Nação e Patriotismo
Terry Boardman em seu Ano do Cisne Negro https://threeman.org/?p=2391 esclarece diferenciando o que hoje chamamos de nação com o conceito anterior de Steiner, devido às necessidades de nossa época.
Na palestra abaixo, Rudolf Steiner traz Theodor Faiss. Theo, nascido no Brasil, retornou com seus país a Dornach onde pereceu num acidente, durante a construção do Primeiro Goetheanum, descreve ndo como as forças do etérico do Brasil, em Theo, como as forças de revitalização, de vida entram na configuração daquela obra.
Sonia von Homrich, 04/11/2024
Rudolf Steiner
From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.
Da coragem dos combatentes,
Do sangue das batalhas,
Da dor do enlutado,
Dos sacrifícios das nações
Crescerão os frutos do espírito
Se almas acordadas do espírito tornem
Seus sentidos para a nação-espiritual.
A influência dos Arcanjos Decaídos
Entre os Arcangeloi-guias estão aqueles que começaram seu
desenvolvimento adequadamente no Sol e se tornaram corretos Arcangeloi até a evolução da Terra, mas também aqueles
que pararam no nível do Sol que estão basicamente somente no nível dos seres
humanos.
Esses seres estão no mesmo nível que os espíritos de folk e, no entanto, eles se atrasaram, ficaram para trás em relação aos outros, têm as qualidades de seres humanos suprasensíveis invisíveis, porém não as qualidades dos Arcanjos.
Eles clamam o mesmo para o mundo como os Arcangelois, de uma certa
maneira, mas não atingiram o nível dos Arcangelois na Terra.
No entanto, eles devem trabalhar com as mesmas forças como no Sol. O
resultado é que eles não apreendem os seres humanos, como os arcanjos fazem os
direcionando a partir de cima, mas os PENETRAM como seres humanos invisíveis.
Eles não lideram o ser humano a partir do alto, mas vão para a natureza
humana.
Esses espíritos, que competem com os verdadeiros espíritos do Folk, causam contendas entre as nações, não vivem em paz entre si.
O ser humano não deveria ser tentado, de forma alguma, a identificar sua
personalidade, sua qualidade de humano com sua nação, mas ele deveria procurar
a pessoa como algo que o alimenta espiritualmente.
No entanto, ele não se levantaria
como lutador para sua nação, não identificando sua pessoa com ela.
O ser humano não deveria dizer: eu sou desta ou daquela nacionalidade, mas: a nacionalidade está lá, e tenho que obter meu alimento espiritual indiretamente através dessa nacionalidade na qual nasci.
Mas enquanto o arcanjo o estimula a pensar dessa maneira, o outro que
está no nível da humanidade vem, na verdade, é basicamente um espírito luciférico,
e o lidera à sua nacionalidade.
O resultado é que aquele que se assemelha a um arcanjo não desce (à Terra) como um presente para o ser humano, mas que o ser humano se identifica com a nação como com um caso totalmente pessoal, e, assim, essa briga de nacionalidades surge na terra.
Rudolf Steiner. GA 159. O Mistério da Morte. 9. O relacionamento de Seres Humanos em relação aos Reinos da Natureza e as Hierarquias – Espíritos da Época e Almas do Folk – As vozes de adversão dos Mortos. 13 de Maio 1915, Praga.
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA159/English/UNK2013/19150513p01.html
Since we started considering the world
spiritual-scientifically, we call the four members of our human nature:
physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. We know that the ego or
rather that in the human being which we name ego by which we express the ego
which is the youngest, but is also for us the most significant member of the
human being. If the human being only consisted of physical body, etheric body
and astral body as the result of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, he would
not be a human being. The human being is a human being because he received his
ego from the spirits of the higher hierarchies during the earth evolution. He
develops this ego in the course of his successive incarnations in different
human communities, through peoples and periods, until the earth arrives at the
goal of its development and the human being also arrives at his goal developing
his ego. However, we also know that there are higher spiritual beings—we use
for them the word “higher,”—who belong to the higher hierarchies which stand as
it were above the human being. We speak of the hierarchy of the angels or
angeloi, of the hierarchy of the archangels or archangeloi, the archai or
spirits of the age and so on, upward rising. We call them with these names, we
could use other names just as well, but the names are introduced in the West.
How have we to imagine, actually, these spiritual
beings of the higher hierarchies in relation to the human being here on earth?
We go out from the surroundings of the human being. We know, it is the mineral
realm, the plant realm, the animal realm, and the human being has to consider
the human realm as the highest after all he can observe. So that we can say: if
we take the visible realms on earth, we have the realms of the minerals, the
plants, the animals and that of the human beings. Above these realms, as it
were, as a continuation upwards, the realms of the angeloi, the archangeloi,
the archai et cetera appear. We can simply imagine that the realms are not
closed with the human realm, but also extend farther upwards, only that the
higher realms cannot be seen with the outer senses.
It could seem remarkable if we go upwards from the
realms of nature to the realm of human beings that above the human realm
invisibility begins at once. However, this will be remarkable only as long as
one does not think that the animals do not see the human being in such a way as
a human being sees the other. That is completely clear to somebody who is able
to transport himself into the animal view. If the animals could speak, they
would only speak of visible realms, of the mineral realm, the plant realm, and
the animal realm. They would consider themselves as the highest visible realm.
The fact that the animals see the human being like a human being sees the other
is only a prejudice.
We are human beings of a supersensible, ghostly
existence to the animals; and if the animals had only such a perception as we
have it, they would not see the human beings, but they would be as invisible
for them as the realm of angels for the human beings. Only because they have a
certain kind of dreamy clairvoyance, the animals see the human being as a
ghost, as a supersensible being. The human being can have no idea directly of
the image which an animal has of him. In return, the animals see something also
downwards, or properly speaking, perceive something downwards that the human
being does not perceive any more. Since the animals perceive not only like the
human being perceives the mineral world, but still perceive—the lower animals
most intensely—something else. If an animal, for instance, a snail creeps on
the ground, and then it perceives the whole peculiarity of the ground. This
would disturb the human being perpetually if he, while he goes on the surface
of the earth, perceived this in the same way as a snail or a tortoise. With the
higher animals which have warm blood it is somewhat different, but just the
lower animals really perceive the whole peculiarity of the ground on which they
creep. They perceive the whole peculiarity of the air; they perceive everything
that is round them in another way as the human being. The animal knows whether
it is on a soil which is marshy, or whether it moves on a sandy soil, because
it perceives the whole peculiarity of the soil. Namely this is as similar as we
hear the things in our surroundings. The whole mineral world is infiltrated
with forces which make it shake and which the human being does not perceive.
The animal perceives this fine shaking, these forces in such a way that it
feels something as sympathetic, something not. If the animal turns back, for
example, from one soil type to the other, it is not so that the animal sees it
like the human being, but because something is a little bit painful to it,
because the fine movements go on reverberating in it, because it feels as if it
belongs to it. This is a kind of instinctive hearing like a hearing of that
which takes action in the ground or this is like smelling. So that we can say:
the animal perceives an elemental realm, and the higher hierarchies begin already
with the human being for it.—We are put in the middle in the world which we
know as the external sensory world, the external realms of the sensory world,
and the world of the higher hierarchies. We call the lower visible hierarchies
the realms of nature; we call the invisible ones the higher hierarchies.
We also know that such a being of the higher
hierarchies, for example, an angel, once also experienced the level of
humanity. This took place, while the earth went through the old Moon evolution.
There the human being was not yet a human being; for he had no ego; he was on
the preparatory level of humanity only and had the astral body as his highest
member. The beings who belong to the hierarchy of the angeloi went through
their human level during the old Moon evolution. The spirits to whom we turn as
the guarding spirits of the individual human being are these beings of the
hierarchy of the angeloi. To each of them, as it were, a human being is
assigned. “Spirits of your souls” are those who stand immediately in the
hierarchy above the human being who really spread out their protecting wings,
symbolically spoken, over the human beings namely over the individual human
being.
We come then to the hierarchy of the archangeloi.
They also were human beings once. During the old Sun evolution the beings we
call archangeloi today were on the human level. They were not so formed as the
human beings today, of course not, they were formed quite differently, but they
were on their human level in that time. We are not allowed to imagine that
during the old Sun evolution the archangeloi looked as the human beings today,
but concerning their development they were on their human level. The spirits of
personality or spirits of the ages were on their human level during the old
Saturn evolution.
Now, we pick out the spirits we call archangeloi.
There we have such spirits as archangeloi who went through the human level
during the old Sun evolution, ascended to the level of the angels during the
Moon evolution, and today they have ascended to the level of the archangeloi.
We leave these spiritual beings put before our souls at first, as it were,
standing two levels above us; later we will come back to them. Then we have the
spiritual beings who were human beings during the old Saturn evolution, today
they are spirits of the ages, they are three levels above us. We let them put
again. Now we want to look at our relation to these both types of spiritual
beings.
When the human being goes through an incarnation,
then stand above us the spirits we count to the hierarchy of the angels, then
the spirits we count to the hierarchy of the archangeloi, and those we count to
the hierarchy of the archai, spirits of the ages or spirits of personality.
However, they also develop. Let us pick out the archai, the spirits of
personality or spirits of the ages. We go through our incarnation, and then we
go through the gate of death, come into a spiritual world after death, go through
a certain purely spiritual development between death and a new birth and come
to an earth existence by a new birth again. Now we can ask: what does this
depend on that we move down to the earth again after a certain number of years?
In public talks this question is often put. Then one can already give an answer
from certain points of view, but intimately speaking in our branches we can
give a more objective answer pointing to reality.
While we live here in the physical body, the spirit
of the ages has a certain level of development. He does something that is
connected with the development of the human beings on earth, and he experiences
a development on his part. If this spirit of the ages has come in the course of
a development so far that we all let flow into ourselves that which he has
worked through on his part, then we are ripe, as it were, to come down to an
earth incarnation. If he has advanced to a certain level and we have developed
by the spiritual worlds up to a certain level, we can enter an earth
development again. Let us understand well in this regard and refrain from our
own development first of all. Let us look at the spirit of the ages developing
in a very long period.
I may say the following. If we consider the
development of the earthly humankind in such a way that we go back to the
foundation of the ancient Rome, about eight hundred years before the Mystery of
Golgotha, we find that there a certain spirit of the ages started his
development. Another spirit of the ages was leading and steering the destiny of
the earth before. This spirit of the ages who took over the leadership of the
spiritual earthly development in those days was leading up to the 16th century.
A spirit of the ages leads the destiny of the earth for such a period. Since
the 16th century, another spirit of the ages is there. We deal with two spirits
of the ages. The human being who was, for example, in the third century before
the Mystery of Golgotha in any incarnation on the earth experienced that which
this spirit of the ages caused for the earth. For the time after his death if
this human being has died in the third century or also in the second century,
the spirit of the ages can give him nothing at first. He gave him what he could
give him. Now the spirit of the ages must go through a number of years again,
until he is able to give something new to the human being. This human being
comes again down to the earth who was between death and birth in a spiritual
world, when the spirit can give him something new.
Now, however, it is arranged that way that the
human being comes down several times on average, because the spirit of the ages
is not able to give the human being everything that he could give him because
of the imperfection of the human beings. That is why the human being comes down
repeatedly in the time in which a spirit of the ages develops. But basically it
depends on the fact that the spirits of the ages regulate the successive
incarnations of the human beings. Now, however, the spirits of the ages regulate
this whole course of the human destiny, as it were, by their subordinates.
These are the archangels. Such archangels govern in subordinated positions for
a much shorter time than the spirits of the ages.
While the spirits of the ages rule as long as I
have stated just now, we can assume a spirit of the ages from the foundation of
Rome up to the 16th century, the spirits we count to the hierarchy of the
archangels rule only for three to four centuries. They alternate in such a way
that about six or seven come one after the other, while a spirit of the ages is
ruling. So that we have that archangel we call Oriphiel in the time of the
Mystery of Golgotha. Then Anael, Zachariel, Raphael, Samael, Gabriel rule successively;
and now since 1879 we have the government of that archangel we call Michael. So
we have, if we look at the spiritual worlds, the higher government of the
spirits of the ages and subordinate to them, the successive governments of
archangels. Because the human being cannot take up everything that the spirit
of the ages would give him, he does not take it directly from the hands of the
spirit of the ages, but from the hands of the less powerful archangel. Keep in
mind: our personal guardians belong to the hierarchy of the angeloi. Above them
there are the spirits who regulate the interrelations of the human beings.
Above them there are the archai or spirits of personality or spirits of the
ages.
If I talk in such a way, it always concerns those
beings who went through their development properly. But not all the spirits
develop regularly. There are spiritual beings who were archai already during
the Saturn evolution who lagged behind, however, on the level of the archai at
that time, the level of humankind. They have not gone beyond their Saturn level
during the earth development. They did not ascend to the level of the regular
development. They maintained their human character, are supersensible Saturn
beings on one side, however, are on the level of humankind. There are also
beings of the hierarchy of the archai who stopped on the human level during the
Sun evolution and stand there now in the supersensible world still as human
beings. We term these beings that lagged behind the luciferic beings or
ahrimanic beings with collective names. We cannot get involved in the
difference between luciferic and ahrimanic beings today. These are spirits who
lagged behind.
We have now to answer the question: how does the
human being conceive, here in his earthly incarnation, the influence of the
spirits who have properly progressed, the spirits of the ages, the archai, and
the archangeloi who are their servants? These beings are supersensible; the
human being cannot get a relationship to them like to the sensory world. Hence,
the human being does not know as a rule if he only relies on the sensory world
that he has been put in a development which is directed by the archai and
archangeloi above him. He does not know it; but these supersensible beings
intervene in his whole nature. Also those spiritual beings we call folk-spirits
who lead whole peoples are among the archangeloi, the archangels. And in so far
as we have the people to which we belong to thank for that which we are, we
have to look at that what the nation's being gives us as a gift of the
corresponding being of the hierarchy of the archangeloi. It is the inspiration
of the archangeloi which comes to us because we are put into a people. Now we
only need to think what it means for the human being to be put into a people.
In the people's being there flow mental qualities, but also customs; a certain
configuration of the being flows into the human being. One cannot imagine at
all that somebody would have become that who somebody is in an incarnation
because of the gift of the folk-spirit, in reality of the gift of an archangel.
Except that we stand within a people and receive,
inspired by an archangel, certain configurations of our whole being, we stand
in the development of the whole humankind. There we are exposed to the
intuitions into which the spirit of the ages of the hierarchy of the archai
leads us. Imagine that we receive something today in our present spiritual
culture that goes beyond any national differentiation; what we have because we
live from the 19th to the 20th centuries what we would not have had if we had lived
during the Roman or Greek times. We have the spirit of the ages to thank for
this. You can strictly make a distinction between the gift of the spirit of the
ages and the gift of the folk-spirit. If only this were there which is a
regular development of the human being, of the angel, of the archangel or that
of the spirit of the ages then we would receive, every individual human being,
the gift always from our spirit of the ages and from our corresponding
folk-spirit and would develop by means of this gift. The human beings on earth
would develop side by side. All members of the different peoples would receive
the gift of their folk-spirits in such a way, as if five pictures would hang
completely differently from each other in a gallery which would show miscellaneous
things, but which would not disturb each other in the slightest.
Thus individual human beings would receive the gift
of their folk-spirits on earth side by side. They would not disturb each other
if their development had proceeded regularly. But there are beings who lagged
behind. Among the guiding archangeloi are those who began their development
properly on the Sun and have become right archangeloi up to the earth
evolution, but also those who stopped on the Sun level who are basically only
on the level of human beings. These beings are on the same level as the folk-spirits,
and, nevertheless, they lagged behind them, have the qualities of invisible
supersensible human beings, not those of archangels. They make the same claims
to the world like the archangeloi in a certain way, but they have not reached
the level of the archangeloi on earth. Hence, they must work with the same
forces as on the Sun. The result is that they do not seize the human beings as
the archangels do directing them from above, but penetrate them as invisible
human beings. They do not lead the human being from above, but go into the
human nature. These spirits, who compete with the really leading folk-spirits,
cause that the nations feud with each other, do not live in peace with each
other.
The human being would not be tempted at all to
identify his personality, his humanness with his nation, but he would look at
the person as something that feeds him spiritually. However, he would not stand
up as a fighter for his nation, not identify his person with it. The human
being would not say, I am of this or that nationality, but: nationality is
there, and I have to get my spiritual food indirectly via this nationality into
which I have been born. But while the archangel stimulates him to think that way,
the other comes who is on the level of humankind, actually, and is basically a
luciferic spirit, and leads him into his nationality.
The result is that the archangel-like does not come
down as a gift to the human being, but that the human being identifies himself
with the nation like with a completely personal affair, and thereby this
quarrel of the nationalities comes into being on the earth. That must
absolutely be clear to us: because we were not only exposed to the influence of
the leading archangel, but also to the influence of the retarded archangel, we
identify ourselves with the nationality as we do on earth. That is just the spiritual-scientific
feeling that we as human beings are able to rise above the only national to
find access to the general humanness. Then we can be national in the most
remarkable sense. As well as the one human being may do that or the other may
do something different as art, and the former doing his art does not need to be
the adversary of the other, one did not need to be the adversary of the other
concerning nationality if there were no retarded archangels who cause the
identification. One has to presuppose that if one generally speaks about the
basis of the human development with reference to the national or other
differentiations.
Concerning the spirit of the ages you will still
see further details, in which way the luciferic element works into the regular
element if we consider the following. A spirit of the ages works for a certain
time. Since the 16th century a new spirit of the ages is there. This spirit of
the ages has a particular task. He has the task to add the whole materialistic
skill and understanding of the world to the former impulses of development.
Hence, materialism made so big progress since the 16th century in the world.
Therefore, we do not need to look at the materialistic understanding as
something more inferior to the former kind of understanding if we identify
ourselves not only unilaterally with it. What will somebody who looks at the
matters that way say about the government of the different spirits of the ages?
He says: we are now controlled by the particular spirit of the ages; before we
were controlled by another spirit of the ages. The human beings had other
ideas, other impulses then. If the human being now were able to be influenced
by the properly developing spirits of the ages, he would say: we must now adapt
ourselves to this spirit of the ages, while we penetrate more the laws of the
evolution of the world, of the materialistic thinking. Then another spirit of
the ages comes after a time; he causes another attitude of mind in the human
thinking.
I emphasised it often that we as supporters of
spiritual science must say: today we announce spiritual science using
particular words, ideas and concepts, but it is not correct that we believe,
that what we say today holds good for the whole earth future, but it changes.
When two thousand years are over, our knowledge of spiritual science today is
announced with other words, just as we talk differently than in the Greek
epoch; nothing remains of the kind of our words. We do not rely on anything
that externally remains but we know that one spirit of the ages replaces the
other and that they all stand equally side by side.
Somebody who is influenced by the retarded spirits
of the ages of the Saturn and identifies himself with their influence says: at
that time all the other human beings were silly; this was the nursery of
humankind. We have advanced so far today; we have found completely valid truth
for all future.—One becomes humbler, more modest in the field of spiritual
science. Somebody who identifies himself with the spirit of the ages says:
Copernicus found the right thing finally; something different was once believed.
Now the human beings will say forever: the earth and the planets move in
ellipses around the sun. The sun is in its centre.—Spiritual science already
knows today that this is a one-sided teaching. It is very good for our
materialistic time to imagine the world, but it is wrong. It is not true at all
that the sun is in one focus of the ellipse and the earth moves around. It is,
actually, a materialistically calculated apparent movement. In truth it is in
such a way that the sun moves and the earth and the other planets run after it
in a helical movement. Because certain positions originate in this helical
movement, the earth stands once here, another time there. That appears as an
ellipse. In truth it is another line. The time will come when the external science
knows this, too.
One becomes more modest if one knows that truth is
announced in a certain way for certain times. We never state as correct
supporters of spiritual science: from now on into all future all human beings
say, the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and
ego. But the future speaks quite differently, because everything is developing.
The ideas of yesterday are as justified as the ideas of today. We can be
controlled not only by a spirit of the ages who leads us to believe that all previous
knowledge was a pack of lies and we have advanced so wonderfully far. With
reference to the spirit of the ages you see people possessed by the luciferic
spirit saying: how wonderfully far we have advanced. How imperfect everything
was what one thought and said about the world once. What we have found since
the 16-century remains as eternal truth.
The folk-spirit is basically a complicated being on
the whole. He is the regular folk-spirit who floats above us and if we only
followed him we would follow in such a way that we take up his gifts because we
are in his sphere. But he is impaired perpetually in his effectiveness by his
luciferic companion who obsesses us and induces us to identify ourselves as
individual human beings with the whole nationality. However, the individual
human being does this differently. It is very important that one really sees
that in the middle of Europe a people has to develop that has another
relationship to its folk-spirit as the peoples have in the periphery of Europe.
We have to learn this insight. What takes place under the surface of the human
consciousness and what depends really on the spiritual beings of the higher
hierarchies is extremely important.
The materialistically thinking human being regards
it still an insanity if one says that such impulses go out from the spiritual
beings like this is one in Central Europe who stimulates the unaware people to
such a feeling towards the divine or—because in Central Europe Christ is
working—to the Christ Impulse. So that the Central European human being learns
to feel Christ in such a way as He speaks to the core of the soul. This came
nowhere else into being as in Central Europe. Still during the Roman time of
the Christian development one understood, for example, Christ as a being who
came to earth and worked for the human beings. Indeed, the advanced human
beings and partly those who thought already in such a way, as we think today
who we are in the possession of spiritual science felt as Paul thought: “not I,
but Christ in me.” However, it is a difference compared with a feeling as we
find it with Master Eckhart, with Tauler, with Angelus Silesius and similar
minds. How these spirits took up the Mystery of Golgotha. We only need to ask
Angelus Silesius; and he answers us with the nice saying:
Were Christ born a thousand times in Bethlehem
And not in you, you would be lost forever.
It depends on the commiseration of the Mystery of
Golgotha in the own soul. These Central European human beings tried to
internally experience something that is an internal picture, an internal
expression of the Mystery of Golgotha. And how wonderful is it when Angelus
Silesius says once about death: everything that happens in me happens in the
end because God is in me and carries out the matters in me. And if I die, I do
not die, but, actually, God dies in me.—Imagine what a wonderfully intimate
idea of immortality already is given when one says: God dies in me.—Since God
is immortal, of course. If God dies in me, death is only apparent; then one
feels like Angelus Silesius felt: God dies only apparently in me, because God
cannot die. So is death not that it seems externally, it is only a fact of
life. Because God cannot die—but dies in anyone,—one already feels immortality
with it.
This most intimate being together with God whether
one feels it as something divine or as something Christian was prepared for
long times in the course of the Central European development. There the Central
European folk-spirits worked, so that it found an external symbolic expression,
a real symbolic expression. Except in Central Europe nowhere anybody says
“ich,” if he means his own self, his own being. The whole development was led
by the folk-spirit who manifests himself as a spirit of language in such a way
that the own being was expressed with the word ICH. But ICH, “I-Ch,” is Jesus
Christ. It lies in Jesus Christ. Because in “ICH” Christ Jesus is expressed in
His initial letters, it is expressed allegorically what in the Central European
spiritual being is as it is connected with the most intimate experience.
Whenever somebody pronounces “Ich,” he pronounces the initial letters of “Jesus
Christ.” If one turned the spiritual eyes only once to such matters which are
really considered even today as fantastic, somebody would already think that
the spirits of the higher hierarchies work unconsciously in the human
development, and would then find something significant in the matters which one
takes for granted today.
I want only to mention a really significant fact.
One calls a certain group of European human beings Germanic people or Teutons.
And while one speaks in Central Europe of Germanic people (“Germanen”),
one includes England, Holland, Norway, Sweden and still others. One expands the
concept of the Germanic people. I do not talk out of agitation, but out of that
which is given in the language. The English do not speak of themselves as
Germanic people, because they call only the Germans Germanic people. The German
calls himself “deutsch,” and if he speaks of Germanic people, he encloses a
bigger group of human beings. The English apply the term Germans only to the
Germans, to those who are not like “him.” This is a tremendously significant
fact. It is something that is in the deepest sense typical for the kind in
which way on the one side and on the other the folk-spirit works; he works in
Central Europe to embrace a bigger entity and the folk-spirit of the English
people takes care to put away that and only to apply it to the other.
That will be obvious to the human beings gradually
in a wonderful way which the language teaches as the outflow of the effective
folk spirituality. Now one is little understood if one speaks about the
different European peoples as I tried it some years before this war—not caused
at all by the war—in the cycle The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls
in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology. This is understood in
such a way, as if I wanted to express any value judgments. But I do not want to
express value judgments, but only a characteristic. We can now characterise the
West-European peoples expressing exactly what I expressed in this lecture
cycle.
We know that the soul of the human being consists
of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul or mind-soul and the
consciousness-soul, and the ego which works in these three soul nuances. If we
look at the Italian nation with its folk-spirit, we find the peculiarity that
there the folk-spirit inspires the sentient soul. This is the typical of the
Italian people, that the folk-spirit inspires the sentient soul. If now
something is possessed by the luciferic folk-spirit, it is also the
folk-spirit. Imagine that on one side the brilliant aspect of the Italian
people is based on the fact that the sentient soul is inspired. Think of Dante,
of all the great Italian artists. But this people also identify themselves, on
the other hand, with something superhuman that lagged behind luciferically in
all the passionate impulses of development which appear within the Italian
people. I do not pronounce any value judgment, but I characterise it only.
We can see everywhere with the French people the
folk-spirit inspiring the intellectual soul or mind-soul.
With the British people it is the
consciousness-soul. The consciousness-soul is for the present human cycle that
which connects the human being mostly with the external physical world. Hence,
this nation which is inspired in the consciousness-soul is entrusted above all
with the task of furthering the materialistic civilisation. No value judgment
is expressed again, but it is characterised only that just the British nation
has a vocation to get the consciousness-soul inspired. In so far as the
individual human being belongs to his nation, in so far as he is inspired by
the luciferic folk-spirit, he identifies himself with the purely materialistic
civilisation of the present. We find this really in the British culture. Like
the individual human being positions himself in the British nation, this comes
out what is just the materialistic spirit of the British nation, this peculiar
spirit who waged thirty-four wars of conquest from 1856 up to 1900 and made
fifty-seven million people new British subjects, and who pretends to stand up
for the liberty of single human groups in our time.
If we consider such a time like ours, we must
absolutely be clear to us that just this time teaches people very much to feel
like an admonition what one puts up now as the contrast of the single national
groups of Europe or of a big part of the earth. The members of thirty-four
nationalities—apart from minor tribal differences—are in war with each other.
One should regard this as an admonition to refrain really from that which one
has called history up to now. But this approach is used just for the time being
still up to nonsense. We find it really driven up to nonsense what the
individual nations of Europe reproach each other for everything. One weighs up
the single external facts to discover the causes of this dreadful war. But just
this war will teach people that one finds nothing in its external causes, but
at most external symptoms of that which exists deeply hidden in the human
groups by the guidance of advanced and retarded spiritual beings. The ordeals
of this time force us to appeal to the spiritual subsoil in which the causes of
the external events in the world can be found today.
From the most different sides one can show how in
the subsoil of the consciousness that works which appears externally. I want to
point, although most of the friends already know this example, once again to
the fact that the whole map of Europe was determined towards the end of the
Middle Ages by the Maid of Orleans who intervened in the war between England
and France. Everybody who looks understanding at our external history has to
recognise that the map of Europe would have turned out quite differently if at
that time England had not been defeated by France because the Maid of Orleans
intervened in the fight. But the Maid of Orleans was not a qualified
strategist; she was no one who stood at the summit of education. She was a
simple human child—a farmer girl. But the spirits of the higher hierarchies
worked through her in the way as they had to work in this time. It has been
absolutely necessary up to our time that these spirits worked in the
subconscious because the human beings could not yet understand what must now be
understood spiritual-scientifically.
The intervention of spiritual beings in the
subconsciousness is often nicely expressed in legends. And rightly, not because
of superstition, but because it really corresponds to facts, one set particular
store by the time when the external world has withdrawn mostly from the year,
the time from Christmas up to the sixth January. If one does not want to attain
spiritual knowledge in the way, as we do today using the instructions given
in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, but in a
more elementary way, one could be inspired in these thirteen nights. This is
expressed, for example, very nicely in the Norwegian legend of Olaf Åsteson.
This legend relates that Olaf Åsteson goes to the church before Christmas; that
he falls asleep before the church and sleeps during thirteen nights. He wakes
up at the Epiphany day and is really able to tell his experience. What he tells
there figuratively in a clear, but primitive way corresponds to that we call
the passage through the soul-world and the passage through the spirit-land.
Olaf Åsteson experienced that in the time in which Christmas was rightly put.
This makes it clear to us that the clairvoyance of a nature child could be
developed best of all during these thirteen nights from Christmas till
Epiphany.
Because the Maid of Orleans was such a nature
child, one could assume that she would have experienced the world in these
thirteen nights in a sort of dreamy state of which she spoke when she led the
French army against the English that she would have been inspired in these
thirteen nights. This happened in a peculiar way. Every human being experiences
a sleeping state, a state when the senses do not yet speak, namely in the body
of the mother, before he sees the physical earth light. This is still a kind of
sleeping state, and the ripest state is that during the last thirteen days
before birth. This is the great thing and fills our souls with such amazement:
the Maid of Orleans is born on the sixth January. She went through the
inspiration actually in the thirteen nights, but before she opened her eyes to
the earth light. That is why the sixth January is noted as the birthday of the
Maid of Orleans intentionally in our calendar. We have to understand that in
its big world-historical connection; since it can say to us how mysterious the
connections are in the world and how mysterious forces work in the world.
Mysterious powers worked in those days on the sixth January, because people
gathered in the little village where the Maid of Orleans was born in the morning;
where the animals themselves behaved so wonderfully. On this sixth January, an
inspiration could be finished. In thirteen nights a being could be inspired
which was disposed by its own karma. Of course, not everybody who is born on
the sixth January is disposed, but karma has to coincide with the other
conditions.
I wanted to give this example of the Maid of
Orleans which shows us so surely how subterranean powers intervene in the
historical development. Indeed, the materialistic development of the following
centuries came then. It is completely comprehensible that this had to consider
such tips to historical backgrounds as insanity. This does not harm; even it
does not harm at all if today people still look at this spiritual science like
insanity. This spiritual science will be accepted finally.
But such significant events, within which the human
beings of the present time live and in which they themselves incarnated to take
part in them in one or another way, do not always mean the same in the
historical development. Today these destiny-burdened events mean an admonition
to the human beings. Such a flood of literature has been written about this
war, but in everything that appeared in books, pamphlets and so on we do not
yet find this from which one has to assume, actually, that it is found and that
it must be found bit by bit. One often hears: one can talk about the causes not
really, maybe after the war, maybe people find the true causes of this war from
documents only after decades and know who was to blame for it.—You can read
this in every third newspaper. But that does not concern, it concerns that
which one finds—and just as a result of this time—that the real causes are not
to be seen in these external occasions, but that one has to look for the causes
in the spiritual world. One will find that this war was the significant karma
of materialism which must be experienced, so that the human beings take up a
sum of convictions in them leading from materialism to spiritualism. Humankind
must experience this ordeal.
What does happen basically today in such a
distressing way round us?—We know, when the human being goes through the gate
of death, he leaves his physical body behind in the physical world. He enters
in the spiritual world with his etheric body, astral body and ego. He soon
takes off the etheric body which is given to the remaining world. Then he goes
with astral body and ego through the soul-land, through the spirit-land. But
imagine now that today a big number of human beings goes through the gate of death
in relatively short time and with a particular consciousness; that they take
off etheric bodies which could have supplied, so to speak, their lives normally
still for decades. If a human being dies between the twentieth and thirtieth
years, he takes off an etheric body which could have supplied his physical body
for sixty to seventy years. The forces are in the etheric body, because nothing
gets lost also in the spiritual world. All human beings, who go today in the
prime of life through the gate of death, hand over to the world etheric bodies
which could still have maintained their lives for a long time. These forces are
there in the spiritual world. How are they there, these forces?—I may give you
an illustrative example of the significance of such a phenomenon which is taken
from our circle itself.
Last autumn, a family belonging to our
anthroposophical circle lost a little son, a dear boy of seven years. The
external circumstances were exceptionally tragic ones. The father had been
called up to the army as a German citizen; he just fell ill and was in the
military hospital. One evening, even as a lecture took place in Dornach where
our construction is built, somebody informed us that the little seven-year-old
boy was missing. He had not come home since the evening. I have to mention that
the family has settled down in Dornach as a gardener family. I had come from
Germany to Switzerland shortly before. The boy had already met me before the
construction and shaken my hand; it was a sunny very dear child. In that
evening, we were informed that the boy was missing. Now one could imagine
nothing else, as that a removal van, which had brought pieces of furniture for
our members, had toppled over and fallen on the boy near the construction. You
must also take into consideration that since countless years no removal van
went at that place or since that time. You must think further: the boy lived
with his mother who manages the garden. He was such a dear boy that he said to
his mother when the father had to go; now he would muck in, because the father
is not there any more.
That evening, he had been sent to the so-called
canteen to get something for his mother. It was not far at all; it is only a
short way between the canteen and the flat of the mother. On this short way is
a crossroad, so that the removal van had to do a bend. Now the boy intended to
leave, actually, ten minutes sooner, was detained by somebody who wanted to go
with him. If he had left sooner and through the door through which he was used
to leave, he would have passed the carriage sooner and on its left side, while
he went now on the right. Because he left later, through another door and on
the right side of the removal van, the carriage when it tipped over fell just
on the boy. People had looked at this, also those who were busy with the
horses. Nobody anticipated that the boy had got under the carriage. Then one
said: The carriage is too heavy to lift it still this evening, tomorrow we do
this.—Between five and six o'clock p. m. this had happened. We had definitely
to lift the carriage a quarter past ten o'clock. At twelve o'clock it was
lifted; and we recovered the dead child.
The first thing I would like to mention is that
just such an example is suited to show how wrongly people think concerning
life. I would like to give an often used comparison for this wrong thinking.
Assuming, you see a person in some distance who goes along a riverside.
Suddenly you see the person falling into the river. You run to that place and
you find a stone at the same place. Of course, you say, the person tripped over
the stone, fell into the water, and found his death that way. However, the matter
can be completely different; it could be the other way round. The man could
have experienced a heart failure. He fell into the water, because he was dead
before; and he did not find his death, because he fell into the water. This
mistake is done any minute, in the natural sciences in particular. One does not
notice it, of course, if it is well hidden.
That was also the case concerning this child. The
karma of this child had run off. The removal van went there because of the
child. The spiritual beings who exist behind the secret arranged the matter in
such a way that the child could find its death. The boy was seven years old.
The rather youthful etheric body would have supplied life for many decades, its
forces were there. Now, I will always confess what it means that since some
time our Dornach construction is embedded in the enlarged etheric body of the
little boy Theodor Faiss. The etheric body is increased—it grows after
death,—and the etheric body of this little seven-year-old Theo forms something
like an aura of the construction since that time. If one deals with the
construction, if one needs to find ideas for the construction which put himself
rightly in the spiritual world, since the death of this boy he knows that he is
co-inspired by the etheric body which is involved in the aura of the
construction, the etheric body of the little Theo Faiss.
Of course, no longing to appear original could
inveigle me into denying that a lot is co-inspired by that which contributed to
the construction since that time, because the aura of this etheric body is
round the construction, and one has, as it were, this help that this unused
etheric strength works in favour of the construction. Imagine which important
internal facts are behind the external facts: a family moves their residence
near to the construction. There is a boy, especially gifted by his soul-being; he
sacrifices his etheric body, so that the construction is wrapped up in the
strength of this etheric body. There we have such an example at which we see
that unused sacrificed etheric bodies have their task in the world.
There only that begins basically which should flow
as the sentient content from our spiritual science. That one knows, the human
being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, that one
goes through different lives on earth—one knows that in theory, it does not
matter really. But it matters that which is inserted in our real experience by
these views. One tries to bring life also into our movement and to overcome the
difference between the living and the dead not only theoretically by teaching,
but by life. When recently a very dear assistant, Fritz Mitscher, was snatched
away from us just in his thirtieth year, and I had to hold the address at the
cremation in Basel, an important word consisted in the fact that I turned to
this soul, I would like to say, begged him to continue working among us after
death. For we do not only need the so-called living, but we need the
cooperation of those who have gone through the gate of death. They will
co-operate in a double way. On one side, a big number of etheric bodies
co-operate in the next time which the human beings have taken off going through
the gate of death in the destiny-burdened events.
Youthful unused etheric bodies form a big aura in
which we live. On the other side are the individualities themselves who work on
from their etheric bodies. We can look at the unused etheric body at the
example of the little Theo Faiss where the etheric body becomes the inspirator
for something that was achieved in the construction. I would look at the
individuality of Fritz Mitscher in my address. It is the task of our spiritual
science to feel how the abyss between life and death is filled. It must become
conscious content of our earth times not only to know in theory, but to
penetrate vividly that which the dead are to us like the living that the dead
give something like the youthful, unused etheric bodies. In these etheric
bodies, which belonged to the human beings who have now found their death as a
result of the big destiny-burdened events, the echoes live of everything that
is felt if one considers death as a sacrifice for the events demanded by this
time—more or less consciously. This goes into these etheric bodies.
Looking for death, or properly speaking, foreseeing
death and nevertheless knowing that this death has a meaning, this will be the
case with the numerous human beings going through the gate of death in the
present. One can be a materialist; if one exists in such a way, one may say:
folk-souls, folk-spirits are only names for something that in the abstract
holds together a group of human beings of the same language and the same
characteristics. Speaking of folk-spirits as of real beings is a weirdie.—Some
people going now through the gate of death may speak that way according to the
words; because they go through death they agree unconsciously to that which
spiritual science has to say that a folk-soul, a folk-spirit is a real being.
For what would it mean if folk-spirits, folk-souls were not real beings and the
human beings stand on all sides in this bloody war?
Provided a materialistic world creation it would be
impossible to imagine that. If the individual human being sacrifices himself
for the folk-spirit, if the folk-spirit is a real being to him, it has the
deepest sense that such events have befallen the human beings. Thus we will
feel the next time in which many unspent etheric bodies float in the spiritual
atmosphere admonishing everybody that there is something spiritual. These
etheric bodies are good assistants in future to deepen the human world view spiritually.
The human beings have only to feel the dead calling in their souls. When again
peace holds sway over the fields on which now the dreadful events take place,
the human beings who live then will work much better if they hear the voices of
the dead. But this is meant not only symbolically. The unspent etheric bodies
are calling. The world cannot exist in future without the human beings feeling
their connection with the spiritual world. Humankind of the future would turn
out lifeless if it were not able to hear the admonitions of the dead.
In physics, everybody admits that energy does not
get lost; one speaks of the transformation of energy. That also applies to the
spiritual realm. The forces the unused etheric body carries through the gate of
death do not disappear; they will be there. They can be taken up in the souls
of the future, and these souls can receive strength and confidence for their
spiritual work from the connection with the soul leftovers which remained from
unused etheric bodies.
Beside many things this war can say to us, it is
for us as supporters of spiritual science above all that we already look up in
spirit at the atmosphere of the unused etheric bodies. However, here below
souls have to be who have a feeling for the admonitions of the dead. It belongs
to our task as supporters of spiritual science to bring about that. We must
already find a spiritual point of view also towards such events, not the point
of view of an abstract thinking. But we must really imagine the future population
of the earth in such a way that below souls exist who are in the physical
bodies, and from above forces of unused etheric bodies work; and that these
souls below can say: we have no doubts that better times come for the spiritual
cognition, because the unused etheric bodies help us with their forces.—If we
take this specifically, not in the abstract, we have understood something of
the admonitions which this destiny-burdened time can give us in particular as
supporters of spiritual science. It must take place that way, because real
effects in the human development are necessary. We would have to work on for
long times if we had to intellectually convince people of that which the
spiritual-scientific world view wants to give. With the Maid of Orleans a
subconscious initiation took place. In the future, spirituality works in
another way in the human development. The unused etheric bodies support us and
also those who as individualities want to work on the physical plane.
It is sometimes strange what people can understand
also today. On account of the given example you will admit that at the time of
the Maid of Orleans the strategists, the generals did not bring about that
which was brought about. I have sometimes given another example: when at a
determining hour the army of Constantine marched against Rome, these were not
also the generals who brought about the victory and defeated the five times
stronger army of Maxentius who led his armies before the gates of Rome against
Constantine. Constantine followed not his generals, but a dream that said to
him, he should make his armies carry the monogram of Christ. Dreams and
Sibylline oracles brought the armies together at a particular place and decided
everything in those days. However, because Constantine was victorious, the map
of Europe got its corresponding appearance. Who steered the events in those
days taking place under the threshold of consciousness? It was the Christ
Impulse, but the Christ Impulse, as it was real, not as human beings understood
it.
We do not get to know the Christ Impulse listening
to the squabbling of the theologians. The Christ Impulse did not work in that
which the human beings accomplished consciously which the human beings
understood; but it worked in joining together the events with Constantine and
Maxentius, and later again with the Maid of Orleans. Also in this time one
experiences something, even in little facts. You can compare the little thing
with the big one sometimes.
An excellent philosopher wrote a longer article
about the spiritual-scientific world view represented by me some years ago in a
South German monthly magazine. This article had a big effect; it was written in
an opposing way, infiltrated with many a benevolent judgment about theosophy on
the whole, even some acknowledging notes. For example, I got the advice instead
of using my talents for such matters to find out finally whether Mickiewicz1 is
really the reincarnation of the Maid of Orleans and so on. Nevertheless, on the
whole, the article was very suitable to show how our spiritual-scientific world
view has to be regarded so that an inadequate impression was aroused.
The philosopher who had written the article was
regarded as a great Platonist, as a great logician. He himself said that he
devoted himself to no other task than to announce the truth, and, therefore, he
would be able to know the truth. The editor of the magazine seemed to be very
satisfied to publish such authoritative an article about this spiritual
science. This was already some years ago. Then the war came. The person
concerned does not belong to those who sympathise with Central Europe, but he
sympathises in determined way with England and France and even with those who
also fight on the side of England and France. Now what happens? He writes a
number of letters to the same man, the editor of the magazine. This editor of
the mentioned magazine also publishes these letters because they are too
typical, in another magazine, the South German Monthly Magazine. He
even reminds of the fact that he is the same man—it is Karl Muth—who publishes
the magazine Hochland and printed the article about the
“Steinerean theosophy,” as he says. In these letters, a West-European minded
person rants at the Central European population as much as he can do. Among
other things, this man explains: black people are free aristocrats compared to
people who do not know anything they are fighting for. One had to compare the
British Empire with Central Europe, the former were established like the
Catholic Church by God and would never have done anything but what is according
to the divine world order.
Printing this letter is a matter of course. The
mentioned editor adds to this: in whole Central Europe nobody could be found
except in madhouses who could support such a view.—Now the dear Mr. Muth admits
that the man whom he had chosen to let him loose on our spiritual-scientific
world view is ready, actually, for the lunatic asylum. Of such a quality are
the objections generally which are raised against our spiritual-scientific
world view. Only Mr. Muth would already have had to know in those days that the
man is ready for the lunatic asylum. But he needed the admonition of the war.
His view had to be challenged only by that which he could easily see now. Some
people who are ready for the lunatic asylum walk around and criticise our world
view, only it does not come to the fore so absurdly.
I said that this example shows that the reason
which people have today would limp for a long time if it concerns the
spiritual-scientific world view and that one must say: not only the living but
also the dead are necessary that a certain quantity of spirituality comes into
the world. Those belong to the best helpers who had to stand up with their
souls and lives for the course of our present destiny-burdened events. That is
why we would want that such considerations remain not only something theoretical
in the souls, but become a deeply honest feeling, the feeling that we may bear
witness of spiritual science in such a way that we know attentively that there
are admonishing voices in the spiritual world saying to us: let us dead be a
landmark of the spiritual deepening which must come to the human beings,
because we have gone through this death with consciousness—not for our matter,
but for that which is independent from us, so that we have thereby confirmed
the confession of something that goes beyond the individual material human
life.
If among the supporters of spiritual science those
are who anticipate, feel or know the serious murmur of the dead, then something
real is achieved that has to be achieved by spiritual science in the feelings
of the human souls; in other words, if souls are inspired by spiritual science
who know to turn their senses to the realm of spirits, because a lot is said to
the human beings from the realm of spirits in the times to come.
It is this that I wanted to suggest to you for your
feelings, because the circumstances were such that we can be together just in
this time also in a branch meeting. One would want that at such meetings not
only a knowledge as a germ is given, but that that which is spoken in such
meetings would work like a living germ which is planted in the ground of the
feeling soul. What you carry on from such a consideration, this is the central
issue.
That is why we want to close these considerations, while we think of that which might be assigned to us from the destiny-burdened events of this time:
From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.
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