Old and New Methods of Initiation E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

What are the key differences between the contemporary spiritual path and that of the ancient mysteries? With remarkable clarity and insight, Rudolf Steiner throws new light on the contrasting methods of initiation in the ancient and modern day. The old mysteries worked to transform the physical body – 'the brain on the one hand, and the rest of the organism on the other' – whereas modern initiation 'transforms the element of spirit and soul, strengthening it with regard to the thought aspect on the one hand, and the will aspect on the other…' These wide-ranging lectures additionally cover topics that include: the working of Lucifer and Ahriman in the human being; the relationship of the individual to the Folk Spirit; the development of religious life, particularly with reference to the pagan Old Testament streams; and the role of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition in modern life. The final lectures examine the impulse of freedom behind the work of Goethe and Schiller, drawing connections with Shakespeare and the French Revolution. An overarching theme is the significance of the transition between cultural epochs and the importance of freeing ourselves from the intellectualism of our age through the spiritual quality of Imaginative consciousness. This new edition features an introduction by Margaret Jonas, notes and an index. Fourteen lectures, Dornach, Mannheim & Breslau, Jan.–March 1922, GA 210

Leseprobe

OLD AND NEW METHODS OF INITIATION

DRAMA AND POETRY IN THE CHANGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN MODERN TIMES

Fourteen lectures given in Dornach, Mannheim and Breslau from 1 January to 19 March 1922

TRANSLATED BY JOHANNA COLLIS

INTRODUCTION BY MARGARET JONAS

RUDOLF STEINER

Rudolf Steiner Press

Hillside House, The Square

Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2025

Originally published in German under the title Alte und neue Einweihungsmethoden. Drama und Dichtung im Bewußtseins- Umschwung der Neuzeit (volume 210 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand notes that were not reviewed or revised by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on the second German edition (2001), edited by Michaelis Messmer

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 2001

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2025

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ISBN 978 1 85584 709 5

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CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note

Introduction, by Margaret Jonas

LECTURE 1

DORNACH, 1 JANUARY 1922

New Year’s reflection

The moral world and the material world as two irreconcilable elements of the present consciousness of today’s humanity. The task of the science of initiation and its means of expression. The recognition of polarity in people. Characterization of the luciferic and the ahrimanic in the body, soul and spirit of people. The work of Ahriman and Lucifer in thought and will. Luciferic and ahrimanic rule in history. The danger of phrases using the example of Bismarck’s and Robespierre’s speeches on the right to work. Science of initiation as a path from merely logical content to experiencing living truth.

LECTURE 2

DORNACH, 7 JANUARY 1922

West, East and Centre

Necessity of a possibility of communication in the world social issue. The social significance of the Christ Being. Unbiased differentiation of humanity into West, East and Centre with regard to civilization. Contradictions in the innermost feelings towards the divine and spiritual in the West and the East. Knowledge and faith as an ambivalent striving for a union with other areas of the earth. Vladimir Solovyov as an example of cooperation in the spiritual field across the globe. Comparison of instinctive primal wisdom and today’s language as a means of communication. The Christ Being as an impulse for a social union of humanity. The dawn of a new age at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Encounter of the highest human wisdom (the Three Wise Men from the East) and the loneliness of dreaming souls (the shepherds in the field). Augustine and ancient wisdom.

LECTURE 3

DORNACH, 8 JANUARY 1922

The development of religious life in post-Atlantean cultures

The spiritual development of humanity from a historical point of view: change in religious feeling through the five post-Atlantean cultures (schematic representation of the blackboard as a detailed overview). Advancement to a truly religious world-view: through Imagination to geosophy, through Inspiration to cosmosophy, through Intuition to philosophy. Symbol of a vortex movement for the development of primal impulses of traditions in East and West.

LECTURE 4

MANNHEIM, 19 JANUARY 1922

Crossing the threshold

Conscious and unconscious crossing of the threshold to the spiritual world. The ‘Guardian of the Threshold’ as a truly real spiritual power. Dangers of crossing the threshold unprepared. The world beyond the threshold. The imagery of dreams and its destructive powers. The future death through heat of the earth. The difference between crossing the threshold when falling asleep and when passing through death. Apostle Paul on spiritual and mental death. The connection between ‘immortality’ and ‘unbornness’. Waldorf education in connection with the fatigue of children as a contemporary event. Spiritual understanding between West and East in economic life. The Mystery of Golgotha in its supernatural significance up to the fourth century. The change in the connection of man with Christ through material thinking in the fifteenth century. Longing to find the Christ essence again. Differences in the perception of the spiritual task of man among Eastern and Western philosophers (Spencer, Solovyov, Harnack, Mill, Bergson, Wundt).

LECTURE 5

BRESLAU, 1 FEBRUARY 1922

Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition as actions on the way to reincarnation

Disharmony between moral ideals and current scientific knowledge. Kant-Laplace and the death through heat of the earth according to physical law. Belief in the immortality of material power in discordance with the question of the fate of our moral impulses and religious ideals. Anthroposophy as a way beyond the scientific fact of death to the union of the soul with the spirit. Imagination, inspiration and intuition as stages of knowledge. Pre- and post-mortal relationship of man to the hierarchies. Awareness of the angelic world and the importance of love for the national spirit. The counterpart of the three higher levels of knowledge in the spiritual world during the ascent after death and on the way back to embodiment. The breakdown of matter as a prerequisite for the construction of moral ideals. Death as the summary of the dying forces that are constantly at work in us. Resurrection as a source of courage to build new matter as the bearer of a moral world order.

LECTURE 6

DORNACH, 11 FEBRUARY 1922

Old and new initiation methods I

Mysteries as the origin of spiritual knowledge up to the time of Thales of Miletus. The concept of the ‘prince of this world’ within the mysteries and his rebellion against the Mystery of Golgotha. The two main measures in the old mystery sites to prepare the person to be initiated: the drink of forgetfulness and the induction of fright-like states. The effects of these methods on the physical organism. The expression of the ‘unlawful prince of this world’ in the Middle Ages for an ahrimanic being. Effects of this being on external nature (effects of heat and cold) and on the inside of man (turning pale through abstract thoughts). The essential difference in relation to spiritual development in the old and new initiation methods. Reworking of the will, then and now.

LECTURE 7

DORNACH, 12 FEBRUARY 1922

Old and new initiation methods II

Different intellectualism before and after the Mystery of Golgotha. The body as a thought apparatus. The modern path to imagination through thinking without the help of the body. Will exercises (backward exercise in the evening). Orientation in the world of the spirit. Exact thinking as preparation for correct perception of the higher spiritual worlds. Refinement of preconceptions and prejudices.

LECTURE 8

DORNACH, 17 FEBRUARY 1922

On the passage of the human spirit-soul through the physical-sensory organization

Psychological characteristics of the human spirit-soul being during the passage through the physical-sensory organization from conception to the departure from physical incarnation. Thought in man as a shadow image of cosmic life before descent into the physical world. The brain as a replica of the starry sky. Metamorphosis of the soul-spiritual when entering earthly existence and when passing through the gate of death. Experience of pre-earthly existence in feeling with other beings. Significance of the fear of the descent and its transformation into self-awareness and will. The development of a living thought body. Transformation of compassion and self-awareness into the thought body and force being when passing through the gate of death. Differences in the view of nature in the Old and New Testaments.

LECTURE 9

DORNACH, 18 FEBRUARY 1922

The human organism in its threefold nature and repeated earthly lives

The threefold physical human organization in its connection with previous earthly lives and the aftermath of the soul’s experiences between death and new birth. Thought as the corpse of the spiritual and mental. The metamorphosis of the physical organization of man in relation to the previous incarnation. The search for an answer to the riddle of the world in ahrimanically anticipated abstraction (Philo of Alexandria) and in the essence of man (Mystery of Golgotha). Two currents in the struggle for the inner understanding of Christianity: the pagan nature-Sophia and the Old Testament-Jewish current (Yahweh). Calderón’s Cyprianus compared with the Faust theme in Lessing and Goethe.

LECTURE 10

DORNACH, 19 FEBRUARY 1922

The connection of man to the cosmos

The three stages in Goethe’s work on Faust. Revival of dead thoughts through Imagination, which is elevated to Inspiration and Intuition. The threefold human being in his relationship to the four elements and to imagination, inspiration and intuition. Goethe’s Scientific Writings and his Fairy Tale. Ruedorffer’s reference to the need for a change of heart to save civilization (‘The Three Crises’). Karl Julius Schröer on Goethe and the Viennese doctor Oppolzer. The struggle for the spirit in Goethe’s Faust and in Calderón’s ‘Cyprianus’. On the Christianity of our theology (Overbeck).

LECTURE 11

DORNACH, 24 FEBRUARY 1922

Shakespeare, Goethe and Schiller in relation to the intellectual shift in the fifteenth century

The poetry of the fifteenth century as an expression of this transitional state in human development. The after-effects of the intellectual shift from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean period on Goethe, especially in his Faust character. Herder’s influence on Goethe’s portrayal of Faust’s magic. Hamlet as a student of Faust. Shakespeare’s dramatic world: transition from the shift to intellectualism. Schiller’s ‘Robbers’ as a protest against the pedagogy of the Karlsschule. The ahrimanic and luciferic principles in Karl and Franz Moor. Schiller’s rebellion against the intellectualistic age in ‘Love and Intrigue’. Comparison of the struggle in the West, in Central Europe and in the East.

LECTURE 12

DORNACH, 25 FEBRUARY 1922

The struggle of Goethe and Schiller in the time of intellectualism triumphing over the old spirituality

Goethe and Schiller’s position in the intellectual development of humanity in the time of intellectual change. The collaboration between the two poets. Parallelism in Schiller’s Wallenstein and in his ‘Bride of Messina’ to Goethe’s Faust. The intellectual revolution in Schiller’s letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man. Goethe’s reference to the path to the imaginative world through the ‘Fairy Tale’. The right to fantasy in the ‘witches’ kitchen’. Schiller’s search for cosmic vision in the ‘Bride of Messina’, the ‘Maid of Orleans’, in Demetrius and in the Die Malteser fragment. The Theophilus legend of the nun Hrosvitha. Friedrich Theodor Vischer’s criticism of the second part of Faust. The lack of understanding in the nineteenth century for Goethe’s efforts in Wilhelm Meister and in ‘Elective Affinities’. Development of thought in the fifth post-Atlantean period as a source of power towards the imagination.

LECTURE 13

DORNACH, 26 FEBRUARY 1922

The search for access to the spiritual world from the modern state of mind

The longing for access to the spiritual world. Changed form of the question in the search for the spirit in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival. The deep effectiveness of the moral in ‘Poor Henry’ by Hartmann von Aue. Different moods in Parzival (twelfth century) and in Simplicissimus by Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (seventeenth century). The element of language in our soul. The change in the element of language through the change from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean period. Spiritual consideration of the feeling in Till Eulenspiegel in connection with language. Village stories based on the search for the essence of man from the intellectualism of the nineteenth century in Jeremias Gotthelf, Immermann, George Sand, Grigorovich and Turgeniev.

LECTURE 14

DORNACH, 19 MARCH 1922

The ideal of freedom in Schiller and Goethe

The basic character of the French Revolution. How can man as a social being attain freedom? Goethe and Schiller on the question of the realization of freedom on this earth. Wilhelm Meister as a representative of genuine, true humanity. The problem of an ‘aesthetic society’ in Schiller. The concept of moral tact in The Philosophy of Freedom. Effects of devotion to imaginative research on medicine, art and the social life of today’s human being. The familiarization with imaginative, inspired and intuitive truths as the meaning of life.

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Index

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

THIS volume presents a collection of lectures by Rudolf Steiner that were held in Dornach on various weekends in the first three months of 1922 for members of the Anthroposophical Society. From mid-January to 11 February, this course was interrupted by a large series of lectures that Rudolf Steiner gave on a tour of various German cities. The two individual lectures from Mannheim and Breslau included here are taken from this trip.

INTRODUCTION

SOMETHING of the background to these lectures of 1922 may be helpful as a context. Given in Dornach, Mannheim and Breslau, they were delivered during a period of intense deliberation and difficulty for Rudolf Steiner. Not only were the after-effects of the First World War still weighing upon people’s souls with grief and the struggle of daily life—particularly with the chaotic rate of inflation and political instability in Germany, where already National Socialism was beginning to rear up—but, though this is not stated explicitly here, there was dissent within the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach and Germany. The latter was between the older members, often living with private means, who by and large wanted to keep hearing more esoterically-based lectures in a tranquil and inner mood, and the burgeoning groups of mainly younger people, active in or studying for professions, and who were eager to relate anthroposophy to this practical work and to present it to a wider world. Indeed, again and again in these lectures Rudolf Steiner repeats this urgent necessity: humanity must awaken to the existence of a real spiritual world—not merely as interpreted by religions and philosophies—or else culture will inevitably decline further and fresh disasters will occur—as tragically did happen. Readers may wish to reflect on how little or how much has changed one hundred years on.

Steiner also repeats a plea to the Central European countries and stresses that middle Europe must awaken to its task of putting these aims into practice, not only because of its geographical position between the more mystically-inclined Eastern nations and the greater technological and economic acumen of the Western, but because of its rich cultural heritage stemming chiefly from Goethe and Schiller, but also Novalis, Lessing, Schelling and others whose spiritual insights paved the way for an understanding of anthroposophy. Above all, there needs to be an awakening to the true significance of Christ’s deed for the whole earth—the Mystery of Golgotha as an actual fact, irrespective of religious persuasion or otherwise. Steiner saw the Eastern nations as having a mystical sense for Christ which was not earthed, whereas the Western ones were more inclined towards the concept of the Father God—not only in religious practice, but in adhering to ancient Orders whose symbolic ritual practices were no longer properly understood. Neither showed the possibility of any new impulses.

In Lecture Four for instance, Steiner becomes more specific: people who die without spiritual knowledge will see only, and may even be part of, destructive forces unless they absorb spiritual content whilst on earth. This is perhaps even more applicable today, when destructive forces in people are attributed only to social and psychological conditions, with no recognition of any actual spiritual beings behind them; in the past there was often at least lip service to the idea of Satan or the devil. In Lecture Five Steiner points out the scientific predictions of earth’s doom, even in 1922, but no heed is taken of the force of moral ideals or the presence of spiritual beings. Because these are unrecognized, people are affected unconsciously by such predictions—even more relevant today. Leading on from this, if people are unaware of angelic beings—the spiritual hierarchies—they will not connect properly to folk spirits (archangels), and thus after death will be led forcibly to a folk spirit for their next incarnation for whom they may not have the necessary love—a love which does not bring about a conflict with other nations.

The title of the series was chosen by Marie Steiner and relates specifically to Lectures Six and Seven. These give us an overview of the ancient mysteries in which pupils for initiation were brought to experiences of shock and fear in order to loosen their soul/spirit organism from the physical body (immersion under water or a three-day temple sleep were also methods used, though not discussed here), and they would also receive a ‘draught of forgetfulness’ so that they forgot temporarily their present life events. This is in contrast to the new mysteries in which special substances are not to be taken, but memories of life events are called up strongly and deliberately and the images then suppressed, so that contents from the spiritual world can be received. In other words, we are given special exercises which make use of and transform our thinking, feeling and will soulforces in order to reach the stages of higher knowledge: Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. In the Middle Ages, certain people still knew how to loosen the soul from the body by different means, but nowadays we require the exercises such as are given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Occult Science / Esoteric Science. Some readers may be unhappy with Steiner’s statement that what is needed for today is only to be found on an anthroposophical path.

Lecture Eight is important for describing how fear affects us in the spiritual world, and metamorphoses into a feeling of selfhood when we are reborn. We are attracted to incarnate where the spiritual structure of the physical brain most resembles the starry constellation within which we dwelt before our descent to a new incarnation—a remarkable picture! Descriptions of thinking, feeling and will and their metamorphosis are also significant here. This central group of lectures has particularly rich insights, as we are reminded again of how ancient peoples and their religious streams experienced the world.

The last five lectures focus on the heritage of middle Europe and the work of Goethe—especially as revealed in Faust, even though Goethe did not fully reach a deeper understanding of Christ’s deed. Steiner’s early mentor Karl Julius Schröer attempted to interpret Goethe, but sadly the writer’s significance is often just buried in ‘Goethe Societies’. Lecture Eleven introduces some interesting considerations of Hamlet, whose hero Steiner imagines could have been a pupil of Dr Faust at Wittenberg! These last lectures emphasize particularly the grip of intellectualism on contemporary culture and how an awareness of spiritual realities, even in medieval times, became superstition by Shakespeare’s age. Hamlet is brought into contact with the spiritual world by means of his father’s ghost, but this is not real spiritual knowledge. In contrast, in pre-revolutionary Russia cultural events were considered to be the result of spiritual events taking place in the spiritual world.

Goethe was able to reach the stage of Imaginations, and those characters in Schiller’s plays who consulted the stars indicated a reach towards Inspiration—an action which led people to an awareness of a spiritual world, which was an important cultural development. Lecture Thirteen dwells on some literary precursors of the present age, which Steiner terms as that of the consciousness soul and which began from the fifteenth century onwards, such as in Parzival. In this age of intellectualism as Steiner calls it (not to be confused with his use of the term ‘the intellectual soul’), we must learn to ask questions. However, in the Middle Ages moral impulses were still recognized as having a healing influence, as shown in the story of Poor Heinrich by Hartmann von Aue.

From the time of the French Revolution, people demanded satisfaction in the earthly world as they ceased to look for spiritual nourishment, and the lectures conclude with a reminder of where real freedom lies, as demonstrated in Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom (or Spiritual Activity). Schiller wrote that people are only free when being creative or enjoying artistic works, and Goethe’s characters had freedom in their life of feeling but could not yet be very effective in outer life. An example of how the new path of Mystery knowledge and initiation will lead us forward is, for instance, if we can develop Imagination. This will lead to the unexpected result of even medicines becoming more effective, not to mention the effect upon outer life if spiritual truths and moral impulses are rightly heeded and allowed to develop.

We must allow for the time and place of these lectures, but their message is not only still relevant but very necessary. It may be questioned that they were given to people with a specific cultural background, but this need not prevent their being understood and appreciated by a much wider readership.

Margaret Jonas

April 2025

LECTURE 1

DORNACH, 1 JANUARY 1922

YESTERDAY1 I spoke about initiation science. Today2 I shall describe some aspects of what nowadays gives expression to initiation science. A profound breach now runs through the whole of civilization, a breach which brings much chaos to the world and which people who are fully aware cannot but experience with a sense of tragedy. One expression of this breach is the fact that human beings, when considering human dignity and their worth as human beings, can no longer find any connection with a world to which they look up—that world which gives the human soul religious feelings both profound and uplifting—namely, the world of moral values.

People look instead to the world of nature, to which, of course, they also belong. During the course of recent centuries the world of nature has come to appear before the human soul in such a way that it has absorbed the whole of reality, has absorbed every aspect of actual existence. The world of nature, with its laws which are indifferent to moral values, runs its course in accordance with external necessity, and in their everyday life human beings, too, are tied up in this necessity. However the bounds of this necessity are defined, if human beings feel themselves enclosed within such bounds, it is impossible for them to discover what it is that makes them human. Human beings have to look up from the world of nature to the world of moral values. We have to see the content of this moral world as something which ought to be, something which is the ideal. Yet no knowledge which is current today is capable of showing us how moral ideals can flow into the laws of nature and how necessity can be made to serve moral values.

We have to admit that today’s world is divided into two parts which, for modern consciousness, are incompatible: the moral world and the material world. People see birth and death as the boundaries which encompass the only existence recognized by present-day knowledge. On the other hand they have to look up to a world which lies above birth and death, a world which is eternally meaningful, unlike the endlessly changing material world; and they have to think of their soul life as being linked with the eternal meaning of that world of moral values. The Platonic view of the world, containing as it did the last remnants of orientalism, saw the external world perceptible to the senses as a semblance, an illusion, and the world of ideas as the true, real world. But for modern human beings, if they remain within the confines of present-day consciousness, this Platonic world-view has no answers.

But now initiation science wants to enter once again into human civilization and show us that behind the world perceived by our senses there stands a spiritual world, a mighty world, powerful and real, a world of moral values to which we may turn. It is the task of initiation science to take away from natural existence the absolute reality it assumes for itself and to give reality back once more to the world of moral values. It can only do so by using means of expression different from those given by today’s language, today’s world of ideas and concepts.

The language of initiation science still seems strange, even illusory, to people today because they have no inkling that real forces stand behind the expressions used, nor that, whatever kind of speech is used—whether ordinary everyday speech or speech formation—language cannot give full and adequate expression to what is seen and perceived. What, after all, do the words ‘human being’ signify, when only the speech sounds are considered, compared with the abundant richness of spirit, soul and body of an actual human being standing before us! In just such a way in initiation science a spiritual world—behind the world of the senses—living in the world of moral values, storms and flows, working in manifold ways. This initiation science has to select all manner of ways of expressing what, despite everything, will be far richer in its manifestation than any possible means of expression.

Today I should like to speak about certain expressions of this kind with regard to man’s immediate existence, expressions which have been discussed here in one connection or another over the last few days and which are well known to those of you who have concerned yourselves over a period of time with anthroposophical spiritual science.

It is both right and wrong to say that the true being of man is beyond understanding. It is right in a certain sense, but not in the sense frequently meant nowadays. Yet the true being of man is indeed revealed to initiation science in a way which defies direct definitions, descriptions or explanations. To make use of a comparison I might say that defining the being of man is like trying to draw a picture of the fulcrum of a beam. It cannot be drawn. You can draw the left-hand and the right-hand portions of the beam but not the fulcrum upon which it turns. The fulcrum is the point at which the right-hand and the left-hand portions of the beam begin. In a similar way the profoundest element of the human being cannot be encompassed by adequate concepts and ideas. But it can be grasped by endeavouring to look at deviations from the true human being. The being of man represents the state of balance poised between deviations that constantly want to go off in opposite directions. Human beings throughout their life are permanently beset by two dangers: deviation in one of two directions, the luciferic or the ahrimanic.3

In ordinary life our state of balance is maintained because only a part of our total, our full being, is harnessed to our bodily form, and because it is not we who hold this bodily form in a state of balance within the world as a whole, but spiritual beings who stand behind us. Thus, in ordinary consciousness, we are on the whole unaware of the two dangers which can cause us to deviate from our state of balance towards one side or the other, towards the luciferic or the ahrimanic side. This is what is characteristic of initiation science. When we begin to comprehend the world in its true nature we feel as though we were standing on a high rock with one abyss on our right and another on our left. The abyss is ever-present, but in ordinary life we do not see this abyss, or rather these two abysses. To learn to know ourselves fully we have to perceive these abysses, or at least we have to learn about them. We are drawn in one direction towards Lucifer and in the other towards Ahriman. And the ahrimanic and the luciferic aspects can be characterized in relation to the body, the soul and the spirit.

Let us start from the point of view of man’s physical being. This physical being, which the senses perceive as a unit, is in fact only seemingly so. Actually we are forever in tension between the forces which make us young and those which make us old, between the forces of birth and the forces of death. Not for a single moment throughout our life is only one of these forces present; always both are there.

When we are small, perhaps tiny, children, the youthful, luciferic forces predominate. But even then, deep down, are the ageing forces, the forces which eventually lead to the sclerosis of our body and, in the end, to death. It is necessary for both kinds of force to exist in the human body. Through the luciferic forces there is always a possibility of inclining towards, let me say, the phosphoric side, towards warmth. In the extreme situation of an illness this manifests in a fever, such as a pleuritic condition, a state of inflammation. This inclination towards fever and inflammation is ever-present and is only held in check or in balance by those other forces which want to lead towards solidified, sclerotic, mineral states. The nature of the human being arises from the state of balance between these two polar-opposite forces.

Valid sciences of human physiology and biology will only be possible when the whole human body and each of its separate organs, such as heart, lungs, liver, are seen to encompass polar opposites which incline them on the one hand towards dissolution into warmth and, on the other hand, towards consolidation into the mineral state. The way the organs function will only be properly understood once the whole human being, as well as each separate organ, are seen in this light. The science of human health and sickness will only find a footing on healthy ground once these polarities in the physical human being are able to be seen everywhere. Then it will be known, for instance, that at the change of teeth, around the seventh year, ahrimanic forces are setting to work in the head region; or that when the physical body starts to develop towards the warmth pole at puberty, this means that luciferic forces are at work; that in the rhythmical nature of the human being there are constant swings of the pendulum, physically too, between the luciferic and the ahrimanic aspect. Until we learn to speak thus, without any superstition, but with scientific exactness, about the luciferic and ahrimanic influences upon human nature—just as today we speak without superstition or mysticism about positive and negative magnetism, about positive and negative electricity, about light and darkness—we shall not be in a position to gain knowledge of the human being which can stand up to the abstract knowledge of inorganic nature that we have achieved during the course of recent centuries.

In an abstract way many people already speak about all kinds of polarities in the human being. Mystical, nebulous publications discuss all kinds of positive and negative influences in man. They shy away from ascending to a much more concrete, more spiritual, but spiritually entirely concrete plane, and so they speak in a manner about the human being’s positive and negative polarities which is just as abstract as that in which they discuss polarities in inorganic nature. Real knowledge of the human being can only come about if we rise above the poverty-stricken concepts of positive and negative, the poverty-stricken concepts of polarity as found in inorganic nature, and ascend to the meaningful concepts of luciferic and ahrimanic influences in man.

Turning now to the soul element, in a higher sense the second element of man’s being, we find the ahrimanic influence at work in everything that drives the soul towards purely intellectual rigid laws. Our natural science today is almost totally ahrimanic. As we develop towards ahrimanic soul elements, we discard anything that might fill our concepts and ideas with warmth. We submit only to whatever makes concepts and ideas ice-cold and dry as dust. So we feel especially satisfied in today’s scientific thinking when we are ahrimanic, when we handle dry, cold concepts, when we can make every explanation of the world conform to the pattern we have established for inorganic, lifeless nature. Also, when we imbue our soul with moral issues, the ahrimanic influence is found in everything that tends towards what is pedantic, stiff, philistine on the one hand; but also in what tends towards freedom, towards independence, towards everything that strives to extract the fruits of material existence from this material existence and wants to become perfect by filling material existence.

Both ahrimanic and luciferic influences nearly always display two sides. In the ahrimanic direction, one of these—the pedantic, the philistine, the one-sidedly intellectual aspect—leads us astray. But on the other side there is also something that lies in mankind’s necessary line of evolution, something which develops a will for freedom, a will to make use of material existence, to free the human being and so on.

The luciferic influence in the human soul is found in everything that makes us desire to fly upwards out of ourselves. This can create nebulous, mystical attitudes which lead us to regions where any thought of the material world seems ignoble and inferior. Thus we are led astray, misled into despising material existence entirely and into wanting instead to indulge in whatever lies above the material world, into wanting wings on which to soar above earthly existence, at least in our soul. This is how the luciferic aspect works on our soul. To the ahrimanic aspect of dull, dry, cold science is added a sultry mysticism of the kind that in religions leads to an ascetic disdain for the earth, and so on.

This description of the ahrimanic and luciferic aspects of soul life shows us that the human soul, too, has to find a balance between polar opposites. Like the ahrimanic, the luciferic aspect also reveals possibilities for deviation and, at the same time, possibilities for the necessary further evolution of the proper being of man. The deviation is a blurred, hazy, nebulous mysticism that allows any clear concepts to flutter away into an indeterminate, misty flickering of clarity and obscurity with the purpose of leading us up and away from ourselves. On the other hand, a luciferic influence which is entirely justifiable, and is indeed a part of mankind’s necessary progress, is made manifest when we fill material existence with today’s genuine life principles, not in order to make exhaustive use of the impulses of this material existence—as is the case with ahrimanic influences—but in order to paralyse material existence into becoming a semblance which can then be used in order to describe a super-sensible realm, in order to describe something that is spiritually real, and yet—in this spiritual reality—cannot also be real in the world of the senses merely through natural existence.

Luciferic forces endow human beings with the possibility of expressing the spirit in the semblance of sense-perceptible existence. It is for this that all art and all beauty are striving. Lucifer is the guardian of beauty and art. So in seeking the right balance between luciferic and ahrimanic influences we may allow art—Lucifer—in the form of beauty, to work upon this balance. There is no question of saying that human beings must guard against ahrimanic and luciferic influences. What matters is for human beings to find the right attitude towards ahrimanic and luciferic influences, maintaining always a balance between the two. Provided this balance is maintained, luciferic influences may be permitted to shine into life in the form of beauty, in the form of art. Thus something unreal is brought into life as if by magic, something which has been transformed into a semblance of reality by the effort of human beings themselves.

It is the endeavour of luciferic forces to bring into present-day life something that has long been overtaken by world existence, something that the laws of existence cannot allow to be real in present-day life. If human beings follow a course of cosmic conservation, if they want to bring into the present certain forms of existence which were right and proper in earlier times, then they fall in the wrong way under the influence of the luciferic aspect. If, for instance, they bring in a view of the world that lives only in vague pictures such as were justifiable in ancient cosmic ages, if they allow everything living in their soul to become blurred and mingled, they are giving themselves up in the wrong way to luciferic existence. But if they give to external existence a form which expresses something it could not express by its own laws alone—marble can only express the laws of the mineral world—if they force marble to express something it would never be able to express by means of its own natural forces, the result is the art of sculpture; then, something which cannot be a reality in a sense-perceptible situation of this kind, something unreal, is brought as if by magic into real existence. This is what Lucifer is striving to achieve. He strives to lead human beings away from the reality in which they find themselves between birth and death into a reality which was indeed reality in earlier times but which cannot be genuine reality for the present day.

Now let us look at the spiritual aspect of the human being. We find that here, too, both luciferic and ahrimanic influences are called upon. In life here on earth the being of man expresses itself in the first instance in the alternating states of waking and sleeping. In the waking state the spiritual part of our being is fully given over to the material world. The following must be said in this connection: in sleep, from the moment of going to sleep to the moment of waking up, we find ourselves in a spirit-soul existence. On going to sleep we depart with our spirit-soul existence from our physical and etheric bodies, and on waking up we enter with our spirit and soul once again into our physical and etheric bodies. In sleep, you could say, we bear our state of soul-spirit within us; but on waking up we keep back our soul state almost entirely in the form of our soul life. Only with our spirit do we plunge fully into our body. So in the waking state in the present phase of human evolution we become with our spirit entirely body, we plunge into our body, at least to a very high degree. From the existence of our sleeping state we fall into that of our waking state. We are carried over from one state to the other. This is brought about by forces which we have to count among the ahrimanic forces.

Looking at the spiritual aspect of the human being, that is, at the alternation between waking and sleeping, which is what reveals our spiritual aspect in physical, earthly existence, we find that in waking up the ahrimanic element is most at work, while falling asleep is brought about chiefly by the luciferic element. From being entirely enveloped in our physical body, we are carried across into the free soul-spirit state. We are carried over into a state in which we no longer think in ahrimanic concepts but solely in pictures which dissolve sharp ahrimanic conceptual contours, allowing everything to interweave and become blurred. We are placed in a state in which to interweave in pictures is normal. In brief we can say: the ahrimanic element carries us, quite properly, from the sleeping to the waking state, and the luciferic element carries us, equally properly, from the waking state into the sleeping state.

Deviations occur when too little of the luciferic impulse is carried over into the waking state, making the ahrimanic impulse stronger than it should be in the waking state. If this happens, the ahrimanic impulse presses the human being down too strongly into his physical body, preventing him from remaining in the realm of the soul sentiments of good and evil, the realm of moral impulses. He is pushed down into the realm of emotions and passions. He is submerged in the life of animal instinct. His ego is made to enter too thoroughly into the bodily aspect.

Conversely, when the luciferic impulse works in an unjustified way in the human being it means that he carries too much of his waking life into his sleeping life. Dreams rise up in sleep which are too reminiscent of waking life. These work back into waking life and push it into an unhealthy kind of mysticism.

So you see, in every aspect of life a state of balance must be brought about in the human being by the two polarities, by the luciferic and the ahrimanic elements. Yet deviations can occur. As I have said, a proper physiology of the body, with a proper knowledge of health and sickness, will only be possible when we have learnt to find this polarity in every aspect of bodily life. Similarly, a valid psychology will only be possible when we are in a position to discover this polarity in the soul.

Nowadays, in the sciences that are regarded as psychology—the science of the soul—all sorts of chaotic things are said about thinking, feeling and willing. In the life of the soul thinking, feeling and willing also flow into one another. However pure our thoughts may be, as we link them together and take them apart we are using our will in our thoughts. And even in movements which are purely instinctive our thought impulses work into our will activity. Thinking, feeling and willing are nowhere separate in our soul life; everywhere they work into one another. If, as is the custom today, they are separated out, this is merely an abstract separation; to speak of thinking, feeling and willing is then merely to speak of three abstractions. Certainly we can distinguish between what we call thinking, feeling and willing, and as abstract concepts they may help us to build up our knowledge of what each one is; but this by no means gives us a true picture of reality.

We gain a true picture of reality only if we see feeling and willing in every thought, thinking and willing in every feeling and thinking and feeling in every act of will. In order to see—in place of that abstract thinking, feeling and willing—our concrete living and surging soul life, we must also picture to ourselves how our soul life is deflected to one polarity or the other—for instance, how it is deflected to the ahrimanic polarity and there lives in thoughts. However many will impulses there may be in these thoughts, if we learn to recognize, at a higher level of knowledge, the special characteristics of the ahrimanic element, then we can feel the polarity of thinking in the soul. And if we see the soul deflected in the other direction, towards the will, then—however much thought content there may be in this will activity—if we have grasped the luciferic nature of the will, we shall have understood the living nature of the will in our soul life. All abstractions, concepts, ideas in us must be transformed into living vision. This we will not achieve unless we resolve to ascend to a view of the luciferic and the ahrimanic elements.

As regards the life of mankind through history, too, the pictures we form are only real if we are capable of perceiving the working and surging of the luciferic and ahrimanic elements in the different periods of history. Let us look, for instance, at the period of history which starts with Augustine4 and reaches to the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times, the fifteenth century. Let us look at this period and see how in external life people preferred to allow impulses to work which came from their deepest inner being, out of their emotional life; let us see how people during this period wanted to shape even the external life of society and the State in accordance with what they believed they could discern of the divine impulses within themselves. We feel quite clearly that the luciferic impulse was at work in this period of history.

Now go to more recent times and see how people turn and look outwards towards the mechanical and physical aspects of the world which can only be adequately comprehended in the right way by thinking and by contact with the external world. It is obvious that the ahrimanic element is at work in this period. Yet this must not tempt us to declare the period from Augustine to Galileo to be luciferic and the period from Galileo to the present time to be ahrimanic. This would in turn be an ahrimanic judgement, an intellectualistic interpretation. If we want to make the transition from an intellectualistic to a living interpretation, to a recognition of life as an experience in which we share, of which we are a part, then we shall have to express ourselves differently. We shall have to say: during the period from Augustine to Galileo, human beings had to resist the luciferic element in their striving for balance. And in more recent times human beings have to resist the ahrimanic element in their striving for balance.

We must understand ever more clearly that in our civilization as it progresses it is not a matter of whether we say one thing or another. What matters is being able to decide, in a given situation, whether one thing or another can be said. However true it may be to say, in an abstract way, that the Middle Ages were luciferic and more recent times ahrimanic, what matters is that this abstract truth bears no real impulse. The real impulse comes into play when we say: in the Middle Ages human beings maintained their uprightness by combating the luciferic element; in modern times they maintain their uprightness by combating the ahrimanic element. In an external, abstract sense something that is in reality no more than an empty phrase can be perfectly true. But as regards the particular situation of human existence in question, a thing that is real in our life of ideas can only be something that is actually inwardly present. What people today must avoid more than anything else is to fall into empty phrases. Again and again we come across situations in which people who believe themselves to be standing in anthroposophical life say: So-and-so said something which was in perfect agreement with anthroposophy. We are not concerned with an outward agreement in words alone. What matters is the spirit, the living spirit, the living reality within which something stands. If we concern ourselves solely with the external, logical content of what people say today, we do not avoid the danger of the empty phrase.

In one circle or another recently I have a number of times given a striking example of how strangely certain statements, which are perfectly correct in themselves, appear when illuminated by a sense for reality. In 1884, in the German Reichstag, Bismarck made a remarkable statement when he felt threatened by the approach of social democracy.5 He wanted to dissuade the majority of the working population from following their radical social-democratic leaders, and this is what spurred him to say: Every individual has the right to work; grant to every individual the right to work, let the State find work for everybody, provide everybody with what they need in order to live—thus spoke the German Chancellor—when they are old and can no longer work, or when they are ill, and you will see that the broad masses of the workers will turn tail on the promises of their leaders. This is what Prince Bismarck said in the German Reichstag in 1884.

Curiously enough, if you go back almost a hundred years you find that another political figure said the same, almost verbatim: It is our human duty to grant every individual the right to work, to let the State find work for all, so long as they can work, and for the State to care for them when they are ill and can no longer work. In 1793 Robespierre6 wanted to incorporate this sentence in the democratic constitution. Is it not remarkable that in 1793 the revolutionary Robespierre and in 1884 Prince Bismarck—who certainly had no wish to be another Robespierre—said exactly the same thing. Two people can say exactly the same, yet it is not the same. Curiously, too, Bismarck referred in 1884 to the fact that every worker in the state of Prussia was guaranteed the right to work, since this was laid down in the Prussian constitution of 1794. So Bismarck not only says the same, but he says that what Robespierre demanded was laid down in the Prussian constitution. The real situation, however, was as follows: Bismarck only spoke those words because he felt the approach of a threat which arose from the very fact that what stood word for word in the Prussian constitution was actually not the case at all.

I quote this example not because it is political but because it is a striking demonstration of how two people can say the same thing, word for word, even though the reality in each case is the opposite. Thus I want to make you aware that it is time for us to enter upon an age when what matters, rather than the actual words, is our experience of reality. If we fail in this, then in the realm of spiritual life we shall fall into empty phrases which play such a major role in the spiritual life of today. And this transition from mere correctness of content to truth livingly experienced is to be brought about through the entry of initiation science into human civilization, initiation science which progresses from mere logical content to the experience of the spiritual world. Those who view correctly the external symptoms of historical development in the present and on into the near future will succeed, out of these symptoms, in achieving a feeling, a sense, for the justified and necessary entry of initiation science into world civilization. This is what I wanted to place before your souls today by way of a New Year’s contemplation.

LECTURE 2

DORNACH, 7 JANUARY 1922

TODAY I shall add to what has been said over the past few days, both before and after Christmas, about the Being of Christ. Our angle of approach to the question of Christ will be to relate it in a brief sketch chiefly to the worldwide social question. Mankind has at the present time an urgent need to reach a global understanding. Yet whatever sphere of life we turn to, we find precious little of any such understanding. The need for an understanding is there. What is not there is any talent on the part of human beings to come to such an understanding. We see how attempts are made to consult one another about important aspects of life. We see congresses taking place everywhere. With regard to the matters being discussed at these congresses, what is to be found in the depths of human souls is quite different from the words which are exchanged there. In the words exchanged at these congresses there are appearances which are deceptive. These appearances are supposed to give the impression that individual human beings everywhere desire to come to terms with one another, or something similar. But such coming to terms cannot be achieved anywhere, because it is not actually individual human beings who are speaking with one another but members of various nations. Only the external appearance makes it seem as though individuals were speaking with one another. What is actually speaking through each one are the very varied beings of the different nations. And since it is in the very nature of human beings these days to notice only the verbal content of words and not the source of the words—not the soil in which they are rooted—since human beings fail to discern these fundamental aspects of life, it is simply not noticed that it is the folk daemons who are speaking with one another, rather than human being with human being.

We would be hard put to it to find clearer proof of the fact that Christianity is today not realized in the world. Christianity is not realized, for fully to understand Christ means: to find man as man within oneself. Christ is no folk god, no god of any race. Christ is not the god of any group of human beings. He is the god of the individual, in so far as the individual is a member of the human race as a whole. Only when we can understand the Christ-being, through all the means available to us, as the God of mankind, only then will Christ come to have what will certainly be the greatest possible social significance for the globe as a whole.

We have to understand very clearly that there are things which hold sway in the depths of the soul, things which do not find their way into those words that remain stuck in empty phrases as a result of the differences between the folk daemons. Out of the situation in which people are content to reside at present, it is not possible to bring about what can actually only be brought about today out of the profound depths of man’s being. Today what is needed is profundity, a willingness to enter into the profound depths of man’s being, if forces of advance, forces of fruitful progress are to enter into earth evolution. What can be heard today in every corner of the earth does not to any extent even touch the surface of all that is rooted in the human being. What ought now to enter into mankind is the quest for what is most profoundly rooted in the being of man.

Let us now show in a few simple outlines the main differences that exist in people’s attitudes to what could lead to a recognition and an understanding of the question of Christ. I have often drawn the distinction for you between people of the West, people of the East, and people of the middle region between West and East. This distinction can be viewed from very varied standpoints. Justice can only be done to it if it is considered without any kind of prejudice and with the utmost impartiality, if we refrain from looking with sympathy or antipathy at one or other of these divisions, perhaps because we happen to belong to one or the other of them ourselves. Today all the people of the world must work together in order to bring forth true unity in Christ. It can certainly be said that in the most varied parts of the world, in the very depths of mankind, the impulse exists towards finding this unity. But the search must take us into the profound depths.