The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity
GA 144
4 February 1913, Berlin
Lecture II
From what has been said we can well see that the ascent into the spiritual worlds depends upon the strengthening of the inner forces of the soul-life, so that through the exercises which a person undertakes for the purpose of penetrating into the higher worlds, he develops forces in his soul which far surpass those needed in ordinary life. This requirement is shown by the fact that when the soul becomes independent of the physical body in ordinary life, i.e. in sleep, it falls at once into unconsciousness. This means that in normal life the individual lacks sufficient force to unfold inner activity and maintain consciousness when, as in sleep, the physical and etheric bodies are not helping him to do so. The other members of the human organism, the ego and the astral body, must be worked upon and illuminated through the exercises of meditation, concentration and contemplation, so that they become capable of conscious experience when they are separated from the physical and etheric bodies, as in ordinary sleep. The stronger-than-ordinary soul-forces that a man develops are what enable him to reach the stage we spoke of yesterday. They give him the power, after he has confronted the Void, to enter a new world which he can experience through the fact that—as the spider spins its web out of itself—he pours out into space the spiritually substantial content of his soul, and receives into it the spiritual worlds which then present themselves to him.
So now, after having left behind him the physical sense-world in this way, and gone through the stage of having stood over the abyss—for that is how it feels when one confronts the Void—the aspirant is in a new world. And in this new world he not only experiences something different, but he experiences it in a quite new way. We can begin from an ordinary experience on the physical plane. There, events occur in two apparently quite separate domains. In one domain the events are subject to the laws of nature; in the other they are subject to moral laws. When in ordinary physical life we observe the events of nature, even when we ascend to the animal kingdom, we know that we are looking only for natural laws and that moral standards are inapplicable there. We do not enquire, for example, why a rock crystal has the form of a six-sided column ending in two six-sided pyramids; we do not ask why this mineral substance aggregates itself in such a way that this crystal form appears. We expect no answer except that it obeys a natural law. We do not ask what good thing the rock crystal has done that it should have become a rock crystal. We do not ask what its intentions are, We do not apply moral standards to the mineral world. Neither do we apply them to the plant world. And only in a somewhat indirect sense—and, one might say, according to the sympathies of Darwinistically-inclined persons—do we apply moral concepts to the animal kingdom. What interests us in the animal kingdom, first of all, is its conformity to natural law. When we rise to the human kingdom, we feel obliged to judge men according to the standards of goodwill, love, and so forth. As already said, we regard the facts of the physical world as enmeshed in the web of natural laws, while we judge human actions and soul dispositions by the standard of moral laws; and we are indeed not doing well in our estimate of the physical plane if we mix up these two sets of facts. We are accustomed on the physical plane to judge the world in this twofold way. Hence it is not very easy, after one has sprung, as it were, over the abyss of the Void, to pass into the spiritual world where a different kind of judgment is necessary; where, in fact, there is no separation between something that could be ascribed to natural laws, as with natural events on the physical plane, and a purely moral happening, which likewise exists on the physical plane. When, therefore, the point is reached of which we spoke yesterday, one must accustom oneself to judge events in like manner as we judge natural facts, but also as we judge moral facts in the physical world. The world of natural law and the world of moral law intermingle when one enters the spiritual world.
That shows itself at once, for example, when a man is confronted with the realm that he inhabits between death and a new birth. When the seer has in all earnestness come as far as we have already indicated, he can and will meet those souls who, having passed through the Gate of Death, are going through their development between death and a new birth. He then learns to know the kind of experience these souls are encountering, and if he is to form any judgment of what their experience is, he must adopt quite different habits of thought. A few examples will explain this.
In that realm we find souls which for a certain period between death and a new birth have to undergo very hard conditions. The seer has at first the impression that in the spiritual world these souls—of a certain category—have become the servants of very terrible beings, and that it was through their own lives before death that they condemned themselves to this labour for the terrible spirits. As seer he gradually learns to understand their hard fate, and he does so in the following manner. He cultivates the thought of how a man lives in his physical body from birth to death and how—as has often been described in the course of our lectures on spiritual science—so-called natural death is brought about through an inner conformity to law, when a man has in old age expended his life-forces. We will not speak of this death at present. But there are other deaths. There are those deaths by which a man is snatched away, through accident or illness, in the very flower of his life. We do not all die after having fulfilled our measure of life. Men die at all ages, and we must ask ourselves: Whence come the forces which are responsible for these deaths at different ages? We understand that a man must die when his measure of life is fulfilled. We have often seen how that is brought about by the spiritual worlds. But everything that happens in the physical world comes about through influences from the spiritual worlds. Those deaths which are to a certain extent untimely also happen through influences from the spiritual worlds; that is, they are caused by forces and beings of the spiritual world.
There is something else in the physical world to which we must pay attention if we want to understand the life between death and the next birth. We see the physical world permeated by illnesses and diseases, and in earlier times afflicted by well-known pestilences. One need but recall those devastating visitations among earlier European peoples when the plague, cholera, etc., swept through the land. In this present age we are comparatively fortunate in regard to such things. But already—as indicated in the course of our lectures—certain epidemics are preparing. So we see what appears to be untimely death pass over the Earth; we see disease and pestilence. And. the seer sees souls living between death and a new birth who are helping those spirits who bear from the super-sensible worlds into the sense-world the forces which bring epidemics and illnesses, and so-called untimely death.
It makes a terrifying impression to perceive how during certain periods of their lives between death and a new birth human souls have become servants of the evil spirits of illness and death, and have condemned themselves to this servitude. If one tries to trace back the lives of such persons to the time before they went through the Gate of Death, one always finds that during their life on the physical plane they were lacking in conscience, lacking in feelings of responsibility. A fixed law is evident here. The seer perceives how souls who were morally irresponsible in their dispositions in their lives on Earth have to co-operate, for a period after death, in bringing epidemics, illnesses and untimely deaths into the physical sense-world. Here we see a natural ordinance to which these souls are subject, but we cannot say of it that, like a crystallisation, or like the concussion between two elastic balls, it has no connection with morality. These souls show us how in the higher worlds there is an interweaving of natural law with the moral world-order. The manner in which things come about in the higher worlds is dependent on beings whose fate is conditioned by their moral behaviour in the world.
To take another example, we can look at what the seer learns when he turns his attention to a characteristic, the desire for ease and comfort, that is very widespread among men—more widespread than is generally supposed. People indulge far more in indolence than one realises. They are indolent in their thinking, indolent in their manners and behaviour and particularly so when they are required to alter their thinking or their habits. If men were not so ease-loving in their innermost souls, they would not have so often resisted a necessary change in their ideas. They struggled against it because to have to unlearn anything is uncomfortable. After having thought so long that the Earth stood still and that the
Sun and Stars went round it, it was tiresome to have to learn something different when they suddenly heard through Copernicus about the movement of the Earth! It was an uncomfortable thing when—theoretically, at least—the ground was taken from under their feet. All the resistance of those times against this new idea sprang from indolence of thought, from the love of ease, for to unlearn anything is tiresome. But one need merely consider the most ordinary everyday life and one will find how widespread is the quality—really a vice—of indolence. In recent times we have gained some idea of the enormous extent of indolence, love of ease, among humanity. This will be seen from the following example.
There are many theories of political economy. I need not speak about them now. But there is one theory of political economy which is somewhat out of date today but once played a great role. It was based upon the idea that all men should be free to compete in the exchange of commodities, etc.; and that the best social structure would be obtained if completely free competition were allowed. Then other, more socialistic theories took root. But latterly some political economists have drawn attention to the fact that all these theories were in the highest degree one-sided. For what takes place in the world of commerce and in social life is much more dependent on the love of ease than on the law of competition or the law of getting on in the world—yes, even more than on the laws of conscious egoism. Thus even into political economy a knowledge of the law of slothfulness finds entry—which means that even in this realm one can discern good sense, and a readiness to recognise facts that cannot be overlooked, unless one adopts an ostrich policy towards life.
Love of ease is a general and widespread attribute of mankind. And if one follows up after death the souls who were subject to it, one sees how this love of ease persists, and how for a certain time after death these souls have to live in a region where—as a result of indolence—they become servants of the god or gods of Opposition, those gods who place particular obstacles in the path of evolution. And these again are spirits under the rule of Ahriman. Ahriman has various things to do; one of his tasks, is to conduct out of the spiritual worlds into the physical world the forces which call forth opposition in physical life. Thus men are on the one hand ease-loving, but on the other hand the fate of lovers of ease is such that when they want to do anything they run up against a general cosmic law. Obstacles are everywhere, and even if they are not in the grotesque form once pictured by a German poet, they are there in the most tragic guise. He called them the “malice of things”. This “malice of things” is especially apparent when, for instance, a preacher in the pulpit is in the midst of a tremendously long tirade and a fly alights on his nose, causing him to sneeze violently. That is the “malice of things”. But it appears first in full force when persons who in this sense are the children of misfortune are exposed to it at every step. Friedrich Theodor Vischer once wrote a novel in which someone was continually exposed to this “malice of things”.
In truth, these things rise from the grotesque to the tragic. All such obstacles are directed from the spiritual worlds and the Lord of Opposition is Ahriman. And souls that are lovers of ease make themselves into servants of Ahriman for a certain time between death and a new birth. On the whole it is not so terrible to see the punishment of the devotees of ease as it is to see the souls who are living in servitude to the spirits of illness and. death. But it shows again how moral and natural law intermingle as soon as we come into the higher worlds.
Such are the experiences that are gone through when one has come to the point described yesterday; and a man has to go through these experiences in order that he may also experience other necessary conditions (we shall see later why “necessary”) and so may advance still further in regard to higher experiences. This matter of ascending into the higher worlds is not such that one can say: Today you are beginning your ascent into the higher worlds, and then you will mount upwards stage by stage. For him who wants to become an Initiate, things go forward unnoticed in relation to external happenings amid the affairs and events of ordinary life. He does indeed come stage by stage into the higher worlds, but from this sojourn in the higher worlds he must again come forth and live in the ordinary world. From the experiences in the spiritual worlds, however, he brings with him something into the physical world. He realises, after he has become an Initiate, that while moving around in the physical world he is endowed with feelings and perceptions other than those pertaining to anyone who is not a seer. He need only train himself (and a correct schooling will see to this) not to be misled in ordinary life through the alteration of his perceptions and feelings. He must learn to be a seer only for the higher worlds, and not to bring into the ordinary world the characteristics and attitude of soul needed for the higher worlds. This must be strictly avoided. He should be able to be a seer, while remaining as rational as anyone else in the ordinary physical world.
Hence the least suitable persons for the development of seership are those who from the outset are predisposed to be visionaries. Enthusiasts and intellectual idealists, those who already experience in the physical world that which has its justification in the spiritual world; people who in the physical world “hear the grass grow”, who see everywhere the visions of the dreamer, not the realities perceived by a sober disposition; people who indulge their imagination—there are many more such than is generally supposed—such people are of no use for training in seership. Persons who stand with both feet on solid ground, who understand something of actuality and judge things as they are—these are the people best fitted for developing seership.
This will have indicated how a person should not let feelings and perceptions necessary for the physical world be misled through what he acquires for the ascent into the higher worlds. Quite definite feelings and perceptions remain with him, once he has become a seer; in the physical world he will be too, a different person. But in order that this may do him no harm he must also apply these new feelings and perceptions to things in the external physical world to which he had previously paid no attention or had not noticed. Then he will find—not in a bad sense but emphatically in a good one—that his relations with nature are somewhat altered. For instance, he will feel differently towards the plant world which spreads itself like a carpet over the Earth. Formerly he looked at the plants and was delighted with their greenery, with the wealth of flowers and their colours, with everything that the plant world offered to him as it grows out of the Earth and delights the eyes and perhaps the other senses. Let us not think in this connection of some dull, prosaic person, but of someone who can really enjoy to the full the effect which the beauty of the Earth's plant-cover can evoke in the soul. And do not let us imagine that anyone who has become a seer must forfeit in the very least any part of his feeling for the plant-vesture of the Earth. Something else, however, arises within him. When he looks at the plant world he feels that a certain inner relationship links it with Sun, Moon and Stars. In his feeling and perception the green carpet of plants grows together with the out-there in the Cosmos.
Nowadays men build up plenty of abstract ideas on this subject. Everyone with a mere smattering of learning knows how the Earth's carpet of plants is connected with the activity of the light from the Sun; how the plants cannot grow without the specific action of the Sun's rays. And men have some inkling that not only the Sun's activity has an influence on the plant world, but that the rest of the starry world also has an influence. Certainly some people are incredulous about this, but not so long ago there lived a great and significant thinker who applied himself in a thoroughly scientific way to studying the influence of the Moon on the weather, and so on the vegetation of the Earth. I refer to Gustav Theodor Fechner. Not from the standpoint of any superstition, but from that of quite empirical observation, he tried to show that the influence of the new Moon on rainfall is different from that of the full Moon, and so on. There were many people who wanted to prove their scientific outlook by laughing at Gustav Theodor Fechner and his studies of the Moon. One of those who laughed loudest was the celebrated botanist, Schleiden, who voiced his opinion that it certainly does not depend on the full Moon or the new Moon whether for fourteen days we have more rain or less. Fechner replied (conditions then were somewhat more patriarchal than they are today): “Let the matter be put to the test indirectly through the women; learned men soon begin to quarrel.” Now the two wives, Frau Professor Schleiden and Frau Professor Fechner, always put out tubs in their Leipzig backyards to catch rain-water for washing-day. Fechner proposed that Frau Professor Schleiden should put out her tubs at new Moon, while his own wife put out hers at full Moon, and they would soon see in which period. the greater quantity of rain would fall. And behold, Frau Professor Schleiden was by no means in agreement with her husband, for she caught the smaller quantity of rain-water!
Thus—ironically, one might say—a decision was reached, though we would not want to attach any value to it now. Later on, however, it will emerge that sunlight, sun-heat, and also the other stellar influences, all have effects on the plant world. At first, this is theoretical knowledge. But the seer has direct perception of how influences from the Earth interact with those from stellar space. He regards them ultimately as one, and he feels as a vital occurrence the pouring out of the sunlight upon the vegetation of the Earth, and again the withdrawal of the sunlight. He feels how it is with the plants when the sunlight is withdrawn from them. As one feels sympathy with a child that is very much attached to its mother when the mother is removed from its sight for a while, so does the seer feel sympathy when the sunlight is withdrawn from the plants? This sympathy with the plant world is an experience that comes to the seer; so that when he has reached the point spoken of in the preceding lecture, he acquires perceptions of such a kind that he becomes a participant in the relations between Earth-growth and plant-growth and the Sun and Stars.
Through the birth of this feeling he is adapted for feeling something else besides. He can feel this something when he returns into the physical world from the spiritual world and looks for instance, at a waking or sleeping person. Also when he has, so to speak, laid aside his seer's gift and sees only the physical world and the sleeping person, then, too, comes the feeling that the sleeper has been forsaken by something. This is very similar to the feeling one has when, for example, in autumn the relation of the Sun's rays to the Earth's vegetation changes in the usual way. Quite similar are the feelings towards nature now forsaken by Sun and Stars to the feelings towards the human organism forsaken by its ego and astral body. And now one has the specific experience that in this respect man is independent of his relation to the physical heavens, whereas the plant-growth is dependent on this relationship. Concerning the plants we know that they cannot go to sleep as they like, owing to their inner constitution; they must wait until the Sun sets in the evening, or until autumn comes. Concerning man we know that in our time, and especially under our conditions of civilisation, he is no longer in the least guided by the Sun. For instance, if we had to guide ourselves by the Sun, as do the plants, we could not be assembled here together. The transition, which for the plants is so strictly ruled by the course of the Sun and Stars, has no influence on man. Certainly if we come into primitive rural conditions and see how not only the fowls but also the village folk go to sleep at a certain time and wake at a certain time, we feel as if there were something of a plant-like connection between human beings and the course of the Sun and Stars. But we have to conclude that in the course of human evolution man has emancipated himself from the cosmic course of events. With his physical and etheric bodies he is able to come into the situation which the plant comes to through the position of the Sun and Stars—he comes to it through inner conditions, I will not say by dint of inner free will. A man can have his afternoon nap through his own inner condition; that is he can come out of his physical and etheric bodies. The plant cannot have an afternoon sleep at will; it has to regulate itself entirely in accordance with the course of the stars. But what is man when as physical and etheric body he lies asleep, with his astral body and his ego outside? His physical and etheric bodies then have the value of the plant. A physical and an etheric body are what the plant has. Considering all this, you may say: A plant grows gradually into connection with the Sun and the starry world, becomes one with them. Hence we must direct our feeling from the plant to the world of the Stars and Sun. This same direction of feeling applies to the sleeping man, who also consists of physical body and etheric body, and has the value of a plant in relation to his ego and astral body, for these, quite independently of the Sun's position, are outside his physical and etheric bodies when he sleeps, just as the physical Sun is outside the physical body and etheric body of the plant.
What I have here explained to you is experienced by the seer. Now when, proceeding from such perceptions, a man deliberately brings about the independence of the ego and astral body from the etheric and physical bodies; when he has got so far as deliberately to make the physical body and the etheric body into a kind of plant by passing out of them, then he comes to know something very strange—it is as if the Sun were speaking, as if it were looking down on the plants and observing itself in relation to them, and then saying: Yes, this physical and this etheric body of the plants belong to me, for they need what I can send them! Exactly as the Sun might speak to the plant growing below, so can the ego of a person say of his physical and etheric bodies: “They belong to me as the plant does to the Sun; I am like a Sun to the physical and etheric bodies.” A Sun to the physical and etheric body—so does a man learn of necessity to speak of his ego. And just as he learns to speak of his ego with reference to his physical and etheric bodies as the Sun would speak to the plant, so does he learn to speak of his astral body as the Moon, and also the planets, would have to speak to the plant. That is a quite special and important experience in the Mysteries. It was cultivated as a real and immediate experience, first in the Mysteries of Zarathustra and then wherever the world was developing, right on to the Mysteries of the Holy Grail.
This experience was always called “Seeing the Sun at midnight”, because a man had it most clearly—especially at the time of the Egyptian Mysteries—when in sleep he saw the Sun spiritually at midnight and felt himself united with the forces of the Sun in the manner described. It was an experiencing of the Sun-element in one's own ego, as a Sun-force that shines upon the physical and etheric bodies. This, then, was a third experience common to all the different Mysteries. Common to them all were, and are, the “Pressing forward to the boundaries of Death”, the “Experiencing of the Elementary World”, and now “Seeing the Sun at midnight”. But it must be clearly understood that at the moment when the seer feels himself isolated and as though sun-like or star-like in relation to his own etheric and physical bodies, he no longer feels the Sun and Stars only in their physical substantiality but becomes acquainted with the spiritual beings and worlds belonging to them. The experiencing of the Cosmos is an experience in the spiritual worlds—one must be quite clear about that.
Now in order to grow up correctly into the higher worlds, and to have the experiences which correspond with the spiritual realities, it is important and necessary that one should first gain acquaintance with the quite different nature of the spiritual world as compared with the physical world. One learns enough of this when, as a seer, one can test and observe the consequences of indolence, or of a lack of conscience for the experience of the soul in the time between death and a new birth, and much else besides. Through these things the seer must, so to speak, open out his soul for conditions essentially different from those on the physical plane. Only then is he ripe for gaining living experience of the spiritual Cosmos, for recognising the inner connection of the ego and the astral body with the Cosmos. Directly one comes to the experience that man, in regard to the highest members of his being, belongs not only to the Earth but is at home in the whole Cosmos, then all previous theorising is seen as a mere playing with words. One knows then that every person, when on going to sleep in the evening he passes out of his physical and etheric bodies, enters into participation with cosmic forces. He seeks strength for himself out of the whole universe, and on reawaking brings back the forces he has gathered during sleep in order to use them in the physical world. The connection with the Cosmos is experienced. at a quite definite stage of the Mysteries. From this stage we will go on tomorrow.
Zweiter Vortrag
Das, was gestern hier ausgeführt worden ist, konnte wohl anschaulich machen, wie der Aufstieg in die höheren, in die spirituellen Welten davon abhängig ist, daß der Mensch die inneren Kräfte des Seelenlebens verstärkt, so daß er durch seine Übungen, die er vornimmt zum Zwecke des Hinaufdringens in höhere Welten, Kräfte in der Seele entwickelt, die eben weit über dasjenige hinausgehen, was der Mensch im gewöhnlichen Leben an solchen Seelenkräften braucht. Daß der Mensch eine gewisse Verstärkung seiner Seelenkräfte erlangen muß, um innerlich zu erleben, innerliche Regsamkeit zu entwickeln, das mag schon daraus hervorgehen, daß des Menschen Seele, wenn er im gewöhnlichen Leben unabhängig wird von seinem physischen Leibe, im Schlafe also, sogleich in die Bewußtlosigkeit verfällt. Das heißt, er hat nicht genug Kräfte im normalen Leben, um dann, wenn ihm der physische Leib und der Ätherleib nicht helfen, Bewußtsein, innere Regsamkeit wirklich zu entfalten, wenn er, wie im Schlafe, unabhängig von seinem physischen und Ätherleibe leben soll. In dasjenige, was im gewöhnlichen Schlafe unabhängig wird von physischem Leib und Ätherleib, müssen die Übungen der Meditation, Konzentration, Kontemplation diejenigen Kräfte hineinarbeiten, die zu einer Durchleuchtung mit Bewußtsein für das Ich und den astralischen Leib führen, so daß diese unabhängig vom physischen Leib und Ätherleib zum Erleben, zum Erfahren kommen können. Was da der Mensch an Kräften seiner Seele entwickelt, die stärker sind als die des gewöhnlichen Lebens, ist das, was ihn dazu befähigt, das zu erreichen, was gestern im Verlaufe des Vortrages ausgeführt worden ist: nachdem er sozusagen gegenüber dem Nichts gestanden hat, in eine neue Welt einzutreten, die er dadurch erleben kann, daß er — wie die Spinne ihr Netz aus sich herausspinnt — den geistig substantiellen Gehalt seiner Seele ausgießt in die Weiten und in das, was er da ausgießt, die geistigen Welten aufnimmt, die sich dann vor ihn hinstellen.
So ist nun der Mensch, nachdem er die gewöhnliche physische sinnliche Welt auf diese Art verlassen hat, durchgegangen durch ein Stehen über einem Abgrund - denn so ist es, wenn man dem Nichts gegenüber sich fühlt - im Gebiete einer neuen Welt. Und er erlebt nun in dieser neuen Welt nicht nur anderes, sondern er erlebt in ganz anderer Weise, in anderer Art, als er in der physisch-sinnlichen Welt erlebt hat. Da können wir ausgehen von einem sehr gewöhnlichen Erlebnis des physischen Planes. Auf dem physischen Plane erscheinen dem Menschen in der Tat wie zwei ganz voneinander getrennte Gebiete des Geschehens die Tatsachen, die den Naturgesetzen unterliegen, und alles, was den Moralgesetzen unterliegt.
Wenn wir im gewöhnlichen physischen Leben unsere Blicke hinausrichten in das Naturgeschehen, selbst wenn wir hinaufgehen bis ins Tierreich, sind wir uns immer bewußt, daß wir dabei nach Naturgesetzen, nach bloßen Naturgesetzen für das Geschehen fragen, daß wir aber eigentlich keine moralischen Maßstäbe anlegen können. Wir fragen zum Beispiel nicht, warum ein Bergkristall gerade in einer solchen Weise vor uns hintritt, daß wir eine sechsseitige Säule haben, durch zwei sechsseitige Pyramiden abgeschlossen, wir fragen nicht, warum sich diese mineralische Substanz so zusammenfügt, daß diese Kristallgestalt herauskommt. Anders fragen wir nicht, als daß wir ein Naturgesetz zur Antwort haben wollen. Wir fragen nicht: Was hat der Bergkristall Gutes getan, daß er gerade ein Bergkristall geworden ist? Wir fragen nicht: Wie ist der Bergkristall gesinnt? Wir wenden die moralische Gesetzmäßigkeit nicht auf die mineralische Welt an, wir wenden sie auch nicht auf die Pflanzenwelt an, und höchstens in einer etwas übertragenen Weise - und man möchte sagen, nach den Sympathien moderner, darwinistisch gesinnter Leute wenden wir die Moralbegriffe auch auf das Tierreich an. Aber was uns auch beim Tierreich zuerst interessiert, ist die Naturgesetzlichkeit.
Wenn wir ins Menschenreich hinauf kommen, fühlen wir uns veranlaßt, den Menschen zu beurteilen nach dem Maßstabe des Wohlwollens, der Liebe und dergleichen mehr. Getrennt, wie gesagt, betrachten wir, insofern wir in der physischen Welt stehen, die Tatsachen als eingefangen in das Netz des Naturgeschehens und die menschlichen Handlungen und Seelenverfassungen, denen wir als einen Maßstab auferlegen die Beurteilung nach Moralgesetzen, und wir tun wahrhaftig nicht gut für die Beurteilung des physischen Planes, wenn wir diese beiden Tatsachenreihen durcheinandermischen. Der Mensch gewöhnt sich dann an, indem er auf dem physischen Plane lebt, in dieser zwiefachen Weise die Welt zu beurteilen. Daher ist es nicht ganz leicht, nachdem man sozusagen über den Abgrund des Nichts gesprungen ist, in die spirituelle Welt überzugehen, wo eine ganz andere Beurteilung notwendig ist: wo in der Tat nicht getrennt ist etwas, was man als Naturgesetze ansprechen könnte, ähnlicher Art wie das Naturgeschehen auf dem physischen Plan, von einem bloß moralischen Geschehen, wie es ebenfalls nur auf dem physischen Plane vorhanden ist. Deshalb muß man sich gewöhnen, wenn der Punkt erreicht ist, von dem gestern gesprochen worden ist, das, was geschieht, ähnlich zu beurteilen, wie wir Naturtatsachen beurteilen, aber auch wie wir moralische Tatsachen in der physischen Welt beurteilen. Die moralische Welt und die physische Gesetzmäßigkeit — es sind aber damit jetzt nicht «Gesetzmäßigkeiten» gemeint nach dem Muster der in der physischen Welt vorhandenen Naturgesetzlichkeit -, also die Welt der Naturgesetze und die Welt der moralischen Gesetzmäßigkeit, gehen ineinander, wenn man in diese spirituelle Welt eintritt.
Das zeigt sich zum Beispiel gleich, wenn man vor sich bekommt das Reich, das der Mensch durchlebt zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt. Der Seher kann dort begegnen - und er wird begegnen, wenn er im Ernste so weit gekommen ist, wie es gestern angedeutet worden ist — denjenigen Seelen, die, nachdem sie durch die Pforte des Todes durchgegangen sind, ihre Entwickelung zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt durchmachen. Wir lernen dann die Art des Erlebens dieser Scelen kennen, und man muß ganz andere Denkgewohnheiten annehmen, wenn man beurteilen will, was diese Seelen erleben. An einigen Beispielen sei das erläutert.
Da finden wir Seelen, welche in einer gewissen Zeit zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt recht schwere Lebensverhältnisse durchzumachen haben. Zunächst hat man als Seher den Eindruck, daß diese Seelen - eine gewisse Kategorie von Seelen - in der geistigen Welt Diener geworden seien von recht furchtbaren geistigen Wesenheiten, und daß sie sich selber durch ihr Leben vor dem Tode zu dieser Arbeit verurteilt haben, in der sie Diener sind von recht furchtbaren Geistern. Man arbeitet sich als Seher allmählich hinein, das schwere Schicksal dieser Seelen zu verstehen, und zwar auf folgende Weise arbeitet man sich da hinein. Man bildet in sich heran intimer den Gedanken, wie der Mensch in seinem physischen Leben von der Geburt bis zum Tode lebt, wie — das ist oftmals im Verlaufe unserer geisteswissenschaftlichen Vorträge dargestellt worden — durch eine innere Gesetzmäßigkeit des Erlebens der sogenannte naturgemäße oder natürliche Tod herbeigeführt wird, wenn der Mensch sozusagen im Alter seine Lebenskräfte erschöpft hat. Von diesem Tode wollen wir jetzt nicht sprechen. Aber es gibt andere Tode. Es gibt diejenigen Tode, durch die der Mensch in der Blüte seines Lebens durch äußere Unglücksfälle oder durch Krankheiten hingerafft werden kann. Wir sterben nicht alle, nachdem das Maß unseres Lebens erfüllt ist. Die Menschen sterben in jedem Lebensalter, und fragen müssen wir uns: Woher kommen denn die Kräfte, welche diesen Toden in den verschiedenen Lebensaltern zugrunde liegen? Das verstehen wir, daß der Mensch, wenn seines Lebens Maß erfüllt ist, einmal sterben muß. Wie das aus den geistigen Welten heraus sich motiviert, haben wir oft gesehen. Aber alles, was in der physischen Welt geschieht, geschieht durch Einflüsse aus der geistigen Welt. Auch die Tode, die gewissermaßen zur Unzeit eintreten, geschehen durch Einflüsse aus der geistigen Welt; das heißt, sie werden veranstaltet durch Kräfte und Wesenheiten der geistigen Welt.
Auch noch etwas anderes bemerken wir in der physischen Welt, auf das wir den Blick richten müssen, wenn wir die Zeit zwischen dem Tode und der neuen Geburt verstehen wollen. Da sehen wir die physische Welt durchzogen von Krankheiten, Seuchen, sehen diese physische Welt durchzogen in früheren Zeiten von jenen Seuchen, die ja hinlänglich bekannt sind. Man braucht nur die verheerenden Züge unter der älteren europäischen Bevölkerung durchzugehen, wo die Pest, Cholera und dergleichen hinzog über die Lande. In dieser gegenwärtigen Zeit sind wir in bezug auf solche Dinge — man kann das Wort dafür gebrauchen - noch verhältnismäßig glücklich daran. Allein schon bereiten sich gewisse Epidemien vor, auf die bereits in unseren Vorträgen aufmerksam gemacht worden ist. So sehen wir also den gleichsam zur Unzeit eintretenden Tod über die Erde hinziehen, und so auch sehen wir Krankheiten und Seuchen über die Erde hinziehen. Und der Seher sieht Seelen, die da leben zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt, jenen Geistern helfen, die aus den übersinnlichen Welten in die Sinneswelt die Kräfte tragen, welche Seuchen, Krankheiten bringen, welche sozusagen unzeitige Tode bringen. Es gehört zu den furchtbaren Eindrücken, Menschenseelen in gewissen Zeiten ihres Lebens zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt wahrzunehmen, die Diener geworden sind der schlimmen Geister von Krankheit und Tod, und die sich selber dazu verurteilt haben, solche Diener der schlimmen Geister von Krankheit und Tod zu werden.
Versucht man nun das Leben solcher Menschen zurückzugehen bis vor die Zeit, da sie die Pforte des Todes durchschritten haben, dann findet man immer bei denjenigen Menschen, die sich das eben erwähnte Schicksal bereitet haben, daß sie in ihrem Leben auf dem physischen Plan Mangel an Gewissenhaftigkeit, Mangel an Verantwottlichkeitsgefühl gehabt haben. Das ist ein ständiges Gesetz, welches sich dem Seher zeigt, daß Seelen, die durch die Pforte des Todes schreiten, und die vorher gewissenlose Seelenanlagen gehabt haben oder in Gewissenlosigkeit gelebt haben, sich zu einer bestimmten Zeit zwischen dem Tode und der neuen Geburt zu den Dienern machen derer, die mitarbeiten müssen an dem Hereintragen von Seuchen, Krankheiten und unzeitigen Toden in die physisch-sinnliche Welt. Da sehen wir naturgemäßes Geschehen, dem diese Seelen unterliegen, und von dem wir nicht sagen können, es sei, wie eine Kristallisation oder wie der Stoß zweier elastischer Kugeln oder dergleichen, unabhängig von irgendwelchen moralischen Fehlern; sondern an dem, was da geschieht, was diese Seelen uns zeigen, schen wir, wie sich in den höheren Welten durcheinandermischt dasjenige, was als Naturgesetzmäßigkeit in den höheren Welten wirkt, mit der moralischen Weltordnung. Wie die Dinge in den höheren Welten geschehen, das hängt ab von Wesenheiten, an denen das eine oder das andere geschieht, jenachdem diese sich moralisch in die Welt hineingestellt haben.
Oder, um ein anderes Beispiel anzuführen, man kann hinschauen auf das, was der Seher lernt, indem er auf eine sehr weit verbreitete Eigenschaft unter den Menschen den Blick richtet: Es ist das, was man bezeichnen kann als Bequemlichkeit, als Behaglichkeitssucht. Bequemlichkeit, Behaglichkeitssucht ist wahrhaftig eine weiter verbreitete Eigenschaft, als man gewöhnlich glaubt. Viel mehr, als man denkt, machen die Menschen aus Bequemlichkeit. Bequem sind die Menschen in ihrem Denken, bequem sind die Menschen in ihrem äußeren Handeln und Gebaren. Und namentlich bequem erscheinen sie, wenn sie irgend etwas ändern sollen in ihrem Denken oder in ihrem Handeln und Gebaren. Wären die Menschen im Innersten ihrer Seele nicht so bequem, so würde es nicht so oft geschehen sein, daß, wenn an sie die Forderung herantrat, in dieser oder jener Sache umzulernen, sie sich dagegen gesträubt haben. Gesträubt haben sie sich, weil es unbequem ist, in bezug auf irgendeine Sache umzulernen. Es war ja unbequem, nachdem man solange gedacht hatte, daß die Erde stille steht und die Sonne und der Sternenhimmel sich um sie herumbewegen, nun plötzlich von der Bewegung der Erde durch Kopernikus zu hören, und umzulernen! Eine unbequeme Sache war das, daß einem so der Boden unter den Füßen — wenigstens theoretisch — wie weggezogen wurde. Und alles, was sich damals gegen diesen neuen Gedanken aufgelehnt hat, war entsprossen aus der Denkbequemlichkeit, aus der Behaglichkeitssucht, weil alles Umlernen unbehaglich ist. Aber man braucht nur das alleralltäglichste Leben zu betrachten, und man wird die «Tugend» - die eigentlich natürlich eine Untugend ist - der Bequemlichkeit weit verbreitet finden. Man hat in der neueren Zeit doch schon ein wenig eine Ahnung bekommen von der ganz ungeheuren Verbreitung der Bequemlichkeit unter der Menschheit. Das mag aus folgendem ersichtlich sein.
Es gibt viele nationalökonomische Theorien. Ich will über dieselben jetzt nicht sprechen. Aber da gibt es zum Beispiel jene nationalökonomische Theorie, die heute schon vielfach verlassen ist, aber die einmal eine große Rolle gespielt hat, die darauf gebaut ist, daß alle Menschen doch im Grunde genommen frei zu konkurrieren suchen im Austausch der Güter und dergleichen und daß die beste Art, sozial zusammenzuleben, eben die wäre, wenn eine vollständig freie Konkurrenz stattfände. Andere, mehr sozialistische Theorien haben dann Platz gegriffen. In der letzten Zeit haben aber einige Nationalökonomen darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß man eigentlich mit all diesen Theorien doch nur höchst einseitig vorgehe. Denn was in der Welt im Austausch der Güter, im sozialen Zusammenleben geschieht, das unterliege viel mehr als dem Konkurrenzgesetz oder dem Gesetz, fortschreiten zu wollen, ja, mehr sogar als den Gesetzen des bewußten Egoismus, dem Gesetze der Bequemlichkeit! Also sogar in die Nationalökonomie hält die Erkenntnis von dem Gesetz der Bequemlichkeit den Einzug. Das ist ganz anzuerkennen, daß man sogar auch auf einem solchen Gebiete einmal recht vernünftig wird und auf etwas aufmerksam macht, was da ist, und was man nur übersehen kann, wenn man dem Leben gegenüber eine Vogel-Strauß-Politik spielt.
Die Bequemlichkeit ist eine allgemeine, weit verbreitete Eigenschaft der Menschen. Und verfolgt man die Seelen, die damit verbunden waren, nach dem Tode, so sieht man, wie sich diese Sucht nach Bequemlichkeit fortsetzt nach dem Tode, und wie der Mensch dann gleichsam eine Provinz durchleben muß, in welcher er sogar eine gewisse Zeit zwischen dem Tode und der neuen Geburt damit zubringen muß, daß er wegen der Bequemlichkeit, als Wirkung dieser Bequemlichkeit, zu einem Diener wird — als Seele — des Gottes oder der Götter der Widerstände, jener Götter, die alle die entsprechenden Widerstände der Entwickelung entgegensetzen. Und das sind wieder die Geister, die unter der Oberherrschaft des Ahriman stehen. Ahriman hat verschiedene Dinge zu tun, unter anderem auch das, daß er aus der spirituellen Welt die Kräfte in die physische Welt hereinleitet, welche im physischen Leben die Widerstände hervorrufen. So sind die Menschen auf der einen Seite bequem, aber auf der anderen Seite stellt sich das Leben der bequemen Menschen auch so heraus, daß man, wenn man so etwas tun will, wieder an ein allgemeines Weltengesetz stößt. Die Widerstände sind überall da, wenn sie auch nicht in der grotesken Form da sind, in der sie einmal ein deutscher Dichter und Ästhetiker geschildert hat. Sie sind aber da in der allertragischsten Form. Ein deutscher Dichter hat sie geschildert als die sogenannte «Tücke des Objekts». Diese «Tücke des Objekts» tritt zum Beispiel besonders hervor, wenn ein Prediger auf der Kanzel steht und eine ungeheuer lange Tirade zu sprechen hat; da setzt sich ihm eine Fliege auf die Nase - und er muß furchtbar niesen. Das ist die «Tücke des Objekts». Aber eigentlich tritt sie erst recht dann hervor, wenn Menschen, die in dieser Beziehung Unglücksmenschen sind, auf Schritt und Tritt dieser «Tücke des Objekts» ausgesetzt sind. Friedrich Theodor Vischer hat ja einmal einen Roman geschrieben, wo jemand fortwährend dieser «Tücke des Objekts» ausgesetzt ist.
Diese Dinge gehen aber in Wirklichkeit von der grotesken Form bis zu dem Tragischen hinauf. Alle Widerstände aber werden dirigiert aus der geistigen Welt, und der Herr der Widerstände ist eben Ahriman. Und dadurch, daß die Seelen Bequemlinge sind, machen sie . sich für eine gewisse Zeit zwischen dem Tode und der neuen Geburt zu Dienern des Ahriman. Es ist im ganzen nicht so furchtbar, die Strafen des bequemen Lebens anzusehen, als wenn die Seelen leben müssen in dem Gedrücktsein unter die Geister von Krankheit und Tod. Aber es gibt immerhin einen Begriff, wie Moral und Naturgesetzmäßigkeit sich untereinander vermischen, sobald wir in die höheren Welten hinaufkommen.
Das sind solche Erlebnisse, die man durchmacht, wenn man an den Punkt gekommen ist, der gestern geschildert worden ist. Und man muß diese Erlebnisse durchmachen, damit man andere, notwendige Verhältnisse auch erleben kann — wir werden schon schen, warum notwendig -, damit man eben weiterkommt in bezug auf das höhere Erleben. Die Sache des Hinaufsteigens in die höheren Welten ist ja nicht so, daß man sagt: Du beginnst heute deinen Aufstieg in die höheren Welten, und dann geht es stufenweise hinauf -, sondern das geht für den, der ein Eingeweihter werden will, sozusagen unvermerkt für das äußere Geschehen zwischen den Handlungen und Tatsachen des äußeren Lebens vor sich. Man kommt also zwar stückweise hinauf in die höheren Welten, aber es ist so, daß man aus diesem Drinnenstehen in den höheren Welten wieder heraustritt und in der gewöhnlichen Welt lebt. Aber man trägt aus dem Erleben in den geistigen Welten dann etwas mit hinein in die physische Welt. Man sieht sich, wenn man ein Eingeweihter geworden ist, dann, trotzdem man ein Eingeweihter geworden ist, in der physischen Welt herumgehen, mit anderen Gefühlen und Empfindungen behaftet, als man behaftet ist, wenn man kein Seher ist.
Es muß nur durch die Trainierung dafür gesorgt werden - und es wird auch bei einer richtigen Schulung dafür gesorgt -, daß man nicht für das gewöhnliche Leben beirrt wird durch die Änderung der Empfindungen und Gefühle. Das muß ja erreicht werden, daß man, wenn man ein Seher ist, eben nur für die höheren Welten ein Seher ist, und daß man das, was man als Charakter, als Seelenstimmung haben muß für die höheren Welten, ja nicht in die gewöhnliche physische Welt hineinträgt. In keiner Weise sollte man das. Man sollte Seher werden können, und in der gewöhnlichen physischen Welt ein ganz vernünftiger Mensch sein, wie ein anderer auch. Daher taugen für die Ausbildung des Seherwesens am wenigsten solche Leute, die von vornherein zur Schwärmerei veranlagt sind. Schwärmer, abstrakte Idealisten, die sozusagen in der physischen Welt schon dasjenige erleben, was ja in der geistigen Welt seine gute Berechtigung hat, also Leute, die schon in der physischen Welt «das Gras wachsen hören», die überall sozusagen schon wahrnehmen, was eben nur der Schwärmer wahrnimmt, was nicht die nüchterne, auf das Reale hingeneigte Natur wahrnimmt, Menschen, die sich leicht etwas vormachen - es gibt viel mehr Menschen von dieser Sorte, als man gewöhnlich meint -, taugen nicht für die Ausbildung des Sehergeistes. Menschen, die mit beiden Füßen in der Wirklichkeit stehen, die von der Wirklichkeit auch etwas verstehen und die Dinge so beurteilen, wie sie sind, die taugen am besten auch für die Ausbildung des Sehergeistes. Damit ist schon angedeutet, wie man seine Gefühle und Empfindungen, die schon einmal für die physische Welt notwendig sind, nicht beirren lassen darf durch das, was man sich aneignet für den Aufstieg in die höheren Welten.
Also ganz bestimmte Gefühle und Empfindungen bleiben einem schon, die man, wenn man ein Seher geworden ist, sich gegenüber hat. Man ist gewissermaßen auch für die physische Welt ein anderer . Mensch geworden. Aber man muß, damit einen das nicht schädigt, gewissermaßen diese neuen Gefühle und Empfindungen auch auf Dinge anwenden in der äußeren physischen Welt, die man früher gar nicht berücksichtigt hat, auf die man früher gar nicht aufmerksam gewesen ist. Dann wird man, wenn man Seher geworden ist und gewisse Gefühle und Empfindungen in sich herangezüchtet hat, seine Verhältnisse zur Natur nach und nach — nicht im schlimmen, sondern gerade im guten Sinne — etwas verändert finden. Man wird sich in anderer Weise zum Beispiel der Pflanzenwelt, dem sich ausbreitenden Pflanzenteppich der Erde gegenüber fühlen, als man sich früher ihm gegenüber gefühlt hat. Man hat früher die Pflanzen angeschaut, war entzückt über ihr Grünen, war entzückt über die Blütenfülle und Blütenfärbung, über alles, was einem die Pflanzenwelt eben darbot, insofern sie aus der Erde herauswächst und das Auge und vielleicht auch andere Sinne entzückt. Denken wir nicht an irgendeinen Nüchterling in dieser Beziehung, sondern an einen Menschen, der wirklich genießen kann in vollen Zügen, was die Schönheit der Pflanzendecke der Erde in der Seele bewirken kann; und denken wir nicht daran, daß irgend jemand, der Seher geworden ist, auch nur im geringsten Maße etwas einbüßen müßte von den Gefühlen, die er vorher der Pflanzendecke der Erde gegenüber gehabt hat. Aber etwas anderes entsteht in ihm. Es entsteht das Gefühl, wenn er sich nun der Pflanzenwelt gegenüber sieht, einer gewissen innigen Verwandtschaft der Pflanzenwelt mit dem, was außerhalb der Pflanzenwelt in der Natur ist: mit der Sonne, auch mit dem Mond und mit der anderen Sternenwelt. Es wächst ihm gewissermaßen für sein Empfinden, für sein Anschauen zusammen, was da als grüner Pflanzenteppich sich ausbreitet, mit dem, was im Weltall ist.
Abstrakt machen sich ja die Menschen heute genügende Vorstellungen von dem, was hier gemeint ist. Jeder Mensch weiß heute, wenn er nur ein bißchen gelernt hat, wie die Pflanzendecke zusammenhängt mit dem Wirken des Lichtes, welches die Sonne herabsendet, wie die Pflanzen nicht wachsen können ohne die bestimmten Wirkungen der Sonnenstrahlen. Und etwas ahnen können ja die Menschen, daß nicht nur auf die Pflanzenwelt dasjenige einen Einfluß hat, was auf der Sonne vorgeht, sondern daß auch die Sternenwelt einen Einfluß hat. Da wird es ja allerdings so, daß da schon die Menschen ins Ungläubige hineinfallen. Aber es gab noch einen großen, bedeutenden Geist in einer Zeit, die noch gar nicht so weit hinter uns liegt, der sich ganz naturwissenschaftlich zum Beispiel beschäftigte mit dem Einfluß des Mondes auf die Witterung und damit auch auf die Vegetation der Erde. Ich meine Gustav Theodor Fechner. Er hat nicht vom Standpunkte irgendeines Aberglaubens, sondern vom Standpunkte ganz empirischer Beobachtungen festzustellen versucht, wie anders der Neumond, wie anders der Vollmond zum Beispiel auf die Regenverhältnisse der Erde wirkt und so weiter. Es hat viele Leute gegeben, die gerade dadurch ihre naturwissenschaftliche Gesinnung dokumentieren wollten, daß sie Gustav Theodor Fechner mit seinen Monduntersuchungen auslachten. Einer, der besonders stark lachte, war der berühmte Botaniker Schleiden, der der Meinung war, daß es gewiß nicht vom Vollmond und vom Neumond abhänge, ob einmal durch vierzehn Tage hindurch mehr oder weniger Regenmenge sei. Da sagte Gustav 'Theodor Fechner — es war das in einer Zeit, da noch gegenüber den heutigen etwas patriarchalische Verhältnisse waren -: Wir wollen einmal die Sache auf dem Umwege durch die Frauen entscheiden; die gelehrten Männer kommen sehr leicht in Streit. Da eben damals noch etwas patriarchalische Verhältnisse waren, so hatten die beiden Frauen, die Frau Professor Schleiden und die Frau Professor Fechner, in ihrem Hofe in Leipzig immer die Gefäße aufgestellt, um das Regenwasser für die Wäsche aufzufangen, und Gustav Theodor Fechner machte nun den Vorschlag, daß einmal die Frauen über die Frage nach der größeren Regenwassermenge entscheiden sollten, indem die Frau Professor Schleiden immer zur Neumondzeit, seine Frau dagegen immer zur Vollmondzeit ihre Geschirre auf den Hof herausstellen sollte. Es würde sich dann schon zeigen, in welchem Zeitraum die größere Regenmenge fiele. Und siehe da, die Frau Professor Schleiden war gar nicht mit ihrem Gemahl einverstanden, denn sie bekam die geringere Regenwassermenge!
So war, ich möchte sagen, in ironischer Weise eine Entscheidung geschehen, auf die wir aber jetzt keinen Wert legen wollen. Aber später wird sich ergeben, daß auf die Pflanzenwelt alles, Sonnenlicht und Sonnenwärme und auch die anderen Sterneneinflüsse, sich geltend machen. Das ist jedoch zunächst theoretisches Wissen. Für den Scher aber stellt sich heraus, daß er eine unmittelbare Empfindung hat, wie ihm zusammenwächst, was an Einflüssen von der Erde kommt, und was vom Sternenraume kommt. Er betrachtet es zuletzt als eins, und er fühlt lebendig im Geschehen das Ergießen des Sonnenlichtes über die Vegetation der Erde und wieder das Zurückgehen des Sonnenlichtes. Er fühlt mit, wenn den Pflanzen das Sonnenlicht entzogen wird. Wie man bei einem Kinde, das sehr an der Mutter hängt, mitfühlt, wenn dem Kinde für eine Zeit der Anblick der Mutter entzogen wird, so fühlt der Seher mit, wenn den Pflanzen das Sonnenlicht entzogen wird. Dieses Mitfühlen mit der Pflanzenwelt der Erde ist etwas, was sich für den Seher einstellt, so daß also der Seher, der den Punkt erreicht hat, von dem gestern gesprochen worden ist, sich solche Empfindungen aneignet, wodurch er gleichsam zum «Mitfühler» wird des Verhältnisses zwischen Erdenwachstum, Pflanzenwachstum —- und Sonne und Sternen.
Dadurch, daß man dies zu fühlen beginnt, ist man auch geeignet, etwas anderes zu fühlen. Dieses andere kann man fühlen, wenn man von der spirituellen Welt wieder zurückkehrt in die physische Welt, und man zum Beispiel einem schlafenden Menschen oder einem wachenden Menschen gegenübersteht. Auch wenn man sozusagen die Schergabe ausgeschaltet hat und nur die physische Welt sieht mit dem schlafenden Menschen, auch dann kommt das Gefühl, daß dieser Mensch, der da schlafend ist, von etwas verlassen ist. Sehr ähnlich ist dieses Gefühl dem, das man bekommt, wenn zum Beispiel im Herbst die Sonnenstrahlen sich so verändern gegenüber der Vegetation, wie dies eben der Fall ist. Ganz ähnlich stellen sich die Gefühle gegenüber der sonnen- und sternenverlassenen Natur, wie die Gefühle zu dem von seinem Ich und astralischen Leib verlassenen Menschenleib. Und nun erlebt man das Eigentümliche, daß der Mensch in dieser Beziehung unabhängig ist von seinen physischen Himmelsverhältnissen, während das Pflanzenwachstum abhängig ist von den physischen Himmelsverhältnissen.
Von der Pflanze wissen wir, daß sie nicht in beliebiger Weise, durch ihre eigenen Innenverhältnisse etwa, einschlafen kann: sie muß warten, bis die Sonne am Abend hinuntersinkt, oder sie muß warten, bis der Herbst kommt. Vom Menschen wissen wir, daß er in unserer Zeit, und besonders in unseren Kulturverhältnissen, sich gar nicht mehr nach der Sonne richtet. Wir könnten zum Beispiel gar nicht hier zusammen sein, wenn wir uns ebenso wie die Pflanze nach dem Sonnenstande richten müßten. Beim Menschen ist derselbe Übergang, der bei der Pflanze noch streng geregelt ist durch den Sonnen- und Sternengang, emanzipiert von Sonnen- und Sternengang. Zwar wenn wir hinauskommen in ländliche, ursprüngliche Verhältnisse und gewahr werden, wie nicht nur die Hühner, sondern auch die Menschen auf dem Dorfe zur bestimmten Zeit schlafen gehen und zur bestimmten Zeit aufwachen, so fühlen wir da noch etwas, man möchte sagen, wie pflanzenhaftes Zusammenhängen der Menschen mit dem Gange der Sonne und der Sterne. Aber wir können es nicht anders beurteilen, als daß im Laufe der Menschheitsentwickelung der Mensch sich emanzipiert von dem kosmischen Gang der Ereignisse, daß er mit seinem physischen Leib und Ätherleib in jenen Zustand, in den die Pflanze nur durch den Sonnen- und Sternenstand kommt, aus inneren Verhältnissen heraus kommen kann, ich will nicht sagen aus der inneren Willkür heraus. Der Mensch kann seinen «Nachmittagsschlaf» machen aus seinen eigenen inneren Verhältnissen heraus, das heißt, er kann aus seinem physischen Leib und Ätherleib herauskommen. Die Pflanze kann nicht in einer beliebigen Weise einen Nachmittagsschlaf machen, sie muß sich ganz nach dem Gang der Sterne richten. Der Mensch aber, was ist er denn, wenn er im Bette liegt als physischer Leib und Ätherleib, und heraußen sind sein Ich und sein astralischer Leib? Physischer Leib und Ätherleib haben dann den Wert der Pflanze. Die Pflanze hat physischen Leib und Ätherleib. Wenn wir nun alles, was jetzt gesagt ist, zusammenhalten, so werden Sie sagen: Habe ich eine Pflanze vor mir, dann wächst allmählich die Pflanze zusammen mit Sonnen- und Sternenwelt, wird eins damit. Man muß also die Empfindung hinlenken von der Pflanze zu den Sternenwelten, zur Sonne. Dieselbe Empfindungsrichtung muß man entwickeln von dem schlafenden Menschen, der auch physischer Leib und Ätherleib ist, also vom Werte einer Pflanze ist, zu seinem Ich und astralischen Leib hin, die ganz unabhängig zunächst vom Sonnenstande außer dem physischen Leib und Ätherleib sind, wenn der Mensch schläft, genau wie die physische Sonne außerhalb des physischen Leibes und des Ätherleibes der Pflanze ist.
Was ich Ihnen jetzt auseinandergesetzt habe, erlebt man als Seher. Wenn man nun, ausgehend von solchen Empfindungen, willkürlich herbeiführt die Selbständigkeit des Ich und astralischen Leibes von physischem Leib und Ätherleib, wenn man es dahin gebracht hat, physischen Leib und Ätherleib willkürlich zu einer Art von Pflanze zu machen dadurch, daß man aus ihnen heraus ist, dann weiß man jetzt etwas ganz Sonderbares. Man weiß etwas, was sich nicht anders aussprechen läßt, als wie etwa die Sonne sprechen würde, wenn sie hinuntersehen würde auf die Pflanzen und sich denselben gegenüber sehen würde. Da könnte sie sagen: Ja, dieser physische Leib und Ätherleib der Pflanzen gehört zu mir; er gehört zu mir, weil erbraucht, was ich ihm zusenden kann! Genau wie die Sonne zur Pflanze, die unten wächst, sprechen würde, so kann das Ich des Menschen zu seinern physischen und Ätherleib sagen: Das gehört zu mir wie die Pflanze zur Sonne; ich bin wie eine Sonne für den physischen Leib und Ätherleib. Sonne für den physischen Leib und Ätherleib, — so lernt der Mensch mit Notwendigkeit sprechen von seinem Ich! Und ebenso wie er sprechen lernt von seinem Ich mit Bezug auf physischen Leib und Ätherleib, wie die Sonne zur Pflanze sprechen würde, so lernt er von seinem astralischen Leib so sprechen, wie der Mond und auch die Planeten zur Pflanze sprechen müßten. Das ist ein ganz besonderes Mysterienerlebnis, ein wichtiges Mysterienerlebnis.
In der Weise, wie ich es jetzt auseinandergelegt habe, ist dieses Mysterienerlebnis als unmittelbare Erfahrung - als wirkliches Erlebnis — zuerst gepflegt worden in den Mysterien des Zarathustra, und dann über die ganze Weltentwickelung hin bis wieder in die Mysterien des Heiligen Gral. Genannt wurde es immer, dieses Erlebnis, weil es der Mensch, namentlich während der ägyptischen Mysterienzeit, am deutlichsten hatte, wenn er schlafend um die Mitternacht geistig die Sonne schaute und sich mit den Kräften der Sonne so vereint fühlte, wie es jetzt charakterisiert worden ist, genannt wurde es «die Sonne um Mitternacht sehen»: Erleben des Sonnenhaften im eigenen Ich als eine Sonnenkraft, die auf physischen Leib und Ätherleib scheint.
Da haben wir jetzt ein Drittes, das allen den verschiedenen Mysterien der Welt gemeinsam war. Gemeinsam war und ist ihnen das «Herandringen bis an die Grenze des Todes», das «Erleben der elementaren Welt» und jetzt das «Schauen der Sonne um Mitternacht». Das ist ein technischer Ausdruck; das entsprechende Erlebnis setzt sich aus dem zusammen, was eben jetzt charakterisiert worden ist. Man muß sich nur klar darüber sein, daß in dem Augenblick, wo man sich also abgesondert fühlt und wie sternenhaft oder sonnenhaft dem eigenen Ätherleib und physischen Leib gegenüber fühlt, man nicht mehr die Sonne und die Sterne nur in ihren physischen Substantialitäten fühlt, sondern daß man die zu ihnen gehörigen geistigen Wesenheiten und Welten kennenlernt. Daß das Erleben des Kosmos ein Erleben in den geistigen Welten ist, darüber muß man sich klar sein.
Nun ist es wichtig und notwendig, um in regelrechter Weise in die höheren Welten hinaufzuwachsen, um wirklich die Erlebnisse zu haben, welche den spirituellen Realitäten entsprechen, daß man zuerst dasjenige durchmacht, was einen bekannt macht mit dem ganz Andersartigen der spirituellen Welt, als die physische Welt ist. Das lernt man zur Genüge kennen, wenn man die Folgen der Bequemlichkeit, die Folgen der Gewissenlosigkeit für das Erleben der Seele in der Zeit zwischen dem Tode und der neuen Geburt als Scher prüfen und beobachten kann, und noch manches andere. Durch diese Dinge muß der Seher sozusagen seine eigene Seele aufschließen für wesentlich andere Verhältnisse, als es die des physischen Planes sind. Dann erst wird er reif dazu, sich hineinzuleben in den geistigen Kosmos, zu erkennen den inneren Zusammenhang von Ich und astralischem Leib mit dem Kosmos. Alles frühere Theoretisieren ist eigentlich dann ein Spiel mit Worten, wenn der Moment eingetreten ist, der jetzt eben geschildert worden ist, wo man erlebt hat, daß der Mensch in bezug auf die höchsten Glieder seiner Wesenheit nicht nur zur Erde gehört, sondern heimisch ist im ganzen Kosmos. Man weiß dann auch, daß abends beim Einschlafen jeder Mensch, wenn er herausgetreten ist aus physischem Leib und Ätherleib, zusammenwächst mit Kräften, die kosmische Kräfte sind, sich Stärkung sucht aus der ganzen Welt und die Kräfte, die er vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen gesammelt hat, hereinträgt beim Aufwachen in die physische Welt, um sie dort zu verwenden. Den Zusammenhang mit dem Kosmos erlebt man auf einer bestimmten Stufe des Mysterienwesens. Von dieser Stufe wollen wir morgen ausgehen.
Second Lecture
What was explained here yesterday clearly showed how the ascent into the higher, spiritual worlds depends on the human being strengthening the inner forces of the soul life, so that through the exercises he undertakes for the purpose of rising into higher worlds, he develops forces in the soul that go far beyond what human beings need in ordinary life. That human beings must attain a certain strengthening of their soul forces in order to experience inner life and develop inner activity may already be seen from the fact that when human beings become independent of their physical bodies in ordinary life, that is, when they fall asleep, their souls immediately sink into unconsciousness. This means that in normal life, the human being does not have enough powers to truly develop consciousness and inner activity when the physical body and etheric body are no longer available to help him, when he has to live independently of his physical and etheric bodies, as in sleep. Meditation, concentration, and contemplation must work into that which becomes independent of the physical body and etheric body during ordinary sleep, those forces that lead to an illumination with consciousness of the I and the astral body, so that these can come to experience and learn independently of the physical body and etheric body. What human beings develop in their souls that is stronger than the forces of ordinary life is what enables them to achieve what was explained yesterday in the course of the lecture: after standing, as it were, before nothingness, to enter a new world, which he can experience by pouring out the spiritual substance of his soul into the vastness, just as a spider spins its web from itself, and by taking in the spiritual worlds that then appear before him.
Thus, after leaving the ordinary physical sensory world in this way, the human being has passed through a period of standing above an abyss — for that is what it is like when one feels oneself facing nothingness — into the realm of a new world. And in this new world, he now experiences not only different things, but he experiences them in a completely different way, in a different manner than he did in the physical-sensory world. We can start from a very ordinary experience on the physical plane. On the physical plane, the facts that are subject to the laws of nature and everything that is subject to the laws of morality appear to human beings as two completely separate realms of existence.
When we look out into the natural world in our ordinary physical life, even if we go up to the animal kingdom, we are always aware that we are asking about natural laws, about mere natural laws for events, but that we cannot actually apply any moral standards. For example, we do not ask why a rock crystal appears before us in such a way that we have a six-sided column, closed by two six-sided pyramids; we do not ask why this mineral substance combines in such a way that this crystal form emerges. We do not ask any other question than that we want a natural law as an answer. We do not ask: What good has the rock crystal done to become a rock crystal? We do not ask: What is the rock crystal's disposition? We do not apply moral laws to the mineral world, nor do we apply them to the plant world, except perhaps in a somewhat figurative way—and one might say that, in accordance with the sympathies of modern Darwinists, we also apply moral concepts to the animal kingdom. But what interests us most in the animal kingdom is natural law.
When we ascend to the human realm, we feel compelled to judge human beings according to the standards of benevolence, love, and the like. Separately, as I said, insofar as we stand in the physical world, we regard facts as caught in the web of natural events, and human actions and states of mind, to which we impose a standard of judgment according to moral laws, and we do not do well for the judgment of the physical plane when we mix these two series of facts together. Living on the physical plane, human beings then become accustomed to judging the world in this twofold manner. Therefore, after jumping over the abyss of nothingness, so to speak, it is not easy to pass into the spiritual world, where a completely different judgment is necessary: where, in fact, there is no separation between what could be called natural laws, similar to natural events on the physical plane, and purely moral events, which also exist only on the physical plane. Therefore, when the point mentioned yesterday has been reached, one must accustom oneself to judging what happens in the same way as we judge natural facts, but also in the same way as we judge moral facts in the physical world. The moral world and physical lawfulness—but here we do not mean “laws” in the sense of the natural laws that exist in the physical world—that is, the world of natural laws and the world of moral lawfulness merge when one enters this spiritual world.
This becomes immediately apparent, for example, when one is confronted with the realm that human beings pass through between death and a new birth. There, the seer can encounter — and will encounter, if he has come as far as was indicated yesterday — those souls who, after passing through the gate of death, undergo their development between death and a new birth. We then learn about the nature of these souls' experiences, and we must adopt completely different ways of thinking if we want to judge what these souls are experiencing. Let us illustrate this with a few examples.
There we find souls who, during a certain period between death and a new birth, have to endure very difficult living conditions. At first, as a seer, one has the impression that these souls—a certain category of souls—have become servants of quite terrible spiritual beings in the spiritual world, and that they have condemned themselves through their lives before death to this work in which they are servants of quite terrible spirits. As a seer, one gradually works one's way into understanding the difficult fate of these souls, and one does so in the following way. One develops within oneself a more intimate understanding of how human beings live in their physical lives from birth to death, how—as has often been explained in the course of our spiritual scientific lectures—through an inner law of experience, so-called natural death is brought about when human beings have, so to speak, exhausted their life forces in old age. We do not want to speak about this death now. But there are other kinds of death. There are those deaths through which human beings can be snatched away in the prime of life by external accidents or by illness. We do not all die after our life span is fulfilled. People die at every age, and we must ask ourselves: Where do the forces come from that underlie these deaths at different ages? We understand that when a person's life span is fulfilled, they must die. We have often seen how this is motivated from the spiritual worlds. But everything that happens in the physical world happens through influences from the spiritual world. Even deaths that occur at what we consider to be an untimely hour happen through influences from the spiritual world; that is, they are brought about by forces and beings of the spiritual world.
We also notice something else in the physical world that we must consider if we want to understand the time between death and rebirth. We see the physical world riddled with diseases and epidemics, and we see that in earlier times this physical world was riddled with epidemics that are well known. One need only consider the devastating effects on the older European population when the plague, cholera, and the like swept across the land. At the present time, we are still relatively fortunate in this respect, so to speak. However, certain epidemics are already in preparation, as we have pointed out in our lectures. So we see death sweeping across the earth at what seems to be an untimely hour, and we also see diseases and epidemics sweeping across the earth. And the seer sees souls living between death and a new birth, helping those spirits who carry from the supersensible worlds into the sensory world the forces that bring epidemics, diseases, and, so to speak, untimely deaths. It is one of the most terrible impressions to perceive human souls at certain times of their lives between death and a new birth, who have become servants of the evil spirits of sickness and death, and who have condemned themselves to become such servants of the evil spirits of sickness and death.
If one now tries to trace the lives of such people back to the time before they passed through the gate of death, one always finds that those who have brought the aforementioned fate upon themselves have lacked conscientiousness and a sense of responsibility in their lives on the physical plane. It is a constant law, which is revealed to the seer, that souls who pass through the gate of death and who previously had unscrupulous dispositions or lived unscrupulously, at a certain time between death and new birth make themselves servants of those who must cooperate in bringing epidemics, diseases, and untimely deaths into the physical-sensory world. Here we see natural events to which these souls are subject, and of which we cannot say that they are like crystallization or like the collision of two elastic balls or the like, independent of any moral errors; but in what happens there, in what these souls show us, we see how in the higher worlds that which acts as natural law in the higher worlds mixes with the moral world order. How things happen in the higher worlds depends on beings to whom one thing or another happens, depending on how they have placed themselves morally in the world.
Or, to give another example, one can look at what the seer learns by focusing on a very widespread characteristic among human beings: it is what can be described as comfort, as a desire for comfort. Comfort, the desire for comfort, is truly a more widespread characteristic than is commonly believed. People do much more out of convenience than one might think. People are convenient in their thinking, convenient in their outward actions and behavior. And they appear particularly convenient when they are required to change anything in their thinking or in their actions and behavior. If people were not so comfortable in the depths of their souls, it would not happen so often that when they were asked to relearn something, they resisted. They resisted because it is uncomfortable to relearn something. It was inconvenient, after having thought for so long that the earth stood still and the sun and the stars moved around it, to suddenly hear about the movement of the earth from Copernicus and to have to relearn everything! It was inconvenient to have the ground pulled out from under one's feet — at least theoretically. And everything that rebelled against this new idea at that time sprang from intellectual laziness, from a desire for comfort, because all relearning is uncomfortable. But one need only look at everyday life to find the “virtue”—which is actually a vice—of comfort widespread. In recent times, we have already gained some insight into the enormous spread of comfort among humanity. This can be seen from the following.
There are many theories of national economy. I do not want to discuss them now. But there is, for example, that economic theory which has now been largely abandoned, but which once played a major role, based on the assumption that all people are fundamentally seeking to compete freely in the exchange of goods and the like, and that the best way to live together socially would be if there were completely free competition. Other, more socialist theories have since gained ground. Recently, however, some economists have pointed out that all these theories are actually highly one-sided. For what happens in the world in the exchange of goods, in social coexistence, is subject much more to the law of convenience than to the law of competition or the law of progress, even more than to the laws of conscious egoism! So even in economics, the recognition of the law of convenience is gaining ground. It is to be welcomed that even in such a field people are finally becoming reasonable and drawing attention to something that is there and that can only be overlooked if one adopts an ostrich policy towards life.
Complacency is a general, widespread characteristic of human beings. And if one follows the souls that were connected with it after death, one sees how this addiction to complacency continues after death, and how human beings then have to live through a province, as it were, in which they even have to spend a certain time between death and rebirth because, as an effect of this complacency, as a result of this comfort, they become servants—as souls—of the god or gods of resistance, those gods who oppose all the corresponding forces of development. And these are again the spirits who are under the dominion of Ahriman. Ahriman has various tasks, including that of bringing forces from the spiritual world into the physical world, which cause resistance in physical life. Thus, on the one hand, people are comfortable, but on the other hand, the life of comfortable people turns out to be such that if one wants to do something, one again encounters a general law of the world. Resistance is everywhere, even if it is not in the grotesque form once described by a German poet and aesthete. But it is there in its most tragic form. A German poet described it as the “malice of the object.” This “malice of the object” is particularly evident, for example, when a preacher stands in the pulpit and has to deliver an incredibly long tirade; a fly lands on his nose—and he has to sneeze terribly. That is the “malice of the object.” But it really comes to the fore when people who are unlucky in this respect are exposed to this “malice of objects” at every turn. Friedrich Theodor Vischer once wrote a novel in which someone is constantly exposed to this “malice of objects.”
In reality, however, these things range from the grotesque to the tragic. All resistance is directed from the spiritual world, and the lord of resistance is Ahriman. And because souls are complacent, they make themselves servants of Ahriman for a certain time between death and rebirth. All in all, it is not so terrible to look at the punishments of a comfortable life as it is when souls have to live oppressed by the spirits of sickness and death. But there is at least a concept of how morality and natural law intermingle as soon as we ascend to the higher worlds.
These are the kinds of experiences one goes through when one has reached the point described yesterday. And one must go through these experiences in order to experience other necessary conditions — we will see why they are necessary — so that one can progress in relation to higher experiences. The matter of ascending into the higher worlds is not such that one says: Today you begin your ascent into the higher worlds, and then you ascend step by step — rather, for those who want to become initiates, this happens, so to speak, unnoticed by the outer events between the actions and facts of outer life. So you do ascend bit by bit into the higher worlds, but it is such that you step out again from this standing within the higher worlds and live in the ordinary world. But one then carries something from one's experiences in the spiritual worlds back into the physical world. When one has become an initiate, one sees oneself walking around in the physical world, despite having become an initiate, imbued with feelings and sensations that are different from those one has when one is not a seer.
It must simply be ensured through training—and this is also ensured with proper training—that one is not confused in ordinary life by the change in feelings and emotions. It must be achieved that when one is a seer, one is only a seer for the higher worlds, and that one does not carry into the ordinary physical world what one must have as character and soul mood for the higher worlds. This should not be done in any way. One should be able to become a seer and still be a completely reasonable person in the ordinary physical world, just like everyone else. Therefore, people who are predisposed to enthusiasm are the least suitable for training as seers. Enthusiasts, abstract idealists who, so to speak, already experience in the physical world what is indeed justified in the spiritual world, i.e., people who already “hear the grass grow” in the physical world, who perceive everywhere, so to speak, what only enthusiasts perceive, what the sober, reality-oriented nature does not perceive, People who easily deceive themselves — there are many more people of this type than one usually thinks — are not suited to the training of the seer's spirit. People who stand with both feet in reality, who also understand something of reality and judge things as they are, are best suited to the training of the seer's spirit. This already indicates how one must not allow one's feelings and sensations, which are necessary for the physical world, to be confused by what one acquires for the ascent to the higher worlds.
So you retain certain feelings and sensations that you have when you become a seer. In a sense, you have become a different person for the physical world. But in order for this not to harm you, you must also apply these new feelings and sensations to things in the outer physical world that you did not take into account before, that you did not pay attention to before. Then, when you have become a seer and have cultivated certain feelings and sensations within yourself, you will gradually find that your relationship to nature has changed somewhat—not in a bad way, but in a good way. For example, you will feel differently about the plant world, the spreading carpet of plants on the earth, than you did before. In the past, you looked at plants and were delighted by their greenness, by the abundance and color of their flowers, by everything that the plant world offered you insofar as it grew out of the earth and delighted the eye and perhaps other senses as well. Let us not think of some sober-minded person in this connection, but of a person who can truly enjoy to the full what the beauty of the earth's plant cover can do for the soul; and let us not think that anyone who has become a seer would have to lose even the slightest bit of the feelings he previously had toward the earth's plant cover. But something else arises in him. When he now looks at the plant world, he feels a certain intimate relationship between the plant world and what is outside the plant world in nature: with the sun, also with the moon and with the other stars. In a sense, what spreads out before him as a green carpet of plants grows together in his perception, in his view, with what is in the universe.
Today, people have abstract ideas about what is meant here. Every person today, if they have learned even a little, knows how the plant cover is connected with the action of the light that the sun sends down, how plants cannot grow without the specific effects of the sun's rays. And people can sense that it is not only what happens on the sun that has an influence on the plant world, but that the world of the stars also has an influence. Of course, this is where people tend to fall into disbelief. But there was a great and significant mind in a time not so long ago who, from a purely scientific point of view, studied the influence of the moon on the weather and thus also on the vegetation of the earth. I am referring to Gustav Theodor Fechner. He did not attempt to determine from the standpoint of superstition, but from the standpoint of purely empirical observations, how differently the new moon and the full moon, for example, affect the rainfall on Earth, and so on. There were many people who wanted to demonstrate their scientific attitude by ridiculing Gustav Theodor Fechner and his investigations of the moon. One who laughed particularly loudly was the famous botanist Schleiden, who was of the opinion that it certainly did not depend on the full moon and the new moon whether there was more or less rain over a period of fourteen days. Gustav Theodor Fechner then said—this was at a time when conditions were still somewhat patriarchal compared to today—that we should decide the matter indirectly through the women, as learned men were very prone to arguing. Since conditions were still somewhat patriarchal at that time, the two women, Professor Schleiden's wife and Professor Fechner's wife, always had vessels set up in their courtyard in Leipzig to collect rainwater for washing, and Gustav Theodor Fechner suggested that the women should decide the question of which of them collected the most rainwater by having Professor Schleiden's wife always put her dishes out in the courtyard at new moon and his wife always at full moon. It would then become clear which of them collected the most rainwater. And lo and behold, Professor Schleiden's wife did not agree with her husband at all, because she got the smaller amount of rainwater!
So, I would say, an ironic decision was made, but we do not want to attach any importance to it now. Later, however, it will become apparent that everything, sunlight and solar heat as well as other stellar influences, has an effect on the plant world. However, this is theoretical knowledge for the time being. For Scher, however, it turns out that he has a direct sense of how the influences coming from the earth and from the stars grow together. Ultimately, he regards them as one, and he feels vividly in the events the pouring of sunlight over the vegetation of the earth and then the retreat of the sunlight. He feels when the sunlight is taken away from the plants. Just as one feels for a child who is very attached to its mother when the child is deprived of the sight of its mother for a time, so the seer feels when the sunlight is taken away from the plants. This empathy with the plant world of the earth is something that develops in the seer, so that the seer who has reached the point we spoke of yesterday acquires such feelings that he becomes, as it were, an “empath” of the relationship between the growth of the earth, the growth of plants, and the sun and stars.
By beginning to feel this, one is also able to feel something else. This something else can be felt when one returns from the spiritual world to the physical world and stands, for example, before a sleeping or waking human being. Even if one has, so to speak, switched off the sensory apparatus and sees only the physical world with the sleeping person, one still has the feeling that this person who is sleeping is abandoned by something. This feeling is very similar to the feeling one gets when, for example, in autumn the sun's rays change in relation to the vegetation, as is the case here. The feelings toward nature abandoned by the sun and stars are very similar to the feelings toward the human body abandoned by its ego and astral body. And now we experience the peculiarity that in this respect, human beings are independent of their physical celestial conditions, while plant growth is dependent on physical celestial conditions.
We know from plants that they cannot fall asleep in any arbitrary way, for example through their own internal conditions: they must wait until the sun sets in the evening, or they must wait until autumn comes. We know that human beings in our time, and especially in our cultural conditions, no longer orient themselves to the sun. For example, we could not be here together if we had to orient ourselves to the position of the sun, as plants do. In human beings, the same transition that is still strictly regulated in plants by the course of the sun and stars has been emancipated from the course of the sun and stars. When we go out into rural, primitive surroundings and notice how not only chickens but also people in villages go to sleep at a certain time and wake up at a certain time, we still feel something, one might say, like a plant-like connection between humans and the course of the sun and stars. But we cannot judge it otherwise than that in the course of human evolution, human beings have emancipated themselves from the cosmic course of events, that with their physical body and etheric body they can emerge from inner conditions into that state which plants can only reach through the position of the sun and stars. I do not want to say through inner arbitrariness. Man can take his “afternoon nap” out of his own inner circumstances, that is, he can come out of his physical body and etheric body. The plant cannot take an afternoon nap in any way it pleases; it must conform entirely to the course of the stars. But what is a human being when they lie in bed as a physical body and etheric body, and their ego and astral body are outside? The physical body and etheric body then have the value of a plant. A plant has a physical body and an etheric body. If we now hold together everything that has been said, you will say: If I have a plant in front of me, then the plant gradually grows together with the sun and star worlds, becoming one with them. So you have to direct your feeling from the plant to the star worlds, to the sun. You have to develop the same direction of feeling from the sleeping human being, who is also a physical body and an etheric body, and therefore has the value of a plant, to his I and astral body, which are completely independent of the position of the sun outside the physical body and etheric body when the human being is asleep, just as the physical sun is outside the physical body and etheric body of the plant.
What I have now explained to you is what one experiences as a seer. If, starting from such sensations, one arbitrarily brings about the independence of the ego and the astral body from the physical body and the etheric body, if one has succeeded in arbitrarily turning the physical body and the etheric body into a kind of plant by removing oneself from them, then one now knows something very strange. You know something that cannot be expressed in any other way than how the sun would speak if it looked down on the plants and saw them in front of itself. It could say: Yes, this physical body and etheric body of the plants belongs to me; it belongs to me because it consumes what I send to it! Just as the sun would speak to the plant growing below, so the human ego can say to its physical and etheric bodies: This belongs to me as the plant belongs to the sun; I am like a sun for the physical body and etheric body. Sun for the physical body and etheric body — this is how the human being necessarily learns to speak of his ego! And just as he learns to speak of his ego in relation to his physical body and etheric body, as the sun would speak to the plant, so he learns to speak of his astral body as the moon and also the planets must speak to the plant. This is a very special mystery experience, an important mystery experience.
In the way I have now explained it, this mystery experience as an immediate experience — as a real experience — was first cultivated in the mysteries of Zarathustra, and then throughout the entire world evolution until it reappeared in the mysteries of the Holy Grail. This experience was always called, because it was most clearly experienced by human beings, especially during the Egyptian mystery period, when they looked spiritually at the sun at midnight while asleep and felt united with the forces of the sun in the way that has now been characterized, it was called “seeing the sun at midnight”: Experiencing the sun in one's own self as a sun force shining on the physical body and etheric body.
Now we have a third element that was common to all the various mysteries of the world. What they had and still have in common is “approaching the threshold of death,” “experiencing the elemental world,” and now “seeing the sun at midnight.” This is a technical expression; the corresponding experience consists of what has just been described. One must only be clear that at the moment when one feels separated and star-like or sun-like in relation to one's own etheric body and physical body, one no longer feels the sun and the stars only in their physical substantiality, but that one gets to know the spiritual beings and worlds that belong to them. One must be clear that the experience of the cosmos is an experience in the spiritual worlds.
Now, in order to grow up properly into the higher worlds and to really have experiences that correspond to spiritual realities, it is important and necessary to first go through what makes one familiar with the spiritual world, which is completely different from the physical world. One learns this well enough when one can test and observe the consequences of comfort and of unscrupulousness for the soul's experience in the period between death and rebirth, and many other things besides. Through these things, the seer must, so to speak, open his own soul to conditions that are essentially different from those of the physical plane. Only then does he become ready to live his way into the spiritual cosmos, to recognize the inner connection between the I and the astral body with the cosmos. All previous theorizing is actually just playing with words when the moment has come that has just been described, when one has experienced that, in relation to the highest members of his being, man not only belongs to the earth but is at home in the whole cosmos. One then also knows that in the evening, when falling asleep, every human being, having stepped out of the physical body and etheric body, grows together with forces that are cosmic forces, seeks strength from the whole world, and carries the forces gathered between falling asleep and waking up into the physical world upon awakening in order to use them there. The connection with the cosmos is experienced at a certain stage of the mystery teachings. We will start from this stage tomorrow.