The Story of My Life
GA 28
Chapter XXXVII
[ 1 ] While anthroposophic knowledge was brought into the Society in the way that results in part from the privately printed matter, Marie von Sievers and I through our united efforts fostered the artistic element especially, which was indeed destined by fate to become a life-giving part of the Anthroposophical Movement.
[ 2 ] On one side there was the element of recitation, looking toward dramatic art, and constituting the objective of the work that must be done if the Anthroposophical Movement was to receive the right content.
[ 3 ] On the other hand, I had the opportunity, during the journeys that had to be made on behalf of anthroposophy, to go more deeply into the evolution of architecture, the plastic arts, and painting.
[ 4 ] In various passages of this life-story I have spoken of the importance of art to a person who enters in experience into the spiritual world.
[ 5 ] But up to the time of my anthroposophic work I had been able to study most of the works of human art only in copies. Of the originals only those in Vienna, Berlin, and a few other places in Germany had been accessible to me.
[ 6 ] When the journeys on behalf of anthroposophy were made, together with Marie von Sievers, I came face to face with the treasures of the museums throughout the whole of Europe. In this way I pursued an advanced course in the study of art from the beginning of the century and therefore during the fifth decade of my life, and together with this I had a perception of the spiritual evolution of humanity. Everywhere by my side was Marie von Sievers, who, while entering with her fine and full appreciation into all that I was privileged to experience of perception in art and culture, also shared and supplemented all this experience in a beautiful way. She understood how these experiences flowed into all that gave movement to the ideas of anthroposophy; for all the impressions of art which became an experience of my soul penetrated into what I had to make effective in lectures.
[ 7 ] In the actual seeing of the masterpieces of art there came before our minds the world out of which another configuration of soul speaks from the ancient times to the new age. We were able to submerge our souls in the spirituality of art which still speaks from Cimabue. But we could also plunge through the perception of art into the spiritual battle which Thomas Aquinas waged against Arabianism.
[ 8 ] Of special importance for me was the observation of the evolution of architecture. In the silent vision of the shaping of styles there grew in my soul that which I was able to stamp upon the forms of the Goetheanum.
[ 9 ] Standing before Leonardo's Last Supper in Milan and before the creations of Raphael and Michelangelo in Rome, and the subsequent conversations with Marie von Sievers, must, I think, be felt with gratitude to have been the dispensation of destiny just then when these came before my soul for the first time at a mature age.
[ 10 ] But I should have to write a volume of considerable size if I should wish to describe even briefly what I experienced in the manner indicated.
[ 11 ] Even when the spiritual perception remains in abeyance, one sees very far into the evolution of humanity through the gaze which loses itself in reflection in the School of Athens or the Disputa.
[ 12 ] And if one advances from the observation of Cimabue to Giotto and to Raphael, one is in the presence of the gradual dimming of an ancient spiritual perception of humanity down to the modern, more naturalistic. That which came to me through spiritual perception as the law of human evolution appeared in clear revelation before my mind in the process of art.
[ 13 ] I had always the deepest satisfaction when I could see how the anthroposophical movement received ever renewed life through this prolonged submergence in the artistic. In order to comprehend the elements of being in the spiritual world and to shape these as ideas, one requires mobility in ideal activity. Filling the mind with the artistic gives this mobility.
[ 14 ] And it was necessary constantly to guard the Society against the entrance of all those inner untruths associated with false sentimentality. A spiritual movement is always exposed to these perils. If one gives life to the informative lectures by means of those mobile ideas which one derives from living in the artistic, then the inner untruths derived from sentimentality which remain fixed in the hearers will be expelled. The artistic which is truly charged with experience and emotion, but which strives toward luminous clarity in shaping and in perception, can afford the most effective counterpoise against false sentimentality.
[ 15 ] And here I feel that it has been a peculiarly fortunate destiny for the Anthroposophical Society that I received in Marie von Sievers a fellow-worker assigned by destiny who understood fully how to nourish from the depths of her nature this artistic, emotionally charged, but unsentimental element.
[ 16 ] A lasting activity was needed against this inwardly untrue sentimental element; for it penetrates again and again into a spiritual movement. It can by no means be simply repulsed or ignored. For persons who at first yield themselves to this element are in many cases none the less seekers in the utmost depths of their souls. But it is at first hard for them to gain a firm relation to the information imparted from the spiritual world. They seek unconsciously in sentimentality a form of deafness. They wish to experience quite special truths, esoteric truths. They develop an impulse to separate themselves on the basis of these truths into sectarian groups.
[ 17 ] The important thing is to make the right the sole directive force of the Society, so that those erring on one side or the other may always see again and again how those work who may call themselves the central representatives of the Society because they are its founders. Positive work for the content of anthroposophy, not opposition against outgrowths which appeared – this was what Marie von Sievers and I accepted as the essential thing. Naturally there were exceptional cases when opposition was also necessary.
[ 18 ] At first the time up to my Paris cycle of lectures was to me something in the form of a closed evolutionary process within the soul. I delivered these lectures in 1906 during the theosophical congress. Individual participants in the congress had expressed the wish to hear these lectures in connection with the exercises of the congress. I had at that time in Paris made the personal acquaintance of Edouard Schuré, together with Marie von Sievers, who had already corresponded with him for a long time, and who had been engaged in translating his works. He was among my listeners. I had also the joy of having frequently in the audience Mereschkowski and Minsky and other Russian poets.
[ 19 ] In this cycle of lectures I gave what I felt to be ripe within me in regard to the leading forms of spiritual knowledge for the human being.
[ 20 ] This “feeling for the ripeness” of forms of knowledge is an essential thing in investigating the spiritual world. In order to have this feeling one must have experienced a perception as it rises at first in the mind. At first one feels it as something non-luminous, as lacking sharpness of contour. One must let it sink again into the depths of the soul to “ripen.” Consciousness has not yet gone far enough to grasp the spiritual content of the perception. The soul in its spiritual depths must remain together with this content, undisturbed by consciousness.
[ 21 ] In external natural science one does not assert knowledge until one has completed all necessary experiments and observations, and until the requisite calculations are free from bias. In spiritual science is needed no less methodical conscientiousness and disciplined knowledge. Only one goes by somewhat different roads. One must test one's consciousness in its relationship to the truth that is coming to be known. One must be able to “wait” in patience, endurance, and conscientiousness until the consciousness has undergone this testing. It must have grown to be strong enough in its capacity for ideas in a certain sphere for this capacity for concepts to take over the perception with which it has to deal.
[ 22 ] In the Paris cycle of lectures I brought forward a perception which had required a long process of “ripening” in my mind. After I had explained how the members of the human being – physical body; etheric body, as mediator of the phenomena of life; and the “bearer of the ego” – are in general related to one another, I imparted the fact that the etheric body of a man is female, and the etheric body of a woman is male. Through this a light was cast within the Anthroposophical Society upon one of the basic questions of existence which just at that time had been much discussed. One need only remember the book of the unfortunate Weininger, Geschlecht und Charakter1Sex and Character. and the contemporary poetry.
But the question was carried into the depths of the being of man. In his physical body man is bound up with the cosmos quite otherwise than in his etheric body. Through his physical body man stands within the forces of the earth; through his etheric body within the forces of the outer cosmos. The male and female elements were carried into connection with the mysteries of the cosmos.
[ 23 ] This knowledge was something belonging to the most profoundly moving inner experiences of my soul; for I felt ever anew how one must approach a spiritual perception by patient waiting and how, when one has experienced the “ripeness of consciousness,” one must lay hold by means of ideas in order to place the perception within the sphere of human knowledge.
Chapter XXXVII
[ 1 ] Während die anthroposophischen Erkenntnisse in die Gesellschaft so getragen wurden, wie sich das - zum Teile - aus den Privatdrucken ergibt, pflegten Marie von Sivers und ich in gemeinsamen Arbeiten namentlich das künstlerische Element, das ja vom Schicksal bestimmt war, ein Belebendes der anthroposophischen Bewegung zu werden.
[ 2 ] Da war auf der einen Seite das Rezitatorische, mit seiner Hinorientierung auf die dramatische Kunst, das den Gegenstand der Arbeit bildete, die getan werden mußte, damit die anthroposophische Bewegung den rechten Inhalt bekäme.
[ 3 ] Da war aber auf der andern Seite für mich die Möglichkeit, mich auf den Reisen, die im Dienste der Anthroposophie gemacht werden mußten, in die Entwickelung der Architektur, Plastik und Malerei zu vertiefen.
[ 4 ] Ich habe an verschiedenen Stellen dieser Lebensbeschreibung von der Bedeutung gesprochen, die das Künstlerische für einen Menschen hat, der innerhalb der geistigen Welt erlebt.
[ 5 ] Nun konnte ich aber die meisten Kunstwerke der Menschheitsentwickelung bis in die Zeit meines anthroposophischen Wirkens hinein nur in Nachbildungen studieren. An Originalen war mir nur zugänglich, was in Wien, Berlin und einigen Orten Deutschlands ist.
[ 6 ] Als nun die Reisen für die Anthroposophie in Gemeinsamkeit mit Marie von Sivers gemacht wurden, traten mir die Schätze der Museen im weitesten europäischen Umkreise entgegen. Und so machte ich vom Beginne des Jahrhunderts ab, also in meinem fünften Lebensjahrzehnt, eine hohe Schule des Kunststudiums, und im Zusammenhange damit, eine Anschauung der geistigen Entwickelung der Menschheit durch. Überall war da Marie von Sivers mir zur Seite, die mit ihrem feinen und geschmackvollen Eingehen auf alles, was ich in der Kunst- und Kulturanschauung erleben durfte, selbst in schöner Weise alles, ergänzend, miterlebte. Sie verstand, wie diese Erlebnisse in all das flossen, was dann die Ideen der Anthroposophie beweglich machte. Denn es durchdrang, was an Kunst-Eindrücken meine Seele empfing, das, was ich in Vorträgen wirksam zu machen hatte.
[ 7 ] Im praktischen Anschauen der großen Kunstwerke trat vor unsere Seelen die Welt, aus der noch eine andere Seelenkonfiguration aus älteren Zeiten in die neuen herüberspricht. Wir konnten die Seelen versenken in die Geistigkeit der Kunst, die noch aus Cimabue spricht. Aber wir konnten uns auch durch das Anschauen in der Kunst in den gewaltigen Geisteskampf vertiefen, den Thomas von Aquino in der Hochblüte der Scholastik gegen den Arabismus führte.
[ 8 ] Für mich war die Beobachtung der baukünstlerischen Entwickelung von besonderer Bedeutung. Im stillen Anblick der Stilgestaltung erwuchs in meiner Seele, was ich dann in die Formen des Goetheanums prägen durfte.
[ 9 ] Das Stehen vor dem Abendmahl des Lionardo in Mailand, vor den Schöpfungen Raphaels und Michel Angelos in Rom und die im Anschlusse an diese Betrachtungen mit Marie von Sivers geführten Gespräche müssen, wie ich glaube, gerade dann gegenüber der Schicksalsfügung dankbar empfunden werden, wenn sie erst im reiferen Alter zum ersten Male vor die Seele treten.
[ 10 ] Doch ich müßte ein Buch von einem nicht geringen Umfange schreiben, wenn ich auch nur kurz schildern wollte, was ich in der angedeuteten Art erlebte.
[ 11 ] Man sieht ja, wenn die geistige Anschauung dahinter steht, so tief in die Geheimnisse der Menschheitsentwickelung hinein durch den Blick, der sich in die «Schule von Athen» oder in die «Disputa» betrachtend verliert.
[ 12 ] Und schreitet man mit der Beobachtung von Cimabue durch Giotto bis zu Raphael vor, so hat man das allmähliche Abdämmern einer älteren Geist-Anschauung der Menschheit zu der modernen, mehr naturalistischen vor sich. Was sich mir aus der geistigen Anschauung als das Gesetz der Menschheitsentwickelung ergeben hatte: es tritt, sich deutlich offenbarend, in dem Werden der Kunst der Seele entgegen.
[ 13 ] Es gab ja immer die tiefste Befriedigung, wenn ich sehen konnte, wie durch dieses fortwährende Eintauchen in das Künstlerische die anthroposophische Bewegung neues Leben empfing. Man braucht, um mit den Ideen die Wesenhaftigkeiten des Geistigen zu umfassen und sie ideenhaft zu gestalten, Beweglichkeit der Ideen-Tätigkeit. Die Erfüllung der Seele mit dem Künstlerischen gibt sie.
[ 14 ] Und es war ja durchaus nötig, die Gesellschaft vor dem Eindringen aller derjenigen inneren Unwahrheiten zu bewahren, die mit der falschen Sentimentalität zusammenhängen. Eine geistige Bewegung ist ja diesem Eindringen immer ausgesetzt. Belebt man den mitteilenden Vortrag durch die beweglichen Ideen, die man selbst dem Leben in dem Künstlerischen verdankt, so wird die aus der Sentimentalität kommende innere Unwahrhaftigkeit, die in dem Zuhörenden steckt, hinweggebannt. - Das Künstlerische, das von Empfindung und Gefühl zwar getragen wird, das aber aufstrebt zur lichterfüllten Klarheit in der Gestaltung und Anschauung, kann das wirksamste Gegengewicht gegen die falsche Sentimentalität geben.
[ 15 ] Und da empfinde ich es denn als ein besonders günstiges Geschick für die anthroposophische Bewegung, daß ich in Marie von Sivers eine Mitarbeiterin vom Schicksal zuerteilt bekam, die aus ihren tiefsten Anlagen heraus dieses künstlerisch-gefühlsgetragene, aber unsentimentale Element mit vollem Verständnis zu pflegen verstand.
[ 16 ] Es war eine fortdauernde Gegenwirkung gegen dieses innerlich unwahre sentimentale Element notwendig. Denn in eine geistige Bewegung dringt es immer wieder ein. Man kann es nicht etwa einfach abweisen, oder ignorieren. Denn die Menschen, die sich zunächst diesem Elemente hingeben, sind in vielen Fällen in ihren tiefsten Seelenuntergründen doch Suchende. Aber es wird ihnen zunächst schwierig, zu dem mitgeteilten Inhalt aus der geistigen Welt ein festes Verhältnis zu gewinnen. Sie suchen in der Sentimentalität unbewußt eine Art Betäubung. Sie wollen ganz besondere Wahrheiten erfahren, esoterische. Sie entwickeln den Drang, sich mit diesen sektiererisch in Gruppen abzusondern.
[ 17 ] Das Rechte zur alleinigen orientierenden Kraft der ganzen Gesellschaft zu machen, darauf kommt es an. So daß nach der einen, oder der andern Seite Abirrende immer wieder sehen können, wie diejenigen wirken, die die zentralen Träger der Bewegung sich nennen dürfen, weil sie deren Begründer sind. Positives Arbeiten für die Inhalte der Anthroposophie, nicht kämpfend gegen Auswüchse auftreten, das galt Marie von Sivers und mir als das Wesentliche. Selbstverständlich gab es Ausnahmefälle, in denen auch das Bekämpfen notwendig wurde.
[ 18 ] Für mich ist zunächst die Zeit bis zu meinem Pariser Zyklus von Vorträgen etwas als Entwickelungsvorgänge in der Seele Geschlossenes. Ich hielt diese Vorträge 1906 während des theosophischen Kongresses. Einzelne Teilnehmer des Kongresses hatten den Wunsch ausgesprochen, diese Vorträge neben den Veranstaltungen des Kongresses zu hören. Ich hatte damals in Paris die persönliche Bekanntschaft Edouard Schurés, zusammen mit Marie von Sivers gemacht, die schon längere Zeit mit ihm in Briefwechsel gestanden hat und die sich mit Übersetzung seiner Werke beschäftigt hatte. Er war unter den Zuhörern. So hatte ich auch die Freude, Mereschkowski und Minsky und andere russische Dichter öfters unter den Zuhörern zu haben.
[ 19 ] Es wurde von mir in diesem Vortragszyklus das gegeben, was ich an den für das Menschenwesen leitenden spirituellen Erkenntnissen als in mir «reif» empfand.
[ 20 ] Dieses «Reif-Empfinden» der Erkenntnisse ist etwas Wesentliches im Erforschen der geistigen Welt. Um dieses Empfinden zu haben, muß man eine Anschauung erlebt haben, wie sie zunächst in der Seele herauftaucht. Man empfindet sie zuerst noch als unleuchtend, als unscharf in den Konturen. Man muß sie wieder in die Tiefen der Seele hinuntersinken lassen zur «Reifung». Das Bewußtsein ist noch nicht weit genug, den geistigen Inhalt der Anschauung zu erfassen. Die Seele in ihren geistigen Tiefen muß mit diesem Inhalt in der geistigen Welt ungestört durch das Bewußtsein zusammensein.
[ 21 ] In der äußeren Naturwissenschaft behauptet man eine Erkenntnis nicht früher, als bis man alle nötigen Experimente und Sinnesbeobachtungen abgeschlossen hat, und bis die in Betracht kommenden Rechnungen einwandfrei sind. - In der Geisteswissenschaft ist keineswegs weniger methodische Gewissenhaftigkeit und Erkenntnis-Disziplin notwendig. Man geht nur etwas andere Wege. Man muß das Bewußtsein in seinem Verhältnis zu der erkennenden Wahrheit prüfen. Man muß in Geduld, Ausdauer und innerer Gewissenhaftigkeit «warten» können, bis das Bewußtsein diese Prüfung besteht. Es muß sich in seinem Ideenvermögen auf einem gewissen Gebiete stark genug gemacht haben, um die Anschauung, um die es sich handelt, in das Begriffsvermögen hereinzunehmen.
[ 22 ] Im Pariser Zyklus von Vorträgen habe ich eine Anschauung vorgebracht, die eine lange «Reifung» in meiner Seele hat durchmachen müssen. Nachdem ich auseinandergesetzt hatte, wie sich die Glieder der Menschenwesenheit: physischer Leib, Ätherleib - als Vermittler der Lebenserscheinungen -, Astralleib - als Vermittler der Empfindungs- und Willenserscheinungen - und der «Ich-Träger» im allgemeinen zu einander verhalten, teilte ich die Tatsache mit, daß der Ätherleib des Mannes weiblich; der Ätherleib der Frau männlich ist. Damit war innerhalb der Anthroposophie ein Licht geworfen auf eine Grundfrage des Daseins, die gerade damals viel behandelt worden ist. Man erinnere sich nur an das Buch des unglücklichen Weininger: «Geschlecht und Charakter» und an die damalige Dichtung. Aber die Frage war in die Tiefen der Menschenwesenheit geführt. Mit seinem physischen Leib ist der Mensch ganz anders in die Kräfte des Kosmos eingefügt als mit seinem Ätherleib. Durch den physischen Leib steht der Mensch in den Kräften der Erde; durch den Ätherleib in den Kräften des außerirdischen Kosmos. Männlich und Weiblich wird an die Weltgeheimnisse herangeführt.
[ 23 ] Für mich war diese Erkenntnis etwas, das zu den erschütterndsten inneren Seelen-Erlebnissen gehörte. Denn ich empfand immer von neuem, wie man sich geduldig-wartend einer geistigen Anschauung nähern muß, und wie man dann, wenn man die «Reife des Bewußtseins» erlebt, mit den Ideen zugreifen muß, um die Anschauung in den Bereich der menschlichen Erkenntnis hereinzuversetzen.
Chapter XXXVII
[ 1 ] While the anthroposophical insights were being carried into society in the way that results - in part - from the private prints, Marie von Sivers and I cultivated the artistic element in our joint work, which was destined to become a moving force in the anthroposophical movement.
[ 2 ] On the one hand, there was the recitative, with its orientation towards dramatic art, which formed the object of the work that had to be done so that the anthroposophical movement would have the right content.
[ 3 ] On the other hand, there was the opportunity for me to immerse myself in the development of architecture, sculpture and painting on the journeys that had to be made in the service of anthroposophy.
[ 4 ] I have spoken at various points in this biography of the significance that the artistic has for a person who experiences within the spiritual world.
[ 5 ] However, until the time of my anthroposophical work, I was only able to study most of the works of art of human development in the form of reproductions. The only originals available to me were those in Vienna, Berlin and some places in Germany.
[ 6 ] When the journeys for anthroposophy were made together with Marie von Sivers, I was confronted with the treasures of the museums in the widest European circle. And so, from the beginning of the century, in the fifth decade of my life, I went through a high school of art studies and, in connection with this, a view of the spiritual development of humanity. Marie von Sivers was at my side everywhere, and with her fine and tasteful understanding of everything I was allowed to experience in the view of art and culture, she herself experienced everything in a beautiful, complementary way. She understood how these experiences flowed into everything that then made the ideas of anthroposophy mobile. For the impressions of art that my soul received permeated what I had to make effective in lectures.
[ 7 ] In the practical viewing of the great works of art, the world appeared before our souls, from which another soul configuration from older times speaks into the new. We were able to immerse our souls in the spirituality of art that still speaks from Cimabue. But by looking at art, we could also immerse ourselves in the mighty spiritual battle that Thomas Aquinas waged against Arabism in the heyday of scholasticism.
[ 8 ] For me, observing the development of architecture was of particular importance. In the quiet contemplation of stylistic design, what I was then allowed to shape into the forms of the Goetheanum grew in my soul.
[ 9 ] Standing before Lionardo's Last Supper in Milan, before the creations of Raphael and Michel Angelo in Rome and the conversations I had with Marie von Sivers following these contemplations must, I believe, be felt with gratitude towards fate, especially when they come before the soul for the first time at a more mature age.
[ 10 ] But I would have to write a book of no small length if I wanted to describe even briefly what I experienced in the manner indicated.
[ 11 ] You can see so deeply into the secrets of the development of mankind through the gaze that loses itself in the "School of Athens" or in the "Disputa", if the spiritual view is behind it.
[ 12 ] And if one proceeds with observation from Cimabue through Giotto to Raphael, one has before one the gradual fading of an older spiritual view of humanity to the modern, more naturalistic one. What had emerged for me from the spiritual view as the law of human development: it emerges, revealing itself clearly, in the development of the art of the soul.
[ 13 ] I always felt the deepest satisfaction when I could see how the anthroposophical movement received new life through this continual immersion in the artistic. In order to embrace the essential nature of the spiritual with ideas and to shape it in an imaginative way, we need mobility in the activity of ideas. The fulfillment of the soul with the artistic gives it.
[ 14 ] And it was absolutely necessary to protect society from the intrusion of all those inner untruths that are connected with false sentimentality. A spiritual movement is always exposed to this intrusion. If the communicative lecture is enlivened by the moving ideas that one owes to the life in the artistic, then the inner untruthfulness that comes from sentimentality in the listener is banished. - The artistic, which is borne by feeling and emotion, but which aspires to light-filled clarity in design and vision, can provide the most effective counterweight to false sentimentality.
[ 15 ] And so I feel it to be a particularly favorable destiny for the anthroposophical movement that in Marie von Sivers I was given a collaborator by fate who, from her deepest dispositions, was able to cultivate this artistic-emotional but unsentimental element with full understanding.
[ 16 ] A continuous counteraction against this inwardly untrue sentimental element was necessary. For it always penetrates a spiritual movement. It cannot simply be dismissed or ignored. For the people who initially give themselves over to this element are in many cases seekers in the deepest recesses of their souls. However, they initially find it difficult to establish a firm relationship with the content communicated from the spiritual world. They unconsciously seek a kind of anesthesia in sentimentality. They want to experience very special truths, esoteric ones. They develop the urge to segregate themselves into groups with these sects.
[ 17 ] The important thing is to make the right the sole guiding force of society as a whole. So that those who stray to one side or the other can see again and again how those who may call themselves the central carriers of the movement work because they are its founders. Working positively for the content of anthroposophy, not fighting against excesses, that was the essential thing for Marie von Sivers and me. Of course, there were exceptional cases in which it also became necessary to fight.
[ 18 ] For me, the time leading up to my Paris cycle of lectures is something that is closed as a developmental process in the soul. I gave these lectures in 1906 during the Theosophical Congress. Individual participants of the congress had expressed the wish to hear these lectures in addition to the events of the congress. At that time I had made the personal acquaintance of Edouard Schuré in Paris, together with Marie von Sivers, who had been in correspondence with him for some time and who had been engaged in translating his works. He was among the audience. I also had the pleasure of having Merezhkovsky and Minsky and other Russian poets among the audience on several occasions.
[ 19 ] In this lecture cycle, I gave what I felt was "ripe" in me in terms of the spiritual insights that guide the human being.
[ 20 ] This "mature feeling" of knowledge is something essential in the exploration of the spiritual world. In order to have this feeling, one must have experienced a perception as it first arises in the soul. At first it is still perceived as unclear, as blurred in its contours. It must be allowed to sink back into the depths of the soul to "mature". The consciousness is not yet far enough to grasp the spiritual content of the vision. The soul in its spiritual depths must be together with this content in the spiritual world undisturbed by the consciousness.
[ 21 ] In external natural science, knowledge is not asserted earlier than until all the necessary experiments and sensory observations have been completed, and until the calculations under consideration are flawless. - In spiritual science, methodical conscientiousness and cognitive discipline are by no means less necessary. It just takes a slightly different approach. Consciousness must be tested in its relationship to the truth of knowledge. One must be able to "wait" with patience, perseverance and inner conscientiousness until the consciousness passes this test. It must have made itself strong enough in its faculty of ideas in a certain area in order to take the view in question into the conceptual faculty.
[ 22 ] In the Paris cycle of lectures I put forward a view that had to undergo a long "maturation" in my soul. After I had explained how the members of the human being: physical body, etheric body - as mediator of life phenomena -, astral body - as mediator of sensory and volitional phenomena - and the "I-bearer" generally relate to each other, I communicated the fact that the etheric body of man is female; the etheric body of woman is male. This shed light within anthroposophy on a fundamental question of existence that was much discussed at the time. One need only recall the book by the unfortunate Weininger: "Gender and Character" and the poetry of the time. But the question was led into the depths of the human being. With his physical body, man is integrated into the forces of the cosmos in a completely different way than with his etheric body. Through the physical body man stands in the forces of the earth; through the etheric body in the forces of the extraterrestrial cosmos. The masculine and feminine are introduced to the mysteries of the world.
[ 23 ] For me, this realization was one of the most shattering inner soul experiences. For I always felt anew how one must patiently-waitingly approach a spiritual view, and how, when one experiences the "maturity of consciousness", one must then grasp the ideas in order to bring the view into the realm of human cognition.