Goethe and the Present

GA 68c — 22 September 1909, Basel

XXVI. The Spiritual Significance of “Faust”

Dear attendees!

It was in the late summer of 1831 – that is, [not quite] a year before Goethe's death – that the great poet sealed a package. The contents of this package were to remain untouched until after his death.

What Goethe sealed at the time was the conclusion of his great life's work, the second part of his “Faust” as it is presented to us today. And the words that Goethe spoke to one of his friends when he had completed this great work of poetry sound significant. He said: “My life's work is now complete, and basically it doesn't matter what I do now and whether I do anything at all.

It is a peculiar feeling that must creep into our soul when we see such a personality arrive at the height of life and at the same time in the evening of life, and when such a feeling passes through the soul of this personality. This statement by Goethe implies that our poet feels something deeply inwardly concluded in his life's work: he feels, so to speak, that he has brought to an end and to a goal something that he had been working on for a long, long time – not years, but decades! And when we consider that the work in which he has invested his highest ideals and views of life has been completed, then we must attach a very special importance to such a work – such a rich, meaningful life that can speak of itself with such inner harmony and with the consciousness of having reached a goal [that he has given the world what he had to give, that is the deep meaning]. To have given to humanity the best you have to say! [With this great poet, we can understand how his work grows with development, becoming richer and richer.]

We can get an impression of what that means if we put ourselves back into the poet's life, into that time when he, in September of the year 1783, in Ilmenau, carved into a [wooden wall] the words:

Over all the hills
There is peace,
In all the treetops
You can barely feel
A breath;
The little birds are silent in the forest.
Just wait, soon
You too will rest.

Even if we have to understand such a poem based on the situation and perhaps have to remember that it was born in such a moment of inspiration as Goethe had – it was evening – out of the evening mood, we can still say that these words, so full of meaning, were written out of Goethe's mood at the time, out of that mood of heavy worries of the inner life, when heavy riddles weighed on his soul.

It was at the end of his life, when he was back at the place where he had written these words. He reread them in old age, and with tears of emotion he looked back to this youthful mood. What lies between two such moments in Goethe's life! What ultimately lies in Goethe's life between the time when he began to invest all his thirst for knowledge as a yearning for the ideals of life in the youthful [first parts of] Faust, and the moment shortly before his death, which brings this work to a close! Oh, it is very peculiar that we can follow several steps in this work of the poet's, where it shows us how it grows and grows with the poet's personality. Even when he arrived in Weimar in his [mid] seventies, he brought with him certain parts of his “Faust”. That was the first form in which he expressed his life ideals and riddles. This version was not available in print for a long time – it was preserved until the nineteenth century, when it was found in the estate of a Weimar court lady. Rediscovered when the archives were opened, the “Faust” was printed as a fragment in 1790. [From then on, the “Faust” grew more and more.]

Today, my task is to characterize this mighty poem from the outside and thus create the conditions for tomorrow's lecture, which will delve deeper into the profound secrets. There has been much talk about the incomprehensibility of the second part. In response to this, I would simply like to raise the question: Do you believe that a personality such as Goethe, at the end of his life, is as easy to understand as he was in his earlier years? Should we not rather endeavor to penetrate with all our might into what he had to say in his old age?

We have three versions of Faust: first, the youthful Faust, which is called the first part. This is available to us in the manuscript that was found in the Weimar estate of the aforementioned court lady. The second version dates from 1790. And the third appeared in 1808. This is the form in which the first part of “Faust” is now available to us. From then until the 1820s, Goethe did not think about continuing his “Faust.” [We will see what the reasons for this were.] For Goethe, the problem was too great to simply bring it to a conclusion. It was only in 1820, when he was at the height of his powers, that the poet took up the work again and completed it with energy and strength in the last year of his life. Oh, in Goethe we have a person who is already confronted with the greatest issues of life in his youth, but at the same time a personality who, from decade to decade, was able to look into his own soul and say: Now you have come a step further.

And when we see how far above us this ever-striving personality stands, must we not be inspired to follow the steps he took between the first and second parts of his “Faust”? [Truly, there is a tremendous difference between the stages of the first part of “Faust” and between the first and second parts.] If we first consider the figure that could have been printed in 1775, we would see a personal work in which Goethe's most intimate yearning and striving have been incorporated. Everything that Goethe has felt in terms of mystery and profound experience has been poured into this work.

Then we find that “Fragment” that first came to our attention in 1790. There we find a remarkable difference compared to the first one: Goethe is already more serene. What first comes to us as a personality with an individual touch and nuance is more elevated into the impersonal and serene. We feel more that what is being discussed concerns not only Goethe in his youth, but also all of us to a greater or lesser extent.

And if we then consider the figure from 1808, we find that he [“Faust”] has moved more from the human into the superhuman, into a sphere where the powers of heaven fight for man and man is placed in the struggle between good and evil – expressed in particular in the “Prologue in Heaven”. In the first part, we see the striving of the Goethe soul to participate as a human being, but in 1808 we see him placed in the whole of humanity, his perspective broadened from the human-personal to a grand tableau of the world.

But in the inner character we find that the first part contains something that Goethe himself, in the age of life, feels as something personal and unclear, not as something universally human. Those who delve into it find something theoretical in it: the way a person speaks when faced with things unknown to him, of which he has only a presentiment. The second part – however strange this may sound in view of our usual preconceptions – is a realistic work, flowing from the most fundamental experiences after he could say of himself that he had arrived at a satisfactory solution to all the questions of life. [In this respect the second part is raised even higher above the personal level]. Therefore, if we understand him correctly, Faust fills us with the same satisfaction as all literary works of which we can say: here an artistic individuality has struggled to speak to all people, to inner peace, to inner harmony.

How Goethe allowed the content of “Faust” to flow out of his innermost being can help us understand why the first part is more theoretical and the second more realistic in the way it recounts Goethe's experiences of what he experienced.

If we want to find Goethe in his “Faust”, we have to realize that the goal was contained in his disposition from childhood on. That is why it is so significant that seven-year-old Goethe already felt unsatisfied as a boy [from what his environment told him] about the great underpinnings of life. Of course, he cannot express it then, only feel and sense it; but he feels in the direction that he was later able to present in such sharp contours. And so we find that one day he is looking for an expression for his feelings about the divine: He takes a music stand and places on it everything he can find of natural products in his father's collection of natural objects. He has erected a kind of altar for himself, and through the products of nature he allows the creator, the creative spirit behind it all, to speak to him. For the seven-year-old boy intended to make an offering to the god he was seeking. And on top of it he places a small incense stick, and he takes a burning glass, collects the rays of the rising sun with the burning glass and ignites the small incense stick. He has made a sacrifice to his god at the very source of nature. [This is the direction of Goethe's soul, his striving towards the sources of life.] In his memoirs, he himself says that as a boy he wanted to sacrifice to the deity. This urge remained in his soul and was expressed in all his later endeavors.

Thus we see him, when he was supposed to be studying law as a student in Leipzig, mainly occupied with what he could take from the natural science of the time; and in all other sciences and knowledge of life he looks around, just as he had looked around at the end of the sixties [of the seventeenth century] in all knowledge. But he does not seek [individual insights] as one otherwise [as a young student] sought under the constraints of circumstances. He sought to blaze a trail to insights of all kinds; he strove [for a general knowledge of the spiritual source of humanity], thereafter, what was then expressed in abstract terms, in sober, dry observations of external life impressions, that he sought to connect with the innermost longings and needs of his soul: the insights should bring him enlightenment about the riddles of life. The knowledge of the time was not suited for this purpose.

Everything that came to him was connected in Goethe with his very individual quest, with all the questions that arose in him about the infinite. And his life, even in his youth, was such as to point him to the spiritual and eternal. But that which was so suited to deepen his whole life from youth on was particularly expressed in various events of his life.

Only two of these will be mentioned here: During a serious illness, he felt close to death. Yes, death stood at his bedside in his early youth. He was touched by this event in his life by the transience of all externals, and his soul was also directed outwardly to the pursuit of the immortal.

Anyone who follows Goethe's life at the time will see how this event deepened his life. He was suited to encounter very special [intellectual circles] in Frankfurt. And the personalities who, in the most eminent sense, direct the soul towards investigating [the riddles of life], the spirit and the sources of existence, who have worked their way out of the traditional moods of religion, who ask: Where are the limits of our knowledge? How much do we have to leave to mere religious traditions and how much to our own insight? [Those who do not ask about the limits of knowledge, about the limits of science and revelation] did not feel at home with those who were Goethe's friends at the time.

Meanwhile, a different mood prevailed among those in the midst of whom stood the sincere Fräulein von Klettenberg, whom Goethe later immortalized in his “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul.” In this circle, people said to each other: There is something in the human soul that can be developed, that can mature ever higher and higher. Man is not always mature enough to recognize the highest, but forces slumber in his soul that he can develop [that can be brought out if one strives and works on himself. One then acquires inner spiritual powers that are otherwise not present in the soul]. And what he cannot achieve, no matter how humanly he tries, he can achieve if he develops powers that cannot be achieved in ordinary life. The content of this circle of friends was the development of the soul; because it was their conviction that there is something in the soul that remains unconscious, or let's say subconscious, in ordinary life. [In ordinary life, people are unconcerned about the mysterious powers that are there.] If a person lives in such a way that he devotes himself only to sensory perception, and processes this sensory perception only with the intellect, he does not approach the sources of life, he passes by the hidden powers of the soul, which he can develop and work on. And when a person has brought himself to a higher level of development, then he penetrates deeper into what is hidden behind the objects. Then the spiritual, the eternal, the imperishable comes to meet him. Such was the mood of these friends.

So you can see that these people had a different attitude to the question of the immortality of the human soul than many people have in their lives, where they often refrain from seeking insight into what is eternal in nature or in art, or leave it to traditional lore. It was not so with these friends. They said to themselves: There is something immortal out there in nature, and there are forces that are in the human organization as they are out there in nature. What is transitory and shows itself to be transitory on the outside is also transitory within the human being. And if we only see our powers with this transitory, then the immortal will never reveal itself. But in the hidden depths of the soul lie deeper powers of the human being, powers that are covered as if by a veil because the human being only gives some to the outer sense perceptions and the mind that combines them. Through such powers, which are purified and which give objective knowledge [of the eternal] [in the same way as the intellect gives it for the sensual world], we must purify the senses and try to distract them from the transitory. That is what they said to themselves: When I connect with the eternal in my own soul, then I stand spiritually face to face with the immortal, then I have brought it out of myself, then nothing can take away the certainty of immortality, then I am connected with the spirit in my own breast, which comes from the Spirit of God just as sense things come from the outer belonging and harmony.

Goethe felt a deep kinship with these souls. But there was much that was unclear in these souls. What I have now explained with certain words was expressed by them more in the form of intuitions, of unexpressed feelings of the soul; it was expressed more in certain soul gestures than in sharply outlined insights.

It was into this society that young Goethe came. And this society had a certain preference for a certain kind of writing that emerged from a medieval knowledge that had already passed away. Writings that expressed the way in which one sought to approach the great secrets of human nature. Goethe also came into contact with these writings, and we can see what the basic mood of his heart was when we see him searching in these medieval writings with an unceasing thirst for knowledge, in order to find means to develop the hidden forces of his soul that would finally lead to the knowledge of the immortal. One such work was that of Valentinus Basilius and Theophrastus Paracelsus, [Welling's “Opus macrocabalisticum et theosophicum”, but especially Kirchweger's “Aurea catena Homeri”], which he himself calls cabalistic-theosophical.

What do these writings contain that a person with a modern attitude at the time would delve into such writings as if a modern-day Haeckelian or other modern educated person would occupy themselves with the strange writings of Eliphas Levy? [If an ordinary person delved into them at the time, they would consider these writings to be pure nonsense, a flight of fancy.] And that is exactly how it was in those days: a modern person would feel that it was pure nonsense, that only a fantasist could devote himself to such things. One can understand this attitude, then and now. From a certain point of view, it can be recognized as a justified attitude. One need not be surprised that someone who is not far enough along in the development of his soul can only see pure nonsense in it. Goethe found more than mere nonsense in it. But some of it was pure nonsense. It still belonged to the time before the invention of printing, when everything was still written by hand; to the time when science had not yet been enriched by what Galileo and Kepler had taught. In those days, people sought to understand nature in a completely different way. If we want to characterize the way in which people wanted to approach the source in that time before the great achievements of natural science, we have to say that before that time, people sought to enter into nature and the world with everything that was in their soul, to enter into nature and the world with everything in his soul, not only with his intellect; but to purify his will and feeling in such a way that he also recognizes objectively with his feeling in the same way that mathematical knowledge searches. [Something that today's man can hardly imagine. In the same way, desire can become a power of knowledge. But for that, man must change it; he must work on it; he must purify and purify it of all selfish feelings. In the same way, the will can be elevated to a power of knowledge. But for that, man must not leave feeling, sensation and desire as they are – he must work on them!

The circle of friends around Goethe knew how to work on it. While the mind can be left as it is, because it is already as one can leave it, [one must reshape feeling, emotion, will and desire so that they become powers of knowledge]. Only through this work can one extract the hidden abilities of the soul that give man a knowledge of the eternal. The intellect, which is conveniently left alone, can only provide enlightenment about the transitory. This kind of knowledge through will and feelings had been more neglected [compared to intellectual knowledge at the time], even in Goethe's youth. On the other hand, what was gained through external sensory perception and the intellect prevailed, as is also the case today. But Goethe knew the limits of sensory-intellectual knowledge. [So he could not really find his way around in these writings, which, since they were written by latecomers who no longer had their own knowledge, contained a lot of nonsense.] His soul received nourishment from these books, although he could not understand them. They contained much that was pure nonsense, but anyone who could see beyond that to what was more deeply contained in these writings could feel that there was knowledge lying dormant within them. And this is what Goethe felt: the realization that does not aim to take the world as it is, but to develop the soul, to shape it, to bring up the forces that lie dormant within it. (He now wants to develop the ability to grasp these within himself.)

In these writings, Goethe found strange figures that only a fool can find pleasing today. But there is something else behind these things; I will mention just one example. In that writing, “Aurea catena Homeri,” which made a particular impression on him, you will find a strange figure: two dragons. One formed at the top as a semicircle. It is full of life and gives the impression of a good being. Below, entwined with it, is a shriveled, dried-up dragon, which appears as a symbol of evil. The two are entwined in a circle. Within the circle are two triangles: one point facing upwards and the signs for the individual planets of our solar system at the corners.

How fascinated Goethe's soul must have been by such a sign, for what is experienced in the soul in relation to this sign does not leave the soul untouched. Inner soul forces stirred when he looked at this sign: what otherwise only served human needs, what will and desire is, stirred like the urge for knowledge. He felt something that is necessary for the knowledge of such writings.

If someone wants to say: Of course, if you just want to talk about the tasteless stuff, you show that you have no knowledge of science, such as philosophy and other sciences. This objection can be understood, even if one says: In our knowledge, we should see what is there in truth. What this fantastic stuff depicts does not depict truth. Those who speak in this way are absolutely right. But they do not know what is important! What matters is the impression that these images make on the soul; that they are precisely those that bring out what otherwise lies deep within the soul, that they have creative power for the soul. And Goethe felt how this sign affected him: “It affects your will,” he felt. It draws forces from your soul that connect with the universe. He felt that. But he felt something else as well, something terrible for him at the time. He was confronted with all these things, felt that they could trigger something in the soul, felt that they could work — but he did not feel the strength within himself to be able to let this something take effect. He only felt that they concealed something

and I cannot understand what I can sense there.

[He sensed something in them like the spirit of the world, but he cannot understand it through his education and his previous life.] It was terribly shattering for Goethe's soul when he sensed something like connections with higher soul forces, sensed what could flow out of this “Aurea catena Homeri”, and yet had to say to himself: You are not yet mature, you cannot penetrate the secrets of the world, your powers of knowledge have not yet matured. But he longed to follow such a path of knowledge. And so he came to other signs, to a symbol that represented not only the great world but also the working of the spirit on earth. He felt closer to it, but still was not able to extract the forces from the earth. Now we feel how what he experienced flowed into Faust. There he focuses on the title page of the 'Aurea catena Homeri'. It shows him how the forces go from planet to planet, how their inner relationship is indicated with human desires, [it draws them up to good, down to evil], in the forms of coiled dragons, with the triangles, one point of which is directed upwards. A few pages further on, he sees the picture that shows “heavenly powers ascending and descending”. There he must turn away, for he did not feel his powers ripe to understand this.

Now read the passage in Goethe's “Faust” that shows that you cannot grasp anything from ordinary knowledge, from scientific knowledge, nothing that is experienced in the depths of the soul:

There I stand now, I poor fool, And am as wise as before!

That was the mood when Goethe left Leipzig.

There he sought a different path in Frankfurt, as he expresses so beautifully in Faust. He opened the book of Nostradamus and saw the sign of the macrocosm. [There he sees the working of nature before his soul, he sees:]

How everything is woven into a whole,
One within the other, working and living!
How heavenly powers rise up and down
And pass each other the golden buckets!
With wings that smell of blessing
From heaven through the earth they penetrate,
Harmoniously resounding through the universe!

This is a beautiful and wonderful description of what so fascinated Goethe. This is how he expresses what he feels when he sees the sign of the first spirit. Then he turns to the sign that only concerns the processes that take place on earth. He sees the sign of the earth spirit. Again it fascinates him. Before, he felt the stirring of the powers that are otherwise expressed as interest and feeling for objects. These powers should now develop in the earth spirit sign in such a way that they become powers of knowledge. Try to imagine the powers that come into question as powers of knowledge for the soul; first the objective powers of the mind, the powers of thinking. These are easy to access. But then the powers of feeling and perception, which can only be purified in the described way and can be awakened by the signs that evoke the spiritual world. Now Goethe had unlocked such a sign, and now he felt that he was not yet ripe for it. He did not feel ripe to understand the powers of perception that connect only with the earth either. Not ripe!

Now something rises in his soul. But at first only terror and fear, which are reflected to us where “Faust” turns away from the earth spirit, whom he calls “terrible face”, and whereupon the earth spirit then says to him:

You resemble the spirit you understand, not me!

Thus Goethe's insights are reflected in the first part of “Faust”. But Goethe was not a personality who could necessarily remain a “fearfully cringing worm”; he was a personality who was powerful enough to strive on. What did the personality say to itself? It did not speak like other personalities who believe that they are seekers of knowledge and say: There are limits to knowledge. It is easy and comfortable to dismiss all this as nonsense. No! Goethe said to himself: I am not yet ready for this! That is something we can learn from Goethe: he said to himself, “You are not ready yet; you must first begin to work on yourself in order to mature to what is possible for the soul.” [Now he worked on himself to get ahead.] To achieve this, he now immersed himself in life in order to get to know life and people and science in all its aspects. And we see this when, after his time in Frankfurt, he comes to Strasbourg, looks around at nature, in order to grasp the things that he, as a seven-year-old boy, placed on his father's music stand, in order to get to know the divine-spiritual forces of being through their knowledge. But not only the divine-spiritual forces of what is formed externally in nature, but also of human life and its manifold forms. And now we can already see how he has the favorable opportunity to get to know all the ups and downs of the human soul, the human soul in its infinite kindness and love – but also in all its malicious, spiteful and harmful qualities, with all its longings, torments and sacrifices. [He experienced the greatest satisfaction, but also tormenting doubts, in the souls of people.] There he met the great personality of Herder in Strasbourg, a personality who strove throughout her entire life to come close to the sources of life, who also felt that the powers of her soul were not ripe. A terrible mood was in Herder's soul at that very moment, when, despite his titanic urge for knowledge, he loses courage and says to himself, [You cannot strive higher]. One's own inability is a general human inability. Herder was close to such moods, such moods had gained control in him and caused a lifestyle that was harsh and rejecting – only bearable for a soul like Goethe's, which was benevolent. Goethe had recognized the greatness of Herder's soul. And no matter how much Herder might have belittled him, Goethe knew that he was in the presence of greatness. And Goethe had a great soul, great enough not to pay attention to the unimportant when faced with the important. When he climbed the stairs of the Gasthof zum Heiligen Geist and unexpectedly saw this personality, who Herder introduced in a somewhat brusque manner – with his coat fluttering, his coat-tails criss-crossed in his pockets – Goethe sensed at a single glance that this personality was Herder, and he said: “You are Herder.” From that moment on, his respect for him increased.

Deep ideas lived in Herder, as we can find them, for example, in his treatise “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humanity”. But all this was not enough for him. Then Goethe got to know a tremendous striving that was on the verge of collapsing, and was held down by it. But Goethe had already learned from another personality the inadequacy of the ordinary mind: from his friend Merck. Of him, even the most well-meaning woman, Goethe's mother, said: “He can never leave Mephisto at home; he finds fault with everything.” Goethe saw these personalities, and he saw in them something that in turn had a significant effect on his soul: that they had particularly developed what he himself had in his own soul. As in a mirror, he saw his soul, himself! He saw the intellect into which error and superstition of the outer world creep. He sought to comprehend the spirit of the earth, which he has spoken in “Faust”:

In the flood of life, in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
weaving back and forth!
Birth and death,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
So I create at the whirring loom of time,
And work the living garment of the Godhead.

He had tried out of inner urge to grasp the spirit and soul that spoke to him in the forces of life, in the images of the “Aurea catena Homeri.” But he had also felt that he was not yet ready to soar to these heights of the mind. He had now realized why: because there was still too much of the sensual interests in him. Now he knew that the spirit to which he still resembled too much was the most evil, the Mephisto spirit.

You resemble the spirit you understand,

the Earth Spirit could speak, who saw the Mephistophelian in Goethe's soul.

Now a good part of the idea for Faust shone forth in Goethe: Why can't human beings, in their ordinary feelings and perceptions, achieve the same kind of clear insight as they do in their thinking? Why are desire and perception not as powerful as the powers of thought? Because there are forces at work within us that are not ourselves, but which have an effect on us. The forces that we embrace with our actions and desires, according to both ancient and new spiritual science, are the forces of Lucifer, and these bring our desires down to such a level that they cannot become an objective power of knowledge in this life. This is how Lucifer works.

But there is also another kind of force that makes us act, that our minds gain real knowledge when we direct our perception to this world. These are the forces that were first characterized by Zarathustra as ahrimanic. Thus the Ahrimanic forces, which are imbued with desire and would penetrate to the macrocosm, work in us. [They prevent feeling from becoming a power of knowledge in relation to the earth, just as the Luciferic spirits prevent desire from rising to cosmic knowledge.] The Luciferic entities work in us.

Goethe sensed what clouds the human gaze and leads to error, what is called the forces of Ahriman. For Ahriman is the same as what we are accustomed to calling Mephistopheles, after the one who characterizes human behavior as lying: from the Hebrew “Mephis” is liar and “tofel” is ruin. It means the same thing that Zarathustra calls Ahriman. But Mephisto does not mean Lucifer. He is the power that leads man to lie, to see outer life in deceptive forms, not in truth.

All these forces are at work where man passes through life and is led by his interests to see life in its deceptive forms.

Goethe, despite his most sincere efforts, could not penetrate to the sources of truth at that time because he still had too much of the Mephistopheles in him – You resemble the Mephistopheles, not me! And so [in the “Urfaust” immediately after the earth spirit] Mephisto appears suddenly, as if shot out of a pistol. [Sudden because Goethe only sensed the context, did not clearly recognize it.] Another deeply moving secret of the soul.

Thus we see how Goethe pours into “Faust,” as it were, what he experiences, how he tries to depict how Mephisto guides him to take pleasure in such stale stuff as in Auerbach's cellar, in many of the externalities of life, which he must call banal from a higher point of view. But this Mephisto leads him to something else as well. If we follow Goethe from Strasbourg to the time when he had passed the bar exam, a little later, we find two qualities that must have brought a deep and searching soul into strange conflicts. The first one comes to us when we seek him out as a legal scholar. He was not very good at the positive knowledge of the law, [he only knew a few legal paragraphs]. But when it was a matter of quickly grasping some case and penetrating it in no time, he was one of the very first, still admired today by experts who follow his processes. [He was a practical man who quickly found his way in practical life with his mind.] He is proof against the outrageous statement that those who seek access to the spiritual life must be impractical people in life. Goethe sought access to the spiritual worlds to the highest degree and at the same time was an eminently practical person compared to all those who are impractical because they are untalented. Some young poets think that it is part of being absorbed in the intellectual life that you have to be an impractical person. Such people are only talented up to a certain point. No one would ever dispute the special talent that Goethe showed in writing his “Iphigenia”. On his desk lay the lists for the recruitment of recruits. While the recruits were being drafted, he wrote the verses for his “Iphigenia” in between. That was a whole human being! Penetrating into the spiritual world never prevents one from finding one's way into the practical world. Goethe felt he was a practical person.

But he also felt this: when he was consulting with himself one day, he had to say something to himself that made a deep impression on his soul. There are many, many things in which you have not been at your own height in your life – and above all: you have become guilty! The self-knowledge: You have become guilty – in the face of such cases as the Frankfurt poet experienced in Sesenheim, in the face of the struggle of the most violent passions that confronted him there in Friederike. He also knew that they did not fit together, that he would be paralyzed in all his striving if he had sought a connection with her. But he knew that through the way he behaved, he had become guilty, knew that Mephisto had led him; as we are led by Mephisto when, instead of being led into clear circumstances, we are led into error and deception.

Goethe felt completely and in his deepest innermost being, because he grasped all these questions at their center, that this in the human soul, which guides everything in the human soul, that [this Mephistophelian power] can lead it far, to completely different self-confessions than what he had to clothe in words: You have become guilty. He knew that when these Mephistophelian forces intrude into the striving for knowledge, they can make a charlatan out of a person in the face of higher striving for knowledge! There he stood with his soul before something monstrous; there he stood [before a tremendous abyss] that he said to himself: You must go beyond what only the mind can experience, you must call upon the powers of feeling and emotion for knowledge, [those that Mephistopheles pulls down], but there is still something of Mephisto living in you. Another self lives in you besides. Only now did he clearly recognize a figure of the sixteenth century who [has interested and frightened so many people], who has instilled fear and horror in people. Now the “Faust” of the sixteenth century became clear to him. How did he become clear to him? We take a deep look into Goethe's psychological self-knowledge when we research it. Goethe said to himself, as many people could still say today: Man cannot help but seek access to the forces that transcend the sensual. That is why, in our time, which does so little for the deepest needs of the soul, we have so many currents that emanate from such people who seek access to the spiritual currents, to the spiritual foundations of the soul.

The first thing [that is necessary] for a person to find access [to the spiritual world] without harm, to purify and cleanse his soul, is that he free himself from everything that is now called, in Goethe's sense, Mephistophelian forces, from the merely negating, criticizing endeavors [that are directed only at the things of the outer world]. This is not easy; Goethe himself shows how difficult it is by being bound to Mephisto as to a spirit that makes up part of his soul.

If man listens to this Mephisto in him, then he does not tell his fellow human beings the truth, but rather what the Mephistophelian element, reinforced by the Luciferian element, incites him to, leading to arrogance, ambition, pride, charlatanry.

Truly, a very fine cobweb separates the charlatan from the true spiritual researcher. This can also be seen today. Theosophy or other spiritual movements arise because they correspond to the longing of our world. But it is not easy to become a messenger of the spirit.

If the researcher is not free from these Mephistophelean forces, then he is not a real researcher, but a charlatan who incites vanity in the field of knowledge. — Here a fine sense is really necessary to distinguish between noble striving for higher knowledge and charlatanry. And it is difficult for the one who does not penetrate deeply into the spiritual life to distinguish the charlatan from the spiritual researcher. This danger also exists in Theosophy. It is not easy to satisfy the longings. He who wants to penetrate into the spiritual world is in danger of falling into charlatanry. It is therefore only too understandable when the charlatan and the spiritual researcher are confused. The reproach of the outer world is only too justified: “One cannot distinguish the charlatan from the true spiritual researcher”. This, which can confront us so vividly in life, confronted Goethe in his soul. The Mephistophelean brings you so close in an entity, as it is to Faust, whom people fear, of whom one can say that he has united with the devil, has fallen prey to the forces that lead to lies and deception. And now the question arose in Goethe's soul: How can man save himself from the danger of charlatanry, so that Mephisto does not lead him down into the abyss? Thus the Faust question had become a matter of the heart for Goethe.

The first thing a person must say to himself when this question arises in his soul is: [You must become simple and humble]. You have to go through something, where you look for the individual thing in you; from the smallest experience, from the smallest observation, to find the divine in every single experience. Goethe embarked on this path. On this path we see him wandering through Italy, modestly, humbly collecting all the details. In the inconspicuous coltsfoot, he seeks to clarify the different effects of plant forms, [observing the difference in its appearance here and elsewhere]. We see him hurrying from picture to picture, from work of art to work of art, in an intimate, selfless way. Although he has read Spinoza at home to uplift himself, he does not dwell on it because he is humble. [He goes to the works of art and says to himself,] When I look at them, I know that the ancients created like nature, by raising forces to a higher level. There is necessity in this, there is God. He does not seek to build a worldview in a rush, from thing to thing, humbly seeking the smallest thing in order to modestly seek the divine-spiritual in the smallest thing. [Perhaps you sometimes find it inconvenient when someone who talks about spiritual science speaks of details.] The human quest for knowledge is not modest enough, does not want to go from detail to detail, wants to go straight up; one would like to span the whole world at once with one word. For example, in the theosophical movement, emphasis is placed on going from detail to detail in each step, so it is sometimes said, “I want to go straight to the highest levels of the Logos,” although the person in question does not understand more about the Logos than that the word “Logos” is composed of five letters. (Above all, modesty is needed; Goethe achieved this necessary modesty).

Goethe learns from detail to detail. That was what Goethe did. In doing so, he achieved the purity and refinement that he had after he had been on this path for a while, so that he can now speak in a different way about [his encounter with those spiritual forces like the earth spirit, from whom he had previously turned away, curled up in terror like “a timid worm curled up in terror”], of his encounter with the earth spirit, who experiences what is happening on the earth. At that time he had to listen to:

You resemble the spirit you comprehend, not me!

The spirit had appeared to him out of the fire. So now, after he had gone from piece of nature to piece of nature through modesty, through prudent research, so that he could incorporate the piece he wrote in Italy into “Faust,” now he addressed this spirit of the earth differently, as characterized in that beautiful monologue in “Forest and Cave”:

Sublime Spirit, thou gavest me, gave me everything,
why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
turn thy face to me in fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature of a kingdom,
strength to feel, to enjoy. Not
coldly marvelling visit thou only allowest,
allow me to look into her deep chest
As into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
Before me, and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water know.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce toppling neighbor branches
And crushing neighbor trunks,
And the hill muffled hollow thunders,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show me
Then myself, and my own chest,
Secret deep wonders open up.

That was the progress Goethe had made through his endeavors. Now, after he had humbly followed in nature's footsteps step by step, he no longer felt like a sluggard of knowledge, and closer to the spirit that had previously rejected him. Now he was allowed to look into his soul with a different kind of satisfaction and bliss. What he had once sought to grasp in a single flight, he had now recognized in the most diligent study of detail. He had ascended in humility. Now he was face to face with the spirit that lives not only as an earth-spirit in the outer world, but also lives in the human soul. It led him to the secure cave within, to self-knowledge. He had gained a view of nature that now really allows the spirit to recognize nature:

You lead the line of the living
Before me, and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in the air and water.

Now he had ascended – albeit always with the powers that had triggered his Frankfurt aspirations back then – but he had ascended in humility. And now what lived in his own soul presented itself to him as the eternal, the immortal. With what he was able to connect, after he recognized this “spirit of the earth” in the outer world, the spirit led him to self-knowledge. Now he felt ready to find within himself the strength that he had previously sought by storming. And so we learn from the great Goethe how we, with him, should mature in the depths, carefully and humbly, and say: This cannot affect our soul now, but it wants to wait patiently and let it mature. Those who do so will say: It is good that you have done so, and have also opened up many things, because that had to mature in you first and then flourish. We can learn from Goethe: faith in the development of the human soul, faith in the necessity of maturing, so that we can believe in the immortality of the eternal, [so that we gradually grow into the spiritual world];

At the time when he found a cave in his inner soul in which the secrets of his own heart were revealed, he did not believe he was finished, but strove ever higher. And we will see how “Faust”, which appeared in fragment form in 1790, rises ever higher.

At that time, much of what he experienced was only external. But more and more, he connected with the experiences of the inner soul: he penetrated into the mystical. [After Goethe had seen the living earth spirit in the outer world, he also found his inner strength: “And the deep shafts of my own spirit open up” - the Goethe of 1790 strives deeper and deeper. Humbly and modestly, he looks up.] Thus he came to feel intensely in his deepest soul: There is something immortal, and the human soul can recognize it because it can recognize in itself that which is immortal. That was the testament that he left behind, sealed, in the completion of his “Faust”; which was expressed in the final words:

All that is transitory is but a parable.