’s soul. To begin with, you can dream yourself into a state where your imagination brings these external symbols—which are essentially the signs of the zodiac, the signs of the elements, and the signs of the planets—to life; you may even, at first, burst out with overflowing emotion:

What a spectacle!

[ 12 ] But this backfires on you, because now you realize you have nothing but the symbol in the book, nothing but a fantasy ...

But alas! It's just a show!

[ 13 ] Even if it is merely a spectacle of the inner imagination! And yet you are cast back. The sign has led you nowhere; on the contrary, it has cast you back, giving you the feeling: there is the world of the spirit, standing before you, but nowhere can you find a way in.

Where can I grasp you, infinite Nature?
O breasts, where? You, the sources of all life,
Upon which heaven and earth depend,
Toward which the withering breast strives—

[ 14 ] Nothing, in turn, but the feeling within the elements—in the light and in the air, as I have said—in the lower world. And now this is even clearly expressed. Faust has forced his way up into the spiritual world, only to fall back into the world I described earlier as the next supersensible world. This aspect of life in the air and light is very well expressed in the words:

You spring forth, you quench my thirst—and yet I languish in vain?

[ 15 ] He has fallen completely back into himself, fallen back from the spiritual world into the elemental world. But he is not yet able to perceive this world either. What comes to his aid is that he opens the book and beholds the sign of the Earth Spirit. This is the sign that was once written down by the one who regarded this lower world—the elemental world—as his own. Now he feels himself to be within it after all. He has a sense of being within it.

How differently this symbol affects me!

[ 16 ] — because he feels something in the process, because he has turned away from the illusion of meaning, and feels something of what it means to be immersed in the world. Now, he actually always speaks of this world:

Already I feel my strength growing,

[ 17 ] — what one experiences when living in warmth and light —,

I’m already glowing as if from new wine.

[ 18 ] Imagine feeling warmth in your soul, living and weaving through the world as a wave of warmth!

I feel the courage to venture out into the world.

[ 19 ] It really is like moving through the elements. I have told you that life on Earth becomes a sense organ, and just as you normally feel your eyes and ears within yourself, so now you feel your sense organs within the Earth.

To bear the earth's sorrow and the earth's joy,

To struggle against the storms, —

[ 20 ] when you're out in the open as a radio wave.

Clouds are gathering above me —
The moon hides its light

[ 21 ] No wonder! I have just described to you how this happens, how stars and the moon fade away. The light fades because it goes with the light itself.

It's steaming! — Red rays flicker

Around my head

[ 22 ] That is now inner perception.

A chill blows
down from the vaulted ceiling
and touches me!
I feel it—you hover around me, spirit I have implored.
Reveal yourself!
Ha! How my heart is torn!
To new feelings
All my senses are stirred!

[ 23 ] Don't you see how life is expressed in the elements there?

I feel my whole heart given to you!
You must, you must! Even if it costs me my life!

[ 24 ] And now, emerging from his meditation, he utters the verse that is appended as a sign of the Earth Spirit—a meditative, evocative verse that truly leads him to the face of the Spirit who is the leader of the spirits into whose realm we enter when we step into the elemental world. But we immediately realize that Faust is not actually ready for this world—above all, he cannot feel ready for it. What, then, is to become of him, of Faust? He is to attain self-knowledge—in the sense that this is, in fact, the highest knowledge of the world—as we all witness what can be experienced when we swim, weave, surge, and exist within the elemental realm. But Faust cannot recognize what individualizes itself within it.

[ 25 ] This spiritual dialogue between Faust and the Earth Spirit is truly characteristic of Goethe’s own state of maturity at the time he wrote the scene, as he describes his immense yearning for the spiritual world.

Ghost: Who's calling me?

[ 26 ] Faust is already turning away. Of course, this doesn’t sound like what we usually hear with our ears—sounds that reach us from afar—but rather as if we were living within the sounds themselves. It sounds different from what one can hear on Earth—completely different. Just as what one sees is not seen through the light, but rather one shines with it oneself. It looks different. Faust wanted to become a superhuman. That is to say, he wanted to enter the spiritual world, but a horror seizes him at the thought of this spiritual world. Through this encounter with the Earth Spirit, it becomes clear to Faust that one must become someone other than the human one was before if one wishes to enter the spiritual world—that one cannot enter this spiritual world with one’s ordinary powers, feelings, and passions. Thus Faust must feel deeply how he is first cast back, falling from the higher spiritual world into the elemental world, and how, now in the elemental world, his understanding is set back because he has remained only the “I” that he was before—because he has not developed himself into this elemental world, a process to which the suggestive meditation he performed through the incantation attributed to the Earth Spirit had led him. For a moment, he was able to see what kinds of beings dwell there. But the Spirit tells him:

Where are you, Faust, whose voice rang out to me,
Who pressed himself upon me with all his might?

[ 27 ] I have already pointed out that this voice came from the subconscious—that it was the Faust whom the outward Faust himself does not even truly know.

Is it you, swept up by my breath,

who trembles in the depths of every life...

[ 28 ] This “you” now refers to the ordinary Faust, whereas the aspiring Faust was the higher human being Faust.

A worm cowering in fear?

[ 29 ] But now Faust's defiance stirs. He wants to plunge right into the world for which he is not yet ready:

Shall I give way to you, Flame?
It is I, Faust, your equal.

[ 30 ] Now he can still hear how the spirits of the elemental world, into which he has transported himself, live with human history—with what unfolds on Earth through the races and cultures—and how they relate to it. And the mystery of the elemental world is revealed by the Earth Spirit; he speaks nowhere of being, but of becoming, of what is happening.

Spirit: In the floods of life, in the storm of deeds
I surge back and forth,
Weaving to and fro!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A shifting weave,
A blazing life,
Thus I create at the whirring loom of time
And weave a living garment for the Deity.

[ 31 ] Not in Space, but in Time: Read the Hague Lectures!

[ 32 ] Faust can at least grasp this much: that this is the spirit that runs through history:

You who roam the wide world,
Restless spirit, how close I feel to you!

[ 33 ] You who roam the wide world! You who are the spirit that belongs to the spirits of the age—how close I feel to you! — So he says in his presumption. The Spirit now tells him what Faust himself later calls the “thunderous word”—a word that strikes his soul like thunder and hurls him back into the ordinary world in which he finds himself, because he is not yet ready. He must seek self-knowledge and, within the self expanded to encompass the world, the spiritual world. He cannot yet find it; therefore, this Earth Spirit must echo the “thunderous word” back to him:

You are like the spirit you comprehend,
Not me!

[ 34 ] What spirit, then, is it that Faust comprehends? What spirit does Faust comprehend? He, the image of the deity, who cannot comprehend the spirit of the earth? How, then, can he now make progress in self-knowledge? What does the human spirit look like that Faust can grasp? He enters, in a nightgown and nightcap—the other Faust: Wagner! That is the spirit you grasp! Wagner—that is whom you grasp! You have not gone any further than that, for the other lives within you only as defiance, as passion!—In self-knowledge, he advances a little further. That is precisely what is so distinctive about Goethe’s *Faust*—that is the beautiful artistic conception of Goethe’s *Faust*—that what is brought onto the stage in tangible form is, at its core, always a piece of self-knowledge. Just as Mephisto is a piece of self-knowledge, so too is Wagner a piece of Faust’s self-knowledge. Wagner is Faust himself. And it would not be at all wrong to stage *Faust* in this way—if, in the figure of Wagner in a dressing gown and nightcap, from whom Faust turns away, one were to have a likeness of Faust himself—then people would immediately understand why this particular Wagner enters at this very moment. What Wagner says is, in essence, what Faust already understands; the rest he merely declaims. That’s just how he expresses it. He believes he is rising to the highest truths, which he can declaim in flowery phrases, but which he does not experience inwardly. And now a moment of self-realization unfolds. Wagner speaks the truth. Faust, in essence, has not expressed his innermost experiences; he has merely declaimed them.

Forgive me! I hear you reciting.

[ 35 ] This is the truth: he was merely declaiming. And it is an act of self-reflection to realize that one does not approach the spirit of the world in this way, but at most reads a Greek tragedy. So many people, when they come into contact with Spiritual Science, want to declaim about the highest truths—even if it is often merely a matter of declaiming to themselves about the highest truths. Basically, they want nothing more than to declaim about Spiritual Science, to profit from it, and to delude themselves with a haze of illusion. With regard to the present day, one can say that this is often the case in certain circles. Some people are very interesting when they declaim from their visions. In earlier times, one heard this from the priests; now the actors have learned it even better, so that the priests can learn something from the actors. If Faust were to go only as far as his understanding allows, he would have to speak the words that Wagner speaks—his mirror image. But he goes beyond with his passion, precisely with that which is Luciferic—not with the genuine, full, human core of the soul, but with the Luciferic core. It is Lucifer in Faust who now responds to what Faust is—but who stands before us as Wagner:

Yes, if the pastor is a comedian;
I wonder how that might happen sometimes.

[ 36 ] This contempt, this arrogance, stems from the Luciferic element in Faust; for if Faust were not gripped by Lucifer, he would speak like Wagner—if only he would voice what he can honestly acknowledge as the object of his understanding. The other aspect is a dark premonition within him of something he wishes to reach. But this soliloquy—truly, it is merely a conversation with himself—does take him a step further. One gets so much further in life when one encounters oneself in another self. One is reluctant to admit to oneself that one possesses this or that quality. But when these qualities confront one in another, one is more willing to study them. Thus, one gains self-knowledge through the fact that a quality confronts one in the form of another, as it does with Faust in Wagner. Faust is not yet at the point where, once Wagner is gone, he would say to himself: “Yes, actually, that is me.”—If he had already fully come to terms with himself through his understanding, he would say: “I am merely a Wagner; it is only Wagner who resides here in my head!”

How is it that all hope does not fade from the mind,
Which clings ceaselessly to worthless evidence,
Digging for treasures with a greedy hand,
And is happy when it finds earthworms!

[ 37 ] For up to now, he has done nothing else but seek out the spirits in the manner described. It is self-knowledge that confronts Faust in Wagner. Who, then, sent Wagner to him? The Earth Spirit sent him, the Earth Spirit:

You are like the spirit you comprehend,
Not me!

[ 38 ] And now Faust shall see which spirits he resembles. He does not resemble the Earth Spirit, who is the ruler of the earth, but let him see one of the figures that dwell within him: There you have Wagner! This Wagner dwells within you!

[ 39 ] But now it is not merely Wagner who is present in Faust; rather, the Luciferic element is opposed to Wagner—that is, to itself. There is yet another element within him.

[ 40 ] If one looks at *Faust* in its earlier form, as it was at the beginning, it turns out that Goethe did not complete the following section after the Earth Spirit scene at that time. It continues like this: a conversation with Wagner, then with the student, Mephisto... Mephisto enters the circle of Faust and his students, and Goethe isn’t quite sure whether he is Lucifer or Ahriman. If he had studied Spiritual Science, Lucifer would appear now. Instead, he has the other one, the one sent to him by the Earth Spirit. The Earth Spirit sends him Wagner, sends him Mephisto—we would say Lucifer. Faust is to gradually come to know what lies within him. Mephisto is sent by the Earth Spirit: “Here you have, once again, one of the spirits you can comprehend. Try to comprehend the Lucifer within you, and do not look immediately at the Spirit of the Earth!”

[ 41 ] Just how unclear the matter was to Goethe can be seen from the fact that a short passage—which was later omitted—appears in the original manuscript, consisting of four lines. In 1775, there were four lines there, following the scene where Mephisto has led Faust to the point where he has brought him to Gretchen, and where Faust now wants to make his move on Gretchen. There are four lines there that were already missing from the fragment by 1790. After Faust has asked Mephisto—who is actually Lucifer, though Goethe gets them mixed up—to provide jewelry for Gretchen, the old manuscript has Mephisto say, after Faust has left:

He acts as if he were a prince's son.
If Lucifer had a dozen princes like that,
They'd certainly make him some money;
In the end, he'd get a commission.

[ 42 ] There it is—Mephisto calls himself Lucifer. As I said, those four lines were later omitted. So what was Goethe actually trying to do in his later years, when he—one might say—wanted to express himself in his *Faust*? Well, his aim was to show how a human being is to attain self-knowledge. But—one might say—there lies, as if foreshadowed, in this first scene, which Goethe wrote in his youth, what you can now read clearly in the section titled “How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?”—the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold. You foresaw in *Faust* how a human being, gradually realizing how various beings dwell within him, becomes divided—just as he splits into Wagner and Lucifer-Mephisto. He thus gradually comes to know himself in his individual parts; he comes to know himself as Wagner; he comes to know himself as Lucifer-Mephisto. But as I said, Goethe first had to mature in order to truly grasp the great significance of the Christ impulse for humanity, to the extent that this was possible in his time. Thus we see how, only in his later years, Goethe sought to supplement what he had previously written about Faust’s striving—up to the point where the human being confronts himself in his various images, including the image of Lucifer—by bringing Faust into contact with what has flowed into the Earth’s evolution through Christ. One might say that the cult symbols of Christ approach Faust. And through this we see in *Faust* the document that shows us how Goethe himself brought occultism into contact with Christianity, with the Christ impulse, and how we are in fact continuing today along the path that Goethe set out on back then, with regard to its first steps. In Goethe’s time, one could only arrive at a vague inkling. Today, the time has come that makes it possible for human beings, through Spiritual Science, to truly enter the realms of spiritual life—toward which all of Goethe’s striving was directed. The present age must understand Faust differently than Goethe himself did. Yes, the world is moving forward, and if we do not fully acknowledge that the world is moving forward, then we are not taking the world seriously enough. Such experiences, however—of being split, of encountering oneself in one’s true form, in a Luciferic form—such experiences do carry us forward, but always only a little way. We must let go of the belief that we can survey the entire spiritual world when we have made only small advances, such as those we can achieve through meditation. One always moves forward only a little.

[ 43 ] There are two natures in Faust: the Wagnerian nature and that which now strives forward. When Goethe wanted to point this out in his later years, he did so very beautifully. Goethe felt the need, at that point—when Faust had already approached Christianity—to show what constitutes the Wagnerian nature in Faust. That is why he has Wagner and Faust take the Easter Walk together. It is now truly the case that, as is naturally dramatic, what is going on in Faust’s soul is portrayed to us through these two characters. The higher human being in Faust strives forward, but the Wagnerian side of Faust holds him back. A spark of understanding of the spiritual world has been kindled in Faust; that is why the poodle he encounters appears to him in such a way that he now sees more than just the physical poodle—and there is truly something like a power of the soul within Faust that expresses itself in the conversation with Wagner:

Faust: Do you see the black dog roaming through the crops and stubble?

[ 44 ] Now Wagner's nature reawakens in Faust.

Wagner: I’d seen him for a long time, but he didn’t seem important to me.

The Higher Nature: Look at him closely! What do you take this animal to be?

Wagner’s Nature: A poodle who, in his own way, struggles to follow his master’s trail.

[ 45 ] These are objections that Faust himself actually raises. And now the story continues. Faust is already beginning to see the supernatural beyond the sensory world; he already senses it. So, it is a premonition, brought about by the experiences he has had. A spark of the spiritual world has entered him. And one might say how beautiful it is, how infinitely artistically sincere and honest Goethe is—one just has to understand him. When Faust now feels the Luciferic within himself—as you know, the Luciferic is connected to self-will, to inner egoism—he, now as Faust, already carries this Luciferic element into his soul’s response to the Christ impulse. It is a Luciferic trait that, as he attempts to translate the Gospel of John, it does not seem perfect to him at all. For to the discerning reader, Goethe’s commentators seem somewhat peculiar; they truly go along with him because they always follow the poet, even where he distributes the things he wishes to say among his characters. Faust does not yet understand the text of the Gospel at all; otherwise, he would pause at “In the beginning was the Word.” He hesitates because he does not yet understand it. The professors portray it as if Faust understood it better, but he does not yet understand it. The power, the deed—that is, rationalistic, intellectual elements—now appear to him, and he projects them into the Gospel. This now brings about the opposite phenomenon. Whereas he was previously thrust down into the sensory world, he is now guided upward into the spiritual world. By asserting his limitations so emphatically—by positing “sense, power, and action”—he is propelled upward into the spiritual world, because there is already a spark of spiritual power within Faust. Then the spirits appear, and once again as messengers of the Earth Spirit... Mephisto, that ambiguous figure between Lucifer and Ahriman. So you see, one must understand Faust’s entry into the spiritual world through the lens of Goethe’s struggle, and we can learn an infinite amount from this, especially for our present time.

[ 46 ] My particular aim in the last lecture on Easter Sunday and in this lecture was to to bring before your souls how it is a more difficult task for a spirit that seeks to delve deeply to penetrate to the Christ impulse than it is for a spirit that remains stuck in its infinite arrogance and conceit and does not want what Spiritual Science has to offer. On the other hand, I also wanted to use *Faust* to illustrate just how immense was what entered the world through the Christ impulse. Times will come when people will learn to understand the inner nature of the Christ impulse better and better, precisely through what Spiritual Science is able to offer. It stands there in the world—I would say, like an illustration brought about by world history of humanity’s earthly development, showing what the Christ impulse is—there stands the fact that centuries after the Christ impulse entered into humanity’s development on Earth, something occurs in this development that is not yet fully understood. But the very moment one begins to understand it correctly, it is precisely through this understanding that one is led to a deeper sense of the Christ event. As you know, six hundred years after the Christ impulse entered human development, a prophet appeared in a certain human community who initially rejected what had entered human development through the Christ impulse: Muhammad. Today we really must no longer subscribe to the superstition of the nineteenth century, which, out of rationalism, seeks to explain in a narrow-minded way what must be explained from the spirit. And it must seem ridiculous to anyone who truly wishes to delve into Spiritual Science when a particularly learned, intelligent man says of Muhammad: “Yes, he claims that the angel came to him in the form of doves and whispered into his ear what he wrote in the Quran!” But Muhammad—so says the rationalist scholar—was merely a charlatan. He put a few grains—which the doves like to eat—into his ear; the doves flew over and took the grains, but flew away again once they had them!—Yes, such explanations have been offered, both within and outside of Christianity, in the very “intelligent” 19th century.

[ 47 ] A time will come when people will truly laugh at such explanations, even though they may fully satisfy materialism. We must take Muhammad more seriously; we must realize that what lived in his soul was truly the kind of communion with the spiritual world that Goethe sought for his Faust. But what did Muhammad feel? What did he find? I can only hint at this today; another time I will explain it in greater detail. What did Muhammad find? Well, you know, Muhammad initially strove for a world for which he had a single term—it is just one word: God. The world becomes a monon, a monistic expression of God. This world has nothing of the essence of Christianity, of course. But Muhammad does look into the spiritual world; he enters the elemental world of which I have spoken today. He promises his followers that, once they have passed through the gate of death, they will enter this spiritual world. But he can only tell them about the spiritual world he has come to know. What kind of spiritual world is this? This spiritual world that Muhammad describes to his followers is the Luciferic world, which he regards as paradise—the world that is to be striven for. And when one moves from the abstract to the concrete, and interpretively incorporates the meaning of Islam’s striving into the spiritual world, one recognizes what Spiritual Science also proclaims. But this spiritual world is the world in which Lucifer reigns; the Luciferic world is reinterpreted as paradise, as the world toward which human beings are to strive.

[ 48 ] I believe it must make a deep impression on our souls when we are able to delve so deeply into the essence of historical development through a very significant phenomenon. It must certainly give us pause when, in the course of religious life, we learn how a great prophet arose with the error that the Luciferic world was paradise. I do not want this to simply sink into your soul like abstract truths; I believe it can truly shake the soul when one allows such things to take effect upon it. But what does the Muslim do to enter his spiritual world? Perhaps afterward we could have each of our dear friends sitting here who has read the entire Qur’an drop a slip of paper at the door. It would then be interesting to count the slips from those who have read it. But it is also not easy to read the entire Qur’an, with its endless repetitions, with what Westerners find so infinitely tedious in its presentation. Among Muslims, however, there are people who claim to have read it seventy thousand times in their lives, from beginning to end. That is to say: to have brought a given word to the soul in such a way that this word has come alive within the soul! While we certainly cannot learn anything substantively about Christianity from such a religious community, we can at least learn that within that human community, even spiritual error is treated quite differently than we treat what we are called to recognize as spiritual truths. The most a European does is read *Faust*; then, when he has forgotten it, he reads it again; and when he has forgotten it once more, he reads it yet again. But those who have read *Faust* a hundred times would be hard to find. This is also understandable within the context of Western education to date. After all, how could one possibly read everything printed in the West seventy thousand times? It is quite understandable. But there is something we should take to heart: that it is one thing to simply inform oneself about a subject that is significant for the life of the soul, and quite another to live with it, again and again, so that one becomes completely one with it—completely one. It is something one must first come to understand—something one cannot even begin to grasp according to the habitual ways of thinking within our national community. But we should reflect on such things. Words such as those spoken in this reflection have been spoken not merely to tell you something, but to stimulate your own reflection. To heighten our sense of responsibility toward ourselves and toward the world, with regard to what Spiritual Science can and should be for us.

[ 49 ] In many ways, we are living in difficult times. The very serious external events that surround us at present are merely the outward signs of the very difficult times we are facing. It is not good to view these very difficult times as an illness, just as we often call an illness an “illness,” for illness is often a healing process; the true illness preceded the physically manifest illness. Similarly, what is now sweeping through the world as tragic events was preceded by something pathological, and we must look much deeper than humanity is inclined to do. Oh, a great pain can settle upon the soul of anyone who contemplates the present time with the challenges it presents and the limited understanding that so many people bring to these challenges. When one sees how people in the world today pass judgment, how they think, feel, and perceive—and how this thinking, feeling, and perceiving leads to external events—and how little people learn from these external events, then an infinitely significant pain settles upon the soul. It is this sense of pain that must now so often come over the soul. For one can truly look back on this period—to name only the most recent example—of months-long trials, turn one’s gaze to what people have learned through these months-long trials, and compare the judgments one now encounters with those one encountered eight months ago: it is the same kind of judgment, the same kind of sentiment. What people believed to be right eight months ago, they still believe today; they even wish that these sad events had occurred specifically to prove them right in what they believed to be right eight months ago.

[ 50 ] I cannot put into words just how infinite is the pain one feels at the petty way in which human souls have changed in recent months, given the conditions that had to be created for this change so that our time might truly be a time of trial, a time of learning. But one would hope that those who are engaged in Spiritual Science would take to heart much of what can be learned when such reflections—as these in connection with *Faust*—are made. Time and again, one would like to direct souls’ attention to the profound seriousness and the sacred quest for truth that must be linked to our spiritual-scientific perspective. And it is precisely in such a movement that whatever does not spring from deep sincerity and a profound sense of truth must be exposed. All that of which one can say to the one who expresses it: “Forgive me, but I hear you declaiming!”—all of that we must truly strive to overcome.

[ 51 ] Isn’t it strange that today, following theatrical traditions, we often see Wagner take the stage, and that even scholars—and currently, rationalists and men of reason—mock Wagner to their hearts’ content, instead of listening to their hearts and recognizing themselves in him? This Wagner sits everywhere in the lecture halls, in the laboratories, and our scientific literature, our philosophical literature—they would contain a profound truth if the vast majority of authors were to choose the pseudonym “Wagner.” For these contemporary philosophies have been written by Wagner.

[ 52 ] I firmly believe that even some who walk the path of Spiritual Science have sufficient reason to search their hearts, to examine themselves with self-awareness, to determine how much of what is in their souls is mere self-proclamation, and how much springs from absolute honesty and an absolute sense of truth! With this appeal to your hearts, to the deepest powers of your souls, I conclude this reflection.