The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit

GA 68b — 12 March 1910, Munich

55. The Mission of Devotion

Dear attendees! When I last had the honor of speaking to you here about the “mission of wrath” and “the mission of truth” for the human soul, I was able to refer to the saying of the great Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “You will never find the limits of the soul, and even if you walk through all the streets, so far are its territories.” And even in those days, the validity of this saying about the vastness of the human soul was proved by the fact that we can only penetrate to some extent into the complicated structure of our own soul if we first bring a little order, so to speak, into our consideration of the soul; that is, if we do not simply look at the soul as it presents itself to us — as a sum of surging sensations, feelings, urges, desires, of perceptions, of ideas, of ideals, and so on, but that we realize how this soul into three separate areas: what can be called the sentient soul within the human being, what can be called the mind or emotional soul, and finally the third, highest soul element, which can be called the consciousness soul. For these three different soul members have three completely different types of developmental conditions. And that which can teach us, so to speak, how one of these soul members develops is not at the same time suited to give us insight into the developmental laws and developmental conditions of the other of the soul members mentioned.

Our sentient soul initially presents itself to us as that which responds within us to external stimuli that confront us from both nature and human life, which first receives impressions from the outside world and then, on the basis of these impressions, develops what we can call the passions for something, the urges to do or want this or that. Everything that confronts us in the way of drives, desires, passions, in the form of an unordered soul life, however it unfolds even in the lowest human soul, we describe as the realm of the sentient soul.

When a person progresses in their development, when they become more inwardly focused, as it were, then what might be called the emergence of the intellectual or mind soul in relation to the sentient soul occurs. As long as a person gives way to anger in response to some external stimulus, as long as he is seized by the affect of fear in response to some external impression, we can only speak of the sentient soul.

But when a person independently processes the feelings and impressions of the external world within themselves, when, in addition to being devoted to the external world, they can also immerse themselves in themselves, combining the impressions of the external world, then they gradually rise above the mere surge of the sentient soul and comes to what can be called the rational control of instincts, desires and passions with ideas, which on the other hand can be described as a soothing, purifying of unbridled instincts and passions by the mind. In short, the mind or soul, which actually form a unity, are what elevates man above the mere sentient soul.

That such an elevation takes place, that man can, as it were, turn away from the outside and process the impressions within himself to a certain perfection, is taught us by the outer life when we consider an example such as the following. There were certainly many people who were contemporaries of the events from 1750 to 1815. Enormous upheavals of life occurred during that time. Let us take a closer look at those who experienced these events. They had an effect on their sentient soul. All those who were able to see them were carried away by the sensations and impressions. But only those who processed these impressions within themselves became wiser and richer in worldly wisdom and experience. They then faced the world in 1815 with a different inner soul life, with a clearer inner soul life than in about 1770. That is the elevation of the intellectual or mind soul out of the sentient soul.

If we only had this intellectual or emotional soul at work within us, then we would, so to speak, become more and more introspective. We would become richer in worldly wisdom and experience, but we would not come to know the world, as we call it, to recognize the great laws that lie behind things. We can only approach this by going out of ourselves again, , that we again permeate the impressions with what we have acquired in the way of life experience and worldly wisdom; and that occurs through the soul of consciousness, which leads the human being out of himself and into the world again. He allows the consciousness soul to prevail at the moment when he, so to speak, not only becomes richer and richer within himself in ideas, but also applies these ideas to into order and to penetrate it in such a way that the laws of existence, the laws of the world, gradually appear to him, so that he, as it were, connects with his consciousness soul to the outside world.

And if we ask ourselves – this too has already been mentioned – what is going on within us to bring these three soul elements into corresponding activity, to work one out of the other, to let one have an effect on the other? That which is at work within us is the actual human I, the actual bearer of human self-awareness.

But it is also this human I that is in a state of perpetual development. As it were, it still rests submerged in the sentient soul. As long as only the sentient soul rules, the I appears as a slave to this sentient soul, devoted to all impressions of the external world, overwhelmed by all the impressions of color, light and warmth, tyrannized by its passions, instincts and desires.

But then this I continues to work, even working to make the person more and more mature. By purifying the intellectual soul from the sentient soul, the I becomes more and more independent, it becomes more and more the master of the drives, desires and passions, and it is increasingly led to determine the direction and goal of life itself. Then the I works its way up to the consciousness soul, so to speak, to penetrate through the skin of the soul, as it were, and to reunite with the things, to live in the things and events of the world.

Thus we see that it is the I that reigns in these three soul members, and we emphasized in the last lectures - this is only briefly repeated today - that something like an affect, like anger, works through its own nature within the sentient soul in order to allow the I to develop in the right way. If a person initially surrenders to external impressions in such a way that he directly follows such an impression in the sense of the sentient soul, so that he erupts in anger, then this anger itself has an effect on his soul. We can experience that anger, because it obscures the I, because it takes away the full, clear, bright consciousness of the I, because it does not allow the I to emerge into completely selfish existence, thereby beneficially moderating this still undeveloped I. It is still entirely a slave to the sentient soul; it would abandon itself entirely to the ruling drives, and it dampens it down to a certain powerlessness, not letting it live itself out completely. By damping it, it actually does a good thing. If anger only led to the expression of the ego, then every time the ego was expressed, it would reinforce the ego in its selfishness, in its self-will.

In this sense, we could see the mission of anger as educating the ego. Anger poisons selfishness, as it were, by pushing the ego down. And we can find this in all affects, that they signify a kind of self-regulation of the soul or the ego.

And then we were able to point out how truth works in the human soul to educate the ego. Since truth is something that a person must fully understand within himself if he really wants to experience it in his own ego, he can only experience it by recognizing it within himself. Thus the I must live entirely within itself if it wants to arrive at a real truth. A million people can vote against the truth 3 x 3 = 9; if the I has grasped this truth within itself, then the I knows that 3 x 3 = 9, that it is true. In this way the I is completely within itself when it penetrates the truth.

But at the same time, truth is something that does not allow any selfishness or egoism to arise, but something that leads this ego out of itself at the same time. Truth is the only thing that must be experienced in the ego completely and that at the same time can make the ego completely unselfish. For once we have arrived with our ego at a truth that must be experienced in itself, then this truth does not belong only to the individual ego, but is a common property for each and every ego.

Thus truth is a powerful educator for the intellectual soul, because it leads the I out of selfishness and at the same time highly encourages the powers of selfhood. For truth can only be experienced in an I that wants to seek this truth in itself. Thus, in a certain sense, affects such as anger, when they are overcome and purified, can be seen as educators of the sentient soul, and truth as a powerful educator of the mind or mind soul.

Likewise, there is now an educator for the consciousness soul, for that in us which leads our I and thus our soul in turn completely out of us and allows us to grow together with the outer world, with that which does not rest in us but is outside of us, and with which we must grow together if we do not want to become desolate within ourselves. And today's meditation is to be devoted to the education of this third soul element.

Just as anger has the mission of dampening selfishness in the sentient soul in a certain respect, and as truth has the mission of guiding the I in the rational soul, both to be within itself and to instinct to express itself, then what we call devotion becomes the educator for the consciousness soul, showing the right way to reconnect with the outer world, with that which lies outside of our ego. Only when we recognize its purpose for this third of the human soul's members can devotion truly reveal itself to us. In order to be able to present the whole mission of devotion for the human soul, we must look a little deeper into the workings of our soul.

Devotion is, after all - already according to the use of the word - what allows man to go out of himself and penetrate into the other, which, above all, is first of all an unknown behind the visible, behind the perceptible. But we can only understand this devotion if we first ask ourselves: how must spiritual science, from whose point of view we are speaking here, understand this whole relationship of man or the human ego to the unknown?

It has been emphasized time and again from this point that spiritual science is called precisely to penetrate through the external world of physical reality to that which is initially unknown and hidden for this external physical reality. And it has been pointed out again and again that man can only penetrate into the unknown spiritual world behind the physical world by awakening the spiritual organs, the spiritual faculties of perception, in his soul itself, which lead beyond the sensual-physical.

And so that we can understand each other, I will only hint at a few words of what you will now find in great detail as a description of the path that the human soul can take into the spiritual world, both in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in the second section of the recently published “Occult Science”. What you will find there in detail is briefly hinted at here.

It will be hinted how man can become a spiritual researcher and make communications from the spiritual world when he cultivates his soul in such a way that the forces and abilities slumbering in it come to external activity. There man must, with his will and consciousness, evoke something that otherwise always occurs in everyday life without his will. The everyday event that takes place with a person without their will is that the surging perceptions, drives, passions, that pleasure and pain, cease to be conscious in the soul when the person finds themselves tired in the evening, and sink into an indeterminate darkness. At this time of falling asleep, external impressions cease. But instead, the human being sinks into the state of unconsciousness, or rather, the subconscious. His soul is empty of external impressions; but he also knows nothing, so to speak, of any world or inner experiences.

The spiritual researcher, the one who wants to live in the spiritual world, must be able to consciously and deliberately evoke that which takes place so spontaneously. He must consciously silence external impressions. He must also command all interests, all sympathies and antipathies with external impressions to stand still and be silent. The spiritual cognizer must voluntarily evoke in himself the same silence and cessation of external stimuli and impressions that occur when he falls asleep at night due to fatigue. But he must be present throughout all of this; he must be able to prevent, through his will and consciousness, that his consciousness passes into unconsciousness when he empties his soul of all external stimuli and impressions. He must, so to speak, be able to be conscious with an empty soul as he is otherwise conscious with a full soul that receives external impressions. So then, the spiritual researcher must have the strength to reject all external impressions, but still be able to consciously remain in the state of the empty soul. That is the first act that the spiritual researcher has to perform.

The second step is to allow a series of images and sensations and volitional impulses, which are described to him, to take effect on his soul. These images and sensations and volitional impulses, which he must now bring to life in his soul through his inner strength, are not there to reflect external impressions, to give an external truth. Anyone who were to look at them from this point of view would be very much mistaken. What must constitute the inner life of spiritual knowledge is an ascent of very definite, or, as I see it, symbolic concepts and ideas, etc., which have such a strong effect in the soul that they might indeed mightily shake up this soul life from within, shake it up more powerfully than all outer impressions and stimuli can shake up the soul life. That is the second act of spiritual knowledge, when the spiritual researcher can stimulate such experiences in himself that powerfully shake up his soul.

But this must not be the end. If the spiritual investigator were to stop at this act, he would not be able to ascend in truth to an insight into the spiritual world; he must add the third act, which consists in his power to would otherwise have an earthquake-like effect on his soul through mere inner contemplation, so that he transforms his entire soul life as if to an inner sea calm, to a complete [inner] calm. Then, when he is able to control and work on his soul inwardly, he will experience that something rises from his inner being, which can only be compared at a higher level to the outer senses at a lower level. Then – this has already been said several times – the spiritual world, which is always around him like color and light around the blind, will flood in as light and color flood into the eye of the blind who has undergone an operation.

In this way, then, can man penetrate into the spiritual world. Then the spiritual unknown, the spiritual facts and spiritual entities that prevail and are active behind the sensual-physical world, open up to him, which are not there for the merely sensual and intellectual perception of reality.

Now the human being is standing in the middle of a world of spiritual life. But at first this spiritual world is closed to the physical gaze and mind. We have to ask ourselves: What are the reasons for this spiritual world being closed to the physical gaze and mind of the human being? There are reasons for this, and these reasons will become clear to us when we ask ourselves: Well, where in ordinary life do we encounter that which stands like a boundary between the physical and the spiritual world?

We encounter it at precisely the moment we described earlier. What does the spiritual researcher actually do when he activates his inner soul powers? He makes the moment that otherwise occurs involuntarily for a person, the moment of falling asleep, into a conscious one, and what otherwise occurs through falling asleep is shaped by the spiritual researcher into a supreme experience. In ordinary consciousness, everything that a person could possibly experience sinks into unconscious darkness when falling asleep. In the world into which the human being plunges every night, and in which he dwells during sleep, he could perceive the spiritual world. For it has been shown here many times that precisely that which we call the 'soul being' lifts itself out of the physical body and out of what is connected with it, out of the etheric or life body, but at the moment when what we call the soul being lifts itself out with sleep, for the person in normal consciousness, consciousness itself ceases, that is to say, the world into which he enters is shrouded in a veil so that he cannot see it. But the person who becomes a spiritual researcher sees into this world!

And how does a person attain consciousness of the external world? He attains consciousness of the external world when he submerges himself in his physical body in the morning and makes use of his physical organs and the physical mind that is connected to the brain. But in doing so, he is bound to the limits of the physical organs. The spiritual researcher, on the other hand, once he has achieved what has just been outlined, when he has acquired these inner abilities, he in turn returns to his physical body, so that he no longer needs to perceive only through the physical senses, but can perceive his environment directly with the inner organs of the soul. In this way he sees behind that which extends in the outer world like a boundary and obscures the actual spiritual world. The spiritual researcher learns to see behind every color into that which the color presents to us; the spiritual researcher hears behind every sound that which stands behind it as a spiritual being. He sees behind every perceptible impression. The world becomes crystal clear to him. And when he sees through the carpet of the external world, spiritual beings and realities are revealed to him.

When the spiritual researcher penetrates into the spiritual world, there is no way for him to avoid – without running the risk of being shipwrecked – but to undergo two important experiences in the course of his initiation or development in spiritual research. These two important experiences are also described in more detail in the two books mentioned earlier. These are the ones who are called the guardians of the threshold.

It is the case that before a person's inner soul abilities awaken in the right way, before he is able to dive down into that darkness in sleep, before he perceives the reality behind it, he must meet with what is called the little guardian of the threshold. This is the perception through which the human being's own being clearly and distinctly comes before the soul in real self-knowledge. Through this, the human being learns to understand what he actually is. Above all, he comes to know what can be called real individual knowledge of karma and reincarnation. The human being learns to recognize how he has gone from life to life before entering this life, and learns to recognize how he has inscribed this or that in his soul in past lives as his karma by living in one way or another, true or laden with error, surrendering to beautiful or ugly impressions, performing good or evil deeds in past lives. Depending on how he has lived, he learns to recognize what his soul has inscribed in itself and what it still has to go through in order to eliminate all error, all that which would prevent the soul from reaching a certain level of perfection. Everything that the soul has of imperfections within itself, the person gets to know there as a kind of second self, as something that he has to overcome, as a kind of doppelganger, of which he knows exactly: you have to overcome that, otherwise you will never reach the goal of the human life path.

This encounter with one's own double would be a harrowing, terrible event for a person if they were not sufficiently prepared. Spiritual science ensures that a person only comes to see this Guardian of the Threshold in his true form when they are sufficiently prepared. And one should not enter into one's own human soul life before one has made this experience, how imperfect one must be through one's whole past life. Through this, that is developed in us which enables us to enter into the own powers of the soul without danger.

What would happen if we were to enter the underworld of the soul without this encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold? Something would happen that would be very destructive for the human being. Let us assume that, through some event, a person enters into the supersensible spiritual abilities of his soul without having met the little guardian of the threshold. In that case, however, this entering would not be able to undergo all that attenuation, all that purification, which is only possible if we have a double of ourselves in our entire imperfection. Then the good qualities of our soul would not emerge to mitigate, so to speak, all that which rules in our ego and is woven from selfish impulses and drives that only take our ego into account. If a person were to descend into his ego without first becoming acquainted with the Guardian of the Threshold, it would mean that all the evil aspects of his nature would be stirred up in him. All the evil impulses of his nature that he is capable of would be awakened in him. All the arrogance, vanity and mendacity rooted in his soul would assert themselves with a mighty force. And man would become, to the highest degree, a being that consumes and burns itself through its own selfishness; man would perish in his own selfishness; he would bring himself into such a conflict with the world that he would first consume himself in his own selfishness. This is what can characterize us, as if man enjoys a certain benefit in his life in that his consciousness is darkened when he falls asleep. If he did not dwell unconsciously in sleep, he would draw from the world, in which he would then be conscious, a continuous increase of his egoism and his untruthfulness.

Now, for all the things that have to occur, so to speak, at a higher level of human development, there are weak imprints in ordinary life, something like preparations. We can say that even if a person in this embodiment has no inclination to go beyond the ordinary life to a higher level of consciousness, he can still always prepare for it, even in this life. And a preparation for this descent into one's own soul, a preparation that works in such a way that it protects the normal outer soul, so to speak, from sinking into complete selfishness and untruthfulness, is everything that we take into our sentient soul in the way of feelings and emotions of humility.

Humility is an effective means of self-education in that, when we let it prevail in our conscious daily life, when we let humility permeate our soul, it imbues our soul life with a soul substance that prevents the soul from drawing all the forces of selfishness out of the ego when it descends into the spiritual world. That is why humility is so highly recommended as a preparatory quality for all those who want to prepare themselves in their ordinary waking lives to gradually enable their soul to become selfless even in places where it might otherwise become selfish.

Through everything that we pour into our soul as humility, we also make our encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold easier for ourselves. We make it easier for ourselves by becoming aware of our imperfection while we are still awake, and so we do not find the Guardian standing before us in such a terribly repulsive form. We, so to speak, strip away his horror.

Thus humility is a good educational tool for descending into our own soul, into its depths, which otherwise remain closed to us for our own good. As long as we are immature, they must remain closed if we do not want to suffer shipwreck in life. This is, as it were, a kind of boundary downwards, towards that 'below' which we have to describe as that which lies in the depths of our soul life, which is hidden from ourselves when we are asleep.

But there is another boundary; and this comes to our mind when we once again familiarize ourselves with what has just been outlined. It was said that the spiritual researcher is not dependent on mere physical perception, on mere thinking with the mind, when he returns to the physical body, but that he is able to bring out soul abilities, inner abilities, through which he can see through to the spiritual foundations, to the spiritual entities and facts of the world. These now also close themselves to the outer gaze of people in the normal state of consciousness. Why is this so? They close themselves for the reason that if man were to stand unprepared before that which exists behind the sense world as its primal foundations, he would be blinded, as if destroyed.

The path that shows us, so to speak, in the mildest form, how man steps out of his ordinary physical abilities, as it were, and faces the outside world spiritually, is the path of what is called ecstasy. This is not really good. It does, however, lead a person to rise in a certain way above his physical seeing and hearing and grasping and understanding to a kind of spiritual vision of the external world, but this ecstasy, as it is so often described, obscures the direct consciousness of the self. The person is then out of himself; he does not carry his self into the world of spiritual experiences. Just as sleep spreads a veil over what we would experience to our detriment, because we would have to become selfish as a result, so the veil of external reality spreads over the spiritual world behind it, and this also occurs as a beneficial effect for the person who wanted to approach this spiritual world unprepared.

But anyone who wants to enter into this spiritual realm as a true spiritual researcher will have a different encounter. It is the encounter with the so-called great or greater guardian of the threshold. This is what shows us, at the moment when we break through, so to speak, the ordinary looking and ordinary understanding, how far we are from a complete understanding of the world. Then we encounter the great guardian of the threshold. And he clearly instructs us that we should no longer ask all those questions about the ultimate reasons so easily, that we should no longer curiously enter behind the veil of existence without first carefully and slowly weaving and working from step to step on the abilities that lead us up, in order to slowly gain insights from world to world. Then we learn through this Great Guardian of the Threshold — he shall be characterized here only from this point of view — what abilities we still lack to penetrate into the spiritual world. At the same time we receive instructions on how to develop what we do not yet have. The self-perfection to which we must submit presents itself to us with all clarity through what is called the greater guardian of the threshold.

Now, however, man can also prepare himself for this degree of higher experience, for this degree of penetration into all the spiritual undercurrents, into the great unknown beings, in his ordinary, so-to-speak normal consciousness. And because everything in humanity is geared towards development, our ordinary life also contains that through which we may approach the secrets of existence, the unknown worlds that lie behind the realities of the senses. This is contained within us like a teacher who can gradually lead us to soften the impression of the greater Dweller of the Threshold. Just as we, when we are led as a humble one to the lesser guardian of the threshold, can soften this encounter, who then does not appear to us in his gruesome form, in which he would otherwise crudely present us with the doppelganger of our imperfections, so we can soften that other encounter with the greater guardian of the threshold, whom every human being must meet in the course of his development. We can also soften the impression of that great, powerful figure, which shows us through its glory, through the way it confronts us when it tells us: “This is how you must become” — which shows us precisely through its majesty what we still have to develop. We will not be repelled with fear and terror as before a cherubim with a fiery sword if we are properly prepared. And unconsciously, people who are on the right path in life, on the path of true inner morality, are always preparing for this great moment.

And what prepares us in our consciousness soul to emerge in the right way in this consciousness soul with the I, not only into physical reality, but into spiritual reality, in order to be allowed to acquire spiritual knowledge, that is what is meant by the word 'devotion'. Devotion is the stirring of inner impulses in the soul for the unknown, for us insofar as we cannot yet understand it. If we had nothing within us that pointed us to what we cannot yet understand, then the urge and the longing could not awaken to come to the unknown. Everything that we want to understand one day and can only understand when we have entered into it must first work in us in a dark way, like a yearning. That which draws us to that which we are not yet equal to, beneath which we still stand, outside of which we find ourselves, that is devotion. We can be truly devoted precisely to that which we know: we do not yet penetrate it with our soul powers, with our knowledge. But then this devotion is something that brings us precisely in the right way to the subject, so that we enter it in a dignified way, so that we can gain true, non-trivial knowledge from it.

It is understandable from the outset that all knowledge must be preceded by something like such a feeling. A person need only consider that, while man must understand everything through logic, that is, one must approach everything through logical thinking, that logic is what can prove everything in existence to us. But what does logic itself prove to us? If we are not to arrive at the self-contradiction that logic proves itself, then we must assume that there is something in the human soul other than mere logic, which in turn is proved by logic. Logic can only be proved by something that itself has nothing to do with logic. And that is in man that which can be called his original, healthy sense of truth. Thus, the logical ultimately leads us back to feeling. All understanding leads us back to feeling.

If we are sincere, we cannot get beyond this. Therefore, it should not surprise us if the first thing that occurs to us when we have the highest knowledge of an unknown behind things is that devotional feeling that we call devotion. And when this devotion, which rules and works in us and moves our soul, before we have recognized something that we reverently worship, when this feeling itself is what leads us up, so to speak, up the mountain to what then yields to our recognition – that is devotion in the highest sense of the word.

But everything that confronts us in the highest style also confronts us in the first outward form. And so devotion in its highest perfection is indeed that which lives in us as a yearning devotion to an unknown, so that it may one day reveal itself to us when we are ready for it, but it is present to a lesser degree in relation to everything that we have not yet recognized, even in the ordinary external world.

When, for example, a younger person looks up to an older, more experienced one, he cannot, of course, see beyond him; for it is vanity, if we believe, sometimes even very much out of today's consciousness of time, to be able to judge everything at any level of existence. For anyone who has a concept of knowledge, it seems strange when someone, for example, believes that they can describe a comprehensive personality like Goethe biographically, because the point is that we can basically only understand someone to whom we have already made ourselves equal. If we were unable to develop a relationship with someone to whom we have not yet made ourselves equal, then we would not be able to understand them at all.

But the human soul is so constituted: if it retains its healthy feelings, then it can long revere a thing, devote itself to it devoutly, before it recognizes the same. And so it is with all maturing of the human soul. And those who look at life in its even most external depths will find this confirmed, which has been emphasized here many times: that in later life one always remembers again and again with such gratitude the hours and moments of childhood in which one could so reverently worship this or that human being, this or that personality.

It will always be a great moment when a person is able to experience in the circle of his family the veneration of this or that personality with whom one is acquainted. The child may not yet have seen this personality, so has not even enjoyed the external impression; it looks up, so to speak, from the stories about what one can see, as if to a complete stranger. Then it experiences the day in such a way that it first gains an impression of the previously revered personality in the external experience. Then it may stand with shy reverence at the door handle that is to give it access to the personality it has learned to revere. When the child has had these feelings, it also approaches the external impression in a completely different way, then something of the wonderful radiance that our soul can radiate is present where it first develops devotion and worship before approaching the object.

Devotion and reverence are something wonderfully luminous that can cast a wonderful radiance [on that] which we encounter only later. One remembers – as I just said – back to the greatest moments of one's childhood, to just such moments when one has truly learned to revere even in the face of what one may encounter in the outside world. And so, in these seeds of devotion, we have a small reflection of what that all-encompassing devotion can give, which builds up to that which must remain more or less unknown to us. Even if it has already opened up to us to a certain extent as knowledge of the spiritual world, something still remains unknown to us; for behind every known thing there is again an unknown. Even the ordinary devotions are a reflection of this comprehensive devotion, with which our soul strives towards the unknown before it can fully penetrate into this unknown.

Thus, in devotion, we have a power that enables us to take the path to the unknown. And since it is true that the spiritual and the unknown give rise to powers and abilities that are known and evident in the outer human senses, it is also the case that our own powers, which flow to us from the spiritual world, can only flow to us if we seek the right path to this spiritual world ourselves, the path through devotion. Even in the ordinary life, as it presents itself to us between birth and death, we can find the healing power of devotion.

If we look at life in this way, we have to say that, alongside all the other moods that can be developed for the world, alongside the moods of joy and pleasure, alongside the moods of exultation and enthusiasm, it is also possible to develop the mood of devotion in the face of the phenomena of existence, whether familiar or unfamiliar. We encounter this, for example, in poetry, in the fact that alongside the song of jubilation, alongside joy and delight, there are also hymns and odes. It confronts us in all the arts, and we may say: just as there are works of art that affirm us, as it were, in how we are the same and akin to the things of existence, so there are also works of art that evoke in us an inkling of how we can strive for the highest, that draw us, as it were, towards a highest.

Thus, we encounter sufficient occasions for devotion throughout life; and we should observe this in life; above all, we should not ignore it in a true life pedagogy, because it is important that we absorb into our life destiny in our childhood that which devotion can give us.

If we observe life between birth and death, we can find what is called karma, the great law of fate, which presents itself to us as a chain of spiritual causes and effects; but it presents itself in a very peculiar way. For example, certain things that are laid down as causes in early youth present themselves in later life as effects. What we may absorb in childhood through this or that only emerges as an effect in old age. And the effects are not the same, but such that we must first understand the connection between cause and effect.

The young person who grows up, educated in the right way and without what is distorted into some dark side of devotion, who grows up in the right devotion, will notice that this is transformed into something else in his soul. We can see this in a more intimate knowledge of life, here or there, that this or that person enters into a group of other people – perhaps he says little or nothing – but his presence already pours out what can be called a beneficent element. The presence of such a person blesses and delights those around him. What radiates from him spiritually has come into him.

But this power of blessing does not come into a person's later life if it is not rooted in what we have developed in our youth as the mood of devotion. Devotion in youth transforms itself throughout life into the power to bless in old age. This is a karmic connection that we encounter between birth and death. We do not need to know this only from spiritual science; anyone who knows life can see it everywhere. We could put it in symbolic words: Those who have not been able to worship devoutly with bowed knees and clasped hands in their youth will never be able to stretch out their hands to bless. The bowed knees and clasped hands of youth are the cause that, in old age, transform into blessing hands. This is one of our wisdoms of life. There we see one of those forces that come to us from the spiritual world, even if we are not yet able to see into it. Devotion first leads us up into the spiritual world, which is still closed to our vision because the greater guardian of the threshold is not allowed to show himself to us. It closes itself to us, but sends us out of itself the forces that, in their all-pervasive effects, emerge from our actions themselves.

In this way we can develop within us a mood of devotion towards an unknown world. Perhaps we will not yet be able to penetrate to an understanding of it, but it pours out forces from itself, which are transformed in our soul and become impulses for our outer life. Just as when we fall asleep tired in the evening and wake up refreshed in the morning, just as the night brings us refreshment, just as what comes out of us makes our tired arms able to work again, so it is in our outer life when we know how to relate to the unknown worlds — which we are not yet able to see into, which stand behind the reality of the senses — when we approach them devoutly. Thus they may, like a gentle sleep, veil their powers from our consciousness; but they give us their powers. And it is through devotion that we can make our way to unknown worlds and that opens up the powers of these unknown worlds to us, thereby bringing us out of ourselves with our ego and making us capable of being effective in the outer world. Thus we approach the unknown worlds with our devout ego. Our I is enriched by them with that which can bring us together with the world again. We become more powerful, stronger, more vigorous through what devotion gives us.

This is the mission of devotion for the soul element that we call the consciousness soul and through which we in turn step out of ourselves and pour our ego into the outside world, as it were. We owe everything that makes us fruitful for the outside world to our devotional moods towards that which is worthy of worship. And the person who cannot be devout will not be able to intervene [in life]. There will be people who will come and say: Yes, I don't succeed at anything, people don't believe in me, people don't want to understand me. Then one falls back on appearances, which prove themselves, but not on the reasons. The reasons lie in the fact that such people, who feel compelled to feel misunderstood, have never been able to find the mood of devotion within themselves. This is the mission of devotion for the education of our ego to grow together with the world.

Thus we first grow unconsciously into the world through the forces that devotion gives us, in order to gradually approach the spiritual world itself, when we have matured through what devotion produces in us. But we must also be clear about the fact that devotion in a certain sense leads the ego out of itself, and that a person who wants to follow the right paths in the world must never divest himself of his ego in the present period of development, because the ego gives him the ability to judge, the right power of deduction, and the possibility to place himself in the world without confusion. Therefore, anyone who has an inclination to indulge in devotional moods must bear in mind that, while they may go as far as possible in the devotional mood, they must never lose themselves in devotion.

We can describe the two elements of devotion that are revealed to us in it as devotion, on the one hand, and love, on the other. When our soul is permeated and warmed by love for a being, that love is the one element that leads us to devotion; the devotion of the will is the other element that leads to devotion. And wherever love and devotion arise, they must also arise [as love and devotion] to the unknown; for there is an intimate connection between all beings, even between the lower beings and ourselves. What is in our soul consists of love and devotion, which can then be lived out as devotion. But we must not lose ourselves in devotion; we must enter into the mood of devotion while preserving our ego. If we do not do this, then we paralyze our will, then a weakening occurs instead of a strengthening of our will. If we approach things with a blind love that is not permeated with the soul, then this love becomes blind, then instead of knowledge we will come to a form of superstition, blind faith. And above all, if our love is not permeated and purified by intellect and mind, we will end up with what we can call unguided, unadvised love. But that is enthusiasm. It is the kind of thing that can ultimately escalate into delusion in the face of the unknown. Just as we are gradually condemned to spiritual powerlessness through a devotion or surrender in which we lose our ego, so we are seduced into erring in the world through our love, which is not illuminated by the deeds of the guide who is there for all our orientation: the soul of mind or soul of feeling.

We must not lose our will or our feelings, advised by reason, if the favorable effects of devotion are to occur, as described.

At the same time, it will be readily apparent that education in devotion, like devotion itself, necessitates something that is far removed from mere intellectualism. When a correct middle course must be found between good and evil, then what one might call the tact and sense of life always comes into play. Therefore, one will not be able to lead someone into devotion in the right way through abstract ideas, but only by pouring out one's whole soul, which in turn comes from a properly guided devotion. That is why, especially in the education of devotion, looking at the other devout person can have such a powerful effect, and why example must play such a great role here.

This is why devotion, where it should be cultivated, relies so heavily on being cultivated in community; this is also why a person walking alone through the world can find little opportunity for devotion. And just as devotion can easily develop in the contemplation of others, so it is also that which leads us out of ourselves and brings us together with other people, for nothing ignites our devotion more powerfully than when we can share it with others who are looking up to the same thing. In this way, devotion also leads our soul upwards to the heights, where it steps out of itself as the consciousness soul, where it enters into communion with the environment. In devotion, man has something that leads man out of himself, that frees him from mere selfish feeling, willing and thinking, that instructs him to have something in common with others in his ego, to which he can look up. This is the mission of devotion in human society. It leads from I to I, and, when it is fostered and cultivated in the right way, it pours a wonderful mood and atmosphere over a community.

Thus devotion plays the greatest conceivable role for man in both his ordinary and elevated life. And devotion also leads him up to the heights of life. This is what all those strive for who want to break through the outer sensual cover and enter the spiritual world. That is what they strive for through the longing and urge of devotion: to penetrate to that which they thus devoutly venerate, to be able to live with that which they first devoutly venerate; to be able to unite with that which one first devoutly venerates, to be able to stand in that which one first strives for from below. This has always been called mystica, spiritual union with the spiritual world, from which man comes, but with which he can consciously unite when he has gradually matured to do so. Mystical union was the lofty ideal of all spiritual aspirants. To all spiritual aspirants, that which lives and works in the human soul appeared as a feminine force that draws up in a devout mood to that which permeates and interweaves the world and can fertilize the soul as a masculine force. This is also what Goethe felt, based on his good knowledge of the mystical mood of human development, when he wrote the “Chorus mysticus” at the end of his life's work. There he wrote the words that, as if from unknown spiritual depths, resonate in our soul and present the riddle of our soul's striving and development to our mind's eye, telling us that everything we encounter in the external world is a parable for something eternal, that what is insufficient for sensual striving can be achieved through spiritual striving. What we cannot describe with words of the physical world is done when we come together with that which inspires us from the spiritual world. And then they fade away, these words, into that wonderful dictum that tells us: The soul is like an eternal feminine that allows itself to be fertilized by what lives as a masculine in the secrets of the world, behind sensual existence. Thus, Goethe's “Chorus mysticus” sounds to our ears like the great riddle of human development:

All that is
transient is but a parable,
the inadequate
here becomes an event,
the indescribable
here is done,
the eternal feminine
draws us on.

But when we learn from the understanding of the mission of devotion to grasp our own soul as it draws us as the eternal feminine towards the eternal masculine, which is to flow into us as world wisdom, then we also gain from this understanding of the mission of devotion this higher understanding of the real union with the eternal masculine in the world. And we feel certain, in the face of what unfolds as a world secret, that we can achieve this unio mystica through our spiritual striving and that we are approaching this unio mystica more and more through the mood of devotion, in order to experience it in the end.

And so, on the one hand, we hear Goethe's words when we contemplate the human soul:

The eternal feminine
Draws us up!

And so another saying rings true to us as the expression of the truth that flows from the unio mystica, which must impose itself on us when we receive the certainty that we can unite with the eternal masculine. As if in amplification of Goethe's saying, “The Eternal Feminine draws us upward,” he who is certain of the former attainment of the unio mystica will say, looking up to the mysteries of existence: The Eternal Masculine leads us upward!