The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eleventh Lecture

[ 1 ] The arrangement we have made with regard to the courses running parallel to these branch lectures makes it possible for us to advance to ever higher levels in our branch. I would therefore ask you to take these courses into account as far as possible. It is necessary to have a place where one can continue with the lectures. Otherwise, one would actually have to start from scratch every year.

[ 2 ] Today we will deal with something that again seems far removed from the last lectures, but which will nevertheless fit into our train of thought this year. We would like to follow up on a remark made in one of the last public lectures, the lecture on “Superstition from the standpoint of spiritual science.” A remark was made there that cannot be elaborated upon in a public lecture because a deeper understanding requires prior knowledge that has less to do with the intellect and intellectual faculty than with a faculty of knowledge that lies in our entire soul constitution and that we can only acquire through years of working with the branch life. Only through such patient work can we reach a point where many things that we previously considered absurd seem possible and probable, so that we can take them into our lives and see how far they prove true. The observation from which we wish to start was that it is a common fact, and not superstition, that in certain diseases, such as pneumonia, for example, the seventh day represents a crisis, that during this crisis, which inevitably occurs on the seventh day, when the patient can easily die, the doctor must be careful to get the patient through it. This is recognized today by every reasonable physician, but physicians cannot investigate the causes because they have no idea of the spiritual origins of things. Let us first establish the fact that something very strange, connected with the mysterious number seven, is evident in pneumonia.

[ 3 ] We must now look at human beings in such a way that we can understand this and many other facts. You all know — it has been mentioned countless times here — that we can only understand human beings if we understand the structure of their four members: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. These four members of human nature stand in the most manifold relationships and mutual dependencies. Each member influences the others, and thus they all work together in a complex way. But this interaction is very complicated. Human beings can only learn about these connections very slowly and gradually, as well as the relationships of these members to certain forces, processes, and beings throughout the cosmos. For human beings, through all their members, are in a continuous—and this is also very important—and changing connection with the cosmos. What we recognize as the physical body, the etheric body, and so on, are connected with each other, but also with the cosmos, with the entire world that surrounds us. For what we have within us is in a certain sense also outside us, and so we may say that we can best recognize these relationships between the inner and outer worlds when we observe human beings in the waking and sleeping states.

[ 4 ] When a human being lies sleeping before us, we have the physical body and the etheric body lying in bed, and in a certain relationship outside these two are the astral body and the I. But that is only an imprecise way of putting it. The imprecision is sufficient for many things, but today we want to get to know these relationships a little more precisely. The astral body and the I are therefore not initially active in the physical body. However, the physical body with its nervous and blood systems and the etheric body are not possible without being permeated by an astral body and an I of some kind. Nor could the etheric body exist without being permeated by higher beings. The moment a person leaves with their own astral body and ego, the activities of these two members of human nature must be replaced. The human body cannot remain lying there without an ego and an astral body active within it, so that we must also have an ego and an astral body active in the sleeping human being. Strictly speaking, however, we should say: The ego and the astral body, which are active in the sleeping physical body of the human being, are also present in the human being during the day, but their activity is completely undermined by the human astral body and ego, which through their activity destroy that of the other higher beings. If we want to imagine the ego as it is in humans today in waking humans, we must say to ourselves: this human ego is within the human body in waking humans, and during this time its activity deprives a comprehensive ego of its sphere of influence. What does this limited ego of ours actually do in sleep? In truth, we can say quite accurately: this ego, which has freed itself during the day from the great world ego and lives on its own in the human body, submerges during the night into the world ego and engages in its own activity. And it is precisely through this immersion, this sinking of the daytime ego into the world ego, that the world ego can work unhindered and remove everything that the daytime ego has accumulated in the way of fatigue. The fact that the daytime ego sinks, submerges into the world ego, makes the nighttime ego possible in a comprehensive way. If you want to visualize this, you can imagine the relationship between the daytime ego and the nighttime ego as the daytime ego describing a circle, so to speak, and spending most of its time outside the large ego, while at night it submerges into the large ego. For example, it spends sixteen hours outside and eight hours submerged in the nighttime ego.

[ 5 ] You can only understand this correctly if you take what I have just said very seriously, namely that your ego is never the same during those sixteen hours—if we assume that this is the normal waking time—that the ego undergoes constant changes during this time, that it describes part of a circle and then sinks below it and undergoes further changes during the night, of which the ordinary person is unaware. These changes go deeper and deeper into the unconscious until they reach a climax, and then the ego slowly becomes more conscious again. We must therefore say that in the course of twenty-four hours, the human ego undergoes certain changes, the outer symbol of which we imagine as a cycle, as a pointer that describes a circle and from time to time sinks into the great world ego.

[ 6 ] In a very similar way, the human astral body undergoes changes. The astral body also changes in such a way that, symbolically speaking, we must imagine a cycle. In the astral body, too, the changes are such that we must indeed speak of a submerging into a world astral body in a certain sense. Only modern human beings no longer notice this immersion in the world astral body, whereas they used to notice it very clearly. At that time, human beings felt, so to speak, their own astral feelings at one time and completely different feelings at another time. Thus, at one time they felt more alive in the external world surrounding them, and at another time they felt more of their own inner being. In this way, one could perceive very different nuances in the way the astral body was felt, because the astral body undergoes rhythmic changes over the course of seven days, i.e., seven times twenty-four hours, which can be compared to an orbit. Just as the ego undergoes rhythmic changes in a period of twenty-four hours, which are still expressed today in the alternation of waking and sleeping, so does the astral body in seven times twenty-four hours. Such rhythmic changes occurred with great vitality in primitive humans. So there are rhythmic changes taking place in the astral body that run their course in seven days, and from the eighth day onwards the rhythm repeats itself. In fact, during part of the time in which the human being undergoes this rhythm, the astral body is immersed in a general world astral body. Otherwise it is more outside this world astral body. From this you can form an idea that what appears as the general astral body and the general I in the sleeping human being has great significance for human life. That I into which he sinks during sleep, which causes the blood to pulsate at night, is the same that works in his body during sleep. Even when he sleeps during the day, he submerges into this general I, and thereby introduces a certain irregularity into his rhythm, which in earlier times would have had a destructive effect, but which is no longer so destructive today because human life has changed significantly in this respect in our time. During the seven days, the human astral body truly submerges into the same part of the general astral body of the world that permeates the physical body and the etheric body during sleep. This causes the inner feelings and sensations to change. Today, this hardly attracts attention, but in earlier times it could not be ignored.

[ 7 ] But it is not only the ego and the astral body that undergo very specific rhythmic changes, but also the etheric body. These changes take place in such a way that, symbolically speaking, the human etheric body rotates around its own axis four times in seven days, and after four times seven days it returns to the same processes it underwent on the first day. A very specific rhythm takes place here in the four times seven days. But here we are already entering a realm that would require more detailed discussion if everything were to be understood. You will recall that I said that the etheric body of the man is female and that of the woman is male. The rhythm is not the same for the male and female etheric bodies, but we will not go into that in detail today. Let us just emphasize that such a rhythm takes place, let us say, because of the difference between man and woman, in approximately four times seven days.

[ 8 ] But we are not finished yet. In the physical body, too, very specific processes repeat themselves rhythmically, however improbable this may seem to people today. They are almost completely blurred today because humans were supposed to become independent of certain processes, but they are still noticeable to the occult observer. If the physical body were left entirely to itself, this rhythm would occur in ten times seven times four days in women and in twelve times seven times four days in men. This is how it would play out if humans today were still completely left to the laws of their own rhythms. This was indeed once the case, but humans have become freer from the cosmic influences surrounding them. So we have a rhythmic sequence of processes in the four members of the human being. If you like, you can imagine each of the four rhythms as a cycle. Today, of course, what humans would perform as rhythm in their physical bodies if they were completely left to themselves only approximately corresponds to the external physical, purely spatial processes that correspond to this rhythm, because the compression of human relationships in favor of human freedom has changed these relationships to the cosmos.

[ 9 ] You have already seen from the numbers ten times seven times four or twelve times seven times four that the rhythm of the physical body corresponds approximately to the course of the year. You can symbolically imagine these changes in the outer physical body when you think of how human beings turn around, as it were, in the course of a year; they are once on this side of the sun and once on the other. If we now imagine that he always faces the sun, then in the course of a year he must turn once around himself and once around the sun. Someone who only looks at the matter externally will regard this as something quite insignificant, but it is actually very important.

[ 10 ] What takes place here as a rhythm in the four bodies has been implanted in human beings over long, long periods of time, and the fact that the different bodies can interact with each other is arranged by the hierarchies, by beings that we have already mentioned several times. We know that we are embedded in higher beings. It is the activity of these spiritual beings, who fill the physical and spiritual space with their deeds, that has brought about these specific relationships. But if you consider what has just been said, you will arrive at a thought from a different angle, one that was touched upon frequently here last winter. The establishment of the rhythm of the physical body began on ancient Saturn. The addition of the etheric body, so that the etheric body and the physical body fit together in their rhythm, comes from the fact that this rhythm was created by other spirits, the sun spirits. Through the interaction of the different rhythms, a relationship is established, just as the relationship between the two hands of a clock is determined by their rhythm. On the old Moon, yet another rhythm was incorporated, that of the astral body.

[ 11 ] Now the spirits who organized our entire cosmos—for everything physical is an expression of these beings—had to shape the outer physical movement in accordance with the inner relationships of the beings. The fact that the sun is orbited by the earth in one year comes from the rhythm that was implanted in the physical body long before the physical constellation existed. The spatial has therefore been arranged in these heavenly spheres out of the spiritual. The moon is led around the earth because its cycle should correspond to the cycle of the human etheric body, in four times seven days, because this rhythm should find its expression in the movement of the moon. The different illumination of the moon by the sun, the four quarters of the moon, correspond to the different rhythms of the astral body, and the daily course of the earth's rotation corresponds to the rhythm of the I. It is precisely in the rhythm of the ego that we can clarify something that has always been taught in all occult science, but which today will seem like fantastic reverie to people, even though it is true. In ancient times, the Earth did not rotate on its axis; this rotation only developed over time. When human beings were still in a different state on Earth, this movement did not yet exist. What was first stimulated to rotate was not the earth, but human beings. The human ego was stimulated by the spirits to which it is subject to rotate, and the human ego then actually took the earth with it and rotated it around itself. The rotation of the earth is the result of the rhythm of the ego. As astonishing as this sounds, it is true. First, the spiritual members of the human being, which developed into the I, had to receive the impulse to turn, and then they took the Earth with them. This changed later. Human beings became free on Earth; conditions changed so that human beings became free from the surrounding cosmic forces. But that is how it was originally. So you see how everything physical around us is actually an outflow of the spiritual. The spiritual is everywhere first. All the conditions in the world flow from it.

[ 12 ] And now think of the astral body, which completes a cycle, so to speak, in the course of seven days. Think how certain irregularities in the astral body are connected with illnesses, namely through the fact that these irregularities continue through the etheric body to the physical body. Now let us assume that the astral body has a certain damage within itself. Through this damage, it affects the etheric body, and thus the damage continues to the physical body. This also becomes damaged. Then the organism begins to revolt against the damage and to bring protective forces into play. This revolt is usually fever; it is the call of the healing forces in the human being. Fever is not an illness, but rather the human being calling upon all the forces of his entire organism to repair the damage. This revolt of the entire organism against the damage is usually expressed in fever. Fever is the most beneficial and healing aspect of illness. The individual damaged part cannot heal itself; it must receive energy from other sources, and this is expressed in fever.

[ 13 ] Now consider that this fever occurs in pneumonia. The lungs have been damaged by some cause. When the human lungs have suffered some damage, it is first the astral body that has suffered the damage, and only then has it passed through the etheric body to the physical body. The root cause of pneumonia always lies in the astral body; pneumonia cannot occur in any other way. Now think of the rhythm of the astral body. On the day when pneumonia occurs, the astral body acts upon the physical body. Now, through the fever, the body begins to revolt. After seven days, the astral body and the etheric body are again in the same mutual position; parts of them meet again. But it does not encounter the same part of the etheric body, because the etheric body has also undergone its rhythm in the meantime. It now encounters the next part. This is now also affected and influenced by the astral body, and this other part of the etheric body is influenced in the opposite way. Now the fever is suppressed. Because the next quarter of the etheric body now coincides with that part of the astral body which coincided with the previous quarter of the etheric body seven days ago, the opposite process is brought about as seven days ago, namely the reaction against the fever. The opposite rhythm of the body suppresses the fever again. For the human body is there to be healthy, and that is the purpose of rhythm. Certain effects rise during the first seven days and must fall during the next seven days. In healthy people, this rise and fall alternate. But when a person is ill, suppressing the fever puts their life in danger. While in healthy people an ascending process reverses on the seventh day, in sick people the ascending process should continue. But the vehement rise causes a vehement fall. This is the reason for the crisis on the seventh day in pneumonia.

[ 14 ] This can be understood when one considers that the lungs developed at a time when the moon had already separated and was preparing to develop its rhythm, and when the rhythm of the days was also beginning to develop. That is why the lungs are still connected to the astral body and the rhythm of the etheric body today.

[ 15 ] You can see how human life in its abnormal conditions can be judged from the perspective of spiritual science, how human beings can only be understood in their entirety when these connections are understood. That is why fertility in the sciences will only be possible again when human beings are thoroughly imbued with the great insights of spiritual science. In the past, until about the middle of our earth's development, human beings were much more in tune with the external rhythms of nature in all their rhythms. Since that time, however, since the middle of the Atlantean epoch, things have shifted. The inner life of human beings has become independent of the external rhythm. Internally, they have retained their old rhythm. It is precisely through the lack of harmony between these rhythms that human beings have gained independence and freedom; otherwise, the development of freedom in human history would not have been possible. The rhythm of human beings has raced ahead of that of the sun, or rather, the rhythm of the earth has raced ahead of that of the sun. The same is true of other rhythms, such as that of the astral body. In the past, humans experienced very different moods during the seven days of the week. At one time, everything external made a great impression on them, at another time they lived more in their inner world. Because the rhythms are no longer in harmony today, the states of inner experience remain even at times when humans enjoy the outside world more, and vice versa. They mix together and balance each other out, and the astral body becomes, so to speak, equally tempered. In people who live more in their astral body, such fluctuations in mood can still be perceived upon close observation. In people with mental illness or disorders, the differences in the states of the astral body can be demonstrated.

[ 16 ] For the ego, rhythm developed last, but even there things are already getting mixed up. After all, people can sleep during the day and be awake at night. But in the past, this rhythm always corresponded to the external world. In Atlantis, something very bad would have happened if people had wanted to sleep during the day and be awake at night. They would have thrown their whole lives into disorder. Today, the rhythm has remained in a certain sense, but it has become independent of the external world. It is just as when you set a clock precisely according to the hour of the sun, according to solar time. You can then read the hours of the sun very accurately. But now you could set the clock to twelve o'clock at seven in the afternoon. The rhythm of the clock would still be correct, it would just be shifted in relation to the sun. The same is true of human beings. The old rhythm in which human beings used to exist in harmony with the entire cosmos has been preserved. It has only shifted. If the clock were a living being, it would be right to shift its rhythm out of the surrounding rhythms. In the distant future, humans will come to let their rhythm flow out into the world again from their inner development. Just as there were once beings who let the sun, moon, and earth move from their rhythms, so too will humans one day transfer their rhythm out into the world when they have reached the divine level. This is the meaning of becoming independent in rhythm. From this we can sense the deeper foundations of astrology. But that is not our concern today. Today we only wanted to show how spiritual science is not a sum of abstract ideas for the egoistic human being who is interested in it, but that it will shine into the most everyday circumstances of life. But then one must have the will to go from the outer appearances to the underlying principles. Rhythm is implanted in matter by the spirit; human beings today carry rhythm within themselves as a legacy of their spiritual ancestry. However, one can only understand this rhythm for human beings and also for other natural beings if one goes back to the original conditions. Even in animals, the individual bodies—the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the group ego—exist in completely different relationships to one another. There is a different rhythm for each species of animal. For the physical body, it is more or less the same, but completely different rhythms operate for the etheric and astral bodies of different animals. The animal world can be classified, as it is today, according to external forms, into genera according to rhythms, depending on the relationship between the rhythm of the astral bodies and that of the etheric bodies.

[ 17 ] Do not believe that these rhythms have never been clearly recognized. We will be able to show that it is not so long ago that people had at least a vague awareness of these rhythms. Anyone who goes through the world with the appropriate awareness can find that in some calendars used in the countryside, certain rules are given regarding specific relationships between animals and the land. By observing these rules in such farmers' almanacs, the farmer used to organize his entire agriculture. The awareness of such rhythms was hidden in the knowledge of the farmers. These are things that can show us that since the 15th and 16th centuries, an age of abstraction, of external science, has dawned, a science that is no longer capable of going into the reasons. This is particularly true in medicine. Today, we are left with nothing but guesswork, and the solid foundation of pathology and therapy dates back to ancient times. I went through the martyrdom of intellect and sensation when phenacetin was being tested. This kind of trial and error, without even a guideline, shows that science has lost its seriousness along with its spirit. This seriousness will be regained through spiritual insight. It is essential to distinguish between the distorted images of a science and knowledge that is truly based on the spirit. If we take this to heart, we will see how necessary spiritual scientific knowledge is, how it must penetrate all areas of knowledge and life.