The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture Four

[ 1 ] Every thinking person must be interested in a phenomenon that external science cannot explain: dream life. What is a dream from an occult point of view? It is the remnant of a state that dates back to a prehistoric period. To gain an understanding of this, let us consider a few other phenomena: organs that are no longer necessary for physical life, that are rudimentary in nature, and whose purpose is unknown to science.

[ 2 ] One example is a muscle in the outer ear, which is greatly atrophied in humans, and another is the nictitating membrane, a kind of third eyelid. Furthermore, there is the appendix, which not only has no function, but can also lead to disease. Occultists are particularly interested in the pineal gland, which is located in the brain and has the shape of a small pine cone. Natural science believes that these organs once had a function and then degenerated. In a certain sense, this is the case, but we must not simply imagine it in the Darwinian sense. The pineal gland is the relic of an organ that was of utmost importance to pre-humans, an organ of perception. It was a kind of external brain that also served as an antenna for the eyes and ears. This organ existed in pre-humans in an earlier period, at a time when the Earth was still half liquid, half vaporous, and connected to the moon. Humans swam like fish in this partly liquid, partly gaseous element and steered themselves with the help of this organ. Their perceptions had a clairvoyant, pictorial character. The warm currents evoked in them an impression of bright red and strong melodious sounds. The cold currents evoked green and blue colors, silvery shining and fluid sounds.

[ 3 ] The pineal gland thus played a very decisive role in early humans. But with the mineralization of the earth, other organs of perception appeared, and in us, the pineal gland no longer has any apparent purpose.

[ 4 ] Let us compare the phenomenon of dreams with this organ. Dreaming is a rudimentary function of our lives, seemingly without use or purpose; but in reality it is a dying function, a function that once had a completely different effect on how we perceived the world.

[ 5 ] Before the earth became mineral, it was only perceptible to astral clairvoyance. All perception is relative and is only a symbol. The central truth is perceptible to the divine human being, but it is inexpressible. It is what Goethe so wonderfully expressed in the words: “Everything transitory is only a parable.”

[ 6 ] Astral vision—and this is also the dream of today—is both an allegory and a symbol.

[ 7 ] Let us consider examples of dreams caused by physical and bodily causes:

[ 8 ] A student dreams that a classmate pushed him as he entered the college, resulting in a duel, and that he was hit by a shot. He wakes up and sees that the cause of the dream is an overturned chair.

[ 9 ] In a dream, you hear the sound of a trotting horse—an auditory perception caused by the ticking of a clock.

[ 10 ] A woman dreams of a pastor preaching who has wings—it is a rooster crowing and saying “cock-a-doodle-doo.”

[ 11 ] Just as there are dream perceptions that come from the body, there are also others that come from the astral and spiritual worlds. Such perceptions are the origin of myths.

[ 12 ] Scholars today trace the origin of myths to the poetic reinterpretation of natural phenomena. But anyone who studies the origin of myths among the people will see that they did not arise in this way. Myths and legends are all originally astral images, which tradition distorts, transforms, and further develops.

[ 13 ] Here is an example: the legend of the noon woman. When country folk working in the harvest do not go home at midday in the oppressive summer heat and sleep on the ground to rest, a woman appears to them and presents them with a series of riddles. If the sleeper can solve them, they awaken free; if not, the woman kills them, cutting them up with a sickle. The legend adds that the phantom can be conjured up by reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards.

[ 14 ] Secret science teaches us that this midday woman is an astral form, a kind of incubus that appears in sleep and oppresses people. The Paternoster recited backwards is a reflection of the fact that in the astral world everything is reflected in reverse order, as in a mirror. Ludwig Laistner notes in his book “Das Rätsel der Sphinx” (The Riddle of the Sphinx) that the legend of the sphinx is originally found among all peoples. He also proves that all these legends originate from a kind of light sleep that perceives realities, and that the sphinx is actually a demon.

[ 15 ] The dream state or the perception of the real world in an astral image—that is the origin of all myths. Myths are the astral world, seen in symbolic visions.

[ 16 ] Historically, myth creation disappears when logical and intellectual life unfolds. People of the present live only through their senses and through their minds, which process sensory perceptions. People of the future will live through their intellect, awakened to full waking consciousness, and at the same time in the astral and spiritual worlds. Therefore, Rosicrucianism teaches: First you must be a clear-thinking person whose bright daytime consciousness remains completely intact; then you can acquire astral consciousness. This brings us to the gateway to a great and significant future for humanity.

[ 17 ] The trance of the hypnotized person and the medium is only an atavistic phenomenon, bound to the dulling of consciousness. The clairvoyant, the initiate, is not someone with an imbalance, a visionary; he already possesses the level of consciousness of the people of the future, he is just as solidly anchored to the earth as the sober earthling, and his reason is just as clear, just as certain. But his gaze looks into two worlds.

[ 18 ] It is a law of evolution that certain organs must die so that new organs can develop. This was also the case with the pineal gland. It is connected to the lymphatic system. It was once an external organ of perception, which can still be found as an opening in the embryo in the womb, and in newborn children, the soft spot at the top of the skull is a reminder of the former human constitution.

[ 19 ] Dreams play an analogous role for our present consciousness as the pineal gland does for the physiology of the human body. They are the last remnant of a now rudimentary clairvoyance.

[ 20 ] Another problem that was brought to the attention of the neophyte in the occult brotherhoods arises from the question of why there is an ascending and a descending development in the world at all. Why does evil exist? This is a difficult question that neither science nor religion has truly solved. However, the whole problem of education also depends on its solution. Evil is not an absolute; it is a means for the development of individual essence and freedom.

[ 21 ] The materialist does not admit that the thoughts we form about nature are already contained within it. He believes that we put them there.

[ 22 ] The Rosicrucians of the Middle Ages placed a glass of water in front of the neophyte and said to him: For this water to be in the glass, someone must have put it there. The same is true of the ideas we find in nature. They must have been placed there by the divine spirits, the helpers of the Logos.

[ 23 ] The thoughts we draw from the world are in truth found within it. Everything we create is necessarily included in it.

[ 24 ] It is a false idea of some mystics to belittle the value of the physical body. It has the same value as the astral body; it is to become the temple of the soul.

[ 25 ] Consider the wonderful structure of the thigh bone, the bone that supports the entire body and whose surfaces are linked together in such a way that they achieve the greatest possible strength with the smallest possible amount of material. No engineer could achieve such a miracle. Compared to the physical body, the astral body, the source of our passions, is crude and unformed.

[ 26 ] The physical world is the expression of incarnated wisdom, divine wisdom.

[ 27 ] The Rosicrucians teach that the Earth was once a planet of wisdom, while today's Earth could be called the planet of love. The task of human beings is to do for that which is still imperfect in themselves what divine wisdom has done for their physical bodies. They must refine their astral bodies and their environment.

[ 28 ] Involution is that which has entered into us without our consciousness and without our will, under the influence of divine wisdom. Evolution is everything that we should bring forth from this for the outer world through our consciousness and our will.

[ 29 ] Why does man work to transform nature? The gods created the rocks, man created the pyramids. The pyramid will perish over the centuries, but the idea that created the pyramid will continue to develop. What is the cathedral today will also take on a different form. The canvas on which Raphael painted will crumble to dust, but Raphael's soul and the ideas represented in his paintings will always be living, evolving forces. The art of today will be the nature of tomorrow and will blossom again in it. Thus, involution becomes evolution.

[ 30 ] Here lies the intersection of the divine and the human, and the dual power that leads God to man and allows man to ascend to God.