03 março 2026
19 fevereiro 2026
Rudolf Steiner. Publicações BR
Obra publicada de Rudolf Steiner
Catálogo completo (com tradução dos títulos) e volumes
publicados no Brasil
Comunicado da Sociedade Antroposófica no Brasil
“Agora dispomos da lista completa da ‘Obra Geral’ de Rudolf
Steiner, com os títulos dos volumes traduzidos para o português, organizada em
seções segundo a classificação dada pela administração do Rudolf
Steiner Archive, com informações detalhadas sobre cada volume e clique
direto para comprar os livros já traduzidos para o português e publicados no
Brasil.
A obra de Rudolf Steiner, catalogada pelo número GA (do alemão Gesamtausgabe,
'edição completa'), abrange os escritos de Rudolf Steiner e a quase totalidade
de suas mais de 6.000 conferências. Até o momento, já foram publicados no
idioma original (alemão) mais de 350 volumes dessa obra, da qual uma parte
importante foi traduzida para o português do Brasil e publicada por várias
editoras dedicadas à antroposofia.”
Link de acesso à lista:
https://www.sab.org.br/antroposofia/edi%C3%A7%C3%A3o-geral-ga
22 janeiro 2026
Destino. Impulso Crístico e Michaélico.
O Destino de Indivíduos e Nações. 5. A Natureza do Impulso Crístico e o Espírito Micaélico que o serve
São vários os ciclos de palestras onde Rudolf Steiner trata dos Mistérios do Mal e como lidamos com este Mistério em nossa Era de Evolução. Lidar, nestas diferentes palestras envolve diferentes termos. Então enquanto neste ciclo aqui mencionado Rudolf Steiner se refere a resistir/confrontar/lidar, em outros ciclos ele se refere a transformar, redimir.
O que sempre devemos ter em mente ao ler Rudolf Steiner é
que ele tem muitas formas para abordar os assuntos e que ao desconhecermos a
Metodologia de Steiner e Goethe, nossa compreensão fica prejudicada, pois usamos o intelecto não espiritualizado/cristianizado (de acordo com a época atual na qual vivemos).
Isto, para que as coisas façam sentido.
Sonia von Homrich
Rudolf Steiner
Não resistimos ao Ahriman através da rejeição à modernidade, mas sim pela busca da inteligência com alma.
Como resistir a esse elemento de Ahriman em nossa época, da mesma forma que resistimos ao elemento de Lúcifer na época de Joana d'Arc?
Resistimos ao elemento de Ahriman trilhando exatamente o caminho que tem sido tão enfaticamente apontado repetidas vezes em nossa corrente de Ciência Espiritual (Ciência Espiritual Cristã/ Cristologia de Rudolf Steiner)— o caminho para a espiritualização da cultura humana, da capacidade do homem de formar ideias e conceitos. É por isso que se enfatiza constantemente que existe um caminho pelo qual tudo o que a ciência espiritual pode nos oferecer, mesmo que inicialmente nos seja presentado em grande parte pelo mundo espiritual, só pode ser verdadeiramente, plenamente e completamente apreendido pelo intelecto, razão pela qual o homem/ser humano foi agraciado desde o século XVI até os dias de hoje (com o intelecto). E ao dizemos que não entendemos, é somente porque damos ouvidos aos preconceitos vigentes no materialismo de nossa época. Devemos parar de dar ouvidos à voz do materialismo contemporâneo, uma voz que fala ora em voz alta, ora em sussurros quase inaudíveis. Em vez disso, devemos concentrar firmemente nossa mente nos poderes de compreensão/ entendimento que temos. Então, as coisas que a ciência espiritual produz para nós um dia parecerão ser perfeitamente compreensíveis, como algo que pode ser entendido tanto quanto qualquer outro evento do mundo exterior.
Nós geramos o grande fortalecimento que necessitamos para
oferecer resistência às forças ahrimânicas ao nos aproximarmos do espírito não meramente
através das mais íntimas capacidades da revelação e da fé, como no caso de
Joana d'Arc, mas também tentando concentrar os nossos poderes de compreensão/
entendimento mais intensamente, no que a ciência espiritual tem a nos oferecer.
Se fizermos isso, a hora, o momento, chegará no qual teremos que dizer a nós mesmos: aquilo que nos
chega a partir da Ciência Espiritual, é a única coisa racional que, ao mesmo
tempo, torna o mundo ao nosso redor compreensível, preenchendo-o de luz.
[Tornar o mundo compreensível é fazer as coisas terem
sentido]
E quando “agarramos/ tomamos” isto desta forma, somos “abraçados” pelo que o espírito tem a dar em nosso tempo, e então podemos verdadeiramente ser fortes o suficiente para encarar/enfrentar as forças de Ahriman.
Alguém com uma disposição semelhante à de Joana d'Arc não seria capaz de chegar à nada em nossos dias e em nossa época. Ela seria uma personalidade interessante e seria capaz de revelar muitas coisas maravilhosas por meio de profecias e outras formas. Uma pessoa capaz de fazer revelações íntimas é capaz de combater eficazmente as forças de Lúcifer. Hoje, porém, o homem/ser humano precisa resistir às forças de Ahriman, precisa se fortalecer para lidar/resistir a estas forças, desenvolvendo a força requerida na era de Michael. [Não uma mera repetição de eras anteriores]. Qualidades solares são requeridas nesta era de Michael, qualidades que incorporamos a nós mesmos através de espiritualizar/cristianizar os poderes que temos à nossa disposição entre o despertar e o dormir: os poderes do intelecto, da compreensão/ entendimento, do insight. Porque estes poderes de compreensão/entendimento que possuímos entrarão numa transformação na alma, se e tão somente tivermos a paciência suficiente. Estes são transformados de tal forma que a partir do que emerge para nós na ciência espiritual, surge a certeza de que o que estamos “agarrando/abraçando” ali é a expressão direta dos pensamentos do mundo espiritual. Então, não se questiona atualmente em nos retirarmos do mundo exterior, que possui forças ahrimânicas em qualquer lugar. Não, o que se faz necessário é que permaneçamos de pé neste mundo, e que ao mesmo tempo também nos fortalecemos para enfrentar/confrontar estas forças ahrimânicas.
Rudolf Steiner. GA157. O Destino de Indivíduos e Nações. 5.
A Natureza do Impulso Crístico e o Espírito Micaélico que o serve—II.19 de
janeiro de 1915, Berlim
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA157/English/RSP1987/19150119p01.html
Ahriman is
resisted not by rejecting modernity, but by ensouling intelligence.
The
question therefore arises: How do we offer resistance to this Ahrimanic element
in our age, the way resistance was offered to the Luciferic element at the time
of Joan of Arc?
We offer
resistance to the Ahrimanic element by taking exactly the path that has been so
emphatically pointed out over and over again within our stream of spiritual
science—the path towards a spiritualization of human culture, of man's ability
to form ideas and concepts. This is why it has been stressed again and again
that there is a way in which everything spiritual science can give us, even if
to begin with it is largely presented to us from the spiritual world, can truly
and wholly and utterly be grasped with the intellect, the reason man has been
gifted with from the 16th century to this day. And if we say we do not
understand, then that is only because we listen to the prejudices current in
the materialism of our age. We must stop listening ever and again to the voice
of present-day materialism, a voice that speaks loudly at times and then again
in the faintest of whispers. Instead we must try and firmly focus our mind on
such powers of understanding as we have. Then the things spiritual science produces
for us will one day appear to be perfectly understandable, as something that
can be understood just as well as some event or other in the outside world can
be understood.
We generate
the great strength we need to offer resistance to the Ahrimanic forces by
approaching the spirit not merely through the inmost powers of revelation and
of faith, as in the case of Joan of Arc, but by trying to concentrate our
powers of understanding most intensely on what spiritual science has to give.
If we do this, the hour, the moment, will come when we have to say to
ourselves: What comes to us out of spiritual science is the only thing that is
rational and at the same time makes the world around us understandable, filling
it with light. And when we are taken hold of in this way we are taken hold of
by what the spirit has to give in our time so that we shall indeed be strong
enough to face the Ahrimanic forces.Someone with a disposition like that of
Joan of Arc would not be able to achieve anything in our day and age. She would
be an interesting personality and would be able to reveal many marvellous
things through prophesy and in other ways. Such a person capable of making
intimate revelations is capable of effectively countering Luciferic forces.
Today, however, man has to resist Ahrimanic forces, has to make himself strong
to cope with these forces, developing the strength required in the Michaelic
age. Sun-like qualities are called for in the age of Michael, qualities we take
into ourselves by spiritualizing the powers we have at our command between
waking up and going to sleep: the powers of the intellect, of understanding, of
insight. For these powers of understanding we possess will undergo a
transformation in the soul if only we have sufficient patience. They are
transformed to such effect that out of what emerges for us in spiritual science
there arises the certainty that what we are grasping there is the direct
expression of the thoughts of the spiritual world.
So there
can be no question today of withdrawing from the outside world which has
Ahrimanic forces in it everywhere. No, it is necessary for us to stand in this
world but at the same time also make ourselves strong to meet those Ahrimanic
forces.
Rudolf
Steiner. GA 157. The Destiny of Individuals and of Nations. 5. The Nature of
the Christ Impulse and the Michaelic Spirit Serving It—II. 19 January 1915,
Berlin
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA157/English/RSP1987/19150119p01.html
5. The
Nature of the Christ Impulse and the Michaelic Sprit Serving It—II
Once again,
let us first of all direct our thoughts to those who are out there at the
front, in the arena of present-day events, where they have to stand for what
the time demands of them:
Spirits of
your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.
And for
those who have already gone through the gate of death:
Spirits of
your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.
May the
spirit we have been seeking for so many gears in our movement, the spirit who
has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha, be present above you, may it stream
through you and strengthen you for your difficult task.
It seems
that not everyone is quite clear about the verse I have just spoken, so I am
told. Let me stress that the proper version reads: Spirit of your souls.
The verse has been phrased in such a way that it can be used when many people
want to speak for one person or one for many or, indeed, many for many—as in
the present case. If it refers to just one person, the only change which has to
be made is to say ‘Spirit of your soul’ and so forth. It appears that I made a
slip of the tongue when I said the verse for the first time here some weeks
ago, so that the view has arisen that the words ‘Spirits of your souls’ may not
be quite correct. But they are correct as they stand. The first line is
addressed to the spirits of the souls requiring protection, as it were and the
‘your’ refers to those to whom our thoughts are directed. In the second line on
the other hand, the 'your' relates to the 'guardians'. Let me remark that such
verses are always such by nature that there can be problems with the purely
grammatical construction. But they are given from the spiritual world for the
specific purpose, and it is true that there are occasional problems with putting
the words together for such verses.
Dear
friends, it was for good reason and, spiritually, also very much in accord with
the work that has to be done in the present time, that two days ago we turned
our attention to events in the evolution of man that show how spiritual
impulses—and particularly the spiritual Impulses linked with the Mystery of
Golgotha, with the Christ impulse—are living impulses within the evolution of
man. We have seen how they were active in the evolution of man even though men
were unable to grasp the nature of the Christ impulse with their reason, with
their intellect.
It was with
this intention that reference was made among other historical events to Joan of
Arc through whom this Christ impulse resolved a major issue in the 15th century
through its servant, the Michaelic spirit, and for the good and advancement of
mankind. The reason why it was particularly important to refer to this event
was that in our day, too, it does hold true that everything destined to
regulate events on the historical scale is ordered and regulated from the
spiritual worlds. We need to be aware that the forces, the impulses, for what
is to happen come to us from the spiritual worlds. In this respect the same
holds true today as in the days of Joan of Arc. But the times are different.
What would happen in a particular way in the days of Joan or Arc has to happen
in a different way in our time and in times to come; it has to take a different
course. For our time is one that is entirely different. Since the 15th and 16th
century—and the Joan of Arc event did, of course, come in that period—mankind
had been guided in quite a different way. It is this difference, and
consequently the basic nature of our time, that we shall consider to some
extent today.
Between
going to sleep and waking up we are in a soul state where that which we really
are is outside our physical and our ether bodies. Asleep, we live in our astral
body and our ego. We need to have a very clear picture of this. That which we
really are is then outside our physical and our ether bodies. Asleep, we live
in our astral body and our ego. We need to have a very clear picture of this.
That which we really are is then outside the body. We are, of course, bound to
our body to an extraordinary degree between birth and death so that in terms of
space we are not far away from our body when asleep. Our soul element is spread
out in our surroundings, as it were; that is in everything that specifically
makes up our environment.
Let us get a clear picture of how the environment has changed specifically over
the last centuries—since the 15th and 16 centuries—at least for the great
majority of the people whom we have to consider in relation to what fate has
decreed for the present age. Just consider whether any of the machinery or the
mechanical contrivances we use today also existed at the time when Joan of Arc
did her work. We can certainly say that the world has changed completely since
that time as far as mechanical things are concerned. Everything we experience
in relation to machines has only come since then. There may be some observant
people among you who have taken a ‘sleeper’ (train) to travel overnight. They
may have had the strange experience of waking up—and this is the kind of
occasion when one may wake up quite frequently—and finding that something was
still rumbling on that was inherent in the machinery of the train all about
them. Something can be perceived, as it were, when one is waking up but still
in a dream state, of the croaking and squealing of the train or boat one
happens to be on. This happens because the soul is not really in the body but
in the area around the body and is placed among those mechanical contrivances.
Yet it is
not only on such less usual occasions that we live among the hustle and bustle
of the present age, and we can certainly say that the mechanized life has also
spread to the countryside today. Fundamentally speaking, we are always within
the mechanized life of the present age. When asleep, the soul merges into
everything that is mechanism. Those are mechanisms, however, which we have
constructed ourselves. A mechanism we have built is something quite different
from nature outside us, for this has been constructed by the elemental spirits.
When we are out in the woods, for instance, where everything has been built up
by the spirits of nature, we are in an environment that is totally different
from the environment of mechanical contrivances created by ourselves. What are
we doing when we take things from nature and put them together to make the
machines and appliances we use in our lives? We are in that case not merely
putting together physical components, for in putting together physical
components we always provide opportunity for a demonic Ahrimanic servant to
unite with the machine. We do this with every machine, every mechanism, in
everything of this kind that is part of modern civilization, providing a point
of attachment for demonic elemental spirits of Ahrimanic nature. And living
surrounded by machines we live together with these demonic Ahrimanic
elementals. We allow them to enter into us; we allow not only the squealing and
groaning of machines to enter into us but also an element that is eminently
destructive for our spirit and our soul.
Please
note—and I have often made a similar comment on similar occasions—what I am
saying is not intended to be a criticism of our Ahrimanic age. It has to be
like this, that we allow demons to stream into everything and allow ourselves
to the surrounded by them. It is part of the evolution of mankind. We have to
acknowledge the simple necessity for this and understand the real impulse of
spiritual science. And so we shall not sing the praises of people who say it is
necessary, as far as possible, to protect oneself from the demons and to shun
civilization and that we should set up a colony as far away as possible in the
wilderness to save us from having anything to do with these demonic Ahrimanic
elementals. That has never been the tenor of my words. I have always said that
we must entirely accept what comes to us out of the necessity of evolution,
that we must not let ourselves be induced to flee from the world. We need to
take heed, however, we need to understand, that conditions are such in our age
that we are filling our environment more and more with beings of a demonic
nature, that we are more and more involved with the principle that is
mechanizing our civilization. An age such as this calls for something quite
different than the age out of which Joan of Arc was called to do her work. In
the time of Joan of Arc it was necessary for the impulse out of which she was
to act to be born out of the gentlest, the most subtle powers of the human
soul. Just consider: she was a shepherd girl living a very simple, natural
life, with nature at her most idyllic. She was very young when her visions came
to her, and through the Imaginations given to her she had a direct link with
the spiritual world. Out of her inner being she was to bring forth everything
that was to be the foundation from which she acted, she was to let it grow
forth from her inner being. And not only this, but it was necessary for very
special circumstances to be brought about so that through the most subtle
powers inherent in the human soul her mission could be imprinted in her soul,
in her very heart of hearts.
We know
that everything in the world goes in cycles, that things happen in such a way
that important events come up in definite cycles. If we take the year of Joan's
birth, 1412, we can ask a specific question relating to this. We are able to
say that the year this Maid of Orleans was born the sun would of course have
been in a particular position, astronomical position, coinciding with one of
the constellations in the zodiac. The progress of the sun from one sign of the
zodiac to the next marks a major time interval. Passing right through the
zodiac the sun will go through all twelve constellations; the time interval
needed for the sun to progress from one constellation in the zodiac to the next
is approximately 2,160 years, and this is important. Going back approximately
2,160 years from the birth of Joan of Arc we come to the founding of Rome.
In the days
when Rome was founded anyone needing information on major issues concerning the
city which was then coming into being would go to see the nymph Egeria. There
it was possible to get information, from a seeress. But, as I said, that was
one solar cycle earlier. And so the times are renewed and everything goes in
cycles. Let us visualize it like this: at the time when Rome was founded the
sun was at a certain point in the constellation of the Ram, Aries. It then
progressed to the Fishes, Pisces, so that it had moved through one-twelfth of
the zodiac. And thus the cycle which inevitably has to be there In the
evolution of mankind takes us from the nymph Egeria to the inspired deed of
Joan of Arc. In ancient Rome, however, it was a matter of pagan Inspiration, of
pagan deeds. If we try to think of the same visionary element that operated at
the time when Rome was founded also having to operate in a Christian age,
acting from within, through the most tender powers inherent in man, what did
have to come about? You can imagine that something had to come about which
again, in some way or other, had to do with the subtlest powers of the
Christian faith.
Most of you
will remember my telling you of the variation we get in the course of the year
in the forces that link us with the spiritual world. In summer, at St John's
tide when the sun's rays are most powerful externally, one might perhaps
achieve an external ecstasy and, as in the old Celtic mysteries, lift oneself
up into the spiritual world in some way, but certainly in ecstasy. Yet when the
days are shortest, when the sun's rays are least powerful and the winter night
the darkest, around Christmas therefore, the opportunity exists also to win
through to the spiritual worlds in our innermost soul life. All who have known
of the cycle of the year have always maintained, quite rightly, that those who
have the gift for it are able to enter into the most intimate aspect of our
connection with the spiritual worlds during the time from the 21st, the 23rd of
December to about the 6th of January—during those days and particularly the
nights. There are legends—the Legend of Olaf Asteson has been
read to you here—which tell of people having their most profound Inspirations
during those days.26 This, again, is connected with the
celebration of Christmas at that time, of the birth of the spirit who went
through the Mystery of Golgotha and is connected with the innermost powers in
human soul development. So, if the Inspiration of pagan Rome of old was to be
resurrected one sun cycle later, 2,160 years later, it had to come in through
the aspect of man that is most utterly childlike. This means that the soul of
Joan of Arc had to be taken hold of at the point where souls are taken hold of
most profoundly, where they are weakest in relation to earthly things, and
where the Christ impulse is not yet hampered by worldly impressions—the souls
not yet having taken up the earthly element, so that the Christ impulse can be
the only one to enter into the soul sphere. The most favourable timing for this
would have been for the Maid of Orleans to have gone through the time of the
Thirteen Nights in her mother's womb immediately before her birth, before she
took her first breath. And, indeed, she did—for she was born on the 6th of
January.
Here we
perceive the more profound forces at work which enter into the physical world
from the spiritual worlds. We see how they find the channels they need, deeply
mysterious channels. There can be nothing more marvellous for someone with
insight into such things, nothing more open to explanation through spiritual
science, than this fact that the Maid of Orleans took her first breath on earth
in the time around Christmas, on the 6th of January, with the days of Christmas
immediately preceding her entry on to the physical plane. We see how the girl
who was to go through death at the age of 19 was taken hold of at the point
where the most subtle of human powers lie, and we are therefore looking into a
time when it was necessary for the divine spiritual powers to find a channel
through the inmost inwardness of the human soul. That, however, was the last
time when such a thing was to be. It was the time when a particular order was
brought into Europe through the Christ impulse, as I indicated to you the last
time, and this happened in the wonderful way in which it did happen through
Joan of Arc. Since then, however, times have changed. Today is not the time
when divine spiritual powers approach the human soul in such intimate fashion.
What was
the mission of Joan of Arc, really, if we consider something that was present
throughout her whole life? She was taken hold of from within by the forces of
the divine spiritual world. In her soul these forces encountered the Luciferic
forces. These Luciferic forces were mighty and powerful at that time. Joan of
Arc bore something within her that made her vanquish the Luciferic forces. She
vanquished the Luciferic forces, that is entirely obvious to anyone who wants
to see. We have briefly considered the miracle of her birth and seen that she
went through an unconscious initiation, in a way, up to Epiphany, the day known
as that of the manifestation of Christ. But we can also point to her death
which occurred because all the Luciferic forces of her enemies joined together
to bring about her death. Her misadventure in a battle was brought about
through the jealousy of the men who were the official leaders, appointed to
guide the battle. All the jealousy then came to the fore over the
manifestations of spiritual forces and spiritual powers that were made through
her. She was put on trial. The records of the trial still exist and anyone
studying them can see—unless of course his mind is as closed as that of Anatole
France—that this Maid of Orleans, having come into the physical world in a very
special way, through the thirteen nights, also left it in such a way. For it
says in the records, so that there is historical proof, that she said that she
would indeed die but that after her death the English would meet with a much
greater reverse than any they had known before, and that this would happen
within the next seven years.
If we take
this rightly, in its spiritual sense, it means nothing less than that the soul
of Joan of Arc on going through the gate of death was prepared to continue
contributing to the work of shaping events after her death, to share in the
work whatever her form of existence. And she did so. What the spiritual powers
have to bring about will be brought about whatever the external conditions may
be. Joan's adversaries were able to bring about her death, to mount the
strongest possible attack against her, as it were. They were not able to
prevent her mission.
However,
the forces of Joan of Arc were only able to work in the subtle way they did
during her time. In everything she did the Luciferic forces were ranged against
her. We are also having to deal with hostile forces in our time, but these are
predominantly Ahrimanic forces, the Ahrimanic forces that have come up with the
materialistic age. These are in evidence even in the outer form and fashion of
the whole of our age if we turn our attention to the mechanisms, the mechanical
element of the age; if we are aware that, fundamentally speaking, we are
offering an abode to demons when we produce our mechanical contrivances,
surrounding ourselves with a whole world of Ahrimanic demons. It is evident
also from other things that Ahrimanic powers are at work everywhere in our age.
We need only look back a few years and pay a little attention to the occult
substrate to our life on earth and we can see Ahrimanic forces influencing all
aspects of our physical life on earth. Not only the kind of demons we create in
our machines influence our earth life but also other kinds of Ahrimanic forces.
The occultist has to put into words something I have often put into words for
one group of friends or another: that, fundamentally speaking, the sad and
painful events now happening all over Europe and a large part of the globe have
long been in preparation. War has been present for a long time, as it were, in
the astral world but was held back by something that was also astral: by the
fear everybody was feeling. Fear is an astral element; it was able to hold the
war back, to prevent it; fear was able to stop war from breaking out for all
that time.
For fear
was abroad everywhere. Fear is altogether something that is most dreadfully
widespread in the depths of our souls in the present age. A time came, however,
when there was an external indication in time of something often referred to
when the starting points of this war are discussed. This outer aspect is not
the one that matters, however, it is merely a symbol. As I said on a previous
occasion, the assassination of the Austrian Archduke occurred and there emerged
the event, so terrible to the soul, that I have already referred to. I had
never before known anything like this, not from personal experience nor through
other occultists. We know what the soul goes through when it has undergone
death. In the case of the soul that went through death at that time something
very specific showed itself. All the elements of fear began to gather around
it, as though around a focal point, and something of a cosmic power could now
be perceived in it. We know already that anything that has a specific character
on the physical plane will have the opposite character in the spiritual world.
This also held true in the present case. An element that first had had a
dispersive effect where war was concerned was now acting in the opposite way,
as a spur, an incitement, to war. So we see that a metamorphosis, as it were,
of the elements of fear, of the Ahrimanic elements, became mixed up with all
the things that finally led to the sad and painful events of the present time.
Ahrimanic elements are indeed at work everywhere in our time. We must not rebel
against this, nor should we aim to protect ourselves against it. We have to see
it as something that is necessary in our time, something that has to be present
in our time. The question is: How do we find the right attitude to this? How do
we find the one thing that will show us what should be our attitude now, in the
present age, if we want to make it possible for divine spiritual forces and
powers to enter into our actions?
Here I must
refer to an event in the spiritual world that happened a few decades ago. I
have mentioned this on a number of occasions, in all kinds of different
contexts. It is an event that occurred behind the scenes of our existence, in
the spiritual world, in or about November 1879.27 We
know that there is a different regent of earth life for every epoch, as it
were; one regent follows another. Until 1879 the spirit acting out of the
spiritual world was the one we call the spirit Gabriel, if a name is to be
used. From 1879 onwards it was the spirit we call Michael. It is Michael who
directs events in our time. Anyone able to see into the spiritual worlds in
conscious awareness will feel the spirit Michael to be the spirit who truly is
the one to lead and govern in our time. Michael is in a way the most powerful
of the leading spirits of the age that follow one another. In a way, I said, he
is the most powerful of these spirits. The others have been predominantly
active in the spirit sphere. Michael had the strength to push the spirit right
through into the physical world. He was the spirit who descended to earth ahead
of the Christ, as it were, before the Mystery of Golgotha approached, and
governed world affairs for four or five centuries at that time. Now in our time
he is again the leading spirit on earth. We may make a comparison by saying
that Michael is among the spirits belonging to the hierarchy of the Archangeloi
as gold is among the metals. Whilst all other metals act predominantly on the
ether body, gold also acts as a medicine for the physical body. In the same way
all the other leading spirits act on the soul whilst it is Michael who at the
same time is able to act on the physical intellect, on physical reason. Now
that his age has come it is possible to act out of the spirit on the physical
intellect, on physical reason. In the 15th century he was not the actual leader
and therefore had to find a way in the case of Joan without making use of the
human intellect, human understanding, human ability to form ideas; a way that
was wholly an inner one, as it were, through the innermost powers of the human
soul. The Christ influenced Joan of Arc through his Michaelic spirit, but he
achieved what had to be done by any other means rather than the forces of the
intellect and of reason.
Luciferic
spirits are also present today. and these prefer to attack man from within.
They want to generate all kinds of passions, but not the error of the
intellect, the error of common reason that we have to struggle with in our
present age. We therefore have to say that anything we wish to achieve in the
spiritual sphere must be achieved in such a way that it is in accord with the
forces that Michael, the leading spirit of the age, commands. We are in close
alliance with Michael when we try to grasp what we have been attempting to
grasp these last few days, when we try and grasp things as phenomena, to grasp
what we call the German folk spirit. Two powers: Michael and the German folk
spirit. These two are entirely in harmony, and it is their mission to bring the
Christ impulse to expression specifically in our time, in accord with the
character of our time. For it would be wrong for the people of our time to
think that the same inward way of working that was appropriate to the 15th
century could still be appropriate now that we are in the fifth post-Atlantean
era. In the present age it is a matter above all of understanding that it is
necessary to be chained to Ahriman, to Ahrimanic elements we ourselves create
in our machines, and that it is necessary to recognize clearly how these things
are connected. Otherwise we live in fear of many of the things that exist in
the present age.
The
question therefore arises: How do we offer resistance to this Ahrimanic element
in our age, the way resistance was offered to the Luciferic element at the time
of Joan of Arc? We offer resistance to the Ahrimanic element by taking exactly
the path that has been so emphatically pointed out over and over again within
our stream of spiritual science—the path towards a spiritualization of human
culture, of man's ability to form ideas and concepts. This is why it has been
stressed again and again that there is a way in which everything spiritual
science can give us, even if to begin with it is largely presented to us from
the spiritual world, can truly and wholly and utterly be grasped with the
intellect, the reason man has been gifted with from the 16th century to this
day. And if we say we do not understand, then that is only because we listen to
the prejudices current in the materialism of our age. We must stop listening
ever and again to the voice of present-day materialism, a voice that speaks
loudly at times and then again in the faintest of whispers. Instead we must try
and firmly focus our mind on such powers of understanding as we have. Then the
things spiritual science produces for us will one day appear to be perfectly
understandable, as something that can be understood just as well as some event
or other in the outside world can be understood. We generate the great strength
we need to offer resistance to the Ahrimanic forces by approaching the spirit
not merely through the inmost powers of revelation and of faith, as in the case
of Joan of Arc, but by trying to concentrate our powers of understanding most
intensely on what spiritual science has to give. If we do this, the hour, the
moment, will come when we have to say to ourselves: What comes to us out of
spiritual science is the only thing that is rational and at the same time makes
the world around us understandable, filling it with light. And when we are
taken hold of in this way we are taken hold of by what the spirit has to give
in our time so that we shall indeed be strong enough to face the Ahrimanic
forces.
Someone
with a disposition like that of Joan of Arc would not be able to achieve
anything in our day and age. She would be an interesting personality and would
be able to reveal many marvellous things through prophesy and in other ways.
Such a person capable of making intimate revelations is capable of effectively
countering Luciferic forces. Today, however, man has to resist Ahrimanic
forces, has to make himself strong to cope with these forces, developing the
strength required in the Michaelic age. Sun-like qualities are called for in
the age of Michael, qualities we take into ourselves by spiritualizing the
powers we have at our command between waking up and going to sleep: the powers
of the intellect, of understanding, of insight. For these powers of understanding
we possess will undergo a transformation in the soul if only we have sufficient
patience. They are transformed to such effect that out of what emerges for us
in spiritual science there arises the certainty that what we are grasping there
is the direct expression of the thoughts of the spiritual world. So there can
be no question today of withdrawing from the outside world which has Ahrimanic
forces in it everywhere. No, it is necessary for us to stand in this world but
at the same time also make ourselves strong to meet those Ahrimanic forces.
It is a
matter therefore of finding the way towards understanding the spiritual world
with the very same powers we also use to understand the outside world. That, of
course, is the way—as we have said on these few occasions—that is inwardly
bound up with the whole mission of the German people, and specifically with
this mission as it has been from the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th
centuries. This mission was in preparation during the preceding centuries. This
is what is so remarkable—what has been going on in the intellectual life of
Germany, through its poets, its artists and philosophers, is intimately bound
up with the spiritual life. Here it really is a matter of boldly looking the
facts in the face, without sympathy or antipathy, and seeing how they were
first in preparation and gradually took shape. We have ourselves had the
experience of simply having to stress one day that there is this necessity to
be active in the life of the intellect and spirit as it continues to progress.
Why should that be so?
Let us try
and take a look at the theosophical movement we had external links with for a
time, the theosophical movement in England. Try and build a bridge for
yourselves between the general intellectual life in England, including the
field of philosophy, and English theosophy. Externally they stand side by side,
are two streams running side by side, and a bridge between the two is something
we can only make in a very external way. Try on the other hand and consider the
life of the mind and spirit that had its preparatory stages in the German
mystics Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler, and then evolved further through
Jakob Boehme and Angelus Silesius.28
In Lessing21
it brought acceptance of the idea of repeated earth lives, and in
Goethe's Faust an out-and-out glorification of the ascent to
the spiritual worlds.
There you
have the straight route from the outer worlds to the spiritual world. If you
then also include the stream that led from Goethe's Fairy Tale of the
Green Snake and the Fair Lily29 to the dramatization
of the basic forces of initiation30 and take the two
streams together, you will have the inner connection. There is an inner
connection between that which finally makes its appearance as spiritual science
and that which is striven for quite exoterically in the intellectual life of the
physical world. The life of the mind and spirit which unfolds outside of
spiritual science is of course striven for with the powers of the intellect,
but it is compelled to move in the direction of what is found outside the body.
I should like to put it like this: It is the mission of the German people that
they cannot do anything else but let the river of all their endeavours finally
enter into spiritual life. In spiritual terms that really means that the German
people are called to unite inwardly with the element that comes into the world
because Michael is the leader. Such a union is not achieved by passively,
fatalistically, allowing oneself to be governed by the powers of destiny. It is
achieved by recognizing the challenge of the time.
What I am
trying to show has been revealed not only inwardly, in the evolution of German
mysticism, but also outwardly in the whole way German life has developed within
the context of European life. In the first of the last two public lectures I
have given, ‘The Germanic Soul and the German Intellect’, I discussed the way
the soul quality of the Germanic tribes flowed into the peoples of the West and
the South, as it were, through those who became the outposts of those tribes,
the Goths, Lombards, Vandals. The Germanic soul element was sacrificed on the
altar of mankind. Later this was to repeat itself, though less obviously so.
Consider first of all the most eastern part of Austria31 and
the people known as the Transylvanian Saxons. They had emigrated from the
Rhine, from the Siebengebirge (Seven Mountains), and there is external evidence
to prove this. As time went on they lost their special characteristics. The
soul substance gave itself up, to merge into that of the other nation, and
little will be left of them one day except for some elements from their
language; it was as folk substance that they flowed into the other nation. Now
let us move on south to the Banat.32 Swabian immigrants
settled there and the Magyar element overgrew the Swabian element. The same
thing has happened in the Carpathian mountains in Hungary. To all appearances
these immigrant elements have disappeared today. Yet they are still alive everywhere
among the present-day population, sometimes emerging in tiny rivulets, like in
the fascinating linguistic enclave of the people of Gottschee in Krain
[Carniola]. And elsewhere as well. We see—and it would be possible to purse
this a great deal further—how the Germanic soul-element has been sent out into
the world, how it has an effect there. This happens out of an inner necessity.
It happened like this in earlier ages and particularly also during the age of
Gabriel. It happened throughout the age of Gabriel in that the blood—I would
say the blood and the mixing of blood—was active, everything which, whilst
connected with external circumstances in life, yet cannot be grasped
externally, but again takes place at a more inward level.
Now the
Michael age has come,the age when we must grasp how, through the whole past
development of the life of the mind and intellect, the German spirit is able to
take its place within the Sun force of Michael. That we simply have to realize.
And it can be realized by giving recognition to spiritual science, by
gradually—on the basis of what spiritual science is considering—getting an idea
and an awareness of the spiritual powers that are at work, of the reality of
spiritual powers. Then we shall gradually come to understand how senseless it
is for people to say: ‘There are no spiritual forces, I cannot acknowledge
them. And if I have a bar of iron in horseshoe form here, then it is just that,
a bar of iron, and I see nothing but iron.’ But there may be magnetic forces
within it. And in the same way something else, something quite different from
magnetic forces, lies within the whole of the outside world. We come to
recognize it if we really consider all that is presented to us as the
characteristic form of things. That is the way to achieve the powers of mind
needed in the age of Michael to resist the Ahrimanic powers, at a time when it
is indeed our duty to withstand the Ahrimanic powers. Fundamentally speaking,
everything the study of spiritual science has to offer is merely preparatory.
One day an awakening of the soul will spring forth from the study of spiritual
science, and the soul will know: Within you lives the spiritual world, from the
Christ impulse down through Michael to the folk spirit which puts into effect
what has to be put into effect.
I have said
that the time of Joan of Arc was one when it was possible to act on the
weakest, physically the weakest, powers of man. Our age is one where it is
necessary to act on the strongest powers of man, to take hold of the will at a
point where it is least inclined truly to unfold its powers. We can see it
again and again: the thing people find most difficult to do is to unfold the
will at the point where our earthly powers, the powers by which we form
concepts, are made inwardly active. To bring ‘will-power’ to bear externally is
something people still find relatively easy. But a different kind of
‘will-power’ is needed to guide our thoughts in such a way that they encompass
the spiritual world. Spiritual science as such has to appeal to that strong will-power,
for this must be there if spiritual science is truly to lead where it ought to
lead in our Michaelic age. For we are not called to discuss the mechanical
element in our age; we are not called to point out that this mechanical element
in our age has laid hold of mankind; we are called to do something else.
Of course,
if we squeeze the facts a little it will be possible for us to become a
philosopher, to some degree even a great philosopher—this we admit without
reserve. It is possible to look at the machines in our age and start to
consider this very mechanistic aspect as the most pernicious of all things,
ascribing it specifically to our enemies. And one then has the inclination,
even if one may be considered a great philosopher, to hurl abuse like a market
woman. One can then do the same as the philosopher Bergson33 who
only recently again managed to point out rather one sidedly—and many things
tend to be perfectly correct if a one sided view is presented—how the
mechanistic effect of the forces relates to the essential nature of the German
people. But that is not the only thing we can point to—that German brainpower
has achieved things in certain areas by applying mechanical principles—for
something else may be pointed out as well. Nor is it necessary to hurl abuse
like a market woman when discussing such matters, and instead we may say:
Perhaps the very place where the intellect has the greatest powers to give form
to the mechanistic and demonic element is also the place where these
mechanistic and demonic powers can be overcome on the basis of our particular
spiritual mission. Then however, a German may easily get himself misunderstood
as he comes to see, in conjunction with the way the intellectual life has
developed, that it is not his function to stop at the purely mechanical element
that is of such great service to him also in the present day, with the
challenges presented by the war. He must not stop at what is merely mechanism,
for then he would merely create demons. No, he must develop powerful forces
within him that can boldly face these demons. This means that we have to stand
in the spiritual world, not blindly but in a way that arises from, and is
guided by, conviction. If we set out to acknowledge that we are surrounding
ourselves with a world of demons, a veritable hell, as we design and build
machine after machine, we can of course understand why people speaking out of
the materialistic spirit of the present age are saying over and over again that
this scientific and materialistic age has taken us to the greatest height ever
achieved by man. Of course we can understand this for it is in line with the
materialistic thought of the present time, but we must know that with those
machines we are introducing nothing but demons for mankind and we must know how
to develop the right powers to resist these demons. We only gain the right
attitude to the spiritual world by recognizing these demonic Ahrimanic forces,
by knowing full well that they are present. For the harmful powers are harmful
only when we remain unconscious of them, when we know nothing about them. Let
me illustrate this by means of a comparison.
As you
know, we hope after some time to have a building at Dornach near Basle where we
can nurture our spiritual stream in suitable surroundings. It is not a question
of erecting this building to escape the pressures of our time in some way or
other, but rather of building it entirely out of the pressures of our time. It
was necessary for instance to design a lighting system out of the most
Ahrimanic forces of the present age, electric lighting, electric heating and so
on. It is a matter of using the architectural form as such to render such
potentially harmful things harmless. It could have been the case that anyone
entering the building in the future would have been surrounded with everything
the Ahrimanic culture of the present age leads to. The point, however, is not
that it is present, but that people do not notice it. We are not suppose to
notice it. To achieve this, a number of friends got together and they are
erecting a separate building for this, giving it a special form, so that the
demonic Ahrimanic forces are banished to this place. Anyone approaching the
building, and also anyone entering it, will have it brought to their notice
that the Ahrimanic forces are at work there. For as soon as we know this they
are no longer harmful. The point is that the powers that have a bad effect on
man cease to do so when we take a good look at the places where they are
active, when we do not look at a machine thoughtlessly and say ‘a machine is
simply a machine’ , but rather acknowledge that a machine is a place where a
demonic Ahrimanic entity may be found.
If we take
our stand in the world with knowledge in our souls we take the right stand in
the Michaelic age. It means that we relate to the spiritual world in such a way
that Michael, too, can be active within us; Michael with his present mission,
as we have described it. The point is that in every case we can either enter
without thought into what exists in the mechanical contrivances men are
producing at an unconscious level or we can see through life. If we see through
it, if we become aware of the demonic elemental powers at work in the machines
we produce, we shall find the way to the rightful givers of Inspiration who are
true to the spirit. They are connected with the spirit who is to the other
spirits concerned with guidance of man as gold is to the other metals—with
Michael.
My aim
today has been to show that the mission of our age is to seek the divine
spiritual powers that will work for the good of mankind. It is different from
the mission given to the human souls who lived at the time of Joan of Arc. At
that time it was much more a question of holding back anything intellectual,
holding back the power of reasoning. Today, however, it is a question of
cultivating everything to do with reason and intellect to attain to
clairvoyance, for it is possible to cultivate it and attain to clairvoyance.
Once there are people who cultivate the human soul in this way, the twilight
period we are now living through will evolve into what it destined to evolve.
Everything that evolves on the physical plane can only be the outer garment for
the spiritual life that is to arise for mankind out of the present time.
And it is
true that those who are now sacrificing their powers in the years of their
youth are prepared to send these powers down into our earthly existence. For
these powers are never lost, they are indestructible- Now, however, they are
destined to continue to act spiritually as they would have continued to act
physically if the people concerned had not gone through the gate of death on
the field of battle. They will continue to send their powers down to earth and
into our time, so that we shall know what to do with these powers. These powers
need to stream down into a human race that shall use them in such a way, during
the time of peace that will follow the war, that spiritual life spreads more
and more on earth. As the light of day always arises from the night, so a
future filled with light will have to arise out of our present which so often
seems like a dark night to us. This future will have to be filled not only with
light but with everything the Michaelic age, which started in 1871, has to
bring for mankind. Once there are souls capable of establishing as intimate a
bond with the spiritual world as has been indicated today, we shall be able to
hope that where the events of the present time are concerned, the thought
expressed in the seven lines of the mantram will come to fruition. We may hope
that it will all be fulfilled—if the first five lines are really and truly
connected with the last two:
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.
15 dezembro 2025
Social, Anti-forces Forces. Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner
Workers of the world unite (?)
Now, I would say that the mere egoistic, soul-stirring talk of loving our fellow-men and acting upon this love at the first opportunity, that this does not constitute social life. This sort of love is, for the most part, terribly egoistic. Many a man is supported by what he has first gained through robbing his fellow-men in a truly patriarchal fashion, in order to create for himself an object for his self-love, so that he can then feel nice and warm with the thought, “You are doing this, you are doing that” One does not easily discover that a large part of the so-called love of doing good is a masked self-love. Therefore, the main consideration is not merely to think of what lies nearest to hand, thereby enhancing our self-love, but to feel it our duty to look carefully at the many-sided social structures in which we are placed. We must at first lay the foundations for such understanding. Yet few today are disposed to do so.
I would like to discuss one question from the viewpoint of general education, namely: How can we consciously establish social impulses to balance those anti-social forces which are developing naturally within us? How can we cultivate the social element, this interest of man in man, so that it springs up in us—going ever further and deeper, and leaving us no rest? How can we enkindle this interest which has disappeared so pitiably in our age, the age of the Spiritual Soul? In our age true chasms have already been created between people. Men have no idea about the manner in which they pass one another by without in the least comprehending each other. The desire to understand the other in all his or her uniqueness is very weak today. On the one hand, we have the cry for social union; and on the other, the ever-increasing spread of purely anti-social principles. The blindness of people toward each other can be seen in the many clubs and societies which people form. They do not provide any opportunity for people to get to know one another. It is possible for men to meet one another for years and not to know each other better at the end than they did at the beginning. The precise need of the future is that the social shall be brought to meet the antisocial in a systematic way. For this there are various inner soul methods. One is that we frequently attempt to look back over our present incarnation to survey what has happened to us in this life through our relations with others. If we are honest in this, most of us will say: Nowadays we generally regard the entrance of many people into our life in such a way that we see ourselves, our own personalities, as the center of the review. What have we gained from this or that person who has come into our life? This is our natural way of feeling. It is exactly this which we must try to combat. We should try in our souls to think of others, such as teachers, friends, those who have helped us and also those who have injured us (to whom we often owe more than to those who, from a certain point of view, have been of use to us). We should try to allow these pictures to pass before our souls as vividly as possible in order to see what each has done.
[...]
Two powers are working in the present. One is the power which since the Mystery of Golgotha has worked in different metamorphoses through the ensuing periods of earth evolution as the Christ Impulse. We have often said that just in our age a reappearance of the Etheric Christ will take place. This reappearance of the Christ is indeed not far off. That He is coming again is no cause for pessimism, nor should it give rise to a nebulous longing and a desire for soul-warming, self-seeking, theosophical theories. The Christ Impulse has various forms, but in His present form He wishes to help humanity realize that spiritual wisdom now being revealed by the spiritual world. This wisdom wants to be realized and the Christ Impulse will be a help in this realization. It is on this realization that all depends. At this critical moment humanity is faced with a momentous decision. On the one side stands the Christ Being, calling us of our own free will to do what we have been speaking about today, to consciously and freely receive the social impulses which can heal and help humanity. Freely, to receive them. Therefore, we do not unite ourselves on those levels where hatred forms a foundation for love as in the cry, “Workers of the world, unite!” But we unite by striving to realize the Christ Impulse, by doing those things which are the will of Christ for this age.
Oppos`ed to this will stands the adversary who is called in the Bible “the unrighteous Prince of this World”. He makes his presence known in various ways. One of these ways is to take those forces which allow us as free beings to serve that which we have been talking about today, to take this force of free will and to place it at the service of the physical. This adversary, the Prince of this world, has various instruments; for example, hunger and social chaos. By this means, through external compulsion, and physical measures, the force of free will is subverted to the service of apparent necessity. See how humanity today shows that it will not of its own free will turn to a truly social life, and to a recognition of true progress for mankind. It wishes to be compelled. And yet, this compulsion has not even led people to make the basic distinction between the Spirit of the super-sensible world, the Christ Spirit and the adversary, the unrighteous Prince of this world. Look at this situation and see if this does not explain why in so many places today men oppose and struggle against the acceptance of any true spiritual teaching, against true spiritual deeds, and against Spiritual Science. They are possessed by the unrighteous Prince of this world.
Now think for a moment; think how you of your own free will turn to spiritual life; think humbly of yourselves, but also earnestly and strongly as the missionaries of the Christ-Spirit today, who have to combat the unrighteous Prince of this world, who lays hold of all those who unconsciously allow themselves to use forces out of the future to realize their own aims. If you think of yourselves in this light there is no room for pessimism—indeed it leaves you no time for a pessimistic view of the world. It will of course not shut your eyes and ears to that which has happened, sometimes in a terrible manner—and which is tragic to behold in its true form. But you will preeminently keep the following before your souls—“I am, in any case, called to look at everything without illusion; I must be neither pessimistic nor optimistic, so that forces may awaken in my soul which give me the power to aid the free development of the human being, to contribute to human progress in the place and situation where I am”. Even if the faults and tragedies of the age are very visible to Spiritual Science this should not be an incitement to pessimism or optimism, but rather a call to an inner awakening so that independent work and the cultivation of right thinking will result. For above all things, adequate insight is necessary. If only a sufficient number of people today were motivated to say, “We absolutely must have a better understanding of things”; then everything else would follow. It is just in regard to social questions that there is a need to consciously strive for insight and understanding. The development of the will activity is planned for, it is coming. If we in daily life would only wish to educate ourselves about social issues, and develop new social ideas, then (according to an occult law), each of us would be able to take another human being along. Each one of us can therefore work for two if we have the will. We could achieve much if we had an earnest desire to acquire insight at once. The rest would follow. It is not so bad that not many people can do much about the situation of society today, but it is incredibly sad if people cannot at least make up their minds to become acquainted with the social laws of Spiritual Science. The rest would follow if serious study would take place.
This is what I have desired to communicate to you today regarding the importance of knowing and recognizing certain things about the social situation of the present, and how such a recognition can lead to a life impulse for the future. I hope we will again have the opportunity of speaking together about the more intimate aspects of Spiritual Science.
Social and Anti-social Forces in the Human Being GA 186, 12 December 1918, Bern, Translated by Christopher Schaefer
Rudolf Steiner.
Social and Anti-social Forces in the Human Being. GA 186. 12 December 1918,
Bern. Translated by Christopher Schaefer
Now we need
not give a full description of these cultural stages, but we will particularly
look at what is a peculiarity of our age—this age which has comparatively few
centuries behind it. Each age lasts on average about 2000 years. Therefore much
remains to be done in this period of the Spiritual Soul. The task of
humanity—of civilized humanity in this age of the Spiritual Soul—will be that
of laying hold of the whole human being and making him entirely dependent on
himself, of lifting into the full light of consciousness much of that which in
earlier periods man felt instinctively and judged instinctively.
Many
present difficulties and much that is chaotic around us in our era, become
quite explicable when one knows that the task of our era is to raise that which
is instinctive to the plane of consciousness. What is instinctive in us happens
to a certain degree by itself, but to achieve a conscious result one must make
an inward effort, above all, to begin to think truly with one's whole being.
Man tries to avoid this, he does not willingly take a conscious part in the
shaping of world conditions. Here is a point over which many are indeed
deceived today. Men today think the following: Well, today we live in the
period of the development of thought. People are proud of the fact that there
is more thinking nowadays than in the past. But this is an illusion—one of the
many illusions in which humanity lives today. This comprehension on which
people pride themselves today is mainly instinctive. Only when the instinctive
nature which has appeared in the evolution of humanity and which so proudly
speaks of thought—only when this instinctive nature becomes instead an active
element, when the intellect does not depend merely on the brain but springs
from the whole man, when it is separated from rationalism and is lifted to the
plane of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition—only then will that gradually
emerge which seeks to emerge in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Period, the period of
the Spiritual Soul. That which meets man today and which is clearly indicated
even in the worldly thought of the present epoch is something which one
continuously needs to mention the appearance of the so-called Social Question.
But he who
has earnestly studied our anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science will
easily perceive that the essential impulse in the shaping of the social order
(whether belonging to the State or not) must come from that which human beings
can develop out of themselves, as it is this which regulates the relationship
between people. Everything which the human being develops out of himself
naturally corresponds to certain impulses which are ultimately found in our
soul and spirit life. If one looks at the matter this way, one is able to ask:
Must attention not then be directed above all to the social impulses or to the
social instincts, movements or forces emerging in human nature? We can, if you
like, call these social impulses, social drives; but we must keep in mind that
they should not only be thought of as mere unconscious instincts since when we
speak of social instincts today, we must take into account that we live in the
age of the Consciousness Soul and that these drives seek to press up into consciousness.
Now, if
these things are to count for us, then we must find social impulses which seek
to become reality. But in so doing we must recognize the terrible one-sidedness
of our age, which should not of course be deplored, but which should be looked
at calmly because it has to be overcome. Man has such a great inclination in
our day to look at things one-sidedly. But a pendulum cannot swing from the
central point out to one side without also swinging back to the other. Just as
little as a pendulum can swing to one side only, can social impulses of men be
expressed by only one side. This is because the social impulses are quite
naturally opposed by anti-social impulses in the human being. Precisely because
one finds social impulses or drives in human nature, one also finds the
opposite. This fact must above all be considered.
The social
leaders and agitators, for example, live in the illusion that they need only
spread certain ideas or need only appeal to a class of man who is willing and
disposed (provided ideas are there) to help forward the social impulse. It is
an illusion to act in this way, for in so doing one forgets that if social
forces are working, then anti-social forces are also present. What we must be
able to do today is to look these things straight in the face without illusion.
It is only from the viewpoint of Spiritual Science that they can be looked at
straightly without illusion. One is tempted to say that people are sleeping
through the most important thing of all in life when they do not begin to look
at life from the viewpoint of Spiritual Science.
We must ask
ourselves: What is the relation between people with regard to social and
anti-social forces? We need to see that the relationship between people is
fundamentally a complicated matter. When one person meets another, I would say
we must look into the situation radically. Meetings of course point to
differences which vary according to specific circumstances; but we must fix our
eyes on the common characteristics, we must clearly see the common elements in
the meeting, in the confrontation between one person and another. We must ask
ourselves: What really happens then, not merely in that which presents itself
to the senses, but in the total situation, when one person stands opposite
another, when one person meets another? Nothing less than that a certain force
works from one person to the other. The meeting of one with another leads to
the working of a certain force between them. We cannot confront another person
in life with indifference, not even in mere thoughts and feelings, even though
we may be separated from them by distance. If we have any kind of relation to
other people, or any communication with them, then a force flows between us
creating a bond. It is this fact which lies at the basis of social life and
which, when broadened, is really the foundation for the social structure of
humanity.
One sees
this phenomenon most clearly when one thinks of the direct interchange between
two people. The impression which one person makes on the other has the effect
of lulling the other to sleep. Thus we frequently find in social life that one
person gets lulled to sleepiness by the other with whom he has interchange. As
a physicist might say: a “latent tendency” is always there for one man to lull
another to sleep in social relationships.
Why is this
so? Well, we must see that this rests on a very important arrangement of man's
total being. It rests on the fact that what we call social impulses,
fundamentally speaking are only present in people of our present day
consciousness during sleep. You are, in so far as you have not yet attained
clairvoyance, really only penetrated by social forces when you are asleep, and
only that which continues to work out of sleeping into waking conditions works
into ordinary waking consciousness as a social impulse. When you know this, you
do not need to be surprised when your social being seeks to lull you to sleep
in your relationship with others. In the relationship between people the social
impulse ought to develop. Yet it can only develop during sleep. Therefore in
the relationship between people a tendency is shown for one person to dull the
consciousness of the other so that a social relation may be established between
them. This striking fact is evident to one who studies the realities of life.
Above all things, our interchange with one another leads to dulling the
consciousness of one another, in the interests of a social impulse between
people. Of course you cannot go about continually asleep in life. Yet the
tendency to establish social impulses consists in, and expresses itself by, an
inclination to sleep. That of which I speak goes on subconsciously of course,
but it nevertheless actually penetrates our life continuously. Thus there
exists a permanent disposition to fall asleep precisely for the building up of
the social structure of humanity.
On the
other hand, something else is also working. A perpetual struggle and opposition
to falling asleep in social relationships is also present. If you meet a person
you are continuously standing in a conflict situation in the following way:
Because you meet him, the tendency to sleep always develops in you so that you
may experience your relationship to him in sleep. But, at the same time, there
is aroused in you the counter-force to keep yourself awake. This always happens
in the meeting between people—a tendency to fall asleep, a tendency to keep
awake. In this situation a tendency to keep awake has an anti-social character,
the assertion of one's individuality, of one's personality, in opposition to
the social structure of society. Simply because we are human beings, our
soul-life swings to and fro between the social and the antisocial. And that
which lives in us as these two forces, which may be observed between people
communicating, can from an occult perspective be seen to govern our life. When
we meet social arrangements and structures in society, even if these
arrangements seem far-fetched from the seemingly wise consciousness of the
present, they are still a manifestation of this pendulum between social and
anti-social forces. The national economist may reflect upon what credit,
capital and interest are. Yet even these things which make for regularity in
social transactions are only outward swings of the pendulum between social and
anti-social forces. The person who seeks to find healing remedies for these
times must intelligently and scientifically connect with these facts. For how
is it that social demands arise in our time? Well, we live in the age of the
Spiritual or Consciousness Soul in which man must become independent. But on
what does this depend? It depends on people's ability during our Fifth
Post-Atlantean Period to become self-assertive, to not allow themselves to be
put to sleep. It is the anti-social forces which require development in this
time, for consciousness to be present. It would not be possible for mankind in
the present to accomplish its task if just these anti-social forces did not
become ever more powerful; they are indeed the pillars on which personal
independence rests. At present, humanity has no idea how much more powerful
anti-social impulses must become, right on until the 30th century. For men to
progress properly, anti-social forces must develop
In earlier
periods the development of the anti-social forces was not the spiritual bread
of humanity's evolution. There was therefore no need to establish a
counter-force. Indeed none was set. In our day, when a person on his own
account, for his individual self, must evolve antisocial forces, which are
evolving because man is now subjected to this evolution against which nothing
will prevail, there must also come about that with which man resists them: a
social structure which will balance this anti-social evolutionary tendency. The
anti-social forces must work inwardly so that human beings may reach the height
of their development. Outwardly, in social life, structures must work so that
people do not totally lose their outer connections in life. Hence the social
demands of the present. They can in a certain sense be seen as the demand for a
justified outer balance to the inward, essentially anti-social evolutionary
tendency of humanity in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch.
From this
you can see that nothing is accomplished by seeing things in a one-sided way.
As men live nowadays, certain words (I will not say ideas or feelings), certain
words have certain values. The word “anti-social” arouses a degree of
antipathy. It is considered as something evil. Very well; we perhaps need not
trouble ourselves whether it is considered good or bad, since it is quite
necessary. Be it good or bad, it is connected with the necessary tendencies of
evolution in our time. It is simply sheer nonsense to say that the anti-social
impulses must be resisted, for they cannot be resisted. One must grasp the
essential inner development of mankind in our time, understand the evolutionary
tendency. It is not a matter of finding prescriptions for resisting the
anti-social forces; but of so shaping, of so arranging the social order, the
structure, the organization of that which lies outside of the individual, that
a counter-balance is present to that which works as anti-social force within
human beings. Therefore it is vital for our time that the individual achieves
independence, but that social forms provide a balance to this independence.
Otherwise neither the individual nor society can develop properly.
In earlier
periods there were tribes and classes. Our age strives against this. Our age is
no longer able to divide people into classes but must consider them in their
totality and create social structures which take this totality into account. I
said yesterday in my public lecture that slavery could exist in the Greco-Latin
Period; one was the master, the other the slave. Then men were divided. Today
we have as a remnant just that which disturbs the working-man so much, namely
that his power to work is sold; in this way something belonging to him is
organized from outside. This must go; it is only possible to organize socially
what does not integrally belong to the human being, such as his position or the
function to which he is appointed, in short, something which is not an inner
part of the individual. All this which we acknowledge with regard to the
necessary development of social democracy is really so, and must be so
understood.
Just as no
man can claim to do arithmetic if he has never learned his multiplication
tables, so too he cannot claim to discuss social reforms and the like when he
has never learned those things which we have just explained: namely, that
socialism and anti-socialism exist quite concretely in the way described.
People in some of the most important positions in society, when they begin
talking about present social demands, often appear to those who know, as
individuals who wish to begin building a bridge over a rushing stream without
having the most elementary knowledge of mechanics. They may well be able to put
up a bridge, but it will collapse at the first opportunity. It seems with
social leaders or with those who look after social institutions, that their
plans will be shown to be impossible; for the things of reality demand that we
work with them, and not against them. It is therefore tremendously important
that those things which form the backbone of our anthroposophical thought and
consciousness should one day be taken seriously.
One of the
impulses which ensoul us in the sphere of our anthroposophical movement is that
we, in a sense, carry into the whole of man's life that which most people apply
only to youth. We sit on the “school-bench” of life long after we have become
grey. This is one of the differences between us and others, who believe that at
the age of 25, or sometimes 26, when they have finished lazying about with
their education, that they are ready for the rest of life—at most there may
still be some amusing additions to one's education.
But when we
approach the very nerve of Spiritual Science, we feel that the human being
really must continue to learn throughout his whole life if he wishes to tackle
the tasks of life. It is vital that we should be permeated with this feeling.
If we do not get rid of the belief that people can master everything with the
faculties they have developed up to their 20th or 25th year, that then one only
has to meet in Parliament or some other forum to decide all affairs—as long as
we do not get rid of this view, we shall never be able to establish healthy
conditions in the social structure of mankind.
The study
of the reciprocal relation between the social and the anti-social is extremely
significant for our time. Just this anti-social tendency is of the utmost
importance to understand because it must make itself felt and must be developed
in us. This anti-social spirit can only be held in balance by the social. But
the social must be nursed, must be consciously cared for. And in our day this
becomes truly more and more difficult because the anti-social forces are really
in accord with our natural development.
The social
element is essential; it must be cherished. We shall see that in this Fifth
Post-Atlantean Period there is a tendency to take no notice of the social in
merely acting naturally. Rather it must be acquired consciously in working with
one's soul forces, while formerly it was felt instinctively in man. What is
necessary and must be actively acquired is the interest of man in man. This is
indeed the backbone of all social life.
It almost
sounds paradoxical to say today that no clear conception of the so-called
difficult ideas of economics can be gained if the interest of one for another
does not increase, if people do not begin to compare the illusions which have
sway in social life with present realities. One who really thinks about it
recognizes the fact that simply by being a member of society one is in a
complicated relation to others. Imagine that you have a $5 note in your pocket,
and you make use of this $5 note by going shopping one morning, and you spend
the full $5. What does it mean that you go out with a $5 note in your pocket?
The $5 note is really an illusion—it is worth nothing in reality (even if it is
metal money. At this point I do not want to discuss the theories of the
Metalists and the Nominalists with regard to money; but even if it is metal
money, it is still an illusion and of no real worth). Money is namely only a
‘go-between’. And only because in our day a certain social order exists, an
order belonging purely to the State, therefore this $5 note which you have
spent in the morning for different items is nothing else than an equivalent for
so many days of labour of so many men. A number of men must have completed so
many days of work, so much human labour must have flowed into the social
order—must have crystallized itself into merchandise—in order for the apparent
worth of the bank note to have any real value, but only at the command of the
social order. The bank note only gives you the power to call into your service
so much labour, or to put it another way, to command its worth in work. You can
picture it in your mind: There I have a bank note, which assigns to me,
according to my social position, the power over so many men. If you now see
these workmen selling their labour hour by hour, as the equivalent value of
that which you have in your purse as the $5 note, then you begin to get a
picture of the real facts.
Our
relationships have become so complicated that we no longer pay attention to
these things, especially if they do not concern us closely. I have an example
which easily clarifies this. In the more difficult considerations of economics,
in the areas of capital and interest and credit, things are quite complicated;
so that even university professors and political economists, whose position
should mean possession of adequate insight, really have no knowledge. Thus you
can see that it is necessary to look at things correctly in these areas. Of
course we cannot immediately take in hand the reform of the national economy,
which has been forced into such a helpless condition by what is nowadays taught
as political economy. But we can at least ask with respect to national
education and other such matters: What must be done so that social life and
forms are consciously established in opposition to anti-social forces? What is
really required? I said that it would be difficult in our time for people to
develop sufficient interest in each other. You do not have sufficient interest
if you think that you can buy yourself something with a $5 note and do not
remember the fact that this brings about a social relationship with certain
other human beings and their labour-power. You only have an adequate interest
when in your picture you are able to substitute for each apparent transaction
(such as the exchange of goods for a $5 note) the real transaction which is
linked with it.
Now, I
would say that the mere egoistic, soul-stirring talk of loving our fellow-men
and acting upon this love at the first opportunity, that this does not
constitute social life. This sort of love is, for the most part, terribly
egoistic. Many a man is supported by what he has first gained through robbing
his fellow-men in a truly patriarchal fashion, in order to create for himself
an object for his self-love, so that he can then feel nice and warm with the
thought, “You are doing this, you are doing that” One does not easily discover
that a large part of the so-called love of doing good is a masked self-love.
Therefore, the main consideration is not merely to think of what lies nearest
to hand, thereby enhancing our self-love, but to feel it our duty to look
carefully at the many-sided social structures in which we are placed. We must
at first lay the foundations for such understanding. Yet few today are disposed
to do so.
I would
like to discuss one question from the viewpoint of general education, namely:
How can we consciously establish social impulses to balance those anti-social
forces which are developing naturally within us? How can we cultivate the
social element, this interest of man in man, so that it springs up in us—going
ever further and deeper, and leaving us no rest? How can we enkindle this
interest which has disappeared so pitiably in our age, the age of the Spiritual
Soul? In our age true chasms have already been created between people. Men have
no idea about the manner in which they pass one another by without in the least
comprehending each other. The desire to understand the other in all his or her
uniqueness is very weak today. On the one hand, we have the cry for social
union; and on the other, the ever-increasing spread of purely anti-social
principles. The blindness of people toward each other can be seen in the many
clubs and societies which people form. They do not provide any opportunity for
people to get to know one another. It is possible for men to meet one another
for years and not to know each other better at the end than they did at the
beginning. The precise need of the future is that the social shall be brought
to meet the antisocial in a systematic way. For this there are various inner
soul methods. One is that we frequently attempt to look back over our present
incarnation to survey what has happened to us in this life through our
relations with others. If we are honest in this, most of us will say: Nowadays
we generally regard the entrance of many people into our life in such a way
that we see ourselves, our own personalities, as the center of the review. What
have we gained from this or that person who has come into our life? This is our
natural way of feeling. It is exactly this which we must try to combat. We
should try in our souls to think of others, such as teachers, friends, those
who have helped us and also those who have injured us (to whom we often owe
more than to those who, from a certain point of view, have been of use to us).
We should try to allow these pictures to pass before our souls as vividly as
possible in order to see what each has done.
We shall
see, if we proceed in this way, that by degrees we learn to forget ourselves,
that in reality we find that almost everything which forms part of us could not
be there at all unless this or that person had affected our lives, helping us
on or teaching us something. When we look back on the years in the more distant
past to people with whom we are no longer in contact and about whom it is
easier to be objective, then we shall see how the soul-substance of our life
has been created by the people and circumstances of the past. Our gaze then
extends over a multitude of people whom we have known in the course of time. If
we try to develop a sense of the debt we owe to this or that person—if we try
to see ourselves in the mirror of those who have influenced us in the course of
time, and who have been associated with us—then we shall be able to experience
the opening-up of a new sense in our souls, a sense which enables us to gain a
picture of the people whom we meet even in the present, with whom we stand face
to face today. This is because we have practiced developing an objective
picture of our indebtedness to people in the past. It is tremendously important
that the impulse should awaken in us, not merely to feel sympathy or antipathy
towards the people we meet, not merely to hate or love something connected with
the person, but to awaken a true picture of the other in us, free from love or
hate.
Perhaps you
will not feel that what I am saying now is extremely important—but it is. For
this ability to picture the other in oneself without love or hate, to allow the
other individual to appear again within our soul, this is a faculty which is
decreasing week by week in the evolution of humanity. It is something which men
are, by degrees, completely losing. They pass one another by without arousing
any interest in each other. Yet this ability to develop an imaginative faculty
for the other is something that must enter into pedagogy and the education of
children. For we can really develop this imaginative faculty in us if, instead
of striving after the immediate sensations of life as is often done today, we
are not afraid to look back quietly in our soul and see our relationships to
other human beings. Then we shall be in a position to relate ourselves
imaginatively to those whom we meet in the present. In this way we awaken the
social instinct in us against the anti-social which quite unconsciously and of necessity
continues to develop. This is one side of the picture.
The other
is something that can be linked up with this review of our relations to others.
It is when we try to become more and more objective about ourselves. Here we
must also go back to our earlier years. Then we can directly, so to speak, go
to the facts themselves. Suppose you are 30 or 40 years of age. You think, “How
was it with me when I was ten years old? I will imagine myself entirely into
the situation of that time. I will picture myself as another boy or girl of ten
years old. I will try to forget that I was that; I will really take pains to
objectify myself.” This objectifying of oneself, this freeing of oneself in the
present from one's own past, this shelling-out of the Ego from its experiences,
must be specially striven for in our present time. For the present has the
tendency towards linking up the Ego more and more with its experiences.
Nowadays
man wants to be instinctively that which his experiences make him. For this
reason it is so very difficult to acquire the activity which Spiritual Science
gives. The spirit must make a fresh effort each time. According to true occult
science, nothing can be done by comfortably remaining in one's position. One
forgets things and must always be cultivating them afresh. This is just as it
should be because fresh efforts need to continually be made. He who has already
made some progress in the realm of Spiritual Science attempts the most
elementary things every day; others are ashamed to pay attention to the basics.
For Spiritual Science, nothing should depend on remembering, but on man's
immediate experience in the present. It is therefore a question of training
ourselves in this faculty—through making ourselves objective—that we picture
this boy or girl as if he or she were a stranger at an earlier time in our
lives; of bestirring ourselves more and more, of getting free of events, and of
being less haunted at 30 by the impulses of a 10 year old. Detachment from the
past does not mean denial of the past. We gain it in another way again, and
that is what is so important. On the one hand, we cultivate the social instinct
and impulses in us by looking back upon those who have been connected with us
in the past and regarding our souls as the products of these persons. In this
way we acquire the imagination for meeting people in the present. On the other
hand, through objectifying ourselves we gain possibilities of developing
imagination directly. This objectifying of our earlier years is fruitful
insofar as it does not work in us unconsciously. Think for a moment: If the 10
year old child works on unconsciously in you, then you are the 30 or 40 year
old augmented by the 10 year old. It is just the same with the 11, the 12 year
old child and so on. Egoism has tremendous power, but its power is lessened
when you separate the earlier years from yourself and when you make them
objective. This is the important point on which we must fix our attention.
The
following pre-condition for social activity must be made clear to those people
who raise social claims in unreasonable and illusory fashion: Understanding
about how man can develop himself as a socially creative being must first be
present in this period, when anti-social forces are growing ever stronger as
part of human evolution.
What will
then have been achieved? You will discover the whole meaning of what I have now
explained if you consider the following: In 1848 there appeared a social
document which continues to work into the present day in radical socialism, and
in Bolshevism. It was the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx,
which contains ideas which rule the thoughts and feelings of many working men.
Karl Marx was able to dominate the labour world for the simple reason that he
wrote and said what the working man thinks and understands, as a working man.
This Communist Manifesto the contents of which I do not need
to explain to you, appeared in 1848. It was the first document, the first seed
in what has now borne fruit, after the recent destruction of opposing
movements. This document contains one slogan, one sentence which you will often
find quoted today by most socialist writers: “Workers of the world, unite!” It
is a sentence which has run through many socialist groups. What does it
express? It expresses the most unnatural thing that could possibly be thought
today. It expresses an impulse for socializing, for uniting a certain mass of
people. On what is this uniting, this union, to be built? Upon its opposite,
upon the hatred of all those who are not members of the working class. This
associating, this banding together of people is to be brought about through
splitting up and separating mankind into classes. You must ponder this, you
must think about the reality of this principle which is a genuine illusion, if
I can use this expression, and which has been adopted in Russia, now in Germany
and the Austrian countries, and which will eat its way further and further into
the world. It is so unnatural precisely because, on the one hand, it shows the
necessity of socializing, but on the other it builds this socialization out of
the anti-social instinct of class hatred, and class opposition.
However,
these things need to be considered from a higher perspective, otherwise we
shall not get very far; above all, we shall not be able to participate in the
healthy development of mankind in the present. Nowadays Spiritual Science is
the only means of seeing things truly in their totality; it is the only means
for understanding our time. Just as one is adverse to entering into the spirit
and soul foundations of man's physical constitution, so one also avoids, out of
fear and lack of courage, studying those things in social life which can only
be understood out of the Spirit. People are afraid, cover their eyes and put
their heads in the sand like ostriches when they are confronted by real and
important things. Of what does human interchange in fact consist? As we have
seen, it consists of one person trying to put the other to sleep, while the
other tries to resist and stay awake. This is the archetypal phenomenon of
social science in Goethe's sense. This archetypal phenomenon points to
something which mere material thinking cannot grasp; it points to that which
can only be understood when one knows that in human life one is not only asleep
during sleep—when we slumber along for hours, oblivious to the world—but the
same applies to daily waking life, where the same forces which lead to sleep
and wakefulness also play into the social and anti-social forces of man. All
thinking about social forms can bear no fruit if we do not make the effort to
take these things into account.
With this
in mind, we must not be blind to the events taking place in the world, but must
carefully watch what is coming to pass. What, for example, does the socialist
of today think? He thinks that he can invent socialist slogans and call to men
from all countries—“Workers of the world, unite!” and by so doing, establish a
sort of international Paradise.
This indeed
is one of the greatest and most fatal illusions. People are not abstract, but
concrete. Fundamentally, the human being is individual. I have tried to make
this clear in my Philosophy of Freedom, in contrast to the
relativism of Neo-Kantianism and socialism. Men are also different according to
their groupings over the world. We will discuss one of these differences so
that we may see that it is not possible to simply say:—“You begin in the West,
and carry out a certain social system, then you go to the East and then home
again, as if taking a world tour.” But the attitude of taking a world journey
lives in those who wish to spread socialism over the whole earth. They look
upon the earth as a globe on which they, by starting in the West, can
eventually arrive in the East. But people on the earth are different—and
exactly in this difference dwells an impulse which is the motive force of
progress.
You can see
how, in this way, provision is made for the Consciousness Soul through birth
and heredity. This actually comes to expression in the English-speaking people
of today. They are organized for the Consciousness Soul through their blood,
their birthright, and their inherited faculties. Because the English-speaking
peoples have been especially prepared for the cultivation of the Consciousness
Soul they are, in a way, representatives of the fifth Post-Atlantean period.
People are thus differentiated according to where they live and how they are
constituted.
The Eastern
peoples must effect and represent the true development of humanity in another
way. Beginning with the Russian people, and passing on to the people of the
Asiatic countries—one finds an opposition, a revolt against the instinctive
elements natural to the evolution of the Consciousness Soul. The people of the
East wish to save the soul treasure of intellectuality of the present age for
the future. They do not want it to be mixed with experience, but wish to
liberate and preserve it for the next period. During this period, a true union
can take place between the human being and the evolved Spirit Self. Thus, if
the characteristic force of our present period is in the West, and can indeed
be best cultivated as a quality among the English-speaking peoples, the people
of the east, out of their national inheritance, seek to prevent the
coming-to-pass in their souls of that which is most characteristic of the
present period—so that it may develop in them as a germ for the following
period, which begins with the 30th century. From this we can see the fact that
certain laws prevail in human life, and in human evolution. In the realm of
nature people are not surprised that they cannot burn ice, that a regular law
underlies this phenomenon. But with the social structures of humanity, people
fancy that the same social form, based on the same social principles, can, for
example, be made to work in Russia, as in England, Scotland, or America. This
is impossible, for the whole world is organized by underlying principles so
that one cannot simply create identical forms at will all over the globe. This
is a point which we must not forget.
In the
Central European countries there is a middle condition of affairs. There, it is
as if one were in a balanced condition, between the extremes of the East and
the West. Looked at in this way, we see the Earth population divided into three
parts. You cannot say: “Workers of the world, unite!” For the workers are of
three sorts, are three varieties of people. Let us look at the people of the
West again. We find a special disposition, a special mission for all who speak
English by nature (single cases may be different)—a disposition for the
cultivation of the Consciousness Soul. This disposition expresses itself in not
detaching from the soul its characteristic quality of intelligence, but
connecting this intelligence naturally, instinctively, with events in the
world. To naturally, even instinctively, place oneself in the life of the world
as a consciousness soul individual is the task of the English-speaking people.
The expanse and greatness of the British Empire rests on this quality. Indeed
herein lies the original phenomenon behind the expansion of the British
Empire—that which is hidden in the impulses of its people exactly coincided
with the inner impulses of the age. In my lectures on the European folk souls,
you will find what is essential in this matter. Much is contained in this
series of lectures which were given long before the war, but which provide
material for judging this war-catastrophe objectively.1
Now, the
very capacities connected with the evolution of the Consciousness Soul give the
English-speaking peoples a special genius for political life. One can study how
the political art of dividing society and creating social structure has spread
from England to those countries where things have remained backward, where the
remnants of the fourth Post-Atlantean period have remained. This influence has
spread even to the division of Hungarian society, to this Turanian member of
the European peoples. It is only from the English heritage that a foundation
for the political thinking of the fifth Post-Atlantean period can come. The
English are specially suited to the realm of politics. It is of no use to
pronounce a judgment on these things, the necessities of the case alone do so.
One may feel sympathy or the opposite—that is a private affair. Objective
necessity determines the affairs of the world. It is important that these
objective necessities shall be clearly placed before us at this time.
Goethe, in
his Legend of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, has treated
the forces of the human soul as three members, or forces; Power, Appearance,
and Knowledge or Wisdom—or, as the Bronze King, the Silver King and the Golden
King. Many remarkable things are spoken of in this legend, regarding the
governing relationships which are being prepared for the present and which will
live into the future. We can point out that what Goethe symbolizes by the
Bronze king, the force of Power, is that which spreads over the world through
the English-speaking peoples. This is necessary because the culture of the
Consciousness Soul coincides with the special qualities of the British and
American peoples.
In the
Central European countries, which are now in such a state of chaos, there is an
unmistakable equilibrium between the Leaning of the intellect toward the
Consciousness Soul, and the desire to be free from it; there, sometimes one
prevails, sometimes the other. None of the Central European nations is really
suited for political life. When they desire to be political, they are disposed
to lose contact with reality. Whereas the political thinking of the
Anglo-American nations is firmly anchored in the soul, in the Central European
countries, it is not, for the second soul force dominates—Semblance and
Appearance. However, the people of the Central European countries manifest an
intellectuality of special brilliance. Compare anything that the English-speaking
people have to say about the nature of thinking—and you will find the thoughts
strongly linked to solid earth-realities. But if you take the brilliant feats
of the German mind—you will find that they are more an aesthetic shaping of
thoughts, even if the aesthetic shaping has a logical form. It is especially
noticeable how one thought leads to another so that thoughts of value appear in
dialectical form, shaped by an aesthetic will. If one wishes to apply this to
solid earth-realities—if one wishes by this means to become a politician—then
one easily becomes untrue; one easily falls into a so-called dreamy idealism
which seeks to establish united kingdoms, with decade-long calls for unity—but
in the end sets up a mighty State by force. Never before has there been such a
contrast in political life as the one between the dream of unity in 1848 and
that which was really established in 1871.2 There you
see the swing of the pendulum, the shift from that which really strives for
aesthetic form, which can become untrue, an illusion, a dreamy picture when one
wishes to apply it to politics. Here, there is simply no disposition for
politics. When the Central European people become politicians they either dream
or they lie. I should add that these things must not be discussed with sympathy
or antipathy in order to accuse or to acquit. Rather, they must be said,
because on the one hand they correspond with a need, and on the other with a
tragedy. These are things that we must heed.
And if we
then look to the East, things are quite different again. We have seen that the
German, if he wants to be political, falls into a dreamy idealism or, at its
worst, into untruth. The Russian on the other hand becomes ill or actually
suffers a death if he desires to be political. This may seem strange, yet a
Russian person has a constitution which creates a disposition towards disease,
towards death, with intensive political involvement. The Russian Folk Soul has
absolutely no affinity with that quality in the English and American Folk Soul
which creates a political capacity. But because of this, the East has the task
of carrying the intellect separated from its natural connection with the world
of sense experience into the future age of the Spirit-Self.
One must
therefore know how different abilities are spread among the people of the
earth. This becomes visible in many areas. You have, for example, heard about
the super-sensible experience called “The Meeting with the Guardian of the
Threshold”. There are marked differences in this meeting with the Guardian.
Where this meeting, this initiation, is effected entirely independent of
nationality, then it is objective and complete. But when this initiation occurs
through special groups or societies connected with a particular people or
nation, then it is one-sided. The English-speaking peoples are those who, when
not guided by higher spiritual leaders but by their own Folk Soul, are
especially suited for bringing to the Threshold those spiritual beings who surround
and accompany us in this world of Ahrimanic spirits, and whom we take with us
when we approach the super-sensible world, if they have developed a certain
liking for us. They then lead us primarily to an experience of the power of
sickness and death. You will therefore hear it said by the greater number of
Anglo-Americans initiated into the super-sensible Mysteries, that the first
more important event in their cognition of the super-sensible world is the
encounter with those powers expressing sickness and death. They learn to know
this as an external, outward experience.
If you turn
to the Central European people what will you find, when those who are being
initiated are not taken out of their nation and raised to universal humanity,
but when the Folk Spirit co-operates with them? Then the first important
experience which comes to our notice is a conflict between those spiritual
beings who belong to higher worlds, to the other side of the Threshold, and
certain other beings who are here in the physical world, on this side of the
Threshold but who are invisible to ordinary consciousness. The Central
Europeans will first become aware of this conflict. The experience of this
conflict makes itself felt to the genuine seeker after truth in the Central
European countries as a being penetrated with the powers of doubt. One becomes
acquainted with all the powers of “many-sidedness”. In Western countries, there
is a stronger inclination to be satisfied with exact truth; whereas in the
Central European countries there is a tendency to immediately see the other
side of the question. There, in the searching for truth, one trembles in the
balance. Everything has two sides. One is regarded as a Philistine in Central
Europe if one ventures a one-sided opinion. But this causes tragic suffering
when nearing the Threshold. We must pay attention to this struggle which takes
place at the Threshold, between spirits which belong only to the spirit world,
and those belonging to the world of sense—this struggle which conditions all
that calls forth doubt in man, this vacillation with regard to the truth. It is
this experience of doubt which creates the European need to be trained in the
truth—in philosophy—so as not to fall prey so easily to the generally
recognized impulses of truth in society.
When you
turn to the Eastern countries—and the Folk Soul acts as sponsor at the
initiation—then one primarily experiences the spirits that work upon human
egotism. One sees all that gives rise to human selfishness. The Westerner who
approaches the Threshold does not see this. Instead, he sees the spirits that
permeate the world and humanity with sickness and death in the broadest sense,
as injurious, destructive and degrading for humanity. The Neophyte of the East,
however, sees all that comes forward to tempt man as selfishness. Therefore,
the ideal which proceeds from Western initiation is making men healthy and
keeping them healthy, and giving mankind the possibility of healthy
development. In the East, on the other hand, there springs up, as instinctive
knowledge in connection to a religious orientation toward initiation, a feeling
of one's own insignificance when faced with the sublime powers of the spiritual
world. The man of the East, when meeting the spiritual world, is shown how
selfishness may be cured, and egotism destroyed because of its dangers. This is
even expressed in the external character of people from the East. Much of the
Eastern character which is inexplicable to people from the West arises
precisely from what is expressed at the Threshold of the spiritual world.
So we can
see the differences in human qualities when we look at the inner development,
the inner shaping of the psycho-spiritual development of humanity. It is
important to keep this clearly in mind. In certain occult circles of the
English-speaking people who were under the guardianship of the Folk Spirits,
prophetic sayings could be found during the second half of the 19th century
which referred to the things we have been discussing, things which are
happening today. Think of what could have happened if the people of Europe,
with the exception of those speaking English, had not stopped up their ears and
blindfolded their eyes, so that their attention was directed from the truth of
these things. I will tell you of a formula which was frequently repeated during
the second half of the 19th century. The following was said:—“The State must be
abolished in Russia, so that the Russian people may develop, for in Russia
social experiments must be carried out, which could never be done in Western
countries”. This might seem unsympathetic to non-English ears, but it contains
a high degree of wisdom and insight. And he who can connect himself with these
things so that he can believe in their efficacy as impulses in whose
realization he can take part, this person is truly of the present age.3 Those
who do not see the reality of these forces set themselves against the time.
These
matters must be clearly understood. It was, of course, the inevitable lot of
Central and Eastern Europe to block their ears and blindfold their eyes to
occult facts; to give no heed to them, to work on lines of mysticism, abstract
teaching, and abstract intellectualism. But we are now in a time when this must
cease. Pessimism and despair must not be created by such contemplations as
these. Rather force, courage, and the will to help is needed. In this sense we
should always remember that we do not work against, but rather with the issues
of our time—out of the spiritual scientific impulse of the Anthroposophical
Movement. Let us see to it that we do not sleep away our opportunities.
Spiritual Science can lead us to the conscious cultivation of social faculties.
It can, for example, show us the forces at work in the human being when he is
free from the body, what he is experiencing between going to sleep and awaking.
But more importantly it can give us a direction in conscious waking life for
developing social capacities. We of course cultivate the powers most necessary
for our age when we are consciously thinking about those things which can only
forcefully penetrate into our soul during waking hours. We could not develop,
we would be powerless, if we only had to evolve during sleep. It is for our
waking life that the following is therefore important.
Two powers
are working in the present. One is the power which since the Mystery of
Golgotha has worked in different metamorphoses through the ensuing periods of
earth evolution as the Christ Impulse. We have often said that just in our age
a reappearance of the Etheric Christ will take place. This reappearance of the
Christ is indeed not far off. That He is coming again is no cause for
pessimism, nor should it give rise to a nebulous longing and a desire for
soul-warming, self-seeking, theosophical theories. The Christ Impulse has
various forms, but in His present form He wishes to help humanity realize that
spiritual wisdom now being revealed by the spiritual world. This wisdom wants
to be realized and the Christ Impulse will be a help in this realization. It is
on this realization that all depends. At this critical moment humanity is faced
with a momentous decision. On the one side stands the Christ Being, calling us
of our own free will to do what we have been speaking about today, to
consciously and freely receive the social impulses which can heal and help
humanity. Freely, to receive them. Therefore, we do not unite ourselves on
those levels where hatred forms a foundation for love as in the cry, “Workers
of the world, unite!” But we unite by striving to realize the Christ Impulse,
by doing those things which are the will of Christ for this age.
Opposed to
this will stands the adversary who is called in the Bible “the unrighteous
Prince of this World”. He makes his presence known in various ways. One of
these ways is to take those forces which allow us as free beings to serve that
which we have been talking about today, to take this force of free will and to
place it at the service of the physical. This adversary, the Prince of this
world, has various instruments; for example, hunger and social chaos. By this
means, through external compulsion, and physical measures, the force of free
will is subverted to the service of apparent necessity. See how humanity today
shows that it will not of its own free will turn to a truly social life, and to
a recognition of true progress for mankind. It wishes to be compelled. And yet,
this compulsion has not even led people to make the basic distinction between
the Spirit of the super-sensible world, the Christ Spirit and the adversary,
the unrighteous Prince of this world. Look at this situation and see if this
does not explain why in so many places today men oppose and struggle against
the acceptance of any true spiritual teaching, against true spiritual deeds,
and against Spiritual Science. They are possessed by the unrighteous Prince of
this world.
Now think
for a moment; think how you of your own free will turn to spiritual life; think
humbly of yourselves, but also earnestly and strongly as the missionaries of
the Christ-Spirit today, who have to combat the unrighteous Prince of this
world, who lays hold of all those who unconsciously allow themselves to use
forces out of the future to realize their own aims. If you think of yourselves
in this light there is no room for pessimism—indeed it leaves you no time for a
pessimistic view of the world. It will of course not shut your eyes and ears to
that which has happened, sometimes in a terrible manner—and which is tragic to
behold in its true form. But you will preeminently keep the following before
your souls—“I am, in any case, called to look at everything without illusion; I
must be neither pessimistic nor optimistic, so that forces may awaken in my
soul which give me the power to aid the free development of the human being, to
contribute to human progress in the place and situation where I am”. Even if
the faults and tragedies of the age are very visible to Spiritual Science this
should not be an incitement to pessimism or optimism, but rather a call to an
inner awakening so that independent work and the cultivation of right thinking
will result. For above all things, adequate insight is necessary. If only a
sufficient number of people today were motivated to say, “We absolutely must
have a better understanding of things”; then everything else would follow. It
is just in regard to social questions that there is a need to consciously
strive for insight and understanding. The development of the will activity is
planned for, it is coming. If we in daily life would only wish to educate
ourselves about social issues, and develop new social ideas, then (according to
an occult law), each of us would be able to take another human being along.
Each one of us can therefore work for two if we have the will. We could achieve
much if we had an earnest desire to acquire insight at once. The rest would
follow. It is not so bad that not many people can do much about the situation
of society today, but it is incredibly sad if people cannot at least make up
their minds to become acquainted with the social laws of Spiritual Science. The
rest would follow if serious study would take place.
This is what I have desired to communicate to you today regarding the importance of knowing and recognizing certain things about the social situation of the present, and how such a recognition can lead to a life impulse for the future. I hope we will again have the opportunity of speaking together about the more intimate aspects of Spiritual Science.
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