The Intellectual Fall from Grace and Spiritual Ascent of Sins

GA 220 — 6 January 1923, Dornach

Second Lecture

I would have to read a book to you if I wanted to share with you all the extraordinarily kind words and the words of intimate connection with what has been lost here as a result of the terrible catastrophe. I will therefore only share the names of those who have signed such words of sympathy and commitment to the cause. Some of them show how deeply the hearts of many people have been touched by what may be communicated to the world from here. Some of them are also signs of truly heartfelt desires and energetic resolutions to regain what we have lost. The widespread sympathy for our work and for our loss will certainly be a source of strength for many of you, and for this reason alone I am allowed to make this announcement here. For our cause should not be merely a theoretical one; our cause should be one of labor, of philanthropy, of devoted service to humanity, and therefore, what should be said from here should also include the communication of what is being done or intended to be done. I will only take the liberty of mentioning those names that do not belong to personalities who are here, because what the hearts of those who are here have to share has been expressed more silently, but no less deeply and clearly, in these days, in these days of truly pain-stricken togetherness. So you will allow me not to mention the dear friends of the cause who have expressed their sympathy in writing. They know them, of course. (The names were read out.)

We may assume that what has been attempted here is deeply rooted in many hearts, and I would like to fill this evening's lecture by interrupting the reflections of these days, as it were episodically, and remember that it was a course that brought a large number of friends from outside to join the friends who otherwise try to work on the anthroposophical matter here at the Goetheanum. And in particular, I would like to turn first in my thoughts to the young and younger friends who have come here for this course and who, to the greatest satisfaction of all those who are serious about anthroposophy, have recently found their way into this movement in such a beautiful, deep and heartfelt way.

We must be absolutely clear about the significance of young souls, souls that are striving to acquire all that can be acquired by a young person today in the way of science, art and so on, finding each other to work within the anthroposophical movement. These younger friends who have come here for this course are among those who came here recently, saw the Goetheanum, saw it again and probably thought that they would leave it in a different state than they did on their return journey. And if I turn first to these younger friends in my thoughts, it is because everyone who cares about the anthroposophical movement must feel that everything that concerns any group or individual within the movement is their direct concern. The younger friends are, for the most part, those who want to find their way to anthroposophical work from what is called spiritual life today. And in particular, I would like to speak first to those who belong to academic life and have felt the urge from within it – but hardly generated by it – to join with other people within the anthroposophical movement for further striving.

Above all, it is the holy earnestness of the striving for the fulfillment of the human soul with spiritual life that has driven these young people. Within anthroposophy, however, there is talk of a spiritual life that cannot be acquired in direct contemplation in the easy way that is particularly loved today. And it is made no secret of the fact – not even in the literature, from which anyone in the broadest circle can see for themselves what they will find within anthroposophical work – that the paths to anthroposophy are difficult. But difficult only for the reason that they are connected with the deepest, but also with the most powerful, of human dignity, and because they are also connected, on the other hand, with what is most urgently needed in our age, our epoch, what may be said that the discerning person, who knows how to properly appreciate the phenomena of decline in our time, must recognize the necessity of such progress as is at least attempted by the anthroposophical movement.

Now it must not be forgotten that the anthroposophical cause can be of value to the modern man in many ways. He can benefit from it if he really tries with all his heart to gain a direct insight into the spiritual worlds, and thus convince himself that everything imparted from the spiritual worlds is absolutely based on truth. But I must emphasize again and again that, however necessary it is for individuals or perhaps an unlimited number of people to take this serious and difficult path in the present, on the other hand, anyone with unbiased, healthy human understanding can gain insight into the truth of anthroposophy that is completely based on real inner reasons.

This must be emphasized again and again, so that the objection, which is quite invalid, does not seemingly gain validity: that actually only the one who clairvoyantly looks into the spiritual world can somehow gain a relationship to what is proclaimed as truth in the anthroposophical movement. Today's general intellectual life, civilization and culture, they indeed bring forward so many prejudices that it is difficult for the human being to come to full awareness in the healthy human mind, to convince himself of the truth of the anthroposophical cause without clairvoyance.

But it is precisely in this area that the Anthroposophical Society should lead the way and focus its work, so that the prejudices of contemporary civilization are increasingly overcome. If the Anthroposophical Society does its duty in this direction, then one can hope that those inner powers of knowledge will arise even without clairvoyance in those who, for whatever reason, cannot strive for the exact clairvoyance that must be spoken of here; that they can still come to a fully-fledged conviction of the validity of anthroposophical knowledge.

But there is another very special path that younger academics can now find for themselves to anthroposophy. Consider what academic study should and could actually provide today as a solid starting point for coming to one's own view – and I say this expressly: for coming to one's own view – of the anthroposophical spiritual knowledge, if science and knowledge and inner life within our school system were present in the way that the possibility for this is actually available today.

But consider how little younger people today are inwardly connected with what they are supposed to strive for as their science, as their knowledge, within the present civilization. Consider how it cannot be otherwise today, more or less, than that the individual sciences approach younger people as something external. They approach with a system that is not at all suited to letting the often extraordinarily significant, so-called empirical knowledge speak for itself in its full value. Yes, today within every science that is cultivated, there are harrowing truths, sometimes harrowing truths in details, in specialties. And there are, in particular, such truths that, if properly presented to young people, would act as a kind of mental microscope or telescope, so that, if properly used by the soul, they would unlock tremendous secrets of existence.

But precisely those things that would be tremendously revealing if they were properly cultivated, that would carry hearts and minds away if they came from the depths of humanity and personality within academic life to the youth, precisely those things must be said today in many cases are often brought to young people within a spun-out, indifferent system, often with indifference, so that the relationship of young people to what our empirical science has produced in the most diverse fields of information remains a thoroughly external one. And one would like to say: Many, indeed most, of our young academics today go through their studies without any inner interest, letting the subject pass by, so to speak, more or less as a panorama, in order to be able to take the necessary repetitions for the exams and find a permanent position.

It may sound paradoxical to say that the hearts of academic youth should also be involved in everything that is presented to them. I say that sounds like a paradox, although it could be so! For the possibility exists, because for those who have a subjective disposition for it, sometimes even the most dry of books or lectures can be enough to be deeply moved, if not by the power of the writer or lecturer, then perhaps by their own power, and this can happen even to the heart. But I must say: sometimes it goes quite deeply to the soul when one notices, perhaps even in the best of the young friends who come to the anthroposophical movement, that through no fault of their own, but through their destiny within today's civilization ization life, not only have they received nothing for their hearts from the current field of knowledge, but – perhaps some will not forgive me for saying this, but most of the young academics here will probably understand – but also nothing for their minds.

Today, as a result of the development of natural science, which I have tried to characterize during this natural science course, we have arrived at a point in the development of civilization where it is possible that, without any Anthroposophy, through the mere practice of the life of science and knowledge by fully human beings, young people would have to experience what I would call a kind of deep mental oppression from ordinary natural science. Yes, contemporary science is such that precisely those who study it diligently and earnestly and take its things seriously feel something like a mental oppression, can feel something of what comes over the human soul when it wrestles with the problem of knowledge. For anyone who looks around a little from this or that point of view, which is available within natural science today, will be confronted with great world problems, world problems that are often, however, I would say, clothed in small formulations of facts. And these formulations of facts urge one to seek something in one's own soul, which, precisely because these scientific truths are present, must be solved as a riddle. Otherwise one cannot live, otherwise one feels oppressed.

Oh, if this oppression were the fruit of our scientific studies! Then not only the longing for the spiritual world would arise from this oppression, which takes hold of the whole person, but also the gift to look into the spiritual world. Even if one takes knowledge that cannot satisfy the human being, it is precisely through the unsatisfactory, when properly approached to the soul and heart, that the highest striving can be kindled.

This is what is sometimes felt as so terrible, so devastating, within the field of knowledge in the present day, that no claim is made to allow people to feel how the things that are present in the present can affect the whole person that he is prevented in his young life from even approaching what is most human in nature, if he does not, precisely out of a particularly predisposed yearning, free himself from that which only afflicts him with the obstacles that are placed in his way.

And if we look away from the natural sciences to the humanities, we see that during the natural science era they have reached a state in which, if a young person could devote themselves to them with a guide that would treat these humanities from a fully human point of view, they would at least give them what I would call a spiritual sense of breathlessness. All the abstract ideas, the results of documentary research and all the other things that are contained in the humanities today, if they were to be brought to young people with at least a human interest, could pursue the goal of awaken in him the urge to ascend into the fresh air that is to be brought into the field of today's spiritual contemplation through anthroposophical world view.

Anyone who has followed the spirit of my lectures on the scientific development of modern times will certainly not be able to say that I have criticized this natural science of the present unnecessarily. On the contrary, through my lectures I have proved its necessity, have tried to prove that natural science and, finally, also spiritual science of the present time can be nothing but foundations, for they served and must serve as the foundations of civilization, which must be laid once and for all so that further building can be done on them.

But man cannot help it, he is human, full of humanity in body, mind and soul. And since today's young people have to live in an age in which they are inevitably confronted with something that does not include the human being at all, the noblest and most powerful human striving could nevertheless be aroused if only that which is necessary but not humanly satisfying were to be offered to them today in the highest sense of the word, out of full humanity. If that were to happen, our young people would need nothing more than to hear about the achievements of today's physical and spiritual sciences at the academies themselves, and from this they would receive not only the innermost urge but also the ability to absorb spiritual science in a fully human way. And from what would then live in young people, it would become clear all by itself that the anthroposophical form of science would also become the one necessary for us to advance in human civilization.

I believe that our younger friends, if they reflect on the words I have spoken, which may sound somewhat paradoxical, will find that they go some way to characterizing the main suffering they had to endure during their academic years. And I can assume that for the majority, this suffering is the reason why they came to us. But for many, this suffering belongs to the past, a past that can no longer be caught up with. For what one should actually have in a certain period of youth, one can no longer have in the same form later. But nevertheless, I believe that one thing can serve as a substitute. What can replace what one can no longer have is the realization of the task that younger people in particular have among us, to cultivate anthroposophical life in the present.

Set yourselves this task: to do for the anthroposophical movement what you already know from your own conviction, that it needs you to do, or what you can become convinced of over time in your innermost being, in your very individual innermost being, that it is necessary for the further civilization of mankind, then you will be able to carry something in your heart for longer than this earthly life lasts: Then you will be able to carry the consciousness of having done your duty to humanity and the world in an age of greatest human difficulties. And that will be a rich reward for what you may rightly lose.

If you have a true sense of the situation of young people in our age, you will also look in the right way at the fact that academic youth has found its way into our circles, and then, if I may express myself express myself, the talent will gradually emerge on the part of those within the Anthroposophical Society who, let us say, do not belong to it as young people, to develop a relationship with this youth in this or that respect.

But I believe there is a word that can come from our present mourning, that I can also speak to the oldest members of the Anthroposophical Society, and that is this: That the human being who today truly understands himself as a human being can indeed experience this within the Anthroposophical Society, which in turn must be taken seriously if civilization of humanity is to continue, if the forces of decline are not to gain the upper hand over the forces of ascent. It has almost come to this within general culture and civilization of the present day that it almost sounds comical when someone says: When a person is in his spiritual-soul life between falling asleep and waking up, he should have ensured that his spiritual-soul life can behave in the right way during this time. But within the anthroposophical movement, you learn that this spiritual-soul, as it lives between falling asleep and waking up, is the germ that we carry into the eternity of the future. What we leave behind in bed when we sleep, what is visible to us when we perform our daily work from morning to evening, we do not carry out through the gate of death into the spiritual, into the supersensible world. But we do carry out that which is subtlest in the spiritual, that which exists outside of the physical and etheric bodies, when a person is between falling asleep and waking up. We will now disregard the significance of the life of sleep for a person here on earth. However, through anthroposophical spiritual science, it can become clear to a person that the subtle, substantial, which, imperceptible to the ordinary consciousness, between falling asleep and waking, is precisely what he will carry with him when he has passed through the gate of death, when he has to fulfill his task in other worlds than this earthly world.

But the tasks he has to perform there, he will be able to perform them according to how he has cultivated this spiritual-soul life. Oh my dear friends, in that spiritual world, which is around us just as the physical world, those human soul beings also live a present existence, who are not in a physical body right now, but perhaps have to wait for decades, centuries, for their next embodiment on earth. These souls are there, as we physical people are on earth. And in what happens here among us physical people, what we later call historical life, not only do earthly people play a part, but so do those forces that reach out from people who are currently between death and a new birth. These forces are there. Just as we reach out our hands, so these beings reach their spirit hands into the immediate present. And it is a desolate historiography when only the documents that deal with earthly matters are recorded, while the true history that unfolds on earth is influenced by the spiritual forces from the spiritual world that are active in those who are between death and a new birth. We also work with people who are not embodied on earth.

And just as we commit a sin against humanity if we do not educate young people in the right way, so we commit a sin against humanity, a sin against the noblest work that is to be done from the invisible worlds by not embodied human beings, we commit a sin against the evolution of humanity if we do not cultivate our own spiritual nature so that it passes through the portal of death in such a way that it can develop there more consciously and more consciously. For if the soul and spiritual aspects are not cultivated on earth, it happens that this consciousness, which in a certain way immediately and then more and more between death and a new birth begins to shine, remains clouded in all those souls who do not cultivate a spiritual life here. When a person becomes aware of his full humanity, then the spiritual belongs to it.

Those who truly understand the impulses of the anthroposophical movement should realize that what has been acquired through anthroposophical spiritual science is a world-life treasure, a world-life power; that it is a sin in the higher sense to neglect to cultivate that which must be there in order to further develop the earth, in order to further develop mankind on earth, because its absence must lead to the downfall of the earthly. And in many ways, it depends on feeling the deep seriousness of connecting with a spiritual, comprehensive human cause, in addition to what one may more or less accept in theory from spiritual science.

And this is not something that applies only to a particular category of people, it is something that certainly applies to young and old alike. But this also seems to me to be the one thing in which young and old can come together, so that a spirit may prevail within what is the Anthroposophical Society.

May the younger people bring their best, may the older people understand this best, may understanding on one side find understanding on the other, then only will we move forward. Let us, from the sad days we have gone through, from the painful suffering we have been imbued with, let us take resolutions into our hearts that are not mere wishes, not mere vows, but that sit so deep in our souls that they can become deeds. Even in a small circle, if we want to make up for the great loss, we will need deeds.

Youthful deeds, if they are in the right direction, are deeds that can be used around the world. And the most beautiful thing that one can want as an older person is to be able to work together with those people who can still perform youthful deeds. If one knows this in the right way, oh my dear friends, then youth will indeed come to meet you with understanding. And only then will we ourselves be able to do what is necessary to compensate for our great loss, when the young, who can offer us what was once necessary for the future, can see – and most certainly then to their own satisfaction – beautiful examples of what older people can do to compensate for this loss. Let us endeavor to see the good and powerful in each other, so that strength may be added to strength. Only in this way shall we make progress.