It
is important to be aware of the need which existed in the
anthroposophical movement for Christianity to be asserted,
specifically among those who were initially what might be
described as ordinary listeners. For the theosophical movement
under the guidance of H.P. Blavatsky had adopted an expressly
anti-christian orientation. I wish to throw a little more light
on this anti-christian attitude, a perspective which I also
mentioned in connection with Friedrich Nietzsche.
It has to be
understood that the Mystery of Golgotha occurred in the first
instance simply as a fact in the development of mankind on earth.
If you look at the way in which I have dealt with the subject in
my book, Christianity
As Mystical Fact,
you will see that I attempted to come to an understanding of the
impulses underlying the ancient Mysteries, and then to show how
the various forces which were active in the individual mystery
centres were harmonized and unified. Thus what was initially
encountered by human beings in a hidden way could be presented
openly as a historical fact. In this sense the historical reality
of the Mystery of Golgotha represents the culmination of the
ancient Mysteries. Remnants of the ancient mystery wisdom were
present when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. With the aid of
these remnants, which were incorporated into the Gospels, it was
possible to find access to this event, which gave earth
development its true meaning.
The impulses
derived from ancient wisdom which were still directly experienced
began to fade in the fourth century AD, so that the wisdom was
preserved only in a more or less traditional form, allowing
particular people in one place or another to revitalize these
traditions. But the kind of continuous development which the
Mysteries enjoyed in ancient times had disappeared, taking with
it the means to understand the Mystery of Golgotha.
The tradition
remained. The Gospels existed, kept secret at first by the
communities of the church and then published in individual
nations. The rituals existed. As the western world developed it
was possible to keep alive a memory of the Mystery of Golgotha.
But the opportunity to maintain the memory came to an end in that
moment in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch when intellectualism,
with what I described yesterday as modern education, made its
appearance. And with it a type of science of the natural world
began, which pre-empted any understanding of the spiritual world
as it developed the kind of methodology seen to date. This
methodology needed to be expanded in the way that anthroposophy
has sought to expand it. If one does not progress beyond the
scientific method introduced by Copernicus, Galileo and so on,
the Mystery of Golgotha has no place within the resultant view of
nature.
Now consider the
following. In none of the ancient religions was there any
division between knowledge of the natural world and knowledge of
God. It is a common feature of all pagan religions that there is
a unity in the way in which they explain nature, and in how that
understanding of nature then ascends to an understanding of the
divine, the many-faceted divinity, which is active in nature.
The kind of
abstract natural forces we are now aware of, unchallenged in
their absoluteness, did not exist. What did exist were nature
spirits which guided the various aspects of nature, and with
which links could be established through the content of the human
soul.
Now anthroposophy
will never make the claim that it somehow wants to become a
religion. However, although religion will always need to be an
independent spiritual stream in mankind, it is a simple human
desire for harmony to exist between cognition and the religious
life. It must be possible to make the transition from cognition
to religion and to return from religion to cognition without
having to cross an abyss. That is impossible, given the structure
of modern learning. It is impossible, above all, to discover the
nature of Christ on this scientific basis. Modern science, in
investigating the being of Christ ever more closely, has
scattered and lost it.
If you bear this in
mind, you will be able to understand what follows. Let me begin
by talking about Nietzsche, whose father was a practising
minister. He went through a modern grammar school education. But
since he was not a bread-and-butter scholar but a thinker, his
interest extended to everything which could be learnt through
modern methods. So he consciously and in a radical way became
aware of the dichotomy which in reality affects all modern minds,
although people do not realize it and are prone to illusion
because they draw a veil over it. Nietzsche says: Nowhere does
modern education provide a direct link to an explanation of Jesus
Christ without jumping over an abyss. His uncompromising
conclusion is that if one wants to establish a relationship with
modern science while preserving some sort of inner feeling for
the traditional explanations of Christ, it is necessary to lie.
And so he chose modern learning, and thus arrived at a radical
indictment of what he knew about Christianity.
No one has been
more cutting about Christianity than Nietzsche, the minister's
son. And he experiences this with his whole being. One example is
when he says — and it is not, of course, my standpoint —
that what a modern theologian believes to be true is certainly
false. And he finds that the whole of modern philosophy has too
much theological blood flowing through its veins. As a result he
formulates his tremendous indictment of Christianity, which is of
course blasphemous, but which is an honest blasphemy and
therefore worthy of greater attention than the hypocrisy which is
so often found in this field today. It needs to be emphasized
that a person like Nietzsche, who was serious about wanting to
understand the Mystery of Golgotha, was not able to do so with
the means at his disposal, including the Gospels in their present
form.
Anthroposophy
provides an interpretation of all four Gospels, [ Note
1 ]
and these interpretations are rejected decisively by theologians
of all denominations. But they were not available to Nietzsche.
It is the most difficult thing for a scientific mind — and
almost all people today have scientific minds in this sense, even
if at a basic level — to come to terms with the Mystery of
Golgotha, and what is precisely not the old Mysteries, but the
discovery of a whole new mystery knowledge. The discovery of the
spiritual world in a wholly new form is necessary.
Basically
Blavatsky's inspiration also came from the ancient Mysteries. If
one takes The Secret Doctrine as a whole, it really feels
like nothing fundamentally new but the resurrection of that
knowledge which was used in the ancient Mysteries to recognize
the divine and the spiritual. But these Mysteries are only
capable of explaining the events which happened in anticipation
of Christ. Those who were familiar with the impulses of the
ancient Mysteries when Christianity was still young were able to
adopt a positive attitude to what happened at Golgotha. This
applied into the fourth century. The real meaning of the Greek
Church Fathers was still understood: how their roots stretched
back to the ancient Mysteries, and how their words have quite a
different tone from those of the later Latin Church Fathers.
The ancient wisdom
which understood nature and spirit as one was contained in
Blavatsky's revelations. That is the way, she thought, to find
the divine and the spiritual, to make them accessible to human
perception. And from that perspective she turned her attention to
what present-day traditional thinking and the modern faiths were
saying about Christ Jesus. She could not, of course, understand
the Gospels in the way they are understood in anthroposophy, and
the knowledge which came from elsewhere was not adequate to deal
with the knowledge of the spirit which Blavatsky brought. That is
the origin of her contempt for the way in which the Mystery of
Golgotha was understood by the world. In her view, what people
were saying about the Mystery of Golgotha was on a much lower
level than all the majestic wisdom provided by the ancient
Mysteries. In other words, the Christian god stands on a lower
level than the content of the ancient Mysteries.
That was not the
fault of the Christian god, but it was the result of
interpretations of the Christian god. Blavatsky simply did not
know the nature of the Mystery of Golgotha and was able to judge
it only by what was being said about it. These things have to be
seen in an objective light. As the power of the ancient Mysteries
was drawing to a final close in the last remnants of Greek
culture in the fourth century AD, Rome took possession of
Christianity. The empirical attitude of Roman culture to learning
was incapable of opening a real path to the spirit. Rome forced
Christianity to adopt its outer trappings. It is this romanized
Christianity alone which was known to Nietzsche and Blavatsky.
Thus these souls
whom I described as homeless, whose earlier earth lives were
lighting up within them, took the first thing on offer because
their sole aim was to find access to the spiritual world, even at
the risk of losing Christianity. These were the people who began
by seeking a way into the Theosophical Society.
Now the position of
anthroposophy in relation to these homeless souls has to be
clearly understood. These were searching, questioning souls. And
the first necessity was to find out what questions resided in
their innermost selves. And if anthroposophy addressed these
souls, it was because they had questions about things to which
anthroposophy thought it had the answer. The other people among
our contemporaries were not bothered by such questions.
Anthroposophy
therefore considered what came into the world with Blavatsky to
be an important fact. But its purpose was not to observe the
knowledge which she presented, but essentially to understand
those questions which people found perplexing.
How were the
answers to be formulated? We need to look at the matter as
positively and as factually as possible. Here we had these
questioning souls. Their questions were clear. They
believed they could find an answer to them in something like
Annie Besant's book The
Ancient Wisdom,
[ Note
2 ]
for instance. Obviously, it would have been stupid to tell people
that this or that bit of The
Ancient Wisdom
was no longer relevant. The only possible course was to give real
answers by ignoring The
Ancient Wisdom
at a time when this book was, as it were, dogma among these
people, and by writing my book Theosophy,
[ Note
3 ]
which gave answers to questions which I knew were being asked.
That was the positive answer. And there was no need to do more
than that. People had to be left completely free to choose
whether they wanted to continue to read The
Ancient Wisdom
or whether they wanted to use Theosophy.
In times of great
historical change things are not decided in as rational and
direct a manner as one likes to think. Thus I did not find it at
all surprising that the theosophists who attended the lecture
cycle on anthroposophy when the German Section was established,
remarked that it did not agree in the slightest with what Mrs
Besant was saying.
Of course it could
not agree, because the answers had to be found in what the
deepened consciousness of the present can provide. Until about
1907 each step taken by anthroposophy was a battle against the
traditions of the Theosophical Society. At first the members of
the Theosophical Society were the only people whom one could
approach with these things. Every step had to be conquered. A
polemical approach would have been useless; the only sensible
course was hope, and making the right choices.
These things
certainly did not happen without inner reservations. Everything
had to be done at the right time and place, at least in my view.
I believe that in my Theosophy
I did not go one step beyond what it was possible to publish and
for a certain number of people to accept at that time. The wide
distribution of the book since then shows that this was an
accurate assumption.
It was possible to
go further among those who were engaged in a more intensive
search, who had been caught up in the stream set in motion by
Blavatsky. I will take only one instance. It was common in the
Theosophical Society to describe how human beings went through
what was called kamaloka after death. To begin with, the
description given by its leaders could only be put in a proper
context in my book Theosophy by avoiding the concept of time. But I wanted to deal with the
correct concept of time within the Society.
|
G
= Geburt (birth) T = Tod (death)
|
As a result I gave
lectures about life between death and a new birth within the then
Dutch Section of the Theosophical Society. And there I pointed
out, right at the start of my activity, that it is nonsense
simply to say that we pass through kamaloka as if our
consciousness is merely extended a little. (see diagram above). I
showed that time has to be seen as moving backwards, and I
described how our existence in kamaloka is life in reverse, stage
by stage, only at three times the pace of the life we spend on
earth. Nowadays, of course, people leading their physical lives
have no idea that this backward movement is a reality in the
spiritual realm, because time is imagined simply as a straight
line.
Now the leaders of
the Theosophical Society professed to renew the teachings of the
old wisdom. All kinds of other writings appeared which were based
on Blavatsky's book. But their content took a form which
corresponded exactly to the way things are presented as a result
of modern materialism. Why? Because new knowledge, not simply the
renewal of old knowledge, had to be pursued if the right things
were to be found. Buddha's wheel of birth and death and the old
oriental wisdom was quoted on every occasion. That a wheel is
something which has to be drawn as turning back on itself (see
diagram) was ignored by people. There was no life in this
rejuvenation of the old wisdom, because it did not spring from
direct knowledge. In short, it was necessary through direct
knowledge to create something which was also capable of
illuminating the ancient wisdom.
Nevertheless, in
the first seven years of my anthroposophical work there were
people who denied that there was anything new in my material in
relation to theosophy. But people never forgot the trouble I
caused in the Dutch Section by filling my lectures with living
material. When the congress took place in Munich in 1907 [ Note
4 ]
the Dutch theosophists were seething that an alien influence, as
they perceived it, was muscling in. They did not feel the living
present standing against something which was based merely on
tradition.
Something had to
change. That is when the conversation between Mrs Besant and
myself took place in Munich, [ Note
5 ]
and it was clarified that the things which I had to represent as
anthroposophy would work quite independently of other things
active within the Theosophical Society. What I might describe as
a modus
vivendi
was agreed.
On the other hand,
even at that time the absurdities of the Theosophical Society
which eventually led to its downfall began to be visible on the
horizon. For it is clear today that it has been ruined as a
society which is able to support a spiritual movement, however
great its membership. What the Theosophical Society used to be is
no longer alive today.
When anthroposophy
began its work the Theosophical Society still contained a
justified and full spirituality. The things which were brought
into the world by Blavatsky were a reality, and people had a
living relationship with them. But Blavatsky had already been
dead for a decade. The mood within the Theosophical Society, the
things which existed as a continuation of Blavatsky's work, had a
solid historico-cultural foundation; they were quite capable of
giving something to people. But even at that time they already
contained the seeds of decay. The only question was whether these
could be overcome, or whether they would inevitably lead to
complete disharmony between anthroposophy and the old
Theosophical Society.
It has to be said
that a destructive element existed in the Theosophical Society
even in Blavatsky's time. It is necessary to separate Blavatsky's
spiritual contribution from the effect of the way in which she
was prompted to make her revelations. We are dealing with a
personality who, however she was prompted, nevertheless was
creative and through herself gave wisdom to mankind, even if this
wisdom was more like a memory of earlier lives on earth and
restricted to the rejuvenation of ancient wisdom. The second
fact, that Blavatsky was prompted to act in a particular way,
introduced elements into the theosophical movement which were no
longer appropriate if it was to become a purely spiritual
movement.
For that it was
not. The fact is that Blavatsky was prompted from a certain
direction, and as a result of this she produced all the things
which are written in Isis Unveiled. But by various
machinations Blavatsky for a second time fell under outside
influence, namely of eastern esoteric teachers propelled by
cultural tendencies of an egoistic nature. From the beginning a
biased policy lay at the basis of the things they wished to
achieve through Blavatsky. It included the desire to create a
kind of sphere of influence — first of a spiritual nature,
but then in a more general sense — of the East over the
West, by providing the West's spirituality, or lack of it if you
like, with eastern wisdom. That is how the transformation took
place from the thoroughly European nature of Isis Unveiled
to the thoroughly eastern nature of Blavatsky's The Secret
Doctrine.
Various factors
were at work, including the wish to link India with Asia in order
to create an Indo-Asian sphere of influence with the help of the
Russian Empire. In this way her teaching received its Indian
content in order to win a spiritual victory over the West. It
reflected a one-sidedly egoistic, nationally egoistic, influence.
It was present right from the beginning and was striking in its
symptomatic significance. The first lecture by Annie Besant which
I attended dealt with theosophy and imperialism. [ Note
6 ]
And if one questioned whether the fundamental impulse of the
lecture was contained in the wish to continue in Blavatsky's
spiritual direction or to continue what went alongside it, the
answer had to be the latter.
Annie Besant
frequently said things without fully understanding the
implications. But if you read the lecture “Theosophy and
Imperialism” attentively, with an awareness of the
underlying implications, you will see that if someone wanted to
separate India from England in a spiritual way, the first,
apparently innocuous step could be taken in a lecture of this
kind.
It has always
spelled the beginning of the end for spiritual movements and
societies when they have started to introduce partisan political
elements into their activity. A spiritual movement can only
develop in the world today if it embraces all humanity. Indeed,
today it is one of the most essential conditions for a spiritual
movement whose intention it is to give access to the real spirit
that it should embrace all mankind. And anything which aims to
split mankind in any way is, from the beginning, a destructive
element.
Just consider the
extent to which one reaches into the subconscious regions of the
human psyche with such things. It is simply part of the
conditions for spiritual movements, such as anthroposophy wants
to be, that they honestly and seriously endeavour to distance
themselves from all partisan human interests, and aspire to take
account of the general interest of mankind. That was what made
the theosophical movement so destructive, in so far as it
contained divisive elements from its inception. And on occasion
they also veered in their position; during the war there was a
tendency to become very anglo-chauvinistic. But it is essential
to understand very clearly that it is completely impossible to
make a genuine spiritual movement flourish if it contains
factional interests which people are unwilling to leave behind.
That is why one of
the main dangers facing the anthroposophical movement today —
in an age deteriorating everywhere into nationalist posturing —
lies in the lack of courage among people to discard these
tendencies.
But what is the
root cause of this tendency? It arises when a society wants to
accrue power by something other than spiritual revelation. At the
beginning of the twentieth century there was still much that was
positive in the way the Theosophical Society developed an
awareness of its power, but that awareness had almost completely
disappeared by 1906 and was replaced by a strong drive for power.
It is important to
understand that anthroposophy grew out of the general interests
of mankind, and to recognize that it had to find access to the
Theosophical Society, because that is where the questioners were
to be found. It would not have found accommodation anywhere else.
Indeed, as soon as
the first period came to an end, the complete inappropriateness
of the theosophical movement for western life became evident,
particularly in its approach to the issues surrounding Christ.
Where Blavatsky's contempt for Christianity was still basically
theoretical, albeit with an emotional basis, the theosophical
movement later turned this contempt into practice, to the extent
that a boy was specially brought up with the intention of making
him the vehicle for the resurrection of Christ. There is hardly
anything more absurd. An Order [ Note
7 ]
was established within the Theosophical Society with the aim of
engineering the birth of Christ in a boy already alive here.
This soon descended
into total farce. A congress of the Theosophical Society was to
take place in Genoa in 1911, [ Note
8 ]
and I felt it necessary to announce my lecture “From Buddha
to Christ” for this congress. This should have resulted in
a clear and concise debate by bringing into the open everything
which was already in the air. But — surprise, surprise —
the Genoa Congress was canceled. It is, of course, easy to find
excuses for something like that, and every word that was uttered
sounded uncommonly like an excuse.
Thus we can say
that the anthroposophical movement entered its second stage by
pursuing its straightforward course, and it was introduced by a
lecture which I delivered to a non-theosophical audience of which
only one person — no more! — is still with us,
although many people attended the original lecture. That first
lecture, lecture cycle in fact, was entitled “From Buddha
to Christ”. In 1911 I had wanted to deliver the same cycle.
There was a direct connection! But the theosophical movement had
become caught up in a hideous zig-zag course.
If the history of
the anthroposophical movement fails to be taken seriously and
these things are not properly identified, it is also impossible
to give a proper answer to the superficial points which are
continually raised about the relationship between anthroposophy
and theosophy; points made by people who refuse absolutely to
acknowledge that anthroposophy was something quite independent
from the beginning, and that it was quite natural for
anthroposophy to provide the answers it possessed to the
questions which were being asked.
Thus we might say
that the second period of the anthroposophical movement lasted
until 1914. During that time nothing in particular happened, at
least as far as I am concerned, to resolve its relationship with
the theosophical movement. The Theosophical Society remedied that
when it expelled the anthroposophists. [ Note
9 ]
But it was not particularly relevant to be in the Theosophical
Society and it was not particularly relevant to be excluded. We
simply continued as before. Until 1914 everything which occurred
was initiated by the Theosophical Society. I was invited to
lecture there on the basis of the lectures which have been
reprinted in my book Eleven
European Mystics.
I then proceeded to develop in various directions the material
contained in it.
The Society, with
its unchanged views, then proceeded to expel me — and, of
course, my supporters. I was invited in for the same material
which later caused my exclusion. That is how it was. The history
of the anthroposophical movement will not be understood until the
fundamental fact is recognized that it was irrelevant whether I
was included in or excluded from the theosophical movement. That
is something upon which I would ask you to concentrate in your
self-reflection.
Today how many
souls have a hint of such homelessness about them? That is
revealed in incidents such as the following, which was reported
very recently. A professor announced a course of university
lectures on the development, as he called it, of mystic-occult
perceptions from Pythagoras to Steiner. Following the
announcement, so many people came to the first lecture that it
could not be held in the usual lecture hall but had to be
transferred to the Auditorium Maximum which is normally used only
for big festive occasions.
Such occurrences
demonstrate the way things are today, how the tendency to such
homelessness has become an integral element in many souls. All of
this could be anticipated: the rapidly growing evidence of a
longing in homeless souls for an attitude to life which was not
organized in advance, which was not laid out in advance; a
longing for the spirit among them which was increasingly
asserting itself, and asserting itself more strongly week by
week.
Thanks
to the Rudolf Steiner Archive.
Continued
in the next issue of SCR
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