81 In the following night, the air was filled with many
voices. A loud voice called: "I am falling." Others cried out, confused and excited during
this: "Where to? What do you want?" Should I entrust myself to this confusion? I shuddered.
It is a dreadful deep. Do you want me to leave myself to chance, to the madness of my
own darkness? Wither? Wither? You fall, and I want to fall with you, whoever you
are.
The spirit of the depths opened my eyes and I caught a glimpse of the inner things, the
world of my soul, the many-formed and changing.
I see a gray rock face along which I sink into great depths.82 I stand in black dirt up to my ankles in a dark cave. Shadows sweep
over me. I am seized by fear, but I know I must go in. I crawl through a narrow
crack in the
rock and reach an inner cave whose bottom is covered with black water. But beyond this I
catch a glimpse of luminous red stone which I must reach. I wade through the muddy water.
The cave is full of the frightful noise of shrieking voices.83 I take the stone, it covers a dark opening in the rock. I hold the
stone in my hand, peering around inquiringly. I do not want to listen to the voices, they
keep me away.84 But I want to know. Here something
wants to be uttered. I place my ear to the opening. I hear the flow of underground
waters. I see the bloody head of a man on the dark stream. Someone wounded, someone
slain floats there. I take in this image for a long time, shuddering. I see a large
black scarab floating past on the dark stream.
In the deepest reach of the stream shines a red sun, radiating through the dark
water. There I see -- and a terror seizes me -- small serpents on the dark rock walls,
striving toward the depths, where the sun shines. A thousand serpents crowd around,
veiling the sun. Deep night falls. A red stream of blood, thick, red blood springs up,
surging for a long time, then ebbing. I am seized by fear. What did I
see?85
Heal the wounds that doubt inflicts on me, my soul. That, too, is to be
overcome,
so that I can recognize your supreme meaning. How far away everything is,
and how I have turned back! My spirit is a spirit of torment, it tears asunder my
contemplation, it would dismantle everything and rip it apart. I am still a victim of my
thinking. When can I order my thinking to be quiet, so that my thoughts, those unruly
hounds, will crawl to my feet? How can I ever hope to hear your voice louder, to see your
face clearer, when all my thoughts howl?
I am stunned, but I want to be stunned, since I have sworn to you, my soul, to trust you
even if you lead me through madness. How shall I ever walk under your sun if I do not drink
the bitter draught of slumber to the lees? Help me so that I do not choke on my own
knowledge. The fullness of my knowledge threatens to fall in on me. My knowledge has a
thousand voices, an army roaring like lions; the air trembles when they speak, and I am
their defenseless sacrifice. Keep it far from me, science, that clever
knower,86 that bad prison master who
binds the soul and imprisons it in a lightless cell. But above all, protect me from
the serpent of judgment, which only appears to be a healing serpent, yet in
your depths is infernal poison and agonizing death. I want to go down cleansed
into your depths with white garments and not rush in like some thief, seizing whatever I can
and fleeing breathlessly. Let me persist in divine87 astonishment, so that I am ready to behold your wonders.
Let me lay my head on a stone before your door, so that I am prepared to receive your
Light.
When the desert begins to bloom, it brings forth strange plants. You will
consider yourself mad, and in a certain sense, you will, in fact, be mad.
88 To the extent that the Christianity of this time
lacks madness, it lacks divine life. Take note of what the ancients taught
us in images: madness is divine.89 But because the ancients lived this image concretely in events, it
became a deception for us, since we became masters of the reality of
the world. It is unquestionable: if you enter into the world of the soul, you are
like a madman, and a doctor would consider you to be sick. What I say here can be seen
as sickness, but no one can see it as sickness more than I do.
This is how I overcame madness. If you do not know what divine madness is, suspend
judgment and wait for the fruits.90 But know
that there is a divine madness which is nothing other than the over-powering of
the spirit of this time, through the spirit of the depths. Speak then of
sick delusion when the spirit of the depths can no longer stay down and forces
a man to speak in tongues instead of in human speech, and makes him believe that he himself
is the spirit of the depths. But also speak of sick delusion when the
spirit of this time does not leave a man and forces him to see only the surface,
to deny the spirit of the depths and to take himself for the spirit of the times. The
spirit of this time is ungodly, the spirit of the depths is ungodly, balance is
godly.
Because I was caught up in the spirit of this time, precisely what happened to me on this
night had to happen to me, namely that the spirit of the depths erupted with
force, and swept away the spirit of this time with a powerful wave. But the spirit
of the depths had gained this power, because I had spoken to my soul during 25
nights in the desert and I had given her all my love and submission. But during the
25 days, I gave all my love and submission to things, to men, and to the thoughts
of this time. I went into the desert only at night.
Thus can you differentiate sick and divine delusion. Whoever
does the one, and does without the other, you may call sick, since he is out
of balance.
But who can withstand fear when the divine intoxication and madness comes to him? Love,
soul, and God are beautiful and terrible. The ancients brought over some
of the beauty of God into this world, and this world became so beautiful that it
appeared to the spirit of the time to be fulfillment, and better than
the bosom of the Godhead. The frightfulness and cruelty of the world lay under wraps and
in the depths of our hearts. If the spirit of the depths seizes you, you
will feel the cruelty and cry out in torment. The spirit of the depths is pregnant with ice,
fire, and death. You are right to fear the spirit of the depths, as he is full of
horror.
You see in these days what the spirit of the depths bore. You did not believe
it, but you would have known it if you had taken counsel with your
fear.91
Blood shone at me from the red light of the crystal, and when I picked it up to discover its
mystery, there lay the horror uncovered before me: in the depths of what is to come lay
murder. The blond hero lay slain. The black beetle is the death that is necessary for
renewal, and so thereafter, a new sun glowed, the sun of the depths, full of riddles, a
sun of the night. And as the rising sun of spring quickens the dead earth, so the sun of the
depths quickened the dead, and thus began the terrible struggle between light and
darkness. Out of that burst the powerful and ever unvanquished source of blood. This
was what was to come, which you now experience in your life, and it is even more than that.
(I had this vision on the night of 12 December 1913.)
Depths and surface should mix so that new life can develop. Yet the new life does
not develop outside of us, but within us. What happens outside us in these days is
the image that the peoples live in events, to bequeath this image immemorially
to far-off times so that they might learn from it for their own way, just as we learned
from the images that the ancients had lived before us in events.
Life does not come from events, but from us. Everything that
happens outside has already been.
Therefore whoever considers the event from outside always sees only that it already was, and
that it is always the same. But whoever looks from inside, knows that everything is new.
The events that happen are always the same. But the creative depths of man are not always
the same. Events signify nothing, they signify only in us. We create the
meaning of events. The meaning is and always was artificial. We
make it.
Because of this we seek in ourselves the meaning of events, so that the way of
[...]
[...] what is to come becomes apparent, and our life can flow again.
That which you need comes from yourself, namely the meaning of the event. The
meaning of events is not their particular meaning. This meaning exists in learnèd books.
Events have no meaning.
The meaning of events is the way of salvation that you create. The
meaning of events comes from the possibility of life in this world that
you create. It is the mastery of this world and the assertion of your soul in this
world.
This meaning of events is the supreme meaning, that is not in
events, and not in the soul, but is the God standing between events and the soul, the
mediator of life, the way, the bridge, and the
going-across.92
I would not have been able to see what was to come if I could not have seen it
in myself.
Therefore I take part in that murder; the sun of the depths also shines in me after
the murder has been accomplished; the thousand serpents that want to devour the sun are also
in me. I myself am a murderer and murdered, sacrificer and
sacrificed.93 The upwelling blood streams out of me.
You all have a share in the murder.94 In you,
the reborn one will come to be, and the sun of the depths will rise, and a thousand
serpents will develop from your dead matter and fall on the sun to choke it. Your blood will
stream forth. The peoples demonstrate this, at the present time, in unforgettable acts
that will be written with blood in unforgettable books for eternal memory.95
But I ask you, when do men fall on their brothers with mighty weapons and bloody acts?
They do such if they do not know that their brother is themselves.
They themselves are sacrificers, but they mutually do the service of
sacrifice. They must all sacrifice each
other, since the time has not yet come when man puts the bloody knife into himself in order
to sacrifice the one, he lulls in his brother. But whom do people lull? They lull the
noble, the brave, the heroes. They take aim at these, and do not know that, with these, they
mean themselves. They should sacrifice the hero in themselves, and because they do
not know this, they kill their courageous brother.
The time is still not ripe. But through this blood sacrifice, it should ripen. So long
as it is possible to murder the brother instead of oneself, the time is not ripe.
Frightful things must happen until men grow ripe. But anything else will not ripen
humanity. Hence all this that takes place in these days must also be, so that
the renewal can come. Since the source of blood that follows the shrouding of the sun is
also the source of the new life.96
As the fate of the peoples is represented to you in events, so will it happen
in your heart. If the hero in you is slain, then the sun of the depths
rises in you, glowing from afar, and from a dreadful place. But all the same, everything
that, up til now, seemed to be dead in you will come to life, and will change into poisonous
serpents that will cover the sun, and you will fall into night and confusion. Your
blood also will stream from many wounds in this frightful struggle. Your shock and doubt
will be great, but from such torment the new life will be born. Birth is blood
and torment. Your darkness, which you did not suspect since it was dead, will come to life,
and you will feel the crush of total evil and the conflicts of life that still now lie
buried in the matter of your body. But the serpents are dreadful evil thoughts and
feelings.
You thought you knew that abyss? Oh you clever people! It is another thing to
experience it. Everything will happen to you. Think of all the frightful and devilish
things that men have inflicted on their brothers. That should happen to you in your
heart. Suffer it yourself, through your own hand, and know that it is your
own heinous and devilish hand that inflicts the suffering on you, but not your
brother, who wrestles with his own devils.97
I would like you to see what the murdered hero means. Those nameless men who in our
day have murdered a prince are blind prophets who demonstrate in events what
then is valid only for the soul.98 Through the
murder of princes we will learn that the prince in us, the hero, is threatened.99 Whether this should be seen as a good or a bad sign need
not concern us. What is awful today is good in a hundred years, and in two hundred years is
bad again. But we must recognize what is happening: there are nameless ones in you who
threaten your prince, the hereditary ruler.
But our ruler is the spirit of this time, which rules and leads in us all.
It is the general spirit in which we think and act today. He is of frightful power,
since he has brought immeasurable good to this world and fascinated men with unbelievable
pleasure. He is bejeweled with the most beautiful heroic virtue, and wants to drive
men up to the brightest solar heights, in everlasting ascent.100
The hero wants to open up everything he can. But the nameless spirit of the depths
evokes everything that man cannot. Incapacity prevents further ascent. Greater height
requires greater virtue. We do not possess it. We must first create it by learning to
live with our
incapacity. We must give it life. For how else shall it develop into ability?
We cannot slay our incapacity and rise above it. But that is precisely what we
wanted. Incapacity will overcome us and demand its share of life. Our ability will
desert us, and we will believe, in the sense of the spirit of this time, that it is a loss.
Yet it is no loss, but a gain; not for outer trappings, however, but for
inner capability.
The one who learns to live with his incapacity has learned a great deal.
This will lead us to the valuation of the smallest things, and to wise limitation, which the
greater height demands. If all heroism is erased, we fall back into the misery of humanity
and into even worse. Our foundations will be caught up in excitement since our
highest tension, which concerns what lies outside us, will stir them up. We will
fall into the cesspool of our underworld, among the rubble of all the centuries in
us.101
The heroic in you is the fact that you are ruled by thoughts like this-or-that is good,
this-or-that performance is indispensable, this-or-that cause is objectionable, this or
that goal must be attained in headlong striving work, this-or-that pleasure should be
ruthlessly repressed at all costs. Consequently, you sin against incapacity. But
incapacity exists. No one should deny it, find fault with it, or shout it down.102