You will have noticed that
all my lectures for years past have stressed the importance, both
for the spiritual and social evolution of humanity, of the spread
of what we spiritual scientists call the results of initiation
research. You know also that by the word initiation, to use an
ancient term, we understand a seeing into a spiritual world
separated from our physical-sensible world by a kind of veil; a
veil which may very easily lead to illusions. What is first given
to man is the physical-sensible world, and he makes use of this
either for the concerns of ordinary life or in pursuit of what
today is called science. He combines his perceptions in the
physical world with all kinds of concepts, ideas and so on; but
all that does not lead him beyond the world of the senses; and we
may say that the only means through which in ordinary life the
human being can to a certain extent look beyond and above the
sensible is in dreaming.
The dream, as we experience
it today in normal life, is only a poor imitation of what may be
called experience in the super-sensible world. The super-sensible
world has to be perceived not only with the same degree of
consciousness that one has in ordinary life, a degree of
consciousness which is not there in the dream condition, but with
a consciousness of even higher degree. In order to experience the
super-sensible world, one must enhance one’s consciousness,
to come to a state which bears a similar relation to that of
normal life, of normal consciousness, as that of normal
consciousness bears to sleep consciousness, or at any rate to
dream consciousness. Thus a kind of awakening out of normal
consciousness has to take place. Hence the dream is, of course,
only a poor imitation of what is experienced in that other
condition.
But really the dream differs
far less from normal thinking than is believed to be the case.
When you become aware of the picture world of an ordinary dream,
it is actually in its content essentially the same as what
underlies one’s thoughts, only that in thinking the human
being enters into the outer world through his senses; and
therefore what is arranged in the dream by mere analogy is in
thinking ordered in accordance with quite external relationships
ordered by the perception of the outer sense world, in accordance
with what this world says to us. You can have a kind of proof of
this if you sit down and shut your eyes, or let us say if you are
lazy and just allow your thoughts to wander, and then notice how
they have wandered, notice that as you recall them in your mind
you can hardly find between them any closer connection than one
finds in the events of a dream. The ordinary uncontrolled flow of
man’s ideas is in a certain sense subject to the same law
as that of the dream. It is only through our senses that we are
torn out of our dreams. And as soon as we silence our senses,
then we really begin to dream. This dream activity has to be
intensified. It has to be so organized that it becomes permeated
by a higher consciousness than that which our ordinary senses
confer. Then imaginative consciousness arises, and then by
degrees comes inspired consciousness, of which I told you
yesterday in my public lecture that it is recognized by Thomism
as a justified source of cognition.
In our initiation science,
then, we have the results of such an intensified condition of
consciousness. The difficulty in the present evolution of
humanity and in that of the near future is that humanity will
most certainly need this science of initiation, and will not be
able to get on without it, for if only the materialistic
knowledge that has been developed in the last three to four
centuries should continue to permeate human evolution, conditions
such as we are now experiencing in the present social chaos of
the civilized world will repeatedly recur, interrupted only by
short intervals. What science has been able to give to humanity
since the middle of the Fifteenth Century has certainly been
sufficient for the making of technical discoveries; has been
sufficient to spread over the earth a network of commerce and
business intercourse, but it does not suffice for the creation of
social arrangements really adapted to the consciousness of
present-day humanity. That is something which has gradually to be
realized. As long as the science of our universities, our
recognized public education, rejects the science of initiation,
as long as an external, materialist science is alone recognized,
so long will humanity be perpetually in the grip of chaotic
social conditions, such as we are now having. The science of
initiation will alone be able to save humanity of the future from
such chaotic social conditions. Above all, the science of
initiation will be able to give those human beings who can
approach it a consciousness of the fact that the life here on
earth, which we enter through the gate of birth, is the
continuation of a spiritual life which we have spent in the
super-sensible world between the last death and this present
birth.
Now you know that this
spiritual life which precedes our birth or conception is not
spoken of in the churches of our modern civilized world. It is
never spoken of, and for a quite definite reason. Because at a
certain point of time, which coincides with that of Greek
evolution between Plato and Aristotle, all consciousness of a
prenatal spiritual life was lost. Plato speaks clearly of that
life, but Aristotle vehemently defended the theory that every
time a human being is born on the earth a quite new soul unites
with his physical body. The Aristotelian doctrine is that for
each physically born human being a new soul is created.
Now if one holds such a
view, one cannot say otherwise than that the life which begins
with death, which a person begins by throwing off his physical
body — and of this Aristotle also speaks — continues
to exist and does not again descend to earth. For, of course,
unless one can speak of a prenatal existence, one has no
justification for believing otherwise than that after his death
man remains forever in a spiritual world. That led Aristotle to
draw some very weighty conclusions. For instance, he argued that
if anyone between birth and death here on earth has led a life
which burdens his soul with evil, that human being is for all
eternity forced to look back on that evil, which can never again
be blotted out or overcome. So that according to Aristotle’s
view, when the man dies, he has to look back eternally on the one
earth life for which he has to pay.
This doctrine of Aristotle
was taken over in its entirety by the Catholic Church, and when
in the Middle Ages the Church sought for a philosophy which could
carry its theology, it took over, as regards the life of the
soul, this Aristotelian doctrine, and one can still today
recognize its echo in the idea of eternal punishment in hell.
Now, after having for
thousands of years had this doctrine of the origin of the soul
with the body impressed upon them, how is it conceivable that
people can free themselves from it again and arrive at the truth?
They can only do so by receiving a new spiritual science. Without
this renewal of spiritual science humanity will not be able to
accept a life before birth as a justified belief or, rather,
before conception. Just think what it signifies for the whole
evolution of humanity not to speak of a prenatal life. When in
the churches of today we are told only of a life after death,
that simply arouses instincts connected with man’s
egotistical desire not to be extinguished at death.
An essay, a thorough-going
study is needed — “On the Cultivation of Human
Egotism by the Churches”. In such a study one would have to
explore the real motives which are worked upon in the sermons and
doctrines of all the usual religious denominations, and one would
everywhere find that appeal is made to the egotistical instincts
of man, especially to the instinct for immortality after death.
One could extend this study to cover more than a thousand years,
and one would see that these religious denominations, by
eliminating the life before birth under Aristotelian influence,
have fostered in the highest degree the egotism in human nature.
Churches, as cultivators of the deepest egotistical instincts, is
a subject well worthy of study.
By far the largest part of
the religious life of the modern civilized world today panders to
human egotism. This egotism can be felt in pronouncements which I
could quote by the dozen. Again and again it is written,
especially in pastoral letters, “that spiritual science
busies itself with all kinds of knowledge about super-sensible
worlds, but man does not need that. He only needs to have the
childlike consciousness of his connection with Christ Jesus.”
That is said both by pastors and by the faithful; this childlike
connection with Christ Jesus is always emphasized. It is brought
forward with immense pride against what is, of course, far less
easy to attain — penetration into the concrete details of
the spiritual world. It is preached over and over again. Again
and again man is led to believe that he can be most Christian
when he least exercises his soul forces, when he least strives to
think something clear with what he calls his Christ
consciousness. This Christ consciousness must be something which
man attains by being infantile — so say these easy-going
ones. And best of all they like to be told that Christ has taken
all the sins of humanity on Himself, and has redeemed mankind
through His sacrificial death, without people having to do
anything themselves. All this points to the belief that through
the sacrificial death of Christ immortality is guaranteed after
death; but that merely tends to nourish in humanity the most
extreme egotism. By this cultivation of egotism on the part of
the churches, we have finally brought about what is dawning today
over all the civilized world. Because this egotism has been so
widely cultivated, mankind has become what it is today.
Just think that if the
human being, not merely theoretically with ideas and concepts,
but with the whole inner life of his soul, were to grasp the
truth that this earthly life as he enters it through birth lays
upon him the obligation of fulfilling a mission which he has
brought with him from a life before birth! Just think how egotism
would vanish if that thought were to fill our souls, if
this earthly life were regarded as a task which must be fulfilled
because it is linked to a higher-than-earthly life through which we
have previously passed! Egotism is combated by the feeling that
stirs in us when we look upon life on earth as a continuation of
a higher-than-earthly life, just as it is fostered by the religious
denominations which speak only of life after death. That is what
is important for man’s social well being, to restore the
fact of his preexistence to the consciousness of mankind of the
present and of the future, and of course the idea of
reincarnation is inseparable from that of the preexistence of the
human soul.
Thus we can say that the
Catholic Church itself accepted the Aristotelian doctrine and
made it into a dogma of its own; but this dogma must now be
replaced by the higher knowledge of repeated earth lives, of
preexistence, which Aristotle was clearly the first to leave out
of account.
You see, if you can imagine
what importance it has for humanity to absorb certain elements
into its inmost soul-life, then you will recognize what it means
for man’s life of feeling in its widest sense. It means
that the human being gets quite another consciousness of himself.
Now let us add to what has just been said, the words of St. Paul,
that this ordinary consciousness must become permeated more and
more by the consciousness, “Not I, but Christ in me.”
When we look upon ourselves as something different, Christ will
also become different within us. If we look upon ourselves as
something which, even as regards the soul-spiritual, has only
originated at birth, then of course the Christ can only be in
what has come into existence with this present birth, and will
only have the task of carrying our souls through the gate of
death and further through all eternity. But if we know that we
have had a prenatal life, we can know also that it is the Christ
Himself Who has laid on us a mission for this life on earth, that
we have to develop our own forces, that we have to find Him in
our forces, that we have to seek Him as the best we can have in
us, the best in our spirit and soul.
The Catholic Church, by
doing away with the spirit in the Eighth Ecumenical Council in
Constantinople in the year 869 has always taken care that those
belonging to it should never think about the real
psycho-spiritual nature of man. The Church laid down in that
Council that man consists only of body and soul, though the soul
has a few spiritual attributes; but that to regard man as
consisting of body, soul and spirit is heretical, and when the
Jesuit Zimmerman brought forward certain reproaches against
spiritual science, he reckoned as its deepest sin that it seeks
to re-establish the validity of trichotomy, by declaring that man
consists of body, soul and spirit. For thereby the true nature of
man and also his real relationship to the Christ must inevitably
come to light. But what the Church worked for more and more was
that man should not come to a true understanding of his
real relationship to Christ. We may say, my dear friends, that
the development of the western churches consists really in
drawing an ever denser and denser veil over the real secret of
Christ.
You see, fundamentally, all
institutions are built on external abstractions. When a state is
young it has but few laws and people are relatively unfettered by
them. The longer a state exists, and especially the longer the
various parties in the state apply their clever arguments, the
more laws are made until finally no one knows where he is, for
there is no longer only one law, but everything is entangled in
the meshes of intertwining laws from which one has the greatest
difficulty in freeing oneself.
That is the case also with
the churches; when a church begins to make its way through the
world, it has relatively few dogmas; but people must have
something to do, and just as the statesman is always making laws,
so do Churchmen create more and more dogmas, until finally
everything becomes dogma, and dogma becomes consolidated. It is
only since the time when Scholasticism was at its height that
this consolidation of dogma has been especially noticeable in
modern civilization. Anyone who really studies thoughtfully the
Scholasticism of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas will find
that in their time everything to do with dogma was still fluid,
still a matter for discussion, that discussion was still taken as
a matter of course. True, in the Scholastic period there was
already a certain opposition within the western church. There was
the opposition between the Dominicans and the Franciscans. The
Dominican Order, of which Scholasticism was the flower, developed
its knowledge through strictly logical ideas. The Franciscan
Order declined to do that; the Franciscans wanted to achieve
everything through a childlike feeling. I will not now enter into
the relation between Dominican and Franciscan teaching, but I
should like you to imagine what it would be like if people fought
as vigorously today about the content of Dominican and Franciscan
doctrine as they did in the Middle Ages, when they discussed
dogma so freely. Of course, the Roman bishop even at that time
declared people to be heretics; and he could have gone on doing
so for a long while, had not the secular governments come to his
assistance and burnt the people whom he merely wanted to condemn.
In this matter one has to admit that greater blame falls on the
secular rulers. All this did not prevent there being free
discussion in the Catholic Church at that time. This free
discussion has gradually been completely eliminated. Free
discussion was something which the Catholic Church, as time went
on, could not endure.
And why not? Because a quite
new consciousness was arising in humanity. This was the
transformation of consciousness in man, which took place, as I
have often explained to you, in the middle of the Fifteenth
Century. The human being wants ever more and more to form his own
judgment from the depths of his own soul. In the Middle Ages that
was not so. Man then had a kind of communal consciousness, and
only a few learned people, the real scholars, could get beyond
that. They were able to evolve out of this common uniform folk
consciousness because they had been trained in Scholasticism.
This also applies to a certain number who were trained in the
Rabbinical teaching. In general, however, man’s
consciousness was uniform. It was a community consciousness, a
family consciousness. But the individual consciousness was
developing more and more.
Now, one thing that the
Catholic Church had always had, because it has attracted highly
educated people, was historical foresight. The Catholic Church
knows quite well what I am now saying, that the principle of
modern development is to foster the individual consciousness of
man — but the Catholic Church is unwilling to let this
individual consciousness arise. It wants to maintain that dull
communal consciousness, from which only those will stand out who
have received a scholastic education. Now there is a very good
way of maintaining this dull communal consciousness — it is
always a dull one. And that is to damp down the ordinary
consciousness which a person has whenever he makes use of his
sense organs, to subdue it thoroughly. Just as the dream damps
down the ordinary consciousness, similarly consciousness is
subdued for the purpose of making of it a dull communal
consciousness. Now one of the many characteristics of the dream
is that in many respects it is a liar. Or would you deny that the
dream is a liar, that it represents things which are not true? It
is, however, not due to the dream but to the subdued
consciousness that when we dream we cannot test what is true and
what is untrue. Hence it is one of the properties of this subdued
consciousness that it takes away from human beings the
possibility of distinguishing truth from untruth.
Now if one is versed in
these matters, what does one do? Using authority, one tells
people things which are not true, and one does this
systematically. Thereby one subdues their consciousness to the
dim state of the dream consciousness. Thereby one succeeds in
undermining what since the middle of the Fifteenth Century has
been seeking to emerge as individual consciousness in the souls
of men. It is a fine undertaking using authority to write
articles such as are now appearing in the “Katholischen
Sonntagsblatt”; for thereby one succeeds in preventing
people from developing in the way they should since the middle of
the Fifteenth Century! Although the individual may not know it,
the whole hierarchy is behind what happens in this respect, and
has organized things extremely well. If one believes that these
things happen out of mere naivety or purely from rancor, one is
making a great mistake. Naturally, we must fight lying and
untruth with all the means at our disposal, but we must not
believe that these lies proceed out of simplicity or even out of
the belief that what is said is the truth; for if these people
spoke the truth, they would not attain their purpose, which is to
subdue consciousness by deliberately telling people lies, and
that is a mighty and diabolical undertaking.
Now this, too, must be said
quite frankly. The simplicity is entirely on the other side.
Simplicity today is not on the side of the Catholic Church but on
the side of their opponents. They do not believe that the
Catholic Church is great in the direction I have described; they
do not believe that the Catholic Church long ago foresaw that the
social condition which has now come over Europe would some day
come about, and that the Catholic Church took her own measures to
make her influence felt in these social conditions. What the
Catholic Church intends is to create a bridge between the most
radical socialism, that is, Communism, and its own hegemony.
You see, this magnificent
foresight is something one has to recognize in everything which
has a real spiritual basis, a spiritual foundation that is rooted
in a real spiritual life, and not in mere abstraction. You see,
with all this modern enlightenment one arrives at nothing which
can have a far-reaching significance in the course of human
evolution. But the ceremonies practiced in the Catholic Mass are
of far greater significance than all the sermons from evangelical
[Protestant] pulpits, because they are deeds accomplished in the
sensible world, and in their form they are at the same time
something which enchants the spiritual world into the sensible
world. For that reason the Catholic Church has never been willing
to deprive itself of magical means of working on human beings.
These magical means do exist. And we must not believe that
anything other than re-entry into the spiritual world in all true
inner sincerity and uprightness can be effective against these
things. And as what one might call an external sign that the
Catholic Church has always had a connection with the spiritual
world, you can take something which I have already told a few of
you.
In the first decade of the
Twentieth Century a Papal Encyclical was issued which declared
various things to be heretical. Papal Encyclicals speak in such a
way that they always adduce the doctrine in question and then
say: “Whoever believes that is anathema.” Thus it
quotes some doctrine taken from one of the books of Haeckel or
someone else, and then says: “Whoever believes that is
anathema.” It does not state what is true, but says:
“Whoever believes that is anathema.”
Now, you see, the science of
initiation makes it always possible to investigate such things,
and I set myself the task of making certain investigations
concerning this Encyclical. I am bound to say that here, as in so
many other things, what was promulgated by the Pope “ex
cathedra” at that time was really drawn from out of the
spiritual world. I mean that what flowed into that Encyclical did
come down from the spiritual world. But in an extraordinary way
it was completely reversed! Everywhere where there should have
been a ‘yes’ there was a ‘no’, and
vice-versa. That is something — and I could give other
instances — which shows that the Roman Church has today
some sort of real connection with the spiritual world but one
that is extraordinarily harmful for mankind. Therefore, we need
not be surprised that it sees in the rise of modern spiritual
science something which it wishes at all costs to get rid of, for
what is the effect of this new spiritual science? It brings about
a consciousness of a prenatal life, of preexistence. That may not
be! Under no circumstances shall that happen! So spiritual
science must be condemned; for spiritual science calls man’s
attention to his own being, makes him aware that he consists of
body, soul, and spirit. Under no circumstances may that be;
therefore spiritual science must be condemned. People would see,
for example, that the dogma of eternal damnation in hell is an
Aristotelian consequence of the creation of the soul at physical
birth. Suppose a Catholic theologian today studies the connection
between Aristotle and Scholasticism, and perceives that the
Scholastics derived their proof of the origin of the soul
together with the physical body from the philosophy of Aristotle!
He would see behind the scenes to the origin of dogma. What is
done to prevent this? The theologian is made to take the oath
against Modernism. He is made to swear that it is part of his
creed that he can never come to a historical conclusion contrary
to dogmas which emanate from Rome. The fact that he has taken
this oath works so strongly on his feelings that he is confused
in his research and can never come to see how dogma relates to
the history of humanity. Now things cannot remain in this state
if initiation science appears, and therefore this science of
initiation must under all circumstances be condemned.
Why am I telling you these
things? So that you may not take the matter too lightly. For in
our anthroposophical spiritual science it is really not a
question of the things which go on in the Theosophical Society.
That the Theosophical Society is not to be taken seriously is
clearly to be seen from the fact that one day it came to accept
by a majority the whole farce of Krishnamurti as the reborn Jesus
Christ of Nazareth. Such a comedy is only based on hypocrisy,
even though this hypocrisy is taken seriously by many. But what
should grow on the soil of Anthroposophy, of spiritual science,
should be a search for truth, sincere through and through. It is
therefore something which, as the Catholic Church is well aware,
penetrates behind the scenes, to what must not be discovered if
that church is to maintain the dominion in the world to which it
lays claim.
All that I am now saying is
simply to show you that these things may not be taken lightly.
For it must be recognized that the Catholic Church has shown
great foresight. Though the individual sheep follows the lead and
merely obeys orders, though he may be ignorant of what this
systematic lying means for the whole evolution of mankind —
though the individual knows nothing and does as he is told, the
whole system is thoroughly well established, for the lies will be
believed by very many.
On the other side there is
the naïve belief that all the external fabrication of
natural laws which today forms the subject of our university
education can be of significance for the further development of
humanity, that all the nonsense about the conservation of matter
and energy can be of significance for the further development of
mankind! Today people cannot even look with an unprejudiced eye
upon the snow which is spread before them every winter (if they
are living in the temperate zone), yet through the covering of
the forces of growth by the snow crust one part of the earth goes
through a complete transformation; and folk consciousness which
speaks of the purity of the snow knows far more than our modern
science which talks of the conservation of matter and energy. Of
course I can only say what I am now saying because I have spent
many weeks in showing you how ill-founded are the modern laws of
the conservation of matter and energy, how in fact in every human
being matter and energy are destroyed, as they work up towards
the head, and new matter and new energy arise.
All these things are bound
to be fiercely contested in some quarters, and the only thing
which can help is for as many people as possible to become
conscious of the present task of mankind — to be aware that
the individual consciousness must lay hold of the world. It will
do so, but it can either lay hold of the wisdom of the world or
of the blind instincts. If it seizes hold of the blind instincts
there will come about a completely antisocial condition, such as
is now being prepared in Russia. That, my dear friends, will
gradually evoke an antisocial condition against which the English
or American governments, not to speak of the French or any other,
will be absolutely defenseless. It would be childish to believe
that the English Parliament will be able to deal with what will
happen to humanity if the individual consciousness works merely
by instinct. But there is one power which will be ready to deal
with it, and that is the power of Rome. It is only a question of
how it will be done. Rome can establish a dominion; it has the
necessary means for this. Thus the only real question is not
whether Bolshevism or the Anglo-Saxon bourgeoisie will get the
upper hand; the question is whether there will be antisocial
chaos, Roman domination, or the resolve on the part of mankind to
fill itself with that spirit which in 869 at the Council of
Constantinople the western Church declared it heretical to
recognize.
There is no other
alternative than that humanity determine not to go on living in
the way which results from there being only materialistic
thoughts about the world. How does humanity live in a
materialistic world? People earn their living in accordance with
the fluctuations of the market; there is no other measurement for
the social order. After that they may perhaps have a philosophy
of life, as a sort of luxury, but only as a luxury. Those
supposed to be still more profound say that one must raise
oneself into the spiritual world and leave the evil material
world behind; a really profound nature can have nothing to do
with the material world; he must understand nothing about the
material world, but become a mystic and live in the higher world!
But even these profound natures as well as the less profound have
children and have the notion that these children must “earn,”
that it would be very, very wrong if the children were not sent
to schools where they would be trained in present-day methods of
earning a living. Thereby they have already come to terms with
the existing state of things; thereby they hand on this
materialism to the next generation.
Now when someone talks like
this he is an inconvenient person, and it is best simply to
revile him, for to hear what I have just been telling you is for
most people as if they were being irritated by vermin. Now people
do not like being irritated in this way by psychic vermin and so
they cover themselves with a thick skin which makes them
impervious to what spiritual science has to say about our present
culture. It is on this side then that the naivety lies; and when
the Catholic Church saw that people were becoming so one-sided,
they took care to have people specially trained, and in this they
really were indirectly guided by spiritual impulses. And the
foundation of the Jesuit Order by
Ignatius Loyola as a result of fundamental influences from the
spiritual world is one of the most significant events of
metahistory, and in it one has to do with a strong spiritual
efficacy.
Now we must, of course,
among ourselves be able to speak frankly; hence I have been
obliged to speak of the grand but questionable training of the
Jesuits. I also dealt with this theme in the [lecture] cycle
“From
Jesus to Christ,”
which some misguided
member has now delivered into the hands of a mudslinger and
fabricator of nonsense. You know that in the Karlsruhe cycle I
discussed the fundamental basis of Jesuit training. What, may I
ask, is the use of stating in each [lecture] cycle that it is
printed as a manuscript for members only, when mudslingers have
the cycle at their disposal and can use it for the preparation of
all sorts of lies? This incident bears out in a remarkable way
what I have already often said, that the time would come when one
could no longer count on these cycles being restricted to a small
circle, for mankind is not at present fit to be entrusted with
anything. Of course, everything written in that quarter is
rubbish and untrue, but it is written not on the basis of my
public writings, but of private cycles which have been passed on,
and I have good reason to believe that one of the first cycles
given into the hands of the Catholic clergy was that very
Karlsruhe cycle on the Jesuits. For they on their part are not
inclined to let the truth about Jesuit training be known. The
world must know nothing of how Jesuits are trained; the world
must know nothing of their powerful discipline.
Modern mankind in its
simplicity is merely retarding its own consciousness. On the
subject of the Jesuits there are absolutely no true ideas. There
are numerous men within that Order of such spiritual capacity
that if they were scattered about the world and did not spend
their time in the way they do but were working at external
science or painting or poetry, they would be honored as
individual geniuses; they would be recognized as the great minds
of mankind. Within the Jesuit Order there are countless men who
would be great lights if they were to appear as individuals and
were busy with something different — with, for instance,
materialistic science. But these men suppress their very names;
they submerge themselves in their Order, and one of the
conditions of their strength is that the world should know
nothing of the way in which many a head, clothed in black cassock
and Jesuit cap, has been trained.
These things are intended to
show you how fundamentally different consciousness is in
different categories of human beings. But our modern simpletons,
who consider themselves enlightened, will not take these things
seriously. That must be emphasized again and again.
Thanks to the Rudolf Steiner
archive.
Lecture 2
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