The Balance in the World and Man,
Lucifer and Ahriman
GA 158
20 November 1914, Dornach
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond
Lecture I
The idea of other worlds lying beneath or behind the physical world is very familiar to us, and as an introduction to what I propose to put before you, I want to speak today of certain characteristics of these worlds. By widening and extending the knowledge we already possess, still other aspects of this subject will become clear to us.
As you know, the world bordering upon that known to our ordinary consciousness is the so-called world of Imagination. The world of Imagination is far more inwardly mobile and flexible than our physical world with its clear-cut lines of demarcation and its sharply defined objects. When the veil formed by the physical world is broken through, we enter an ethereal, fluidic world, and when we experience this first spiritual world, the feeling arises that we are outside the physical body. In this spiritual world we are at once conscious of a new and different relationship to the physical body; it is a relationship such as we otherwise feel to our eyes or ears. The physical body in its totality works as if it were a kind of organ of perception; but we very soon realize that, properly speaking, it is not the physical but the ether-body that is the real organ of perception, The physical body merely provides a kind of scaffolding around the ether-body. We begin, gradually, to live consciously in the ether-body, to feel it as a sense-organ which perceives a world of weaving, moving pictures and sounds. And then we are aware of being related to the ether-body within the physical body just as in ordinary life we are related to our ears or eyes.
This feeling of being outside the physical body is an experience similar in some respects to that of sleep. As beings of spirit-and-soul we are outside the physical and etheric bodies during sleep, but our consciousness is dimmed during the experience, and we know nothing of what is really happening to us and around us.
You will see from this that there can be a relationship to the physical body quite different from that to which we are accustomed in ordinary life. This is a fact to which attention must be called by Spiritual Science and it is an experience which will become more and more common in human beings as evolution leads on into the future.
I have said repeatedly that the cultivation of Spiritual Science today is not the outcome of any arbitrary desire, but is a necessity of evolution at the present time. This feeling of separation from the physical body is an experience that will arise in human beings more and more frequently in the future, without being understood. A time will come when a great many people will find themselves asking: “Why is it that I feel as if my being were divided, as if a second being were standing by my side?” This feeling will arise as naturally as hunger or thirst or other such experiences and it must be understood by men of the present and future. It will become intelligible when, through Spiritual Science, people begin to understand what this experience of division within them really signifies.
In the domain of Education, particularly, attention will have to be paid to it; indeed we shall all have to learn to pay more heed than hitherto to certain experiences which will become increasingly common in children as time goes on. It is true that in later life, when the whole impression made by the physical world is very strong, these feelings and experiences will not be particularly noticeable in the near future, but as time goes on they will become more and more intense. They will occur, to begin with, in children, and grown-up people will hear from children many things which in the ordinary way are pooh-poohed but which will have to be understood because they are connected with deep secrets of evolution.
We shall hear children saying: “I have seen a being who said this or that to me, who told me what to do.”—The materialist, of course, will tell such a child that this is all nonsense, that no such being exists. But students of Spiritual Science will have to understand the significance of the phenomenon. If a child says: “I saw someone who came to me, he went away again but he keeps on coming and I cannot get rid of him”—then anyone who understands Spiritual Science will realize that a phenomenon which will appear in greater and greater definition as time goes on, is here revealing itself in the life of the child. What does this really signify?
We shall understand it if we think of two fundamental and typical experiences, the first of which was particularly significant in the Greco-Latin age, while the other is significant in our own time, when it is beginning, gradually, to take shape. Whereas the first experience reached a kind of culmination in the Greco-Latin epoch, we are slowly moving towards the second.
Experiences deriving from the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman are all the time playing into human life. In this basic experience of man during the Fourth Post-Atlantean or Greco-Roman epoch, Lucifer's influence was the greater; in our own epoch, Ahriman is the predominant influence. Lucifer is connected with all those experiences which, lacking the definition imparted by the senses, remain undifferentiated and obscure.
Lucifer is connected with the experience of breathing, of the in-breathing and the out-breathing. The relationship between a man's breathing and the functioning of his organism as a whole must be absolutely regular and normal. The moment the breathing process is in any way disturbed, instead of remaining the unconscious operation to which no attention need be paid, it becomes a conscious process, of which we are more or less dreamily aware. And when, to put it briefly, the breathing process becomes too forceful, when it makes greater claims on the organism than the organism can meet, then it is possible for Lucifer (not he himself but the hosts belonging to him) to enter with the breath into the organism.
I am speaking here of a familiar experience of dream-life. It may arise in many forms and with growing intensity. A nightmare in which the disturbed breathing process makes a man conscious in dream, so that experiences of the spiritual world intermingle with the dream and give rise to the anxiety and fear which often accompany a nightmare—all such experiences have their origin in the Luciferic element. When, instead of the regular breathing, there is a feeling of being choked or strangled, this is connected with the possibility that Lucifer may be mingling with the breathing.
This is the cruder form of the process, where, as the result of a diminution of consciousness, Lucifer intermingles with the breathing and, in the dream, takes the form of a strangler. That is the crude form of the experience. But there is an experience more delicate and more intangible than that of being physically strangled. It does not, as a rule, occur to people that a certain familiar experience is really a less crude form of that of strangulation. Yet whenever anything becomes a problem in the soul or gives rise to doubt concerning one thing or another in the world, this is a subtler form of the experience of being strangled. It can truly be said that when we feel obliged to question, when a riddle, either great or trifling, confronts us, then something seems to be strangling us, but in such a way that we do not heed it. Nevertheless, every doubt, every problem is a subtle form of nightmare.
And so experiences which often take a crude form, become much more subtle and intangible when they arise in the life of soul itself. It is to be presumed that science will be led some day to study how the breathing process is connected with the urge to question, or with the feeling of being assailed by doubt; but whether this happens or not, everything that is associated with questioning and doubt, with feelings of dissatisfaction caused when something in the world demands an answer and we are thrown back entirely upon our own resources—all this is connected with the Luciferic powers.
In the light of Spiritual Science it can be said that whenever we feel a sensation of strangulation in a nightmare, or whenever some doubt or question inwardly oppresses or makes us uneasy, the breathing process becomes stronger, more forceful. There is something in the breathing which must be harmonized, toned down and modified if human nature is to function in the right and normal way.
What happens when the breathing process becomes excessively vigorous and forceful? The ether-body expands, becomes too diffuse; and as this takes effect in the physical body, it tends to break up the physical body. An over-exuberant, too widely extended ether-body gives rise to an excessively vigorous breathing process and this provides the Luciferic forces with opportunity to work.
The Luciferic forces, then, can make their way into the human being when the ether-body has expanded beyond the normal. One can also say that the Luciferic forces tend to express themselves in an ether-body that has expanded beyond the limits of the human form, that is to say, in an ether-body requiring more space than is provided within the boundaries of the human skin.
Of attempts made to find an appropriate form in which to portray this process, the following may be said.—In its normal state, the ether-body moulds and shapes the physical form of man. But as soon as the ether-body expands, as soon as it tries to create for itself greater space and an arena transcending the boundaries of the human skin, it tends to produce other forms. The human form cannot here be retained; the ether-body strives to grow out of and beyond the human form. In olden days men found the solution for this problem. When an extended ether-body—which is not suited to the nature of man but to the Luciferic nature—makes itself felt and takes shape before the eye of soul, what kind of form emerges? The Sphinx!
Here we have a clue to the nature of the Sphinx. The Sphinx is really the being who has us by the throat, who strangles us. When the ether-body expands as a result of the force of the breathing, a Luciferic being appears in the soul. In such an ether-body there is then not the human, but the Luciferic form, the form of the Sphinx. The Sphinx is the being who brings doubts, who torments the soul with questions.
And so there is a definite connection between the Sphinx and the breathing process. But we also know that the breathing process is connected in a very special way with the blood. Therefore the Luciferic forces also operate in the blood, permeating and surging through it. By way of the breathing, the Luciferic forces can everywhere make their way into the blood of the human being and when excessive energy is promoted in the blood, the Luciferic nature—the Sphinx—becomes very strong.
Because man is open to the Cosmos in his breathing, he is confronted by the Sphinx. It was paramountly during the Greco-Latin epoch of civilization that, in their breathing, men felt themselves confronting the Sphinx in the Cosmos. The legend of Oedipus describes how the human being faces the Sphinx, how the Sphinx torments him with questions. The picture of the human being and the Sphinx, or of the human being and the Luciferic powers in the Cosmos, gives expression to a deeply-rooted experience of men as they were during the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, and indicates that when, in however small a degree, a man breaks through the boundaries of his normal life on the physical plane, he comes into contact with the Sphinx-nature. At this moment Lucifer approaches him and he must cope with Lucifer, with the Sphinx.
The basic tendency of our Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch is different. The trend of evolution has been such that the ether-body has contracted and is far less prone to diffusion or expansion. The ether-body, instead of being too large, is too small, and this will become more marked as evolution proceeds. If it can be said that in the man of ancient Greece, the ether-body was too large, it can be said that in the man of modern times the ether-body is compressed and contracted, has become too small. The more human beings are led by materialism to disdain the Spiritual, the more will the ether-body contract and wither. But because the organization and functions of the physical body depend upon the ether-body—inasmuch as the ether-body must permeate the physical in the right way—the physical body too will always tend to dry up, to wither, if the contraction of the ether-body is excessive; and if the physical body became too dry, men would have feet of horn instead of the feet of a normal human being. As a matter of fact, man will not actually find himself with feet of horn, but the tendency is there within him, owing to this proclivity of the ether-body to weaken and dry up. Now into this dried-up ether-body, Ahriman can insinuate himself, just as Lucifer can creep into an extended, diffuse ether-body. Ahriman will assume the form which indicates a lack of power in the ether-body. It unfolds insufficient etheric force for properly developed feet and will produce hornlike feet, goat's feet.
Mephistopheles is Ahriman. There is good reason, as I have just indicated, for portraying him with the feet of a goat. Myths and legends are full of meaning: Mephistopheles is very often depicted with horses' hoofs; his feet have dried up and become hoofs. If Goethe had completely understood the nature of Mephistopheles he would not have made him appear in the guise of a modern cavalier, for by his very nature Mephistopheles-Ahriman lacks the etheric forces necessary to permeate and give shape to the normal physical form of a human being.
Yet another characteristic of Mephistopheles-Ahriman is due to this contraction of the ether-body and its consequent lack of etheric force. The best way to understand this will be to consider the nature of man as a whole. Even physically, the human being is, in a certain respect, a duality. For think of it.—You stand there as a physical human being. But the in-breathed air is inside you, is part of you as a physical being. This air, however, is sent out again by the very next exhalation, so that the “man of air-and-breath” pervading you, changes all the time. You are not merely a man of flesh, bone and muscle, but you are also a “breath man.” This “breath man,” however, is constantly changing, passing out and in. And this “breath man” is connected with the circulating blood.
Within you, separate as it were from this “breath man” is the other pole: the “nerve man” with the circulating nerve-fluid. The contact between the “nerve man” and the blood is a purely external one. Just as those etheric forces which tend towards the Luciferic nature can only find easy access to the blood by way of the breath, so the etheric forces which tend towards the Mephistophelean or Ahrimanic nature can only approach the nervous system—not the blood.
Ahriman is deprived of the possibility of penetrating into the blood because he cannot come near the warmth of the blood. If he wants to establish a connection with a human being, he will therefore crave for a drop of blood, because access to the blood is so difficult for him. An abyss lies between Mephistopheles and the blood. When he draws near to man as a living being, when he wants to make a connection with man, he realizes that the essentially human power lives in the blood. He must therefore endeavor to get hold of the blood.
That Faust's pact with Mephistopheles is signed with blood is a proof of the wisdom contained in the legend. Faust must bind himself to Mephistopheles by way of the blood, because Mephistopheles has no direct access to the blood and craves for it. Just as the Greek confronted the Sphinx whose field of operation is the breathing system, so the man of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch confronts Mephistopheles who operates in the nerve-process, who is cold and scornful because he is bloodless, because he lacks the warmth that belongs to the blood. He is the scoffer, the cold, scornful companion of man.
Just as it was the task of Oedipus to get the better of the Sphinx, so it is the task of man in the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch to get the better of Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles stands there like a second being, confronting him. The Greek was confronted by the Sphinx as the personification of the forces which entered into him together with excessive vigor of the breathing process. The human being of the modern age is confronted by the fruits of intellect and cold reason, rooted as they are in the nerve-process. Poetic imagination has glimpsed, prophetically, a picture of the human being standing over against the Mephistophelean powers; but the experience will become more and more general, and the phenomenon which, as I have said, will appear in childhood, will be precisely this experience of the Mephistophelean powers.
Whereas the child in Greece was tormented by a flood of questions, the suffering awaiting the human being of our modern time is rather that of being in the grip of preconceptions and prejudices, of having as an incubus at his side a second “body” consisting of all these preconceived judgments and opinions. What is it that is leading to this state of things?
Let us be quite candid about the trend of evolution. During the course of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, so many problems have lost all inner, vital warmth. The countless questions which confront us when we study Spiritual Science with any depth, simply do not exist for the modern man with his materialistic outlook. The riddle of the Sphinx means nothing to him, whereas the man of ancient Greece was vitally aware of it. A different form of experience will come to the man of modern times. In his own opinion he knows everything so well; he observes the material world, uses his intellect to establish the interconnections between its phenomena and believes that all its riddles are solved in this way, never realizing that he is simply groping in a phantasmagoria. But this way of working coarsens and dries up his ether-body, with the ultimate result that the Mephistophelean powers, like a second nature, will attach themselves to him now and in times to come.
The Mephistophelean nature is strengthened by all the prejudices and limitations of materialism, and a future can already be perceived when everyone will be born with a second being by his side, a being who whispers to him of the foolishness of those who speak of the reality of the spiritual world. Man will, of course, disavow the riddle of Mephistopheles, just as he disavows that of the Sphinx; nevertheless he will chain a second being to his heels. Accompanied by this second being, he will feel the urge to think materialistic thoughts, to think, not through his own being, but through the second being who is his companion.
In an ether-body that has been parched by materialism, Mephistopheles will be able to dwell. Understanding what this implies, we shall realize that it is our duty to educate children in the future—be it by way of Eurythmy or the development of a spiritual-scientific outlook—in such a way that they will be competent to understand the spiritual world. The ether-body must be quickened in order that the human being may be able to take his rightful stand, fully cognizant of the nature of the being who stands at his side. If he does not understand the nature of this second being, he will be spellbound by him, fettered to him. Just as the Greek was obliged to get the better of the Sphinx, so will modern man have to outdo Mephistopheles—with his faunlike, satyrlike form, and his goat's or horse's feet.
Every age, after all, has known how to express its essential characteristic in legend and saga. The Oedipus legends in Greece and the Mephistopheles legends in the modern age are examples, but their basic meanings must be understood.
You see, truths that are otherwise presented merely in the form of poetry—for instance, the relations between Faust and Mephistopheles—can become guiding principles for education as it should be in the future. The prelude to these happenings is that a people or a poet have premonitions of the existence of the being who accompanies man; but finally, every single human being will have this companion who must not remain unintelligible to him and who will operate most powerfully of all during childhood. If adults whose task it is to educate children today do not know how to deal rightly with what comes to expression in the child, human nature itself will be impaired owing to a lack of understanding of the wiles of Mephistopheles.
It is very remarkable that indications of these trends are everywhere to be found in legends and fairy-tales. In their very composition, legends and fairy-tales which seem so unintelligible to modern scholars, point either to the Mephistophelean, the Ahrimanic, or to the Sphinx, the Luciferic. The secret of all legends and fairy-tales is that their content was originally actual experience, arising either from man's relation to the Sphinx or from his relation to Mephistopheles.
In legends and fairy-tales we find, sometimes more and sometimes less deeply hidden, either the motif of the riddle, the motif of the Sphinx, where something has to be solved, some question answered; or else the motif of bewitchment, of being under a spell. This is the Ahriman motif. When Ahriman is beside us, we are perpetually in danger of falling victim to him, of giving ourselves over to him to such an extent that we cannot get free. In face of the Sphinx, the human being is aware of something that penetrates into him and as it were tears him to pieces. In face of the Mephistophelean influence he feels that he must yield to it, bind himself to it, succumb to it.
The Greeks had nothing like theology in our modern sense, but were very much closer to the wisdom of Nature and the manifestations of Nature. They approached the wisdom of Nature without theology, and questions and riddles pressed in upon them.
Now the breathing process is much more intimately connected with Nature than is the nerve-process. That is why the Greek had such a living feeling of being led on to wisdom by the Sphinx. It is quite different in the modern age when theology has come upon the scene. Man no longer believes that direct intercourse with Nature brings him near to the Divine Wisdom of the world, but he sets out to study, to approach it via the nerve-process, not via the breathing and the blood. The search for wisdom has become a nerve-process; modern theology is a nerve-process. But this means that wisdom is shackled to the nerve-process; man draws near to Mephistopheles, and owing to this imprisonment of wisdom in the nerve-process, the premonition arose at the dawn of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch that Mephistopheles is shackled to the human being, stands at his side.
If the Faust legend is stripped of all the extraneous elements that have been woven around it, there remains the picture of a young theologian striving for wisdom; doubts torment him and because he signs a pledge with the Devil—with Mephistopheles—he is drawn into the Devil's field of operations. But just as it was the task of the Greek, through the development of conscious Egohood, to conquer the Sphinx, so we, in our age, must get the better of Mephistopheles by enriching the Ego with the wisdom that can be born only from knowledge and investigation of the spiritual world, from Spiritual Science.
Oedipus was the mightiest conqueror of the Sphinx; but every Greek who wrestled for manhood was also, at a lower level, victorious over the Sphinx. Oedipus is merely a personification, in a very typical form, of what every Greek was destined to experience. Oedipus must prove himself master of the forces contained in the processes of the breathing and the blood. He personifies the nerve-process with its impoverished ether-forces, in contrast to those human beings who are altogether under the sway of the breathing and blood processes. Oedipus takes into his own nature those forces which are connected with the nerve-process, that is to say, the Mephistophelean forces; but he takes them into himself in the right and healthy way, so that they do not become a second being by his side, but are actually within him, enabling him to confront and master the Sphinx.
This indicates to us that in their rightfully allotted place, Lucifer and Ahriman work beneficially; in their wrongful place—there they are injurious. The task incumbent upon the Greek was to get the better of the Sphinx-nature, to cast it out of himself. When he was able to thrust it into the abyss, when, in other words, he was able to bring the extended ether-body down into the physical body, then he had overcome the Sphinx. The abyss is not outside us; the abyss is man's own physical body, into which the Sphinx must be drawn in the legitimate and healthy way. But the opposite pole—the nerve-process—which works, not from without but from within the Ego, must here be strengthened. Thus is the Ahrimanic power taken into the human being and put in its right place.
Oedipus is the son of Laios. Laios had been warned against having a child because it was said that this would bring misfortune to his whole race. He therefore cast out the boy who was born to him. He pierced his feet, and the child was therefore called “Oedipus,” i.e., “club foot.” That is the reason why, in the drama, Oedipus has deformed feet.
I have said already that when etheric forces are impoverished, the feet cannot develop normally, but will wither. In the case of Oedipus this condition was induced artificially. The legend tells us that he was found and reared by shepherds after an attempt had been made to get rid of him. He goes through life with clubbed feet. Oedipus is Mephistopheles—but in this case Mephistopheles is working in his rightful place, in connection with the task devolving upon the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch.
The harmony between ether-body and physical body so wonderfully expressed in the creations of Greek Art, everything that constituted the typical greatness of the Greek—of all this, Oedipus is deprived in order that he may become a personality in the real sense. The Ego that has now passed into the head becomes strong, and the feet wither.
The man of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch has quite a different task. In order to confront and conquer the Sphinx, Oedipus was obliged to receive Ahriman into himself. The man of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, who confronts Ahriman-Mephistopheles, must take Lucifer into himself. The process is the reverse of that enacted by Oedipus. Everything that the Ego accumulates in the head must be pressed down into the rest of man's nature. The Ego, living in the nerve-process, has accumulated “Philosophy, Law, Medicine, and, alas, Theology too”—all nerve-processes. And now there is the urge to get rid of it all from the head—just as Oedipus deprived the feet of their normal forces—and to penetrate through the veils of material existence.
And now think of Faust standing there with all that the Ego has accumulated; think of how he wants to throw it all out of his head, just as Oedipus deprives his feet of their normal forces. Faust says: “I have studied, alas! Philosophy, Jurisprudence and Medicine too, and saddest of all, Theology” ... he wants to rid his head of it all. And moreover he does so, by surrendering himself to a life that is not bound up with the head. Faust is Oedipus reversed, i.e., the human being who takes the Lucifer-nature into himself.
And now think of all that Faust does, so that having Lucifer within him, he may battle with Ahriman, with Mephistopheles who stands beside him. All this shows us that Faust, in reality, is Oedipus reversed. The Ahriman-nature in Oedipus has to get the better of Lucifer; the Lucifer-nature in Faust has to help him to overcome Ahriman-Mephistopheles. Ahriman-Mephistopheles operates more in the external world, Lucifer more in the inner life. All the misfortunes that befall Oedipus because he must take the Ahriman-nature into himself, are connected with the external world. Doom falls upon his race, not merely upon himself. Even the doom that falls upon him is of an external character; he pierces his eyes and blinds himself; similarly, the pestilence which sweeps his native city—this, too, is an external doom. Faust's experiences, however, are of the soul—they are inner tragedies. Again in this respect, Faust reveals himself as the antithesis of Oedipus.
In these two figures, both of them dual—Oedipus and Sphinx, Faust and Mephistopheles—we have typical pictures of the evolution of the Fourth and Fifth Post-Atlantean epochs.
When history, in time to come, is presented less as a narration of external happenings and more as a description of what human beings actually experience, then and only then will the significance of these fundamental experiences be fully understood. For then man will perceive what is really at work in the onflowing evolutionary process, of which ordinary science knows only the external phantasmagoria.
In order that the Ego should be strengthened, it was necessary for Ahriman-Mephistopheles to enter into Oedipus—the typical representative of the Greeks. In the man of the modern age, the Ego has become too strong and he must break free. But this he can only do by deepening his knowledge of spiritual happenings, of the world to which the Ego truly belongs. The Ego must know that it is a citizen of the spiritual world, not merely the inhabitant of a human body. This is the demand of the age in which we ourselves are living. The man of the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch was called upon to strive with might and main for consciousness in the physical body; the man of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch must strive to become conscious in the spiritual world, so to expand his consciousness that it reaches into the spiritual world.
Spiritual Science is thus a fundamental factor in the evolution of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch.
Die Welt als Ergebnis von Gleichgewichtswirkungen Vierter Vortrag
Es ist uns durch unsere Betrachtungen schon geläufig geworden, daß wir unter oder hinter der physischen Welt, die vor uns liegt, den Beginn anderer Welten finden. Ich möchte heute als Einleitung von einigen Eigentümlichkeiten dieser geistigen Welten sprechen, von denen wir zum Teil schon wissen, die wir durch manches ergänzen wollen, um auch sonstiges noch vor die Seele zu rücken.
Sie wissen, die nächste Welt, welche an die unsrige angrenzt, ist die sogenannte imaginative Welt. Diese Welt ist in sich viel beweglicher als unsere physische Welt. Unsere physische Welt stellt sich dar mit scharfen Konturen, scharfen Grenzlinien, stellt eine Welt scharf umrissener Gegenstände dar. Eine gleichsam flüssige, flüchtige Welt ist diejenige, in die wir hineinkommen, wenn wir den Schleier zerreißen, den die physische Welt bildet. Auch wissen wir, daß gegenüber dieser ersten geistigen Welt das Gefühl, die Empfindung beginnt, daß wir außerhalb unseres physischen Leibes sind. Zu diesem unserem physischen Leib bekommen wir in dem Augenblicke, wo wir in die geistige Welt hinaufsteigen, gewissermaßen ein neues Verhältnis, ein Verhältnis, wie wir es innerhalb des physischen Leibes etwa haben zu unseren Augen oder zu unseren Ohren. Der physische Leib wirkt mehr als ein Ganzes wie eine Art Wahrnehmungsorgan, aber wir merken sehr bald, es handelt sich eigentlich nicht richtig um den physischen Leib, wenn uns so dieser physische Leib als eine Art Wahrnehmungsorgan zum Gefühl kommt, sondern es handelt sich da um den ätherischen Leib. Der physische Leib gibt uns gleichsam nur ein Gerüst, das den ätherischen Leib hält. Wir blicken von außerhalb nach unserem ätherischen Leibe hin, verspüren ihn auch noch, verspüren ihn als das Sinnesorgan, das eine Welt wahrnimmt webender, schwebender Bilder und Töne. Wie unser Verhältnis zum Ohr und Auge, so wird unser Verhältnis zu dem vom physischen Leibe gehaltenen Ätherleibe.
Wenn wir uns nun so außerhalb unseres physischen Leibes fühlen, so ist dieses Erlebnis ähnlich dem Schlaferlebnis. Das Schlaferlebnis besteht darin, daß wir mit unserer geistig-seelischen Menschlichkeit außerhalb unseres physischen und Ätherleibes sind, nur daß während des Schlaferlebnisses unser Bewußtsein herabgestimmt ist, und wir nichts wissen von dem, was eigentlich mit uns und um uns vorgeht. Man kann also sagen, daß es noch ein anderes Verhältnis des Menschen zu seinem physischen Leibe gibt als dasjenige, woran wir gewohnt sind. Auf das, worauf die Geisteswissenschaft so aufmerksam machen muß, wird die Menschheit durch ihre Evolution immer mehr und mehr hingelenkt werden, je weiter wir der Zukunft entgegengehen.
Ich habe es aus vielen Zusammenhängen heraus betont, daß es nicht eine Willkür ist, daß wir heute Geisteswissenschaft treiben, sondern daß die Beschäftigung mit dieser Geisteswissenschaft von uns gefordert wird durch die Evolution der Menschheit, durch das, was im gegenwärtigen Zeitpunkte in der Menschheitsevolution sich vorbereitet. Man kann nämlich dieses gleichsam Sich-Getrenntfühlen in seiner menschlichen Wesenheit von seinem physischen Leibe als etwas bezeichnen, was wie ein unverstandenes Erlebnis immer mehr und mehr über die Menschen wie von selbst kommen wird, je weiter wir als Menschheit der Zukunft entgegengehen. Es wird eine Zeit kommen, wo an viele, viele Menschen immer mehr die Empfindung herantreten wird: Ja, was ist denn das, ich fühle mich so, wie wenn ich mich gespalten hätte, wie wenn da noch ein Zweiter neben mir wäre. — Und diese Empfindung, dieses Gefühl, das als etwas Natürliches auftreten wird, geradeso wie Hunger oder Durst oder andere Erlebnisse, darf nicht unverstanden bleiben bei den Menschen der Gegenwart und Zukunft. Verständlich wird es sein, wenn die Menschen sich bequemen werden, durch die Geisteswissenschaft die eigentliche Bedeutung dieses Gespaltenseins zu verstehen. Insbesondere wird auch die Pädagogik, die Erziehung - je mehr wir diesen Dingen entgegengehen — darauf Rücksicht nehmen müssen. Man wird lernen müssen, auf gewisse Erlebnisse der Kinder sorgfältiger zu achten, als man das bisher getan hat, wo diese Erlebnisse auch nicht in demselben Maße da waren.
Gewiß, in dem späteren, robusteren Leben, unter dem Eindrucke der physischen Welt werden diese Gefühle und Empfindungen, die ich charakterisiert habe, nicht so besonders stark sein in der allernächsten Zukunft, aber in einer ferneren Zukunft werden sie immer stärker und stärker werden. Zunächst werden sie beim heranwachsenden Kinde auftreten, und die Erwachsenen werden von den Kindern gar mancherlei hören, was sie werden verstehen müssen, mancherlei, über das man hinweggehen kann wie über ein Nichts, über das man aber nicht hinweggehen sollte, weil es mit den tiefsten Evolutionsgeheimnissen der Welt zusammenhängt.
Kinder werden andeuten: Da oder dort habe ich ein Wesen gesehen, das hat zu mir dies oder jenes gesagt, was ich tun soll. - Der materialistisch gesinnte Mensch wird sagen: Du bist ein dummer Bub oder ein dummes Mädchen, das gibt es ja gar nicht. — Wer aber Geisteswissenschaft verstehen will, muß wissen lernen, daß es sich da um eine bedeutsame Erscheinung handelt. Wenn ein Kind sagt: Da habe ich jemanden gesehen, der ist wieder verschwunden, aber er kommt immer wieder und wieder; er sagt zu mir immer das und jenes, und ich kann nicht aufkommen gegen ihn -, so wird der, welcher die Geisteswissenschaft versteht, erkennen, daß sich da etwas in dem Kinde ankündigt, was immer deutlicher in der Menschheitsevolution hervortreten wird. Was ist denn das, was sich da ankündigt?
Wir werden es verstehen, wenn wir zwei Grunderlebnisse des Menschen ins Auge fassen, von denen das erste ganz besonders wichtig war für den vierten nachatlantischen, den griechisch-lateinischen Zeitraum, und das andere wichtig ist für unseren Zeitraum, in dem es sich langsam erst vorbereitet. Während das erste Grunderlebnis in dem griechisch-lateinischen Zeitraum seinen Abschluß gefunden hat, gehen wir dem zweiten langsam entgegen. In das menschliche Leben spielen immer Erlebnisse herein, die von Luzifer und Ahriman stammen. In das Grunderlebnis der vierten nachatlantischen Periode spielte insbesondere Luzifer herein; in unsere Periode spielt Ahriman herein und bedingt das Grunderlebnis. Nun hängt Luzifer mit alledem zusammen, was noch nicht bis zur Deutlichkeit der einzelnen Sinne sich ausgewachsen hat, was undeutlich an den Menschen, undifferenziert an ihn herankommt. Mit andern Worten, Luzifer hängt mit dem Atemerlebnis zusammen, mit dem Erlebnis des Ein- und Ausatmens. Das Atmen des Menschen ist etwas, was in einem ganz bestimmten geregelten Verhältnis stehen muß zu seiner Gesamtorganisation. In dem Augenblick, wo der Atmungsprozeß in irgendeiner Weise gestört ist, verwandelt sich sogleich die Atmung aus dem, wie sie sonst auftritt, nämlich als unbewußter Vorgang, auf den wir nicht zu achten brauchen, in einen bewußten, in einen mehr oder weniger traumhaft bewußten Vorgang. Und wenn — wir können es ganz trivial ausdrücken — der Atmungsprozeß zu energisch wird, wenn er größere Anforderungen an den Organismus stellt, als dieser Organismus leisten kann, dann hat Luzifer die Möglichkeit, mit dem Atmen einzudringen in den menschlichen Organismus. Er muß es ja nicht selbst sein, aber seine Scharen tun es, diejenigen, die zu ihm gehören.
Ich weise damit auf eine Erscheinung hin, welche jeder kennt als Traumerlebnis. Dieses Traumerlebnis kann sich in beliebiger Weise steigern. Der Alptraum, wo also der Mensch durch das gestörte Atmen zum Traumbewußtsein kommt, so daß sich Erlebnisse der geistigen Welt hineinmischen können, und auch alle Angst- und Furchterlebnisse, die mit Alpträumen verbunden sind, haben in dem luziferischen Element der Welt ihren Ursprung. Alles, was vom gewöhnlichen Atmungsprozeß übergeht zum Würgen, zu dem Gefühl des Gewürgtwerdens, das hängt zusammen mit dieser Möglichkeit, daß Luzifer sich einmischt in den Atmungsprozeß. Das ist der grobe Prozeß, wo durch eine Herabminderung des Bewußtseins Luzifer sich in das Atemerlebnis hineinmischt, gestaltenhaft in das Traumbewußtsein tritt und da zum Würger wird. Das ist das grobe Erlebnis.
Es gibt aber auch ein feineres Erlebnis, das uns dieses Würgeerlebnis gleichsam verfeinert, nicht so grob wie ein physisches Würgen darstellt. Man achtet gewöhnlich nicht darauf, daß eine solche Verfeinerung des Würgens zu den menschlichen Erlebnissen gehört. Aber jedesmal, wenn an die menschliche Seele dasjenige herantritt, was zu einer Frage wird oder zu einem Zweifel an diesem oder jenem in der Welt, dann ist in verfeinerter Weise ein Würgeerlebnis da. Man kann schon sagen: Wenn wir eine Frage aufstellen müssen, wenn ein kleines oder ein großes Weltenrätsel sich uns aufdrängt, dann werden wir gewürgt, aber so, daß wir es nicht merken. — Jeder Zweifel, jede Frage ist ein verfeinertes Alpdrücken oder ein verfeinerter Alptraum.
So verwandeln sich die Erlebnisse, die uns sonst grob entgegentreten, in feinere Erlebnisse, wenn sie mehr seelisch auftreten. Man kann sich schon denken, daß die Wissenschaft einmal dazu kommen wird, den Zusammenhang des Atmungsprozesses mit der Fragestellung oder der Empfindung eines Zweifels in der Menschenseele zu studieren. Aber auch alles das, was mit Fragen und Zweifeln zusammenhängt, alles das, was damit zusammenhängt, daß wir unbefriedigt sind, weil die Welt an uns herantritt und eine Antwort verlangt, oder weil wir gezwungen sind, eine Antwort zu geben durch das, was wir sind, hängt mit dem Luziferischen zusammen.
Wenn wir nun die Sache geisteswissenschaftlich betrachten, so können wir sagen: Bei allem, wo der Würgeengel im Alptraum uns bedrückt, oder wo wir durch die Fragestellung eine innere Bedrückung, einen Anflug von Beängstigung erfahren, haben wir es mit einem gleichsam stärkeren, energischeren Atmungsprozeß zu tun, mit etwas, was im Atem lebt, was aber, damit die menschliche Natur in der richtigen Weise funktioniert, harmonisiert, abgeschwächt werden muß, damit das Leben richtig verläuft. Was findet nun statt, wenn ein energischerer Atmungsprozeß eintritt? Da ist gleichsam der Ätherleib und alles, was mit der ätherischen Natur des Menschen zusammenhängt, zu weit ausgedehnt, zu sehr auseinandergedrängt, und da sich das dann auslebt im physischen Leibe, so kann es sich nicht auf den physischen Leib beschränken, es will ihn gewissermaßen auseinanderzerren. Ein zu üppiger, ein zu weit ausgedehnter Ätherleib liegt einem verstärkten Atmungsprozeß zugrunde, und dann besteht die Möglichkeit für das luziferische Element, sich besonders geltend zu machen.
Man kann also sagen: Das Luziferische kann sich in die menschliche Natur hineinschleichen, wenn der Ätherleib geweitet ist. - Man kann auch sagen: Das Luziferische hat die Tendenz, in einem der menschlichen Form gegenüber geweiteten Ätherleibe sich auszudrücken, also in einem Ätherleibe, der mehr Raum braucht, als in der menschlichen Haut eingeschlossen ist, der die Form üppiger gibt. — Man kann sich nun denken, daß man künstlerisch diese Frage beantworten will, und da kann man sagen: So wie der menschliche Ätherleib normal ist, ist er der Bildner der menschlichen Gestalt, die physisch vor uns steht. Aber sobald er sich weitet, sobald er sich einen größeren Raum, weitere Grenzen verschaffen will, als in der menschlichen Haut darinnen sind, will er auch andere Formen geben. Es kann da nicht die menschliche Form bleiben. Er will überall über die menschliche Form hinaus. — Dieses Problem hat man in alter Zeit schon gelöst. Was für eine Form kommt da heraus, wenn der geweitete Ätherleib, der nicht für das menschliche Wesen, sondern für das luziferische Wesen paßt, sich Geltung verschafft und formhaft vor die menschliche Seele tritt? Was kommt da heraus? Die Sphinx!
Hier haben wir eine besondere Art, uns in die Sphinx hinein zu vertiefen. Die Sphinx ist es, was eigentlich an einem würgt. Wenn der Ätherleib des Menschen durch die Energie des Atmens sich ausweitet, taucht ein luziferisches Wesen in der Seele auf. Es lebt in diesem Ätherleibe nicht die menschliche Gestalt, sondern die luziferische Gestalt, die Sphinxgestalt. Die Sphinx taucht auf als die Zweifelaufwerferin, als die Fragepeinigerin. Diese Sphinx hat also eine besondere Beziehung zum Atmungsprozeß. Wiederum wissen wir aber, daß der Atmungsprozeß eine besondere Beziehung zur Blutbildung hat. Daher lebt das Luziferische auch im Blute, durchwogt und durchwallt das Blut. Überall kann auf dem Umwege durch die Atmung das Luziferische in das Blut des Menschen hinein, und wenn zuviel Energie in das Blut hineinkommt, dann ist das Luziferische, die Sphinx, besonders stark.
So steht der Mensch dadurch, daß er in seinem Atmungsprozeß dem Kosmos geöffnet ist, der Sphinxnatur gegenüber. Dieses Erlebnis, in seinem Atmen der Sphinxnatur des Kosmos gegenüberzustehen, dieses Grunderlebnis ging besonders in der vierten nachatlantischen, der griechisch-lateinischen Kulturperiode auf. Und in der Ödipus-Sage sehen wir, wie der Mensch der Sphinx gegenübersteht, wie die Sphinx sich an ihn kettet, zur Fragepeinigerin wird. Der Mensch und die Sphinx, oder wir können auch sagen, der Mensch und das Luziferische im Weltall sollten gleichsam als ein Grunderlebnis der vierten nachatlantischen Kulturperiode so hingestellt werden, daß, wenn der Mensch sein äußeres normales Leben auf dem physischen Plan nur ein wenig durchbricht, er mit der Sphinxnatur in Berührung kommt. Da tritt Luzifer in seinem Leben an ihn heran, und er muß mit Luzifer, mit der Sphinx fertig werden.
Anders ist das Grunderlebnis des fünften nachatlantischen Kulturzeitraumes, unseres Zeitraumes. Für unseren Zeitraum ist das besonders vorbereitet, daß der Ätherleib nicht aufgeplustert, nicht ausgedehnt, sondern zusammengezogen ist, daß er nicht zu groß, sondern eher zu klein ist, und das wird immer stärker und stärker werden, je weiter die Evolution fortgeht. Wenn wir sagen können: Die normale Gestalt des Menschen beim Griechen ist so, daß der Ätherleib zu groß ist -, so können wir sagen: Beim modernen Menschen ist es so, daß der Ätherleib sich zusammenschnürt, sich zusammenzieht, zu klein wird. - Je weiter der Mensch kommen wird in der materialistischen Verachtung des Spirituellen, desto mehr wird sich dieser Ätherleib zusammenziehen und austrocknen. Da aber die Durchorganisierung des physischen Leibes davon abhängt, daß der Ätherleib ihn ganz richtig durchdringt, so wird für den physischen Leib immer eine Tendenz auftreten, wenn der Ätherleib zu sehr zusammengedrängt ist, daß der physische Leib auch auszutrocknen beginnt. Und wenn er ganz besonders stark austrocknen würde, so würde er statt der natürlichen Menschenfüße hornartige Füße bekommen. Der Mensch wird sie ja nicht bekommen, aber die Tendenz dazu liegt in ihm, und sie ist begründet in dieser Tendenz des Ätherleibes, auszutrocknen, zu wenig Ätherkraft zu entwickeln. In diesen vertrockneten Ätherleib kann sich nun besonders Ahriman hineinleben, wie Luzifer in den erweiterten Ätherleib. Ahriman wird die Gestalt annehmen, die auf eine Armlichkeit des Ätherleibes hinweist. Er wird zu wenig Ätherkraft entwickeln, um richtig organisierte Füße zu haben, und die erwähnten hornartigen Füße Bocksfüße — ausbilden.
Mephistopheles ist ja Ahriman; er hat die Bocksfüße nicht umsonst, er hat die Bocksfüße aus diesem Grunde, den ich angedeutet habe. Die Mythen und Sagen sind eben sehr bedeutungsvoll; deshalb erscheint Mephistopheles sehr oft mit Pferdefüßen, wo also die Füße zu Hufen vertrocknet sind. Wenn Goethe das Problem des Mephisto schon vollständig durchdrungen hätte, so hätte er nicht seinen Mephisto wie einen modernen Kavalier auftreten lassen, denn es gehört schon einmal zum Wesen des Ahriman-Mephisto, nicht so viel Ätherkraft zu haben, daß er die menschliche physische Gestalt vollständig durchorganisieren kann.
Aber noch eine Eigentümlichkeit ist dadurch hervorgerufen, daß der Ätherleib gleichsam zusammengezogen ist, ärmer ist an Ätherkräften, als es im Normalen der Fall ist. Diese Eigentümlichkeit wird uns am klarsten, wenn wir einen Blick auf die gesamte menschliche Natur werfen. Wir sind in gewisser Beziehung schon physisch eine Zweiheit. Denken Sie doch, wenn Sie so dastehen, sind Sie eben der physische Mensch. Aber zu dem physischen Menschen gehört es, daß die Atemluft immerfort in ihm darinnen ist. Diese Atemluft jedoch ist bei dem nächsten Ausatmen schon wieder nach außen befördert, so daß der Atemluftmensch, der Sie durchdringt, fortwährend wechselt. Sie sind nicht bloß das, was aus Muskeln und Knochen besteht, der Fleisch- und Knochenmensch, sondern Sie sind auch der Atemmensch. Der aber wechselt fortwährend, geht hin und her, aus und ein. Und der Atemmensch ist es, der wieder im Zusammenhang steht mit dem immerfort zirkulierenden Blute.
Wie getrennt von diesem ganzen Atmungsmenschen liegt in Ihnen der Nervenmensch, der andere Pol, in dem das Nervenfluidum zirkuliert, und es ist nur eine Art äußere Berührung, ein äußeres Zusammenkommen zwischen dem Nervenmenschen und dem Blutmenschen. So wie nur diejenigen Ätherkräfte, die nach dem Luziferischen hin tendieren, durch das Atmen leicht an das Blutsystem herankommen können, so können die Ätherkräfte, welche nach dem Mephistophelischen oder Ahrimanischen hin tendieren, nur an das Nervensystem herankommen, aber nicht an das Blutsystem. Ahriman ist es versagt, in das Blut unterzutauchen; er kann fortwährend in den Nerven leben, bis zum Vertrocknen, zur Nüchternheit leben, weil er nicht an die Wärme des Blutes heran kann. Will er aber eine Beziehung zur Menschennatur hin entwickeln, dann wird er lechzen müssen nach einem Tröpfchen Blut, weil er so schwer herankommen kann an das Blut. Ein Abgrund liegt zwischen Mephistopheles und dem Blute. Willer an den Menschen herankommen, an das, was im Menschen lebt, will er mit dem Menschen in Verbindung treten, dann wird er gewahr, daß das Menschliche in dem Blute lebt. Er muß nach dem Blute trachten.
Sehen Sie, damit hängt zusammen die Weisheit der MephistophelesSage, daß die Verschreibung mit Blut geschieht. Faust muß sich dem Mephisto durch das Blut verschreiben, weil dieser nach dem Blute lechzen muß, weil er abgetrennt ist vom Blute. Geradeso wie der griechische Mensch der Sphinx gegenüberstand, die im Atmungssystem lebt, so steht der Mensch des fünften nachatlantischen Kulturzeitraumes dem Mephistopheles gegenüber, der im Nervenprozesse lebt, der kalt und nüchtern ist, weil er an Blutleere leidet, weil die Wärme des Blutes ihm fehlt. Und dadurch wird er zum Spötter, zum nüchternen Begleiter des Menschen.
Wie Ödipus mit der Sphinx, so hat der Mensch der fünften nachatlantischen Kulturepoche mit Mephistopheles fertigzuwerden. Er steht diesem Mephistopheles wie einem zweiten Wesen gegenüber. Der Grieche stand der Sphinx durch den energisch gewordenen Blut- und Artmungsprozeß gegenüber; ihm stand gegenüber, was mit der energischeren Atmung in seine Natur hineinkam. Der moderne Mensch steht mit allem, was aus seinem Verstande, seiner Nüchternheit drängt, dem gegenüber, was an den Nervenprozeß gebannt ist. Prophetisch konnte dieses Gegenüberstehen des Menschen dem Mephistophelischen, ich möchte sagen, dichterisch vorausgeahnt werden. Aber es wird immer mehr und mehr heraufziehen als ein Grunderlebnis, je weiter wir in der Evolution des fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraumes kommen. Und das, wovon ich erzählt habe, daß es im kindlichen Erlebnisse auftreten wird, wird dieses mephistophelische Erlebnis sein.
Während der griechische Mensch unter der Pein einer Überfülle von Fragen gestanden hat, wird der moderne Mensch nicht so sehr einer Fragepein entgegengehen als vielmehr der Pein, in seine Vorurteile hinein verzaubert zu sein, einen zweiten Leib neben sich zu haben, der seine Vorurteile enthält. Und wie bereitet sich das vor?
Betrachten Sie einmal ganz unbefangen die Evolution. Wieviel hat im Verlaufe des fünften nachatlantischen Kulturzeitalters aufgehört, in warmer unmittelbarer Weise an den Menschen heranzutreten. Nehmen Sie die unzähligen Fragen, die wirklich an uns herantreten, wenn wir uns in die Geisteswissenschaft vertiefen. Sie sind alle für den modernen materialistisch gesinnten Menschen nicht da. Das Rätsel der Sphinx empfindet er nicht; das hat der Grieche noch in lebendiger Weise empfunden. Der moderne Mensch wird aber ein anderes empfinden müssen. Er weiß eigentlich alles so gut nach seiner Meinung, beobachtet die Sinneswelt, kombiniert sie mit seinem Verstande, und dann lösen sich ihm alle Rätsel. Er ahnt nicht, wie sehr er in der äußeren Phantasmagorie herumtappt. Das aber verdichtet immer mehr seinen Ätherleib, trocknet immer mehr seinen Ätherleib aus und führt endlich dazu, daß das mephistophelische Element wie eine zweite Natur sich heften wird an das Wesen des Menschen der Gegenwart in die Zukunft hinein. Alles das, was an materialistischen Vorurteilen, an materialistischer Beschränktheit sich entwickelt, wird die mephistophelische Natur verstärken, und wir können jetzt schon sagen: Wir sehen in eine Zukunft hinein, wo jeder geboren wird mit einem zweiten Menschen, welcher sagen wird, die da von der geistigen Welt reden, sind Narren. Ich weiß alles, ich verlasse mich auf meine Sinne. - Gewiß, der Mensch wird abweisen, so wie das Sphinxrätsel, auch das Mephistopheles-Rätsel, aber er wird heften an seine Fersen ein zweites Wesen. Das wird ihn so begleiten, daß er den Zwang empfinden wird, matertalistisch zu denken nicht durch sich, sondern durch ein zweites Wesen, das sein Begleiter ist.
Die materialistische Gesinnung wird den Ätherleib vertrocknen, und in dem vertrockneten Ätherleib wird Mephistopheles leben. Das werden wir verstehen müssen, und die Menschheit wird dem Kinde in zukünftigen Zeiten so viel an Bildung mitgeben müssen — sei es durch Eurythmie, sei es durch geisteswissenschaftliche Gesinnung -, durch welche der Ätherleib belebt werden muß, daß der Mensch seine richtige Stellung wird einnehmen können, daß er erkennen wird, was sein Begleiter bedeutet. Sonst wird er diesen Begleiter nicht verstehen, sonst wird er sich ihm gegenüber fühlen, wie wenn er verzaubert, gebannt wäre. Wie der Grieche mit der Sphinx hat fertig werden müssen, so wird der moderne Mensch mit Mephistopheles fertig werden müssen, mit der satyrhaften, faunhaften Gestalt, dieBocks- oder Pferdefüße hat.
Man kann schon sagen: Ein jedes Zeitalter weiß dasjenige, was sein Charakteristisches ist, in eine Grund- oder Ursage zu fassen. — Solche Grund- oder Ursagen sind die OÖdipus-Sage in Griechenland und die Mephistopheles-Sage in der neueren Zeit. Aber diese Dinge müssen möglichst aus den Fundamenten heraus wirklich verstanden werden.
Sie sehen, was sonst nur als Dichtung auftritt — die Auseinandersetzungen von Faust und Mephisto -, das wird, man möchte sagen, zum Fundament für die Zukunftspädagogik. Das Vorspiel davon besteht darin, daß das Volk oder der Dichter den Begleiter geahnt haben. Aber das Nachspiel wird darin bestehen, daß ein jeder Mensch diesen Begleiter haben wird, der ihm nicht unverständlich bleiben darf, und daß dieser Begleiter am lebendigsten, am mächtigsten in der Kindheit des Menschen auftreten wird. Und wenn die erwachsenen Erzieher nicht die richtige Stellung einnehmen werden gegenüber dem, was das Kind äußert, dann wird durch das unverstandene Gegenüberstehen den Verzauberungen des Mephistopheles die menschliche Natur verdorben werden.
Es ist sehr merkwürdig, daß man in der Sagen- und Märchenliteratur, wenn man sie verfolgt, überall diese Züge finden kann. Sagen und Märchen, die so unverständig von den Gelehrten unserer Gegenwart betrachtet werden, weisen ihrer Struktur nach entweder nach dem Mephistophelischen, dem Ahrimanischen hin, oder nach dem Sphinxartigen, dem Luziferischen. Alle Sagen und Märchen rühren davon her, daß ihr Inhalt ursprünglich entweder durch das Verhältnis, das der Mensch zur Sphinx hat, erlebt worden ist oder durch das Verhältnis, das der Mensch zu Mephisto hat. In den Sagen und Märchen finden wir mehr oder weniger verborgen auftreten entweder das Fragemotiv: das ist das Sphinxmotiv, das Motiv, daß irgend etwas gelöst werden muß, daß eine Frage beantwortet werden muß, oder das Motiv der Verzauberung, des Gebanntseins an irgend etwas: das ist das mephistophelische, das ahrimanische Motiv. Denn worin besteht das ahrimanische Motiv im genaueren? Es besteht darin, daß, wenn wir Ahriman neben uns haben, wir fortwährend in der Gefahr sind, ihm zu verfallen, in seine Natur überzugehen, uns nicht mehr losreißen zu können von ihm. Und man möchte sagen: Der Sphinx gegenüber empfindet der Mensch etwas, was in ihn eindringt und ihn gleichsam auseinanderreißt; dem Mephistophelischen gegenüber empfindet der Mensch etwas wie: er muß untertauchen in dieses Mephistophelische, er muß sich ihm verschreiben, er muß ihm verfallen.
Die Griechen hatten keine Theologie in unserem modernen Sinne, aber sie standen in bezug auf alles, was Weisheit ist, doch noch der Natur und ihren Erscheinungen näher als der moderne Mensch. Ohne Theologie näherten sie sich den Weistümern der Natur, und dadurch entstand in ihnen die Fragepein.
Der Mensch ist näher der Natur in seinem Atmungsprozeß als in seinem Nervenprozesse. Daher empfand der Grieche besonders lebendig dieses Entgegengehen der Weisheit in seinem Verhältnis zur Sphinx. Anders ist das beim Menschen in der modernen Zeit geworden. Die Theologie kommt herauf. Nicht in dem unmittelbaren Verkehr mit der Natur glaubt der Mensch der göttlichen Weltweisheit nahe zu sein, sondern er will sie studieren; er will sich ihr nähern nicht durch den Atmungs- und Blutprozeß, sondern durch den Nervenprozeß. Nervenprozeß wird das Suchen nach Weisheit, Theologie. Aber dadurch bannt der Mensch seine Weisheit in den Nervenprozeß hinein, nähert sich dem Mephistopheles. Und als der fünfte nachatlantische Zeitraum heraufkam, entwickelte sich gerade aus diesem Bannen der Weisheitswandelung in seinen Nervenprozeß die Ahnung, daß man den Mephisto an seine Fersen kettet, daß man ihn neben sich hinstellt.
Wenn man die Faust-Sage von allem Rankenwerk befreit, das sich um sie herumschlingt, so haben wir doch immer die Tatsache, daß ein junger Theologe nach Weisheit strebt, von Zweifeln geplagt wird und sich deshalb dem Teufel, dem Mephisto verschreibt, und dadurch in seinen Wirkungskreis gezogen wird. So wie aber der Grieche mit der Sphinx fertig werden mußte dadurch, daß er die Ich-Natur des Menschen völlig ausbildete, so wie man fertig werden mußte mit der Sphinx durch die Ausbildung der Ich-Natur, so muß man fertig werden in unserem Zeitraum mit Mephistopheles durch die Erweiterung und Erfüllung des Ich mit jener Weisheit, die allein von der Erforschung der geistigen Welt, durch die Erkenntnis der geistigen Welt, durch die Geisteswissenschaft kommen kann.
Ödipus sollte der Mächtigste dieser Sphinxbesieger sein. Jeder Grieche, der sein Menschentum ernst nahm, war im Grunde genommen im kleinen mehr oder weniger ein Sphinxbesieger. Ödipus sollte nur das, was jeder Grieche erleben mußte, in besonders typischer Gestalt darstellen. Was geschieht also? Ödipus sollte dasjenige, was im Atmungs- und Blutprozesse lebt, besiegen. Dem Menschen, der in diesem lebt, soll er gegenüberstellen den gleichsam mit verarmten Ätherkräften lebenden Nervenmenschen. Wodurch kommt er dazu? Dadurch, daß er in seine eigene Natur die Kräfte, die mit dem Nervenprozeß verwandt sind, also die mephistophelischen Kräfte, aufnimmt, aber in gesunder Weise aufnimmt, so daß sie nicht nebenhergehen und ihm zum Begleiter werden, sondern daß sie in ihm sind und er durch diese Kräfte der Sphinxnatur gegenübertreten kann.
Da sehen wir, wie im Grunde genommen Luzifer und Ahriman an ihrem richtigen Orte segensreich wirken, an dem Orte, wohin sie gleichsam erst versetzt sind, und daß sie, wo sie nicht stehen sollen, nachteilig wirken. Für den Griechen war die Sphinxnatur etwas, womit er fertig werden sollte, was er aus sich heraussetzen sollte. Wenn er sie in den Abgrund stürzen, also den erweiterten Ätherleib in den physischen Leib hineinbringen konnte, dann hatte er die Sphinx überwunden. Der Abgrund ist nicht da draußen, der Abgrund ist der eigene physische Leib, in den in gesunder Weise die Sphinx untergetaucht werden muß. Aber da muß der andere Pol, der Nervenprozeß, der entgegengesetzte Prozeß, vom Ich ausgehend, stärker werden — nicht das, was draußen ist, sondern das, was drinnen sein muß. Das Ahrimanische wird im Menschen aufgenommen und dadurch an den richtigen Ort gestellt.
Ödipus ist der Sohn des Laios. Diesem war vorausgesagt worden, daß, wenn er ein Kind haben würde, dieses Unglück bringen würde für sein ganzes Geschlecht. Daher setzte er das Knäblein, das ihm geboren wurde, aus. Er durchstach ihm die Füße, und daher bekam es den Namen Ödipus, das heißt Klumpfuß. Da haben wir die mephistophelischen Kräfte in dem Ödipus-Drama.
Ich habe gesagt, wenn durch diese Kräfte die Ätherkraft verarmt, können sich die Füße nicht mehr entwickeln, sie müssen verkümmern, verdorren. Bei Ödipus wurde das künstlich bewirkt. Er wurde bekanntlich an einem Baum aufgehängt von dem Hirten gefunden, der ihn aufzieht, während er hätte zugrunde gehen sollen. Er trägt nun die Klumpfüße durch die Welt. Er ist gewissermaßen der ins Heilige übersetzte Mephistopheles. Da ist er an der richtigen Stelle, da kann er das Ich kräftig durchpulsen, wo es gilt, die Aufgabe des vierten nachatlantischen Zeitraumes zu lösen. Alles dasjenige, wodurch der Grieche groß geworden ist, wodurch er so recht zum Griechen geworden ist, der harmonische Einklang zwischen dem Ätherleibe und dem physischen Leibe, den wir noch so lebendig an den griechischen Gestalten in ihrer Wohlgestalt bewundern, alles das geht dem Ödipus ab, damit er «Persönlichkeit» werden kann, damit er gerade der Repräsentant wird des Menschen, in dem das Ich stark wird. Das zum Kopfe heraufwandernde Ich wird stark, indem die Füße verkümmern.
Dem muß gegenüberstehen der Mensch der fünften nachatlantischen Kulturperiode. So wie der Ödipus, um der Sphinx gegenüberzustehen, um sie zu besiegen, den Ahriman aufnehmen mußte, so muß der Mensch der fünften nachatlantischen Kulturperiode, der dem Ahriman-Mephistopheles gegenübersteht, den Luzifer in sich aufnehmen, das heißt, er muß den umgekehrten Prozeß durchmachen wie Ödipus. Er mußte das, was vom Ich aufgehäuft war im Kopfe, hinunterdrängen von dem Kopfe in die andere Menschennatur. Da hat sich angehäuft in dem Ich, insofern dieses Ich im Nervenprozeß lebt, Philosophie, Juristerei, Medizin und leider auch Theologie — alles Nervenprozesse! Da entsteht der Drang, alles wegzukriegen aus dem Kopfe und durch die Sinnlichkeit zur ganzen Welt durchzudringen.
Jetzt nehmen Sie den Faust, wie er dasteht, mit alledem, was das Ich sich errungen hat, und wie er das alles gleichsam aus dem Kopfe herauswerfen will, das, was Goethe zusammenfaßt in die Worte: «Habe nun, ach! Philosophie, Juristerei und Medizin, und leider auch Theologie durchaus studiert mit heißem Bemühn.» Das suchte er nun alles aus dem Kopfe wegzubekommen. Er tut es auch, indem er sich dem Leben ergibt, das nicht an den Kopf gebunden ist. Er ist der umgekehrte Ödipus, der die Luzifernatur in sich hereinbekommt.
Und nun verfolgen Sie, was Faust alles macht, damit er den Luzifer in sich hereinbekommt, damit er den Ahriman, den Mephisto neben sich bekämpfen kann. Das alles zeigt uns, inwiefern wirklich dieser Faust der umgekehrte Ödipus ist. Während alles dasjenige, was durch die umgekehrte Ahrimannatur in Ödipus geschieht, in Zusammenhang steht mit Luzifer, steht alles dasjenige, was durch die umgekehrte Luzifernatur in Faust geschieht, in Zusammenhang mit Ahriman-Mephisto. Wie Ahriman-Mephisto mehr in der äußeren Welt lebt, so lebt Luzifer mehr in der inneren Welt. All das Unglück, das Ödipus dadurch trifft, daß er sich mit der Ahrimannatur durchdringen muß, besteht in äußeren Dingen. Über das Geschlecht kommt Verhängnis, nicht bloß über ihn selber. Und auch das Verhängnis, das über ihn selber kommt, ist äußerlich angedeutet. Daß er sich die Augen durchsticht und sich blendet, das sind auch äußere Dinge. Daß die Pest kommt über seine Vaterstadt, ist etwas Äußeres. Alles, was bei Faust auftritt, sind innere Seelenerlebnisse, ist ein Tragisches in des Menschen Inneren, so daß Faust sich auch hier als der umgekehrte Ödipus darstellt.
Wenn wir diese zwei Gestalten oder vielmehr diese zwei Doppelgestalten: Ödipus und Sphinx, Faust und Mephisto, vor unser Auge hinstellen, so haben wir in typischer Weise vor uns die Evolution des vierten und des fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraums. Wenn einmal die Zeit kommen wird, wo man weniger darstellen wird als Geschichte die äußere Phantasmagorie, dasjenige, was als Abdruck des Außeren geschehen ist, sondern darstellen wird, was die Menschen erleben, dann wird man erst sehen, wie bedeutungsvoll und wichtig diese Grunderlebnisse des Menschen sind. Dann wird man erst bemerken, was im fortlaufenden Evolutionsprozeß wirklich lebt, wie übergeht die Geschichte, die äußere Phantasmagorie von derjenigen Darstellung, die gewöhnlich als Geschichte gegeben wird, in das, wovon die äußeren Ereignisse, wenn sie auch noch so bedeutungsvoll auftreten, im Grunde nur der äußere phantasmagorische Abdruck sind.
Wie das Ich einerseits sich kräftigen mußte dadurch, daß AhrimanMephistopheles in den Ödipus, das heißt, in den Griechen einzog, so ist andererseits im modernen Menschen dieses Ich zu stark geworden. Und der moderne Mensch muß von diesem Ich wieder loskommen dadurch, daß er sich in die geistigen Geschehnisse vertieft, vertieft in dasjenige, was zusammenhängt mit der Welt, der das Ich angehört, wenn dieses Ich sich bewußt wird, daß es nicht nur im Menschenleibe lebt, sondern ein Bürger der spirituellen Welt ist. Und in diesem Zeitalter leben wir. Während im vierten nachatlantischen Zeitalter der Mensch streben mußte, mit aller Gewalt sich bewußt zu werden des Ich im physischen Leibe, so muß der Mensch unseres fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraumes darauf hinarbeiten, sich bewußt zu werden, daß das Ich der geistigen Welt angehört. Und die Erweiterung des Ich-Bewußtseins über die geistige Welt, das ist Geisteswissenschaft. Daher ist diese Geisteswissenschaft auch in tiefstem Zusammenhang mit den höchsten Forderungen der menschlichen Evolution in unserem fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraume.
The World as the Result of Balancing Forces Fourth lecture
Through our observations, we have already become familiar with the idea that beneath or behind the physical world that lies before us, we find the beginning of other worlds. Today, as an introduction, I would like to speak about some of the peculiarities of these spiritual worlds, some of which we already know, and which we would like to supplement with a few additional points in order to bring other aspects to the fore.
You know that the next world, which borders on ours, is the so-called imaginative world. This world is much more mobile than our physical world. Our physical world presents itself with sharp contours, sharp boundaries, and represents a world of sharply defined objects. The world we enter when we tear the veil that forms the physical world is a world that is, as it were, fluid and fleeting. We also know that, in contrast to this first spiritual world, we begin to feel and sense that we are outside our physical body. At the moment we ascend into the spiritual world, we acquire a new relationship to our physical body, a relationship similar to the one we have within the physical body to our eyes or ears. The physical body acts more as a whole, like a kind of organ of perception, but we soon realize that it is not really the physical body that comes to our senses as a kind of organ of perception, but rather the etheric body. The physical body provides us, as it were, only with a framework that holds the etheric body together. We look at our etheric body from outside, we still feel it, we feel it as the sense organ that perceives a world of weaving, floating images and sounds. Our relationship to the etheric body held by the physical body is like our relationship to our ears and eyes.
When we feel ourselves outside our physical body in this way, the experience is similar to the experience of sleep. The experience of sleep consists in our spiritual-soul humanity being outside our physical and etheric bodies, except that during sleep our consciousness is lowered and we are unaware of what is actually happening to us and around us. One can therefore say that there is another relationship between the human being and his physical body than the one we are accustomed to. The more we move toward the future, the more humanity will be drawn toward what spiritual science must draw our attention to.
I have emphasized in many contexts that it is not arbitrary that we are engaged in spiritual science today, but that our preoccupation with this spiritual science is demanded of us by the evolution of humanity, by what is being prepared at the present moment in human evolution. For this feeling of separation in our human nature from our physical body can be described as something that, like an incomprehensible experience, will come over people more and more as if by itself the further we advance as humanity toward the future. A time will come when many, many people will increasingly have the feeling: Yes, what is this? I feel as if I have split in two, as if there were a second person beside me. And this feeling, this sensation, which will appear as something natural, just like hunger or thirst or other experiences, must not remain misunderstood by the people of the present and the future. It will become understandable when people take the trouble to understand the real meaning of this split through spiritual science. In particular, pedagogy and education will have to take this into account, the more we approach these things. We will have to learn to pay more attention to certain experiences of children than we have done so far, when these experiences were not present to the same extent.
Certainly, in later, more robust life, under the influence of the physical world, these feelings and sensations that I have characterized will not be particularly strong in the immediate future, but in the more distant future they will become stronger and stronger. At first they will appear in the growing child, and adults will hear many things from children that they will have to understand, many things that can be dismissed as nothing, but that should not be dismissed because they are connected with the deepest evolutionary secrets of the world.
Children will hint: “There or there I saw a being who told me this or that, what I should do.” The materialistic person will say: “You are a silly boy or a silly girl, there is no such thing.” But anyone who wants to understand spiritual science must learn that this is a significant phenomenon. When a child says, “I saw someone there, but he disappeared again, yet he keeps coming back; he always says this and that to me, and I cannot stand up to him,” those who understand spiritual science will recognize that something is emerging in the child that will become increasingly evident in human evolution. What is it that is emerging?
We will understand this if we consider two fundamental experiences of human beings, the first of which was particularly important for the fourth post-Atlantean, Greek-Latin period, and the second of which is important for our period, in which it is slowly preparing itself. While the first fundamental experience came to an end in the Greek-Latin period, we are slowly approaching the second. Experiences originating from Lucifer and Ahriman always play a role in human life. Lucifer played a particularly important role in the fundamental experience of the fourth post-Atlantean period; Ahriman plays a role in our period and determines the fundamental experience. Now, Lucifer is connected with everything that has not yet developed to the point of clarity in the individual senses, everything that comes to human beings in an unclear, undifferentiated form. In other words, Lucifer is connected with the experience of breathing, with the experience of inhaling and exhaling. Human breathing is something that must be in a very specific, regulated relationship to the human organism as a whole. The moment the breathing process is disturbed in any way, breathing immediately changes from what it normally is, namely an unconscious process that we do not need to pay attention to, into a conscious, more or less dreamlike conscious process. And when — to put it very simply — the breathing process becomes too energetic, when it places greater demands on the organism than it can cope with, then Lucifer has the opportunity to penetrate the human organism through breathing. It does not have to be him himself, but his hosts do it, those who belong to him.
I am referring to a phenomenon that everyone knows as a dream experience. This dream experience can intensify in any way. The nightmare, in which a person's disturbed breathing brings them into dream consciousness, allowing experiences from the spiritual world to intrude, and all the feelings of fear and terror associated with nightmares, have their origin in the Luciferic element of the world. Everything that passes from the normal breathing process to choking, to the feeling of being strangled, is connected with this possibility of Lucifer interfering with the breathing process. This is the gross process whereby, through a reduction of consciousness, Lucifer interferes with the experience of breathing, enters the dream consciousness in a formative way, and becomes a strangler there. This is the gross experience.
But there is also a finer experience that refines this experience of choking, so to speak, and is not as coarse as physical choking. People do not usually pay attention to the fact that such a refinement of strangulation belongs to human experience. But every time something approaches the human soul that becomes a question or a doubt about this or that in the world, then there is a strangulation experience in a refined way. One can even say that when we have to ask a question, when a small or large mystery of the world imposes itself on us, we are choked, but in such a way that we do not notice it. Every doubt, every question is a refined nightmare or a refined nightmare.
Thus, experiences that otherwise confront us in a crude form are transformed into more refined experiences when they occur more spiritually. One can well imagine that science will one day come to study the connection between the breathing process and the questioning or feeling of doubt in the human soul. But everything that has to do with questions and doubts, everything that has to do with our dissatisfaction because the world approaches us and demands an answer, or because we are compelled to give an answer by virtue of what we are, is connected with the Luciferic.
If we now look at the matter from a spiritual scientific point of view, we can say: In everything where the angel of death oppresses us in nightmares, or where we experience inner oppression, a touch of fear through questioning, we are dealing with a stronger, more energetic breathing process, with something that lives in the breath, but which, must be harmonized and weakened so that human nature functions properly and life proceeds correctly. What happens when a more energetic breathing process occurs? The etheric body and everything connected with the etheric nature of the human being is, as it were, too expansive, too spread out, and since this then plays itself out in the physical body, it cannot be confined to the physical body but wants, as it were, to tear it apart. An overly abundant, overly expanded etheric body is the basis for an intensified breathing process, and then there is the possibility for the Luciferic element to assert itself particularly strongly.
One can therefore say that the Luciferic can creep into human nature when the etheric body is expanded. One can also say that the Luciferic has a tendency to express itself in an etheric body that is expanded in relation to the human form, that is, in an etheric body that needs more space than is enclosed in the human skin, that gives the form more abundance. — One can now imagine that one wants to answer this question artistically, and one can say: Just as the human etheric body is normal, it is the creator of the human form that stands physically before us. But as soon as it expands, as soon as it wants to create a larger space, wider boundaries than are contained within the human skin, it also wants to give other forms. It cannot remain the human form. It wants to go beyond the human form everywhere. This problem was already solved in ancient times. What form emerges when the expanded etheric body, which is not suited to the human being but to the Luciferic being, asserts itself and appears in form before the human soul? What emerges? The sphinx!
Here we have a special way of delving into the Sphinx. It is the Sphinx that actually chokes us. When the etheric body of the human being expands through the energy of breathing, a Luciferic being appears in the soul. It is not the human form that lives in this etheric body, but the Luciferic form, the Sphinx form. The sphinx appears as the questioner, the tormentor. This sphinx therefore has a special relationship to the breathing process. But we know that the breathing process has a special relationship to blood formation. Therefore, the Luciferic also lives in the blood, surges and swirls through the blood. The Luciferic can enter the human blood everywhere via the detour through breathing, and when too much energy enters the blood, the Luciferic, the Sphinx, is particularly strong.
Thus, because human beings are open to the cosmos in their breathing process, they face the Sphinx nature. This experience of facing the sphinx nature of the cosmos in one's breathing, this fundamental experience, arose particularly in the fourth post-Atlantean, the Greek-Latin cultural period. And in the Oedipus legend we see how man faces the sphinx, how the sphinx chains itself to him and becomes a tormentor of questions. Man and the Sphinx, or we could also say, man and the Luciferic in the universe, should be presented as a fundamental experience of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period, in such a way that when man breaks through his normal outer life on the physical plane even a little, he comes into contact with the Sphinx nature. Then Lucifer approaches him in his life, and he must deal with Lucifer, with the Sphinx.
The fundamental experience of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, our own epoch, is different. For our epoch, it has been specially prepared that the etheric body is not inflated or expanded, but contracted, that it is not too large, but rather too small, and this will become stronger and stronger as evolution progresses. If we can say that the normal form of the Greek human being is such that the etheric body is too large, then we can say that in modern human beings, the etheric body is constricting, contracting, becoming too small. The further human beings go in their materialistic contempt for the spiritual, the more this etheric body will contract and dry up. But since the thorough organization of the physical body depends on the etheric body penetrating it correctly, there will always be a tendency for the physical body to begin to dry out when the etheric body is too constricted. And if it were to dry out particularly severely, it would develop horn-like feet instead of natural human feet. Humans will not actually develop these feet, but the tendency to do so is inherent in them and is based on the tendency of the etheric body to dry out and develop too little etheric energy. Ahriman can now particularly thrive in this dried-up etheric body, just as Lucifer thrives in the expanded etheric body. Ahriman will take on a form that indicates the poverty of the etheric body. He will develop too little etheric force to have properly organized feet, and will develop the aforementioned horn-like feet, or goat's feet.
Mephistopheles is Ahriman; he does not have goat's feet for nothing, he has them for the reason I have indicated. Myths and legends are very meaningful; that is why Mephistopheles very often appears with horse's feet, where the feet have dried up into hooves. If Goethe had fully understood the problem of Mephisto, he would not have had his Mephisto appear as a modern cavalier, for it is part of the nature of Ahriman-Mephisto not to have enough etheric power to completely organize the human physical form.
But another peculiarity is caused by the fact that the etheric body is, as it were, contracted, poorer in etheric forces than is normally the case. This peculiarity becomes clearest to us when we take a look at the whole of human nature. In a certain sense, we are already physically dual. Think about it: when you stand there, you are the physical human being. But it is part of being a physical human being that the air you breathe is constantly inside you. However, this air is expelled again with the next exhalation, so that the air that permeates you is constantly changing. You are not merely what consists of muscles and bones, the flesh-and-bone human being, but you are also the breathing human being. But this is constantly changing, going back and forth, in and out. And it is the breathing human being who is again connected with the constantly circulating blood.
Separate from this whole breathing human being lies within you the nervous human being, the other pole, in which the nervous fluid circulates, and there is only a kind of external contact, an external coming together between the nervous human being and the blood human being. Just as only those etheric forces that tend toward the Luciferic can easily reach the blood system through breathing, so the etheric forces that tend toward the Mephistophelean or Ahrimanic can only reach the nervous system, but not the blood system. Ahriman is denied access to the blood; he can live continuously in the nerves, living until he dries up, until he becomes sober, because he cannot reach the warmth of the blood. But if he wants to develop a relationship with human nature, he will have to crave for a drop of blood, because it is so difficult for him to reach the blood. There is an abyss between Mephistopheles and blood. If he wants to get close to human beings, to what lives in human beings, if he wants to connect with human beings, then he realizes that what is human lives in the blood. He must seek the blood.
You see, this is connected with the wisdom of the Mephistopheles legend, that the pact is made with blood. Faust must commit himself to Mephisto through blood because Mephisto craves blood, because he is separated from blood. Just as the Greek man stood before the Sphinx, which lives in the respiratory system, so the man of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch stands before Mephistopheles, who lives in the nervous processes, who is cold and sober because he suffers from blood deficiency, because he lacks the warmth of blood. And this makes him a mocker, a sober companion to man.
Like Oedipus with the Sphinx, the human being of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch has to deal with Mephistopheles. He faces this Mephistopheles as a second being. The Greek faced the Sphinx through the energetic process of blood and breathing; he was confronted with what entered his nature with more energetic breathing. Modern man, with everything that presses out of his intellect, his sobriety, is confronted with what is bound to the nervous process. This confrontation between man and the Mephistophelean could be prophetically, I would say poetically, anticipated. But it will become more and more apparent as a fundamental experience the further we advance in the evolution of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. And what I have described as occurring in childhood experiences will be this Mephistophelean experience.
While the Greek man suffered from an abundance of questions, modern man does not so much face the torment of questions as the torment of being enchanted by his prejudices, of having a second body beside him that contains his prejudices. And how does this come about?
Consider evolution with an open mind. How much has ceased to approach humans in a warm, direct way during the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch? Take the countless questions that really confront us when we delve into spiritual science. They are all foreign to modern materialistic-minded people. They do not perceive the riddle of the Sphinx; the Greeks still perceived it in a living way. But modern people will have to perceive something different. They actually think they know everything so well, they observe the sensory world, combine it with their intellect, and then all riddles are solved for them. They have no idea how much they are groping around in the outer phantasmagoria. But this increasingly condenses his etheric body, increasingly dries out his etheric body, and finally leads to the Mephistophelean element becoming attached to the essence of the human being of the present and into the future like a second nature. Everything that develops in materialistic prejudices and materialistic narrow-mindedness will strengthen the Mephistophelean nature, and we can already say: We see a future in which everyone will be born with a second human being who will say that those who speak of the spiritual world are fools. I know everything, I rely on my senses. Certainly, humans will reject the riddle of Mephistopheles, just as they rejected the riddle of the Sphinx, but they will attach a second being to their heels. This will accompany him in such a way that he will feel compelled to think materialistically, not through himself, but through a second being who is his companion.
The materialistic attitude will dry up the etheric body, and Mephistopheles will live in the dried-up etheric body. We will have to understand this, and humanity will have to give children in future times so much education—whether through eurythmy or through a spiritual scientific attitude—that the etheric body will be enlivened, so that human beings will be able to take their rightful place and recognize what their companion means. Otherwise, he will not understand this companion, otherwise he will feel toward him as if he were enchanted, bewitched. Just as the Greeks had to deal with the Sphinx, so modern man will have to deal with Mephistopheles, with the satyr-like, faun-like figure with goat's or horse's feet.
One can already say that every age knows how to capture its characteristic features in a fundamental or causal principle. Such fundamental or causal principles are the Oedipus legend in Greece and the Mephistopheles legend in more recent times. But these things must be understood as truly as possible from their foundations.
You see what otherwise only appears as fiction—the conflicts between Faust and Mephisto—becoming, one might say, the foundation for future education. The prelude to this consists in the fact that the people or the poet have sensed the companion. But the aftermath will consist in every human being having this companion, who must not remain incomprehensible to them, and in this companion appearing most vividly and powerfully in human childhood. And if adult educators do not take the right position toward what the child expresses, then human nature will be corrupted by the enchantments of Mephistopheles through this incomprehensible confrontation.
It is very remarkable that if one studies the literature of legends and fairy tales, one finds these traits everywhere. Legends and fairy tales, which are regarded with such incomprehension by the scholars of our time, point in their structure either to the Mephistophelean, the Ahrimanic, or to the sphinx-like, the Luciferic. All legends and fairy tales originate from the fact that their content was originally experienced either through the relationship that man has with the sphinx or through the relationship that man has with Mephistopheles. In legends and fairy tales, we find, more or less hidden, either the motif of questioning: that is the sphinx motif, the motif that something must be solved, that a question must be answered, or the motif of enchantment, of being spellbound by something: that is the Mephistophelean, the Ahrimanic motif. For what exactly is the Ahrimanic motif? It consists in the fact that when we have Ahriman beside us, we are constantly in danger of falling prey to him, of passing over into his nature, of no longer being able to tear ourselves away from him. And one might say: Faced with the Sphinx, human beings feel something that penetrates them and tears them apart, as it were; faced with Mephistopheles, human beings feel something like: they must submerge themselves in this Mephistophelean, they must devote themselves to him, they must fall prey to him.
The Greeks had no theology in our modern sense, but in relation to all that is wisdom, they were still closer to nature and its phenomena than modern man. Without theology, they approached the mysteries of nature, and this gave rise to the torment of questioning within them.
Man is closer to nature in his respiratory process than in his nervous processes. Therefore, the Greeks felt this encounter with wisdom in their relationship with the Sphinx particularly vividly. This has changed in modern times. Theology has emerged. Humans do not believe they are close to divine world wisdom through direct contact with nature, but want to study it; they want to approach it not through the processes of breathing and blood circulation, but through the nervous system. The search for wisdom becomes theology. But in doing so, humans banish their wisdom into the nervous process and draw closer to Mephistopheles. And when the fifth post-Atlantean epoch dawned, it was precisely from this banishment of wisdom into the nervous process that the idea arose that Mephisto could be chained to one's heels, that he could be placed beside oneself.
If we strip the Faust legend of all the tendrils that entwine it, we are still left with the fact that a young theologian strives for wisdom, is plagued by doubts, and therefore commits himself to the devil, Mephistopheles, and is drawn into his sphere of influence. But just as the Greek had to deal with the Sphinx by by fully developing the ego nature of human beings, just as one had to deal with the Sphinx by developing the ego nature, so in our time we must deal with Mephistopheles by expanding and fulfilling the ego with that wisdom which can come only from the exploration of the spiritual world, through the knowledge of the spiritual world, through spiritual science.
Oedipus was supposed to be the most powerful of these Sphinx conquerors. Every Greek who took his humanity seriously was, in essence, more or less a Sphinx conqueror in a small way. Oedipus was only supposed to represent in a particularly typical form what every Greek had to experience. So what happens? Oedipus was supposed to defeat that which lives in the processes of breathing and blood. He was to confront the human being who lives in this with the nervous human being who lives, as it were, with impoverished etheric forces. How does he achieve this? By taking into his own nature the forces related to the nervous process, i.e., the Mephistophelean forces, but taking them in a healthy way, so that they do not run alongside him and become his companions, but are within him, enabling him to confront the sphinx nature through these forces.
Here we see how, in essence, Lucifer and Ahriman work beneficially in their proper places, in the places where they have been transferred, as it were, and that they have a detrimental effect where they do not belong. For the Greeks, the sphinx nature was something they had to come to terms with, something they had to remove from themselves. If they could plunge it into the abyss, that is, bring the expanded etheric body into the physical body, then they had overcome the sphinx. The abyss is not out there; the abyss is one's own physical body, into which the sphinx must be submerged in a healthy way. But there the other pole, the nerve process, the opposite process, originating from the ego, must become stronger — not what is outside, but what must be inside. The Ahrimanic is taken up into the human being and thereby placed in its rightful place.
Oedipus is the son of Laius. It had been predicted that if he had a child, it would bring misfortune upon his entire family. Therefore, he abandoned the baby boy who was born to him. He pierced his feet, and so he was given the name Oedipus, which means clubfoot. Here we have the Mephistophelean forces in the Oedipus drama.
I have said that when these forces impoverish the etheric force, the feet can no longer develop; they must wither and die. In Oedipus, this was brought about artificially. As is well known, he was found hanging from a tree by the shepherd who raised him, when he should have perished. He now carries his club feet through the world. He is, in a sense, Mephistopheles translated into the sacred realm. There he is in the right place, where he can powerfully pulse through the ego, where it is necessary to solve the task of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Everything that made the Greeks great, everything that made them truly Greek, the harmonious balance between the etheric body and the physical body, which we still admire so vividly in the Greek figures in their well-formed bodies, all this is lacking in Oedipus so that he can become a “personality,” so that he can become the representative of the human being in whom the ego becomes strong. The ego rising to the head becomes strong as the feet wither away.
This must be confronted by the human being of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period. Just as Oedipus had to take in Ahriman in order to face the Sphinx and defeat it, so the human being of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period, who faces Ahriman-Mephistopheles, must take in Lucifer, that is, he must go through the reverse process of Oedipus. He had to push down from his head into the other human nature what had been accumulated by the ego in the head. Philosophy, law, medicine, and, unfortunately, theology — all nerve processes — had accumulated in the ego insofar as this ego lives in the nerve process. This gives rise to the urge to get everything out of the head and penetrate the whole world through sensuality.
Now take Faust as he stands there, with everything the ego has achieved, and how he wants to throw it all out of his head, as it were, which Goethe sums up in the words: “Now, alas! I have studied philosophy, law, and medicine thoroughly, and unfortunately also theology, with ardent effort.” He now sought to get all that out of his head. He does this by surrendering himself to a life that is not bound to the head. He is the reverse Oedipus, who takes the Lucifer nature into himself.
And now follow what Faust does to take Lucifer into himself so that he can fight Ahriman, Mephisto, beside him. All this shows us to what extent Faust really is the reverse Oedipus. While everything that happens through the reverse Ahriman nature in Oedipus is connected with Lucifer, everything that happens through the reverse Lucifer nature in Faust is connected with Ahriman-Mephisto. Just as Ahriman-Mephisto lives more in the outer world, Lucifer lives more in the inner world. All the misfortune that befalls Oedipus because he has to be imbued with the Ahriman nature consists of outer things. Disaster comes through his lineage, not just upon himself. And even the disaster that comes upon him is indicated outwardly. That he gouges out his eyes and blinds himself are also external things. That the plague comes upon his father's city is something external. Everything that happens to Faust is an inner soul experience, something tragic within the human being, so that Faust also presents himself here as the reverse of Oedipus.
When we place these two figures, or rather these two double figures, Oedipus and the Sphinx, Faust and Mephisto, before our eyes, we have before us in a typical way the evolution of the fourth and fifth post-Atlantean epochs. When the time comes when people will represent less the external phantasmagoria of history, that which has happened as an imprint of the external world, and will instead represent what human beings experience, then only will we see how meaningful and important these fundamental experiences of human beings are. Only then will we notice what really lives in the ongoing process of evolution, how history, the external phantasmagoria, passes from the representation that is usually given as history into that of which external events, however significant they may appear, are in essence only the external phantasmagorical imprint.
Just as the ego had to strengthen itself by Ahriman-Mephistopheles entering into Oedipus, that is, into the Greeks, so this ego has become too strong in modern man. And modern man must free himself from this ego by immersing himself in spiritual events, immersing himself in that which is connected with the world to which the ego belongs, when this ego becomes conscious that it does not only live in the human body, but is a citizen of the spiritual world. And this is the age in which we live. Whereas in the fourth post-Atlantean age, human beings had to strive with all their might to become conscious of the ego in the physical body, in our fifth post-Atlantean period, human beings must work toward becoming conscious that the ego belongs to the spiritual world. And the expansion of ego-consciousness beyond the spiritual world is spiritual science. Therefore, this spiritual science is also deeply connected with the highest demands of human evolution in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch.