Spiritual and Social Changes in the Development of Humanity

GA 196 — 30 January 1920, Dornach

Seventh Lecture

In our deliberations over the past three hours, we have included as an episode the description of our building here, its facilities and the goal associated with it. Today, we will now have a lot to tie in with these building deliberations, which I would like to see in the broadest sense as a consideration of time. We have indeed had to emphasize that this building, as a representative of our anthroposophical spiritual science, should at the same time be a manifestation of the times, so to speak, in its forms, in its entire design, it should express that which wants to and must be part of our contemporary development from the present into the near future. When we speak today of the great tasks of our time and in particular when we must point out that a certain inclination to receive spiritual things must arise in a larger part of humanity and that this is a special demand of the time, then such an indication is directly derived from all that the Science of Initiation and Initiation Wisdom can currently gain from the spiritual world. But there is no need to approach the spiritual world directly to convince oneself of the necessity of a spiritual impact in our time. In one of the last lectures here, I spoke of the fact that we are indeed facing a major transformation of the world, including its outward appearance. Today it can already be more or less apparent to everyone that, as a result of current events, the outer world domination is falling to the English-speaking population. We do not want to talk about this falling into world domination, but we do want to talk about, and have already talked about, the fact that this is linked to a fundamental sense of responsibility, a sense of responsibility that is quite clear about the fact that wherever there is the possibility of exercising a certain domination over the world, the urge to permeate what one can do with the spiritual impulse that is currently demanded by the development of humanity must take hold. For not to penetrate what one can do, or not to want to penetrate it, means to lead human development towards its decline.

It is really not without significance, especially at this time, to engage in retrospective reflection, and from the abundance of what could be unrolled here before you from such retrospective reflection, I would like to present one thing to you. A remarkable coincidence of events led to a subtle man giving a lecture in a German city in 1870, just as the Battle of Sedan was being fought – but this was not yet known in the city – where this man, whom I call a subtle man, gave his lecture and was already able to point out certain successes that Germany had at the time. But this reference to these successes was at the same time accompanied by the demand that a spiritual deepening must take place among those who have the success. And soon after, after fuller successes had been achieved, the same man wrote an essay on the necessities of the development of the times. In this essay, which now lies almost fifty years behind us, there are remarkable things, things that bear witness to a twofold aspect. Firstly, it explicitly states that it is urgently necessary to avoid two one-sidedness. One of these consists in turning only to the abstract spiritual, the other in turning only to the contemplation and worship of the material. And what the man in question demanded of his contemporaries and their descendants was something he called “ideal realism”.

It can be seen from this that such a demand was made at that time, when there was a certain longing for a renewal of spiritual life. But if one follows everything that was put forward at that time out of this longing for a renewal of spiritual life, then one sees the complete powerlessness to find anything that could represent a connection between spiritual striving and material striving, that could arise as a reality for the concept of ideal realism. So it was an important demand, but one that was voiced out of a mere intuited yearning, out of a profound impotence, out of the impossibility of finding any real content. It was an indefinite feeling, nothing more. But the explanation of this feeling was connected with something else. The man in question, and in agreement with many others who at that time felt something of a longing for a renewal of spiritual life, pointed out that if a new spirit did not come, the broad masses of Europe would storm and destroy everything that had so far been surrendered to humanity in the way of culture. At the time, a man who spoke a lot here in Switzerland, Johannes Scherr – I ask you to bear in mind that what was said was said fifty years ago! He pointed out the great danger that the broad masses of humanity would become self-aware in a certain sense, but this at a time when the bearers of education had turned away from a spiritual world view and turned to materialistic concepts and ideas. In those days, such things were spoken of in sharp and serious words.

What followed? The time came when a materialistic wave swept over the whole of Europe. It was a time when it was easy to delude oneself about the great dangers inherent in not wanting to know anything about a spiritual impact. Only now and then did one or the other arise to point out that, despite the conscious persistence in comfortable everyday life in the subconscious depths of human souls, the yearning for spiritual life is more present than at any time in world-historical development.

But all such voices were taken as the voices of the feuilleton. Such voices were not appreciated in their full seriousness. And basically, we are still living in that time today. Basically, the wave of the most terrible misfortunes of the last five years has passed through most European souls at most in such a way that they reflect on and empathize with the external consequences, but do not want to go into what needs to be addressed if there is to be any further development of humanity in the future in any favorable sense at all.

What we are facing today in Europe has been decades in preparation. But the souls of men have not prepared themselves. The souls of the majority of people today are as unreceptive as possible to the impact of a spiritual wave from the spiritual world, which is beating at the gates of life, which wants to come in and which people do not want to accept in their souls and hearts. What is necessary is that people turn to a spiritual view of the world, above all to a real knowledge of man himself. The human being cannot be recognized without recognizing the spiritual world, because man lives with two-thirds of his being in the spiritual-soul world, only with one-third in the physical-material world. And without seeking to understand spiritual life, man remains without knowledge of his own nature. In a much more comprehensive sense than is even suspected by most people today, we must ask: What is the nature of the realm of human soul life that we encompass with the word thinking? What kind of essence is the realm of human soul that we encompass with the words willing or acting? Between the two lies the soul, the life of feeling. Knowledge of the life of feeling or soul would arise if one were only to turn one's attention to the life of thoughts and actions, to the life of will.

Please follow me for a short time in a contemplation of what our thinking is. Man is, of course, aware that he inwardly accompanies with his thinking the life that makes an impression on him from there or from over there. This thinking — one lives in it. But one should also become aware that the greater part of life is filled with the fact that this thinking is permeated by all kinds of dream-like elements. Most people are not aware of how much of their thinking is an involuntary element. All involuntary thinking is basically of a dream-like nature. Try to realize, in a superficial self-knowledge, how far you direct your thoughts from the center of your will in everyday life. Try to realize how far you have the aspiration to direct thoughts inwardly, to shape thoughts yourself. Try to realize to what extent it is the case that the soul lets thoughts come, lets them break in. They give themselves up to it, the thoughts, one weaving itself together with the other, and man comfortably surrenders himself to this involuntary play of thoughts. There is no great difference between this everyday play of thoughts and between the dreams that dawn from sleep.

Dream-like elements also intrude into human thinking from other sides. Today, one participates in the outer life. How does one participate in this outer life? One informs oneself about what is going on in the world; one informs oneself in such a way that one allows oneself to be carried into one's experience, so to speak, by what comes into life through this or that impulse. One surrenders to some popular agitation. Just examine how much of this devotion to a popular agitation arises from one's own will and how much can simply be attributed to being carried along by the surges of life! And I could tell you many, many things that rush into thinking and dominate it, without the will of the human being itself having a direct effect on this thinking.

The specific historical task in writing my book “The Philosophy of Freedom” was to point out how human freedom is only possible at all if this involuntary, dreamy thinking is not present, but rather impulses from the fully conscious will assert themselves. This thinking - what nature is it then? When is it real thinking? When it really comes from the fully conscious will, when we grasp the thought in such a way that it is we ourselves who grasp the thought. At the moment when the thought grasps us, we are no longer free. Only when we can grasp the thought out of our own power, out of our own being, are we free. But then the thought can be nothing but an image. If the thought were anything other than an image, it would be a reality, and then it could not leave us free. Everything that is a reality weaves us into the stream of the real. Only that which is an image leaves us free. Imagine how everything you see in a room has a real effect on you. You are only completely free in relation to the images that look back at you from the mirror. These cannot harm you on their own, you cannot be offended by these images. If you are to do something in response to these images, then it must be you who takes action. If a fly lands on your nose – it is, after all, an insignificant animal – you are not free, you make a reflexive movement. And so it is with everything that is there. You are only free in relation to what you can perceive as an image that is not reality, that is an image. Why are the contents of our thinking images? Well, we need only recall from my 'Occult Science in Outline' how man was connected with a previous embodiment of our earth planet, with the development of the moon. If you read everything that is said there about the development of the moon, you will say to yourself: During this development of the moon, man was connected with quite different entities and also with quite different natural forces than he is in his earthly existence. He has gone through this moon existence. The after-effect of it is in him. He has developed from this moon existence to the earthly existence. And if you read more carefully what I have discussed there, you will say to yourself: During the time on the moon, man did not yet think in the same way as he does as an earth human being. He lived in unconscious imaginations then, and these unconscious imaginations were not at his disposal, any more than the images in dreams are at his disposal today. Only the thoughts are at our discretion, to which we as human beings are only now gradually developing in the fifth post-Atlantic period. What we have today as thinking is a further development of what we had as pictorial experiences of the soul during our lunar existence.

If you understand this quite clearly, then you will also see that everything that creeps into thinking, as I have just characterized the dream-like aspect of thinking in everyday life, is a remnant of what the human being had as soul life during the moon-end. If today man abandons himself to his surging thoughts, if he shuts out his will from his thoughts, if he lets what is dream-like in nature play into his thinking, then the conditions of the moon-life somehow play into his thinking.

You will see that this influence of the moon's existence on our everyday thinking has a wide, very, very wide scope. Everywhere you can feel how the involuntary element of what arises purely and shoots up mingles with thinking and imagining. This is a remnant of the moon's existence. So you have two opposing forces at work in human nature itself. The one kind of thing draws us towards letting our will dominate our thinking, towards becoming free in our thinking element. The other power constantly wants to mix into this free thinking that which is a remnant of the old moon culture: a Luciferic element. The Luciferic element constantly mixes into our everyday thinking. We cannot reject it. We would have to reject everything that we cannot yet reach with our conscious free thinking, but we must strive for knowledge. We must be clear about this in our consciousness. It is merely a phrase when someone says they want to escape Lucifer. That is nonsense, because the Luciferic constantly plays into everyday existence. But today, if one really wants to engage with the demands of the development of humanity in the present, one must have the good will to know within oneself that these two powers, the actual earthly powers and the luciferic powers, interact in our soul existence. Only in this way can one gain a real knowledge of what is inside the human soul.

In this way, I have, I would say, outlined one pole of the human soul. Take the other pole, which lies more on the side of the will. The will also plays a part in thinking; but we have now considered thinking permeated by the will. Now let us consider the volition that is permeated by thinking. How does volition, which leads to action, play a role in the ordinary everyday life of a human being? We can realize this by considering the connection between our everyday real actions and the whole of cosmic existence. Just think: when you take a single step, when you walk from here to there [forward], you bring about, even if only to a very small extent, a different state of equilibrium in the whole earth. When you step here [backwards], you step to a different place than when you step here [forwards]. You influence the balance of the earth in a different way when you step here [backwards] than when you step here [forwards]. But when you look at it properly, you will see that you yourself are constantly influencing the balance of the earth through your movements, and you will come up with yet another way of influencing it. Just imagine you take something that comes purely from nature. If, for example, there is a tree branch on a tree trunk, this tree branch, the way it is attached to the tree trunk, has a certain relationship to the whole earth. It has a certain equilibrium relationship to the whole earth. The whole earth and the branch together form a whole. The moment you break off the branch and lay it down beside it, you have changed the whole equilibrium of the earth, even if only to a small extent. The tree weighs less, and the broken branch weighs differently in a different place. You change the balance to a different degree if you lay the branch there or if you lay it there.

This is something that you bring into the whole earthly existence of your own accord. But at least initially you are only bringing out the relationship between your human being and the surrounding world. But you can do more. For example, you can shape something out of this tree branch. What I mean is, you can artificially shape it into something that is an object for some use. You have thought up the form, and you have carved away the other parts that do not belong to this form. Now you exert a completely different influence with your object, not only by breaking off, not only by putting aside, but by giving a certain form to what you have taken from nature. Just think how much people in the technical and artistic fields do in this direction, how they shape what they wrest from nature, and how they influence the earthly through this!

And now I ask you: When man does this, when he changes nature, when he takes what he takes from nature and forms it into his machines, into his works of art, does he do this out of his thinking? — Let us consider it in so far as he does it out of his thinking: He does it out of the pictorial nature of thinking. To the earthly, it is absolutely unimportant what happens, just as the images that arise in the mirror make no particular impression on the objects in the room. But the human being gives reality to these things. That is the other side of things when the human being, after having developed out of the lunar existence, surrenders to thinking: When man forms something and places it into the world, just as the dreamlike plays into our thinking and, in the dreamlike, the old lunar state, the Luciferic, plays into all our mechanization, into all our reshaping of the world, that which is not yet connected with earthly existence, what we ourselves place into this earthly existence. What is that actually?

What we place out of our free soul life into earthly existence does not follow from the old moon existence, but is added to the present earthly existence. It will only have full significance when something else has entered into earthly existence. Just as the child that is carried in the womb of the mother, or perhaps is not yet carried but is only waiting in the spiritual world for its embodiment, is still a future event, so everything that a person forms is actually destined for the future and is still in its embryonic state in the present. And we only look at it truthfully when we look at it in its embryonic state, in its significance for the future. When we shape something in life today, we do not take nature as it is, but change it out of our thoughts, thus creating for the future. But if we regard what we create for the future as belonging to the present, if it becomes so ingrained in our lives that we consider it solely in terms of its usefulness for the present, then the future becomes ingrained in our actions, just as the past becomes ingrained in our thinking in dream-like thinking; then the Ahrimanic takes hold of our actions.

In human life, only the child, who, when playing, also shapes objects but shapes them without purpose, not seeking utility, is protected in his unconsciousness from taking what he does in life for the present and not in preparation for the future. We should be aware that we shape the machines and works of art we produce for the next existence, for the existence on Jupiter, that the earthly existence must first be shed and that only a future existence will give meaning to our actions.

This is the great error of modern times: that people place what they produce in the mechanical and artistic spheres directly in their present earthly usefulness and do not want to be aware that we have to work for our future earthly existence. The Ahrimanic can thus creep into our volition by applying a mere utilitarian point of view to what we do mechanically or artistically or otherwise in life.

But we must ask ourselves: Has this utilitarian point of view always been there? — This utilitarian point of view was not present as such in the older times of Greek culture, for example, and even less so in the older cultures. There was, if only as an atavistic presentiment, an awareness that man creates beyond earthly existence. Particularly since the fifteenth century, the striving for mere utility in what man produces has grown strong. And today, world programs are already being made from the mere point of view of utility.

Just as it is impossible to exclude from our thinking the realm of dream-thoughts, so it is impossible to exclude the utilitarian point of view. Therefore no one should speak the thoughtless words that he wants to flee from Ahriman. That is nonsense. He cannot. Ahriman plays a part in all our actions, with the exception of our child's play, in which we strive for no purpose, no use, but which is done for the sake of the action itself. In all our other actions we can only strive for some kind of ideal. But how? We must be clear about how two forces play into our human existence here again. What forces? One is the force that makes us act for reasons of utility, but the other is this: when we do something in life where we do not just let ourselves be carried by life like puppets, when we do something in life without leading such a puppet existence, then something is always going on with ourselves: we become more skillful, we become wiser, we can do things better afterwards. That is the other power. Most people today pay no attention to it, especially after they have passed the age of eighteen, when they are already “quite wise” and “quite clever” for their present-day view of life, that one can become more and more skillful in what one does throughout one's life. One is a sense of usefulness, the other is a constant self-discipline to pay such attention to what one does that one observes how one enhances one's human existence by doing this or that, by experiencing this or that. What plays into our human existence has a completely different meaning than the mere external point of view of usefulness and the moment. Take a more elevated example, I might say, and consider Raphael's pictures. Raphael worked on his pictures throughout his short life. The time will certainly come when none of Raphael's pictures will remain, perhaps after-images, but having nothing directly to do with Raphael. A time will surely come when the earth will no longer have any of these images of Raphael's, when no embodied earthly human being will be able to see Raphael's images. But Raphael will still be there, and that which Raphael has become by creating these images will also be there. By creating these images, Raphael has been furthered in a corresponding incarnation. He carried this through life between death and a new birth, appeared in a new earthly incarnation, did something there that he carried through life, that remains, even when the earth perishes in the cosmos. That which Raphael became through his paintings is what remains. One can even define the utilitarian point of view so subtly that one includes the fact that pictures exist in this utilitarian point of view. If you think about it, you will not find much difference between gross utility and the utility that is created by the fact that Raphael's pictures exist. But something else is that Raphael's individuality and soul have been transformed by the fact that he made his pictures. This is carried over from earthly existence into the existence on Jupiter. This is what develops.

Here, I would like to say, we have a more exalted example of what becomes of human souls, which can be distinguished from external action. This distinction must be borne in mind in a comprehensive sense. One must realize that the earth will one day be shattered in the cosmos, that nothing will remain but human souls. When nothing remains but human souls, the harvest of the development of human souls will be what distinguishes this earthly existence at its end from the earthly existence at its beginning. From this point of view, what one can call an obligation to further oneself in earthly development begins. There begins the obligation to make something of oneself, so that one can be something for the Cosmos. And there begins the thought: The earth will shatter, the earth will split apart, the human souls will be alone!

The strength needed to bear this thought, I would say to grasp it in all its poignancy, this strength will be completely lost to people. And thus the evolution of the earth will cease to make sense if people do not contrive to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha spiritually. For basically, the mystery of Golgotha, properly understood, contains the germ of such thoughts, to be grasped from a correct, spiritual world view that is appropriate for today. Consider just one very specific popular saying that the Gospels ascribe to Christ Jesus: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” That which He gives to the human soul will remain, will be there even when the earth has shattered and shattered in the cosmos.

Now I ask you – and now I come back to my consideration of time – can that which religions and theology have gradually made of the Mystery of Golgotha still give man this perspective? No, that is impossible! Theology and religions have also become materialized. But a materialized mystery of Golgotha does not extend in its meaning beyond earthly existence. Anyone who is serious about Christianity today - I have explained it to you from different points of view, and today you have heard it again from a new point of view - cannot help but seek a spiritual understanding of this mystery of Golgotha.

In other words, however, this means that spiritual science, real knowledge of the spirit, is necessary for humanity today. As I said at the beginning of today's reflection, fifty years ago people were powerless to fill their ideal realism with anything that had reality. Hence the sailing into European misfortune. But today the question arises: Do those who can avert a new disaster, where spiritual science speaks today, want to continue living as those to whom spiritual science has not yet spoken had to live fifty years ago? — Then, indeed, earthly catastrophes will come, against which what is happening now is a trifle. Today it is not possible to say anything other than this. Fifty years ago, when people demanded a new spiritual life, they were unable to create it because the time had not yet come. Today the time has come. Today, not wanting to turn to this spiritual life means not being serious about the development of humanity! This is the responsibility I must speak of, which must be spoken of today, especially to those who can take on this responsibility today for the reasons already stated. Today, man must look at the horizon of world-historical observation. He cannot reduce his existence. Imagine you have a cupboard. The cupboard breaks apart. You have its pieces in front of you, you look at them. The cupboard has broken apart due to some natural event, and you have its pieces in front of you. What do you do? You take the pieces, take nails, and put the pieces together to make the old cupboard again. But it will fall apart again very soon if the pieces are rotten, if the nails can no longer hold, or if the pieces are torn in other places. Europe has fallen apart like an old cupboard: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, German-Austria, the former Germany, the former Russia, Ukraine – these are the pieces, the debris of the cupboard. And the Western powers are trying to hammer these rotten pieces of the cupboard back together with nails that will not hold. People do not realize that they are dealing with rotten pieces. They want to glue the old together, whereas what is needed is to bring a completely new substance into human development. That is the idea at stake. Only spiritual science can draw our attention to this idea in a penetrating way today. And the question is: should the world, after what has seized Europe today, and what will very soon seize Asia and, beyond Europe, America, be glued and nailed together merely from its old rotten pieces for the sake of humanity's comfort, or should the connection be sought to renew the whole human being from the spiritual? — We will talk about this further tomorrow.