Metamorphoses of the Soul

By Rudolf Steiner

This vintage book contains a collection of fascinating lectures by Rudolf Steiner. They chiefly concern the goals of spiritual science and the concepts of truth, anger, and reverence. The lectures also deal with the exploration of the human condition, egoism, asceticism and illness, and Buddha and Christ. This volume is highly recommended for those with an interest in philosophy and the work of Rudolf Steiner. Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (1861–1925) was an Austrian author, philosopher and esotericist. The lectures include: “The Mission of Spiritual Science”, “The Mission of Anger”, “The Mission of Truth”, “The Mission of Reverence”, “Human Character”, “Asceticism and Illness”, “Human Egoism”, “Buddha and Christ”, and “Something about the Moon in the Light of Spiritual Science”. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Home Farm Books
• Release date: Jul 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528769617

Rudolf Steiner

Nineteenth and early twentieth century philosopher.

Book preview

PREFACE

RUDOLF STEINER’S WORK AT BERLIN

MARIE STEINER

THE following are new contributions from the unlimited treasure of Rudolf Steiner’s Berlin lectures. To extract them thus from their organic whole is like boring with a sharp instrument into a noble substance and breaking off fragments of glistening marble. Life flows in its veins and its whiteness betokens the purity of its origin. The store of wisdom is given into our hands and we must learn with its help to form an active, living entity in the soul, to create works of art, to develop strength of ego-consciousness which, fired by the living spark, becomes a flame of life. We can become wise through handling this immaculate store. These lectures, which will delight the lover of beauty in his inmost soul, were given by Rudolf Steiner in the grey city of Berlin. What can have made Berlin a centre radiating the fire of life which, when received, raises humanity to a higher stage of existence? Was it the heart-beat of his untiring power of work and his life of unresting labour, which in spite of dust, hard pavements and driving haste could harbour souls capable of receiving still higher benefits than those smilingly bestowed by a friendlier environment? Was it the comparative freedom left to the individual by the hurry and rush in which each is indifferent for his neighbour? Or would it have been possible and was the opportunity lost of hearing the word, in the right moment, and acquiring the knowledge which might have saved Berlin, Germany and Europe?

The word remained unspoken and unheard, relinquishing its power to the future and abandoning the present to its destiny. Its utterance, even in Berlin, was confined behind walls raised on high by the silence of public opinion. And when the silence apparently failed in its purpose there was always cheap ridicule and blasphemy at hand. Public burnings do not take place nowadays but there are cheaper and more efficient means of killing without making martyrs; there is the official authority of those who tell us what we have to believe, and the Press, and the Fraternities who spread both openly and secretly anything they choose. Should all these prove insufficient there was still the holocaust¹ left, and it was this which placed the crown upon Rudolf Steiner’s life’s work.

Nevertheless, until the point was reached when the building he had erected, the Goetheanum, attracted the notice and provoked the hatred of the world, Rudolf Steiner worked on with never-failing sense of duty at establishing the foundations upon which his faultless edifice of thought rested. Never a word he spoke with an eye to success or without full responsibility before the spiritual world. This feeling of responsibility and this respect for the conditions of growth underlying the powers of human understanding never deserted Rudolf Steiner, whether he stood before children and teachers, himself as a teacher, or whether, as a speaker he paid regards to the capacities and possibilities of his listeners. He always counted upon the best and highest in the human being, supporting, guiding and raising it. His personal mildness of manner, his respect for the freedom of the individual and his joy at every talent shown, were so great that very often a pupil would lose his sense of proportion and take what he had received and was now merely reflecting, to be his own power, thus giving rise to antagonistic inner forms which could not but grieve and disappoint the teacher. Yet it was the teacher’s duty always to believe in the pupil’s better self, while the spiritual investigator kept his thoughts free from every negative element. The tragic failure of a pupil in his environment always redounded upon the teacher; for the pupil, however, it meant maturity in the course of his career, and then wisdom. And this was Rudolf Steiner’s task and mission; spiritually to enliven human consciousness as it lies deadened by modern intellectualism, and to develop in the Ego, through pangs of birth, the organ for free spiritual activity.

It was in the great, prosaic, strange city Berlin that Rudolf Steiner spoke as follows on transformations of the human soul, these lectures being taken from the whole series held in the winter and spring months of 1909 and 1910. They release us from our imperfections, for we are shown how to consider these as preliminary stages to later perfections if we are but willing to become transformed. This is work of the Ego in the Cosmos within the sphere of lawful transformation to ever higher stages; work of the Ego in itself, supported by the necessity of cosmic law. In the macrologos the micrologos which creates its own word in free spiritual activity and, with will to knowledge, embodies its word in the connected cosmic whole. Wonder-struck we measure the expanse and depth of the cosmic word which Rudolf Steiner speaks to us. Ever it grows to the height of a cathedral and spans the horizon. This speech has power which can stun and destroy a weak race, power which weakness would fain shun. But out of this process of seering and this pulverization of dross, there rises, if it is only recognized, the will to re-birth. The stifling mantle of materialism lay heavily upon humanity as Rudolf Steiner spoke his life-renewing word in Berlin.

The general weakness of soul proved a barrier which none pierced. The distant flashes of the approaching storm were indeed visible and the heavy clouds of national and class hatred were gathering ever more threateningly but, through the authority of the powers that be, dull unresponsiveness remained engrained in the souls of men who had not yet learnt what freedom is and where to look for it.

‘We do not need freedom; we only need reasonable compulsion. . . .’ Such was the motto of those labour leaders in the educational institutions where Rudolf Steiner spoke to workers. The will of the workers could not retain him there, for the will of the leaders to unfreedom was stronger. On all sides the representatives of heavy materialism were on the defensive, bitterly resentful.

The disaster overtook humanity before men could awaken and learn to perceive—disaster the effect of which must apparently reach the utmost limit, as in Eastern Europe and now in China. The dragon is firmly coiled round our unfortunate world; the dragon-slayer is the object of deadly hatred.

The time in which we live is so great and tremendous that it escapes us; we cannot survey what ranges above us,—or we overlook it. Thus we did not see him who was greater than his time. But now that he is no longer among us, we are precisely offered the possibility of gaining perspective, of appreciating historical values, of distinguishing between relative greatness and of estimating the distance between his mind and ours. Compare those who were raised in triumph because they were a danger to none, with this greatest one who provoked the hatred of the times because he spoke the truth.

Rudolf Steiner, his work and mission, can be understood only within the great connected scheme of history, in which the march of civilization unfolds, between each rise and fall, in an ever ascending spiral. At each turning point of spiritual life the leader appears who has comprised the future in himself and therefore remains incomprehensible to the present. The leader of to-day had to inform humanity that the means of salvation were now to a large extent given into the hands of men; men must find in themselves the will to effect their own rescue, for the moment of freedom from instinct, thrust and compulsion was at hand; freedom bought by the fall into the greatest ignominy, the slavery of matter which, however, can bring us knowledge and consciousness united with will.

These are quiet and upward paths, followed by the spirit of these lectures; paths of beauty and purity by which humanity ascends to sacred sanctuaries. Prometheus, Pandora, Titans and Gods rise before us. It is as though we tread the sacred ways of Greek temples,—upward to the summits of art and beyond these into the spirit. The pioneer of these ways on our behalf chose for himself the martyr’s path and pursued it to the end. We now keep on our way so strongly supported by the stream of his power that we may perhaps experience something like a shudder of that awe and reverence which such uplifting and upbuilding power of love should arouse in us.

These lectures show us the transformation of psychic qualities from lower to higher stages; they give only a section of the manifold mutual interactions of the soul-forces which are described further in the lectures of that winter. The latter will be published singly or in series according to their content. Art and poetry envelop this first series, forming the background for each consideration and uplifting us to warm heights of soul-experience. Some of the succeeding publications will be devoted to severer questions of psychological specialization, others again to the sphere of religious experience. Above everything which these lectures give, the words stand:

Know thyself.

Know the world in thine inward self.

Know thyself in the stream of the world.

The observation of the soul and its life is only possible for one whose spiritual eye is opened. The investigator of the soul must be in a position, so to speak, to make observations in soul-substance.

¹ The burning down of the Goetheanum.

METAMORPHOSES OF THE SOUL

I

THE MISSION OF ANGER

WHEN we penetrate more deeply into the human soul and consider its nature from the point of view here intended, we are repeatedly reminded of the saying of the Greek sage Herakleitos: ‘The soul’s end, thou canst never find it, though thou searchest all paths; of such depth is the soul’s being.’ We speak here of the soul and the soul’s life, not from the standpoint of current psychology and psychic teaching, but from the point of view of spiritual science. Spiritual science stands for the existence of a positively real spiritual world behind all that is outwardly revealed to the senses and to the mind therewith connected, this spiritual world being the source and fundamental principle of outward existence. Furthermore it holds that the investigation of this spiritual world is within the reach of man. ‘Occult science’ does not contend that knowledge is circumscribed by any boundaries whatever; it puts the question: how are we to transform our own selves in order to penetrate deeper into this world and to obtain a more comprehensive experience thereof? Spiritual science must ever again point to that great event which enables a man to become a spiritual investigator and to direct his gaze into the spiritual worlds even as the physical investigator, with his microscope, observes the physical world. In their bearing upon the spiritual world, Goethe’s words are indeed true:

Secretly, in the light of day,

Nature’s veil may not be lifted.

Whate’er to thine enquiring spirit

She freely will not reveal,

Thou canst not forcibly extract it

Not with levers, not with screws.

Of course, the investigator in the sense of spiritual science is not equipped with any instrument possessing lenses or other component parts. His soul, it is, which he must transform into an instrument; he then experiences that mighty moment when his soul is awakened and he can perceive a spiritual world, as a blind man, after a successful operation, becomes gifted with sight and perceives a world which was hitherto hidden from him. Again, we have often emphasized the fact that not everyone need be a spiritual investigator in order to understand and appreciate what the Initiate has to impart. When knowledge resulting from spiritual investigation is communicated, no more is required from the listener than an unbiased sense of truth and ordinary logic. Investigation requires the clairvoyant eye of the seer; understanding and appreciation of what is communicated requires a healthy sense of truth; natural unprejudiced feelings; natural common sense. It is essential, therefore, that we should understand psychic teaching and psychic observation in the sense of this spiritual investigation when we, in the course of these lectures, come to speak of certain qualities of the human soul possessing general interest. As the investigation of hydrogen, oxygen and other chemical substances presupposes the acquisition of certain faculties, so too, observation of the soul and its life is only possible for one whose spiritual eye is opened. The investigator of the soul must be in a position, so to speak, to make observations in soul-substance. In this connection we must avoid regarding the soul as some indefinite and nebulous thing in which feelings, thoughts and volitions whirl about; indeed, it will be advisable for us to renew acquaintance, in outline, with what has been said here on the same subject in previous lectures.

Man, as we see him before us, is a far more complicated being than is held by exoteric science. For spiritual science the knowledge supplied by exterior physical observation covers only a part of the being of man, namely, his exterior physical body which he has in common with all his mineral surroundings. The same laws are here in force and the same substances operate as in the outer physical and mineral world. As a result of observation, however, and not on the strength of mere logical inference, spiritual science recognizes, beyond this body, a second member of the being of man, which we call the etheric or life-body. Only a short reference can be made to-day to this componency underlying human constitution, the task we have set ourselves being quite different; nevertheless, the knowledge of this componency must be the foundation upon which we build. Man possesses this etheric or life-body in common with all things gifted with life. I said that the spiritual investigator, that is, one who had transformed his soul into an instrument for the perception of spiritual worlds, is acquainted with this etheric or life-body from immediate observation. Nevertheless, a healthy sense of truth, unperverted by contemporary prejudices will also ensure its recognition. Take the physical body; it harbours the same physical and chemical laws as the outer physical and mineral world. When do these physical laws become manifest to us? When the human being is before us in a lifeless state. The laws peculiar to the physical body are revealed to us when man passes through the portal of death: these are the laws which dissolve the body, dominating it quite otherwise than in the period between birth and death. These same laws are always present in the human physical body and if the latter does not obey them it is for the good reason that, in the period between birth and death, an antagonist of dissolution, in the person of the etheric or life-body, is present within the physical body.

A third member of the entity of man can then be distinguished: the vehicle of pleasure and pain, joy and grief, of lusts, desires, passions,—of all manifestations, generally speaking, designated as being of the soul (not the manifestations themselves but their vehicle). Man shares this feature with all beings gifted with a certain form of consciousness: with the animals. Astral or consciousness body is the name we give to this third element of the human entity. This exhausts what may be called the bodily part of man in its threefold aspect: physical body, etheric or life body, astral or consciousness body.

Within these bodies we recognize that feature of man which raises him to the summit of creation and which is unique in him, unshared by all else. It has often been pointed out that our language possesses a single little word by which we are directly guided to this inner being of man, whereby he is the crown of earthly creation. Everyone can call these flowers ‘flowers,’ the clock ‘clock,’ the desk ‘desk’ and so on; but one word we have which can never sound upon our ear as a name if we ourselves are designated; as a name designating ourselves it must issue from our own