In a man who has brought through
death no idealistic thoughts or feelings, no human love or true
piety, something of the soul-and-spirit has perished as a result
of the antipathy and chilling reception meted out by the higher
world. A man who now again approaches the realm of the Archangels
in the right way has received into him the power to work effectively
in his subsequent life on Earth, to make proper use of his body;
a man who has not brought such experiences with him will be imbued
by the Angels with a longing for earthly life which remains more
unconscious. A very great deal depends upon this. Upon it depends
to what people, to what language - mother-tongue - the man descends
in his forthcoming earthly existence. This urge towards a particular
people, a particular mother-tongue may have been implanted in
him deeply and inwardly or more superficially. So that on his
descent a man is either permeated with deep and inward love for
what will become his mother-tongue, or he enters more automatically
into what he will have to express later on through his organs
of speech.
It makes a great difference
in which of these two ways a man has been destined for the language
that will be his in the coming earthly life. He who before his
earthly life, during his second passage through the realm of
the Angels, can be permeated with a really inward love for his
mother-tongue, assimilates it as though it were part of his very
being. He becomes one with it. This love is absolutely natural
to him; it is a love born of the soul; he grows into his language
and race as into a natural home. If however a man has grown into
it the other way during the descent to his next earthly life,
he will arrive on the Earth loving his language merely out of
instinct and lower impulses. Lacking the true, inward love for
his language and his people, he will be prone to an aggressive
patriotism connected with his bodily existence. It makes a great
difference whether we grow into race and language with the tranquil,
pure love of one who unites himself inwardly with his folk and
language, or whether we grow into them more automatically, and
out of passions and instincts express love for our folk and our
language. The former conditions never come to expression in chauvinism
or a superficial and aggressive form of patriotism. A true and
inward love for race and language expresses itself naturally,
and is thoroughly consistent with real and universal human love.
Feeling for internationalism or cosmopolitanism is never stultified
by this inner love for a language and people. When, however,
a man grows into his language more automatically, when through
his instincts and impulses he develops an over-fervid, organic,
animal-like love for language and people, false nationalism and
chauvinism arise, with their external emphasis upon race and
nationality.
At the present time especially,
it is necessary to study from the standpoint of life between
death and a new birth what we encounter in the outer world in
our life between birth and death. For the way we come down into
race and language through the stream of heredity, through birth,
depends upon how we encounter, for the second time, the realm
of the Archangels.
Those who try to understand
life to-day from the spiritual vantage-point, know that the experience
arising in the period between death and a new birth when man
comes for the second time into the realm of the Angels, is very
important. All over the Earth to-day the peoples are adopting
a false attitude to nationality, race and language, and much
of what has arisen in the catastrophe of the second decade of
the twentieth century in the evolution of the Western people,
is only explicable when studied from such points of view. He
who studies life to-day in the light of anthroposophical Spiritual
Science must assume that in former earthly lives many men became
more and more deeply entangled in materialism. You all know that,
normally, the period between death and a new birth is lengthy.
But especially in the present phase of evolution, there are many
men whose life between their last death and their present birth
was only short, and in their former earthly life they had little
human love or idealism. Already in the former earthly life their
interests were merely utilitarian. And as a result, in their
second contact with the realm of the Angels between death and
a new birth, the seeds were laid for all that arises to-day in
such an evil form in the life of the West.
We shall have realised that
man can only be understood as a spatial being when it is known
that his form and structure derive from the realm of the fixed
stars and his life-stages from the planetary spheres. As a spatial
being, man draws the forces that are active in him, not only
from the Earth but from the whole Cosmos. Now just as it is necessary
to go beyond what is earthly in order to understand man as a
spatial being, so it is necessary to go beyond life between birth
and death in order to understand social life, racial life on
the Earth.
When we carefully observe
the life of to-day we find that although men claim their right
to freedom so vociferously, they are, in reality, inwardly unfree.
There is no truly free life in the activities which nowadays
manifest such obvious forces of decline; instincts and lower
impulses are the cause of the misery in social life. And when
this is perceived we are called upon to understand it.
Just as a second meeting with
the Archangels takes place, so when man once again approaches
earthly life, he enters into a more intimate union with his Angel.
But at first he is somewhat withdrawn from the realm of the Angels.
As long as he is in the realm of the Archangels, his Angel too
is more strongly bound with this realm. Man lives as it were
among the higher Hierarchies and as he draws near to a new birth
he is entrusted more and more to the realm of the Angels who
then lead him through the world of the Elements, through fire,
air, water and earth, to the stream of heredity. His Angel, leads
him to physical existence on Earth. His Angel can make him into
a man who is in a position to act freely, out of the depths of
his soul-and-spirit, if all the conditions described have been
fulfilled by the achievements of a former earthly life.
But, the Angel is not able
to lead a man to a truly free life, if he has had to be united
automatically with his language and his race. In such a case
the individual life also becomes unfree. This lack of freedom
shows itself in the following way. Instead of forming free concepts,
such a man merely thinks words. He becomes unfree because all
his thinking is absorbed in words. This is a fundamental characteristic
of modern men.
Earthly life in its historical
development, especially in its present state, cannot be understood
unless we also turn with the eyes of soul, to the life which
runs its course between death and a new birth, to the world of
soul-and-spirit.
- Cosmic Forces in Man, II. The Soul Life
of Man, Oslo, November 27th, 1921 ( GA 209)
"He that hath ears to
hear, let him hear." - Matthew 11:15