Human Will and Cosmic Evolution: Elohim, Lucifer, Ahriman

GA 203 — 11 March 1921, Dornach

Lecture III

Since we last met here, our anthroposophical movement has made some important progress. After I left here, we prepared a long series of lectures in Stuttgart, which were initially to be given within Germany. My work in mid-February was devoted to preparing these lectures. And then, from about mid-February, a larger number of our friends, led by the teachers of the Waldorf School and the Stuttgart staff, but also including a number of younger friends who had only recently joined the anthroposophical movement, began a somewhat more extensive series of lectures in the most important cities in Germany, which will not be completed until the Stuttgart university course begins on March 12.

These lectures arose from the realization that something radical must be done for the anthroposophical movement and everything that is its result — or at least should be — and everything connected with it. It is, of course, extremely difficult to fill halls to capacity in cities where only small groups of our friends are working for our cause. But in these difficult times, everything that is possible must be done.

The lectures were specifically intended to on the one hand, to show how anthroposophical spiritual science has to position itself in relation to the great cultural and civilizational questions of the present, and then to show what consequences for social life must follow from this anthroposophical basic view. The tenor of the lectures that have just been given and are still being given in a large number of German cities was precisely in this direction. Dr. Boos has contributed to this series of lectures from here and will continue to do so in various German cities, and we will see whether this strong initiative we have attempted to take meets with understanding in our present time, with the understanding that is so necessary for our present time.

After the preparatory lectures for this lecture series were completed on February 17, I was able to travel to Holland to give a series of lectures for the anthroposophical spiritual movement. The lectures I gave there were essentially aimed at showing how anthroposophical spiritual science arises from all the demands of contemporary civilization, and how this anthroposophical spiritual science can be something essential and important for those souls of the present who are truly seeking today. I gave a series of lectures in a number of Dutch cities, initially on two topics: “Anthroposophical spiritual science in its essence and in its relationship to the great civilizational questions of the present day,” and then “Questions of education, teaching, and practical life from the perspective of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.”

I spoke on these questions on February 19 in Amsterdam, on the 20th in Hilversum, on the 21st in Utrecht; on February 22, I was able to give a slide lecture in the afternoon about our building in Dornach. On the 23rd, I gave a lecture in The Hague, on the 24th again in Utrecht; on the 25th, I gave a lecture at the Technical University in Delft on economic organization under the influence of the threefold social order. The lecture for the 26th had been announced but was canceled because I had to rest my voice, as I had to give a lecture to our university friends in The Hague on the morning of the 27th and, in the evening of the same day, I had another public lecture in The Hague on educational and teaching issues from the perspective of spiritual science. On the afternoon of the 28th, I gave a slide lecture in The Hague about our building in Dornach, and on the same evening I gave the second public lecture in Amsterdam. On March 1, I gave a lecture in the university auditorium in Amsterdam on the topic “Anthroposophy and Philosophy.” On March 2, I gave a public lecture in Rotterdam. On March 3, I gave a public lecture in Hengelo in Holland. This is a place that is particularly interesting because it is, I would say, basically an artificially created place. In the 1960s and 1970s, industrialists first established special welfare facilities there, and Hengelo gradually developed out of what was actually industrial-social thinking. This becomes particularly clear when you visit the nursery school there. I only had a short time there, but I visited the classes, and it was particularly striking that these little children are different from, say, those you find today in the first grade of a Waldorf school. Those children are simply taken from the population, as is the result of today's civilization. It's different in Hengelo. In Hengelo, there were initially certain industrial welfare institutions, and the people who settled there worked there in the 1970s; their children now work in the industrial establishments that have sprung up there, and the children of these working people, the second generation, were now in kindergarten. You could see it very clearly; they are not children picked up off the street, but have been artificially nurtured, if I may say so, by several generations of a civilization that emerged, in a sense, from the thinking of that time, naturally to their advantage, but nevertheless artificially nurtured, and they bear the mark of an artificial civilization. It is, of course, difficult everywhere to counter the prejudice that is so prevalent in the world today, especially when one finds oneself, I would say, in such an environment. I have indicated to you in various lectures how, especially at the beginning of the last third of the 19th century, we had a wave of liberalism across Europe, a wave of free thinking which, if it had been able to find a continuation on the spiritual side, would probably have achieved something extremely significant. Instead, we were driven back into reaction because we had a materialistic scientific spirit that no longer corresponded to the liberal aspirations of the time. It is strange how karmic things work.

For example, in the last few days, I gave this lecture in Hengelo for the local industrialists and people associated with them, and I saw how what has actually been broken off, what is lacking only in its spiritual continuation, is still having an effect on the present. When I came back here, I happened to pick up a book from my bookshelf that is of some interest in connection with these things. This book, which is not particularly significant as a work—it is a book that deals with philosophical questions—was written by the former Bonn University philosopher Jürgen Bona Meyer; but it is the copy that belonged to the well-known materialist Arnold Dodel, who worked in Zurich. In this book, you can see how far he read it. Up to, I believe, page 114—it has, let's say, 460 pages—there are pencil marks and notes everywhere, and from these notes one can see how, at that time, materialism fought “bullishly” against what was still emerging from the old philosophy, albeit in the clumsy manner of the Bonn University philosopher Bona Meyer. ; how materialism fights, how materialism quarrels, but also how materialism appears with incredible arrogance. You see, my dear friends, that is what broke the momentum of a better will at that time and what shows that it is absolutely necessary to delve deeper into a spiritual life if we want to make progress in civilization, if we do not want to rush headlong into decline, which is so clearly perceptible everywhere, especially in the economic sphere, I would say, which is obvious to everyone, if we do not want to rush headlong into decline. For the fact that the sixties and seventies did not allow a spiritual life to arise is what has actually caused all the misfortune of recent times.

In addition to these lectures, which I gave in various places, we had eurythmy performances on February 20 in Hilversum, February 22 in Amsterdam, February 26 in Rotterdam, and February 27 in The Hague. On February 27, there were three events in The Hague: a branch event in the morning, a eurythmy performance in the afternoon, and the public lecture in the evening. Then there was another eurythmy event on March 2 in Amsterdam, which I was unable to attend, but Mr. Stuten gave the introductory remarks because I had to give my public lecture in Rotterdam that day.

What can be said here is that everywhere there is a clearly perceptible longing among people for spiritual nourishment, for that which can advance the soul. Eurythmic performances have been planned and some have already been held in Cologne and Essen, and will be held in Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Freiburg, and Stuttgart. The other things I would like to mention are those that have often had to be discussed here, which accompany our movement like a shadow; the more our movement proves its inner necessity, the more intense the opposition becomes. This opposition has the peculiar characteristic that as it spreads and grows, it simultaneously becomes increasingly mean and base. For example, on February 28 in Amsterdam, when I entered the concert hall, a man was standing there distributing leaflets containing, in a very sleazy manner, roughly the same things that are being spread here by Pastor Kully's newspaper and other similar publications.

So you see, these things are not localized, but spread all over the world, and everything is being done to spread them. The opposition, I must mention again and again, is much better organized, much more active than the Anthroposophical Society is organized in this direction or develops organized activity. On the contrary, when an activity is undertaken here or there, numerous friends of ours who do not like it want us to let ourselves be beaten up and carry around the bruises without defending ourselves in any way.

Cute things come to mind when one considers, for example, the, one might say, strangely appearing “School of Wisdom” in Darmstadt run by Count Hermann Keyserling. It has published a kind of brochure, but a rather thick booklet, “Der Weg zur Vollendung” (The Way to Perfection), which appeared with the well-known so-called “belly band” that advertised books carry, and there it is advertised that my attacks would be “dealt with”: “Dealing with Steiner's attacks.” — First of all, this writing is actually extremely comical. What someone who has read a little of this pamphlet told me a few days ago is almost true, namely that its actual content is that anyone who has not moved in the circles of the School of Wisdom in Darmstadt is actually a stupid fellow in this world! That is indeed more or less the content of this “Path to Perfection.” But the following is also quite cute, for example. You know that I deliberately called Count Hermann Keyserling a liar in my public lecture in Stuttgart because he really did lie, and he took offense at that; while he says that the other judgments I have made about his philosophy can be left alone — he leaves them alone! — he turns against this accusation with an extremely significant justification: He says: If I had simply said that what he claimed was not true, then he would understand; but he did not have time to do any special research on Steiner, so one must understand that he could also spread incorrect things. Now, you see, that is so characteristic of all these ignorant people of the present day, who, in addition to being ignorant, are also lazy, terribly lazy, and even derive a certain right from their laziness not to know certain things. So when you accuse them of lying, they say they don't have time to research Steiner, which means they don't have time to convince themselves of the things they claim. Of course, they don't need to research Steiner, but then they should keep their mouths shut about what they don't know — I want to be polite. If they keep their mouths shut, no one will reproach them; but if they trumpet incorrect things and then say they don't have time to learn the correct things, then that is indeed a symptom of the terrible moral and intellectual decay of our so-called intellectuals today, especially of such parlor intellectuals as Count Hermann Keyserling.

What is remarkable about this is that it is already clear today that these people are incapable of doing anything scientific, simply because they are far too comfortable in their scientific or literary positions to seriously engage with the humanities. People like Professor Fuchs in Göttingen are particularly in this situation. Because these people have no scientific understanding of the humanities, they resort to other means, and these other means consist of destroying the movement in some questionable way. When I arrived back in Stuttgart from Holland, I was surprised to find that the article in the Frankfurter Zeitung, which had of course been published in the meantime, had gone further and was now entitled, because of our measures regarding the Upper Silesian question, “Traitors to Germanness,” and talked about treason and all sorts of other things. It is very characteristic that these things are being used to destroy this matter from behind.

Well, these things are only proof of the low means to which our representatives of the present intellectual life resort, and you can see from these things that not a single word spoken here has been unjustified, that I was compelled to characterize our educational institutions, especially the universities, in this way. That we need a thorough metamorphosis here, that we need a thorough reorganization of our universities in particular, is something that must be recognized more and more. And from this point of view, it is certainly to be welcomed with joy that, despite the fierce opposition that arises from the other side, a small circle of university students is now coming together to work on introducing anthroposophically oriented spiritual science into the university system. This is evident in the preparation of such undertakings as the Stuttgart university course and the university course to be held here, which will begin on April 3.

That, my dear friends, is what I wanted to share with you to give you a picture of the activities of the last few weeks.

What I would like to discuss with you today is a kind of summary of truths that we already know from one source or another, but which must repeatedly come to the fore in our minds if we want to draw inspiration from the depths of spiritual scientific knowledge for what is necessary for human activity in the present.

I have often spoken to you about how different currents interact to form the world in which we live, and we are familiar with the terminology: Luciferic, Ahrimanic, and that which is, in a sense, the equilibrium between the two currents and which is best expressed for us when we speak of the Christ current. You know that the central group of our building is intended to express precisely the mystery of this trinity of the Luciferic, Ahrimanic, and Christian.

When we look at the human being, who is ultimately the confluence of the forces of the cosmos, we can see exactly how these three currents, one might say, work through him. We know that we must clearly distinguish in the human being what is essentially — you know how to understand this — the head or head organization, which is also essentially the carrier of the nerve-sense system. We know that we must then distinguish the rhythmic system, which as the most important part comprises the respiratory rhythm and the circulation of the blood, that is, everything that proceeds rhythmically, and that the third member of the outer human being is the metabolic system, which is closely connected with the development of the limb system. But we also know that we can understand this trinity of the human being in a spiritual sense. For the nervous-sensory organization, the head or brain organization, is essentially the carrier of everything that is imagination and thinking. The rhythmic organization is the carrier of everything that is feeling life, and the metabolic organization is the carrier of the life of the will.

Now let us be clear about the following: We only have real daytime consciousness, daytime consciousness permeated by full light, through our nerve-sense system, through the life of imagination that develops in this nerve-sense system. The rhythmic system, or, we could also say, the chest system, is the carrier of the life of feeling. This is where feelings develop in the middle part of the soul. And that in which feelings have their physical basis is the rhythmic system. This life of feeling, as we have often said, is not permeated by clear, bright consciousness in the same way as the realm of ideas. If we approach human soul life with an open mind, we cannot help but say that emotional life has no greater clarity of consciousness than dream life. Dream life, which takes place in images, and emotional life are equally conscious and equally unconscious. They only appear different because emotional life is not experienced in images, but in something spiritual and essential that does not take shape as an image. Dreams are lived out in images. This is what distinguishes emotional life from dream life. But in terms of the intensity of consciousness, the two do not differ.

Completely shrouded in unconsciousness, as the human being otherwise is when asleep, from falling asleep to waking up, is then the life of the will, whose physical basis is the system of metabolism and limbs. In relation to the life of the will, the human being, while awake, is entirely a sleeping being. By will, the human being actually sees only what comes about through his will, which he then imagines, just as he imagines something else. But what is actually active in the will, the inner soul experience in the act of willing, is actually slept through, just as the life of the feelings is dreamt through.

But now let us nevertheless consider this sleeping life of the will, or rather its physical manifestation, this sleeping life of metabolism and limbs. Human beings do not exist with their whole being merely in the physical, natural environment, but also in a spiritual world. They exist with their whole being, regardless of the degree of consciousness in which this being appears, in the spiritual cosmos. Now let us consider the will. We can say something like this: If this is the spiritual cosmos (see drawing, light), which I do not want to characterize further for the time being — you know, “spiritual cosmos” is very universal, one can only ever take out a part of it — then this here (red) would be a certain part of the spiritual cosmos, namely the one to which our will or our metabolic-limb life belongs. So if you think of the life of the will as separate from the human being, the life of the metabolism and limbs as separate from the physical being, and then ask yourself: How is this integrated into a spiritual cosmos? — then this whole relationship to a spiritual cosmos should first be represented by this drawing. And for us the question arises: What is the white here? We know that the red is the human life of will, viewed from the soul, or the human life of metabolism and limbs, viewed from the body; but what is that to which this life belongs, so to speak? I would like to express myself in other words. If you look at any part of the human organism, say the liver, for example, you will say to yourself: this liver belongs to the whole organism and has a significance within the whole organism. — Similarly, within a large organism, a world organism, which is represented here in white, we can consider the entire human metabolic-limb system, the will system, as a limb. And then the question arises: What is this large cosmic organism in which human will life and metabolic-limb life are, so to speak, embedded?

You see, what man is embedded in with regard to his third limb is the cosmic life of those spiritual beings whom the Bible calls Elohim. In fact, just as we live in the outer nature that we see through our senses, so we live with this part of our being, which we actually sleep through in its activity, the life of the Elohim.

Now, we want to discuss these things in more detail; I will first just characterize them for you. Let us consider this life of the Elohim throughout cosmic evolution. If you read my “Outline of Esoteric Science,” you will find that these are the spirits of form; they arose from earlier stages of development. If we go back, we come to the earlier stage of development of the cosmic Moon-existence. There were these spirits of form, archai, primal forces, primal beginnings. If we go back to the Sun-existence, they were archangels; if we go back to the Saturn existence, they were angels. So since that time they have ascended and entered into the Elohim existence, into the existence of the spirits of form.

When we consider our human development, we must say to ourselves: We are also developing; when will we reach the level where these spirits are now? — We will reach this level when we have passed through the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan stages of existence, and are in what comes next. If you add up what I have described in my Occult Science, you have seven successive stages of development, seven successive, one might also say, spheres of development. And the spirits of form, the Elohim, have entered the eighth sphere of development.

That is what I would say characterizes the situation of the Elohim. When the Earth came into being, they were at the stage that we humans would characterize as Vulcan-existence. They ascended to the eighth sphere. Now the great question, the great cosmic question was: What is the situation with human beings during this earthly existence, or what was it? You see, human beings were in a position to remain a link in the development of the Elohim, just as they had been before. The Elohim developed through Saturn, Sun, and Moon existence to the stage I have now described to you. There they carried human beings in their womb, as you will find described in my Occult Science. But everything I have described there rested in the womb of the Elohim. It is described as if I were describing the development of the liver. When you describe it in its stages, it rests in the womb of the human being. Thus, the entire development of the human being that I have described rested in the womb of the Elohim.

When the earth came into being, the question arose: Will human beings simply remain a dependent member of the great organism that ascended to its eighth sphere, the great cosmic organism of the Elohim, or will they develop toward freedom, will they become independent? — This question: Will human beings become independent? — was decided by a very specific cosmic fact. In relation to our soul system of will and our physical system of metabolism and limbs, we are indeed parts of the Elohim; there we are asleep. There we are not separated. We are separated in relation to our head system.

And how did this separation come about? — This separation came about because certain spiritual beings, which in the course of evolution would have become Elohim if they had progressed properly, did not become Elohim but remained behind, remaining at the stage of Archai or Archangeloi. We can therefore say that these are beings who, if they had progressed properly, could have become Elohim. But they did not progress properly; they remained behind. If we look at them occultly today, they belong to the same sphere as the angels and archangels; but they are not of the same kind as the angeloi or archangeloi or archai, but are actually of the same kind as the Elohim, as the spirits of form, only they have fallen behind in their development and have therefore entered the ranks of the angels and archangels, They manifest themselves in the same sphere, and their activity has therefore had to be limited to not acting on the whole human being and on that which has been acquired primarily on earth by human beings: the metabolic-limb system. Instead, they act on the human head system. So we say: In relation to the head system of the human being — if I draw this here as the opposite pole of the will system, of the metabolic-limb system (see drawing, pink) — it is not this great cosmic organism of the Elohim that is at work, but the backward Elohim, whom I will draw like this (yellow). Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai also work within this sphere. These beings, who are the Elohim who remained behind, are actually the opponents of the other Elohim. The other Elohim cut humanity off from themselves, but they could not give humanity freedom because they have influence over the whole human being. In contrast, the backward spirits of form limit themselves to the head, and in this way they gave humans reason and understanding. These are essentially the Luciferic spirits. As you can now see from the illustration, they are will-givers on a lower level. The Elohim give the will to the whole human being, but they give the head its will. Otherwise, the head would be filled with ideas devoid of will. Ideas become reasonable only when they are imbued with will and become the power of judgment. This comes from these spirits.

You may now see from this illustration, from a certain point of view, how one must not use philistine concepts when attempting to grasp cosmic opposites. One must not simply look down on the Luciferic spirits, if I may express myself thus, but one must be clear that these are spirits of a much higher order than man himself. They are not actually enemies of man; they are enemies of the Elohim because they have remained behind, and they limit themselves to the human head. That is what we must consider here.

If you now imagine what these spirits would actually achieve if they had complete freedom over human evolution, you would come to the following conclusion. You will say to yourself: Well, when the Earth came into being, the Elohim rose to their dignity, while the others remained behind at earlier stages of development; they are therefore the bearers of what is imprinted on humans primarily from the past, from the Saturn, Sun, and Moon existences, the bearers of what is to be placed in humans from the sublime past, which we have undergone in the three previous metamorphoses of development.

Because they remained behind, in a sense opposing what the Elohim intended for the people of Earth, we can also characterize them in relation to human beings by saying: These spirits, who are actually spirits of form, but who oppose us in the spiritual world among the hosts of angeloi, archangeloi, and archai, impress upon human beings everything that prevents them from descending to full earthly existence. They actually want to keep them above the mineral kingdom. They would prefer that human beings experience only what is in the sprouting plant world, what lives in the animal world, what is in the human world itself. But they do not want them to descend into the dead mineral world. And in particular, these spirits have no inclination whatsoever to allow human beings to learn anything connected with our technology. They are, so to speak, angry about this. They want to keep human beings in a spiritual sphere; they do not want them to descend to the earthly realm. That is why they are also enemies of the Elohim, because the Elohim, who have solidified man in the dust of the earth, as the Bible puts it, have pulled him down into the mineral kingdom. However, it is to this that he owes his freedom. But freedom, the freedom that man is supposed to experience in the earthly realm, is not really important to the spirits who want to keep man free from the earthly realm.

Now, human beings have been placed, so to speak, by the Elohim into the mineral-earthly world. But this has in turn given other spirits access. Now pay attention to the difference between the spirits I have just spoken of and the spirits I am about to speak of. Those I have just spoken of are in the sphere where the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai are. We find them among the hosts of these spirits, and they are the ones who bring mobility, active reason, imagination, artistic activity, and so on into the human head. But because human beings have been pushed down into the mineral kingdom, because the Elohim have given them independence, but this independence is not complete independence, for they experience it while asleep in their will and in their metabolic-limb system, other spirits have gained access. These other spirits sneak into evolution, so to speak. The spirits I have spoken of were present during evolution, but they were left behind; they were unable to participate, but they are Elohim who have been left behind. They were present in the cosmos with the Elohim and do not want to let humans descend completely to Earth. But now humans have descended to Earth through the Elohim. Now other spirits are coming from outside. We find them when we turn our occult gaze to the hosts of cherubim, seraphim, and thrones. Some of these spirits, which actually belong to this species, have also been left behind. They did not enter these hosts; they have only become spirits of wisdom. These spiritual beings reveal themselves in such a way that one can say of them: they actually want to begin a completely new creation on earth; they want to preserve human beings on earth. Just as human beings are embodied in the mineral kingdom through the Elohim, they want to take this as a beginning and continue the development from this beginning. They want to wipe out all the past: Oh, what's the past, they say, that doesn't matter to us; human beings once came down into the mineral kingdom, so let's tear them away from the Elohim, who don't need them; let's tear them away from the Elohim and start a new evolution. Let them be the first link, so that they can live on and on!

These are the Ahrimanic beings. These Ahrimanic beings want to wipe out all the past and leave human beings only with what they have achieved directly on earth.

You see how the Elohim stand in the middle. The Elohim want to link the past with the future. The spirits I described earlier want to imbue humans with their sublime past. The other spirits want to erase the entire past, take away from the Elohim that which humans are made of the dust of the earth, and make a new beginning, starting development from the earth. Away with this “balloon” of the cosmos, with Saturn, Sun, and Moon; none of this should have any meaning for human beings. A new evolution should begin with the earth; it should be a new Saturn, then the Sun should come, and so on. That is the ideal of these other beings. They storm into the unconscious of human beings, into the life of the will, the life of the metabolism and limbs, they storm in there. They are the race among the spiritual beings who want to teach human beings a special interest in everything mineral and material, who want to teach human beings an interest in everything that is, for example, external, mechanical, and machine-like. They would like nothing better than to destroy everything that the earth has brought with it from the old moon, they would like the animal world to disappear, the physical human world to disappear, the plant world to disappear, only the physical laws of the mineral kingdom to remain, but above all they would like human beings to be taken away from the earth; and they would like to form a new Saturn out of machines, a new world made entirely of machines. That is how the world should continue. That is actually their ideal. In the external scientific field, they have the ideal of turning everything into matter, of mechanizing everything. In the religious field, we can clearly perceive these two opposites.

In earlier times — you know this from other lectures I have given here — people were more exposed to spirits of the former kind, which act on the head. In Plato, for example, you still find that when people spoke of the eternity of the human soul, they spoke in particular of pre-birth existence, of what human beings actually remember from their previous existence. This ceases the further we go into the Middle Ages, until the Church completely forbids belief in pre-existence; and today, belief in the pre-existence of human beings is considered heresy by the Church. So on the one hand there is the inclination toward knowledge of pre-existence; on the other hand there is the dehumanized Church, which continues human life only beyond death and then allows it to be only a result of what man is here on earth.

There you have it as a creed: what man experiences here in the physical body, he carries with him through death. His soul always looks back on it. — In fact, the whole of the following life is only the continuation of what was here between his birth and death. This is exactly what the Ahrimanic spirits want. These are precisely the important questions facing humanity today: Should the Ahrimanic belief continue to proliferate, as if there were only one life after death, or should the awareness of pre-existence awaken again and should pre-existence and post-existence then be connected through what is the middle equilibrium?

This is what spiritual science must seek: this Christ principle, the equilibrium, the balance between the Luciferic-Ahrimanic — on the one hand, pre-existence, and on the other, post-existence. These are the important questions of the present, that after humanity has devoted itself for a time to the Ahrimanic belief in mere post-existence, we must again add the consciousness, the knowledge of pre-existence, in order thereby to arrive at an understanding of the whole of humanity.