Michaelmas and the Soul-Forces of Man
GA 223
30 September 1923, Vienna
Lecture III
In the first of these lectures I endeavored to set forth how Michael's Conflict with the Dragon persisted into the 18th Century as a determining idea, really a determining impulse in mankind; and in the second lecture I tried to show how a productive revival of this impulse may and really must be brought about. But now, before discussing particulars for a Michael Festival at the beginning of autumn, I should like today to speak about several prerequisites involved in such an intention.
The core of the matter is this: all impulses such as the Michael impulse depend upon man's attaining to super-sensible enlightenment concerning his connection not only with earthly but with cosmic conditions: he must learn to feel himself not only as an earth citizen but as a citizen of the universe, as far as this is perceptible either spiritually or, in image, physically. Nowadays, of course, our general education offers only the most meager opportunities for sensing our connection with the cosmos. True, by means of their materialistically colored science men are aware of earth conditions to the point of feeling connected with them, at least as regards their material life in the wider sense. But the knowledge of this connection certainly engenders no enthusiasm, hence all outer signs of such a connection have become very dim. Human feeling for the traditional festivals has grown dim and shadowy. While in former periods of human evolution festivals like Christmas or Easter exerted a far-reaching influence on the entire social life and its manifestations, they have become but a faint echo of what they once meant, expressing themselves in all sorts of customs that lack all deeper social significance.
Now, if we intend in some way to realize the Michael Festival with its particularly far-reaching social significance, we must naturally first create a feeling for what it might signify; for by no means must it bear the character of our modern festivities, but should be brought forth from the depths of the human being. These depths we can only reach by once more penetrating and entering into our relationship with the extra-terrestrial cosmos and with what this yields for the cycle of the seasons.
To illustrate what I really mean by all that, I need only ask you to consider how abstract, how dreadfully out of touch with the human being, are all the feelings and conceptions of the extraterrestrial universe that today enter human consciousness. Think of what astronomy, astro-physics, and other related sciences accomplish today. They compute the paths of the planets—the positions of the fixed stars, if you like; and from the results of research in spectral analysis they arrive at conclusions concerning the material composition of these heavenly bodies. But what have all the results of such methods to do with the intimate inner soul life of man? This man, equipped with all such sky-wisdom, feels himself a hermit on what he thinks of as the planet earth. And the present habits of thinking connected with these matters are at bottom only a system of very circumscribed concepts.
To get a better light on this, let us consider a condition of consciousness certainly present in ordinary life, though an inferior one: the condition of dream-pervaded sleep. In order to obtain points of contact for today's discussion I will tell you in a few words what relates to this condition. Dreaming may be associated with inner conditions of the human organism and transform these into pictures resembling symbols [See: Rudolf Steiner, Supersensible Knowledge (Anthroposophy) as a Demand of the Age; Anthroposophy and the Ethical-Religious Conduct of Life, Anthroposophic Press, New York.]—the movements of the heart, for example, can be symbolized by flames, and so forth: we can determine concretely and in detail the connection between dream symbols and our inner organic states and processes. Or alternatively, outer events of our life may be symbolized, events that have remained in us as memories or the like. In any case it is misleading to take the conceptional content of a dream very seriously. This can be interesting, it has a sensational aspect, it is of great interest to many people; but for those who see deeper into the nature of man the dream content as it pertains to the conception proper is of extraordinarily little significance. The dramatic development of a dream, on the other hand, is of the greatest import. I will illustrate this:
Suppose a man dreams he is climbing a mountain. It is an excessively difficult climb and becomes ever more so, the higher he goes. Finally he reaches a point where his strength fails him and conditions have become so unfavorable that he cannot proceed: he must come to a halt. Something like fear, something of disappointment enters his dream. Perhaps at this point he wakes up.—Now, something underlies this dream that should really not be sought in the pictures themselves as they appeal to the imagination, but rather in the emotional experiencing of an intention, in the increasingly formidable obstructions appearing in the path of this intention, and in the circumstance of encountering even more insuperable obstacles. If we think of all that as proceeding in an emotional-dramatic way we discover a certain emotional content underlying the actual dream pictures as dramatic content.—This same emotional content could give rise to quite a different dream. The man might dream he is entering a cave. It gets darker and darker as he gropes along until he finally comes to a swamp. There he wades a bit farther, but finally arrives at a quagmire that stops further progress. This picture embraces the same emotional and sentient dramatic content as the other; and the dramatic content in question could be dreamt in still many other forms.
The pictorial content of a dream may vary continually; the essential factor is what underlies the dream in the way of movements, tension and relaxation, hope and disappointment. Nevertheless, the dream presents itself in pictures, and we must ask, How do these arise? They do so, for example, because at the moment of awaking something is experienced by the ego and astral body outside the physical and etheric bodies. The nature of such super-sensible experiences is of course something that cannot possibly be expressed in pictures borrowed from the sense world; but as the ego and the astral body reunite with the physical and etheric bodies they have no choice but to use pictures from the available supply. In this way the peculiar dream drama is clothed in pictures.
Now we begin to take an interest in the content of these pictures. Their conformation is entirely different from that of other experiences. Why? Our dreams employ nothing but outer or inner experiences, but they give these a different contiguity. Why is this? It is because dreams are a protest against our mode of life in the physical sense-world during our waking hours. There we live wholly interwoven with the system of natural laws, and dreams break through this. Dreams will not stand for it, so they rip events out of their context and present them in another sequence. They protest against the system of natural laws—in fact, men should learn that every immersion into spirit is just such a protest.
In this connection, there are certain quaint people who keep trying to penetrate the spiritual world by means of the ordinary natural-scientific method. Extraordinarily interesting in this connection is Dr. Ludwig Staudenmaier's book on Experimental Magic. A man of that type starts with the assumption that everything which is to be comprehended should be comprehended according to the natural-scientific mode of thought. Now, Staudenmaier does not exactly occupy himself with dreams as such but with so-called mediumistic phenomena, which are really an extension of the dream world. In healthy human beings the dream remains an experience that does not pass over into the outer organization; whereas in the case of a medium everything that is ordinarily experienced by the ego, and the astral body, and that then takes shape in the pictures provided by the physical and etheric bodies, passes over into the experiences of the physical and etheric bodies. This is what gives rise to all the phenomena associated with mediumistic conditions.—Staudenmaier was quite right in refusing to be guided by what other mediums offered him, so he set about making himself into a sort of medium. He dreamt while writing, so to speak: he applied the pencil as he had seen mediums do it, and sure enough, it worked! But he was greatly astonished at what came to light: he was amazed at sequences he had never thought of. He wrote all sorts of things wholly foreign to the realm of his conscious life. What he had written was frequently so remote from his conscious life that he asked, “Who is writing this?” And the answer came, “Spirits.” He had to write “spirits!” Imagine: the materialist, who of course recognizes no spirits, had to write down “spirits.” But he was convinced that whatever was writing through him was lying, so he asked next why the spirits lied to him so; and they said, “Well, we have to lie to you—that is our way.” Then he asked about all sorts of things that concerned himself, and once they went so far as to say “muttonhead.” [Kohlkopf—literally “cabbage-head.”] Now, we cannot assume his frame of mind to have been such as to make him label himself a muttonhead. But in any case, all sorts of things came to light that were summed upon the phrase, “we have to lie to you;” so he reflected that since there are naturally no spirits, his subconscious mind must be speaking. But now the case becomes still more alarming: the subconscious calls the conscious mind a muttonhead, and it lies; hence this personality would have to confess, “In my subconscious mind I am an unqualified liar.”
But ultimately all this merely points to the fact that the world into which the medium plunges down registers a protest against the constraint of the laws of nature, exactly as does the world of dreams. Everything we can think, will, or feel in the physical sense-world is distorted the moment we enter this more or less subconscious world. Why? Well, dreams are the bridge leading to the spiritual world, and the spiritual world is wholly permeated by a set of laws that are not the laws of nature, but laws that bear an entirely different inner character. Dreams are the transition to this world. It is grave error to imagine that the spiritual world can be comprehended by means of natural laws; and dreams are the herald, as it were, warning us of the impossibility of merely extending the laws of nature when we penetrate into the spiritual world. The same methods can be carried over if we prepare ourselves to accomplish this; but in penetrating into the spiritual world we enter an entirely different system of laws.
The idea that the world can and should be comprehended only by means of the mental capacities developed in the course of the last three or four hundred years has today become an axiom. This has come about gradually. Today there are no longer such men as were still to be found in the first half of the 19th Century, men for example, of the type of Johannes Müller, Haeckel's teacher, who confessed that many a bit of research he was carrying on purely as a physiologist refused to be clarified as long as he thought about it in his ordinary waking condition, but that subsequently a dream had brought back to him the whole work of preparing the tissue when awake, all the steps he had taken, and thus many such riddles were solved in his dreams. And Johannes Müller was also one of those who were still fully convinced that in sleep a man dwells in this peculiar spiritual weaving, untouched by inexorable natural laws; where one can even penetrate into the system of physical nature laws, because underlying these there is again something spiritual, and because what is spiritual is fundamentally not subject to natural necessity but merely manifests this on the visible surface.
One really has to speak in paradoxes if thoughts that result quite naturally from spiritual research are to be carried to their logical conclusion. No one who thinks in line with modern natural science believes that a light shining at a given point in space will appear equally bright at a distance. The physicist computes the decrease in the strength of light by the square of the distance, and he calculates gravity in the same way. Regarding these physical entities, he knows that the validity of what is true on the earth's surface diminishes as we pass out into the surrounding cosmos. But he refuses to apply this principle to his thinking. Yet in this respect thinking differs in no way from anything we can learn about earth matters in the laboratories, in the operating rooms—from anything on earth, right down to twice two is four. If gravity diminishes by the square of the distance, why should not the validity of the system of nature laws diminish in a similar ratio and eventually, beyond a certain distance, cease altogether?
That is where spiritual science penetrates. It points out that when the Nebula of Orion or the Canes Nebula is to be the subject of research, the same course is followed as though, with tellurian concepts, Venus, for example, were to be illuminated by the flame of a candle. When spiritual science reveals the truth by means of such analogies people think it is paradoxical. Nevertheless, in the state in which during sleep we penetrate into the spiritual world, greater possibilities are offered us for investigating the Nebula of Orion or the Canes Nebula than are provided by working in laboratories or in observatories. Research would yield much more if we dreamt about these matters instead of reflecting on them with our intellect. As soon as we enter the cosmos it is useless to apply the results of our earthly research. The nature of our present-day education is such that we are prone to apply to the whole cosmos what we consider true in our little earth cell; but it is obvious that truth cannot come to light in this way.
If we proceed from considerations of this sort, a good deal of what confronted men in former things through a primitive, but penetrating, clairvoyant way of looking at things takes on greater value than it has for present-day mankind in general. We will not even pass by the knowledge that came into being in the pastoral life of primitive times, which is nowadays so superficially ignored; for those old shepherds dreamt many a solution to the mysteries of the stars better than can be computed today by our clever scientists with their observatories and spectroscopes. Strange as that may sound, it is true. By studying in a spiritual-scientific way what has been preserved from olden times we can find our way into this mysterious connection we have with the cosmos. Let me tell you here of what can be discovered if we seek through spiritual science the deeply religious and ethical, but also social import of the old Druidic Mysteries on the one hand, and those of the Mithras Mysteries on the other; for this will give us points of contact with the way in which we should conceive the shaping of a Michael Festival.
Regarding the Druid Mysteries, the lecture cycle I gave a few weeks ago in Penmaenmawr, [See: Rudolf Steiner, Evolution of the World and Humanity, Anthroposophic Press, New York (actually, Anthroposophic Publishing Company, London, 1926. Also in Evolution of Consciousness, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1966.—e.Ed)] Wales—the spot in England that lies exactly behind the island of Anglesea—is of quite special significance because in that place many reminders of the old sacrificial sanctuaries and Mystery temples of the Druids are to be found lying about in fragments. Today these relics, these cromlechs and mounds, are not really very impressive. One climbs up to the mountain tops and finds stones arranged in such a way as to form a sort of chamber, with a larger stone on top; or one sees the cromlechs arranged in circles—originally there were always twelve. In the immediate vicinity of Penmaenmawr were to be found two such sun-circles adjoining each other; and in this particular neighborhood, where even in the spiritual life of nature there is so much that has a different effect from that of nature elsewhere, what I have set forth in various anthroposophical lectures concerning the Druid Mysteries could be tested with the utmost clarity. There is indeed a quite special spiritual atmosphere in this region where—on the island of Anglesea—the Society of King Arthur had a settlement. I must describe it as follows:
In speaking of super-sensible things we cannot form thoughts in the same way as we usually do in life or in science, where abstract thoughts are formed, conclusions drawn, and so forth. But to be reduced, in addition, even to speaking more or less abstractly—our language, which has become abstract, demands this—well, if we want to describe something in a spiritual-scientific way we cannot be as abstract as all that in the inner being of our soul: everything must be presented pictorially. We must have pictures, imaginations, before the mind's eye. And this means something different from having thoughts. Thoughts in the soul are extraordinarily patient, according to the degree of our inner indolence: we can hold them; but imaginations always lead a life of their own: we feel quite clearly that an imagination presents itself to us. It is different from writing or drawing, yet similar. We write or draw with our soul; but imaginations are not abstractly held fast like mere thoughts: we write them. In most parts of Europe where civilization has already taken on so abstract a character these imaginations flit past comparatively very quickly: depicting the super-sensible always involves an inner effort. It is as though we wrote something that would then be immediately wiped away by some demonic power—gone again at once. The same is true of imaginations by means of which we bring the super-sensible to consciousness and experience it in our soul.
Now, the spiritual atmosphere in the region of Wales that I mentioned has this peculiarity: while imaginations stamp themselves less readily into the astral element, they persist longer, being more deeply imprinted. That is what appears so conspicuous in that locality; and indeed, everything there points to a more spiritual way of retracing the path to what those old Druid priests really strove for—not during the decadence of the Druid cults, when they contained much that was rather distasteful and even nefarious, but in the time of their flowering.
Examining one of these cromlechs we find it to close off, in a primitive way, a certain space for a chamber that was covered for reasons having to do with the priest's purposes. When you observe sunlight you have first the physical sunlight. But this physical sunlight is wholly permeated by the spiritual activities of the sun; and to speak of the physical sunlight merely as does the modern physicist would be exactly the same as talking about a man's muscles, bones, blood, and so on, omitting all reference to the soul and spirit holding sway within him. Light is by no means mere phos: it is phosphoros, light-bearing—is endowed with something active and psychic. But this psychic element of light is lost to man in the mere sense-world.—Now, when the Druid priest entered this burying place—like other old cult sanctuaries, the cromlechs were mostly erected over graves—he set up this arrangement which in a certain way was impervious to the physical sun-rays; but the spiritual activities of the sun penetrated it, and the Druid priests were specially trained to perceive these. So he looked through these stones—they were always specially selected—into the chamber where the spiritual activity of the sun penetrated, but from which the physical effect was excluded. His vision had been finely schooled, for what can be seen in a primitive darkroom of that sort varies according to the date, whether February, July, August, or December. In July it is lightly tinged with yellow; in December it radiates a faintly bluish shade from within. And one capable of observing this beholds—in the qualitative changes undergone in the course of the year by this shadow-phenomenon enclosed in such a darkroom—the whole cycle of the seasons in the psycho-spiritual activity of the sun's radiance.
And further: these sun-circles are arranged in the number twelve, like the twelve signs of the zodiac; and on the mountain we had climbed we found a large sun-circle and nearby a smaller one. If one had ascended, perhaps in a balloon, and looked down upon these two Druid circles, ignoring the insignificant distance between them, the same ground plan would have presented itself—there is something profoundly moving about this—as that of the Goetheanum in Dornach which was destroyed by fire.
The old Druid priests had schooled themselves to read from what thus met their soul's eye how, at every time of day and at every season of the year as well, the sun's shadow varied. They could trace these shadow formations and by means of them determine accurately, this is the time of March, this is the time of October. Through the perception this brought them they were conscious of cosmic events, but also of cosmic conditions having significance for life on this earth. And now, think how people go about it today when they want to determine the influence of cosmic life on earthly life—even the peasants! They have a calendar telling what should be done on this or that day, and they do it, too, approximately; for the fundamental knowledge once available concerning these matters has vanished. But calendars there were none at the time of the old Druids, nor even writing: what the Druid priest was able to tell from his observations of the sun constituted men's knowledge of the connection between the heavens and the earth. And when the priest said: The position of the sun now calls for the sowing of wheat, or, it is the time to lead the bull through the herd, it was done. The cult of that epoch was anything but an abstract prayer: it regulated life in its obvious, practical demands in accord with the enlightenment obtained by communicating with the spirit of the universe. The great language of the heavens was deciphered, and then applied to earthly things.
All this penetrated even the most intimate details of the social life. The priest indicated, according to his readings in the universe, what should be done on such and such a day of the year in order to achieve a favorable contact with the whole universe. That was a cult that actually made of the whole of life a sort of divine worship. By comparison, the most mystical mysticism of our time is a kind of abstraction, for it lets outer nature go its way, so to speak, without bothering about it: it lives and has its being in tradition and seeks inner exaltation, shutting itself off and concentrating within itself as far as possible in order to arrive at an abstract connection with some chimerical world of divine spirit. All this was very different in those olden times. Within the cult—and it was a cult that had a real, true connection with the universe—men united with what the Gods were perpetually creating and bringing about in the world: and as earth-men they carried out the will of the gods as read in the stellar script by means of the methods known to the Druid priests. But they had to know how to read the writing in the stars.—It is profoundly affecting to be able, at the very spot, to transport oneself back to conditions such as I have described as prevailing during the height of the Druid culture. Elsewhere in that region as well—even over as far as Norway—are to be found many such relics of the Druid culture.
Similarly, all through Central Europe, in parts of Germany, in the Rhineland, even in western France, relics and reminders of the ancient Mithras Cult are to be found. Here again I will only indicate the most important features. The outer symbol of the Mithras Cult is always a bull ridden by a man thrusting a sword into the bull's neck; below, a scorpion biting the bull, or, a serpent; but whenever the representation is complete you will see this picture of bull and man surrounded by the firmament, and particularly the signs of the zodiac. Again we ask, What does this picture express? The answer will never be found by an external, antiquated science of history, because the latter has no means of establishing the interrelationships that can provide clues to the meaning of this man on the bull. In order to arrive at the solution one must know the nature of the training undergone by those who served the Mithras Cult. The whole ceremony could, of course, be run off in such a way as to be beautiful—or ugly, if you like—without anything intelligent transpiring. Only one who had passed through a certain training could make sense of it. That is why all the descriptions of the Mithras Mysteries are really twaddle, although the pictures give promise of yielding so much. The service of the Mithras Cult demanded in the neophyte a very fine and sensitive development of the capacity for receptive sentience. Everything depended upon the development of this faculty in him.
I said yesterday in the public lecture [See: Rudolf Steiner, Supersensible Knowledge (Anthroposophy) as a Demand of the Age; Anthroposophy and the Ethical-Religious Conduct of Life, Anthroposophic Press, New York.] that the human heart is really a subconscious sense organ: subconsciously the head perceives through the heart what goes on in the physical functions of the lower body and the chest. Just as we perceive outer events in the sense-world through the eye, so the human heart is in reality a sense organ in its relation to the functions mentioned. Subconsciously by means of the heart, the head, and particularly the cerebellum, perceives the blood being nourished by the transformed foodstuffs, perceives the functioning of the kidneys, the liver, and other processes of the organism. The heart is the sense organ for perceiving all this in the upper portion of the human being.
Now, to raise this heart as a sense organ to a certain degree of consciousness was the object in the schooling of those who were to be engaged in the Mithras Cult. They had to develop a sensitive, conscious feeling for the processes in the liver, kidneys, spleen, etc., in the human organism. The upper man, the headman, had to sense very delicately what went on in the chest-man and the limb-man. In older epochs that sort of schooling was not the mental training to which we are accustomed today, but a schooling of the whole human being, appealing in the main to the capacity for feeling. And just as we say, on the basis of outer optical perception, There are rain clouds or, the sky is blue, so the sufficiently matured disciple could say, Now the metabolism in my organism is of this nature, now it is of that. Actually, the processes within the human organism seem the same the year round only to the abstractionist. When science will once more have advanced to real truths concerning these things, men will be amazed to learn how they can establish, by means very different from the crude methods of our modern precision instruments, how the condition of our blood varies and the digestion functions differently in January from September, and in what way the heart as a sense organ is a marvelous barometer for the course of the seasons within the human limb-metabolic organism. The Mithras disciple was taught to perceive the course of the seasons within himself by means of his heart organization, his heart-science, which transmitted to him the passage of food transformed by digestion and taken into the blood. And what was there perceived really showed in man—in the motion of the inner man—the whole course of outer nature.
Oh, what does our abstract science amount to, no matter how accurately we describe plants and plant cells, animals and animal tissues, compared with what once was present instinctively by reason of man's ability to make his entire being into an organ of perception, to develop his capacity for feeling into an organ capable of gleaning knowledge! Man bears within him the animal nature, and truly he does so more intensively than is usually imagined; and what the ancient Mithras followers perceived by means of their heart-science could not be represented otherwise than by the bull. The forces working through the metabolic-limb man, and tamed only by the upper man, are indicated by all that figures as the scorpion and the serpent winding around the bull. And the human being proper, in all his frailty, is mounted above in his primitive might, thrusting the sword of Michael into the neck of the bull. But what it was that must thus be conquered, and how it manifests itself in the course of the seasons, was known only to those who had been schooled in these matters.
Here the symbol begins to take on significance. By means of ordinary human knowledge no amount of observation or picturesque presentation will make anything of it. It can only be understood if one knows something about the heart-science of the old Mithras pupils; for what they really studied when they looked at themselves through their heart was the spirit of the sun's annual passage through the zodiac. In this way the human being experienced himself as a higher being, riding on his lower nature; and therefore it was fitting that the cosmos should be arranged in a circle around him; in this manner cosmic spirituality was experienced.
The more a renascent spiritual science makes it possible for us to examine what was brought to light by an ancient semi-conscious, dreamlike clairvoyance—but clairvoyance, nevertheless—the greater becomes our respect for it. A spirit of reverence for the ancient cultures pervades us when we see deeper into them and rediscover, for example, that the purpose of the Mithras Cult was to enable the priest, by penetrating the secrets of the seasons' cycle, to tell the members of his community what should be done on each day of the year. The Mithras Cult served to elicit from the heavens the knowledge of what should take place on earth. How infinitely greater is the enthusiasm, the incentive, for what must be done on earth if a man feels himself to be active in such a way that into his activity there flow the impulses deciphered from the great cosmic script he had read in the universe; that he made such knowledge his starting point and employed the resulting impulses in the ordinary affairs of daily life! However little this may accord with our modern concepts—naturally it does not—it was good and right according to the old ones. But in making this reservation we must clearly understand what it means to read in the universe what should be done in the lives of men on earth, thereby knowing ourself to be one with the divine in us—as over against debating the needs of the social life in the vein of Adam Smith or Karl Marx. Only one who can visualize this contrast is able to see clearly into the nature of the new impulses demanded by the social life of our time.
This foundation alone can induce the right frame of mind for letting our cognition pass from the earth out into cosmic space: instead of abstractly calculating and computing and using a spectroscope, which is the common method when looking up to Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and so on, we thereby employ the means comprised in imagination, inspiration, and intuition. In that way, even when only imagination enters in, the heavenly bodies become something very different from the picture they present to modern astronomy—a picture derived partly from sense observation, partly from deductions. The moon, for example, appears to present-day astronomers as some sort of a superannuated heavenly body of mineral which, like a kind of mirror, reflects the sunlight that then, under certain conditions, falls on the earth. They do not bother very much about any of the effects of this sunlight. For a time these observations were applied to the weather, but the excessively clever people of the 19th Century naturally refused to believe in any relation between the various phases of the moon and the weather. Yet those who, like Gustav Theodor Fechner, harbored something of a mystic tendency in their soul, did believe in it. I have repeatedly told the story in our circles about the great 19th Century botanists Schleiden and Gustav Theodor Fechner, both active at the same university. Schleiden naturally considered it a mere superstition that Fechner should keep careful statistics on the rainfall during the full moon and the new moon periods. What Fechner had to say about the moon's influence on the weather amounted to pure superstition for Schleiden. But then the following episode occurred. The two professors had wives; and in those days it was still customary in Leipzig to collect rainwater for the laundry. Barrels were set up for this purpose; and Frau Professor Fechner and likewise Frau Professor Schleiden caught rainwater in such barrels, like everybody else. Now, the natural thing would have been for Frau Professor Schleiden to say, It is stupid to bother about what sort of an influence the moon phases have on the rainfall. But although Herr Professor Schleiden considered it stupid to take the matter seriously, Frau Professor Schleiden got into a violent dispute with Frau Professor Fechner because both ladies wanted to set up their barrels in the same place at the same time.—the women knew all about rain from practical experience, though the men on their professorial platforms took quite a different standpoint in the matter.
The external aspects of the moon are as I have described them; but especially after rising from imagination to inspiration are we confronted with its spiritual content. This content of the moon is not just something to be understood in an abstract sense: it is a real moon population; and looked at in a spiritual-scientific way the moon presents itself as a sort of fortress in the cosmos. From the outside, not only the light-rays of the sun but all the external effects of the universe are reflected by the moon down to the earth; but in the interior of the moon there is a complete world that nowadays can be reached only by ascending, in a certain sense, to the spirit world. In older writings on the relation of the moon to other cosmic beings you can find many a hint of this, and compare it with what can now be said by anthroposophy about the nature of the moon.
We have often heard that in olden times men had not only that instinctive wisdom of which I have spoken: they had beings as teachers who never descended into physical bodies—higher beings who occupied etheric bodies only, and whose instruction was imparted to men not by speaking, as we speak today, but by transmitting the wisdom in an inner way, as though inoculating the etheric body with it. People knew of the existence of these higher beings, just as we know that some physical teacher is present; but they also knew that these beings surrounded them in a strictly spiritual state. Everything connected with that “primordial wisdom,” recognized even by the Catholic Church—the primordial wisdom that once was available, and of which even the Vedas and the sublime Vedanta philosophy are but faint reverberations—all this can be traced back to the teaching of these higher spiritual beings. That wisdom, which was never written down, was not thought out by man: it grew in him. We must not think of the influence exerted by those primordial teachers as any sort of demonstrating instruction. Just as today, we learn to speak when we are children by imitating the older people, without any particular instruction—as indeed we develop a great deal as though through inner growth—so the primordial teachers exerted a mysterious influence on people of that ancient time, without any abstract instruction; with the result that at a certain age a man simply knew himself to be knowledgeable. Just as today a child gets his second teeth or reaches puberty at a certain age, so men of old became enlightened in the same way.—Doubtless many a modern college student would be delighted if this sort of thing still happened—if the light of wisdom simply flared up in him without his having to exert himself particularly!
What a very different wisdom that was from anything we have today! It was an organic force in man, related to growth, and other forces. It was simply wisdom of an entirely different nature, and what took place in connection with it I can best explain by a comparison. Suppose I pour some sort of liquid into a glass and then add salt. When the salt is dissolved it leaves the liquid cloudy. Then I add an ingredient that will precipitate the salt, leaving the liquid purer, clearer, while the sediment is denser. Very well: if I want to describe what permeated men during the period of primordial wisdom, I must say it is a mixture of what is spiritually wholly pure and of a physical animalistic element. What nowadays we think, we imagine our abstract thoughts simply as functioning and holding sway without having any being in us: or again, breathing and the circulation seem like something by themselves, apart. But for primeval man in earlier earth epochs, that was all one: it was simply a case of his having to breathe and of his blood circulating in him; and it was in his circulation that he willed.—Then came the time when human thinking moved higher up toward the head and became purer, like the liquid in the glass, while the sediment, as we may call it, formed below.
This occurred when the primordial teachers withdrew more and more from the earth, when this primal wisdom was no longer imparted in the old way. And whither did these primordial teachers withdraw? We find them again in the moon fortress I spoke of. That is where they are and where they continue to have their being. And what remained on earth was the sediment—meaning the present nature of the forces of propagation. These forces did not exist in their present form at the time when primordial wisdom held sway on earth: they gradually became that way—a sort of sediment. I am not implying that they are anything reprehensible, merely that in this connection they are the sediment. And our present abstract wisdom is what corresponds up above to the solvent liquid. This shows us that the development of humanity has brought about on the one hand the more spiritual features in the abstract sense, and on the other, the coarser animalistic qualities as a sediment.—Reflections of this sort will gradually evoke a conception of the spiritual content of the moon; but it must be remembered that this kind of science, which formerly was rather of a prophetic nature, was inherent in men's instinctive clairvoyance.
Just as we can speak about the moon in this way—that is, about what I may call its population, its spiritual aspect—so we can adopt the same course in the case of Saturn. When by spiritual-scientific effort, we learn to know Saturn—a little is disclosed through imagination, but far more through inspiration and intuition—we delve ever deeper into the universe, and we find that we are tracing the process of sense perception. We experience this physical process; we see something, and then feel the red of it. That is something very different from withdrawing from the physical body, according to the methods you will find described in my books, and then being able to observe the effects of an outer object on the human physical organism; to observe how the ether forces, rising from within, seize on the physico-chemical process that takes place, for example, in the eye during optical perception. In reality, the act of exposing ourself in the ordinary way to the world in perception, even in scientific observation, does not affect us very deeply. But when a man steps out of himself in this way and confronts himself in the etheric body and possibly in the astral as well, and then sees ex postfacto how such a sense-process of perception or cognition came about—even though his spiritual nature had left his physical sense-nature—then he indeed feels a mighty, intensive process taking place in his spirituality. What he then experiences is real ecstasy. The world becomes immense; and what he is accustomed to seeing only in his outer circle of vision, namely, the zodiac and its external display of constellations, becomes something that arises from within him. If someone were to object that what thus arises might be mere recollections, this would only prove that he does not know the event in question; for what arises there are truly not recollections but mighty imaginations transfused by intuitions: here we begin to behold from within what we had previously seen only from without. As human beings we become interwoven with all the mysteries of the zodiac; and if we seize the favorable moment there may flash before us, out of the inner universe, the secret of Saturn, for example, in its passage across the zodiac. Reading in the cosmos, you see, consists in finding the methods for reading out of the inwardly seen heavenly bodies as they pass through the zodiac. What the individual planet tells us provides the vowels of the world-script; and all that forms around the vowels when the planets pass the zodiacal constellations gives us the consonants, if I may use this comparison. By obtaining an inner view of what we ordinarily observe only from the outside we really learn to know the essence of what pertains to the planets.
That is the way to become acquainted with Saturn, for example, in its true inner being. We see its population, which is the guardian of our planetary system's memory; everything that has ever occurred in our planetary system since the beginning of time is preserved by the spirits of Saturn as in a mighty cosmic memory. So if anyone wants to study the great cosmic-historical course of our planetary system, surely he should not speculate about it, as did Kant and Laplace who concluded that once there was a primordial mist that condensed and got into a spiral motion from which the planets split off and circled around the sun, which remained in the middle. I have spoken of this repeatedly and remarked how nice it is to perform this experiment for children: you have a drop of oil floating on some liquid; above the liquid you have a piece of cardboard through which you stick a pin, and you now rotate the drop of oil by twirling the pin, with the result that smaller drops of oil split off. Now, it may be a good thing in life to forget oneself; but in a case like this we should not forget what we ourselves are doing in the experiment, namely, setting the drop of oil in motion. And by the same token, we should not forget the twirler in the Kant-Laplace theory: we would have to station him out in the universe and think of him as some great and mighty school teacher twirling the pin. Then the picture would have been true and honest; but modern science is simply not honest when dealing with such things.
I am describing to you how one really arrives at seeing what lives in the planets and in the heavenly bodies in general. By means of Saturn we must study the constitution of the planetary system in its cosmic-historical evolution. Only a science that is spiritual can offer the human soul anything that can seem like a cosmic experience. Nowadays we really think only of earthly experiences. Cosmic experience leads us out to participation in the cosmos; and only by co-experiencing the cosmos in this way will we once more achieve a spiritualized instinct for the meaning of the seasons with which our organic life as well as our social life is interwoven—an instinct for the very different relation in which the earth stands to the cosmos while on its way from spring to summer, and again from summer through autumn into winter. We will learn to sense how differently life on earth flows along in the burgeoning spring than when the autumn brings the death of nature; we will feel the contrast between the awakening life in nature during spring and its sleeping state in the fall. In this way man will again be able to conform with the course of nature, celebrating festivals that have social significance, in the same way that the forces of nature, through his physical organization, make him one with his breathing and circulation. If we consider what is inside our skin we find that we live there in our breathing and in our circulation. What we are there we are as physical men; in respect of what goes on in us we belong to cosmic life. Outwardly we live as closely interwoven with outer nature as we do inwardly with our breathing and circulation.
And what is man really in respect of his consciousness? Well, he is really an earthworm—and worse: an earthworm for whom it never rains! In certain localities where there is a great deal of rain, it is so pleasant to see the worms coming out of the ground—we must careful not to tread on them, as will everyone be who loves animals. And then we reflect: Those poor little chaps are down there underground all the time and only come out when it rains; but if it does not rain, they have to stay below. Now, the materialist of today is just such an earthworm—but one for whom it never rains; for if we continue with the simile, the rain would consist of the radiant shining into him of spiritual enlightenment, otherwise he would always be crawling about down there where there is no light. Today humanity must overcome this earthworm nature; it must emerge, must get into the light, into the spiritual light of day. And the call for a Michael Festival is the call for the spiritual light of day.
That is what I wanted to point out to you before I can speak of the things that can inaugurate a Michael Festival as a festival of especial significance—significant socially as well.
Dritter Vortrag
Ich habe Ihnen im ersten dieser Vorträge darzulegen versucht, wie als eine menschenbestimmende Idee, eigentlich als ein menschenbestimmender Impuls selbst bis ins 18. Jahrhundert herein der Streit Michaels mit dem Drachen vorhanden war, und ich habe dann im zweiten der Vorträge versucht zu zeigen, wie eine fruchtbare Wiederbelebung dieses Impulses möglich ist und eigentlich auch möglich werden muß. Bevor wir nun aber über das Besondere, sagen wir der Einrichtung eines Michael-Festes im Herbstbeginn des Jahres sprechen, was ich dann morgen tun will, möchte ich auch heute noch von einzelnen Vorbedingungen zu einer solchen Absicht sprechen.
Es handelt sich darum, daß solche Impulse wie der Michael-Impuls eigentlich immer damit zusammenhängen, daß der Mensch eine übersinnliche Einsicht bekommt in seinen Zusammenhang nicht nur mit den Erdenverhältnissen, sondern mit den kosmischen Verhältnissen, daß er lernt, sich nicht nur als ein Erdenbürger zu fühlen, sondern als ein Bürger des ihm wahrnehmbaren Weltenalls, sei es auf geistige Art wahrnehmbar, sei es im Abbilde auf physische Art. Nun sind in der allgemeinen Bildung heute die Bedingungen zum Erfühlen des Zusammenhanges des Menschen mit dem Kosmos möglichst geringe. Wir müssen sagen: Der Mensch kennt gewiß auch durch seine materialistisch kolorierte Wissenschaft die Erdenverhältnisse bis zu einem solchen Grade, daß er -— wenigstens was sein materielles Leben im weiteren Sinne des Wortes betrifft -— sich mit diesen Erdenverhältnissen verbunden fühlt. Begeisternd wirkt allerdings dieses Wissen von einem solchen Verbundensein nicht. Deshalb sind alle äußeren Zeichen für ein solches Verbundensein eigentlich schattenhaft geworden. Schattenhaft sind die menschlichen Gefühle für die traditionell überkommenen Feste. Während diese Feste - das Weihnachtsfest, das Osterfest - in alten Zeiten der Menschheitsentwickelung einen tiefgehenden Einfluß auf das ganze soziale Leben, auf die sozialen Einrichtungen hatten, sind sie heute kaum etwas anderes als ein schattenhafter Abglanz dessen, was sie einmal waren, dieser lebt sich aus in allerlei Gebräuchen, die aber eine tiefgehende soziale Bedeutung nicht mehr haben.
Wenn man daran denken muß, das Michael-Fest gerade mit seiner sozialen Tragweite - von ihr werde ich morgen sprechen - irgendwie zu realisieren, dann muß natürlich erst eine Empfindung davon geschaffen werden, was ein solches Michael-Fest bedeuten könnte. Denn ein solches Michael-Fest dürfte nicht denselben Charakter tragen wie heutige Festlichkeiten, sondern es müßte herausgeholt sein, wie ich schon vorgestern hier andeutete, aus Tiefen der menschlichen Wesenheit. An die wird man aber nur herankommen, wenn man wieder eindringt und eintritt in den Zusammenhang des Menschen mit dem außerirdischen Kosmos und mit dem, was sich aus dem außerirdischen Kosmos für den Jahreslauf ergibt. Ich möchte Ihnen, um auf dasjenige hinzudeuten, was ich eigentlich hiermit meine, nur vor die Seele führen, wie abstrakt, wie schrecklich wenig den Menschen berührend alles dasjenige ist, was heute in das Menschenbewußtsein an Gefühlen, Empfindungen über das außerirdische Weltenall hereinkommt. Denken Sie nur in dieser Beziehung an alles das, was heute Astronomie, Astrophysik und so weiter leisten. Sie errechnen den Weg der Planeten, meinetwillen die Orte der Fixsterne, sie kommen dazu, durch spektralanalytische Untersuchungen Schlüsse zu ziehen auf die stoffliche Zusammensetzung dieser Weltenkörper. Aber was alles da auf diese Weise herauskommt, was hat es denn für einen Bezug auf das innere, intime Seelenleben des Menschen? Dieser Mensch fühlt sich gerade mit all dieser Himmelsweisheit als Einsiedler auf dem, was er als Erdenplaneten ansieht. Und dasjenige, was heute als Denkungsart mit diesen Dingen verknüpft wird, ist im Grunde genommen nur ein System von sehr engmaschigen Begriffen.
Betrachten wir einmal, um uns das vor die Seele zu führen, einen im gewöhnlichen Leben durchaus vorhandenen, wenn auch minderwertigen Bewußtseinszustand: den Bewußtseinszustand des traumerfüllten Schlafes. Ich will Ihnen nur mit ein paar Worten, damit wir Anhaltspunkte für die heutige Betrachtung gewinnen, das vor Augen führen, was sich auf den traumerfüllten Schlaf bezieht.
Der traumerfüllte Schlaf knüpft entweder an, wie ich schon gestern im öffentlichen Vortrage sagte, an innere Zustände des menschlichen Organismus, verwandelt solche inneren Zustände des Organismus in Bilder, die wie Sinnbilder aussehen, so daß zum Beispiele die Herzbewegungen symbolisiert werden in Feuerflammen und dergleichen; wir werden sehr leicht im einzelnen konkret herausfinden können, wie Traumessinnbilder mit inneren organischen Zuständen und Vorgängen zusammenhängen. Oder es symbolisieren sich äußere Ereignisse des Lebens, die als Erinnerungen in uns vorhanden sind und dergleichen. Es ist unter allen Umständen in die Irre führend, wenn man den Vorstellungsinhalt des Traumes sehr stark ernst nimmt. Er ist interessant, er hat eine sensationelle Seite, er ist das, was viele Menschen außerordentlich interessiert, für den aber, der tiefer in die menschliche Natur hineinschaut, ist der vorstellungsmäßige Trauminhalt von einer außerordentlich geringen Bedeutung. Dagegen ist der dramatische Ablauf des Traumes von der allergrößten Bedeutung. Ich will es durch ein Beispiel veranschaulichen.
Es kann jemand träumen, er unternehme eine Bergpartie. Die Bergpartie ist außerordentlich schwierig, je höher er steigt, desto schwieriger wird sie. Er kommt so in eine Region, wo ihn die Kraft verläßt, er kann nicht mehr weiter, die Verhältnisse werden so ungünstig, daß er nicht weiter aufsteigen kann, er muß stehenbleiben. Etwas wie Ängstlichkeit, etwas von Enttäuschung kommt noch in seinen Traum hinein. Vielleicht wacht er dann auf. Es liegt diesem Traume etwas zugrunde, was man eigentlich nicht in dem Vorstellungsmäßigen der Traumbilder sehen sollte, sondern in dem gefühlsmäßigen Erleben einer Absicht, in der Steigerung der Hindernisse, die dieser Absicht sich entgegenstellen, und im Ankommen an immer unüberwindlicheren Hindernissen. Denken wir uns das alles in gefühlsmäßig-dramatischer Weise verlaufend, so haben wir gewissermaßen einen Gefühlsinhalt, der als dramatischer Inhalt hinter den eigentlichen Vorstellungsbildern des Traumes lebt. Dasselbe, was in diesem Gefühlsinhalt liegt, könnte nun auch ganz anders geträumt werden. Der Betreffende könnte träumen, er gehe in eine Höhle hinein, es wird immer finsterer und finsterer, er tastet sich immer weiter und weiter fort, kommt endlich in ein sumpfiges Gebiet. Da watet er noch ein bißchen, aber nachdem er lange genug gewatet hat, kommt er an eine Art Morast. Er kann nicht weiter. Dieselbe Gefühls- und Empfindungsdramatik liegt in diesem Bilde. Derselbe Traum in seinem dramatischen Inhalt könnte noch auf viele Arten geträumt werden.
Der Vorstellungsinhalt eines Traumes kann immer verschieden sein. Das, was hinter dem Traume an Bewegungen, an Spannung und Entspannung, an Erwartung und Enttäuschung liegt, ist das Wesentliche für den Traum. Aber der Traum kleidet sich in Bilder. Wodurch entstehen diese Bilder? Sie entstehen dadurch, daß zum Beispiel beim Aufwachen irgend etwas erlebt wird von dem Ich und dem astralischen Leib, die außerhalb des physischen Leibes und des ätherischen Leibes sind. Was da erlebt wird als übersinnliches Erleben, ist selbstverständlich etwas, was sich gar nicht auf Bilder aus der sinnlichen Welt zurückbringen läßt, aber indem Ich und astralischer Leib untertauchen in physischen Leib und Ätherleib, werden sie dazu veranlaßt, aus dem Vorrat der Bilder, die da sind, dasjenige zu entnehmen, was sich gerade bietet. Und so wird die eigentümliche Traumdramatik in Bilder gekleidet.. Nun fängt der Inhalt dieser Bilder an, uns zu interessieren. Der Zusammenhang ist ein ganz anderer als der der äußeren Erlebnisse. Woher kommt das? Lauter äußere oder innere Erlebnisse nimmt der Traum, aber er bringt sie in einen andern Zusammenhang. Warum ist das? Das ist, weil der Traum ein Protest ist gegen die Art, wie wir in der physisch-sinnlichen Welt zwischen Aufwachen und Einschlafen leben. Wir leben in dieser physisch-sinnlichen Welt zwischen Aufwachen und Einschlafen eingewoben mit unserem ganzen Leben in Naturgesetzmäßigkeit. Diese Naturgesetzmäßigkeit durchbricht der Traum. Er läßt sich diese Naturgesetzmäßigkeit nicht gefallen, er reißt die Ereignisse heraus, bringt sie in eine andere Folge. Er protestiert gegen die Naturgesetzmäßigkeit.
Der Mensch sollte lernen, daß in dem Augenblick gegen die Naturgesetzmäßigkeit protestiert wird, in welchem man überhaupt in das Geistige eintaucht. In dieser Beziehung sind sogar in einer gewissen Weise, ich möchte sagen, drollig diejenigen Leute, die mit der gewöhnlichen naturwissenschaftlichen Methode in die Geisteswelt eindringen wollen. Außerordentlich charakteristisch ist in dieser Beziehung das Buch von Dr. Ludwig Staudenmaier über «Die Magie als experimentelle Naturwissenschaft». Ein solcher Mensch geht von der Ansicht aus: Alles was begriffen werden soll, soll nach naturwissenschaftlicher Denkweise begriffen werden. -— Nun geht Staudenmaier nicht gerade auf den Traum aus, aber er geht aus auf die sogenannten medialen Erscheinungen, die im Grunde genommen eine Fortbildung der Traumwelt sind. Beim gesunden Menschen bleibt der Traum ein Erlebnis, das nicht in die äußere Organisation übergeht. Beim medialen Wesen ist es so, daß das, was sonst vom Ich und astralischen Leib erlebt wird und sich formt in die Bilder des physischen Leibes und des Ätherleibes, dann auch übergeht in die Erlebnisse des physischen Leibes und des Ätherleibes, und dadurch entstehen alle diejenigen Erscheinungen, die beim Mediumwesen zutage treten. Staudenmaier wollte sich — darin hat er durchaus recht - nicht nach dem richten, was andere Medien ihm geben, und so machte er sich denn selbst in einer gewissen Weise zum Medium. Er träumte sozusagen schreibend. Er fing an, die Feder und den Bleistift anzusetzen, so wie er immer bei Medien gesehen hatte, und richtig — es ging! Nur war er höchst erstaunt über das, was da zutage trat, er war erstaunt über den Zusammenhang, den er früher niemals irgendwie sich gedacht hätte. Alles mögliche schrieb er da auf, was ganz außerhalb des Bereiches seines bewußten Lebens war. Und so stark war das zuweilen außerhalb seines bewußten Lebens, daß er fragte: Ja, wer seid ihr, die da schreiben? — Geister —, antworteten sie. Er mußte aufschreiben: Geister! - Denken Sie sich, der Materialist, der doch keine Geister anerkennt, mußte aufschreiben: Geister! - Nun war er doch überzeugt davon, daß das, was da schreibt, lügt. Er fragte also weiter, warum ihn die Geister so anlügen. Da sagten sie: Ja, wir müssen dich so anlügen, das ist so unsere Art. - Dann fragte er sie über allerlei, was auf ihn selber Bezug hatte. Da kam sogar einmal heraus, daß sie sagten: Kohlkopf. — Es ist nun nicht anzunehmen, daß es in seiner eigenen Seelenverfassung lag, sich selber als Kohlkopf zu bezeichnen. Also es kam da allerlei heraus, was sich so charakterisierte, daß es sagte: Wir müssen dich anlügen. - Daß er aber dann sich sagte: Geister gibt es natürlich nicht, da spricht eben mein Unterbewußtes. - Aber nun wird die Sache immer beunruhigender, denn nun ist das Unterbewußte etwas, was zum Oberbewußten Kohlkopf sagt und was lügt, und ein solcher Vorgang müßte dazu führen, daß die betreffende Persönlichkeit sich sagen muß: In meinem Unterbewußtsein bin ich ein kompletter Lügner.
Aber das alles weist auch schließlich auf nichts anderes hin als auf dies, daß so wie die Traumwelt auch jene Welt, in die man da hinuntertaucht, Protest einlegt gegen den naturgesetzlichen Zusammenhang. Alles was wir denken, wollen und empfinden können in der physisch-sinnlichen Welt, wird entstellt, sobald wir in diese mehr oder weniger unterbewußte Welt eindringen. Warum? Nun, es ist eben der Traum die Brücke hinüber in die geistige Welt, und die geistige Welt ist durchaus durchwoben von einer Gesetzmäßigkeit, die nicht die naturgesetzliche ist, die einen ganz andern inneren Charakter hat. Der Traum ist der Übergang dazu. Wer da glaubt, die geistige Welt mit Naturgesetzen begreifen zu können, der irrt sich gar sehr. Und so ist der Traum gewissermaßen der Vorherverkünder für die Notwendigkeit, daß, wenn wir eindringen in die geistige Welt, wir nicht einfach die Naturgesetze fortsetzen können. Wir können die Methoden fortsetzen, indem wir uns dazu vorbereiten, aber wir kommen in eine ganz andere Gesetzmäßigkeit hinein, wenn wir in die geistige Welt eindringen.
Das ist dasjenige, was oftmals so wenig bedacht wird. Es ist wirklich so, daß es heute als Grundsatz gilt, daß man die Welt nur nach der Verstandesfähigkeit, die sich im Laufe der letzten drei bis vier Jahrhunderte erst herausgebildet hat, erfassen kann und erfassen soll. Das hat sich langsam gebildet. Heute gibt es jene Menschen gar nicht mehr - in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts hat es diese Menschen noch gegeben — von der Art zum Beispiel eines Johannes Müller, dem Lehrer Haeckels, der selbst zugestanden hat, daß ihm manches Problem, das er rein als Physiologe zu erforschen suchte, nicht aufging, wenn er darüber nachdachte im gewöhnlichen vollwachen Zustande; daß aber dann der Traum über ihn gekommen ist, der ihm wieder das Gewebe vorgeführt hat, das er im Wachzustande präpariert hatte, der ihm alle die Hantierungen wieder vorgeführt hat. Da ging ihm dann im Traume manches von der Lösung solcher Rätsel auf. Johannes Müller war noch davon durchdrungen, daß man im Schlafe in diesem eigentümlichen Weben des Geistigen ist, wo man nicht berührt wird von der harten Notwendigkeit der physischen Naturgesetzlichkeit, wo man sogar in die physische Naturgesetzlichkeit eindringen kann, weil auch dieser physischen Naturgesetzlichkeit etwas von demjenigen zugrunde liegt, was geistig ist, und weil das Geistige in seinen Grundlagen nicht von physischer Naturgesetzlichkeit ist, sondern diese nur an seiner Oberfläche uns darbietet.
Da muß man wirklich paradox werden, wenn man solche Gedanken so zu Ende führt, wie sie sich auf ganz selbstverständliche Weise aus der Geistesforschung heraus ergeben. Kein Mensch, der im Sinne der heutigen Naturwissenschaft denkt, wird glauben, daß ein Licht, wenn es hier an einem bestimmten Orte leuchtet, im Umkreise in einiger Entfernung noch ebenso stark leuchtet. Der Physiker berechnet die Abnahme der Lichtstärke mit dem Quadrat der Entfernung, und ebenso berechnet er auch die Abnahme der Schwerkraft. Er sagt sich mit Bezug auf diese physischen Entitäten: Was hier auf der Oberfläche der Erde gilt, das nimmt in seiner Gültigkeit ab, indem wir in den Umkreis des Kosmos kommen. - Nur für den Inhalt seines Denkens läßt er das nicht gelten. Und doch ist es mit diesem Denken nicht anders als mit dem, was man hier in den Erdenlaboratorien, in den Kliniken, überhaupt auf der Erde - bis auf das Zwei-mal-zweiist-Vier - von den Erdendingen erfährt. Wenn die Schwerkraft abnimmt im Quadrat der Entfernung, warum sollte denn das, was Naturgesetzmäßigkeit ist, nicht auch abnehmen mit dem Quadrat der Entfernung in seiner Gültigkeit und von einer gewissen Entfernung an nicht mehr gelten? Das ist aber das, worin die Geisteswissenschaft eindringt. Und sie muß sagen: Wollt Ihr den Orionnebel oder den Nebel in den Jagdhunden erforschen, so macht Ihr dasselbe, wie wenn Ihr Erdenbegriffe anwendet und irgendwie die Venus zum Beispiel beleuchten wolltet mit einer Erdenkerze. - Wenn man aus der Geistesforschung heraus die Wahrheit durch solche Analogien hinstellt, so kommt sie den Menschen paradox vor. Und doch, in jenem Zustande, in dem wir im Schlafe eindringen in die geistige Welt, haben wir mehr Möglichkeiten, zum Beispiel den Orionnebel oder den Nebel in den Jagdhunden zu erforschen, als mit den Möglichkeiten, die durch das Arbeiten in den Laboratorien und auf den Sternwarten zustande kommen. Man würde viel mehr darüber erforschen, wenn man über diese Dinge träumen würde, als über sie verstandesmäßig nachzudenken. Kommt man in den Kosmos hinein, dann nützt es nichts, diejenigen Dinge, die man auf der Erde erforscht hat, auf diesen Kosmos anzuwenden. So stehen wir heute mit unserer Bildung darinnen, daß wir eigentlich das, was wir in unserer kleinen Erdenzelle als richtig befinden, auf den ganzen Kosmos anwenden möchten, und leicht ersichtlich ist es, daß dabei in Wirklichkeit nicht die Wahrheit Zutage treten kann.
Wenn man von solchen Erwägungen ausgeht, dann wird einem manches, was in älteren Zeiten bei einer primitiven, aber eindringlichen hellsichtigen Anschauungsart vor der Menschheit stand, doch wertvoller, als es der heutigen Menschheit ist. Und man wird nicht einmal an denjenigen Menschenerkenntnissen, die einst im Hirtenstande der Urzeit entstanden sind, so oberflächlich vorbeigehen, als man es heute gewöhnlich tut. Denn diese Leute haben manches besser geträumt von den Geheimnissen der Sterne bei ihrem Hirtenleben, als heute die Leute bei ihrem gescheiten Leben auf den Sternwarten erforschen, errechnen und mit dem Spektroskop feststellen können. So sonderbar es klingt, es ist so. Aber in diesen geheimnisvollen Zusammenhang des Menschen mit dem Weltenall kommt man hinein, wenn man manche Überreste, die aus alten Zeiten erhalten sind, in geisteswissenschaftlicher Art betrachtet. Und da gestatten Sie, daß ich heute von dem spreche, was sich ergeben kann, wenn man auf der einen Seite geisteswissenschaftlich die tiefe religiös-ethische, aber auch soziale Bedeutung der alten druidischen Einrichtungen prüft, und andrerseits der alten Einrichtungen der Mithrasmysterien, denn wir werden, indem wir das noch vor unserer Seele vorüberzichen lassen, Anhaltspunkte dafür gewinnen, wie die Gestaltung eines MichaelFestes eigentlich zu denken ist.
In bezug auf die Druidenmysterien war ja der Vortragszyklus, den ich vor wenigen Wochen in Penmaenmawr in Wales zu halten hatte, unmittelbar an derjenigen Stätte Englands, wo die Insel Anglesey vorgelagert ist, wirklich von ganz besonderer Bedeutung, weil dort eine Stelle ist, wo in Trümmern herumliegend viele Erinnerungen an die alten Opferstätten, an die Mysterienstätten der Druiden sich finden. Heute sind die Überreste, diese alten Kromlechs, Dolmen, eigentlich ziemlich unansehnlich. Man steigt auf diese Bergeshöhen hinauf, findet dort Steine so zusammengestellt, daß sie eine Art Kammer abschließen, ein größerer Stein liegt darüber, oder man findet auch im Kreise - es sind ursprünglich immer zwölf gewesen - solche Kromlechs angeordnet. Gerade in der unmittelbaren Nähe von Penmaenmawr konnte man hinaufsteigen und fand zwei solcher unmittelbar aneinandergrenzender Sonnenzirkel. Und gerade in dieser besonderen Gegend, wo auch noch im geistigen Leben der Natur so vieles vorhanden ist, was anders wirkt, als sonst die Natur heute in andern Gegenden wirkt, konnte man mit höchster Deutlichkeit dasjenige wieder prüfen, was ich in verschiedenen anthroposophischen Vorträgen gerade mit Bezug auf die Druidenmysterien auseinandergelegt habe. Es ist dort, wo auch auf der Insel Anglesey eine Niederlassung der Gesellschaft des Königs Artus war, es ist in dieser Gegend tatsächlich eine besondere geistige Atmosphäre vorhanden. Ich muß sie folgendermaßen charakterisieren.
Wenn man von übersinnlichen Dingen spricht, so kann man nicht in derselben Art seine Gedanken bilden, wie man sie sonst im Leben oder in der Wissenschaft bildet. Da bildet man abstrakte Gedanken, da zieht man Schlüsse und so weiter. Wenn man nun auch darauf angewiesen ist, mehr oder weniger sogar abstrakt zu reden-denn das verursacht unsere Sprache, die abstrakt geworden ist -, in seinem inneren Seelenwesen kann man nicht, wenn man geisteswissenschaftlich darstellen will, so abstrakt sein. Da muß alles in Bildern verlaufen. Bilder, Imaginationen muß man vor der Seele haben. Bilder, Imaginationen vor der Seele haben, bedeutet aber doch etwas anderes noch, als Gedanken in der Seele haben. Gedanken in der Seele sind, je nachdem man innerlich mehr oder weniger träge ist, außerordentlich geduldig, man kann sie halten. Die Imaginationen haben immer ein Eigenleben. Man fühlt ganz genau: eine Imagination stellt sich vor einen hin. Es ist anders und doch wieder ähnlich, wie wenn man schreibt oder zeichnet. Man schreibt oder zeichnet mit der Seele. Aber Imaginationen sind nicht etwas so abstrakt Festgehaltenes wie die bloßen Gedanken. Man schreibt sie. Nun, in den meisten Gegenden Europas, wo die Zivilisation schon einen so abstrakten Charakter angenommen hat, da huschen diese Imaginationen verhältnismäßig sehr schnell vorüber, man hat immer einen inneren Kampf zu bestehen, wenn man Übersinnliches darstellen will. Es ist schon so, wie wenn man schreiben würde, und durch irgendeine dämonische Kraft das Geschriebene sogleich wiederum verlöschte. Es ist gleich wieder nicht mehr da. So ist es bei den Imaginationen, durch die man das Übersinnliche vorstellungsgemäß macht, als Seelenerlebnis bekommt.
Die geistige Atmosphäre nun in jenen Orten in Wales, die ich nannte, hat die Eigentümlichkeit, daß sich dort Imaginationen zwar schwieriger einschreiben in das Astralische, aber sie bleiben dafür länger vorhanden, sie sind tiefer eingeprägt. Das ist das, was man gerade in jener Gegend als etwas so Auffälliges wahrnehmen konnte. Und es war schon wirklich so, daß alles darauf hindeutete, dort auch auf eine mehr geistige Art den Weg zurück machen zu können zu dem, was jene Druidenpriester — nicht in den Verfallszeiten dieser Druidenkulte, wo diese etwas ziemlich Unsympathisches, ja sogar sehr Schlimmes hatten, sondern in den Blütezeiten — damals eigentlich wollten.
Man muß sich nur einen solchen Kromlech anschauen: er schließt auf eine primitive Weise einen gewissen Raum ab, der zugedeckt war. Wenn Sie nun das Sonnenlicht betrachten, so haben Sie zunächst das physische Sonnenlicht. Dieses physische Sonnenlicht ist aber durchaus überall durchdrungen von den geistigen Wirkungen der Sonne. Und bloß von dem physischen Sonnenlicht so zu sprechen, wie das der Physiker heute macht, wäre genau so, wie wenn man mit Bezug auf einen Menschen bloß sprechen wollte von seinen Muskeln, seinen Knochen, seinem Blut und so weiter, und keine Rücksicht nehmen würde auf das in ihm waltende Seelisch-Geistige. Das Licht ist durchaus nicht bloß «phos». Das Licht ist Phosphor, Lichtträger, hat ein Aktives, hat Seelisches. Dieses Seelische des Lichtes geht dem Menschen in der bloßen Sinneswelt verloren. Wenn nun der Druidenpriester sich in diese Grabstätte stellte - die Kromlechs waren zumeist, wie andere alte Kultstätten auch, über Gräbern errichtet -, dann stellte er diese Vorrichtung hin, die in einer gewissen Weise undurchlässig war für die physischen Sonnenstrahlen. Aber die geistigen Sonnenwirkungen gingen durch sie durch, und der Druidenpriester war dafür besonders geschult, die geistigen Sonnenwirkungen wahrzunehmen. Und so sah er durch die besonders ausgewählten Steine — sie waren immer besonders ausgewählt - in jenen Raum hinein, wohin die geistigen Sonnenwirkungen kamen, die physische Sonnenwirkung aber ausgeschlossen war. Und nun hatte er seine Anschauung intim geschult. Denn das, was man da sieht in einer solchen primitiv hergestellten Dunkelkammer, das ist anders im Februar, anders im Juli oder August, anders im Dezember. Im Juli ist es so, daß es einen leicht gelblichen Anflug hat, im Dezember dagegen ist es so, daß es eine leicht bläuliche Innerlichkeit hat. Wer das beobachten kann, schaut in den qualitativen Veränderungen, die in einer solchen Dunkelkammer dieses abgeschlossene Schattengebilde im Laufe des Jahres annimmt, den ganzen Lauf des Jahres in den Wirkungen des Geistig-Seelischen der Sonnenstrahlung. Und wiederum in diesen Sonnenzirkeln stehen die Vorrichtungen so, daß sie wie die Zeichen des Tierkreises in der Zwölfzahl angeordnet sind. Gerade an dem Berge, den wir bestiegen hatten, gab es einen größeren solcher Sonnenzirkel, und in einer geringen Entfernung davon war ein kleinerer. Wenn man sich etwa in einem Luftballon in die Höhe erhoben und auf diese beiden Druidenkreise heruntergeschaut hätte und die kleine Entfernung zwischen ihnen dabei nicht beachtet hätte, so würde man das hatte etwas Ergreifendes -— denselben Grundriß gesehen haben, wie ihn das heruntergebrannte Goetheanum in Dornach hatte.
Der alte Druidenpriester hatte sich dafür geschult, daß er dem, was er da vor seiner Seele hatte, es ansah, wie zu jeder Tageszeit, aber auch zu jeder Jahreszeit, der Schatten der Sonne anders fiel. Er konnte diese Schattengestaltungen verfolgen und aus ihnen heraus genau angeben: jetzt ist diese Märzzeit, jetzt ist diese Oktoberzeit. Er stand in der Wahrnehmung, die ihm dadurch vermittelt wurde, drinnen in dem, was im Kosmos vorging, aber auch in dem, was vom Kosmos aus Bedeutung für das Erdenleben hatte. Nun denken Sie sich nur, was man heute macht, wenn man den Einfluß des kosmischen Lebens für das irdische Leben bestimmen will. Was machen selbst die Bauern? Sie haben ihren Kalender, in dem steht, was man an dem oder jenem Tage machen soll. Es wird auch das nur annähernd gemacht, denn die gründlichen Erkenntnisse, die einmal von diesen Dingen da waren, sind heute verglommen, aber Kalender gab es zur alten Druidenzeit nicht, es gab nicht einmal eine Schrift. Was der Druidenpriester aus seiner Sonnenbeobachtung heraus sagen konnte, war, was man über den Zusammenhang des Himmels mit der Erde wußte. Und wie der Druidenpriester sagte: Jetzt steht die Sonne so, daß der Weizen gesät werden sollte — oder: Jetzt steht die Sonne so, daß der Zuchtstier durch die Herde geführt werden muß -, so geschah es. Diese Zeiten hatten einen Kult, der wahrhaftig nicht ein abstraktes Gebet war, sondern sie hatten einen Kult, der das unmittelbar praktische Leben einrichtete nach dem, wie man sich mit dem Geistigen des Weltenalls in Verbindung setzte. Die große Sprache des Himmels wurde abgelesen, und sie wurde in den irdischen Dingen angewendet.
Das aber ging bis in die Intimitäten des sozialen Lebens hinein. Der Druidenpriester gab aus dem, was er aus dem Weltenall ablas, an, was man an diesem oder jenem Tage des Jahres so zu machen habe, daß es in einem günstigen Zusammenhange im ganzen Weltenall drinnensteht. Das war ein Kultus, durch den tatsächlich das ganze Leben eine Art Gottesdienst war. Dagegen ist selbst die mystischste Mystik von heute eine Art Abstraktion, denn sie läßt sozusagen die äußere Natur walten, kümmert sich nicht weiter um sie, sondern schaltet und waltet da nach Traditionen, während sie sich innerlich erhebt, sich möglichst in sich abschließt und in sich konzentriert, um eine abstrakte Beziehung zu einem wolkenkuckucksheimmäßigen Göttlich-Geistigen zu bekommen. Das war allerdings anders in jenen alten Zeiten. Da verband man sich im Kultus, der aber eine reale Beziehung zum Weltenall hatte, mit dem, was die Götter in der Welt schufen und immerfort wirkten. Und als Mensch auf der Erde führte man das aus, was man aus solchen Einrichtungen, wie sie die Druiden hatten, als den Willen der Götter in der Sternenschrift ablas. Aber diese Sternenschrift mußte man erst lesen. Es ist etwas ungeheuer Ergreifendes, gerade dort an Ort und Stelle sich so ganz zurückversetzen zu können in das, was einmal in der Blütezeit der Druidenkultur so gewirkt hat, wie ich es jetzt geschildert habe. Und man findet in jenen Gegenden - auch noch in andern Gegenden bis nach Norwegen hinüber — überall solche Überreste der alten druidischen Kultur.
So findet man auch wieder in Mitteleuropa, in den Gegenden Deutschlands bis in die Rheingegend, auch bis nach Westfrankreich hinein überall Überreste, Erinnerungen an den alten Mithraskultus. Auch von ihnen will ich nur das Wesentlichste angeben. Sie finden überall als das äußere Symbolum des Mithraskultus den Stier, auf dem der Mensch reitet, der ein Schwert stößt in den Hals des Stieres. Sie finden einen Skorpion, der den Stier beißt, oder die Schlange unten. Sie finden aber überall, wenn die Bilder vollständig sind, dieses Stierbild mit dem Menschen umgeben von dem Sternenhimmel, namentlich mit den Tierkreiszeichen. Wiederum können wir uns fragen: Was drückt eigentlich dieses Bild aus? — Was dieses Bild ausdrückt, wird eine äußere, antiquierte Geschichte niemals erforschen, weil sie nicht die Beziehungen herstellen kann, durch die man darauf kommen kann, was eigentlich dieser Mensch auf dem Stiere bedeutet. Um darauf zu kommen, muß man erst wissen, was diejenigen, die bei diesem Mithraskult dienten, für eine Schulung durchgemacht haben. Die ganze Zeremonie läßt sich natürlich so abwickeln, daß sie eine schöne oder auch meinetwillen eine häßliche Zeremonie ist, und daß man dabei gar nichts irgendwie Vernünftiges herausbekommt. Es konnte auch nur derjenige etwas Vernünftiges herausbekommen, der eine gewisse Schulung durchgemacht hatte, daher sind auch alle die Beschreibungen der Mithrasmysterien trotz des Vielversprechenden, was die Bilder hatten, eigentlich Wischiwaschi. Denn derjenige, der dem Mithraskult dienen wollte, mußte besonders sein Empfindungsvermögen in einer feinen, intimen Weise ausbilden. Darauf kam alles beim Mithrasschüler an, daß er so sein Empfindungsvermögen ausbildete.
Nun habe ich gestern im öffentlichen Vortrage gesagt, daß das Herz des Menschen eigentlich ein unterbewußtes Sinnesorgan ist. Der Kopf nimmt unterbewußt durch das Herz wahr, was in den physischen Funktionen des Unterleibes und der Brust vorgeht. So wie wir durch das Auge die äußeren Vorgänge in der Sinneswelt wahrnehmen, so ist das Herz des Menschen in Wirklichkeit ein Sinnesorgan mit Bezug auf die angegebenen Funktionen. Der Kopf - namentlich macht es das Kleinhirn - nimmt unterbewußt durch das Herz wahr, wie das Blut sich mit den verarbeiteten Nahrungsmitteln speist, wie die Nieren, die Leber und so weiter funktionieren, was da alles im Organismus vorgeht. Dafür ist für das Obere des Menschen das Herz das Sinnesorgan. Dieses Herz nun als Sinnesorgan zu einer gewissen Bewußtheit heraufzuheben, bildete die Schulung desjenigen, der beim Mithraskult beschäftigt werden sollte. Er mußte eine feine, bewußte Empfindung dafür bekommen, was im menschlichen Organismus in Leber, Nieren, Milz und so weiter vorgeht. Der obere Mensch, der Kopfmensch mußte fein empfinden, was im Brust- und Gliedmaßenmenschen vorgeht. Eine solche Schulung in den älteren Zeiten war nicht eine Verstandesschulung, wie wit sie heute gewohnt sind, sondern eine Schulung des ganzen Menschen, die vorzugsweise auf das Gefühlsvermögen ging. Und wenn dann der Schüler die nötige Reife erlangt hatte, konnte er sagen, so wie wir auf Grund der Wahrnehmung durch äußere Augen sagen, da sind Regenwolken, oder da ist blauer Himmel: Jetzt ist diese Verarbeitungsart in meinem Organismus, jetzt jene Verarbeitungsatt.
Es ist tatsächlich das, was im menschlichen Organismus vorgeht, nur für den Abstraktling für das ganze Jahr gleich. Wenn einmal die Wissenschaft wieder zu wirklichen Wahrheiten über diese Dinge vorgedrungen sein wird, dann werden die Menschen erstaunen darüber, wie -— wenn auch nicht in jener grobklotzigen Art, wie es durch die heutigen Feininstrumente schon erforscht werden kann - in ganz anderer Art für den Menschen festgestellt werden kann, wie sein Blut anders wird, wie er anders verdaut im Januar als im September, so daß das Herz als Sinnesorgan ein wunderbares Barometer ist für den Jahreslauf im menschlichen Gliedmaßen-Stoffwechselorganismus. Dafür wurde der Mithrasschüler erzogen, in sich selbst den Jahreslauf durch die Herzorganisation wahrzunehmen, durch die Herzwissenschaft, die ihm den Gang der durch die Verdauung metamorphosierten Speise im Organismus überlieferte und der Aufnahme des Verdauten in das Blut. Und in dem, was da wahrgenommen wurde, zeigte sich eigentlich am Menschen, in der Bewegung des inneren Menschen, der ganze Lauf der äußeren Natur.
Ach, was ist denn unsere abstrakte Wissenschaft, wenn wir noch so genau die Pflanzen und die Pflanzenzellen, die Tiere und die tierischen Gewebe beschreiben, was ist denn diese abstrakte Wissenschaft gegenüber dem, was einmal in einer mehr instinktiven Weise dadurch vorhanden war, daß sich der ganze Mensch zum Erkenntnisorgan machen konnte, daß er wie der Mithrasschüler sein Gefühlsvermögen als Erkenntnisorgan ausbilden konnte. Der Mensch trägt die tierische Natur in sich, und er trägt sie wahrhaftig in einer intensiveren Weise in sich, als man gewöhnlich meint. Und das, was durch ihre Herzwissenschaft die einstigen Mithrasschüler wahrgenommen haben, ließ sich nicht anders darstellen als durch den Stier. Und die Gewalten, die durch den Stoffwechsel-Gliedmaßenmenschen wirken und nur gezähmt werden durch den oberen Menschen, diese Gewalten werden durch alles dasjenige angegeben, was da als Skorpion, als die Schlange figuriert um den Stier herum. Und der eigentliche Mensch in seiner Krüppelhaftigkeit sitzt oben mit der primitiven Macht, indem er mit dem MichaelSchwerte in den Hals des Stieres hineinstößt. Aber was da zu besiegen ist, wie es sich darstellt im Jahreslaufe, das wußte eben nur der, der in dieser Beziehung geschult war.
Und jetzt gewinnt dieses Symbolum erst an Bedeutung. Man kann es mit dem, was der Mensch heute gewöhnlich weiß, noch so viel anschauen oder malerisch darstellen wollen, es kommt nichts dabei heraus. Es kommt erst etwas dabei heraus, wenn man etwas von der Herzwissenschaft der alten Mithrasschüler weiß. Und dann studierte der Mensch aber wirklich, wenn er durch sein Herz sich selber ansah, den Geist des Jahresganges der Sonne durch den Tierkreis. Daher war ganz richtig — und die Erfahrungen macht man auf diese Weise, daß der Mensch als ein höheres Wesen auf seiner niederen Natur reitet — um den Menschen herum im Kreise angeordnet der Kosmos, denn das Geistige des Kosmos erfuhr man auf diese Weise. Es ist wirklich so, daß man, je mehr man durch die wieder heraufkommende Geistwissenschaft hineinschaut in das, was ein altes halbbewußtes, traumhaftes, aber doch Hellsehen zutage gefördert hat, vor diesem einen immer größeren Respekt bekommt. Man wird wirklich andächtig gegenüber den alten Kulten, wenn man in sie eindringt und wiederfinden kann, wenn man tiefer in sie hineindringt, wie der Mithraskult zum Beispiel dazu da war, daß der alte Mithraspriester, indem er in den Jahreslauf eindringen konnte, seiner Gemeinde angeben konnte, was an jedem einzelnen Tage des Jahres zu tun war. So war der Mithraskult dazu da, vom Himmel zu erforschen, was auf der Erde zu geschehen hat. Denken Sie sich nur, was für ein anderer Enthusiasmus, was für eine andere Impulsivität sich ergibt für das, was auf der Erde zu tun ist, wenn man sich auf der Erde fühlt als Tätiger, so daß in diese Tätigkeit die Impulse einströmen, die man durch die große kosmische Schrift erst erforscht hat, die man abgelesen hat aus dem Weltenall, indem man von einem solchen Wissen ausging und mit dem, was sich als Impulse ergab, auf die einzelnen Verrichtungen des Lebens einging. So unsympathisch das uns auch nach heutigen Begriffen sein mag und mit Recht ist, für die alten Begriffe war es gut und das Richtige. Aber man muß, indem man diese Reserve macht, sich klarmachen, was es heißt, vom Himmel abzulesen, was auf der Erde im Menschenleben zu geschehen hat, und sich so mit seinem Göttlichen eins zu wissen, statt im Sinne von Adam Smith oder Karl Marx darüber zu diskutieren, was in bezug auf das soziale Leben zu tun sei. Erst wer sich diese Gegensätze vor die Seele stellen kann, weiß hineinzuschauen in das, was heute notwendig ist an neuen Impulsen für das soziale Leben.
Erst wenn man sich diese Grundlagen schafft, bekommt man die richtige Seelenverfassung für das Hinausgehen der Erkenntnis von der Erde in den Weltenraum; nicht mehr hinaufzuschauen in der Art, wie man es gewöhnlich macht, zu Merkur, Venus, Saturn und so weiter, indem man bloß die abstrakte Rechnerei oder das Spektroskop gebraucht, sondern diejenigen Mittel dann anzuwenden, die in Imagination, Inspiration und Intuition liegen. Da kommt man dann allerdings dazu, schon von der Imagination an, daß die Himmelskörper etwas ganz anderes werden, als wie sie teilweise durch sinnliche Anschauung, teilweise aber auch nur durch Schlüsse sich der heutigen Astronomie darstellen. Dem heutigen Astronomen stellt sich der Mond zum Beispiel als irgendein schon alt gewordener mineralischer Himmelskörper dar, der wie eine Art Spiegel das Sonnenlicht zurückwirft, das dann unter gewissen Verhältnissen auf die Erde fällt. Um die Wirkungen dieses Sonnenlichtes überhaupt kümmert man sich dann nicht gerade sehr viel. Eine Zeitlang hat man die Dinge auf das Wetter angewendet. Allein an die Beziehungen der Mondphasen zum Wetter haben die ganz Gescheiten des 19. Jahrhunderts selbstverständlich nicht geglaubt; die einen kleinen mystischen Anflug in ihrer Seele hatten, wie zum Beispiel Gustav Theodor Fechner, hatten es aber geglaubt. Ich habe schon öfter in unseren Kreisen die Geschichte erzählt, wie an einer Universität zusammen gewirkt haben Schleiden, der große Botaniker des 19. Jahrhunderts, und Gustav Theodor Fechner, und wie Schleiden es selbstverständlich als einen Aberglauben hingestellt hat, daß Fechner sorgfältig statistisch nebeneinandergestellt hat, wieviel Regenwasser die Vollmondtage und wieviel die Neumondtage ergeben. Für den Professor Schleiden war das, was in bezug auf die Mondwirkungen für das Wetter Gustav Theodor Fechner sagte, ein purer Aberglaube. Aber nun trug sich einmal folgendes zu. Die beiden Professoren hatten auch Frauen, und damals war es in Leipzig noch so, daß man für die Wäsche das Regenwasser sammelte; man stellte dazu Fässer auf, in denen man es sammelte. So sammelten natürlich auch die Frau Professor Fechner und ebenso die Frau Professor Schleiden ihr Regenwasser in solchen Fässern. Wenn es mit natürlichen Dingen zugegangen wäre, dann hätte eigentlich die Frau Professor Schleiden sagen müssen: Es ist eine Dummheit, sich darum zu bekümmern, was für einen Einfluß die Mondphasen auf die Menge des Regenwassers haben. — Aber trotzdem es der Herr Professor Schleiden als eine Dummheit bezeichnete, darüber ernste Erwägungen anzustellen, kam die Frau Professor Schleiden in einen furchtbaren Streit mit der Frau Professor Fechner darüber, daß beide Frauen gleichzeitig an der gleichen Stelle ihre Fässer für das Regenwasser aufstellen wollten. Die Frauen wußten aus ihrer Lebenspraxis heraus, was es mit dem Regenwasser auf sich hat, während die Männer auf ihren Kathedern sich ganz anders gebärdeten.
Mit dem Äußeren des Mondes ist es also so, wie ich es geschildert habe. Aber besonders wenn man von der Imagination zur Inspiration kommt, stellt sich einem gleich der Mond mit seinem geistigen Inhalte dar. Dieser geistige Inhalt des Mondes ist nun nicht bloß etwas, was man im abstrakten Sinne meint, sondern es ist eine wirkliche Mondenbevölkerung, und der Mond stellt sich in der geisteswissenschaftlichen Anschauung einem dar als eine Art Festung im Kosmos. Nach außen werden vom Monde nicht nur die Lichtstrahlen der Sonne, sondern die äußeren Wirkungen des Universums überhaupt auf die Erde zurückgestrahlt. Aber im Inneren des Mondes ist eine abgeschlossene Welt, eine Welt, die man heute nur erreicht, wenn man in einem gewissen Sinne zum Geistigen aufsteigt. Manches an Andeutungen, die sich in älteren Literaturen über die Beziehungen des Mondes zu anderem Wesenhaften im Kosmos finden, können Sie nachlesen und vergleichen mit dem, was jetzt aus der Anthroposophie heraus über das Wesen des Mondes gesagt werden kann.
Wir haben öfter gehört, wie man, wenn man in der Erdenentwickelung zurückgeht, zu alten Zeiten kommt, wo die Menschen nicht nur jene instinktive Weisheit gehabt haben, von der ich auch heute schon gesprochen habe, sondern wo sie als Lehrer Wesenheiten hatten, die niemals einen physischen Leib annahmen, höhere geistige Wesenheiten und solche Wesenheiten, die nur einen ätherischen Leib annahmen, deren Unterricht in bezug auf die Menschen darin bestand, daß diese Wesen zu den Menschen nicht sprachen, wie wir heute sprechen, sondern daß sie innerlich den Menschen die Weisheit eingaben, gewissermaßen dem ätherischen Leibe einimpften. Die Menschen wußten, daß diese höheren Wesenheiten da sind, geradeso wie wir wissen, daß irgendein physischer Lehrer oder dergleichen da ist, aber sie wußten auch, daß diese Wesen durchaus in einem Geistdasein um die Menschen herum sind. Auf diesen Unterricht höherer geistiger Wesenheiten führt alles das zurück, was selbst bis in die katholische Kirche hinein anerkannt wird als die Urweisheit der Menschen, jene Urweisheit, die einmal da war, von der selbst die Veden und die hehre Vedantaphilosophie nur schattenhafter Abglanz sind. Jene Urweisheit, die niemals aufgeschrieben ist, war so da, daß sie der Mensch nicht erdachte, sondern daß sie im Menschen erwuchs, denn die Einflüsse der Urlehrer müssen wir uns nicht so vorstellen, daß es ein demonstrierender Unterricht gewesen wäre. Wie wir heute als Kinder die Sprache lernen, nachahmend die älteren Menschen, ohne daß da ein besonderer Unterricht stattfindet, wie wir überhaupt vieles so entwickeln, als wenn es aus unserem Inneren herauswächst, so war in jenen Zeiten ein geheimnisvoller Einfluß der Urlehrer auf diese älteren Menschen vorhanden, nicht ein abstrakter Unterricht, so daß der Mensch sich einfach in einem bestimmten Lebensalter wissend wußte. So wie der Mensch heute in einem bestimmten Lebensalter Zähne bekommt oder geschlechtsreif wird, so ging damals auch das Wissen den Menschen in dieser Weise auf. Mancher Student würde, glaube ich, froh sein, wenn es heute auch noch etwas Derartiges gäbe, daß ihm das Wissen einfach aufginge, ohne daß er sich besonders anzustrengen hätte,
Aber es war ein ganz anderes Wissen als das heutige. Es war ein Wissen, das organische Kraft im Menschen war, das mit der Wachstumskraft und so weiter zusammenhing. Es war also diese Urweisheit von einem ganz andern Charakter, und das, was da geschah mit Bezug auf diese Urweisheit, kann ich nur durch einen Vergleich darstellen. Denken Sie sich, ich gieße in ein Glas erst irgendeine Flüssigkeit, gebe dann ein Salz hinein. Ich löse das Salz auf, so daß ich eine trübliche Flüssigkeit habe, dann mache ich irgend etwas, daß sich das Salz unten als Bodensatz niederschlägt und oben die Lösungsflüssigkeit übrigbleibt, dann ist die Lösungsflüssigkeit oben reinlicher, heller, und unten ist der Bodensatz dichter. Wenn ich nun das, was die Menschen durchwoben hat während der Zeit der alten Urweisheit, schildern will, so ist es so gemischt aus dem geistig ganz Reinen und dem physisch Animalischen. Wenn wir heute denken, so glauben wir, daß diese abstrakten Gedanken so, ohne irgend etwas zu sein in uns, walten und weben, und daß wiederum etwas für sich zum Beispiel das Atmen und die Blutzirkulation ist. Aber das war für den Urmenschen in den früheren Erdenzeiten alles eines: er mußte atmen, und sein Blut zirkulierte in ihm, und er wollte in der Blutzirkulation. Dann zog sich das Denken des Menschen mehr nach dem Kopfe herauf und wurde reinlicher, wie in dem Glase die dünner gewordene Flüssigkeit oben, und unten bildete sich sozusagen der Bodensatz.
Das war zu der Zeit, als sich die Urlehrer immer mehr und mehr zurückzogen von der Erde, als diese Urweisheit nicht mehr in dieser alten Art gegeben wurde. Und wohin zogen sich diese Urlehrer zurück? Wir finden sie in dieser Mondenfestung wieder! Dadrinnen sind sie und führen ihr weiteres Dasein. Und auf der Erde blieb der Bodensatz zurück, nämlich die jetzige Art der Fortpflanzungskräfte. Diese Fortpflanzungskräfte waren noch nicht in der heutigen Form da, als die Urweisheit auf der Erde vorhanden war, sie sind erst so geworden, gewissermaßen als der Bodensatz. Ich will nicht sagen, daß sie etwas Schlechtes sind, aber es ist in diesem Zusammenhange der Bodensatz. Und das, was oben gewissermaßen die Lösungsflüssigkeit ist, ist heute unsere abstrakte Weisheit. So daß wir da sehen, wie mit der Entwickelung der Menschheit auf der einen Seite das mehr Geistige, im abstrakten Sinne, heraufkommt, und wie auf der andern Seite die gröberen animalischen Dinge als Bodensatz sich ergeben. Auf diese Weise bekommt man nach und nach eine Vorstellung von dem geistigen Inhalt des Mondes. Solch eine Wissenschaft war aber - dazumal hatte sie einen mehr prophetischen Charakter - in dem instinktiven Hellsehen der Menschen schon vorhanden.
Geradeso wie man vom Monde in dieser Art spricht, indem man, ich möchte sagen, auf seine Bevölkerung, auf sein Geistiges hinweist, so kann man auch vom Saturn sprechen. Lernt man durch geisteswissenschaftliche Anstrengung den Saturn kennen, was sich auch schon der Imagination ein wenig, aber nicht viel, mehr aber der Inspiration und Intuition ergibt, so ergibt sich dadurch, daß man sich immer mehr und mehr so vertieft in das Weltenall, daß man verfolgt den sinnlichen Wahrnehmungsprozeß. Der Mensch erlebt diesen sinnlichen Wahrnehmungsprozeß, er sieht irgendein Ding, fühlt dann an dem Ding das Rot. Das ist noch etwas ganz anderes, als wenn man durch die angegebenen Methoden, die Sie in meinen Büchern beschrieben finden, aus dem physischen Leibe herauskommt und dann anschauen kann, wie ein äußerer Gegenstand auf den menschlichen physischen Organismus wirkt, wie da, von innen aufsteigend, die Ätherkräfte dasjenige erfassen, was als physischer Vorgang, als physisch-chemischer Vorgang zum Beispiel im Auge beim Wahrnehmungsprozeß sich abspielt. Ich möchte sagen, das gewöhnliche SichExponieren der Welt in der Wahrnehmung, auch in der wissenschaftlichen Beobachtung, es rührt nicht sehr den Menschen. Wenn man aber auf diese Weise aus sich heraustritt und dann sich vor sich hat in seinem ätherischen Leibe, mit dem Astralischen vielleicht noch, und dann nachträglich sieht, wie ein solcher sinnlicher Wahrnehmungsoder Erkenntnisvorgang zustande gekommen ist, trotzdem man als geistiges Wesen aus seinem Physisch-Sinnlichen herausgetreten ist, dann fühlt man einen mächtigen, einen intensiven Vorgang in seiner Geistigkeit: Was man da erlebt, ist ein wirkliches Entrücktsein. Die Welt wird groß. Und was man sonst gewohnt ist, nur im äußeren Umkreis zu sehen, den Tierkreis in seinen äußeren Sternbilderoffenbarungen, das entsteht als etwas, was von innen aufsteigt. Wer da etwa sagen würde: In dem, der so spricht, steigen Reminiszenzen auf-, der kennt den betreffenden Vorgang nicht. Denn das, was da aufsteigt, sind wahrhaftig keine Reminiszenzen, sondern das sind mächtige, von Intuitionen durchzogene Imaginationen, und man beginnt dann das, was man sonst nur von außen gesehen hat, jetzt von innen zu sehen. Man wird als Mensch in die ganzen Geheimnisse des Tierkreises verwoben. Und aus dem Inneren des Universums, wenn man den günstigen Augenblick erfaßt, kann einem dann auch innerlich zum Beispiel das Saturngeheimnis aufleuchten in seinem Vorübergange über die Tierkreisbilder. Das Lesen im Kosmos besteht darin, daß man die Methoden findet, aus den innerlich gesehenen Himmelskörpern in ihrem Vorbeigang an den Tierkreisbildern zu lesen. Das, was einem der einzelne Planet sagt, gibt einem die Vokale der Weltenschrift. Und was sich um die Vokale herumgestaltet, wenn die Planeten vorüberziehen an den Tierkreisbildern, das gibt die Konsonanten, wenn ich mich vergleichsweise ausdrücken darf. Man lernt tatsächlich das Wesen des Planetarischen kennen, wenn man so von innen heraus sich eine Anschauung von demjenigen erobert, was man sonst nur in seiner Außenseite schaut.
Das ist der Weg, um zum Beispiel den Saturn nach seiner wahren inneren Wesenheit kennenzulernen. Da ergibt sich einem dann: Da ist seine Bevölkerung, sie ist die Gedächtnisbewahrerin unseres Planetensystems. Alles, was in unserem Planetensystem seit Urzeiten geschehen ist, bewahren wie in einem mächtigen kosmischen Gedächtnis die Saturngeister. Wer daher studieren will, was der geschichtliche, der große kosmisch-geschichtliche Verlauf unseres Planetensystems ist, darf wahrlich nicht darüber spekulieren, wie es Kant und Laplace gemacht haben, daß da einmal ein Urnebel war, der sich verdichtete und in spiralige Bewegung gekommen ist, von dem dann die Planeten sich abspalteten und die Sonne in der Mitte blieb, um die nun die Planeten kreisen. Ich habe schon öfter darüber gesprochen und gesagt: Es ist schön, wenn man den Kindern das Experiment vormacht, bei welchem man einen in einer Flüssigkeit schwimmenden Öltropfen hat, durch ein Kartenblatt von oben eine Nadel durchsteckt, nun den Öltropfen in eine drehende Bewegung bringt, so daß kleinere Öltropfen sich von ihm loslösen. Es mag sonst gut sein im Leben, wenn man sich vergißt. Aber man darf in einem solchen Falle nicht vergessen, was man im Experiment selbst macht, daß man nämlich selbst erst den Öltropfen in die drehende Bewegung gebracht hat. Und man müßte dementsprechend bei der Kant-Laplaceschen Theorie den Drehenden nicht vergessen, müßte ihn ins Weltenall hinausversetzen, sich dort einen großen, mächtigen «Herrn Lehrer» denken, der da die Stecknadel dreht. Dann hätte man wahr und ehrlich gesprochen. So aber, wie die Wissenschaft heute von diesen Dingen spricht, so spricht sie eben nicht ehrlich.
Ich schilderte Ihnen, wie man dazu kommt, in Wirklichkeit zu sehen, was in den Planeten, was in den Himmelsgebilden überhaupt lebt. Am Saturn muß man studieren, wie das Planetensystem in seinem kosmisch-historischen Werden beschaffen ist. Eine geistige Wissenschaft also kann erst wiederum dasjenige in der menschlichen Seelenverfassung geben, was dem Menschen wie eine kosmische Erfahrung vorkommen kann. Wir sprechen heute eigentlich nur von irdischen Erfahrungen. Kosmische Erfahrung führt uns hinaus zu einem Miterleben des Kosmos. Und erst wenn wir den Kosmos so miterleben, dann werden wir wiederum einen vergeistigten, spirituellen Instinkt dafür bekommen, was der Jahreslauf ist, in den wir mit unserem organischen und mit unserem sozialen Leben hineinverwoben sind. Wir werden einen Instinkt dafür bekommen, wie doch die Erde in einem ganz andern Verhältnis zum Kosmos steht im Frühling zum Sommer hin, und wiederum in einem andern Verhältnisse steht vom Sommer zum Herbst in den Winter hinein. Dann werden wir einen Sinn bekommen, wie das Leben auf der Erde anders dahinfließt, wenn der Frühling mit seinem Sprießenden und Sprossenden da ist, und wie es anders verläuft, wenn der Herbst mit seinem Ertötenden in der Natur da ist. Wir werden einen Sinn bekommen für den Unterschied des aufwachenden Naturlebens im Frühling von dem schlafenden Naturdasein im Herbst. Dadurch wird der Mensch wiederum reif werden, sich mit seinen Festen, die eine soziale Bedeutung haben können, in den Naturlauf so hineinzustellen, wie ihn die Naturkräfte durch seine physische Organisation hineinstellen in seinen Atmungsablauf und seine Blutzirkulation.
Schauen wir auf das hin, was innerhalb unserer Haut ist, so leben wir da in Atmung und Blutzirkulation. Was wir da sind, das sind wir als physische Menschen, gehören mit dem, was da in uns vorgeht, dem Weltenlauf an. Da leben wir aber nach außen ebenso hineinverwoben in das äußere Naturdasein, wie wir nach innen verwoben sind in unsere Atmung und unsere Blutzirkulation. Und was ist denn der Mensch in Wahrheit in seinem Bewußtsein? Ja, er ist eigentlich ein Regenwurm, aber noch dazu ein solcher Regenwurm, für den es nie regnet. Es ist so schön, wenn man in gewissen Gegenden geht, wo es viel regnet, da kommen dann die Regenwürmer heraus, und man muß sich dann in acht nehmen, was man ja tut, wenn man ein Tier liebt, daß man sie nicht zertritt. Und man denkt sich dann, die armen Kerle müssen immer da unten sein, nur beim Regen kommen sie einmal aus der Erde heraus, und wenn es nicht regnet, dann bleiben sie unten. Aber ein solcher Regenwurm ist der heutige materialistische Mensch, nur einer, für den es nie regnet. Denn wenn wir den Vergleich festhalten wollen, müßte für ihn der Regen in dem Hereinglänzen der geistigen Erkenntnis bestehen, denn sonst wurmt er immer da unten herum, wo es nie Licht wird. Diese Regenwurmnatur muß die Menschheit heute überwinden. Sie muß aus ihr heraus, muß an das Licht, an das Geisteslicht des Tages. Und der Ruf nach dem Michael-Fest ist der Ruf nach dem Geisteslicht des Tages.
Auf das wollte ich Sie hinweisen, bevor ich über die Dinge sprechen kann, die ein Michael-Fest als ein besonders bedeutungsvolles, auch sozial bedeutungsvolles Fest inaugurieren können.
Third Lecture
In the first of these lectures I tried to show you how Michael's quarrel with the dragon was present as a man-determining idea, actually as a man-determining impulse, even into the 18th century, and then in the second of the lectures I tried to show how a fruitful revival of this impulse is possible and must actually also become possible. But before we now talk about the specifics, let us say the establishment of a Michael festival at the beginning of the fall of the year, which I will do tomorrow, I would also like to talk today about individual preconditions for such an intention.
The point is that such impulses as the Michael impulse are actually always connected with the fact that man gains a supersensible insight into his connection not only with the earth conditions, but with the cosmic conditions, that he learns to feel himself not only as a citizen of the earth, but as a citizen of the universe perceptible to him, be it perceptible in a spiritual way, be it in image in a physical way. Now, in general education today, the conditions for feeling man's connection with the cosmos are as low as possible. We must say that man, through his materialistically colored science, certainly knows the earthly conditions to such a degree that he feels connected with these earthly conditions, at least as far as his material life in the broader sense of the word is concerned. However, this knowledge of such a connection does not have an inspiring effect. That is why all external signs of such a connection have actually become shadowy. Shadowy are the human feelings for the traditional festivals. While these festivals - Christmas, Easter - had a profound influence on the whole social life, on the social institutions in ancient times of human development, today they are hardly anything other than a shadowy reflection of what they once were, which lives itself out in all kinds of customs, but which no longer have a profound social meaning.
If one has to think of somehow realizing the Michaelmas festival with its social significance - I will speak of this tomorrow - then of course a sense of what such a Michaelmas festival could mean must first be created. For such a Michaelmas festival should not have the same character as today's festivities, but it would have to be drawn, as I indicated here the day before yesterday, from the depths of the human being. But you will only get there if you penetrate again and enter into the connection of the human being with the extraterrestrial cosmos and with that which results from the extraterrestrial cosmos for the course of the year. In order to indicate what I actually mean by this, I would just like to show you how abstract, how terribly out of touch with man is everything that enters the human consciousness today in terms of feelings and sensations about the extraterrestrial universe. Just think in this respect of all that astronomy, astrophysics and so on accomplish today. They calculate the paths of the planets, the locations of the fixed stars for my sake, they come to conclusions about the material composition of these world bodies through spectral analysis. But how does everything that emerges in this way relate to the inner, intimate life of the human soul? With all this celestial wisdom, this person feels like a hermit on what he regards as the earth planet. And what is associated with these things today as a way of thinking is basically just a system of very narrow-meshed concepts.
In order to demonstrate this to our souls, let us consider a state of consciousness that is certainly present in ordinary life, even if it is inferior: the state of consciousness of dream-filled sleep. I would just like to give you a few words to give you an idea of what dream-filled sleep is all about, so that we can gain some points of reference for today's consideration.
Dream-filled sleep is either linked, as I said yesterday in the public lecture, to inner states of the human organism, transforming such inner states of the organism into images that look like symbols, so that, for example, the movements of the heart are symbolized in flames of fire and the like; we will very easily be able to find out in detail how dream images are connected with inner organic states and processes. Or external events of life symbolize themselves, which are present in us as memories and the like. Under all circumstances, it is misleading to take the imaginary content of the dream very seriously. It is interesting, it has a sensational side, it is what interests many people extraordinarily, but for those who look deeper into human nature, the imaginative dream content is of extraordinarily little importance. In contrast, the dramatic course of the dream is of the utmost importance. Let me illustrate this with an example.
Someone may dream that he is going on a mountain hike. The climb is extremely difficult, the higher he climbs, the more difficult it becomes. He comes to a region where his strength fails him, he can go no further, the conditions become so unfavorable that he can climb no further, he must stop. Something like anxiety, something of disappointment enters his dream. Perhaps he then wakes up. This dream is based on something that should not really be seen in the imagination of the dream images, but in the emotional experience of an intention, in the increase of the obstacles that stand in the way of this intention, and in the arrival at ever more insurmountable obstacles. If we think of all this in an emotional-dramatic way, we have, so to speak, an emotional content that lives as a dramatic content behind the actual imaginary images of the dream. The same thing that lies in this emotional content could now also be dreamed in a completely different way. The person concerned could dream that he enters a cave, it gets darker and darker, he feels his way further and further and finally comes to a swampy area. He wades a little, but after wading long enough, he comes to a kind of quagmire. He can go no further. The same emotional and sentimental drama lies in this picture. The same dream in its dramatic content could be dreamed in many other ways.
The imaginative content of a dream can always be different. What lies behind the dream in terms of movement, tension and relaxation, expectation and disappointment, is the essence of the dream. But the dream is clothed in images. How do these images arise? They are created, for example, by the fact that on waking something is experienced by the ego and the astral body, which are outside the physical body and the etheric body. What is experienced there as a supersensible experience is of course something that cannot be traced back to images from the sensory world, but as the ego and the astral body are submerged in the physical body and the etheric body, they are prompted to take from the store of images that are there, that which just presents itself. And so the peculiar dream drama is clothed in images. Now the content of these images begins to interest us. The context is quite different from that of external experiences. Where does this come from? The dream takes all external or internal experiences, but places them in a different context. Why is that? It is because the dream is a protest against the way we live in the physical-sensual world between waking up and falling asleep. We live in this physical-sensual world between waking up and going to sleep with our whole life interwoven with natural law. The dream breaks through this natural lawfulness. It does not put up with this natural lawfulness, it tears the events out, puts them into a different sequence. It protests against the laws of nature.
Man should learn that he protests against the laws of nature the moment he dives into the spiritual realm. In this respect, even those people who want to penetrate the spiritual world with the ordinary scientific method are in a certain way, I would say, droll. Dr. Ludwig Staudenmaier's book on “Magic as Experimental Natural Science” is extraordinarily characteristic in this respect. Such a man proceeds from the view that Everything that is to be comprehended should be comprehended according to scientific thinking. -- Now Staudenmaier is not exactly referring to dreams, but he is referring to so-called mediumistic phenomena, which are basically a further development of the dream world. In a healthy person the dream remains an experience that does not pass over into the outer organization. In the mediumistic being it is so that what is otherwise experienced by the ego and the astral body and is formed into the images of the physical body and the etheric body, then also passes over into the experiences of the physical body and the etheric body, and thereby all those phenomena arise which come to light in the mediumistic being. Staudenmaier - and he is quite right in this - did not want to be guided by what other mediums gave him, and so he made himself a medium in a certain way. He dreamed while writing, so to speak. He began to apply pen and pencil, just as he had always seen mediums do, and right - it worked! But he was amazed at what came to light, he was amazed at the connection that he would never have imagined before. He wrote down all sorts of things that were completely outside the realm of his conscious life. And at times it was so strongly outside his conscious life that he asked: "Yes, who are you who are writing? - Spirits, they replied. He had to write down: Spirits! - Think of it, the materialist, who does not recognize spirits, had to write down: Spirits! - Now he was convinced that what he was writing was a lie. So he went on to ask why the spirits were lying to him. They said: Yes, we have to lie to you like this, it's our way. - Then he asked them about all sorts of things that related to himself. It even came out once that they said: "Cabbage. - Now it cannot be assumed that it was in his own state of mind to call himself a cabbage. So all sorts of things came out which characterized themselves in such a way that they said: We must lie to you. - But then he said to himself: Of course there are no ghosts, it's just my subconscious speaking. - But now the matter becomes more and more disturbing, for now the subconscious is something that says cabbage to the superconscious and which lies, and such a process would have to lead to the personality in question having to say to himself: In my subconscious I am a complete liar.
.But all this ultimately points to nothing other than the fact that, just like the dream world, the world into which one dives also lodges a protest against the context of natural law. Everything we can think, want and feel in the physical-sensual world is distorted as soon as we penetrate into this more or less subconscious world. Why? Well, it is precisely the dream that is the bridge over into the spiritual world, and the spiritual world is definitely interwoven with a lawfulness that is not the law of nature, that has a completely different inner character. The dream is the transition to it. Anyone who believes that he can understand the spiritual world with the laws of nature is very much mistaken. And so the dream is to a certain extent the forerunner of the necessity that when we penetrate into the spiritual world we cannot simply continue the laws of nature. We can continue the methods by preparing ourselves, but we enter into a completely different lawfulness when we penetrate into the spiritual world.
This is what is often so little considered. It really is the case that today the principle is that one can and should only grasp the world according to the faculty of understanding that has developed over the last three to four centuries. This has developed slowly. Today there are no longer any such people - in the first half of the 19th century there were still such people - of the kind, for example, of Johannes Müller, Haeckel's teacher, who himself admitted that many a problem which he sought to investigate purely as a physiologist did not occur to him when he thought about it in his ordinary, fully awake state; but that then the dream came over him, which showed him again the tissue which he had prepared in his waking state, which showed him again all the manipulations. Then, in his dream, some of the solutions to such riddles were revealed to him. Johannes Müller was still imbued with the fact that in sleep one is in this peculiar weaving of the spiritual, where one is not touched by the hard necessity of physical natural law, where one can even penetrate into physical natural law, because this physical natural law is also based on something of that which is spiritual, and because the spiritual in its foundations is not of physical natural law, but only presents it to us on its surface.
There one must really become paradoxical if one carries such thoughts to their logical conclusion, as they arise quite naturally from spiritual research. No one who thinks in terms of today's natural science will believe that a light, if it shines here at a certain place, still shines just as strongly in the surrounding area at some distance. The physicist calculates the decrease in luminous intensity with the square of the distance, and in the same way he calculates the decrease in gravity. He says to himself with reference to these physical entities: What is true here on the surface of the earth decreases in validity as we move into the orbit of the cosmos. - Only for the content of his thinking does this not apply. And yet this thinking is no different from what we learn about earthly things here in the earth laboratories, in the clinics, on earth in general - except for the two-by-two-four. If gravity decreases with the square of the distance, why shouldn't the validity of the laws of nature also decrease with the square of the distance and no longer apply from a certain distance? But this is what spiritual science penetrates. And it must say: If you want to investigate the Orion Nebula or the nebula in the hounds, you are doing the same as if you were to apply earth concepts and somehow want to illuminate Venus, for example, with an earth candle. - If you present the truth from spiritual research through such analogies, it seems paradoxical to people. And yet, in that state in which we penetrate the spiritual world in sleep, we have more possibilities to explore, for example, the Orion Nebula or the nebula in the hounds than with the possibilities that come about through work in laboratories and observatories. You would explore much more if you dreamed about these things than if you thought about them intellectually. If you enter the cosmos, it is no use applying the things you have researched on earth to this cosmos. This is how we stand today with our education, that we actually want to apply what we find correct in our small earth cell to the whole cosmos, and it is easy to see that in reality the truth cannot come to light.
If one starts from such considerations, then many things that stood before mankind in older times with a primitive but penetrating clairvoyant way of looking at things become more valuable than they are to mankind today. And one will not even pass by those human insights that once arose in the pastoral state of primitive times as superficially as one usually does today. For these people dreamed many things better about the secrets of the stars in their pastoral life than people today can investigate, calculate and determine with a spectroscope in their clever lives at observatories. As strange as it sounds, it is true. But this mysterious connection between man and the universe can be understood by looking at some of the remains from ancient times in a spiritual-scientific way. And please allow me to speak today of what can arise if one examines the deep religious-ethical, but also social significance of the old Druidic institutions on the one hand, and on the other hand the old institutions of the Mithras Mysteries, because by letting this pass before our souls, we will gain clues as to how the organization of a Michael festival is actually to be thought of.
With regard to the Druid Mysteries, the lecture cycle that I had to give a few weeks ago in Penmaenmawr in Wales, directly at that place in England where the island of Anglesey is located, was really of very special significance, because there is a place where many memories of the old sacrificial sites, of the mystery sites of the Druids, can be found lying around in ruins. Today, the remains of these ancient cromlechs, dolmens, are actually quite unsightly. One climbs up to these mountain heights and finds stones arranged in such a way that they close off a kind of chamber, with a larger stone lying on top, or one also finds such kromlechs arranged in a circle - there were originally always twelve of them. Just in the immediate vicinity of Penmaenmawr one could climb up and find two such directly adjoining sun circles. And it was precisely in this particular region, where so much is still present in the spiritual life of nature that works differently from the way nature works in other regions today, that it was possible to examine again with the greatest clarity what I have explained in various anthroposophical lectures with reference to the Druid Mysteries. There is indeed a special spiritual atmosphere in this region, where there was also a branch of the Society of King Arthur on the Isle of Anglesey. I must characterize it as follows.
When one speaks of supernatural things, one cannot form one's thoughts in the same way as one does in life or in science. There one forms abstract thoughts, draws conclusions and so on. Even if one is now dependent on speaking more or less abstractly - for that is the cause of our language, which has become abstract - one cannot be so abstract in one's inner soul being if one wants to represent spiritual science. Everything must proceed in images. One must have images, imaginations before the soul. But having images, imaginations before the soul means something else than having thoughts in the soul. Thoughts in the soul are, depending on whether one is inwardly more or less inert, extraordinarily patient; one can hold them. Imaginations always have a life of their own. You feel very precisely: an imagination presents itself to you. It is different and yet similar to writing or drawing. You write or draw with your soul. But imaginations are not something as abstractly fixed as mere thoughts. You write them. Now, in most parts of Europe, where civilization has already taken on such an abstract character, these imaginations flit by relatively quickly; one always has an inner struggle to endure if one wants to depict the supernatural. It is as if one were to write and the writing were immediately extinguished by some demonic force. It is immediately no longer there. It is the same with imaginations, through which one visualizes the supersensible as a soul experience.
The spiritual atmosphere in those places in Wales that I mentioned has the peculiarity that imaginations there are more difficult to inscribe in the astral, but they remain there longer, they are more deeply imprinted. That is what one could perceive as so striking in that region. And it really was the case that everything pointed to being able to make the way back there in a more spiritual way to what those Druid priests - not in the times of decline of these Druid cults, when they had something quite unsympathetic, even very bad, but in the heyday - actually wanted at that time.
You only have to look at such a cromlech: it closes off a certain space in a primitive way, which was covered. If you now look at the sunlight, you first have the physical sunlight. But this physical sunlight is permeated everywhere by the spiritual effects of the sun. And to speak only of the physical sunlight, as physicists do today, would be exactly the same as if one wanted to speak only of a person's muscles, bones, blood and so on, and take no account of the soul and spirit within him. Light is by no means merely “phos”. Light is phosphorus, a carrier of light, has an active, spiritual quality. This spiritual aspect of light is lost to man in the mere sensory world. When the Druid priest placed himself in this tomb - the Kromlechs, like other ancient places of worship, were usually built over graves - he placed this device there, which was in a certain way impermeable to the physical rays of the sun. But the spiritual effects of the sun passed through it, and the Druid priest was specially trained to perceive the spiritual effects of the sun. And so he saw through the specially selected stones - they were always specially selected - into that space where the spiritual effects of the sun came, but the physical effects of the sun were excluded. And now he had trained his vision intimately. For what one sees in such a primitively constructed darkroom is different in February, different in July or August, different in December. In July it has a slightly yellowish tinge, whereas in December it has a slightly bluish inwardness. If you can observe this, you can see in the qualitative changes that this enclosed shadow formation assumes in the course of the year in such a dark chamber, the whole course of the year in the effects of the spiritual-soulful of the sun's radiation. And again in these solar circles the devices are so arranged that they are like the signs of the zodiac in the number twelve. Just on the mountain we had climbed there was a larger such solar circle, and at a short distance from it was a smaller one. If you had risen into the air in a balloon and looked down on these two Druid circles, ignoring the small distance between them, you would have seen the same layout as the Goetheanum in Dornach, which had burned down.
The old Druid priest had trained himself to see how the shadow of the sun fell differently at every time of day, but also at every season. He was able to follow these shadow formations and indicate from them exactly: now is this time of March, now is this time of October. In the perception that was conveyed to him through this, he was inside what was going on in the cosmos, but also in what had significance for life on earth from the cosmos. Now just think what people do today when they want to determine the influence of cosmic life on earthly life. What do even the farmers do? They have their calendar, which tells them what to do on this or that day. Even that is only approximate, because the thorough knowledge that once existed about these things has now evaporated, but there were no calendars in the old Druid times, there was not even a script. What the Druid priest could say from his observation of the sun was what was known about the connection between the heavens and the earth. And as the Druid priest said: Now the sun is in such a position that the wheat should be sown - or: Now the sun is in such a position that the breeding bull must be led through the herd - so it happened. These times had a cult which was truly not an abstract prayer, but a cult which organized the immediate practical life according to the way in which one connected with the spiritual of the universe. The great language of heaven was read and applied to earthly things.
But this extended into the intimacies of social life. The Druid-priest indicated from what he read from the universe what was to be done on this or that day of the year in such a way that it would stand in a favorable context in the whole universe. This was a cult through which the whole of life was actually a kind of divine service. In contrast, even the most mystical mysticism of today is a kind of abstraction, for it lets external nature rule, so to speak, does not concern itself further with it, but switches and rules according to tradition, while inwardly it elevates itself, closes itself off as far as possible within itself and concentrates within itself in order to attain an abstract relationship to a cloud-cuckoo-like divine-spiritual. However, that was different in those ancient times. In the cult, which had a real relationship with the universe, people connected with what the gods created in the world and were constantly working on. And as a human being on earth, one carried out what one read from such institutions as the Druids had, as the will of the gods in the starry script. But you had to read this star script first. It is a tremendously moving experience to be able to go back in time and place to what once worked in the heyday of the Druid culture in the way I have just described. And you can find such remnants of the old Druidic culture everywhere in those regions - and in other regions as far away as Norway.
So again in Central Europe, in the regions of Germany as far as the Rhine area, even as far as western France, there are remnants, reminders of the old Mithras cult everywhere. I will only mention the most important of them. You will find the bull everywhere as the outward symbol of the cult of Mithras, on which the man rides, thrusting a sword into the bull's neck. You will find a scorpion biting the bull, or the serpent below. But everywhere, if the pictures are complete, you will find this image of Taurus with man surrounded by the starry sky, especially with the signs of the zodiac. Again, we can ask ourselves: What does this picture actually express? - What this picture expresses will never be explored by an external, antiquated history, because it cannot establish the relationships through which one can arrive at what this man on the bull actually means. In order to arrive at this, one must first know what kind of training those who served in this Mithraic cult underwent. The whole ceremony can of course be conducted in such a way that it is a beautiful or, for my sake, an ugly ceremony, and that nothing at all sensible comes out of it. Only those who had undergone a certain training could get anything sensible out of it, which is why all the descriptions of the Mithra mysteries are actually wishy-washy, despite the promise of the images. For those who wanted to serve the cult of Mithras had to train their sensibility in a fine, intimate way. Everything depended on the Mithraic disciple developing his sensitivity in this way.
Now I said yesterday in the public lecture that the human heart is actually a subconscious sense organ. The head perceives subconsciously through the heart what is going on in the physical functions of the abdomen and the chest. Just as we perceive the external processes in the sensory world through the eye, so the human heart is in reality a sensory organ with reference to the functions indicated. The head - in particular the cerebellum - perceives subconsciously through the heart how the blood is fed with the processed food, how the kidneys, liver and so on function, what is going on in the organism. The heart is the sensory organ for the upper part of the human being. To raise this heart as a sense organ to a certain consciousness was the training of the person who was to be employed in the cult of Mithras. He had to acquire a fine, conscious feeling for what was going on in the human organism in the liver, kidneys, spleen and so on. The upper man, the head man, had to have a fine sense of what was going on in the chest and limb man. Such a training in the older times was not a training of the intellect, as we are used to today, but a training of the whole human being, which preferably focused on the emotional faculty. And when the student had attained the necessary maturity, he could say, just as we say on the basis of perception through external eyes, there are rain clouds, or there is a blue sky: now this type of processing is in my organism, now that type of processing.
What happens in the human organism is actually the same throughout the year, but only for the abstract individual. When science has once more penetrated to real truths about these things, then people will be astonished at how - even if not in the coarse way that can already be investigated by today's fine instruments - it can be ascertained in a quite different way for man how his blood becomes different, how he digests differently in January than in September, so that the heart as a sense organ is a wonderful barometer for the course of the year in the human limb-metabolic organism. To this end the student of Mithras was educated to perceive the course of the year in himself through the heart organization, through the science of the heart, which transmitted to him the course of the food metamorphosed in the organism through digestion and the absorption of the digested food into the blood. And in what was perceived there, the whole course of external nature was actually revealed in man, in the movement of the inner man.
After all, what is our abstract science, no matter how precisely we describe plants and plant cells, animals and animal tissues, what is this abstract science compared to what was once present in a more instinctive way in that the whole human being could make himself an organ of cognition, that he could develop his faculty of feeling as an organ of cognition like the disciple of Mithras. Man carries the animal nature within him, and he truly carries it in a more intense way than is usually thought. And that which the former students of Mithras perceived through their heart science could not be represented in any other way than through the bull. And the forces that work through the metabolic limb-man and are only tamed by the upper man, these forces are indicated by everything that figures around the bull as the scorpion, as the serpent. And the actual man in his crippled state sits above with the primitive power, thrusting into the neck of the bull with the sword of Michael. But what is to be defeated there, how it presents itself in the course of the year, was only known to those who were trained in this relationship.
And only now does this symbol gain meaning. No matter how much you look at it with what people usually know today, or how much you want to depict it artistically, nothing will come of it. Something only comes out of it when you know something of the heart science of the ancient students of Mithras. And then man really studied, when he looked at himself through his heart, the spirit of the course of the sun through the zodiac. Therefore it was quite right - and the experience is made in this way, that man as a higher being rides on his lower nature - that the cosmos was arranged in circles around man, for the spiritual of the cosmos was experienced in this way. It is really the case that the more one looks through the re-emerging spiritual science into what an old, semi-conscious, dreamlike, but nevertheless clairvoyance has brought to light, the greater one's respect for it becomes. One becomes really reverent towards the old cults when one penetrates into them and can find them again, when one penetrates deeper into them, just as the cult of Mithras, for example, was there so that the old Mithras priest, by penetrating into the course of the year, could indicate to his congregation what was to be done on each individual day of the year. So the Mithraic cult was there to find out from heaven what was to happen on earth. Just think what a different enthusiasm, what a different impulsiveness arises for what is to be done on earth when one feels oneself on earth as an active person, so that the impulses flow into this activity which one has first researched through the great cosmic scripture, which one has read from the universe, by starting from such knowledge and entering into the individual activities of life with what arose as impulses. As unsympathetic as this may be to us in today's terms, and rightly so, it was good and the right thing to do in ancient terms. But in making this reserve, we must realize what it means to read from heaven what has to happen on earth in human life and thus know ourselves to be one with the divine, instead of discussing, in the spirit of Adam Smith or Karl Marx, what should be done with regard to social life. Only those who can place these opposites before their souls will know how to look into what is necessary today in terms of new impulses for social life.
Only when one creates these foundations does one acquire the right constitution of soul for going out from the earth into the universe; no longer to look up in the way one usually does, to Mercury, Venus, Saturn and so on, by merely using abstract arithmetic or the spectroscope, but then to apply those means that lie in imagination, inspiration and intuition. But then one comes to the conclusion, already from the imagination, that the celestial bodies become something quite different from how they present themselves to modern astronomy, partly through sensory observation, partly through inference. To the astronomer of today, for example, the moon appears as some kind of mineral celestial body that has already become old, which reflects the sunlight like a kind of mirror, which then falls on the earth under certain conditions. The effects of this sunlight are not given much thought. For a while, things were applied to the weather. Of course, the very clever people of the 19th century did not believe in the relationship between the phases of the moon and the weather, but those who had a little mystical streak in their souls, such as Gustav Theodor Fechner, believed in it. I have often told the story in our circles of how Schleiden, the great botanist of the 19th century, and Gustav Theodor Fechner worked together at a university, and how Schleiden naturally regarded it as a superstition that Fechner carefully and statistically juxtaposed how much rainwater the full moon days and how much the new moon days produce. For Professor Schleiden, what Gustav Theodor Fechner said about the effects of the moon on the weather was pure superstition. But then the following happened. The two professors also had wives, and at that time it was still the case in Leipzig that rainwater was collected for washing; barrels were set up to collect it. Of course, Professor Fechner and Professor Schleiden also collected their rainwater in such barrels. If things had been done naturally, then Professor Schleiden should have said: It's stupid to worry about what influence the phases of the moon have on the amount of rainwater. - But even though Professor Schleiden said it was stupid to make serious considerations about it, Professor Schleiden got into a terrible argument with Professor Fechner about the fact that both women wanted to put their barrels for rainwater in the same place at the same time. The women knew from their practical experience of life what rainwater was all about, while the men on their catheters behaved quite differently.
So it is the same with the appearance of the moon as I have described. But especially when one passes from imagination to inspiration, the moon immediately presents itself with its spiritual content. This spiritual content of the moon is now not merely something that is meant in an abstract sense, but it is a real moon population, and the moon presents itself in the spiritual-scientific view as a kind of fortress in the cosmos. Not only the rays of light from the sun, but also the external effects of the universe in general are radiated back to the earth from the moon. But inside the moon is a closed world, a world that can only be reached today if one ascends to the spiritual in a certain sense. You can read some of the allusions found in older literature about the moon's relationship to other beings in the cosmos and compare them with what can now be said about the nature of the moon from anthroposophy.
We have often heard how, if we go back in earthly development, we come to ancient times when people not only had the instinctive wisdom of which I have already spoken today, but when they had beings as teachers who never took on a physical body, higher spiritual beings and such beings who only took on an etheric body, whose teaching in relation to people consisted in the fact that these beings did not speak to people as we speak today, but that they inwardly imparted wisdom to people, so to speak, inoculated it into the etheric body. People knew that these higher beings were there, just as we know that some physical teacher or the like is there, but they also knew that these beings were definitely around people in a spirit existence. Everything that is recognized even in the Catholic Church as the original wisdom of mankind, that original wisdom that once existed, of which even the Vedas and the noble Vedanta philosophy are only a shadowy reflection, can be traced back to this teaching of higher spiritual beings. That primordial wisdom, which has never been written down, was there in such a way that man did not invent it, but that it grew within man, for we need not imagine the influences of the primordial teachers to have been a demonstrative teaching. Just as today we learn language as children, imitating the older people, without any special teaching taking place, just as we develop many things in general as if they grew out of our inner being, so in those times there was a mysterious influence of the primal teachers on these older people, not an abstract teaching, so that man simply knew himself to be knowledgeable at a certain age. Just as people today get teeth or become sexually mature at a certain age, so knowledge also came to people at that time. I think many a student would be happy if something like this still existed today, where knowledge simply came to them without them having to make any special effort.
But it was a completely different kind of knowledge to that of today. It was a knowledge that was organic power in man, that was connected with the power of growth and so on. So this primal wisdom was of a completely different character, and I can only illustrate what happened with regard to this primal wisdom by means of a comparison. Imagine that I first pour some liquid into a glass and then put some salt in it. I dissolve the salt so that I have a cloudy liquid, then I do something so that the salt settles at the bottom as sediment and the dissolved liquid remains at the top, then the dissolved liquid is cleaner and lighter at the top, and the sediment is denser at the bottom. If I now want to describe what has woven through mankind during the time of the old primal wisdom, it is a mixture of the spiritually pure and the physically animalistic. When we think today, we believe that these abstract thoughts rule and weave without being anything in us, and that breathing and blood circulation, for example, are something in themselves. But for primitive man in the earlier times on earth it was all one thing: he had to breathe, and his blood circulated in him, and he wanted to circulate his blood. Then man's thinking moved more towards the head and became purer, like the thinner liquid at the top of a glass, and the sediment, so to speak, formed at the bottom.
This was at the time when the original teachers withdrew more and more from the earth, when this original wisdom was no longer given in this old way. And where did these original teachers withdraw to? We find them again in this moon fortress! There they are and continue their existence. And the dregs remained on earth, namely the present kind of reproductive forces. These reproductive forces were not yet there in their present form when the primordial wisdom was present on earth, they only became so as the dregs, so to speak. I do not want to say that they are something bad, but in this context they are the sediment. And that which is, so to speak, the solution fluid above is our abstract wisdom today. So that we see how with the development of mankind on the one hand the more spiritual, in the abstract sense, comes up, and how on the other hand the coarser animal things arise as sediment. In this way one gradually gains an idea of the spiritual content of the moon. Such a science, however, was already present in the instinctive clairvoyance of mankind - at that time it had a more prophetic character.
Just as one speaks of the moon in this way by pointing, I would say, to its population, to its spiritual content, so one can also speak of Saturn. If one gets to know Saturn through spiritual-scientific effort, which also results from the imagination a little, but not much, but more from inspiration and intuition, the result is that one becomes more and more immersed in the universe in such a way that one follows the sensory process of perception. Man experiences this process of sensory perception, he sees some thing, then feels the red on that thing. This is still something quite different from coming out of the physical body by the methods described in my books and then being able to see how an external object acts on the human physical organism, how the etheric forces, rising from within, grasp that which takes place as a physical process, as a physical-chemical process, for example, in the eye during the process of perception. I would like to say that the ordinary self-exposure of the world in perception, also in scientific observation, does not move the human being very much. But when you step out of yourself in this way and then have yourself before you in your etheric body, with the astral perhaps still present, and then afterwards see how such a sensory process of perception or cognition has come about, even though you have stepped out of your physical-sensory being as a spiritual being, then you feel a powerful, an intense process in your spirituality: what you experience there is a real rapture. The world becomes big. And what one is otherwise accustomed to seeing only in the outer circle, the zodiac in its outer constellation revelations, arises as something that rises from within. Who would say: Reminiscences arise in the one who speaks in this way - he does not know the process in question. For what arises there are truly not reminiscences, but powerful imaginations permeated by intuitions, and one then begins to see from within what one has otherwise only seen from the outside. As a human being, you become interwoven with all the secrets of the zodiac. And from within the universe, if one grasps the favorable moment, the mystery of Saturn, for example, can light up inwardly in its passage through the zodiacal pictures. Reading the cosmos consists in finding the methods to read from the celestial bodies seen inwardly as they pass by the zodiacal pictures. What the individual planet tells you gives you the vowels of the world script. And what is formed around the vowels when the planets pass by the zodiacal pictures gives you the consonants, if I may express myself comparatively. You really get to know the essence of the planetary when you gain a view from within of what you otherwise only see on the outside.
This is the way to get to know Saturn, for example, according to its true inner essence. Then you realize: there is its population, it is the memory keeper of our planetary system. Everything that has happened in our planetary system since time immemorial is preserved by Saturn's spirits as if in a powerful cosmic memory. Therefore, anyone who wants to study the historical, the great cosmic-historical course of our planetary system must certainly not speculate, as Kant and Laplace did, that there was once a primordial nebula that condensed and began to spiral, from which the planets then split off, leaving the sun in the middle, around which the planets now orbit. I have often spoken about this and said: It is nice to show children the experiment in which you have a drop of oil floating in a liquid, put a needle through a sheet of card from above and then set the drop of oil in a rotating motion so that smaller drops of oil detach themselves from it. It may otherwise be good in life to forget oneself. But in such a case one must not forget what one does in the experiment itself, namely that one has first set the drop of oil in a rotating motion. And accordingly, in Kant-Laplace's theory, one would not have to forget the spinner, one would have to transfer him into the universe and imagine a great, mighty “Mr. Teacher” there, turning the pin. Then one would have spoken truthfully and honestly. But the way science speaks of these things today, it does not speak honestly.
I described to you how one comes to see in reality what lives in the planets, what lives in the celestial formations in general. Saturn must be used to study the nature of the planetary system in its cosmic-historical development. A spiritual science can therefore only give that in the human soul constitution which can appear to man as a cosmic experience. Today we actually only speak of earthly experiences. Cosmic experience leads us to a co-experience of the cosmos. And only when we experience the cosmos in this way will we in turn acquire a spiritualized, spiritual instinct for the course of the year in which we are interwoven with our organic and social life. We will gain an instinct for how the earth stands in a completely different relationship to the cosmos from spring to summer, and again in a different relationship from summer to fall into winter. Then we will get a sense of how life on earth flows differently when spring is there with its sprouting and sprouting, and how it proceeds differently when autumn is there with its killing in nature. We will gain a sense of the difference between the awakening life of nature in spring and the dormant existence of nature in fall. As a result, man will in turn become mature enough to place himself with his festivals, which can have a social meaning, into the course of nature in the same way that the forces of nature place him through his physical organization into his respiratory process and his blood circulation.
If we look at what is within our skin, we live there in respiration and blood circulation. What we are there, that is what we are as physical human beings, belongs to the course of the world with what is going on inside us. But we live outwardly interwoven into the outer existence of nature, just as we are inwardly interwoven into our breathing and our blood circulation. And what is man in truth in his consciousness? Yes, he is actually an earthworm, but an earthworm for whom it never rains. It's so nice when you go to certain areas where it rains a lot, the earthworms come out and you have to be careful, which you do when you love an animal, that you don't crush them. And then you think to yourself, the poor things must always be down there, only when it rains do they come out of the ground once, and when it doesn't rain they stay down. But today's materialistic man is just such an earthworm, only one for whom it never rains. For if we want to hold on to the comparison, the rain for him would have to consist in the shining in of spiritual knowledge, because otherwise he is always worming around down there, where it never becomes light. Humanity must overcome this earthworm nature today. It must get out of it, it must reach the light, the spiritual light of day. And the call for the Michaelmas festival is the call for the spiritual light of day.
I wanted to point this out to you before I can talk about the things that can inaugurate a Michaelmas festival as a particularly meaningful, also socially meaningful festival.