The Value of Thinking IV

GA 277a — 20 September 1915, Dornach

In the last few days I have spoken to you about how the knowledge that human beings acquire on the physical plane as earthly human beings is initially a kind of dead knowledge, a knowledge that relates to what we must call knowledge of the next higher world, like the dead to the living. I have tried to make clear how this dead, as it were mechanical knowledge of the physical man on earth comes to life when we raise ourselves to the level of those steps of knowledge through which man can learn something of the so-called higher worlds.

Dead knowledge! Knowledge today is indeed dead, but as physical knowledge on earth it was not always dead. It only became so. And you all know the time when human knowledge on earth became so dead. I have often spoken to you about how, when we go back to ancient times, to times of the development of the earth before the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place, even ordinary earthly knowledge was more alive because there was a kind of ancient inheritance [of higher knowledge]. There was always something of the ancient inheritance of higher knowledge mixed into ordinary earthly knowledge. You can follow this in the various documents of knowledge and religion of mankind. Just see how in the Bible, in the Old Testament, when the supersensible worlds are mentioned, it is always spoken of either as a dream or as the inspiration of the prophets. There we always have a natural descent from living knowledge. The old atavistic inheritance of clairvoyance, which had remained with them as a lunar legacy, had not yet been extinguished in man. This was extinguished at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.

I ask you to take this sentence quite literally. Because if any of you repeats this sentence anywhere in such a way that you report that I said that the old atavistic knowledge was extinguished by the mystery of Golgotha, then you are saying the exact opposite of what I have just expressed. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, this knowledge had been lost through the entirely natural process of human development, and the Mystery of Golgotha provided a substitute for what had gradually been lost, bringing life into the human soul from a different direction. So that today we are confronted with the following fact: if one goes back into ancient human traditions, one finds all kinds of knowledge even before the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. But in this knowledge, the ancients did not suspect anything of a realization of the Most High, the Most Important for man, but basically it was subordinate things that one believed one recognized in this way. Everything important, everything related to the supersensible worlds, was traced back to an ancient wisdom, to a wisdom that was given to mankind, as it were, through a primeval revelation. That is what you expressed in one of our four mysteries. And it was presented in such a way that this heritage was then passed on from generation to generation in the wisdom schools. In the book “Christianity as Mystical Fact” you will find that we have tried to show how, through the Mystery of Golgotha, a substitute was created for this dying old wisdom, how, as it were, the Primordial Mystery became a historical fact at Golgotha, and how, through the cross of initiation being perceptibly set up at Golgotha for all men, life was to be poured into the human soul. So that one can say since then: There is our dead knowledge, which man gains through his own effort on the physical plane, and there is something in addition to this that flows into his soul through the fact that, through the Mystery of Golgotha, the substantial that was to enter the earth aura through the Christ has flowed into the earth aura, and now flows into the human soul as a second source of human knowledge.

So that one can say: From the spiritual-scientific point of view, the matter must be viewed in such a way that man's physical knowledge of the earth is dead, but that life enters into it when man allows this physical knowledge of the earth to be fertilized by that which the Mystery of Golgotha can be for him. And then we have the next higher level of knowledge, which we call imaginative knowledge. This is now already a living, a truly living thing. And this living realization, this imaginative realization, is about the things that we have discussed in recent days.

As important, I would like to emphasize again today what I already said yesterday, that this imaginative realization is still related to the nature of the human soul. It is a return to the moon age. And it is so akin to the nature of the human soul that, in fact, as I described yesterday, atavistic dream-like moon-knowledge can still emerge in human nature today, and that much of what can be recognized through a higher art of clairvoyance can, so to speak, come together with what comes out through atavism, provided the moon clairvoyant has the necessary modesty.

But beyond this [imaginative knowledge], there is everything that enters the human soul through inspiration. Substantively, these are the facts of the ancient solar evolution, with which the human being was connected. And what man has taken up into himself as an element of life during the old solar development is also preserved down there in the depths of human nature. This must be illuminated by conscious knowledge if inspiration is to occur.

Yesterday I indicated that in real, true art there is an unconscious emergence of these things that belong to the ancient facts of the sun and that man has preserved as hereditary traits; that when this, which is deep in the hidden depths of the soul, is raised up into the conscious life of the soul, it can become conscious to man as artistic inspiration. Man then lives only in the consequences that arise from below; he does not live in the causes. If I had to hint to you that the thought below the threshold of consciousness is very different from the thought we have when we bring something from the subconscious thoughts through the memory back , it must be emphasized that what actually lives in the depths of the artist's soul is even more different, radically different, from what then rises to the artist's consciousness.

Now we have to engrave an idiosyncrasy quite sharply in our minds if we want to understand the whole of inspiration at all. You see, for the person who is touched by inspiration, there is no difference between an objective law of nature and that which he experiences in his soul as a thought, as a soul experience. He feels the law of nature as belonging to him just as he feels that which lives in his own soul as belonging to him. Let me put it this way: When the person who is inspired decides to do something, when he acts on some motive, then there is a lawfulness underlying it. This lawfulness one is initially authorized to feel as a lawfulness of one's own heart, as one's own experience. But one feels it in the same objectivity as one feels the rising of the sun in objectivity. I can also say it this way: when I pick up the watch, I experience it as my affair on the physical plane. In the case of physical knowledge, I will not experience it as my affair when the sun rises in the morning. But with regard to that which really comes from the impulse of the inspired world, one experiences what happens in nature as belonging to oneself.

Human interest truly extends beyond natural affairs. Natural affairs become man's own interests. As long as one does not feel the life of the plant within oneself as intimately as the experiences of one's own heart, there can be no truth in inspiration. As long as you do not feel a falling stone, splashing on the surface of the water and making drops splash up, in the same way as you can feel what is going on in your own being, inspiration is not true. I could also say: Everything in man that is closer to him than nature in its fullness does not belong to the inspired truths. But it would be utter nonsense to believe that if someone were to smash the inspired person's skull, the inspired person would feel this objectively in the same way as he feels the eruption of a volcano. Subjectively, he makes this distinction self-evident; but at that moment, when someone is smashing his skull, he is not an inspiration. But for everything that is in this sense the realm of inspiration, his interest is extended beyond the whole of nature. And I have already pointed out in the Hague Cycle how it is the broadening of interest that is the main thing in the case of extended knowledge. Anyone who cannot detach himself, at least for a short period, from what concerns him alone, cannot, of course, achieve inspiration. He does not always need it; on the contrary, he will do well to sharply distinguish his own interests from those that are to be the subject of his inspiration. But when man extends his interest beyond objectivity, when he tries to feel the life of the plant in its becoming as he feels what is happening in his own life, when what grows and germinates and becomes and passes away out there is as intimately familiar to him as the life within his own being, then he is inspired with regard to everything that comes to him in this way.

But then this way of taking an interest is necessarily linked to a gradual ascent to a way of judging people like the Goethean way of judging people that we have mentioned. Goethe learned to

endeavor [for living thoughts] to distinguish the human being's actions from the human essence. And this is something extremely important! What we do or have done belongs to the objective world, is karma put into action; what we are as a personality is in a state of continuous becoming. And the judgment we pass on anything a person has done must, in principle, be on a completely different level than the judgment we pass on the value or worthlessness of a human personality. If we want to approach the higher worlds, we must learn to face the human personality as objectively as we face a plant or a stone objectively. We must learn to be able to take an interest in the personality of those people who have done deeds that we may have to condemn in the most eminent sense. It is precisely this separation of the human being from his deeds, the separation of the human being from his karma, that one must be able to carry out if one is to be able to gain a right relationship to the higher worlds.

And here, if we truly want to stand on the ground of spiritual science, we must also see that this is one of the cases where we come into sharp opposition to the materialistic thinking of our time. This materialistic thinking of our time has, as a tendency, to draw the personality of man more and more into judging his actions. Just think, in recent times, in the field of external jurisprudence, more and more the tendency has emerged that one must not only pass judgment on a particular act when a person has committed it, but one must also observe the whole of human nature, take into account what the person's soul is like, how he came to do it, whether he is inferior or fully developed, and the like. And certain circles even demand that not only doctors but also psychologists be consulted as experts in the assessment of offenses and crimes by the external judiciary. But it is presumptuous to judge the essence of man instead of deeds, which concern only the external life.

Among the more recent philosophers, only one has paid any attention to this. You will find him mentioned in my “Riddles of Philosophy”, though from a different point of view. It is Dilthey who has pointed out that jurisprudence must in turn free itself from psychological jurisprudence and from everything similar.

What a person does concerns two areas: firstly, his karma. This takes effect of its own accord through its causality and is no concern of other people. Christ Himself did not judge the sin of the adulteress, but wrote it into the ground, because it will be lived out in the course of karma. Secondly, the human deed concerns human coexistence, and only from this point of view is the human deed to be judged. It is not the place of the external social order to judge man as such.

But spiritual science will gradually develop into something other than judgment; it will develop into understanding. And those psychologists who might be called upon today to act as experts when judgments are to be passed on the external deeds of man will be of no use, for they will know nothing of a person's soul. The assessment of a person should not correspond to judgment, but to understanding; because the tendency should be to help, and not to judge, under all circumstances. To help, and not to judge! But one can only help if one has an understanding of what is going on in a human soul.

However, if one tends to help in truth rather than in lies, one will be most misunderstood by the world. For the one who is to be helped will be least inclined to judge the one who wants to help in the right way. The one who is to be helped will want to be helped in the way he thinks best! But that may be the worst help one can give him if one helps him in the way he thinks best himself. An understanding gained on the basis of mental and spiritual life will often lead us to do something quite different for the person we want to help, rather than doing exactly what he or she presumes we should do for them. Perhaps sometimes even withdrawing from such a person will be much better than cajoling; perhaps brusquely rejecting something will be a much better, more loving help than flattering and accommodating oneself to what the person in question wants. Someone who treats him strictly can be much more loving to a person than someone who gives in to him in every way. And of course misunderstanding is inevitable in this field, that is quite natural. Perhaps the one who makes the greatest effort to enter into a person's soul in this way will be most misunderstood. But that is not the point, the important thing is to seek understanding under all circumstances and not to exercise judgment.

In the context of our spiritual-scientific lectures, it was often necessary to speak of Ahriman and Lucifer. Of course, especially after the explanations that have been given recently, one can understand how human nature can be seized more or less strongly by Ahriman and Lucifer. For basically, life is a constant oscillation between Ahrimanic and Luciferic impulses, only that the state of equilibrium is sought by the being of the world itself, and life consists precisely in maintaining this state of equilibrium. But now consider a great, an enormous difference. One can do two things: one can pass judgment, declaring that some deed of a person is influenced by Ahriman or Lucifer, and one can judge the person accordingly. Or one can do the other: one can recognize that a deed of a person is influenced by Ahriman or Lucifer, and one can try to understand the person on the basis of this fact. And between these two judgments lies the greatest conceivable difference. For to pass judgment on the basis that something Ahrimanic or Luciferic is in man requires that one never pass judgment from any other point of view than this: one judges human beings no more by this knowledge, that Ahriman and Lucifer live in man, than one judges any plant because it blossoms red and not blue. The idea that anything in man is Ahrimanic or Luciferic must be excluded from any kind of judgment, just as our judgment must refrain from making any value judgment if we want to recognize the plant, whether it be red or blue.

Above all, we must try to keep our knowledge free of all emotion, of all subjectivity. And we will be able to do this more and more, the more we strive to do so, the more we really strive to take such things, as they have just been expressed, with the utmost seriousness.

Goethe, for example, endeavored, especially in his most mature period, to present events between people as natural phenomena. Of course, not from the point of view that there is a mechanical necessity in human relationships as there is in natural relationships. On the contrary, the position of the human soul in relation to the events of human life gradually becomes such that one regards the events of human life with the same objective love with which one regards natural phenomena. This gives rise to that inner tolerance that arises out of knowledge itself.

But in this way one acquires the possibility of gradually allowing into knowledge that which otherwise may not enter into knowledge at all: namely, the terminology that arises from feeling and will. When I explained psychoanalysis to you, we just concluded on one day that we had to speak a condemning word about it; but we first proved that it followed from the matter itself. And why could this judgment be made? Here one may also express something subjective. Why was I allowed to express what seems to be a completely subjective judgment about psychoanalysis? Because I have endeavored – I am expressing something subjective, but then it is the case that things are perhaps most easily understood – to study psychoanalysis in the way I study something that is very pleasant and very congenial to me. That is to say, to have the same objective love for the one as for the other. And we must gradually struggle through to this, really struggle through; otherwise we seek nothing but sensation in knowledge, seek only what is pleasant in knowledge. But one never has knowledge if one seeks only what is pleasant in knowledge!

For our physical life, the sunlike can never enter the human being's consciousness except by giving him pleasure or repelling him. Only feelings enter from the sunlike, and we must approach the sunlike with our understanding, we must penetrate down into what is otherwise foreign to man. We said that the moonlike is related to man, but the sunlike is no longer related to man. We must bring down, carry down into regions where we would otherwise not penetrate, our understanding, if we want to bring the sunlike of inspiration close to us.

Real knowledge of the higher worlds indeed requires preparation in the whole mood of our soul, and without this mood in our soul we cannot penetrate into the higher worlds. I do not mean merely penetrating clairvoyantly, but also pursuing things with understanding. One cannot understand the things related in Occult Science if one wishes to take them in with the frame of mind one would otherwise have for something outwardly indifferent, I mean for something mathematical or the like; but one can only take them in if one first prepares oneself in one's mind for them. He who wants to absorb the inspired knowledge with the ordinary understanding of the physical plane is like the man who believes he can enter a plant with his physical body and be in it in its life. That is why people have always been prepared before they were given knowledge of the higher worlds, they have always been prepared slowly so that the soul's state was such that this knowledge of the higher worlds could affect the mind in the right way. It had to have this effect on the mind because this peculiar way of relating to the higher world requires a certain strain on the mind, a certain holding together, a gathering of the soul's inner strength. Above all, it requires that one is not wounded, that a certain inner exertion of strength is necessary in order to relate to the knowledge of the higher worlds in the right way.

Therefore, it is necessary for the human being to create a counterweight, a true counterweight, one that allows him, so to speak, to tip the scales in his soul in the other direction. We must look at the matter very carefully.

If you make an effort with your soul – and you have to do that if you really want to grasp the spiritual worlds, even just what is given from the spiritual worlds; you cannot follow a lecture on the spiritual worlds if you don't listen carefully, if you don't make an effort with your soul – if you really try to understand what is said about the spiritual world, you feel that you have to make an effort. One should not be surprised at this. One should not say, yes, that tires me, because it is quite natural to tire! But if it tires one so much, then, as long as we are earth people, a consequence will naturally arise. And this consequence is that selfishness is aroused in man. The more man feels himself in himself, the stronger is his selfishness. Take the most ordinary phenomenon: as long as you go through the world in good health, you are not selfish with regard to the physical body; the moment you become ill, the moment everything hurts, you become selfish with regard to the outer body. That is quite natural. And it is simply nonsense to demand of the sick person that he should not be selfish in relation to his illness. That is simply nonsense. And when someone says, “I may be ill, but I accept my illness selflessly,” that is of course also just a false pretence.

But it is the same when you go through the soul effort that is necessary to work your way up into the higher worlds, to climb up. There you also enter into the selfish. You should not deceive yourself, but should hold the truth before you, especially if you want to penetrate into this world. You have to say to yourself: You are working your way into a mood of selfishness if you want to enter the higher worlds, because you have to feel these efforts within you.

I would like to compare this working into the higher worlds with something. I would like to compare it with a peculiar kind of artistic activity, as it was present in our friend Christian Morgenstern. This certain idiosyncratic manner of his — I have often emphasized it — was different in Morgenstern than in other poets. When he worked his way into the serious, it was different with him than with other poets; it was to a much higher degree self-carrying into the region of the serious. Therefore, he needed a counterweight, something like in the gallows song:

A weasel
sat on a pebble
amid the tumbling stream.
Do you know
why?
The mooncalf
told me
in silence:
The most cunning
animal
did it for the sake of the rhyme.

He needed these light poems, these satirical poems, as a counterweight, for balance. Those who can always make a long face poetically, who sentimentally look up to the higher worlds, are not true poets. The true ones are those who need the counterweight, the counterpart.

Now, of course, we are looking everywhere, aren't we, for the possibility of understanding the phenomenon of egoism that must accompany the striving into the higher worlds. We must not judge egoism when it occurs in such a region, because we must understand it as a natural phenomenon. We must not have the egoism of always wanting to be rid of egoism, because then we are not being true to ourselves. We create, for example, the counterpart in relation to many things [through the exercises] in “How to Know Higher Worlds”; first of all the inner counterparts. But also in what we have created as eurythmy there is a kind of counterpart in this peculiar way of bringing the etheric body into its appropriate movements, and of gaining an understanding for this whole language of the human being. It will encourage young people in particular to live in a way that is in harmony with the spiritual world.

But something that must be emphasized on this occasion is that an element should be particularly sought by the person who really wants to gain a right relationship with the spiritual worlds. This is the element of humor. Do not be surprised at this, but it must be clearly stated, or at least more clearly stated than it has always been done. It is really necessary not to face the striving for the higher world humorlessly! It is this humorless facing that produces such terrible excesses. For if the person who imagines himself to be Homer or Socrates or Goethe were to realize how endlessly ridiculous he must feel in this role, it would help him tremendously to recover his views! But such things can only fail to occur to someone who keeps humor at a distance from his untrue, sentimental life. Because if someone really, yes, I would even say, had the “misfortune” of having been Homer, and through a correct recognition in a later incarnation came to the conclusion that this was the case, then this realization would really appear to him in a humorous light at first. Precisely because it is true, it would at first appear to him in a humorous light. One would truly laugh at oneself at first!

It is difficult to speak about this chapter in the right way, especially in a nutshell. But keeping one's soul open and free to humor is a good way to take the serious in real earnest. Otherwise, sentimentality contaminates and belies the seriousness, and sentimentality is the worst enemy of true seriousness for the serious things in life. I could even imagine that someone who, as a foreign lady once said, only wants to face the seriousness of spiritual-scientific knowledge “with a face down to the stomach” might have found it unpleasant that I spoke of thoughts these days that look like a mouse in one's hand. But one frees oneself from the seriousness of the facts by trying to present them in such a form. For one easily distorts the facts when one approaches them with mere sentimentality, because then one feels sufficiently uplifted to the higher worlds in one's sentimentality and does not believe that one should also still come up to the spiritual worlds through the pliable, elastic, mobile understanding. And truly, it is easier to speak of conquering the elemental world when one is “altruistic, truly altruistic.” It is easier to get some hazy ideas about the elemental world from that than to really make the thing so vivid that one has the transition of thought from a dead object to a living being. This vivid characterization is what we should strive for. So that we gradually train ourselves to ascend into these spiritual worlds without all sentimentality. The serious side is coming. The effort arises precisely from the difficult work of acquiring spiritual science. And what matters is that we gain the strength to correctly understand the place of the spiritual scientific world view within today's materialism and, through this strength, to become a proper member of the spiritual scientific movement. We can gain this strength in no other way than by trying to understand in the right way how these spiritual worlds can be clothed in words, in concepts, that are taken from the physical world, even though the spiritual worlds themselves are so unlike the physical world.

Inspiration as such deals with those inner facts in human nature that are the legacy of the ancient solar evolution, that are connected with everything that makes man capable of accomplishing in the world that which is from heaven, that which is right from heaven. But to do that, the human being must reflect not only on what can be worked out in the individual life within the soul work that is present between birth and death; rather, the human being must reflect on what is in the hidden depths of his soul so that the divine worlds can work into his organization. He who is to be a poet in the world must have the brain of a poet, that is to say, his brain must be prepared for it by the spiritual world. He who wants to be a painter must have the brain of a painter. And in order to give a person a painter's brain or a poet's brain, those forces and impulses must work in human nature that were already substantially present during the cosmic development in the old solar age and were linked to human nature when the human being himself was not nearly as condensed as he is on earth, when the human being himself had only just reached airtightness. Do you think that during the time of the old sun, man consisted only of warmth and air? In what works on warmth and air in man, there lies, as an inheritance from the time of the old sun, what can prepare the human brain to be a painter's or a poet's brain.

From this you can see, however, how we must say, through this observation of what is seen in man and how it goes from the microcosm into the macrocosm: man is one with his surroundings through what is ancient solar inheritance; for air and warmth are just as much outside as they are inside. I have often pointed out that the amount of air I have in me now is out of me in the next moment; it is always going out and coming in, exhaling, inhaling. The air has my form, and in the moment when I exhale the air, it is indeed the same air; it is then only outside, outside of the human being. But as truly as my bones are myself, so truly is the air form, from the moment of inhalation to the moment of exhalation, that which belongs to my own being. As truly as the bones belong to me from my birth to my death, so the air stream belongs to me from the moment it is inhaled to the moment it is exhaled. It is just as much me as my bones are me, only the me-ness of that air stream lasts only from one inhalation to the next exhalation, and the me-ness of my bones lasts approximately from birth to death. Only in terms of time are these things different: the air man dies with the exhalation and is born with the inhalation. And just as our bones are born before our physical birth and gradually decay, something is born in us when we breathe in, and something in us dies when we breathe out. That which is born in us when we breathe in dies when we breathe out; this belongs to the genetic makeup from the old sun, it was laid down back then.

We see how the human realm expands out into the cosmos, how man grows together with it. But we should learn to understand how man lives in the spiritual realm at all. Our time does not even have the talent to grasp this connection between man and the spiritual in the most primitive way. We must come back to that. It would never have occurred to an ancient person to form words as they are formed today when it is necessary to form a word for any compound substance. Now, at most, chemists look for hypothetical conditions to find appropriate names when something is to be named according to the principles of chemistry. These names are very unpleasant for people to pronounce, sometimes they have an awful lot of syllables! Let yourself be informed about this, for example, by those of our friends who are chemists! But where things are not named according to these principles, the names are not connected to the things.

This was not always the case. Today I have spoken to you about inspiration; I have shown you how inspiration leads back to the ancient solar heritage of man. But man had come to the sun through breathing. That is to say, what is now breathing and what lives in the element of air was laid down in former times. So there must be a relationship between human breathing and inspiration. You only have to consider what the word inspiration actually originally means. The intimate relationship between breathing and 'inspiration' is already expressed in this word, because it is basically the word for inhaling. Those who want to deny the spirits would only have to look at the development of language. We have already hinted at this from another angle: one would find the spirits of speech, but also how these spirits of speech work in human nature! Then we will find how we are embedded in the spiritual worlds, how the spirits work with us, how the spirits work with us in everything we do in life. And we will feel ourselves in a real way: our self expanded to the great self of the world. Intuition will become what theory is. And that is the way to really enter into the spiritual worlds.

But we really have to go into these things as well. We have to take them in detail, we have to try to take them seriously, to take some of what has just been said about the relationship between human beings and the spiritual worlds in relation to the simplest of circumstances seriously.

This is what I would like to suggest to you at the end of these lectures, which were intended to show you from a certain point of view how there is a descending current in man and an ascending current, and how man stands in the ascending and descending currents.

And when Faust opens the book and utters the words:

“How the powers of heaven ascend and descend
And pass the golden buckets!”

there you have what I have been trying to convey to you during these days, this rising and descending of the heavenly powers, which Faust first gazes at and cannot understand. But it is expressed in this way in the Faustian legend, so that we can already see in the “Faust” where modern times must strive. It must be very clear to us that we want with our spiritual science what people should strive for. We cannot but recognize that spiritual science must become the spiritual possession of humanity. And as soon as we have come to work together in this becoming a new spiritual possession, we must do everything to realize it, to achieve this goal for humanity.

And with that, I consider these considerations to be concluded for the time being.