| 35. The Spiritual-Scientific Basis of Goethes Work
10 Jul 1905, London |
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| It will then be shown what an intimate knowledge and understanding of the influences at work during this period is obtainable by regarding things from an Anthroposophical point of view. |
| To him, it was a question of the ennobling and purifying of man; to him, a man under the sway of nature's impulses of sensual love and desires appeared impure; but then he considered just as far removed from purity the man who looked upon the sensual impulses and desires as enemies, and was obliged to place himself under the rule of moral or abstract intellectual compulsion. |
| Much, too, might be quoted to show the underlying elements of spiritual science in the fairy tale, The New Melusine, a Pandora-fragment, and many other writings. |
| 35. The Spiritual-Scientific Basis of Goethes Work
10 Jul 1905, London |
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Anthroposophy will only be able to fulfill its great and universal mission in modern civilization when it is able to grasp the special problems which have arisen in every land by reason of the intellectual possessions of the people. In Germany, these special problems are in part determined by the inheritance bequeathed to her intellectual life by the men of genius living at the close of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. Any one who approaches those great minds, Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, Novalis, Jean Paul and many others, from the point of view of Anthroposophical thought and its attitude toward life, will have two important experiences. The first being that, as a result of this profoundly spiritual attitude, a new light is thrown upon the working and works of these men of genius; the second, that through them Anthroposophy receives new life-blood, which must, in some way as yet not clear, produce a fructifying and strengthening effect in the future. It may be said without exaggeration that the German will understand Anthroposophy if only he brings his mind to bear upon the highest conceptions for which the leading spirits of his land have striven, and which they have embodied in their works. It will be the task of future generations to reveal the Anthroposophical and spiritual-scientific basis of the great advancement in the intellectual life of Germany during the period in question. It will then be shown what an intimate knowledge and understanding of the influences at work during this period is obtainable by regarding things from an Anthroposophical point of view. It is only possible on this occasion to make a few references to one man of genius who was the leading light of this age of culture, namely, Goethe. It is possible that new life may be infused into the active principles of Anthroposophy through Goethe's thought and the creations of his mind, with the result that, in Germany, Anthroposophy may appear by degrees to be something akin to the spirit of the people. One thing will be made clear: that the source of the Anthroposophical conception is one and the same as the fount from which Germany's great poet and thinker has derived his creative power. The most clear-sighted of those among whom Goethe lived acknowledged without any reservation that there was no branch of intellectual life which his attitude toward life and the world could not enrich. But one must not allow oneself to be deceived by the fact that the quintessence of Goethe's mind really lies concealed below the surface of his works. He who wishes to win his way to a perfect understanding of them must become intimate with their innermost spirit. This does not mean that one should become insensitive to the beauties of their style or their artistic form. Nor must one put an abstract interpretation upon his art by means of intellectual symbols and allegories. But, just as a noble countenance excites no less admiration for the beauty of its features because the beholder is able to perceive the greatness of the soul illuminating this beauty, so it is with Goethe's art; not only can it lose nothing, but rather will it gain infinitely, when the outward expression of his creative power is illuminated by that depth of conception of the universe which possesses his soul. Goethe himself often has shown how justified we are in having such a profound conception of his creative power. On January 29, 1827, he said to his devoted secretary Eckermann concerning his Faust, “It is all scenic and, from the point of view of the theatre, it will please everyone. More than this I did not wish. If only the performance gives pleasure to the majority of the audience, the initiated will not miss the deeper meaning.” It is only necessary to bring an impartial insight to bear upon Goethe's creative power in order to recognize that it is only an esoteric conception which can lead us to a full understanding of his working. He felt within him an ardent desire to discover in all phenomena of the senses the hidden spiritual force. It was one of his principles of search that the inner secrets are expressed in outward facts and objects, and that those only can aspire to understand Nature who look upon the phenomena as mere letters which enable them to decipher the inner meaning of the workings of the spirit. The words: “All we see before us passing, Sign and symbol is alone,” in the Chorus Mysticus, at the end of Faust, are not merely to be regarded as a poetical idea, but as the outcome of his whole attitude toward the world. In Art, too, he saw only a revelation of the innermost secrets of the world; in his opinion, it was through Art that those things are to be made clear which, though having their origin in Nature and being active in her, yet with the means at her disposal, she cannot express. He sought the same spirit in the phenomena of Nature as in the works of a creative artist; only the means of expression were different in the two cases. He was constantly at work on his conception of a gradual process of evolution of all the phenomena and creatures in the world. He regarded man as a compilation of the other kingdoms. The spirit of man was to him the revelation of a universal spirit, and the other realms of Nature, with their manifestations, appeared to him as the path of evolution leading to man. All this was not merely a theory with him, but became a living element in his work, permeating all that he produced. Schiller has given us a fine description of this peculiarity of Goethe's mind, in the letter with which he inaugurates the intimate friendship which united them (August 23, 1794):
In his book on Winckelmann, Goethe has expressed his opinion as to the position of man in the evolution of the realms of Nature:
It was Goethe's life-work to strive to obtain an ever clearer insight into the evolution of the living world. When, after moving to Weimar (about 1780), he embodied the result of his investigation in the beautiful prose-hymn, Nature, we find over the whole a certain abstract tinge of pantheism. He must perforce use words to define the hidden forces of being, but before long these cease to satisfy his ever-deepening conception. But it is in these very words that we first meet with the ideas which we find later in such perfect form. He says there, for instance:
When Goethe (1828), having reached the summit of his insight, looked back upon this stage, he expressed himself thus concerning it:
It was with such a conception that Goethe approached the animal, mineral and vegetable kingdoms to grasp the hidden spiritual unity in the manifest multiplicity of sense-perceptible phenomena. It is in this sense that he speaks of primeval plant, primeval animal. And it was for him Intuition which stood behind these conceptions as the active spiritual force. In his contemplation of things, his whole being strove toward what in Anthroposophy is called tolerance. And ever more and more he sought to acquire this quality by means of the strictest inward self-education. To this he frequently refers; it will suffice to quote a very characteristic example from the Campaign in France (1792):
Thus he endeavored to rise higher and higher and to reach the point which divided the real from the unreal. Only here and there do we find references to his innermost convictions. One of these occurs, for instance, in the poem The Mysteries, which contains his confession as a Rosicrucian. It was written in the middle of the 80's in the 18th century, and was regarded by those who knew him intimately as revealing his character. In 1816, he was called upon by a “fraternity of students in one of the chief towns of North Germany” to explain the hidden meaning of the poem, and the explanation which he gave might well stand as a paraphrase of the three objectives of the programme of the Anthroposophical Society. Only when one is capable of appreciating the full significance of such points in Goethe is one in a position to recognize the higher meaning, to use his own expression, which he has introduced into his Faust for the initiated. In the second part of this dramatic poem is in fact to be found what Goethe had to say concerning the relation of man to the three worlds: the physical, the astral and the spiritual. From this point of view, the poem represents his expression of the incarnation of man. A character which, to the mind that refuses a spiritual-scientific basis, presents insuperable difficulties, is that of Homunculus. Every passage, every word, however, becomes clear as soon as one starts from this basis. Homunculus is created by the help of Mephistopheles. The latter represents the repressive and destructive forces of the Universe which manifest in the realms of man as Evil. Goethe wishes to characterize the part which Evil takes in the formation of Homunculus; and yet from such beginnings is to be produced a man. For this reason, he is led through the lower realms of Nature to the scene of the classical Walpurgis Night. Before he sets forth on these wanderings, he possesses only a part of human nature. What he himself says concerning his connection with the earthly part of human nature is striking.
The Nature of Homunculus becomes quite clear in the light of the following lines which refer to him:
The following words are also added, “He is, methinks, Hermaphrodite.” Goethe here intends to represent the astral body of man before his incarnation in mortal (earthly) matter. This he also makes clear by endowing Homunculus with powers of clairvoyance. He sees, for instance, the dream of Faust in the laboratory where work is going on with the help of Mephistopheles. Then in the course of the classical Walpurgis Night the embodying of Homunculus, that is, the astral man, is described. He is sent through the realms of Nature to Proteus, the spirit of transformations.
Proteus then describes the road which astral man has to take through the realms of Nature in order to arrive at an earthly incarnation and receive a physical body.
The passage of man through the mineral kingdom is then described. Goethe makes his entrance into the vegetable kingdom particularly contemplative. Homunculus says: A tender air is wafted here; The philosopher Thales, who is present, adds in elucidation of what is taking place:
The moment, too, when the asexual being has implanted within him the double sex, and therewith sexual love, is also represented:
That the investing of the astral body with the physical body, composed of earthly elements, is really meant here is expressly stated in the closing lines of the second act:
Goethe here makes use of the evolution of beings in the course of the fashioning of the earth in connection with the incarnation of man as a special being. The latter repeats as such the transformations which mankind has undergone in reaching its present form. In these conceptions, he was in line with the theory of evolution held by spiritual science. His explanation of the origin of the lower forms of life was that the impulse which was aspiring to a higher grade had been stopped on a certain level. In his diary of the Journey through Switzerland, of 1797, he noted a conversation with the Tübingen professor Kielmeyer, which is interesting in this connection. In it, the following words occur, “Concerning the idea that the higher organic natures in their evolution take several steps which the others behind them are unable to take.” His studies of plants, animals, and of man are entirely pervaded by these ideas, and he seeks to invest them with an artistic form in the transformation of Homunculus into a man. When he becomes acquainted with Howard's theory of the formation of clouds, “he expresses his thoughts concerning the relation of spiritual archetypes to the ever-changing forms in the following words:
In Faust, we also find represented the relation of the imperishable spiritual man to the mortal envelope. Faust has to go to the Mothers to seek for this imperishable essence, and the explanation of this important scene is developed quite naturally in the second part of the play. Goethe conceives the real being of man as a trinity (in accord with the Anthroposophical teaching of Spirit-self, Life-spirit, Spirit-man). And Faust's visit to the Mothers may be termed in Anthroposophical phraseology the forcible entry into Devachan. There he is to find what remains of Helena. She is to be reincarnated; that is, she is to return from the realm of the Mothers to the earth and, in the third act, we really do in fact see her reincarnated. In order to accomplish this it is necessary to reunite the three natures of man: the astral, the physical, and the spiritual. At the end of the second act, the astral (Homunculus) has put on the physical envelope and this combination is now able to receive within it the higher nature. Such a conception introduces an inner dramatic unity into the poem, whereas with a non-occult forcible entry the individual events remain a mere arbitrary collection of poetical incidents. Without taking into account the spiritual-scientific foundation of the poem, Professor Veit Valentin, of Frankfort, has already drawn attention to the inner connection of Homunculus and Helena in an interesting book, Die Einheit des Ganzen Faust, 1896. But the contents of this work can only remain an intelligent hypothesis if one does not penetrate into the spiritual-scientific substratum underlying it all. Goethe has conceived Mephistopheles as a being to whom Devachan is unknown. He is only at home on the astral plane. Hence he can be of service in the creation of Homunculus, but he cannot accompany Faust into the realm of the Mothers. Indeed, that plane is to him Nothingness. He says to Faust, in speaking to him of that world:
But Faust, with his spiritual intuition, at once divines that in that world he will find the real essence of Man.
In the description which Mephistopheles gives of the world which he dares not enter, one understands exactly what Goethe means to express.
Only by means of the archetype which Faust fetches from the devachanic world of the Mothers can Homunculus, the astral being who has assumed physical form, become a spiritually-endowed entity, Helena in fact, who actually appears in the third act. Goethe has taken care that those who seek to penetrate the depths shall be able to grasp his meaning for, in his conversations with Eckermann, he has lifted the veil as far as it seemed to him practical to do so. On December 16, 1829, he said concerning Homunculus:
And, on the same day, he points out further how Homunculus is still wanting in Mind: “Reasoning is not his concern, he wants to act.” The whole of the further development of the dramatic action in Faust, according to this reading, follows easily on the foregoing. Faust has become acquainted with the secrets of the three worlds. Henceforth, he looks at the world from the point of view of the mystic. One could point out scene after scene which bears this out, but it will be sufficient to draw attention here to a few passages. When, towards the end, Care approaches Faust, he becomes outwardly blind but, in the course of his development, he has acquired the faculty of inward sight.
Goethe once, in answer to the question, “What was Faust's end?” replied definitely, “He becomes a mystic in the end,” and the significant words of the Chorus Mysticus, with which the poem closes, can only be interpreted in this sense. In the West-East Divan he also expresses himself very clearly on the subject of the spiritual development of man. It is to him the union of the human soul with the higher self. The illusion that the real man exists in his outward body must die out; then higher man comes into existence. That is why he begins his poem Blessed Longing with the words: “Tell it to none but to the wise, for the multitude hasten to deride. I will praise the living who longs for death by fire.” And, in conclusion, he adds: “And as long as thou hast not mastered this; dying and coming into existence; thou art but a sad and gloomy guest on the dark earth.” Quite in harmony with this is the Chorus Mysticus, for its inner meaning is but this: The transient forms of the outer world have their foundation in the imperishable spiritual ones to which we attain by regarding the transient only as a symbol of the hidden spiritual:
That to which reason, appointed as it is to deal with the world of the senses and its forms, cannot attain, is revealed as an actual vision to the spiritual sight; further, that which this reason cannot describe is a fact in the regions of the spiritual.
In harmony with all mystical symbolism, Goethe represents the higher nature of man as feminine, entering into union with the Divine Spirit. For in the last lines:
Goethe only means to characterize the union of the purified soul drawing near to the Divine. All interpretations which are not made in a mystic sense fail here. Goethe considered that the time had not yet come when it was possible to speak of certain secrets of our being in any other manner than he has done in some of his poems. And, above all, he felt it to be his own mission to furnish such a form of expression. At the beginning of his friendship with Schiller, he raised the question, “How are we to represent to ourselves the relationship between the physical and the spiritual natures of man?” Schiller had tried to answer this question in a philosophical style in his letters Concerning the Aesthetic Education of Man. To him, it was a question of the ennobling and purifying of man; to him, a man under the sway of nature's impulses of sensual love and desires appeared impure; but then he considered just as far removed from purity the man who looked upon the sensual impulses and desires as enemies, and was obliged to place himself under the rule of moral or abstract intellectual compulsion. Man only attained inner freedom when he had so absorbed moral law into his inner being that he desired only to obey it. Such a man has so ennobled his lower nature that it becomes by itself an expression of the higher spiritual, and he has so drawn down into the earthly human nature the spiritual that the latter possesses a direct sentient existence. The explanations which Schiller gives in these Letters form excellent rules of education, for their object is to further the evolution of man so that he may, by absorbing the higher ideal man, come to contemplate the world from a free and exalted point of view. In his way Schiller refers to the higher self of man thus:
All that Schiller says in this connection is of the most far-reaching significance. For he who really carries out his injunctions accomplishes within himself an education which brings him directly to that inward condition which paves the way for the inner contemplation of the spiritual. Goethe was satisfied, in the deepest sense of the word, with these ideas. He writes to Schiller:
Goethe now endeavored on his part to set forth the same idea from the depths of his conception of the world—but veiled in imagery—in the problem-tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. It is placed in the editions of Goethe at the end of the Conversations of German Emigrants. The Faust story has often been called Goethe's Gospel; this tale may, however, be called his Apocalypse, for in it he sets forth—as a fairy-tale—the path of man's inner development. Here again, we can only point out a few short passages, it would need a large book to show how Goethe's spiritual insight is concealed in this tale. The three worlds are here represented as two regions separated from one another by a river. The river itself stands for the astral plane. On this side of it is the physical world, on the other side the spiritual (Devachan), where dwells the beautiful lily, the symbol of man's higher nature. In her kingdom, man must strive if he would unite his lower with his higher nature. In the abyss—that is, in the physical world—dwells the serpent which symbolizes the self of man. Here too is a temple of initiation, where reign four kings, one golden, one silver, one bronze, and a fourth of an irregular mixture of the three metals. Goethe, who was a freemason, has clothed in freemasonic terminology what he had to impart of his mystic experiences. The three kings represent the three higher forces of man: Wisdom (Gold), Beauty (Silver), and Strength (Bronze). As long as man lives in his lower nature, these three forces are in him disordered and chaotic. This period in the evolution of man is represented by the mixed king. But when man has so purified himself that the three forces work together in perfect harmony, and he can freely use them, then the way into the realm of the spiritual lies open before him. The still unpurified man is represented by a youth who, without having attained inner purity, would unite himself with the beautiful lily. Through this union he becomes paralyzed. Goethe here wished to point out the danger to which a man exposes himself who would force an entrance into the super-sensible region before he has severed himself from his lower self. Only when love has permeated the whole man, only when the lower nature has been sacrificed, can the initiation into the higher truths and powers begin. This sacrifice is expressed by the serpent yielding of its own accord, and forming a bridge of its body across the river—that is to say, the astral plane—between the two kingdoms, of the senses and of the spirit. At first man must accept the higher truths in the form in which they have been given to him in the imagery of the various religions. This form is personified as the man with the lamp. This lamp has the peculiarity of only giving light where there is already light, meaning that the religious truths presuppose a receptive, believing disposition. Their light shines where the light of faith is present. This lamp, however, has yet another quality, “of turning all stones into gold, all wood into silver, dead animals into precious stones, and of destroying all metals,” meaning the power of faith which changes the inner nature of the individual. There are about twenty characters in this allegory, all symbolical of certain forces in man's nature and, during the course of the action, the purifying of man is described, as he rises to the heights where, in his union with his higher self, he can be initiated into the secrets of existence. This state is symbolized by the Temple, formerly hidden in the abyss, being brought to the surface, and rising above the river—the astral plane. Every passage, every sentence in the allegory is significant. The more deeply one studies the tale, the more comprehensible and clear the whole becomes, and he who set forth the esoteric quintessence of this tale at the same time has given us the substance of the Anthroposophical outlook on life. Goethe has not left the source uncertain from whose depths he has drawn his inspiration. In another tale, The New Paris, he gives in a veiled manner the history of his own inner enlightenment. Many will remain incredulous if we say that, in this dream, Goethe represents himself just at the boundary between the third and fourth sub-race of our fifth root-race. For him, the myth of Paris and Helen is a symbolic representation of this boundary. And as he—in a dream—conjures up before his eyes in a new form the myth of Paris, he feels he is casting a searching glance into the development of humanity. What such an insight into the past means to the inner eye, he tells us in the Prophecies of Bakis, which are also full of occult references:
Much, too, might be quoted to show the underlying elements of spiritual science in the fairy tale, The New Melusine, a Pandora-fragment, and many other writings. In his novel, Wilhelm Meister's Traveling Years, Goethe has given us quite a masterly picture of a Clairvoyante in Makarie. Makarie's power of intuition rises to the level of a complete penetration of the inner mysteries of the planetary system:
These words of Goethe's prove clearly how intimate he is with these matters, and whoever reads through the whole passage will recognize that Goethe so expresses himself, albeit with reserve, that he who looks beneath the surface may feel quite certain of the spiritual-scientific foundation in his being. Goethe always looked upon his mission as a poet in relation to his striving toward the hidden laws of Life. He was often forced to notice how friends failed to understand this side of his nature. He describes thus, in the Campaign in France in 1792, how his contemplation of Nature was always misunderstood:
Goethe could only understand artistic work when based on a profound penetration of the truth. As an artist, he wished to give utterance to that which in Nature is suggested without being fully expressed. Nature appeared to him as a product of the same essence which also works through human art, only that in the case of Nature the power has remained on a lower level. For Goethe, Art is a continuation of Nature revealing that which in Nature alone is hidden:
To understand the world is to Goethe to Hue in the spirit of worldly things. For this reason, he speaks of a perceptive power of judgment (intellectus archetypus), through which Man draws ever nearer to the secrets of our being:
Thus did Goethe represent to himself Man as the organ of the world, through which its occult powers should be revealed. The following was one of his aphorisms:
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| 35. Supersensible Knowledge
01 Jan 1918, |
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| Long afterwards it frequently emerges into consciousness—in moods, in shades of feeling and the like, if not in clear conceptions. Nay more, it often undergoes a change, and comes to consciousness in quite a different form from that in which it was experienced originally. |
| For him who would penetrate with full conscious clarity of understanding into the supersensible domain, the two experiences above described are, however, preparatory stages. |
| Destined as it is—within its own domain—to bear the most precious fruits, Natural Science will be led into an absolutely fatal error if it be not perceived that the mode of thought which dominates it is quite unfitted to open out an understanding of, or to give impulses for, the moral and social life of humanity. In the domain of ethical and social life our conception of underlying principles, and the conscious guidance of our action, can only thrive when illumined from the aspect of the Supersensible. |
| 35. Supersensible Knowledge
01 Jan 1918, |
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There are two experiences whence the soul may gain an understanding for the mode of knowledge to which the supersensible worlds will open out. The one originates in the science of Nature; the other, in the Mystical experience whereby the untrained ordinary consciousness contrives to penetrate into the supersensible domain. Both confront the soul of man with barriers of knowledge—barriers he cannot cross till he can open for himself the portals which by their very essence Natural Science, and ordinary Mysticism too, must hold fast closed. Natural Science leads inevitably to certain conceptions about reality, which are like a stone wall to the deeper forces of the soul; and yet, this Science itself is powerless to remove them. He who fails to feel the impact, has not yet called to life the deeper needs of knowledge in his soul. He may then come to believe that it is impossible in any case for Man to attain any other than the natural-scientific form of knowledge. There is, however, a definite experience in Self-knowledge whereby one weans oneself off this belief. This experience consists in the insight that the whole of Natural Science would be dissolved into thin air if we attempted to fathom the above-named conceptions with the methods of Natural Science itself. If the conceptions of Natural Science are to remain spread out before the soul, these limiting conceptions must be left within the field of consciousness intact, without attempting to approach them with a deeper insight. There are many of them; here I will only mention two of the most familiar: Matter and Force. Recent developments in scientific theory may or may not be replacing these particular conceptions; the fact remains that Natural Science must invariably lead to some conception or another of this kind, impenetrable to its own methods of knowledge. To the experience of soul, of which I am here speaking, these limiting conceptions appear like a reflecting surface which the human soul must place before it; while Natural Science itself is like the picture, made manifest with the mirror's help. Any attempt to treat the limiting conceptions themselves by ordinary scientific means is, as it were, to smash the mirror, and with the mirror broken, Natural Science itself dissolves away. Moreover, this experience reveals the emptiness of all talk about ‘Things-in-themselves,’ of whatsoever kind, behind the phenomena of Nature. He who seeks for such Things-in-themselves is like a man who longs to break the looking-glass, hoping to see what there is behind the reflecting surface to cause his image to appear. It goes without saying that the validity of such an experience of soul cannot be ‘proved,’ in the ordinary sense of the word, with the habitual thoughts of present-day Natural Science. For the point will be, what kind of an inner experience does the process of the ‘proof’ call forth in us; and this must needs transcend the abstract proof. With inner experience in this sense, we must apprehend the question: How is it that the soul is forced to confront these barriers of knowledge in order to have before it the phenomena of Nature? Mature self-knowledge brings us an answer to this question. We then perceive which of the forces of man's soul partakes in the erection of these barriers to knowledge. It is none other than the force of soul which makes man capable, within the world of sense, of unfolding Love out of his inner being. The faculty of Love is somehow rooted in the human organisation; and the very thing which gives to man the power of love—of sympathy and antipathy with his environment of sense,—takes away from his cognition of the things and processes of Nature the possibility to make transparent such pillars of Reality as ‘Matter’ and ‘Force.’ To the man who can experience himself in true self-knowledge, on the one hand in the act of knowing Nature, and on the other hand in the unfolding of Love, this peculiar property of the human organisation becomes straightway apparent. We must, however, beware of misinterpreting this perception by lapsing again into a way of thought which, within Natural Science itself, is no doubt inevitable. Thus it would be a misconstruction to assume, that an insight into the true essence of the things and processes of Nature is withheld from man because he lacks the organisation for such insight. The opposite is the case. Nature becomes sense-perceptible to man through the very fact that his being is capable of Love. For a being incapable of Love within the field of sense, the whole human picture of Nature would dissolve away. It is not Nature who on account of his organisation reveals only her external aspect. No; it is man, who, by that force of his organisation which makes him in another direction capable of Love, is placed in a position to erect before his soul images and forms of Reality whereby Nature reveals herself to him. Through the experience described above, the fact emerges, that the scientific frontiers of knowledge depend on the whole way in which man, as a sense-endowed being, is placed within this world of physical reality. His vision of Nature is of a kind, appropriate to a being who is capable of Love. He would have to tear the faculty of Love out of his inner life if he wished no longer to be faced with limits in his perception of Nature. But in so doing he would destroy the very force whereby Nature is made manifest to him. The real object of his quest for knowledge is not, by the same methods which he applies in his outlook upon Nature, to remove the limitations of that outlook. No, it is something altogether different, and once this has been perceived, man will no longer try to penetrate into a supersensible world through the kind of knowledge which is effective in Natural Science. Rather will he tell himself, that to unveil the supersensible domain an altogether different activity of knowledge must be evolved than that which he applies to the science of Nature. Many people, more or less consciously aware of the above experience of soul, turn away from Natural Science when it is a question of opening the supersensible domain, and seek to penetrate into the latter by methods which are commonly called Mystical. They think that what is veiled to outwardly directed vision may be revealed by plunging into the depths of one's own being. But a mature self-knowledge reveals in the inner life as well a frontier of knowledge. In the field of the senses the faculty of Love erects, as it were, an impenetrable background whereat Nature is reflected; in the inner life of man the power of Memory erects a like background. The same force of soul, which makes the human being capable of Memory, prevents his penetrating, in his inner being, down to that experience which would enable him to meet—along this inward path—the supersensible reality for which he seeks. Invariably, along this path, he reaches only to that force of soul which recalls to him in Memory the experiences he has undergone through his bodily nature in the past. He never penetrates into the region where with his own supersensible being he is rooted in a supersensible world. For those who fail to see this, mystical pursuits will give rise to the worst of illusions. For in the course of life, the human being receives into his inner life untold experiences, of which in the receiving he is not fully conscious. But the Memory retains what is thus half-consciously or subconsciously experienced. Long afterwards it frequently emerges into consciousness—in moods, in shades of feeling and the like, if not in clear conceptions. Nay more, it often undergoes a change, and comes to consciousness in quite a different form from that in which it was experienced originally. A man may then believe himself confronted by a supersensible reality arising from the inner being of the soul, whereas, in fact, it is but an outer experience transformed—an experience called forth originally by the world of sense—which comes before his mental vision. He alone is preserved from such illusions, who recognises that even on a mystic path man cannot penetrate into the supersensible domain so long as he applies methods of knowledge dependent on the bodily nature which is rooted in the world of sense. Even as our picture of Nature depends for its existence on the faculty of Love, so does the immediate consciousness of the human Self depend upon the power of Memory. The same force of the soul, endowing man in the physical world with the Self-consciousness that is bound to the bodily nature, stands in the way to obstruct his inner union with the supersensible world. Thus, even that which is often considered Mysticism provides no way into the supersensible realms of existence. For him who would penetrate with full conscious clarity of understanding into the supersensible domain, the two experiences above described are, however, preparatory stages. Through them he recognises that man is shut off from the supersensible world by the very thing which places him, as a self-conscious being, in the midst of Nature. Now one might easily conclude from this, that man must altogether forego the effort to gain knowledge of the Supersensible. Nor can it be denied that many who are loath to face the painful issue, abstain from working their way through to a clear perception of the two experiences. Cherishing a certain dimness of perception on these matters, they either give themselves up to the belief that the limitations of Natural Science may be transcended by some intellectual and philosophic exercise; or else they devote themselves to Mysticism in the ordinary sense, avoiding the full enlightenment as to the nature of Self-consciousness and Memory which would reveal its insufficiency. But to one who has undergone them and reached a certain clarity withal, these very experiences will open out the possibility and prospect of true supersensible knowledge. For in the course of them he finds that even in the ordinary action of human consciousness there are forces holding sway within the soul, which are not bound to the physical organisation; forces which are in no way subject to the conditions whereon the faculties of Love and Memory within this physical organisation depend. One of these forces reveals itself in Thought. True, it remains unnoticed in the ordinary conscious life; indeed there are even many philosophers who deny it. But the denial is due to an imperfect self-observation. There is something at work in Thought which does not come into it from the faculty of Memory. It is something that vouches to us for the correctness of a present thought, not when a former thought emerging from the memory sustains it, but when the correctness of the present thought is experienced directly. This experience escapes the every-day consciousness, because man completely spends the force in question for his life of thought-filled perception. In Perception permeated by Thought this force is at work. But man, perceiving, imagines that the perception alone is vouching for the correctness of what he apprehends by an activity of soul where Thought and Perception in reality always flow together. And when he lives in Thought alone, abstracted from perceptions, it is but an activity of Thought which finds its supports in Memory. In this abstracted Thought the physical organism is cooperative. For the every-day consciousness, an activity of Thought unsubjected to the bodily organism is only present while man is in the act of Sense-perception. Sense-perception itself depends upon the organism. But the thinking activity, contained in and co-operating with it, is a purely supersensible element in which the bodily organism has no share. In it the human soul rises out of the bodily organism. As soon as man becomes distinctly, separately conscious of this Thinking in the act of Perception, he knows by direct experience that he has himself as a living soul, quite independently of the bodily nature. This is man's first experience of himself as a supersensible soul-being, arising out of an evolved self-knowledge. The same experience is there unconsciously in every act of perception. We need only sharpen our selfobservation so as to Observe the fact: in the act of Perception a supersensible element reveals itself. Once it is thus revealed, this first, faint suggestion of an experience of the soul within the Supersensible can be evolved, as follows: In living, meditative practice, man unfolds a Thinking wherein two activities of the soul flow together, namely that which lives in the ordinary consciousness in Sense-perception, and that which is active in ordinary Thought. The meditative life thus becomes an intensified activity of Thought, receiving into itself the force that is otherwise spent in Perception. Our Thinking in itself must grow so strong, that it works with the same vivid quality which is otherwise only there in Sense-perception. Without perception by the senses we must call to life a Thinking which, unsupported by memories of the past, experiences in the immediate present a content of its own, such as we otherwise only can derive from Sense-perception. From the Thinking that co-operates in perception, this meditative action of the soul derives its free and conscious quality, its inherent certainty that it receives no visionary content raying into the soul from unconscious organic regions. A visionary life of whatsoever kind is the very antithesis of what is here intended. By self-observation we must become thoroughly and clearly familiar with the condition of soul in which we are in the act of perception through any one of the senses. In this state of soul, fully aware that the content of our ideation does not arise out of the activity of the bodily organism, we must learn to experience ideas which are called forth in consciousness without external perceptions, just as are those of which we are conscious in ordinary life when engaged in reflective thought, abstracted from the outer world. (As to the right ways of developing this meditative practice, detailed indications are given in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment and in several of my other writings.) In evolving the meditative life above-described, the human soul rises to the conscious feeling perception of itself, as of a supersensible Being independent of the bodily organisation. This is man's first experience of himself as a supersensible Being; and it leads on to a second stage in supersensible self-knowledge. At the former stage he can only be aware that he is a supersensible Being; at the second he feels this Being filled with real content, even as the ‘I’ of ordinary waking life is felt by means of the bodily organisation. It is of the utmost importance to realise that the transition from the one stage to the other takes place quite independently of any co-operation from outside the soul's domain—namely from the mere organic life. If we experienced the transition, in relation to our own bodily nature, any differently from the process of drawing a logical conclusion for example, it would be a visionary experience, not what is intended here. The process here intended differs from the act of drawing logical conclusions, not in respect of its relationship to the bodily nature, but in quite another regard; namely in the consciousness that a supersensible, purely spiritual content is entering the feeling and perception of the Self. The kind of meditative life hitherto described gives rise to the supersensible self-consciousness. But this self-consciousness would be left without any supersensible environment if the above form of meditation were unaccompanied by another. We come to an understanding of this latter kind by turning our self-observation to the activity of the Will. In every-day life the activity of the Will is consciously directed to external actions. There is, however, another concomitant expression of the Will to which the human being pays little conscious attention. It is the activity of Will which carries him from one stage of development to another in the course of life. For not only is he filled with different contents of soul day after day; his soul-life itself, on each succeeding day, has evolved out of his soul-life of the day before. The driving force in this evolving process is the Will, which in this field of its activity remains for the most part unconscious. Mature self-knowledge can, however, raise this Will, with all its peculiar quality, into the conscious life. When this is done, man comes to the perception of a life of Will which has absolutely nothing to do with any processes of a sense-perceptible external world, but is directed solely to the inner evolution of the soul—independent of this world. Once it is known to him, he learns by degrees to enter into the living essence of this Will, just as in the former kind of meditative life he entered into the fusion of the soul's experiences of Thinking and Perception. And the conscious experience in this element of Will expands into the experience of a supersensible external world. Evolved in the way above described, and transplanted now into this element of Will, the supersensible self-consciousness finds itself in a supersensible environment, filled with spiritual Beings and events. While the supersensible Thinking leads to a self-consciousness independent of the power of Memory which is bound to the bodily nature, the supersensible Willing comes to life in such a way as to be permeated through and through by a spiritualised faculty of Love. It is this faculty of Love which enables the supersensible self-consciousness of man to perceive and grasp the supersensible external world. Thus the power of supersensible knowledge is established by a self-consciousness which eliminates the ordinary Memory and lives in the intuitive perception of the spiritual world through the power of Love made spiritual. Only by realising this essence of the supersensible faculty of knowledge, does one become able to understand the real meaning of man's knowledge of Nature. In effect, the knowledge of Nature is inherently connected with what is being evolved in man within this physical world of sense. It is in this world that man incorporates, into his spiritual Being, Self-consciousness and the faculty of Love. Once he has instilled these two into his nature, he can carry them with him into the super sensible world. In supersensible perception, the ordinary power of Memory is eliminated. Its place is taken by an immediate vision of the past—a vision for which the past appears as we look backward in spiritual observation, just as for sense-perception the things we pass by as we walk along appear when we turn round to look behind us. Again the ordinary faculty of Love is bound to the physical organism. In conscious supersensible experience, its place is taken by a power of Love made spiritual, which is to say, a power of perception. It may already be seen, from the above description, that supersensible experience takes place in a mood of soul which must be held apart, in consciousness, from that of ordinary Perception, Thinking, Feeling and Willing. The two ways of looking out upon the world must be kept apart by the deliberate control of man himself, just as in another sphere the waking consciousness is kept apart from the dream life. He who lets play the picture-complexes of his dreams into his waking life becomes a listless and fantastic fellow, abstracted from realities. He, on the other hand, who holds to the belief that the essence of causal relationships experienced in waking life can be extended into the life of dreams, endows the dream-pictures with an imagined reality which will make it impossible for him to experience their real nature. So with the mode of thought which governs our outlook upon Nature, or of inner experience which determines ordinary Mysticism:—he who lets them play into his supersensible experience, will not behold the supersensible, but weave himself in figments of the mind, which, far from bringing him nearer to it, will cut him off from the higher world he seeks. A man who will not hold his experience in the supersensible apart from his experience in the world of the physical senses, will mar the fresh and unembarrassed outlook upon Nature which is the true basis for a healthy sojourn in this earthly life. Moreover, he will permeate with the force of spiritual perception the faculty of Love that is connected with the bodily nature, thus tending to bring it into a deceptive relationship with the physical experience. All that the human being experiences and achieves within the field of sense, receives its true illumination—an illumination which the deepest needs of the soul require—through the science of things that are only to be experienced supersensibly. Yet must the latter be held separate in consciousness from the experience in the world of sense. It must illumine our knowledge of Nature, our ethical and social life; yet so, that the illumination always proceeds from a sphere of experience apart. Mediately, through the attunement of the human soul, the Supersensible must indeed shed its light upon the Sensible. For if it did not do so, the latter would be relegated to darkness of thought, chaotic wilfulness of instinct and desire. Many human beings, well knowing this relationship which has to be maintained in the soul between the experience of the supersensible and that of the world of sense, hold that the supersensible knowledge must on no account be given full publicity. It should remain, so they consider, the secret knowledge of a few, who have attained by strict self-discipline the power to establish and maintain the true relationship. Such guardians of supersensible knowledge base their opinion on the very true assertion that a man who is in any way inadequately prepared for the higher knowledge will feel an irresistible impulsion to mingle the Supersensible with the Sensible in life; and that he will inevitably thus call forth, both in himself and others, all the ill effects which we have here characterised as the result of such confusion. On the other hand—believing as they do, and with good reason, that man's outlook upon Nature must not be left to grope in utter darkness, nor his life to spend itself in blind forces of instinct and desire,—they have founded self-contained and closed Societies, or Occult Schools, within which human beings properly prepared are guided stage by stage to supersensible discovery. Of such it then becomes the task to pour the fruits of their knowledge into life, without, however, exposing the knowledge itself to publicity. In past epochs of human evolution this idea was undoubtedly justified. For the propensity above described, leading to the misuse of supersensible knowledge, was then the only thing to be considered, and against it there stood no other circumstance to call for publication of the higher knowledge. It might at most be contended that the superiority of those initiated into the higher knowledge gave into their hands a mighty power to rule over those who had no such knowledge. None the less, an enlightened reading of the course of History will convince us that such conflux of power into the hands of a few, fitted by self-discipline to wield it, was indeed necessary. In present time, however—meaning ‘present’ in the wider sense—the evolution of mankind has reached a point whenceforward it becomes not only impossible but harmful to prolong the former custom. The irresistible impulsion to misuse the higher knowledge is now opposed by other factors, making the—at any rate partial—publication of such knowledge a matter of necessity, and calculated also to remove the ill effects of the above tendency. Our knowledge of Nature has assumed a form wherein it beats perpetually, in a destructive way, against its own barriers and limitations. In many branches of Science, the laws and generalisations in which man finds himself obliged to clothe certain of the facts of Nature, are in themselves of such a kind as to call his attention to his own supersensible powers. The latter press forward into the conscious life of the soul. In former ages, the knowledge of Nature which was generally accessible had no such effect. Through Natural Science, however, in its present form—expanding as it is in ever widening circles—mankind would be led astray in either of two directions, if a publication of supersensible knowledge were not now to take place. Either the possibility of a supersensible world-outlook would be repudiated altogether and with growing vehemence; and this would presently result in an artificial repression of supersensible faculties which the time is actually calling forth. Such repression would make it more and more impossible for man to see his own Being in a true light. Emptiness, chaos and dissatisfaction of the inner life, instability of soul, perversity of will; and, in the sequel, even physical degeneration and illhealth would be the outcome. Or else the supersensible faculties-uncontrolled by conscious knowledge of these things-would break out in a wild tangle of obtuse, unconscious, undirected forces of cognition, and the life of knowledge would degenerate in a chaotic mass of nebulous conceptions. This would be to create a world of scientific phantoms, which, like a curtain, would obscure the true supersensible world from the spiritual eye of man. For either of these aberrations, a proper publication of supersensible knowledge is the only remedy. As to the impulse to abuse such knowledge in the way above described, it can be counteracted in our time, as follows: the training of thought which modern Natural Science has involved can be fruitfully employed to clothe in words the truths that point towards the supersensible. Itself, this Science of Nature cannot penetrate into the supersensible world; but it lends the human mind an aptitude for combinations of thought whereby the higher knowledge can be so expressed that the irresistible impulsion to misuse it need not arise. The thought-combinations of the Nature-knowledge of former times were more pictorial, less inclined to the domain of pure Thought. Supersensible perceptions, clothed in them, stirred up—without his being conscious of it—those very instincts in the human being which tend towards misuse. This being said, it cannot on the other hand be emphasised too strongly that he who gives out supersensible knowledge in our time will the better fulfil his responsibilities to mankind the more he contrives to express this knowledge in forms of thought borrowed from the modern Science of Nature. For the receiver of knowledge thus imparted will then have to apply, to the overcoming of certain difficulties of understanding, faculties of soul which would otherwise remain inactive and tend to the above misuse. The popularising of supersensible knowledge, so frequently desired by overzealous and misguided people, should be avoided. The truly earnest seeker does not call for it; it is but the banale, uncultured craving of persons indolent in thought. In the ethical and social life as well, humanity has reached a stage of development which makes it impossible to exclude all knowledge of the supersensible from public life and thought. In former epochs the ethical and social instincts contained within them spiritual guiding forces, inherited from primaeval ages of mankind. Such forces tended instinctively to a community life which answered also to the needs of individual soul. But the inner life of man has grown more conscious than in former epochs. The spiritual instincts have thus been forced into the background. The Will, the impulses of men must now be guided consciously, lest they become vagrant and unstable. That is to say, the individual, by his own insight, must be in a position to illumine the life in the physical world of sense by the knowledge of the supersensible, spiritual Being of man. Conceptions formed in the way of natural-scientific knowledge cannot enter effectively into the conscious guiding forces of the ethical and social life. Destined as it is—within its own domain—to bear the most precious fruits, Natural Science will be led into an absolutely fatal error if it be not perceived that the mode of thought which dominates it is quite unfitted to open out an understanding of, or to give impulses for, the moral and social life of humanity. In the domain of ethical and social life our conception of underlying principles, and the conscious guidance of our action, can only thrive when illumined from the aspect of the Supersensible. Between the rise of a highly evolved Natural Science, and present-day developments in the human life of Will—with all the underlying impulses and instincts—there is indeed a deep, significant connection. The force of knowledge that has gone into our science of Nature, is derived from the former spiritual content of man's impulses and instincts. From the fountain-head of supersensible Realities, the latter must now be supplied with fresh impulsive forces. We are living in an age when supersensible knowledge can no longer remain the secret possession of a few. No, it must become the common property of all, in whom the meaning of life within this age is stirring as a very condition of their soul's existence. In the unconscious depths of the souls of men this need is already working, far more widespread than many people dream. And it will grow, more and more insistently, to the demand that the science of the Supersensible shall be treated on a like footing with the science of Nature. |
| 36. On the Life of the Soul: The Human Soul in the Twilight of Dreams
21 Oct 1923, Translated by Samuel Borton |
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| In memory the body compels the dream-picturing power to an even stronger fidelity to the outer world than it does in fantasy. If this is understood, then there remains but one step to the recognition that the dream-picturing force of the soul also lies at the basis of ordinary thinking and sense perception. |
| 36. On the Life of the Soul: The Human Soul in the Twilight of Dreams
21 Oct 1923, Translated by Samuel Borton |
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If, within the limits of ordinary consciousness, the human being wishes to study his soul, it will not suffice for him simply to direct his mind's eye backward, so to speak, in order to discern by introspection his nature as someone who looks out upon the world. He will see nothing new by this means. He will perceive himself in his capacity as a spectator of the world—merely from a different direction. In his waking life man is almost entirely occupied with the external world. He lives by his senses. In their impressions the external world continues to live in his inner life. Thoughts weave into these impressions. The outer world lives in the thoughts as well. Only the force with which the world is grasped in thoughts can be experienced as man's autonomous being. The sensation of this force, however, is of an entirely general and vague character. By means of ordinary consciousness one can differentiate nothing within this sensation. If one had to discern the human soul in it, one would obtain no more about the soul than a vague sensation of self; one would be unable to identify what it was. What is unsatisfying about self-observation along these lines is that the nature of the soul promptly eludes the attempt to grasp it. Because of this drawback, people who seriously strive after knowledge may be driven to despair of it entirely. Thoughtful people, therefore, have almost always sought knowledge of the human soul in ways other than such self-observation. In the realm of sense perception and ordinary thinking they have felt that the vague sensation of self is surrendered to the body. They have realized that the soul, so long as it remains in this surrender, can learn nothing of its own nature through self-observation. A realm to which this feeling points is that of the dream. People have become aware that the world of images the dream conjures up has some connection with the vague sensation of self. This appears, as it were, as an empty canvas on which the dream paints its own pictures. And then it is realized that the canvas is really itself the painter painting on and within itself. Dreaming thus becomes for them the fleeting activity of man's inner life, which fills the soul's vague feeling of self with content. A questionable content—but the only one to be had at the outset. It is a view, lifted out of the brightness of ordinary consciousness and thrust into the twilight of semi-consciousness. Yet this is the only form attainable in everyday life. Despite this dimness, however, there occurs—not in thinking self-observation to be sure, but in an inward touching of the self—something very significant. A kinship between dreaming and creative fantasy can inwardly be touched [seelisch ertasten]. One has the feeling that the airy pictures of a dream are the same as those of creative fantasy, though the latter are controlled by the body from within. And this inner body [Korper-Innere] compels the dream-picturing power to desist from its arbitrariness and to transform itself into an activity that emulates, albeit in a free manner, what exists in the world of the senses. Once one has struggled through to such a touching of the inner world, one soon advances a step further. One becomes aware how the dream-picturing power can form a still closer connection with the body. One sees this foreshadowed in the activity of recollection, of memory. In memory the body compels the dream-picturing power to an even stronger fidelity to the outer world than it does in fantasy. If this is understood, then there remains but one step to the recognition that the dream-picturing force of the soul also lies at the basis of ordinary thinking and sense perception. It is then entirely surrendered to the body, while in fantasy and memory it still reserves something of its own weaving. This, then, justifies the assumption that in dreaming the soul frees itself from the state of bondage to the body and lives according to its own nature. Thus the dream has become the field of inquiry for many searchers after the soul. It relegates man, however, to a quite uncertain province. In surrendering to the body, the human soul becomes harnessed to the laws which govern nature. The body is a part of nature. Insofar as the soul surrenders to the body, it binds itself at the same time to the regularity of nature. The means whereby the soul adapts to the existence of nature is experienced as logic. In logical thinking about nature the soul feels secure. But in the power of dream-making it tears itself away from this logical thinking about nature. It returns to its own sphere. Thereby it abandons, as it were, the well-tended and well-trodden pathways of the inner life and sets forth on the flowing, pathless sea of spiritual existence. The threshold of the spiritual world seems to have been crossed; after the crossing, however, only the bottomless, directionless spiritual element presents itself. Those who seek to cross the threshold in this way find the exciting but also doubt-riddled domain of the soul life. It is full of riddles. At one time it weaves the external events of life into airy connections that scorn the regularity of nature; at another it shapes symbols of inner bodily processes and organs. A too violently beating heart appears in the dream as an oven; aching teeth as a fence with pickets in disrepair. What is more, man comes to know himself in a peculiar way. His instinctive life takes shape in the dream in images of reprehensible actions which, in the waking state, he would strongly resist. Those dreams that have a prophetic character arouse special interest among students of the soul, as do those in which the soul dreams up capacities that are entirely absent in the waking state. The soul appears released from its bondage to bodily and natural activity. It wants to be independent, and it prepares itself for this independence. As soon as it tries to become active, however, the activity of the body and of nature follow it. The soul will have nothing to do with nature's regularity; but the facts of nature appear in dreams as travesties of nature. The soul is interested in the internal bodily organs or bodily activities. It cannot, however, make clear pictures of these organs or bodily activities, but only symbols which bear the character of arbitrariness. Experience of external nature is torn away from the certainty in which sense perception and thinking place it. The inner life of what is human begins; it begins, however, in dim form. Observation of nature is abandoned; observation of the self is not truly achieved. The investigation of the dream does not place man in a position to view the soul in its true form. It is true this is spiritually more nearly comprehensible through dreams than through thinking self-observation; it is, however, something he should actually see but can only grope after as if through a veil. The following section will speak about the perception of the soul through spirit knowledge. |
| 36. On the Life of the Soul: The Human Soul in the Light of Spirit Vision
28 Oct 1923, Translated by Samuel Borton |
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| For the dreamer is in a passive state. He cannot undertake any autonomous activity. With the disappearance of the soul's mask, the sensation of one's own self disappears also. |
| 36. On the Life of the Soul: The Human Soul in the Light of Spirit Vision
28 Oct 1923, Translated by Samuel Borton |
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If one resorts to dream phenomena in order to acquire knowledge of the soul's nature, one ultimately is forced to admit that the object of one's search is wearing a mask. Behind the symbolizations of bodily conditions and processes, behind the fantastically connected memory experiences, one may surmise the soul's activity. It cannot be maintained, however, that one is face to face with the true form of the soul. On awaking, one realizes how the active part of the dream is interwoven with the function of the body and thereby subject to the external world of nature. Through the backward-directed view of self-observation one sees in the soul life only the images of the external world, not the life of the soul itself. The soul eludes the ordinary consciousness at the very moment one would grasp it cognitively. By studying dreams one cannot hope to arrive at the reality of the soul element. In order to preserve the soul activity in its innate form one would have to obliterate, through a strong inner activity, the symbolizations of the bodily conditions and processes, along with the memory of past experiences. Then one would have to be able to study that which had been retained. This is impossible. For the dreamer is in a passive state. He cannot undertake any autonomous activity. With the disappearance of the soul's mask, the sensation of one's own self disappears also. It is different with the waking soul life. There the autonomous activity of the soul can not only be sustained when one erases all one perceives of the external world; it can also be strengthened in itself. This happens if, while awake in the forming of mental pictures, one makes oneself as independent of the external world of the senses as one is in a dream. One becomes a fully conscious, wakeful imitator of the dream. Thereby, however, the illusory quality of the dream falls away. The dreamer takes his dream pictures for realities. If one is awake one can see through their unreality. No healthy person when awake and imitating the dream will take his dream images for realities. He will remain conscious of the fact that he is living in self-created illusions. He will not be able to create these illusions, however, if he merely remains at the ordinary level of consciousness. He must see to it that he strengthens this consciousness. He can achieve this by a continually renewed self-kindling of thinking from within. The inner soul activity grows with these repeated kindlings. (I have described in detail the appropriate inner activity in my books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment and An Outline of Occult Science). In this way the work of the soul during the twilight of dreams can be brought into the clear light of consciousness. One accomplishes thereby the opposite of what happens in suggestion or auto-suggestion. With these, something out of the semi-darkness and within the semi-darkness is shifted into the soul-life, which is then taken to be reality. In the fully circumspect activity of the soul just described, something is placed before one's inner view in clear consciousness, something that one regards, in the fullest sense of the word, only as illusion. One thus arrives at compelling the dream to manifest itself in the light of consciousness. Ordinarily this occurs only in the diminished half-awake consciousness. It shuns the clarity of consciousness. It disappears in its presence. The strengthened consciousness holds it fast. In holding the dream fast it does not gain in strength. On the contrary it diminishes in strength. Consciousness, however, is thereby induced to supply its own strength. The same thing happens here in the soul. It is just as it is when, in physical life, one transforms a solid into steam. The solid has its own boundaries on all sides. One can touch these boundaries. They exist in themselves. If one transforms the solid into steam, then one must enclose it within solid boundaries so that it will not escape. Similarly the soul, if it would hold fast the dream while awake, must shape itself, as it were, into a strong container. It must strengthen itself from within. The soul does not need to effect this strengthening when it perceives the images of the external world. Then the relationship of the body to the external world takes care that the soul is aroused to retain these images. If, however, the waking soul is to dream in sensory unreality, then it must hold fast this sensory unreality by its own strength. In the fully conscious representation [Vorstellen] of sensory unreality one develops the strength to behold the spiritual reality. In the dream state the autonomous activity of the soul is weak. The fleeting dream content overpowers this autonomous activity. This supremacy of the dream causes the soul to take the dream for reality. In ordinary waking consciousness the autonomous activity experiences itself as reality along with the reality of the sense world. This autonomous activity, however, cannot behold [anschauen] itself; its vision is occupied with the images of sense reality. If the autonomous activity learns to maintain itself by consciously filling itself with content unreal to the senses, then, little by little, it also brings to life self-contemplation [Anschaung] within itself. Then, it does not simply direct its gaze away from outer observation and back upon itself; it strides as soul activity backward and discovers itself as spiritual entity; this now becomes the content of its vision [Anschaung]. While the soul thus discovers itself within itself, the nature of dreaming is even more illumined for it. The soul discerns clearly what before it could only surmise: that dreaming does not cease in the waking state. It continues. The feeble activity of the dream, however, is drowned by the content of sense perception. Behind the brightness of consciousness, filled with the images of sense reality, there glimmers a dream world. And this world, while the soul is awake, is not illusory like the dream world of semi-consciousness. In the waking state man dreams—beneath the threshold of consciousness—about the inner processes of his body. While the external world is seen through the eye and is present in [vorgestallt] the soul, there lives in the background the dim dream of inner occurrences. Through the strengthening of the autonomous activity of the soul the vision of the external world is gradually dampened to the dimness of dream, and the vision of the inner world, in its reality, brightens. In its vision of the external world the soul is receptive; it experiences the external world as the creative principle and the soul's own content as created in the image of the external world. In the inner vision, the soul recognizes itself to be the creative principle. And one's own body is revealed as created in the image of the soul. Thoughts of the external world are to be felt [empfunden] as images of the beings and processes of the external world. To the soul's true vision, achieved in the way described, the human body can be felt [empfunden] only as the image of the human soul which is spiritual. In dreams, the soul activity is loosened from its firm union with the body, which it maintains in the ordinary waking state; it still retains, however, the loose relationship that fills it with the symbolic images of bodily senses and with the memory experiences that also are acquired through the body. In spiritual vision of itself the soul so grows in strength that its own higher reality becomes discernible, and the body becomes recognizable in its character of a reflected image of this reality. |
| 36. On the Life of the Soul: The Human Soul on the Path to Self-Observation
04 Nov 1923, Translated by Samuel Borton |
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| A dream, however, arises out of sleep. Whoever undertakes to raise the dream up into the clear light of consciousness must also feel the incentive to go still further. |
| 36. On the Life of the Soul: The Human Soul on the Path to Self-Observation
04 Nov 1923, Translated by Samuel Borton |
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In a dream the soul comprehends itself in a fleeting form, which is really a mask. In dreamless sleep it apparently loses itself entirely. In spiritual self-contemplation [Anschaung], which is achieved through circumspect reconstruction [besonnen] of the dream-state, the soul comes into its own as a creative being, of which the physical body is the reflected image. A dream, however, arises out of sleep. Whoever undertakes to raise the dream up into the clear light of consciousness must also feel the incentive to go still further. He does this when he tries consciously to experience dreamless sleep. That seems to be impossible, precisely because in sleep consciousness ceases. The desire consciously to experience unconsciousness seems like folly. The folly, however, takes on another light when one confronts the memories one can follow from a given point of time backward to one's last awakening. To do so one must proceed in such a way as to connect the memory pictures vividly with that which they recall. Then, if one tries—working backward—to proceed to the next conscious memory picture before that, this will be found before the last falling asleep. If one has really made the connection vivid with what is recalled, there arises an inner difficulty. One cannot join up the memory picture after awaking with the one before falling asleep. Ordinary consciousness gets one over this difficulty by not vividly connecting what is recalled, but simply placing the waking image next to the image one has on falling asleep. The person who has raised his consciousness to a high degree of sensitiveness, however, through conscious imitation of the dream, finds that the two images fall apart from one another [fallen ausenander]. For him an abyss lies between them, but because he notices this abyss it already begins to fill itself up. For his self-awareness the dreamless sleep ceases to be an empty passage of time. Out of it there emerges like a memory a spiritual content of the “empty time,” like a memory, it is true, of something that ordinary consciousness had not contained before. Even so this memory points to an experience of one's own soul like an ordinary memory. The soul, however, really looks thereby into that which in ordinary experience—in dreamless sleep—occurred unconsciously. On this path the soul looks still more deeply within than it does in the condition that arises as a result of the conscious dream imitation. In this condition the soul beholds its own body-forming being. Through the conscious penetration of dreamless sleep, the soul perceives itself in its own being, completely detached from the body. Now, however, the soul beholds not only the forming of the body but also, beyond that, the formation of its own willing [Wollen]. The inner nature of the will remains as unknown to ordinary consciousness as the events of dreamless sleep. One experiences a thought that contains the intention of the will. This thought sinks into the obscure world of the feelings and disappears into the darkness of the bodily processes. It emerges again as the external bodily process of an arm movement that is comprehended anew through a thought. Between the two thought contents there lies something like the sleep between the thoughts before falling asleep and those after waking. Now as the inner working of the soul upon the body becomes comprehensible to the first level of vision, so does the will over and above the body to the second. The soul can follow the path to behold its inner working upon the body's organic development; and it can take the other path by which it learns to comprehend how the soul works on the body in such a way as to extract the will from it. And just as dreaming lies between sleeping and waking, so feeling lies between willing and thinking. On the same path that leads to the illumination of the will process lies the illumination of the world of feeling also. In the first kind of vision the soul's inner working on the organism is revealed. In the second the soul penetrates to the will. But an inner activity must precede the outward manifestation of the will. Before the arm can be raised, the creative current must flow into it so that in its metabolic processes, which run on quietly, processes are inserted that are clearly the result of feeling. Feeling is a willing that remains enclosed within the human being, a willing that is arrested at its inception. The processes inserted into the body for feeling and willing reveal themselves for the second stage of vision as processes that are in opposition to those that support life. They are destructive processes. In the constructive processes life prospers; but the soul withers in them. The life of the body, which itself is built up by the soul, must be broken down so that the nature and activity of the soul can unfold out of the body. To spiritual vision the working of the soul on the body is like a memory of something that the soul had first to accomplish before it could exist in its own activity. Thereby, however, the soul experiences itself as a purely spiritual being that has let the forming of the body take precedence to the soul's own activity in order to have the body become the basis for the soul's inherent, purely spiritual development. The soul first devotes its creative effort to the body so that, after this has been done sufficiently, the soul can manifest itself in free spirituality. And this development of the soul begins already with thinking that results from the perception of the senses. When one perceives an object, the soul commences its activity. It shapes the corresponding part of the body in such a way that it becomes adapted for developing, in the form of thought, a mirror image of the object. In experiencing this mirror image, the soul beholds the result of its own activity. One will never find the spiritual nature of the soul by philosophizing about the thoughts that arise before ordinary consciousness. The spiritual activity of the soul does not lie in these thoughts but behind them. It is true that the thoughts which the soul experiences are the result of the brain's activity. The brain's activity, however, is first the result of the spiritual activity of the soul. In misunderstanding this fact lies what is unsound in the materialistic world view. This view is right when it demonstrates from every possible scientific presupposition that thoughts are the result of the brain's activity. Any other view that seeks to contradict this will always run up against the claims of materialism. The activity of the brain, however, is the product of the activity of the spirit. To realize this it is not sufficient to look back into the inner being of man. In doing so one encounters thoughts. And these contain only a pictorial reality. This pictorial reality is the product of the physical body. In observing retrospectively one must bring to life reinforced and strengthened soul capacities. One must wrest the dreaming soul from the twilight of the dream; then it will not evaporate into fantasies, but rather lay its mask aside so as to appear as a being active spiritually in the body. One must wrest the sleeping soul from the darkness of sleep; then the soul does not lose sight of itself but faces itself as an actual spiritual entity, which in the act of willing, by means of the bodily organism, creates above and beyond this body. |
| 36. Collected Essays from “Das Goetheanum” 1921–1925: The Global Issue
28 Aug 1921, |
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| However, this will not be possible if other conditions for international understanding do not arise. It will not be possible to do business with the peoples of Asia if we cannot win their trust. |
| We will have to win the hearts and minds of the Asian people. Without this, all contact will be undermined by the mistrust of these people. And in contrast to this, world issues of the greatest importance arise. |
| So far, it has only developed the external side of its nature. It has achieved what the Asian does not understand and never will want to understand. But this external side arises from an inner strength that has not yet revealed itself in its uniqueness. |
| 36. Collected Essays from “Das Goetheanum” 1921–1925: The Global Issue
28 Aug 1921, |
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The world expects important decisions from the Washington Conference, which is to take place in November. Although the Western powers have listed disarmament and the issues of the Pacific as a kind of program for this meeting, only the latter will be seriously considered at first, with the former being seen as a kind of moral decoration. For it is in the Pacific Ocean that the lines converge on which the attention of the powers on which the fate of the world depends today is focused: North America, England, Japan. If one examines the interests at stake, one will recognize their economic character as the truly decisive one. The parties want to come to terms on economic advantages; and they will disarm or rearm to the extent that these advantages make it necessary. They cannot do otherwise. For the way the individual states have developed, they must act as economic powers; and all other questions can only appear to them in the light that emanates from their economic motives. But Europe and North America, with the way of thinking that their own historical development has given them, will encounter the most serious obstacles in Asia. What the South African minister Smuts said at the London Empire Conference seems significant to many. He said that in the future, political attention could no longer be focused on the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, but would have to be directed towards the Pacific Ocean for the next fifty years. But the actions that will be taken under the influence of this view must clash with the will of the Asians. The world economy, which has been developing for about five decades, should continue to develop internally, should involve the peoples of Asia in its sphere in a way that has only just begun. However, this will not be possible if other conditions for international understanding do not arise. It will not be possible to do business with the peoples of Asia if we cannot win their trust. But trust can only be gained to a certain extent on a purely economic basis. This will not be enough for what we have in mind. We will have to win the hearts and minds of the Asian people. Without this, all contact will be undermined by the mistrust of these people. And in contrast to this, world issues of the greatest importance arise. In the course of the last few centuries, the Westerners have developed schools of thought and feeling that arouse the mistrust of the Asians. No matter how much the Asian may learn about Western science and the technical results of this science, it does not attract him; it repels him. If he sees his Asian fellow countrymen, the Japanese, leaning towards Western civilization, he regards them as renegades from true Asianism. He looks upon Western culture as something inferior to the inner riches of his own spiritual life. He does not see that he is lagging behind in material progress; he sees only his spiritual aspirations, and these appear to him to be superior to those of Westerners. Nor does he find the way in which they relate to Christianity to be sufficient to match the depth of his religious experience. What he now learns about this way of life, he regards as religious materialism; and the depth of Christian experience does not now confront him. The Western nations will face impossible questions if they do not take this antagonism of souls into account in their world-political perceptions. As long as one regards this antagonism as a sentimentality with which the practical man of life does not concern himself, one will only work towards world-political chaos. One will have to learn to regard as practical impulses things that have so far only been regarded as the ideology of dreamers. And the West could make this change of heart. So far, it has only developed the external side of its nature. It has achieved what the Asian does not understand and never will want to understand. But this external side arises from an inner strength that has not yet revealed itself in its uniqueness. This power can be developed, and then it will be able to conquer the achievements in the material world and add to them the results of a spiritual life, which for the Asian may represent values of the world. Of course, one can say against such an assertion: In the face of Asian barbarism, the West has internalization, soulfulness, and indeed the “higher” culture. This is certainly true. But that is not the point. What is important is that Westerners can develop a deep soul, but their history has led them not to bring the soul into public life; the Asian may be childlike and even superficial in his soul, but he brings it into public life. Nor does the contrast mentioned here have anything to do with good and evil. Nor does it have anything to do with beautiful and ugly, artistic and inartistic. But it does have to do with the fact that the Asian experiences his feelings and his mind in his external sensual world, while the Westerner's soul remains inside when he surrenders to the world of his senses. The Asian finds the spirit by living sensually; he often finds a bad spirit there, but a spirit nonetheless. No matter how closely Westerners are connected to the spirit within themselves, their senses escape this spirit and strive towards a mechanically conceived and ordered world. Naturally, Westerners will not adopt a spiritual way of thinking and feeling for the sake of Asians. They can only do so out of their own spiritual needs. The Asian question cannot even be the reason for this. But the material civilization of the West has reached the point where it must itself perceive its revelations as unsatisfactory, where its humanity must feel inwardly empty and desolate. The soul of the Western man must strive for the interiorization of the whole of existence, for a spiritual grasp of life, if it understands itself aright at the present moment in its development. This striving is a matter demanded by the present situation in the West itself. It coincides with the necessary world-political focus on the East. And the West will continue to indulge in disastrous illusions about the great tasks of the time as long as it fails to realize that without the will to renew the soul life, further human progress is impossible. One can feel spiritual shame when one sees what the Asian calls his spiritual superiority. And it is only deception when the Westerner absorbs the way of thinking of the ancient Orient as a spiritual good that he adds to his material acquisitions as a supplement. The spiritual content through which the Western man can make his science, his technology, and his economic abilities truly humane must come from the abilities that he can develop within himself. “Ex oriente lux” many have said. But the light coming from outside does not become perception of light if it is not received by an inner light. Soulless world politics must become a spiritual one. Of course, the development of the soul is an intimate human matter. But the deeds of a person with an internalized soul life are links in the external world order. The commercial sense that the Asian gets to know about the European is rejected in the East; a soul that reveals spiritual content will inspire trust. It may seem practical only for the old ways of thinking to answer the question of how to make China an economic area that presents its results to the Western powers; but the truly practical question of the future will be how to communicate with the souls of the people living in Asia. World economy can only be an outer body for a soul that must be found for it. It may appear to some to be rather ideological that a consideration of the times begins with the Washington Conference and ends with the demands of the soul. Yet in our fast-paced times, many of those who now live and spurn ideas may yet find that the denial of the soul will not prove to be a practical approach to life. |
| 36. Collected Essays from “Das Goetheanum” 1921–1925: America and Germany
04 Sep 1921, |
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| Wilson believed he could give laws to the world, but he did not understand that only those who trust each other can work together. Trust can only arise when souls meet with understanding. But this understanding must come from the spirit, which is experienced as a reality. Wilson's principles do not come from this spirit, but from abstractions of the intellect, divorced from reality. |
| 36. Collected Essays from “Das Goetheanum” 1921–1925: America and Germany
04 Sep 1921, |
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A peace document has been created between America and Germany. It is a true reflection of the thoughts and feelings from which states today believe they can organize their relationships. Wilson's thinking no longer lives in this document. It was the expression of a belief in unworldly intellectual considerations. It was admired in wide circles and dominated the convictions of many people until it was dashed by the facts. Wilson was seen as the man who wanted to give the world a new direction out of the spirit. But today one can talk about the spirit without the talk coming from the spirit. One can appear as an idealist without having ideas rooted in the real spirit. With such ideas one can arouse false enthusiasm; before the true tasks of contemporary life, they falter. Wilson was a political romantic. This is how people who consider themselves true practitioners will now speak. And there will be many among them who, until recently, would have allowed what Wilson said as a minimum of idealism in the context of their “practical” convictions. They now stand in rapture before the peace document, which seeks to regulate economic relations from the perspective of sober reason, knowing how to keep away from political romanticism. But this soberness is only the other side of what it regards as idealistic romanticism. It lives in the same illusion; it just does not know it because it looks at the unworldly ideas not from the front but from the back. Wilson believed he could give laws to the world, but he did not understand that only those who trust each other can work together. Trust can only arise when souls meet with understanding. But this understanding must come from the spirit, which is experienced as a reality. Wilson's principles do not come from this spirit, but from abstractions of the intellect, divorced from reality. Yet he wanted to act out of the spirit; out of a spirit-alien sham spirit. Now Wilson is being corrected by leaving out the spirit altogether and adhering to the business sense that is considered effective because it is soberly practical. And once again, those who believe that they can best manage together if they do not concern themselves with all spiritual and soul human relationships are allowed to feel how right they are. This is the line of thought that more recent human development has followed until the terrible catastrophe of war occurred. But haven't we done everything for a spiritual community? one might ask. Haven't we even exchanged professors who spoke from an American “mentality” in Europe and from a European “mentality” in America? Oh yes, we have done that. But these professors did not speak out of a world-view that comes from the living spirit. And so this spiritual community remained a decoration, from which economic interests were not affected. But humanity must be healed with spiritual reality; the spiritual decoration has brought it no help. Only when this realization dawns will documents emerge in international relations that also make economic work possible. With such a confession one encounters the superior smile of those who say: you may wait a long time for that, because humanity will only be ripe for such thinking after fifty years. Others say after a hundred; others choose an even larger number. The size of the number grows in proportion to the extent to which people feel compelled to smile at what they call impractical idealism. Well, in this case, trial is likely to be better than prophecy. Humanity will become more accessible to the living spirit sooner than the practical people believe possible, if the urge for this spirit is no longer paralyzed by that seductive way of thinking that scents superstition, romanticism, and illogicality wherever a view of life based on spiritual experience is striven for. One must will the spirit if it is to become effective; and in order to will it, one has only to revel in the fruitless judgment that the waiting time will determine, after which it will come of its own accord. To such waiting souls one can reply: the spirit will not appear in fifty, a hundred, five hundred years if its appearance is not willed. But it is absurd when we are told: “We don't want the spirit,” say the waiting souls. We want it just as much as you do. But no, you have to tell them. You don't want it; at most you wish for it. Because only the living spirit itself turns wishing into wanting. But it can only do that when people open the gates of the soul for it. The body that has formed out of world economic interests needs the care of its soul. One should not wait for it to appear by itself. It is there; for every body has a soul. But it also wants to merge with its essence into the way people think in order to become effective. |
| 36. Collected Essays from “Das Goetheanum” 1921–1925: What Can Counteract the Divisive Aspects of Contemporary Life?
11 Sep 1921, |
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| Today, when the old party and class spirit, the interests of the old economic system, have disastrously preserved themselves, there is a need for a general humanity in which people can understand each other. Can only the prospect of death bring human souls together in this way? It would certainly be impossible for the present time to produce the forces of an awakening in the face of decline if the answer to this question were “yes”. |
| 36. Collected Essays from “Das Goetheanum” 1921–1925: What Can Counteract the Divisive Aspects of Contemporary Life?
11 Sep 1921, |
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A sense of weariness pervades the soul in the face of public life. People are only torn out of this mood when an event takes them by surprise, allowing them to avert their gaze from the political disharmony and the economic processes of decomposition. For Germany, such an event occurred in the assassination of Archberger. Beyond party opinion, beyond personal or class identity, one had to feel purely humanly in the face of what had happened. Opponents and supporters of the murdered man are essentially united in their feelings. It is symptomatic that such a meeting of souls should take place in the present life. Today, when the old party and class spirit, the interests of the old economic system, have disastrously preserved themselves, there is a need for a general humanity in which people can understand each other. Can only the prospect of death bring human souls together in this way? It would certainly be impossible for the present time to produce the forces of an awakening in the face of decline if the answer to this question were “yes”. The sight of life must also be able to lead to this feeling in the universal human being. From deep within the soul, man senses that death confronts him with a higher responsibility than that which he imposes on himself by thinking politically or economically out of the current habits of thought. This can be felt in the agitation that resulted from the assassination of Archberger. Something that comes from spiritual life stirs instinctively when the dispute of material interests blows away the general human. What needs to be done is indicated by such signs. The paths to the spirit must be sought from life itself. The weariness of souls stems from the disbelief of the broadest circles in the old party and class opinions. These form the great disappointment of humanity. People used to devote themselves to them with enthusiasm or out of interest. They were attributed an effectiveness. One sees that events pass over them. One has lost faith in them. Nevertheless, they still appear everywhere as the sole foundations of public judgment and action. Those who want something look for this or that idea to which one professed one's faith before the catastrophic events. And they try to win over the members of these old party groups for this idea. And in this striving it becomes clear to him how unreceptive the people he wants to inspire are, because disappointment paralyzes their feelings. Only one thing can lead out of this state of emergency. In a sufficiently large number of people, this spiritual life must be stimulated by what has been discussed in the previous numbers of this weekly publication. Tiredness in the face of bitter disappointment will be a good seedbed for the germination of this spiritual life. But for that to happen, it is necessary to avoid the thought of how to tie in with what this or that group of people has meant so far. It is precisely this tying in that confuses people. It is considered wise to tie in with what people are accustomed to. But it is precisely this that makes them suspicious in their innermost souls. For they themselves basically no longer believe in this habit; they only hold on to it because the actual circumstances of their party grouping bind them. But one needs ideas that work out of the power of the spirit in such a way that individuals gather around them by virtue of their common humanity. Whether or not the way out of the present chaos can be found will depend on the purity with which such ideas are brought to the people. It is certainly difficult at present to work for the purity of ideas. But only the insight that these difficulties must be overcome can help. Today one can already find a number of people who are more or less inclined towards the spiritual life as characterized in this weekly. But many of them believe that one can only speak to this or that person in a certain way. One will have to get away from that. Because by doing so, the other person only hears something that he thinks corresponds to this or that that he knows well. And he thinks that you can't do anything with that. He then only listens half way and soon returns to his old tired mood. One must have the courage to wait until the power that lies in the life-filled spirit takes hold of the person. One will then find that one has to wait less long than if one waits until the “maturity” of the people whose entry one postpones to a preferably indefinite future. In the spirit of life, if it is only properly emphasized, human souls will have to find each other as they can find each other when the shadow of the spirit, death, steps before them. The jagged forces can also fall silent before the living spirit; and, what is the main thing, they will not just have an arousing effect on the feelings; they will pour into the will; they will become deeds. And that is what the present needs. |
| 36. Collected Essays from “Das Goetheanum” 1921–1925: Unemployment
09 Oct 1921, |
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| The world economic conditions that have emerged for the present, with the complicated relationships between nations, should soon bring about conditions under which such a war could not continue. It was “political economy” that spoke thus. Reality spoke differently. |
| Its length had its origin in the ineffectiveness of the world economic underpinnings. The discussions Lord Cecil dreams of can only become a fruitful reality if they do not create causes in the life of nations that “cannot” actually be there, just as, according to “economic insight”, the causes for a long duration of the war were not there at all. |
| The chaotic interaction of politics, intellectual life and the economy undermines this recovery. It produces statesmanlike dreams, just as a chaotic interaction of the organic functions in man produces disturbing dreams. |
| 36. Collected Essays from “Das Goetheanum” 1921–1925: Unemployment
09 Oct 1921, |
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Before the world war, there were people who said that a catastrophe of this kind could not last long. The world economic conditions that have emerged for the present, with the complicated relationships between nations, should soon bring about conditions under which such a war could not continue. It was “political economy” that spoke thus. Reality spoke differently. Its language penetrated more deeply. It overran the world economic interrelations. And today this overrunning has become world economic chaos. One bitter symptom, among many, of this chaos is unemployment. Its origins are just as much a mystery to the “economic insight” as the long duration of the war. But both the long duration of the war and unemployment, as well as many other things, clearly show that the “economic insight” that has judged them is not really insight. In the development of the world economy, the historical necessities of human evolution have been at work. However, the institutions that have been set up in the course of this development have been influenced to a large extent by political intentions that ran counter to economic necessities. The exchange rate conditions that are now paralyzing and corrupting all economic activity could never have arisen from a world economy that was not crossed by political thinking. The emergence of the world economy has made it necessary to create administrative bodies for economic life that work from the conditions of the economy itself. Such administrative bodies can only be associations that arise from the conditions of production, consumption and the circulation of goods. Only such associations are able to shape the interaction of the three factors mentioned in such a way that, for example, unhealthy production on the one hand does not deprive countless people on the other of the opportunity to produce. Unemployment can only be the result of unhealthy economic management. It is not claimed here that unemployment can be counteracted by this or that theoretically conceived recipe. That would be utopian thinking. It is meant that in the living activity of associations that arise from the needs of the economy itself, a way of thinking can develop that results in healthy conditions. Only in an economic life that develops in this way can a healthy political life also flourish. As long as there was no world economy, political intentions could be realized in the old way. For the individual national economies could be shaped in their own interests. The world economy can only develop in a healthy way out of its own conditions. And in a similar way to which the development of the world economy strives towards an independent associative economic administration, so through historical necessity the newer spiritual life is shaped out of its own conditions. Lord Cecil dreams of the future of the League of Nations. For what he said at the League of Nations conference is indeed a dream: that “later on” this League of Nations will bring salvation to the world through the participation of the statesmen of all countries in impressive debates. This “dream” comes from the same root as the “insight” that a world war cannot last long because of the world economy. The same root could well give rise to the “insight” that unemployment on the scale that prevails today cannot arise within the world economy. If the world economy had been effective based on its conditions, we would not have had a world war. Its length had its origin in the ineffectiveness of the world economic underpinnings. The discussions Lord Cecil dreams of can only become a fruitful reality if they do not create causes in the life of nations that “cannot” actually be there, just as, according to “economic insight”, the causes for a long duration of the war were not there at all. But thanks to political “insight,” what was impossible in terms of world economics was possible after all. The “politically insightful” also had dreams that, in the opinion of the “economically insightful,” had no possibility of being realized. After the experiences of recent years, there can be little confidence in the realization of dreams in the manner of Lord Cecil. A League of Nations needs world politicians. They must replace the “dreams” of the old style of politics with the doctrine that speaks so loudly of how much this old politics has corrupted the world economy. It has simply not thought about the independent conditions of the world economy. In the debates that arise on the basis of an associative economic life, the economic forces themselves will flow in. They will be able to be shorter than the political-economic ones. For a large part of the essential will not be expressed in words but in the actions of the personalities in the associations. What is said will only be the guiding principle for action. Those who really think in terms of the world economy will be able to be assisted by politicians who work fruitfully with them. Unemployment! People cannot find work! But there must be work. Because people are there. And in a healthy social organism, the work that cannot be done cannot be superfluous, but must be missing somewhere. So much unemployment, so much scarcity. But this clearly indicates that unemployment can only be counterbalanced by the general recovery of economic institutions. The chaotic interaction of politics, intellectual life and the economy undermines this recovery. It produces statesmanlike dreams, just as a chaotic interaction of the organic functions in man produces disturbing dreams. It is time that the public life of nations learned to distinguish dreams from true realities. Dreams are not without effect. If their character as dreams is not recognized, they create false realities. The world war was the result of many people being too comfortable in their dreams to avoid oversleeping true reality. |
| 36. Collected Essays from “Das Goetheanum” 1921–1925: Feelings While Reading the Third Volume of Bismarck
23 Oct 1921, |
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| Bismarck speaks to help understand the past. A past in which his word had the power to determine reality. What he says about it is as if the facts themselves were speaking. |
| The Eastern question is ultimately a question of intellectual understanding; and everything else is provisional. Even for those who do not believe that Bismarck's views have survived from the past before 1890 into the future as a decisive force, the third volume of his memoirs is nevertheless a “lesson for the future”. |
| Understanding of ideas arises out of feelings; understanding of important ideas may flash from the feeling which the third volume of Bismarck's Thoughts and Recollections arouses. |
| 36. Collected Essays from “Das Goetheanum” 1921–1925: Feelings While Reading the Third Volume of Bismarck
23 Oct 1921, |
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The third volume of Bismarck's thoughts and memories bears the dedication on the title page: “To sons and grandchildren for understanding the past and for learning for the future.” Anyone who has read the volume without party prejudices, but with an interest in the destinies of humanity, of nations and their development, can only look back with shock at this “dedication”. Bismarck speaks to help understand the past. A past in which his word had the power to determine reality. What he says about it is as if the facts themselves were speaking. And how this word, which bore witness to the facts, had an effect on the immediate future is written on page 55 of the book: “How exactly, I would like to say, subaltern Caprivi followed the ‘consignment’, was shown by the fact that he did not address any kind of question or inquiry to me about the state of the state affairs that he was about to take over, about the previous goals and intentions of the Reich government and the means of implementing them.” The “lesson for the future” that Bismarck could have taught was not even sought by the man who took his place. Bismarck's statement is a significant symptom for the historical development of Central Europe. His dismissal indeed marks a turning point in modern history. In this dismissal, two factors emerge that have long been decisive for the fate of Europe, but which have now, to a certain extent, become historically topical. These are the social question and the conflict with the East. The social question had to be included in practical and political considerations. The time when it could only be considered, within certain limits, as the bearer of criticism by dissatisfied masses was over. Whatever one may think of revolutions, every unprejudiced person should realize that the social question, at any rate, can never be answered by revolutionary methods. If anywhere, calm reason is required here, by the thing itself. And the first thing to be done in regard to this question is to ascertain how to arrive at this “calm reason” in practice. The European development of the last three decades has suffered from this “preliminary question”. With Bismarck's dismissal, it unloaded like a worrying sheet of lightning. The words on page 116 of the third volume stand out loudly from this sheet of lightning: “The reasons that led His Majesty to dismiss me ... were never officially revealed to me or mentioned by His Majesty, ... I could only guess at them through ConjJectur. ... I had the impression that the Kaiser did not want me to appear in Berlin before and after New Year 1890 because he knew that, in view of my convictions about social democracy in the Reichstag, I would not speak in the sense of those who had since become its... Today, the whole of Europe is still at the same point it was at the time when Bismarck was not supposed to appear in Berlin because of what he would have said. The other factor at work in Bismarck's dismissal is the question of the East. It will have to be said that the question is: how should Europe behave when the forces of the eastern nations are actively involved in its affairs? Bismarck added to the Triple Alliance a political relationship with Russia, which he hoped would, together with the Triple Alliance, preserve the European nation states that had come into being with his help. The Slav aspirations argue against such a relationship. The sharp contrast between the West and the East of the world speaks to such a relationship. Even Bismarck could only think of a provisional arrangement in what he did in this direction. But he could believe that in the time in which this provisional arrangement exists, things will happen that will put the great national question of the East on a different footing from that on which it stood in 1890. The fact that those who succeeded in dethroning him did not see the situation in the same way as he did contributed to his dismissal. And with regard to the Eastern question, Europe is still at the same point as those who abandoned Bismarck's Russian policy. The Eastern question is ultimately a question of intellectual understanding; and everything else is provisional. Even for those who do not believe that Bismarck's views have survived from the past before 1890 into the future as a decisive force, the third volume of his memoirs is nevertheless a “lesson for the future”. And today in a very special sense. For the “future” of which Bismarck speaks is today partly a gruesome past, partly a present full of tasks. The dramatic description of this book can only be properly understood today if one maintains the feeling in life that Bismarck's fall expresses a symptom of the emergence of great developmental questions for humanity, and that the infertility of the last thirty years in dealing with these questions is the continuation of the “lesson” that speaks from this fall. Understanding of ideas arises out of feelings; understanding of important ideas may flash from the feeling which the third volume of Bismarck's Thoughts and Recollections arouses. |