The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. A Pentecostal Atmosphere: Faust’s Initiation with the Spirits of the Earth

following a eurythmic performance of the first scene of “Faust”, Part II

[ 1 ] In the usual sense, it is—as will be understood—hardly possible to give a Pentecost sermon this year at this very time, namely, on Pentecost itself. Let us consider what characterizes the time of Pentecost in the document of Christianity, the New Testament. We will find that the defining characteristic of the Feast of Pentecost is that the Spirit is poured out upon those who are called apostles. And the result of the outpouring of the Spirit, as we see in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, is that people of various languages, gathered there on the Feast of Pentecost, ten days after the so-called Ascension, each one hears what is to be proclaimed to them in a way that sounds familiar to him, even though each one expressly emphasizes that he is capable of speaking only his native language.

[ 2 ] And so the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost appears as the outpouring of the Spirit of love, unity, and harmony among those who speak the most diverse languages across the globe. Or, to put it more accurately—and to better reflect the wording of the Bible—one could phrase it as follows. One could say: In the Pentecost proclamation, something is given that resonates so deeply with the human heart that everyone can understand it, even though they understand only their native language.

[ 3 ] Almost everyone feels that it contradicts what surrounds us this year on the Feast of Pentecost if only one interpretation is offered of what this Pentecost proclamation might mean. We need only consider that, nineteen centuries after this Pentecostal proclamation, the world has come to follow it in such a way that this Pentecost now finds thirty-four nations speaking different languages at war with one another—in a sense, completely contradicting the very meaning of the Pentecost. Perhaps this reality will at least instill in a certain number of people the realization that the Pentecost proclamation has not yet spread throughout the world in a profound way, that it has not yet sufficiently captured the hearts of people, and that it will have to speak to people’s hearts in a new form—more forcefully and more meaningfully than it has spoken so far—so that in the future it may be understood in the way it must be understood.

[ 4 ] And so, for this year’s Pentecost reflection, let us adopt, so to speak, a general perspective—one that can help us understand, from a certain angle, the new Pentecost proclamation that we mean by Spiritual Science. For we must surely regard what has just been expounded in the lectures we have held here as a Pentecost proclamation to humanity; we must surely understand the Spiritual Science as a Pentecost proclamation.

[ 5 ] Let us take what we know about the Mystery of Golgotha and allow it to come before our soul. What is the essence of this Mystery of Golgotha? The essence of the Mystery of Golgotha lies in the fact that a spiritual being—whom we know to belong to the cosmic spheres—descended and underwent earthly destinies and earthly suffering in a physical human body; that the Christ Being lived for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Through what the Christ-being experienced in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, this Christ-being has, since the Mystery of Golgotha, been united with what we may call the Spirit of the Earth, what we may call the auric aspect of the Earth. Thus, the entire development of the Earth can be divided for us into a time before the Mystery of Golgotha, since, in a sense, what the Christ Spirit is can only be hinted at when a human being rises through initiation out of the earthly sphere to perceive not what lies within the earthly sphere, but that in which the Earth has no part—that which is destined for it only in a later future—and into the time after the Mystery of Golgotha. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, we know, it has been the case that human beings, with their spiritual and soul aspects, need not flee the Earth but can remain within the earthly sphere and perceive, within this earthly sphere, the impulses contained in the Christ Being.

[ 6 ] Now we must realize that, over the centuries leading up to our time, a portion of humanity has come to recognize that the Christ impulse has become linked with earthly existence. Something has completely changed in the collective consciousness of people—those who have felt and sensed something of the Christ impulse. Something has changed in the collective consciousness of these people. The belief took root in the soul that Christ is with humanity, that the human soul can unite with Christ, and that the human soul can experience something within earthly existence that is vividly permeated by the Christ impulse. However, an understanding of what the Christ impulse is in the entire course of earthly existence and in the development of humanity must first truly penetrate human souls through Spiritual Science. And for this to happen, it is necessary to recognize how this Christ impulse works in the human soul in such a way that two other spiritual impulses are, so to speak, kept in balance.

[ 7 ] This is what our artwork—which we are to install in the eastern part of our building—will have to depict. There we will place the representative of humanity, the representative of the human being, insofar as this human being is capable of experiencing the deepest depths within themselves, insofar as this human being is capable of experiencing what one experiences when one has taken the Christ impulse into one’s soul as a living impulse. For my part, one could call the central figure in the eastern part of the building “Christ”; one could also call him the representative of the internalized human being in general. But one will have to view this spirit, who speaks through a human body, in relation to two other spiritual beings: Lucifer and Ahriman. Standing upright, the representative of humanity will have to express the relationship to Lucifer and Ahriman. Everything about this figure will have to be purely characteristic. Above all, you will later be able to notice—once this figure has been erected—that the gesture of the left hand raised and the gesture of the right hand lowered are quite special. This gesture of the hands can be understood when one sees how, atop the rock toward whose summit the left hand of the representative of humanity is raised—the left arm raised—Lucifer plunges from the base of this rocky summit because he has broken his wings.

[ 8 ] Now, one might easily believe that this breaking of the wings is caused by the power emanating from the arm of the representative of humanity, as if, so to speak, this power were radiating toward Lucifer and breaking his wings. That would be a misconception. And hopefully we will succeed, through this vivid depiction, in preventing this misconception from arising. For the point is not that something flows out from the Christ-imbued human being that breaks Lucifer’s wings, but rather that Lucifer experiences something within himself—by sensing the nearness of Christ—which leads to the breaking of his wings. Because he cannot bear the Christ-force, the Christ-impulse, he breaks his own wings. It is a process that is not brought about by a struggle between Christ and Lucifer, but rather a process within Lucifer himself—something Lucifer must experience within himself—and there must be no doubt whatsoever that it would be impossible for Christ to feel hatred or a desire to fight against Lucifer. Christ is Christ and fills the existence of the worlds only with positivity; He does not fight any power in the world! But he must contend with the power that, as a Luciferic force, now draws near to him. Therefore, the hand raised on the left must not act aggressively, nor must the left half of the face act aggressively with this peculiar gesture; rather, it is like a pointing to the fact that, within the context of the world, Christ has something to do with Lucifer. But it is not a battle. The struggle arises only within the soul of Lucifer himself. He breaks his own wings; his wings are not broken by Christ.

[ 9 ] And the same is true of Ahriman, who crouches in a rocky cave beneath the right side of the Christ-infused human being, beneath which the earth is driven upward: the material that is, as it were, driven into human beings, but which cannot muster the strength and grows weak because the Christ-force is near.

[ 10 ] Once again, the Christ-force that surges and flows through the arm into the hand must reveal nothing of a hatred for Ahriman; rather, it is Ahriman himself who weakens within, and who, through what is taking place in his soul, wraps the hidden gold in the earth’s veins around himself like chains, so that he makes chains out of the earth’s gold and forges himself. He is not forged by Christ; he forges himself by sensing the nearness of Christ.

[ 11 ] But this merely lays bare, so to speak, the primordial relationship—which must be recognized—so that what the Christ impulse is may truly be understood by human souls.

[ 12 ] A simple analogy can be used to explain this Christ impulse in abstract terms. Imagine a pendulum. The pendulum swings to one side, then falls under its own weight to the lowest point, and swings to the other side, just as far, until it reaches a point on that other side that we call the point of equilibrium. This point would be a dead point, a point of rest, if the pendulum did not swing back to the other side. Life is in the pendulum because it swings to both sides and has a point of rest in the middle.

[ 13 ] This is how we can create a mental image of the evolution of the Earth since the Mystery of Golgotha: a swing of the pendulum to one side—the Luciferic side—and a swing to the other side—the Ahrimanic side. And the point of balance is Christ in the middle. |

[ 14 ] The fact that this must first be recognized may become clear to you from a significant historical fact. We all admire the painting that Michelangelo created, *The Last Judgment*. You are familiar with it from reproductions of the original, which is located in the Sistine Chapel. There, painted with magnificent mastery by Michelangelo, we see Christ triumphantly sending some to hell, toward the evil spirits, and others—the good—to heaven. And if we look into the face of this Christ, we see in him the wrath of the world. And if we have taken Spiritual Science to heart—if we have truly united in love within our souls all that we have been able to absorb so far from Spiritual Science—then today, despite our admiration for what Michelangelo created, we say: This is not Christ, for Christ does not judge! Human beings judge themselves, just as Lucifer and Ahriman experience their own processes—not what is brought about by any struggle of Christ against them.

[ 15 ] When Michelangelo created his Christ, the time had not yet come to recognize Christ in true perfection. A sense of—I would say—uncertainty still prevailed among people. People saw in Christ himself something that we now know must be attributed to Lucifer or Ahriman. And today we can understand something of this when people have found something like Lucifer or Ahriman in Michelangelo’s Christ himself, for as Michelangelo depicts him, he is not yet free from that of which Christ is completely free.

[ 16 ] Let us take a moment to reflect deeply and truly imagine what it means that, from the worldview out of which Michelangelo emerged, it was impossible to create an image of Christ that corresponded to a genuine understanding of the mystery of Golgotha—because what needed to be known remained unclear: the relationship between Christ, Lucifer, and Ahriman.

[ 17 ] How often has it been emphasized in our circles that it is a mistaken notion to point to Lucifer and say, “I want to escape him”—or to point to Ahriman and say, “I want to escape him.” — That would merely mean seeking to make a pact with weakness; it would mean advising the pendulum, so that it might remain in equilibrium, not to swing at all to the left or to the right, but to remain at rest at all times. We cannot escape the world forces we call Lucifer and Ahriman; we must simply find the right relationship to them. And we find this proper relationship when we understand the Christ impulse in the right way, when we see in the Christ Being the guide who can place us in the right relationship to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, which must, after all, be forces of the world.

[ 18 ] Let us consider everything that Lucifer brings into human life. He brings in everything connected with sensation, with the passions, and with the life of feeling and emotion. Life would be dry, sober, and abstract if it were not permeated by living sensation and living feeling. Let us look at the course of history and see what passion—often called noble passion, and rightly so—has brought about in history, and what feeling and sensation have brought about. Yet we are never capable of harboring feelings and sensations at all without entering the sphere of Lucifer. The only thing that matters is that we never enter this sphere without the guidance of the Christ impulse.

[ 19 ] And let us consider, on the other hand, how necessary it has become—especially in recent times—to understand the world more and more, to develop science, and to master the external forces of nature. Ahriman is the lord of what constitutes external science, of that which lives in the external forces of nature. And we would remain foolish and ignorant if we sought to flee the Ahrimanic element. The point is not to flee from the Ahrimanic element, but rather, under the guidance of the Christ impulse, to enter that sphere in which Ahriman reigns in the world. And thus, not to seek merely the point of rest in a passive way, but to experience the living movement of the world’s pendulum—to experience it in such a way that we take no step without the guidance of the Christ impulse. Knowledge of Christ is only possible once the relationship of the Christ impulse to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces in the human soul has become clear. Therefore, the proclamation of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic aspects of the world is part of what our Spiritual Science movement had to embrace, since it was conscious of the need to stand on the ground of the Christ impulse. And that is why you will find nothing about the Ahrimanic and Luciferic elements in the non-Christian theosophical teachings, because these elements—the Luciferic and Ahrimanic—simply had to emerge at the very moment when the Spiritual Science movement had to seriously reckon with the Christ Impulse.

[ 20 ] I believe it is something extraordinarily important for the human soul to feel how Spiritual Science has the task of truly bringing something new into human consciousness—something so new that we ourselves may measure it against such great creations of humanity as Michelangelo’s Christ in “The Last Judgment.” And what Spiritual Science must hold before our eyes will appear to us as the new Pentecost proclamation in the true sense of the word.

[ 21 ] Around Eastertime, we saw how one of the great minds of modern times, Goethe, struggled to relate Faust—whom he portrayed as the representative of humanity—to the Christ impulse. And we have seen how Goethe was not yet able to do this in his youth, but how it only became possible for him in his mature years. And so, in many ways, spiritual life—as it has developed up to the present day—appears to us as a struggle, as a ceaseless struggle. It truly seems to us that it must make us exceedingly humble when we see how the finest minds of humanity have striven to gain mental images and feelings for what the Christ impulse signifies. Then it strikes us how humble we must be in the human striving for this understanding of the Christ impulse.

[ 22 ] Goethe—as we have seen—was initially concerned with truly allowing the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements that act around human beings to recede in favor of his representative of humanity, Faust. And we have seen how Goethe intermingled the Ahrimanic and Luciferic elements, so that it is not easy to distinguish between them in the figure of Mephistopheles. We demonstrated this in the Easter lectures, showing how the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements are blended together in the figure of Mephistopheles, because Goethe had not yet attained a clear understanding. Throughout his life, Goethe essentially felt within himself the stirring desire to gain clarity regarding humanity’s relationship to Lucifer and Ahriman. When, at the end of the 18th century, as a mature man, he was urged by Schiller to continue his *Faust* and looked again at what he had written in his youth, he called what he had pieced together at various times a *Tragelaph*—half animal and half human; that is how his *Faust* appeared to him. And to hint at the difficulty of continuing it now, he called his *Faust* “a barbaric composition,” so that we have before us the judgment of Goethe—who must have known more precisely about his *Faust* than those who are not Goethe—that *Faust* is a *tragelaph*, “half-beast and half-human,” that it is a “barbaric composition”! What I wanted to present at Easter—and which can so easily be misunderstood—ultimately traces back to a judgment by Goethe himself. Yes, certainly, very intelligent people see *Faust* as a perfect work of art; they see in *Faust* something that cannot be surpassed. That was not Goethe’s opinion, nor should it be ours. Even if we see in *Faust* the ascent to the highest, we must be clear that this *Faust* suffers, above all, even in its internal composition, from the fact that in its figure of Mephistopheles, Lucifer and Ahriman are mixed together in a completely inorganic way.

[ 23 ] But despite all this intermingling, Goethe had a vague sense that both Lucifer and Ahriman should have appeared. Goethe simply mixes everything together and calls it all “Mephistopheles,” so that in the individual scenes of *Faust*, Lucifer is often Lucifer, while in other parts he is Mephistopheles or Ahriman. But this much was quite clear to Goethe: something is taking place within the human being that occurs under the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman, of Lucifer and Mephistopheles. Such things take place within the human being.

[ 24 ] Now let’s take a look at the conclusion of the first part of Goethe’s *Faust*. How does it end? Faust has incurred the gravest possible guilt; he has a human life on his conscience; he has betrayed a fellow human being, thereby incurring grave guilt—both toward himself and toward others. And the final words of the first part of *Faust* are: “Come to me!”—at the very moment when a voice, as if from heaven, resounds and fades away: “Heinrich, Heinrich!” So we know from this conclusion to the first part where Faust has ended up. He has come to Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles has him. There is absolutely no doubt about that.

[ 25 ] And now we come to the beginning of the second part. This opening of the second part presents us with a charming scene: “Faust, lying on a flower-strewn lawn, weary, restless, seeking sleep.” Spirits appear. And from what they say, we get the impression: we are dealing with nature—yes, truly, with nature—we need only go outside now, at this time of year, and we have this nature. Whitsun nature, for example! A Whitsun atmosphere, for example! This Whitsun atmosphere has an effect on Faust. And afterward, he continues on his life’s journey.

[ 26 ] A scholar made a remark about what Goethe did there—a remark that, one might say, does have some merit, even though it is philistine and pedantic. The scholar said: If you have incurred a grave guilt, as Faust did toward Gretchen, then go to a charming place, to flower-strewn meadows—perhaps take a trip to the mountains—and your soul will be healed afterward, capable of further deeds. — One might say that, viewed from a realistic, Ahrimanic perspective, this statement by the scholar—Rieger—has some merit. For it should actually be unbearable for all people who, in the ordinary sense of today’s world, hold a purely materialistic worldview to allow the second part of *Faust* to take effect upon them, after the great, immense guilt that Faust has incurred has been characterized in the first part. But unfortunately, people do not take humanity’s greatest work of poetry—insofar as the human and personal aspects are concerned, for that is what *Faust* is, even though its first part is a barbaric composition and a monstrosity—they do not take this work literally enough. If one took it literally enough, one would have to know that it is true: “Come to me!” … Mephistopheles has Faust. Just as he has him, Faust now lies on a flower-strewn lawn, restlessly seeking sleep. And we must not imagine Faust as detached from the hellish powers at the beginning of the second part. But Goethe strove for true spiritual insight. Just how close Goethe was to spiritual insight may become clear to you from a passage in a letter that Goethe once wrote to his friend, the musician Zelter. A significant passage! Goethe writes there: “Consider that with every breath an ethereal stream of Lethe permeates our entire being, so that we remember joy only moderately and suffering scarcely at all.” With every breath, an ethereal stream of life does indeed permeate our inner being; but this means nothing other than that Goethe was well aware of the etheric body that human beings possess. In his day, of course, he spoke of this only within his circle of friends.

[ 27 ] How Goethe viewed the entirety of human nature, how, looking upon this human nature, he said to himself: “This human being can become guilty, for within it dwells something that is under Mephistophelean influence, something that belongs to Mephistopheles”—just as Goethe looked upon this human being who belongs to this sphere, it was equally clear to him that there is something within human nature that can never succumb to this influence, that can be preserved from the Ahrimanic-Luciferic influence. And that which can be preserved from the Ahrimanic-Luciferic influence—that is what we encounter in Faust at the beginning of the second part. The Faust who was capable of becoming guilty, the Faust who allowed himself to be drawn by Mephistopheles into the most trivial, banal pleasures of life, the Faust who then seduced Gretchen—that Faust has become guilty. In the language of Spiritual Science, we would say: This aspect of Faust must wait until the next incarnation.

[ 28 ] But there is something in human nature that constitutes man’s higher self, which remains connected to the spiritual powers of the world. Therefore, the spiritual powers of the world confront this Eternal One in Faust. We must not form a mental image of the Faust we encounter at the beginning of the second part, in a realistic sense, as a Faust who has grown so much older; rather, he is truly only the representative, first and foremost, of the higher self within Faust. He still bears the same form. But this form is the representative of something within Faust that could not become guilty. This aspect of Faust—which could not become guilty—now enters into a relationship with the servants of the Earth Spirit.

[ 29 ] From his youth onward, Goethe’s longing was to gain an understanding of the nature of human guilt and the evil in the world, and of how, nevertheless, something must hover above it all that would serve as a counterbalance to guilt and evil. And so, since Goethe had, in a sense, had to leave one aspect of Faust’s nature to Mephisto—“Come to me!”—he ventured into the other aspect of Faust’s nature. And we must be very clear: at the beginning of the second part, it is not initially the same Faust we know from the first part who speaks, but rather another, a second nature that bears Faust’s form only outwardly and that is able to attune itself to that which, as the spiritual, pervades the outer world. But what must find its way into this is something that initially has no connection to Faust’s outer physical body. For as long as we remain in the same incarnation, the physical body naturally retains all the signs of the guilt into which we have fallen. Only that part of us which frees itself from the physical body can truly connect with what the higher self is. And so Faust must undergo that transformation which we can call the transformation of guilt into a higher knowledge.

[ 30 ] He will carry the burden of his guilt with him into his next incarnation. In this earthly incarnation, he bears this guilt as the source of a higher insight that is opening up to him—a more precise understanding of life. And so, even though Faust bears the most monstrous guilt upon his soul, the possibility opens up for him that his higher self may be brought into connection with that which surges through, lives through, and weaves through the world as the spiritual.

[ 31 ] Faust’s higher self enters into a relationship with a spirit of the Earth’s aura. Goethe wanted, as it were, to portray that which is the highest in human beings—something that could not be grasped at all by Mephistopheles; we would say: Lucifer-Ahriman—that must have been preserved; it must be able to enter into other spheres. And so Goethe means quite seriously that this higher self in Faust now enters into a relationship with what the elemental world contains as spiritual beings.

[ 32 ] We will see later how this, in turn, relates to what has already been said here in the Easter lectures. But now let us consider how these spiritual beings, who are under the guidance of the Spirit of Air, for Ariel is one such being—how do these spirits, whom we may thus collectively designate as spirits of the air, relate to the external natural processes—as they reveal themselves as that which constitutes another spiritual world—in relation to the Self, which in the supraterrestrial realm is not subject to the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman:

When the spring rain of blossoms
Floats down over everything,
When the green blessing of the fields
Shines upon all who walk the earth,

[ 33 ] — that is, when nature sprouts and blossoms during the spring and Pentecost season, the elemental spirits emerge. To the outer, material eye, they are small; as spirits, they are great, for they are elevated above that which in the human heart can succumb to good or evil.

Little Elf, Ghost-Sized
She rushes wherever she can help;
Whether he's good or evil...

[ 34 ] — that's up to the next incarnation; it's none of these spirits' business —

Whether he is holy or evil,
The unfortunate man laments...

[ 35 ] The spirits deal with his higher self, which remains preserved from what must unfold in karma or incarnation. But these spirits can only act within their own element—the one in which the human being exists as a spiritual-soul being once he has left the outer physical bodies behind. And now Goethe explains what these elves, with their spiritual greatness, are meant to accomplish:

You who circle this head in ethereal orb,
Behave here in the noble manner of elves,
Soothe the heart’s fierce turmoil;
Remove the searing, bitter arrows of reproach,
and purify his inner being from the horror he has endured.

[ 36 ] This cannot happen to Faust, who is exposed to Ahriman-Lucifer. This purification means: Bring out Faust’s higher self and present it in its pure form. — And now something is taken seriously that unfolds like an initiation for Faust, who is outside his body:

There are four pauses in the night's repose,

[ 37 ] — From six in the evening until six in the morning, the elves fulfill their duty by connecting the soul—from the moment it falls asleep until it awakens—with that which spiritually surges through and interweaves earthly existence.

Now, without hesitation, she kindly fills it out.

[ 38 ] — the four stages the soul goes through from falling asleep to waking up.

First he lays his head upon the cool pillow,
Then bathes it in the dew from the waters of Lethe;
His limbs, stiff with cramps, soon become supple,
As he rests, refreshed, awaiting the day;

[ 39 ] —when he has taken in what the spirit pervading the world offers, when this spirit has entered into that which is preserved within Faust’s being as a higher self.

When the elf has fulfilled his noblest duty,
Return him to the holy light.

[ 40 ] What happens externally between falling asleep and waking up are genuine, real processes, similar to an initiation. And now let’s look at what happens during each of the three-hour periods from 6:00 to 9:00, from 9:00 to 12:00, from 12:00 to 3:00, and from 3:00 to 6:00. First, we have the period from 6:00 to 9:00:

When the air fills with a gentle breeze
Around the green-bordered meadow,
Sweet scents, veils of mist
As twilight draws near;
Whispers softly of sweet peace,
Lulls the heart into a childlike calm,
And to the eyes of this weary one
The day’s gate closes!

[ 41 ] The soul is gone, separated from the body.

[ 42 ] Part Two:

Night has already fallen,
Holy stars join one by one;
Great lights, tiny sparks
Sparkle near and shine afar;
Sparkling here, reflected in the lake,
Shining high in the clear night sky,
Sealing the bliss of deepest repose
The moon’s full splendor reigns.

[ 43 ] The harmony of the spheres and the wisdom of the spheres—from the great lights and the tiny sparks—are absorbed. And also the mysteries of the moon, everything we absorb in Spiritual Science from the mysteries of the spheres, is immersed in Faust’s higher self.

[ 44 ] The third stage of sleep:

The hours have already faded away,
Pain and joy have vanished;
Feel it coming! You will recover;
Trust in the light of a new day.
Valleys turn green, hills swell,
Bushes offer shade and rest;
And in swaying silver waves
The harvest’s crop surges forward.

[ 45 ] Innerly connected to existence in nature; we have already spoken of this as well. Read the last Hague cycle to see how the human soul, when it rises from the body, becomes one with the surging and weaving of external existence. But this also signifies the transformation taking place within Faust’s soul:

And in undulating silver waves
The seed—the soul of Faust—sways toward the harvest.

[ 46 ] And remember how I said that while sleeping, a person longs to reenter their body. — That is the last part of the night:

A wish to fulfill wishes,
Look for the radiance there!

[ 47 ] The sun can already be glimpsed.

You are only quietly enveloped,
Sleep is a shell—cast it aside!

[ 48 ] An important statement! A great poet does not write clichés! What does this mean: “Sleep is a shell—cast it aside!?” — For those who sleep through an ordinary night, sleep is not a shell; for those for whom the time from falling asleep to waking up becomes a receptacle for the world’s mysteries, sleep is a shell.

Do not hesitate to be bold,
When the crowd wanders hesitantly;
The noble one can achieve anything,
He who understands and acts swiftly.

[ 49 ] And now the tremendous roar that heralds the sun’s approach, reminding us of what Goethe had already said about this sound of the sun in the “Prologue in Heaven” in the first part of *Faust*:

The sun resounds in the ancient way
In a contest of song among the celestial spheres,
And its prescribed journey
It completes with a thunderous roar.
Its sight gives strength to the angels,
Though none can fathom it;
The incomprehensibly lofty works
Are glorious, just as on the first day.

[ 50 ] When the sun rises and its light pours over the physical plane, the soul—when it is outside the body—hears the sun’s approach as celestial music, as a distinct element within that music. Spirits, of course, hear it. Human beings do not hear it because they must hear through their physical body. But the body is bound to the physical plane, and when the sun is aligned with the physical plane, that is the time when human beings can be awake. Therefore, spirits must withdraw. What Ariel, the spirit of the air, is now saying to his servants is a hint at the rising of the music of the spheres. The spirits can hear it. Anyone who is outside their body can hear it. So Faust still hears it—this rising of the music of the spheres. Then he returns to his body. Then Ariel has the task of disappearing. Ariel instructs his servants on what they must do: they must vanish from the physical plane. For if the sun—which they can perceive only as a sounding sun—strikes them with its light, they will become deafened by it. The light will deafen them, whereas they can certainly endure the sounding sun, in whose tones they themselves live:

Listen! Hear the storm of the Horae!
Resounding to the ears of the spirit
The new day is already dawning.
Rock gates creak and rattle,
Phoebus’ wheels roll with a crackling sound;
What a din the light brings.
It thunders, it trumpets,
Eyes squint and ears are astonished,
The unheard cannot be heard.
Slip away to the flower crowns,
Deeper, deeper, to dwell in silence,
Into the rocks, beneath the foliage;
If it strikes you, you will be deaf.

[ 51 ] And now the elves disappear. Faust retreats into his own body. But the guilty Faust now remains unconscious. He does not stand before us. He has descended deep into Faust’s subconscious and remains there until his next incarnation. Faust, who has just experienced union with the entire spiritual cosmos, must now come to understand how what he experienced during the four intervals of sleep relates to the way he now perceives the world. He now lives as a higher self within his body.

[ 52 ] A person who, after sleeping through the night and lacking within himself all that Faust possesses, would then say upon waking in the morning: “O Earth, you remained unchanged this night as well”—such a person would be a fool, for no one expects anything other than that the Earth remained unchanged this night as well. But certainly, if one goes through what Faust experienced as an initiation with the spirits of the Earth, then one has experienced something that could indeed lead one to believe that the whole Earth has been transformed; then it is justified to say—if one has, so to speak, become a new human being, or rather, if the new human being has been awakened within one—: “You, Earth, remained unchanged even this night—despite what I have experienced.”—Then the world appears entirely new, because it is indeed given to a new human being.

The pulse of life beats fresh and alive,
Gently welcoming the ethereal twilight;
You, Earth, remained steadfast this night as well
And breathe anew, refreshed, at my feet,
Already beginning to surround me with delight,
You stir and inspire a resolute determination,
To strive ceaselessly toward the highest existence. —

[ 53 ] Even now, when the spirit has freed itself from what must be carried over into the next incarnation!

In the dim light, the world is already revealed,
The forest resounds with a thousand voices of life,
A streak of mist pours out of one valley and into the next;
Yet the clarity of the heavens descends into the depths,
And twigs and branches, freshly revitalized, sprout
From the fragrant abyss where they lay slumbering;
Color upon color, too, emerges from the depths,
Where flowers and leaves drip with dew,
A paradise unfolds all around me.

[ 54 ] A person sees this not by undergoing initiation—I am not saying that—but by living within the initiation. And this gives him reason to see the world anew. All the words he now speaks, he would not speak if only the person within him who had become guilty—and who, for example, were living in this incarnation under the influence of that guilt—were present.

Looking up! — The giant peaks of the mountains
Already herald the most solemn hour;
They get to enjoy the eternal light early on,
Which later turns its gaze down toward us.
Now, upon the meadows sloping down to the alp,
Are now bathed in new radiance and clarity,
And step by step it has descended; —
It emerges! — the sun, that is — and, alas, already blinded,
I turn away, pierced by the pain in my eyes.

[ 55 ] The Higher Self is now unable to do what the sensory self was able to do—to gaze upon the sun. Nevertheless, Faust has learned enough that the sun is now something fundamentally different for him. And now something stirs within him that is connected to human knowledge:

This, then, is what happens when a longing hope
Trustingly yields to its highest desire,
And finds the gates of fulfillment wide open.

[ 56 ] What kinds of gates of fulfillment? Only those that first appeared to him while he was asleep. But even the ordinary world now appears to him as if, for eternal reasons, it were bursting forth like a profusion of flames:

But now, for those eternal reasons,
A flood of flames bursts forth; we stand stunned;
We sought to kindle life’s torch,
Yet a sea of fire engulfs us—what a fire!
Is it love? Is it hate?...

[ 57 ] We're familiar with this from the past, but what we're experiencing now is more than just love and hate.

Is it love? Is it hate? That envelop us with such fervor,
Alternating wildly between pain and joy,
So that we look back down to earth,
To take refuge in the veil of youth.

[ 58 ] He cannot look directly at the sun now; he gazes at the waterfall, in which the sun is reflected, and which reveals to him the colors of the rainbow in an arc. He turns away from the sun. He becomes an observer of the world, just as this world shines forth as a reflection of spiritual life—this world of which one can say: All that is transitory is but a parable of the eternal.

May the sun always be at my back!

[ 59 ] He had looked at her before. Now he turns toward the waterfall.

The waterfall, rushing through the rocky reef,
I gaze upon it with growing delight.
From cascade to cascade it now rolls in thousands,
Then pouring out into thousands upon thousands of streams,
Foam upon foam whizzing high into the air.
But how magnificent, springing from this storm,
Is the ever-changing arch of the rainbow...

[ 60 ] —which, in seven colors, reflects what is united in the sun.

Now drawn into view, now dissolving into thin air,
Spreading cool, fragrant shivers all around.
It reflects human striving.
Contemplate it, and you will understand more clearly:
Life lies in this colorful reflection.

[ 61 ] Life lies in the colorful reflection! — After this night, Faust has come so far that, unlike the Faust of the first part, he does not want to plunge into life just as it has cast him into guilt and evil, but rather turns toward its colorful reflection. It is this same colorful reflection—which we call Spiritual Science—that appears to him merely as a colorful reflection, and through which we gradually ascend to experience reality.

[ 62 ] What follows now—the second part—is, first and foremost, a colorful reflection of life. It is nonsense to interpret this second part merely in realistic terms. We have Faust, who, together with his higher self, observes life through its colorful reflection via the physical body; he now simply carries this body through life as something he preserves, so that what within him—as his higher self—protects him from what will come in later incarnations may also develop.

[ 63 ] It became quite difficult for Goethe to continue his *Faust* after Mephistopheles utters the words: “Come to me!” But we see how Goethe strives to penetrate the mysteries that we recognize today as the mysteries of Spiritual Science. How he approaches them. And then follow this second part to see how Mephistopheles truly has Faust in his grasp at first, how Mephistopheles is present everywhere in what happens at the “Imperial Court” and so on. And how, through the aftereffects of the initiation living within him, Faust gradually wriggles free from Mephistopheles in the course of the second part’s plot. But these are further mysteries of this second part. Goethe himself said that he had embedded many secrets in this second part! — People have not taken his words seriously enough. Through Spiritual Science, we will now gradually learn to take such words more and more seriously.

[ 64 ] But one thing you will have gathered from today’s reflections is that Goethe, in his *Faust*, strives to go beyond the first part and to express in his *Faust* something of the mood that is truly symbolically hinted at here in the course of the seasons.

[ 65 ] As Pentecost approaches, and when the spirits of the elemental world draw so close to human beings that it can be said of them:

When the spring rain of blossoms
Floats down over everything,
When the green blessing of the fields
Shines upon all who walk the earth,
The little elf, with the greatness of a spirit,
Hurrying wherever she can help,
Whether he is holy or wicked,
The unfortunate man laments to her.

[ 66 ] A Pentecostal atmosphere! The outpouring of the Spirit in the next lines spoken by the choir, during the four stages of sleep—from falling asleep to waking up!

[ 67 ] Thus, through this *Faust*, we also demonstrate from a certain perspective the necessity that what Spiritual Science seeks to proclaim to humanity as a new Pentecost message be handed down to it little by little. For this *Faust* is so well suited to showing us just how complex that which lies at the very foundation of human nature truly is. There lives within human nature—down there—that which is constantly exposed to the Ahrimanic-Luciferic forces of the world, and there also lives that which a person can find when he places himself under the guidance of the Christ impulse.

[ 68 ] Why do we speak of a threshold? Why do we speak of a guardian of the threshold? We speak of this because, truly, as if by a grace of the wise guidance of the universe, that which struggles, rumbles, and wages war deep within the human soul—in our everyday life—was initially withheld from the human soul. It is as if on the surface, while below it rumbles, struggles, and wages war. And even what we experience in everyday life is a continuous victory. But it must be fought for anew again and again. And in the future, it will only be fought for anew if people come to know that which has guided them thus far, unconsciously, through a benevolent, wise cosmic guidance. At the very depths of the soul, we must truly find that which is unknown in ordinary sensory life, but which the spiritual can experience. It lies in those depths of the human being where the human essence is connected to those forces of the world whose spiritual grandeur transcends good and evil.

[ 69 ] I would like to express this through a Pentecost verse in which I have brought together how human beings, at the very core of their soul, possess elemental, conflicting forces, and how that which lives in their consciousness is a victory over that which wages war down there in the depths of soul life.

[ 70 ] How things will unfold from there in the context of human life—we will discuss that tomorrow, or perhaps the day after tomorrow. Today, however, I would like to conclude with this Pentecost passage, which essentially expresses what has always been the innermost essence of our Spiritual Science, and which we have also highlighted today:

Where sensory knowledge ends,
There stands the gate,
That opens up the realities of life
To the soul;
The soul forges the key,
When it grows strong within itself
In the struggle that the powers of the world
Wage on their own ground
With human forces,
When it drives away through itself
The sleep that shrouds the powers of knowledge
At the limits of the senses
With the darkness of the spirit.