The Meaning of Life and Other Lectures on Fundamental Issues E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

What is the meaning of life? This most fundamental of all questions has challenged human beings for millennia. Rudolf Steiner addresses the eternal enigma with a refreshing directness, giving profound and enlightening answers. In the other lectures which make up this inspiring collection, Steiner addresses themes related to illness and health, reincarnation, destiny, luck and the trials of modern life. The varied subject matter is united by the fact that all the lectures address practical and fundamental issues connected to modern life. The richness and wisdom of their content provides ample stimulation for any individual earnestly seeking a deeper understanding of life. Originally published separately in various booklets, these seven lectures have now been brought together under one cover.

Leseprobe

RUDOLF STEINER (1861–1925) called his spiritual philosophy ‘anthroposophy’, meaning ‘wisdom of the human being’. As a highly developed seer, he based his work on direct knowledge and perception of spiritual dimensions. He initiated a modern and universal ‘science of spirit’, accessible to anyone willing to exercise clear and unprejudiced thinking.

From his spiritual investigations Steiner provided suggestions for the renewal of many activities, including education (both general and special), agriculture, medicine, economics, architecture, science, philosophy, religion and the arts. Today there are thousands of schools, clinics, farms and other organizations involved in practical work based on his principles. His many published works feature his research into the spiritual nature of the human being, the evolution of the world and humanity, and methods of personal development. Steiner wrote some 30 books and delivered over 6000 lectures across Europe. In 1924 he founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world.

THE MEANING OF LIFE

and other lectures on fundamental issues

Rudolf Steiner

translated by Johanna Collis

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2012

Earlier English publications: lectures 1 & 2 in On the Meaning of Life, Anthroposophical Publishing Co./Anthroposophic Press, London/New York 1928; lectures 3 & 4 in Illusory Illness and the Feverish Pursuit of Health, Anthroposophic Press, New York 1969; lecture 5 in Good Fortune, Its Reality and Semblance, Anthroposophical Publishing Co., London 1956; lecture 6, in Spiritual Research, Methods and Results, Steinerbooks, New York 1981; lecture 7, Some Characteristics of Today, Sozialwissenschaftliche Vereinigung am Goetheanum, Dornach, no date.

Originally published in German in various volumes of the GA (Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Lectures 1 & 2 in GA 155; lectures 3 & 4 in GA 56; lecture 5 in GA 61; lecture 6 in GA 168; lecture 7 in GA 193. This authorized translation is published by kind permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

Translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 1999

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 300 4

Cover by Andrew Morgan Typeset by DP Photosetting, Aylesbury, Bucks.

Contents

Publisher’s Note

PART ONE: THE MEANING OF LIFE

Copenhagen, 23 May 1912

1. Growth, Decay and Reincarnation

Copenhagen, 24 May 1912

2. Human Participation in Evolution

PART TWO: ILLNESS AND HEALTH

Munich, 3 December 1907

3. Illusory Illness

Munich, 5 December 1907

4. The Feverish Pursuit of Health

PART THREE: LUCK, DESTINY AND THE TRIALS OF MODERN LIFE

Berlin, 7 December 1911

5. Luck—Reality and Illusion

Zurich, 10 October 1916

6. Psychological Distress and the Birth Pangs of the Consciousness Soul

Heidenheim, 12 June 1919

7. How to listen to the Spirit

Notes

Note Regarding Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures

Publisher’s Note

The lectures collected together in this volume were given between the years 1907 and 1919. They were originally published in various volumes of Rudolf Steiner’s collected works in German, and likewise in various English editions. Most of the latter were in booklet form, and have been out of print for some years.

We are now taking the opportunity of publishing these popular lectures under one cover for the first time. Although they address questions as varied as reincarnation and psychological distress, they nevertheless share an overall common theme in that they all speak to practical and fundamental issues linked with modern life. As is evident from these lectures, Steiner’s teaching is no tedious, abstract philosophy, but is vitally connected to the essential questions with which most people, whether consciously or not, struggle with today.

SG, London, June 1999

PART ONE:

THE MEANING OF LIFE

1. Growth, Decay and Reincarnation1

In these two evening lectures I should like to speak from the viewpoint of spiritual research about a question people ask frequently and urgently: ‘What is the meaning of life?’ Today we shall first lay a kind of foundation upon which we can then erect the edifice of knowledge that will outline a brief answer to our question—such as can be given in two evenings.

If we consider what is all around us—things that exist for our ordinary sense-perception and our ordinary experience, and which can be directly observed—and then turn to look at our own life, we can at best arrive at a question, a difficult and worrying question. We see how the creatures of external nature come into being and disappear again. Every year in spring we can observe how the earth, stimulated by the forces of sun and cosmos, presents us with plants that germinate and sprout, bearing their fruits throughout the summer. As autumn approaches, we see how these creations pass away. Some of course remain with us for several years, or for very many years, such as our long-lived trees. But even if these outlive us, we know that eventually they will pass away, disappear, sink down into that part of nature that is the lifeless realm. We know in particular that growth and decay rule everywhere even in the greatest phenomena of nature; we know that even the continents that provide a basis for our civilizations have not always existed. They have arisen in the course of time and we know for sure that one day they will once more fall in ruins.

All around us we see growth and decay. You can observe these processes in the plant and mineral kingdoms and also in the animal kingdom. So what is the meaning of it all? Wherever we look there is always something coming into being and something else fading away. What is the meaning of this becoming and this dying? Looking at our own life we find that over the years and decades we, too, have experienced growth and decay. Thinking of our early youth we find it has vanished, leaving only memories behind. These stir up anxious questions about our life. Having done one thing or another we ask: ‘What did it lead to? What has come into being through my having done that thing?’ The most important consequence is that we shall have progressed a little ourselves, that we shall have grown a little in wisdom. Usually, however, we only realize how we ought to have done things once we have done them. We only know how everything could have been done much better once we are no longer in a position to do it, so actually we do include in our life all the mistakes we have made. It is through these mistakes and errors that we gain our widest experiences.

A question confronts us, and it seems that what we grasp through our senses and comprehend with our understanding holds no answer for us. This is the position we human beings are in. Everything around us leads to the anxious question: ‘What is the meaning of the whole of existence?’ And to another question also: ‘Why have we human beings been placed into this existence in the way we have?’ This is the question confronting us.

A most interesting legend of Hebrew antiquity tells how in those old Hebrew times people knew that this anxious question about the meaning of life, and in our case the meaning of being human, occurs not only to humans but to other beings as well. The legend is most interesting and this is how it goes.

When the Elohim were preparing to create man in their own image and likeness, beings called ministering angels, spirits lower than the Elohim themselves, asked Yahveh or Jehovah: ‘Why shall human beings be made in the image and likeness of God?’ Then, so the legend continues, Yahveh gathered the animals and plants that had already sprung forth before man existed in his earthly form, and he also gathered the angels, the ministering angels, those in his immediate service. To these he showed the animals and plants, asking what they were called, what their names were. But the angels knew neither the names of the animals nor those of the plants. Then man was created as he was before the Fall. And again Jehovah or Yahveh gathered the angels, and also the animals and plants, and in the presence of the angels he asked man to name the names of the animals he caused to pass before him in procession. Lo and behold, man replied: ‘This animal bears this name, and that animal that name; this plant bears this name and that plant that name.’ Then Jehovah asked man: ‘What is your own name?’ And man replied: ‘I must be called Adam.’ (Adam is related to Adama, meaning: out of earthly slime, creature of earth.) And Jehovah asked man further: ‘What shall I myself be called?’ And man replied: ‘You shall be called Adonai, you are lord of all created beings on the earth.’ The angels now had an inkling of the meaning of man’s existence on the earth.

Religious traditions and religious writings often express the most important of life’s riddles in very simple terms, yet this does not mean there are no difficulties in understanding them, for we first have to find out what is hidden behind the simplicity. If we succeed in doing so, great wisdom and deep knowledge are revealed, as will indeed be the case with this legend. For the present we shall simply keep it in mind, for these two lectures are likely to give us some kind of answer to the questions it raises.

You know that there is a religion which has put the question as to the meaning and value of life by placing it in an overwhelmingly wonderful form into the very mouth of its founder. You all know the stories of Buddha that tell us of his departure from the palace in which he had been born. When he came face to face with the real facts of life, of which in that incarnation he had as yet learned nothing while still in the palace, he was profoundly dismayed about life and pronounced the judgement: ‘Life is suffering’—which, as we know, encompasses four statements: ‘Birth is suffering, illness is suffering, old age is suffering, death is suffering.’ To these are added: ‘To be united with those whom one does not love is suffering, to be parted from those whom one loves is suffering, not to achieve one’s aim is suffering.’ This tells us that for adherents of this religion the meaning of life can be encapsulated in the words: ‘Life, which is suffering, is only meaningful if it can be overcome, if it can be transcended.’

Basically, all the various religions and also all philosophies and world views are attempts to answer the question: ‘What is the meaning of life?’ Rather than approach this question in a philosophically abstract manner, we shall here review some of the phenomena of life, some of the facts of life, from the point of view of spiritual science. We shall endeavour to look more deeply into these facts in order to discover whether a profounder, more spiritual view of life can come up with something approaching an answer regarding its meaning.

Let us begin again at the point we have already touched on, the annual growth and decay in sense-perceptible nature and life, growth and decay in the plant kingdom. In spring we see the plants sprouting up out of the ground, and this germinating, budding life calls forth our joy and delight. We become aware that the whole of our existence is bound up with the plant kingdom without which we could not exist. We sense that everything springing from the ground as summer approaches is related to our own life; and when autumn comes we feel those things that belong to us dwindling away again.

Naturally we compare our own life with the growth and decay we observe. For external observation based solely on what can be perceived by the senses and judged by the intellect it would be quite natural to compare the vernal sprouting of the plants out of the ground with our waking up in the morning, and the autumnal withering and fading of the plants with our going to sleep in the evening. But such a comparison would be entirely superficial in that it leaves out of account what actually happens according to even the more elementary truths of spiritual science. What does happen when we go to sleep at night? We know that we leave our physical body and ether body behind in bed while our astral body and ‘I’ withdraw from them. During the night, between going to sleep and waking up, we live in a world of spirit with our astral body and ‘I’. From this world of spirit we gather the forces we need. As well as our astral body and ‘I’, our physical body and ether body also undergo a kind of restorative process, a regeneration, as they lie in bed separated from the other two during our night-time sleep.

Looking clairvoyantly down from ‘I’ and astral body to ether and physical body, we can see what has been destroyed by our daytime life; we see that what expresses itself as tiredness is in fact destruction, and that this is restored during the night. The whole phenomenon of human consciousness and the way it relates to physical and ether body is seen as a process that is destructive for physical and ether body. We destroy something with our consciousness, and the fact of this destruction manifests as tiredness. What we have destroyed is restored again during the night.

What we see when we have departed from ether body and physical body with our astral body and ‘I’ resembles a field laid waste. But the moment we have gone this field begins to regenerate. It is as though the forces belonging to the physical and ether bodies were beginning to flower and sprout, as if a whole vegetation were rising from the devastation. The further the night advances, the longer we sleep, the more does the sprouting and springing up continue in our ether body. The closer we get to morning, the more we enter our physical and ether bodies with our astral body, the more does a kind of wilting and withering begin again in our physical and ether bodies.

In short, when ‘I’ and astral body look down on our physical and our ether body as we go to sleep at night, what they see is the same manifestation as that confronting us in the great world outside us when the plants spring up and sprout in springtime. Thus the comparison we must draw on a more intimate level likens our going to sleep and the beginning of our sleeping state at night with springtime in nature, and our waking up, when our ‘I’ and astral body re-enter our physical and ether bodies, with autumn in nature. This, not the opposite, is the correct comparison to draw. The opposite is a superficial comparison. In human beings springtime corresponds to falling asleep and autumn to waking up.

How does the matter stand when a clairvoyant observer, someone who can truly look into the spiritual world, turns his attention to external nature and watches what goes on there in the course of the year? The clairvoyant view teaches us to compare things in an inward, not an outward, way. With clairvoyant vision we see that just as the physical and ether bodies of the human being are joined with astral body and ‘I’, so is the earth joined with what we can call its spiritual aspect. The earth, too, is a body, a vast body, and looking only at its physical part is like taking only the human physical body into account. To see the earth in its completeness we have to regard it as the body of spiritual beings, just as with the human being we see the spirit as belonging to the body. There is one difference, however. Man is a single being governing his physical and etheric bodies. A single soul-and-spirit corresponds to the human physical and etheric body. But the earth’s body has a great many spirits belonging to it. The soul-and-spiritual element in man is a unity, whereas for the earth it is a multiplicity. This is the most obvious distinction.

Having accepted this difference, we shall find everything else more or less analogous. Spiritual vision sees that in spring the earth spirits depart from the earth to the same degree as the plants grow up from the ground and greenery spreads, although it is not quite the same as with the human being, for rather than departing entirely, as is the case with the human spirit, the earth spirits redistribute themselves; they move round to the opposite side of the globe. When it is summer in one hemisphere it is winter in the other. As summer comes to the northern hemisphere, the spirit-and-soul part of the earth moves from the northern to the southern hemisphere. This does not alter the fact that a clairvoyant person anywhere on the globe sees the spirits of the earth departing when he experiences the coming of spring; he sees how they rise up and pass out into the cosmos. Rather than seeing them move to the other side he sees them departing, just as he sees the ‘I’ departing with the astral body when a human being falls asleep. The clairvoyant sees the spirits of the earth going away from that with which they have been bound up, whereas in winter, while the ground was covered in ice and snow, the spiritual forces were united with the earth. In the autumn the opposite takes place when clairvoyant vision sees the earth spirits approaching and reuniting with the earth. Something then begins for the earth that resembles what takes place in man—a kind of self-awareness. In summer the spiritual part of the earth knows nothing of what is going on around it in the cosmos. But in winter the spirit of the earth does know what is going on around it in the cosmos, just as the human being, on waking up, sees and knows what is going on around him. The analogy is entirely valid, only it is the reverse of the conclusion drawn by external consciousness.

There is something that must be added, however, in order to complete the picture. It is true to say that the earth spirits depart when the plants sprout and burst forth from the earth in spring. In fact, other more mighty spirits then rise up as though out of the depths, out of the interior of the earth. The mythologies were right to distinguish between the higher and the nether gods, and when people spoke of the gods who leave the earth in spring and return in the autumn they meant the higher gods. But there are mightier, older gods called by the Greeks the chthonian gods who rise up when everything buds and sprouts in summer and sink down again in winter when the real earth spirits unite once more with the body of the earth.

These are the facts, and I should now like to mention a certain idea taken from spiritual research into nature that is of immense importance for our lives. This research shows that an individual human being presents us with an image of the great earth being. What do we see in the plants as they begin to bud and sprout? We see exactly what the human being does inwardly while asleep. The one corresponds exactly with the other. How individual plants are related to the human body, what their significance is for the human body, can only be recognized when such connections are understood. If you watch closely as a human being goes to sleep you see how everything begins to bud and sprout in his physical body and his etheric body; you see a whole vegetation spring up, or that the human being is actually a tree, or a garden with plants growing in it.

If you follow this with clairvoyant vision you see how the sprouting and budding within the human being corresponds to the sprouting and budding in outer nature. This gives us an idea of what may come about in future when spiritual science—which is for the most part still regarded as nonsense—is applied to life and made fruitful. Suppose a person has something wrong in the external life functions of his body. You can observe this person asleep and see which plant species are missing when his physical and ether bodies begin to unfold their vegetation. When we notice that whole species of plant are absent at some location on the earth, we know that there is something not quite right with the life of the earth there. It is the same when certain plants are missing in the person’s physical and ether body. In order to remedy the deficiency in the person we need only seek out the missing plants in nature and apply their juices in a suitable form, either in the diet or medicinally. Then, out of their inner forces, we shall discover the relationship between medicine and illness. This shows us one way in which spiritual science will intervene directly in life, although at present we are only at the beginning of these things.

With this image I have given you a basic truth about nature concerning the way the human being is related with his whole being to the surroundings in which he finds himself.

Let us now look at the matter from a spiritual point of view, and in doing so I would like to call attention to something rather important. In its endeavours to discover the meaning of life, spiritual science encompasses the whole range of human evolution from the spiritual point of view without according any outer preference to one particular world view or creed over another. Within our stream of spiritual wisdom we have often described what earthly humanity developed and experienced immediately after the great Atlantean catastrophe.2 The first great post-Atlantean culture we come across in doing this is the ancient sacred culture of India. Here in Copenhagen we have spoken about this too, stressing the exaltedness of this culture by pointing out that the Vedas or other extant written traditions are merely echoes of it. Only in the Akashic Record can we catch a glimpse of the primeval teachings that issued from that time.3 There we discover a loftiness of culture never since regained.

The subsequent epochs of culture have quite other tasks. We also know that a descent has taken place since those times, that there will be a new ascent and, as we have already said, that spiritual science exists in order to prepare for this ascent. We know that in the seventh post-Atlantean culture there will be a kind of renewal of the ancient sacred Indian civilization. In this sense we give no preference to any religious view or creed. The same yardstick is applied to each one, each is described in detail and the core of truth in all of them is sought.