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The Riddle of Humanity
GA 170

31 July 1916, Dornach

Lecture III

When we cast a glance back over the discussions of the previous two meetings, allowing the main experience to stand before our souls, we become aware of the fundamentally dual nature of the human being. We have seen how everything that comes to life in a human soul during waking consciousness can be traced back to the influence on man of the heavens and of the universe—to what these, taken in their cosmic significance, have imprinted on humanity. The foundations of certain other, deeper regions of human nature, regions which in a normal life only well up in dream-consciousness, can be traced back to terrestrial influences and impressions that are earthly in a more narrow sense. When the world is observed in the light of spiritual science, everything that is perceived by the senses must be seen as a real expression of the spirit.

The picture a human being presents to the senses reveals his dual nature. That is most easily imagined if you consider the skeleton. There it is most clear, for the skeleton is clearly divided into two distinct parts: the head—the skull—and the remaining parts of the body. And, in principle, the only thing that holds these two together is a thin skeletal cord. The head really has just been set on top of the rest. One can knock it off. This is an outer, pictorial expression of the dual nature of a human being, for the head makes waking consciousness possible. The remaining parts, the parts of the skeleton that hang down from the head, form the basis for the life that plays itself out more or less unconsciously. The unconscious life only wells up in dreams or in the creative fantasy of poets and artists, penetrating normal consciousness with its fire and warmth and light. In that, something of an unquestionably earthly nature is working into usual waking consciousness—the noblest part of earthly nature, perhaps, but earthly all the same. Yesterday, in the awareness of time that was typical of the ancient Hebrew culture we found direct evidence that mankind once possessed knowledge, explicit and fundamental knowledge, of the connections between super-earthly occurrences and human waking consciousness. We saw how that which can be called cosmic thought, and which is expressed in the movements of the stars, creates an image of itself in waking human consciousness. Man has a waking consciousness because, in the first place, he is able to make use of the organs in his head. And we have considered the wonderful way that mankind participates in the whole universe, and includes both its heavenly and its earthly aspects.

If one is going to do justice to everything connected with these weighty and significant facts, one must free oneself from prejudice. One ahrimanic prejudice is particularly common in those who still harbour a longing to be mystics. The prejudice comes to expression in a certain sensibility, and consists in the belief that what is earthly is worthless and absolutely must be overcome—that it is coarse, contemptible stuff that a spiritually striving person does not even mention. That for which one must strive is the spirit! This is the way such people experience things, even if their concept of the spirit is confused and they can only picture it in terms of the physical senses. Therefore I said that this prejudice expresses itself more as a sensibility in a particular direction. But one will never be able to understand the nature of either mankind or of the world as long as one clings to this prejudiced mode of experience. A person who is living on earth in an earthly human body can only preserve such a sensibility by viewing the earth in a one-sided way. Following from this attitude to the earth comes a longing—a partially justified longing—for the super-earthly and for things that should be experienced between death and a new life. But one will never be able to develop any sort of clarity in one's feelings for the life between death and a new birth as long as earthly things are regarded in the manner to which I just alluded. For, paradoxical though it may sound, the following is a true statement—and you will find it clearly expressed in various lecture cycles: the dead, those living in spirit and the soul in the interval between death and a new birth, speak of the earth in the same way that men on earth speak of heaven. The earth is a shimmering vision that hovers in front of them in the way the vision of heaven hovers in the mind's eye of those on earth. Earth is the desired other world for which those living in heaven yearn. They speak of earth in the way we speak of heaven. It is the longed-for land towards which they strive, the land of their approaching incarnation. If one loses sight of this, one forms a false picture of how the dead live.

I have often warned you not to interpret the basic dictum, ‘In the spirit, everything is reversed,’ too pedantically. One cannot obtain a correct picture of the spiritual world simply by turning around all one's pictures of the physical world. Nothing very special comes from applying such a rule abstractly. The particular facts must be considered, even though, as I have told you, this rule about reversal applies to many things. Then, for example, someone who is investigating the spiritual worlds can get to know an extraordinary land, a land where individuals find themselves among other men. The men among whom they find themselves are normal, earthly men like the devout people we meet on earth. I say, specifically, like devout people on earth, for these are people who have a certain feeling for things of the earth and a certain feeling for the things of heaven. Also among the people to be met there are those who totally deny everything earthly. They deny all matter, all substance. They maintain that only spirit exists and that it is a superstition to believe in matter.

The land I am describing is not in the physical world; it belongs to the spirit-region that is revealed when one's gaze is directed towards a particular part of the spiritual world that lies between, say, the middle of the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth centuries. All of you were then living in the spiritual world. At least in the first part of this period, we were all still living in the spiritual world. The majority of us were experiencing the heavenly realms which were about us, and also the earthly realm towards which we were striving and which, over there, was the world beyond. But then there were those who viewed all talk of earthly things as superstition. They maintained that only the spirit exists and that the earthly, material realm is just a dream world. And yes, naturally, these men, too, were eventually born. They were known by such names as Ludwig Buchner,5Ludwig Buchner (1824 – 1899). Ernst Haeckel,6Ernst Haeckel (1834 – 1919). Carl Vogt,7Carl Vogt (1817 – 1895). and so on. These men, whose lives on earth you are well-enough acquainted with, are the same ones who explained away belief in material things as superstition and who, during the stage when they were approaching their most recent life in the physical world, viewed the spiritual world as the only real world. They did this because the spiritual world was what was around them and they did not want to consider something that was not around them, some world beyond. Why, you will be asking yourselves, would such individuals be born into souls that developed the view that material is all that exists? You may ask yourselves this, but you can nevertheless understand it, when you see that these individuals showed a lack of understanding for the material world before they were born, and that this remained with them. For anyone who sees matter as something absolute, rather than as an expression of the spirit, has completely failed to understand matter. One is not a materialist when one represents materialism in the way the aforementioned personages represented it. Understanding the substantial nature of the material world does not make one a materialist; a person becomes a materialist precisely because he does not understand the substantial nature of matter. Thus, these individuals did not change, they retained their lack of understanding for matter.

So there you have an area in which the spiritual world is a total reversal of what the appearances in the physical world would lead you to expect. But, as I said, this rule should not be abstractly extended to cover everything. I have gone into all this about how the earthly realm becomes the ‘other world’ when we are living between death and a new birth so that you will not misinterpret the contrast that ancient Greek mythology expressed with the words, ‘Uranus’ and ‘Gaia’. Uranus and Gaia were not incompatible, one referring to what is absolutely valuable and the other to what is absolutely worthless. They were conceived as a polarity that exists within a unity: Uranus represents the peripheral, encircling realm whose polar opposite is the point at the centre, Gaia. To begin with, when they spoke of Uranus and Gaia, the Greeks did not limit their thoughts to the narrow confines of human sexuality or earthly life. They were thinking of the contrast we just mentioned—between heaven and earth. This is the contrast they intended.

I must go into this, as otherwise we will not be able to understand what is to follow. As it is these days, it is difficult to make certain truths about humanity accessible. But it is possible to just touch on certain things, which is what we shall do, in so far as that is possible.

As we enter into these considerations, I ask you keep in mind the sense in which human nature is dual, and how this is outwardly expressed in the form of the human body, with its head that is attached to everything else. The whole process of shaping the human head, the whole of the essential process, takes place during the time between the last death and a new birth. The physical head must be produced on earth, of course, but that is not what I am talking about. I mean the form that it acquires; and the way the head is formed depends on forces that go far back in time. The human head is received, ready-shaped, from heaven, for all the powers that are at work between death and a new birth are really concerned with building the head. The human head comes from the heavens, even though it must follow the path of physical birth and physical heredity. The rest of the body is the only part that comes from the earth. So, as regards the form of the body, a human being is a product of Uranus and Gaia: the head originates in heavenly forces, the body originates in earthly forces—Uranus and Gaia.

Now at birth, when a human being makes his appearance, this whole thing is so strongly evident that one can truly say that part of him, his head, has just been introduced into the physical world and still expresses only the forces of the heavenly realm from which it has come—and that another part, the body, is the expression of earthly forces. This is especially evident just after birth. There is a strong contrast between the head and the rest of the body for those whose sight is informed by a deeper knowledge of the human being. With a little child there really is this strong contrast. One has only to learn to observe such things without preconceptions; then one will soon notice what an immense and pronounced contrast there is between the head, which is the Uranus sphere of the human being, and the remaining body, which is the sphere of Gaia.

Lets us consider the first significant phase of life, the phase up to the change of teeth at approximately the seventh year. As you know, this marks the end of the first significant stage of human life. It is a very important time, a time marked also by the appearance of a paradox that it is very important to understand. For, during the period leading to the change of teeth at around the seventh year, those who observe a human being physically are observing falsely. I have frequently alluded to this from other points of view. To put it briefly, people look upon a human being during the first seven years as if it already were male or female. From a higher point of view this is entirely false. But the materialism of today does hold this view. That is why the materialists of today look upon manifestations during the first seven years as if they were already manifestations of sexuality, which is not at all the case. Matters will be in a much healthier state when it is understood that a child is an asexual being during its first seven years, and not a sexual being at all. To use a trivial expression, it only looks as though a child were already male or female during the first seven years. This is because there is no physical distinction between what one calls masculine or feminine during the first seven years and what one calls masculine and feminine later. For materialism, the physical is all that there is, so what comes later seems to be a continuation of what was already there. But that is not the case at all. And I now ask you to really experience what I am saying, to take it into yourselves, so that it is not misunderstood and immediately mixed up with value judgements. What I say is meant objectively, so please do not fall into the pattern so often found in other areas today, whereby one judges on the basis of previously-held values instead of judging objectively.

During the first seven years, what appears to be masculine is not masculine as such—and here I ask you to keep in mind what I have said about Uranus and Gaia; it has the external form that it has in order that the heavenly forces working from the head can continue to influence the individual being and the human form in accordance with what is super-earthly and heavenly. That is why it appears masculine. But it is not male; it is formed by Uranus in accordance with the super-earthly! I said: the head is the part of the human being where the heavenly takes precedence, the earthly takes precedence in the rest of the body. But the earthly radiates into the heavenly, just as the heavenly radiates into the earthly. Mutual relationships connect them; it is only a question of which one predominates. I would like to describe matters by saying that, with one kind of human being, the heavenly aspect is the preponderant influence on the body, including the parts other than the head, with the result that one says he is male. But this still has nothing to do with sexuality, but only with the fact that this particular organisation is more Uranian, whereas in the case of other individuals, their organisation is more terrestrial, Gaian. During the first seven years, the human being is not a sexual being; that is maya. The bodies differ in that some show more how the heavenly side is at work and others show more from the earthly side. In anticipation of value judgements that might insinuate themselves into our discussions, I began by saying that from a universal point of view the earthly sphere has as much value as the heavenly. I did not want anyone to harbour the belief that we were devaluing the feminine, in the style of Weininger, by taking some elevated, mystical standpoint that makes it out to be merely earthly or merely Gaian. Each is the pole of the other, and this has nothing to do with sexuality.

What, then, is going on in the human being, in the human organisation, during the first seven years? You must take what I am going to describe as the predominant circumstances; the opposite is also there, but what I am characterising is the predominant situation. For you see, during the first seven years the head is constantly being worked on by forces that stream to it from the rest of the organism. There are also forces that flow from the head to the rest of the organism, of course, but during this period these are relatively weak in comparison to the forces that stream from the body to the head. If the head grows and continues to develop during the first seven years, this is due to the fact that the body is actually sending its forces into the head; during the first seven years, the body imprints itself into the head and the head adapts to the bodily organisation. With regard to human development, the essential thing during the first seven years is that the head becomes adapted to the bodily organisation. This welling-up of the rest of the organisation into the head is what is behind the distinctive facial metamorphoses that someone with a finely developed sense for it can observe during the first seven years. Just watch once the development of a child's face, and observe how it changes at the time of the change of teeth, when the whole body is more or less poured into the facial expression.

Diagram 1

Then comes the period that leads to sexual maturity—roughly from the seventh to the fourteenth year. And now exactly the opposite happens: the forces of the head flow uninterruptedly down into the organism, into the body; now the body adapts to the head. The resultant total revolution in the organism is very interesting to watch: the welling-up of the forces of the body into the head during the first seven years concludes with the change of teeth. Then there is a reversal in the flow of forces, which begin to stream downward. It is these downward-streaming forces that turn a human being into a sexual being. Now, for the first time, the human being becomes a sexual being. To begin with, what turns the organs that are simply heavenly or earthly into sexual organs, comes from the head; and that is spirit. The physical organs are not even intended for sexuality—that is exactly the way to put it—they are only adapted to sexuality later on. And the judgement of those who maintain that they are originally adapted to sexuality is superficial. On the contrary, the organs are adapted to the heavenly sphere in one case, to the earthly sphere in the other. They first acquire a sexual character during the period between the seventh and fourteenth years, when this is introduced into them from without by the forces that stream down from the head. That is when a human being begins to become a sexual being.

Diagram 2

It is extraordinarily important to form a precise view of these things, for in practice one is constantly being confronted by people who come with their very small children, complaining about sexual improprieties. But such things are not possible before the seventh year, because nothing sexual is yet present, nothing that has sexual significance. In such cases no healing can come from a medical direction; it needs to come naturally, as people stop calling things by false names and thereby cease to surround them with false concepts. One should recover that holy innocence with which the ancients viewed such matters. Given their atavistic knowledge of the spiritual world, it never would have occurred to them to begin applying sexual terms to those who were still children. I have already alluded to these things in other contexts.

In the light of these important truths about the human being that we have obtained from the spiritual world, truths concerning man's relation to the earthly and heavenly worlds, you can begin to appreciate how the caricature-like ideas of such a man as Weininger do have a certain justification. For if he could have understood matters in the way they have been presented here, he would have been justified in saying: ‘A human being comes into this physical world from the spiritual world in such a way that the head must first develop here in the physical world for seven years before it can produce the masculine out of heavenly forces and the feminine out of earthly forces.’ Later on, it will be our task to look at other currents and forces important to human development. For the moment, it will be helpful to concentrate our attention on the first fourteen years of human development. Only through such things will you begin to see how true it is to say that external life is a life of maya—is the great deception. For it really is a deception that a human being seems to arrive in the world as a male or a female. A human being first becomes a sexual being through what is acquired by the head from the earth during the first seven years there.

Now, those who take these things into their hearts, as well as their heads, are sure to stumble over a question at this point. Nor is it a question that can easily be evaded: How is it that man comes to live in maya, in deception? What is the meaning of this? Is the fact that we live in deception not grounds for an inherent sadness? Surely it would have been better if the Godhead, the gods, had not allowed human beings to live in deception at all? Would it not have been better for man to apprehend the world without being deceived, so that he would not always have to seek truth behind the appearances? Why, why must man live in a world of deception? These questions about why we must live surrounded by deception can lead to a very pessimistic view of the world. But there are good reasons why we must live in the midst of deception; for if we were born into truth to begin with, if truth came at birth without our having to search for it, we would never be able to develop a personality and would never be able to acquire freedom. Only in the sphere of the Earth can a human being achieve freedom. And he can only do so by developing a personality through his earthly striving. Initially he confronts a world of mere appearances whose inner substance has to be sought out. The search releases inner forces that will make him, gradually and through many incarnations, into a free person. Take some worthwhile book like Dante's Divine Comedy. Theoretically, and not only theoretically for it is altogether conceivable, a person of today might come to know Dante's Divine Comedy in an entirely different way from what is usual. Today how does someone become acquainted with The Divine Comedy? Either it is recited and he hears it presented in external sounds that have nothing to do with the content of The Divine Comedy, or else he reads it. If he reads it, in reality he has nothing before him but abstract characters, which do not have the slightest thing to do with the content of The Divine Comedy. Yes, this is how people become acquainted with the contents of a worthwhile work today. One becomes acquainted with it externally through recitation, although speaking has nothing to do with the work as it sprang from Dante's head; it is only an external means of communication. Theoretically—and I say emphatically, not only theoretically—it would be possible for us to approach the contents of The Divine Comedy in a different fashion: it could make its appearance from within us if, at a particular age, the contents were to simply rise up out of our soul and appear in waking consciousness through a dream. This is not just theoretical; it could very easily happen if the world were not organised so that, to begin with, we had to make our way through maya. If it were not that we first had to make our way through maya, there would come one fine day when we would experience, rising up like a dream, everything that has ever been accomplished by the likes of Homer, say, and Dante, and Plato, and so on. We would not have to resort to anything external in order to become acquainted with it. Raphael would not have had to create external pictures. He need only have brought them to life in his spirit, and those that lived after him, without recourse to anything beyond a certain orientation towards Raphael, would have been able to experience the pictures rising up out their own inner being.

What I am telling you is no hypothesis; on the Moon this is how things stood with us, this is how things were passed on. This is how things really were then. On the Moon, one did not have to learn to read; everything arose out of one's own inner being. An event had to happen once; thereafter it rose up from within. But freedom was not possible. One was an automaton, subject to the past. What rose up from within was determined by the past. It was not possible to become a free person. Not there. We do not have to strive for knowledge in order to repeat, pointlessly, what is already there, but in order to become a free person. And we have progressed to the Earth period from the Moon period, from a time when we were not free beings and when everything simply rose up in our imaginations. Now we have to reach out to the external world. Our spiritual experience of the process of reading or listening enables us to be there as a free individual. It is not entirely true to say that man strives for knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Humanity achieves knowledge in order to become free and individual. We do not want to lose sight of this fact.

The other thing we do not want to lose sight of can be introduced with a further question. One can question why the external world should need to be repeated in our concepts and ideas. What, really, is the point of it? Why should we, with our thoughts and ideas, repeat the external world? Surely it is of no concern to the external world that we repeat it!—If you pursue the following train of thought you will get a more exact grasp of this: A man is there. If he had been murdered in his youth, he would not be there. Because he is there, he experiences—in addition to the fact that the world is there—a repetition of that world as a picture within his own inner world. That picture would not exist at all if he had been murdered in his youth. And yet nothing would be different in the outer world. It is a different matter if he intervenes in that world, but as far as the external world is concerned, what lives in our knowledge is pure repetition. If we were robots, and everything we did between birth and death were a reaction to the external world, then our knowledge would be entirely superfluous. We would do all that we had to do, and knowledge would just be a superfluous parallel phenomenon. You could imagine that the knowledge man carries with him is something added to nature and to the universe, but that it makes no difference to nature or to the universe that such a thing is added to it. Nature could just as well have produced robots whose thoughts do not mirror everything that happens. For nothing out there is changed when we accompany events with our thoughts and concepts, creating pictures of them. If you take a picture of some place with a camera, then, in addition to the place, there also is a picture of it, but it is entirely the same to that place whether the picture exists or not. This is how it is with our ideas. They are an addition. So why should nature not be organised like this?—thus one might question. All of us have long since become so accustomed to thinking that we do not ask this question any more; we have grown so fond of thinking. Like eating and drinking, we are used to it, so the question does not arise for us. But you know how many people there are out there who would be quite delighted not to have to think and to be able to function like a machine. Thinking is too heavy a burden to them and they flee from every thought. Now that, too, is contained in the question: Why hasn't nature fashioned man so that thinking is not even included among his possessions? We have answered one part of this question. Man becomes a free individuality by virtue of his thinking. Such a question, however, allows of many kinds of answers. Nor is it the only thing that can help us to understand.

Let us suppose that we had been born with a different organisation. As children, after we had received our head from the heavens, our body from the earth, and had been set down by the beings of the hierarchies, by the angels, the archangels, and so on, suppose that we had proceeded to go about doing what we had to do without our ever having to suffer under the strain of all the pains and torments this so often involves—without our ever developing an inner soul life. If we assume that this were so, then very important consequences would follow. We could only be born once and die once if we were organised like this; we could not live a succession of lives on earth. A plant whose blossoms never develop into fruit only lives once. A plant develops further through its seeds. The seed of our next earthly life develops within our developing soul life. Within it is the seed. If we did not have an unfolding soul life, with its knowledge, our earthly death would be the end of our life. Therefore, the understanding we develop in our inner soul life is not a mere repetition of what is out there; to the extent that our souls are shaped by knowledge, we carry the future within us. And that has great significance. Except for the things related to knowledge, everything we bear in and with us, is more or less the work of the past. The understanding we develop represents the real seed of the future. The real seed of the future develops within the sphere of our knowledge.

Now, in closing, I would like to touch on the leading thought of our next lectures. It will take us into important areas concerned with the cosmic aspects of human nature.

We carry all our knowledge within us, all of it, from the most naive understanding to the most abstract knowledge—and the two are not so terribly different—we just have an incorrect sense of their value. Thus, deep beneath our outer surface we carry this within us. It is super-sensible, for the content of knowledge is, of course, a super-sensible thing. In reality it is a collection of forces that rest within us. And then we pass through the gates of death; what happens then? Now, I have often described what happens then, but I would like to describe it once more from the standpoint of these forces.

A human being consists of head and body. No matter how precious it may seem, our head actually is ‘on the way out’. Here I am referring to forces, not to the outer form. You can let a person's body waste away, or you can burn it, of course, but the forces do not cease to exist. They remain externally present, and the spiritual forces on which the body depends also remain. But the head disappears. As I said, you may well consider it to be a valuable part of your organism, but after death that does not matter—after death it is nothing special. This refers to the outer form of the head, of course, not to its soul content. For, as regards your passage from death to a new birth, what is important to the heavens is the part of your last earthly life that you could only receive from the earth, namely, the rest of the body. That, with its various forces, is what is transformed into the new head during the time between death and a new birth. Here you have the head, there, the rest of the body. This head was the body of your previous incarnation; your present body will be the head of your next incarnation. The forces that you develop by means of your head in this life are what will transform the forces of your body into a head for the next life. The earth gives you a body for that purpose. The head you carry around now is the transformed body of your previous incarnation, for metamorphosis applies to all of life. It is not only there in the transformation of a plant's leaves into the petals of its blossom; metamorphosis does not just affect our subordinate aspects; metamorphosis rules throughout. Your body is a head that is yet to come—your head is a transformed body.

These are the ideas I wanted to touch on. You carry your head about in its present state. Phrenologists study the shapes of the head, but what they do is not worth much unless it is based on initiation, because everyone possesses his own kind of head. The head is nothing other than the inherited body of the previous incarnation. Every person's head is different from the head of anyone else and the characteristic types the phrenologists describe are merely rough observations. Just think what a marvellous connection there is: A human being has a dual nature. But not only does man have a dual nature; in addition to that, his external shape also carries both past and future. The human head gives you reincarnation where you can really put your hands on it, for the shaping of the head is the result of our previous life. The head we bear in the next life will be a transformation of our body. Wherever one looks deeply into the foundations of existence one finds metamorphosis. Someone who understands the things I have just been explaining is enabled to look deep, deep into the nature and origins of world existence and human existence. As I said, I wanted to touch on these ideas because they will provide the leitmotif of the next two lectures. These will be concerned with how one incarnation works on in the next incarnation, and how the previous incarnation works over into the present one, through the metamorphic relationship of man's head-ness to his body-ness, if I may be allowed to use these expressions.

Dritter Vortrag

Wenn wir zurückblicken auf das in diesen zwei verflossenen Tagen Besprochene und uns das Hauptergebnis vor die Seele führen, so ist es ja das, daß der Mensch im Grunde genommen der Ausdruck ist einer Doppelnatur. Wir haben gesehen, wie wir alles das, was die Menschenseele belebt im Wachbewußtsein, zurückzuführen haben auf Einflüsse, Eindrücke, die - wenn der Ausdruck kosmisch genommen wird — dem Menschen aus dem Himmlischen, aus dem Universellen eingeprägt sind. Was gewissen tieferen Regionen der Menschennatur zugrunde liegt, was nur im normalen Leben heraufwogt in das Bewußtsein im Traum, das ist zurückzuführen auf Einflüsse, Eindrücke des Terrestrischen, des im engeren Sinne Irdischen. Wenn wir im geisteswissenschaftlichen Sinne die Welt betrachten, dann muß uns alles, was den Sinnen erscheint, wie ein wirklicher Ausdruck des Geistigen sein.

Nun ist wirklich der Mensch auch mit Bezug auf seine bildliche Erscheinung, mit Bezug auf seine sinnliche Offenbarung ein Ausdruck dieser seiner Doppelnatur. Am besten kann man sich das vergegenwärtigen, weil es da am deutlichsten wird, wenn man das Skelett betrachtet, das sehr deutlich aus zwei Teilen besteht: dem Kopf, dem Schädelteil und dem übrigen Körperteil, und beide hängen im Grunde genommen nur durch einen dünnen Skelettstrang zusammen. Der Kopf ist eigentlich nur aufgesetzt. Man kann ihn herunterheben. Das gibt auch äußerlich, bildlich den Ausdruck jener Doppelnatur; denn dadurch, daß der Mensch sein Haupt, seinen Schädel, seinen Kopf hat, hat er Wachbewußtsein; dadurch, daß er die übrige Natur hat, die beim Skelett am Kopfe daranhängt, hat er alles das, was sich mehr oder weniger im Unterbewußten abspielt und heraufwogt in den Träumen, heraufwogt dann auch dadurch, daß es durchglüht, durchfeuert, durchleuchtet das gewöhnliche Wachbewußtsein in der schöpferischen Phantasie des Dichters, des Künstlers. Da wirkt immer, wenn auch das Edelste der irdischen Natur, so doch eben die irdische Natur durch das, was sonst gewöhnliches Wachbewußtsein ist, durchaus mit. Wir haben gestern gesehen, wie man aus dem Bewußtsein einer gewissen Zeitkultur, der hebräischen Kultur heraus geradezu hinweisen kann darauf, wie die Menschen Erkenntnisse gehabt haben, ausführliche, gründliche Erkenntnisse des Zusammenhanges des menschlichen Wachbewußstseins mit den überirdischen Vorgängen, den überirdischen Tatsachen. Wir haben gesehen, wie eigentlich das, was man die kosmische Gedankenwelt nennen kann, die sich ausdrückt in den Bewegungen der Sterne, sich ihr Abbild schafft in dem, was der Mensch als sein Wachbewußtsein hat, was er dadurch hat, daß er sich für das Wachbewußtsein zunächst des Organes seines Kopfes bedient. Jenes wunderbare Darinnenstehen des Menschen in dem gesamten Universum, gewissermaßen in den himmlischen und irdischen Tatsachen zugleich, das haben wir betrachtet.

Wenn man all dem, was mit diesen schwerwiegenden, bedeutungsvollen Tatsachen zusammenhängt, gerecht werden will, dann muß man sich schon von Vorurteilen losmachen. Und ein solches ahrimanisches Vorurteil ist ja besonders bei denen vorhanden, welche in einem gewissen Sinne doch Mystiker sein wollen. Es ist das Vorurteil, das sich in einer gewissen Empfindung ausspricht und das darin besteht, daß man sagt: Das Irdische ist das Wertlose, was man unbedingt zu überwinden hat, es ist der rohe, gemeine Stoff, von dem ein wirklich der Geisteswelt zustrebender Mensch gar nicht spricht; wonach man streben muß, das ist das Geistige! -— Wenn man dabei auch oftmals von diesem Geistigen die verworrensten Vorstellungen hat und sich vielleicht bloß sinnliche Bilder davon macht, so empfindet man doch so. Deshalb sage ich, es drückt sich das, was in Betracht kommt, mehr in einer Art Empfindungsrichtung aus. Aber man wird niemals die Wesenheit sowohl des Menschen wie der Welt verstehen können, wenn man nur in dieser vorurteilsvollen Empfindung leben will. Denn diese Empfindung kann man nur haben, wenn man in einem gewissen einseitigen Sinne als auf der Erde im physischen Leibe lebender Mensch die Erde betrachtet, und von dieser Erdenbetrachtung aus die ja gewiß berechtigte Sehnsucht hat nach dem, was überirdisch ist und was durchlebt werden muß zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt. Aber man wird niemals vollständig eine Art verständnisvollen Gefühles haben können für das Leben zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt, wenn man so, wie ich es eben angedeutet habe, über das Irdische spricht. Denn, so paradox es klingen mag, es ist wahr, und aus gewissen Zyklen werden Sie das deutlich entnehmen können, wo Sie es im einzelnen dargestellt finden: Was dem Menschen zwischen Geburt und Tod, also dem Menschen im physischen Leibe vorschwebt, wenn er von dem Himmel spricht, das schwebt dem Toten, der zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt steht, dem im Geiste und in der Seele lebenden Menschen, so vor, daß er in demselben Sinne von der Erde spricht. Den im Himmel lebenden Menschen, denen ist das Jenseits die Erde, denen ist das Wertvolle, auf das sie blicken, die Erde. Die reden von der Erde so, wie wir von dem Himmel reden. Es ist das Land ihrer Sehnsucht, zu dem sie wieder hinwollen in einer neuen Verkörperung, das Land, nach dem sie streben. Und man bekommt ein falsches Gefühl von dem, wie die Toten leben, wenn man dieses nicht ins Auge faßt.

Ich habe öfters darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß man nicht pedantisch sein darf und glauben, daß der Grundsatz «im Geistigen ist alles umgekehrt», einfach nun so angewendet werden könne, daß man sagt: Man stellt sich die geistige Welt richtig vor, wenn man sie umgekehrt gegenüber der physischen vorstellt. Da wird gar nichts Besonderes herauskommen durch eine abstrakte Anwendung eines solchen Satzes. Es müssen schon die Tatsachen im einzelnen betrachtet werden, aber es ist wahr, daß dieser Grundsatz von der Umkehrung, wie ich ihn eben angedeutet habe, für vieles gilt. So zum Beispiel kann derjenige, der in geistigen Welten forschend lebt, ein merkwürdiges Land kennenlernen, ein Land, in dem sich einzelne Menschen befinden unter anderen Menschen. Die anderen Menschen, unter denen sich diese einzelnen befinden, sind normale Menschen, so wie die gläubigen Erdenmenschen ich sage die gläubigen Erdenmenschen. — Das sind die, die ein gewisses Gefühl haben für das Himmlische, ein gewisses Gefühl für das Irdische. Aber unter diesen anderen leben einzelne in dem Lande, von dem ich spreche, die leugnen vollständig das Irdische, leugnen alle Materie, allen Stoff, die sagen, es gäbe nur Geistiges, und es sei ein Aberglaube, von Materie zu sprechen. Das Land, von dem ich Ihnen erzähle, ist allerdings nicht hier in der physischen Welt, sondern es ist ein Geistgebiet, das man entdeckt, wenn man den Blick hinrichtet auf gewisse Teile der geistigen Welt, etwa, sagen wir, von der Mitte des achtzehnten bis zu der Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Da lebten Sie alle in der geistigen Welt noch, man kann wohl sagen, wenigstens im ersten Teil lebten wir alle noch in der geistigen Welt, und waren so im Durchschnitt Menschen in der geistigen Welt, die als Seelen Empfindungen hatten von dem Himmlischen, in dem wir drinnen waren, und von dem Irdischen, nach dem wir strebten, und das dort ein Jenseits ist. Dann aber gab es einige, die betrachteten das Reden von dem Irdischen als einen Aberglauben, die behaupteten, es gebe nur Geistiges, und alles Irdische, Stoffliche sei eine Träumerei. Ja, diese Menschen wurden natürlich dann auch geboren. Sie trugen die Namen Ludwig Büchner, Ernst Haeckel, Carl Vogt und so weiter. Diese Menschen, die Sie ja in bezug auf ihr Ausleben in der physischen Welt genügend kennen, sind diejenigen, die gerade in ihrem letzten Stadium während ihres Hereinlebens in die physische Welt alles Materielle als einen Aberglauben erklärt haben, die das Geistige als das einzig Wirkliche anerkannt haben, weil das um sie herum war, und weil sie nicht auf etwas blicken wollten, was nicht um sie herum war, was im Jenseits war. Sie werden fragen: Woher kommt es denn, daß diese Menschen dann geboren wurden und sich allmählich zu solchen Seelen entwickelten, welche von der Materie als dem einzig Vorhandenen sprechen? — Das werden Sie fragen, aber das könnte Ihnen doch verständlich sein, denn diese Menschen haben ja doch, bevor sie geboren wurden, kein Verständnis für die Materie gezeigt, und das ist ihnen geblieben; denn wer die Materie als absolut bezeichnet und nicht als etwas, was bloß Ausdruck des Geistes ist, der versteht eben nichts von der Materie, und ein Materialist ist man nicht, wenn man den Materialismus so vertritt wie die genannten Persönlichkeiten, ein Materialist ist man nicht dadurch, daß man das Materielle als Materielles versteht, sondern eben gerade dadurch, daß man das Materielle als Materielles nicht versteht. Also darin haben sie sich nicht geändert, daß sie kein Verständnis für das materielle Leben haben.

Da sehen Sie gleich ein Gebiet, in dem eine vollständige Umkehrung, eine richtige Umkehrung vorliegt für die geistige Welt gegenüber dem, was man in der physischen Welt hier nach den Erscheinungen glaubt. Aber wie gesagt, man darf diesen Grundsatz nicht in absträkter Art nun über alles ausdehnen. Ich sage das alles, namentlich das von dem Jenseitscharakter des Irdischen während unseres Lebens zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt, damit man den Gegensatz, der in der alten griechischen Mythologie durch die zwei Worte «Uranos» und «Gäa» ausgedrückt wird, nicht so fasse, als ob das eine das absolut Wertvolle und das andere das absolut Minderwertige wäre, sondern damit man ihn so faßt, als ob es eben zwei entgegengesetzte Pole wären eines Einheitlichen. Uranos ist gewissermaßen der Umkreis, und der polarische Gegensatz des Umkreises ist der Mittelpunkt, die Gäa. Die Griechen haben zunächst gar nicht gedacht an das eng begrenzte Geschlechtliche der Menschen oder des Irdischen, wenn sie von Uranos und Gäa gesprochen haben, sondern diesen Gegensatz, den wir jetzt charakterisiert haben — das Himmlische, das Irdische -, diesen Gegensatz als solchen haben sie gemeint.

Ich mußte das auseinandersetzen, weil wir sonst gar kein Verständnis gewinnen könnten für das, was ich im weiteren zu sagen habe. Es ist ja ohnedies heute sehr schwierig, gewisse tiefere Wahrheiten der Menschheit schon zugänglich zu machen. Abergewissermaßen antippen kann man doch, und das soll auch geschehen, soweit es eben möglich ist.

Zu diesen Betrachtungen, die wir nun zu pflegen haben, bitte ich Sie also, ganz genau festzuhalten, in welchem Sinne der Mensch eine Doppelnatur ist, und wie sich diese Doppelnatur äußerlich in seiner Leibesgestaltung ausdrückt dadurch, daß er aus dem Kopf und dem übrigen Leib besteht. Der Kopf des Menschen erfährt seine hauptsächlichste Gestaltung, seine ganze Formung eigentlich schon während der Zeit zwischen dem letzten Tod und der neuen Geburt. Selbstverständlich wird der physische Kopf irdisch erzeugt; darauf kommt es aber nicht an, sondern die Form, die er bekommt, die Art, wie er geformt wird, die hängt zusammen mit Kräften, die in der Zeit weit zurückliegen. Der Mensch bekommt seinen Kopf tatsächlich aus dem Himmel heraus geformt, denn alle die Kräfte, die da wirken zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt, sind wirklich dazu angetan, dem Menschen seinen Kopf zu bilden. Wenn auch der Kopf den Weg durch die physische Geburt und die physische Vererbung machen muß, der Mensch hat seinen Kopf vom Himmel. Nur den übrigen Körper hat er von der Erde. So daß der Mensch seiner Leibesgestaltung nach ein Produkt von Uranos und Gäa ist: dem Kopfe nach ein Ergebnis himmlischer Kräfte, dem übrigen Leibe nach ein Ergebnis irdischer Kräfte, Uranos und Gäa.

Nun tritt der Mensch ins Dasein, und wenn er geboren wird, so ist das ganz stark in ihm ausgeprägt, so stark, daß man sagen kann: Da wird etwas hereingesetzt in die physische Welt, das ist dem Kopfe nach wirklich ein Abdruck derjenigen Kräfte, die himmlisch wirken, und da ist der Leib, der ein Abbild ist der Kräfte, die irdisch wirken. Das ist, wenn der Mensch eben geboren worden ist, besonders stark ausgeprägt. Für den, der mit tiefer Erkenntnis den Menschen durchschauen kann, ist da ein starker Gegensatz zwischen dem Kopf und dem übrigen Leib. Beim kleinen Kinde ist wirklich ein starker Gegensatz. Man muß nur lernen, solche Dinge unbefangen zu beobachten, dann merkt man schon, daß ein großer, gewaltiger Gegensatz ist zwischen dem Kopf, dem Uranosgebiet des Menschen, und dem übrigen Leib, dem Gäagebiet des Menschen.

Betrachten wir das Leben bis zu dem ersten bedeutsamen Einschnitt, bis zum siebenten Jahre ungefähr, bis zum Zahnwechsel. Wir wissen, daß das der erste bedeutungsvolle Lebensabschnitt des Menschen ist. Diese Zeit ist sehr wichtig, denn jetzt kommt das Paradoxe, das in der rechten Weise zu verstehen wichtig ist. Denn in dieser Zeit zwischen der Geburt und dem siebenten Jahre oder dem Zahnwechsel wird der Mensch eigentlich von denen, die ihn physisch betrachten, ganz falsch betrachtet. Ich habe schon öfter von anderen Gesichtspunkten aus darauf hingewiesen. Es wird der Mensch in seinen ersten sieben Lebensjahren, wollen wir kurz sagen, so betrachtet, als ob er schon männlich oder weiblich wäre. Das ist vom höheren Gesichtspunkte aus vollständig falsch. Nur der heutige Materialismus ist dieser Ansicht, daher betrachtet der heutige Materialismus auch immer Äußerungen in den ersten sieben Lebensjahren schon wie sexuelle Außerungen, die sie gar nicht sind. Viel gesünder wird eine Anschauung einmal sein, die wissen wird, daß das Kind in den ersten sieben Lebensjahren überhaupt noch kein sexuelles, sondern ein asexuelles Wesen ist. Wenn ich mich trivial ausdrücken darf, so möchte ich sagen, es schaut nur so aus, als ob der Mensch in den ersten sieben Jahren schon männlich oder weiblich wäre. Und zwar deshalb schaut es so aus, weil in dem, was für den Materialismus einzig und allein da ist, im Physischen, kein rechter Unterschied auftritt zwischen dem, was der Mensch heute in den ersten sieben Lebensjahren irrtümlicherweise männlich nennt und was er später so nennt, und ebenso was er weiblich nennt. Das Spätere sieht aus wie eine Fortsetzung dessen, was schon da ist; das ist es aber gar nicht. Und jetzt bitte ich Sie wirklich, das, was ich gesagt habe, recht sehr in Ihre Empfindungen aufzunehmen, damit Sie es nicht mißverstehen und nach dem Muster, wie man das heute auf anderen Gebieten tut, wo man nicht mehr objektiv, sondern nur nach Werturteilen urteilt, auch da gleich wieder Werturteile einmischen, wo nur Objektives gemeint ist.

Das, was in den ersten sieben Jahren männlich aussieht — und hier bitte ich Sie zu berücksichtigen, was ich über Uranos und Gäa gesagt habe -, das ist nicht männlich als solches, sondern ist nur äußerlich so gestaltet, damit dasjenige, was sonst auf den Kopf wirkt, das Himmlische, fortwirkt und den Menschen und die menschliche Gestalt nach dem Außerirdischen, Himmlischen formt. Dadurch sieht es so aus wie das Männliche. Es ist gar nicht männlich, es ist nach dem Uranos geformt, nach dem Außerirdischen! Ich sagte: vorzugsweise ist der Kopf des Menschen himmlisch, der übrige Körper irdisch. Aber sowohl hat das Irdische eine Hereinstrahlung des Himmlischen, wie das Himmlische eine Hereinstrahlung des Irdischen. Alles steht in Wechselwirkung; es ist nur das eine oder das andere überwiegend. Ich möchte sagen, das Himmlische überschattet bei der einen Sorte des Menschen den Körper, auch den außerkopflichen Körper, und macht ihn so, daß man sagt, er ist männlich. Aber das hat nichts mit dem Geschlechtlichen zu tun, es ist nur eine Organisation, die mehr uranisch ist, und eine andere Organisation bei anderen Individuen ist mehr terrestrisch, gäisch. Gar nicht ist der Mensch ein Geschlechtswesen in den ersten sieben Jahren; das ist Maja. Unterschiedlich sind sie dadurch, daß bei dem einen Körper mehr der Himmel, bei dem andern mehr die Erde wirkt. Und ich habe vorausgeschickt, daß für eine universelle Weltbetrachtung das Irdische geradesoviel wert ist wie das Himmlische, damit kein Werturteil Platz greifen kann, damit nicht geglaubt werden kann, es sollte in Weiningerscher Weise das Weibliche herabgewürdigt werden dadurch, daß es von einem erhabenen mystischen Standpunkte aus nur irdisch ist oder gäisch. Es ist jedes der Pol des anderen, hat aber noch nichts mit dem Geschlechte zu tun.

Nun, was findet statt im Menschlichen, in der menschlichen Organisation während der ersten sieben Jahre? Alles das, was ich sage, müssen Sie so auffassen, daß es hauptsächlich stattfindet, es ist immer auch der Gegensatz da, aber das, was ich charakterisiere, ist eben in der Hauptsache da. Sehen Sie, in den ersten sieben Jahren sind fortwährende Strömungen, Kräftewirkungen vorhanden von dem übrigen Organismus nach dem Haupte hin. Gewiß sind auch Strömungen vom Kopf nach dem übrigen Organismus, die sind aber in dieser Zeit schwach im Verhältnis zu den starken Strömungen, die von dem Leib nach dem Kopfe gehen. Wenn der Kopf wächst in den ersten sieben Jahren, wenn er sich noch weiter ausbildet, so rührt das davon her, daß der Leib eigentlich seine Kräfte in den Kopf hineinschickt; der Leib drückt sich in den Kopf hinein in den ersten sieben Jahren, und der Kopf paßt sich der Leibesorganisation an. Das ist das Wesentliche in der menschlichen Entwickelung, daß sich der Kopf in den ersten sieben Jahren der Leibesorganisation anpaßt. Daher dieses Eigentümliche, was man beobachten kann, wenn man einen feinen Sinn hat für das Verwandeln des menschlichen Antlitzes in den ersten sieben Lebensjahren, dieses Heraufströmen der übrigen Organisation. Beachten Sie das nur einmal, wie das Gesicht des Kindes ist, und wie es nach dem Zahnwechsel ganz anders geworden ist, wo sich der ganze Leib gewissermaßen in den Gesichtsausdruck hineinergossen hat.

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Dann kommt die Zeit ungefähr vom siebenten bis zum vierzehnten Lebensjahre, der zweite Lebensabschnitt des Menschen, bis zur Geschlechtsreife. Da findet das gerade Entgegengesetzte statt: ein fortwährendes Strömen der Kopfkräfte in den Organismus hinein, in den Leib hinein; da paßt sich der Leib dem Kopfe an. Das ist sehr interessant wahrzunehmen, wie eine vollständige Revolution im Organismus stattfindet: ein Strömen, ein Hinaufkraften des Leibes in den Kopf in den ersten sieben Jahren, was dann den Abschluß findet im Zahnwechsel, und dann eine Umkehrung, ein Hinunterströmen, Hinunterkraften. Und durch dieses Hinunterströmen, Hinunterkraften wird der Mensch erst ein Geschlechtswesen. Jetzt wird der Mensch erst ein sexuelles Wesen. Und das, was die vorerst himmlischen oder irdischen Organe zu Geschlechtsorganen macht, das kommt aus dem Kopf, das ist Geist. Die physischen Organe - man kann es geradezu so aussprechen - sind gar nicht für Sexualität bestimmt; sie werden erst angepaßt der Sexualität. Und wer behauptet, sie wären ursprünglich der Sexualität angepaßt, der urteilt nur nach der äußeren Meinung. Sie sind so, daß die einen angepaßt sind dem Himmlischen, die anderen dem Irdischen. Abbilder sind sie. Der Geschlechtscharakter wird ihnen erst aufgedrückt durch das, was aus der Kopfströmung kommt vom siebenten bis zum vierzehnten Jahre. Da erst wird der Mensch ein Geschlechtswesen.

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Es ist außerordentlich bedeutsam, daß man diese Dinge genau ins Auge faßt; denn man erlebt es heute in der Praxis alle Augenblicke, daß Leute kommen mit den kleinsten Kindern und darüber klagen, daß sie geschlechtliche Ungezogenheiten haben. Das ist vor dem siebenten Jahre gar nicht möglich, weil das, was dann vorhanden ist, überhaupt nichts Geschlechtliches ist, gar nicht diese Bedeutung hat. Und es würde auf medizinische Weise eine Heilung hier nicht eintreten können, sondern auf normale Weise dadurch, daß man diese Dinge nicht mehr mit falschen Namen benennt und dadurch ihnen falsche Begriffshüllen überwirft. Erwerbe man sich doch wiederum jene, ich möchte sagen, heilige Unschuld, welche die Alten hatten mit Bezug auf diese Dinge, denen es gar nicht eingefallen wäre bei ihrem noch atavistischen Wissen aus der geistigen Welt, bei Kindern schon von der Sexualität zu sprechen. Von anderen Gesichtspunkten aus habe ich ja auf diese Dinge schon hingedeutet.

Wenn Sie aber das nehmen, was wir so herausholen konnten aus der geistigen Welt an bedeutungsvollen Wahrheiten über den Menschen und seinen Zusammenhang mit der irdischen und himmlischen Welt, dann werden Sie erst recht sehen, wie ein solcher Mensch wie Weininger in der Karikatur gewissen berechtigten Ideen entspricht. Denn würde er die Dinge so durchschauen, wie sie hier dargestellt worden sind, dann würde er mit einer gewissen Berechtigung sagen können: Der Mensch wird aus der geistigen Welt in die physische so hereingestellt, daß er erst durch das, was sein Kopf in den ersten sieben Jahren hier in der physischen Welt erwirbt, aus dem Himmlischen ein Männliches, aus dem Irdischen ein Weibliches macht. Es wird später unsere Aufgabe sein, auf gewisse Strömungen und Kraftungen, die in den späteren Lebensjahren noch für die menschliche Entwickelung wichtig sind, zurückzukommen. Jetzt möchte es gut sein, daß wir einmal auf die menschliche Entwickelung der ersten vierzehn Jahre unser Augenmerk richten. Durch solche Dinge bekommen Sie erst eine Vorstellung davon, wie wahr es ist, daß das äußere Leben eigentlich ein Leben in der Maja ist, in der großen Täuschung. Denn es ist wirklich eine Täuschung, und nichts mehr als eine Täuschung, daß die Menschen als männlich und weiblich in die Welt hereingestellt sind. Erst das Irdische, das sie in den sieben Jahren mit ihrem Kopfe erwerben, das macht sie auf der Erde zu Geschlechtswesen.

Nun muß ja für den, der solche Dinge nicht bloß mit dem Kopfe, sondern auch mit dem ganzen Herzensverständnis nimmt, eigentlich eine Frage auftauchen, über die man nicht so leicht hinweggehen kann: Wie kommt es denn eigentlich, daß der Mensch in der Maja lebt, in der Täuschung lebt? Hat denn das eine Bedeutung? Ist es denn nicht im Grunde genommen etwas, was einen traurig stimmen könnte, daß der Mensch in der Täuschung lebt? Wäre es denn, könnte man sagen, nicht viel richtiger von der Gottheit und den Göttern gewesen, wenn sie den Menschen überhaupt gar nicht in der Täuschung leben ließen, sondern ihn die Welt so anschauen ließen, daß er nicht erst hinter den Erscheinungen die Wahrheit zu suchen hat und nicht in der Täuschung zu leben braucht? Warum muß denn der Mensch zunächst eigentlich in der Täuschung leben? — Es könnte eine sehr pessimistische Weltanschauung begründen diese Frage, warum der Mensch in der Täuschung leben muß. Nun, es hat seine guten Gründe, daß der Mensch in der Täuschung leben muß; denn würde der Mensch von vornherein in die Wahrheit hereingeboren werden, würde ihm die Wahrheit angeboren sein, würde er sie nicht suchen müssen, so würde der Mensch niemals eine Persönlichkeit werden können, niemals frei werden können. Der Mensch kann nur innerhalb der Erdensphäre Freiheit erringen. Das kann er aber nur dadurch, daß er im irdischen Streben zur Persönlichkeit wird. Daß ihm zunächst äußerlich entgegentritt dasjenige, was noch Schein ist, und er erst das Innere dieses Scheins suchen muß, das entfesselt in seinem Innern erst die Kräfte, welche ihn allmählich und durch viele Inkarnationen hindurch zur freien Persönlichkeit machen. Sie können sich das durch einen Vergleich leicht klarmachen. Nehmen Sie einmal irgendein wertvolles Buch, sagen wir Dantes «Göttliche Komödie». Theoretisch, und nicht nur theoretisch wäre es durchaus denkbar, daß der Mensch auf eine ganz andere Weise heute zur Kenntnis von Dantes «Göttlicher Komödie» käme, als es der Fall ist. Wie kommt denn der Mensch heute zur Kenntnis von Dantes «Göttlicher Komödie»? Entweder dadurch, daß sie ihm vorrezitiert wird, daß er sie hört, also äußerlich in Tönen, die gar nichts zu tun haben mit dem Inhalt der «Göttlichen Komödie», oder daß er sie liest. Wenn er sie liest, hat er in Wirklichkeit nichts vor sich als Zeichen, die nicht das Geringste zu tun haben mit dem Inhalt der «Göttlichen Komödie». Es könnten ja geradesogut auch andere Zeichen sein, theoretisch. Ja, so lernt der Mensch heute den Inhalt eines wertvollen Werkes kennen. Von außen her lernt er ihn kennen durch Rezitieren, aber das Sprechen hat nichts zu tun mit dem Inhalt des Werkes, wie es aus Dantes Kopf entsprungen ist, es ist nur eine äußerliche Vermittlung. Und theoretisch — aber nicht nur theoretisch, sage ich ausdrücklich wäre es auch möglich, daß wir auf eine andere Weise zum Inhalt der «Göttlichen Komödie» kämen: Von innen heraus, indem einfach in einem gewissen Lebensalter der Inhalt in unsere Seele heraufstiege, in unser Wachbewußtsein durch einen Traum. Es ist dies nicht nur theoretisch, sondern es könnte ganz gut sein, wenn die Welt nicht so eingerichtet wäre, daß wir erst durch Maja hindurchgehen müßten. Wenn wir nicht erst durch Maja hindurchgehen müßten, dann wäre nämlich die Sache so: Das, was schon geleistet ist, sagen wir von Homer, Dante, Plato und so weiter, würden wir eines schönen Tages heraufsteigen sehen wie einen Traum. Wir brauchten uns nicht durch eine Vermittlung von außen Kenntnis davon zu verschaffen. Raffael hätte nicht seine Bilder zu malen, sondern sie nur lebendig in seinem Geiste zu fassen gebraucht, und es würden diejenigen, die nachher leben, ohne daß sie etwas anderes bekommen würden als eine Art Direktion hin zu Raffael, sie aus sich selber aufstehen lassen können.

Das, wovon ich Ihnen erzähle, ist gar nicht einmal eine Hypothese, sondern auf dem Mond verhielt es sich so mit uns, da wurde alles so vermittelt. Da war es wirklich so. Auf dem Mond lernte man nicht lesen, da erstand alles aus dem Inneren heraus. Es mußte einmal dagewesen sein; dann aber stieg es aus dem Innern heraus. Aber frei konnte man nicht sein. Man war ganz und gar wie ein Automat der Vorzeit. Die Vorzeit ließ alles in einem erstehen. Eine freie Persönlichkeit konnte man da nicht werden. Nicht deshalb erlangen wir unsere Kenntnisse, damit wir eine überflüssige Wiederholung machen dessen, was doch schon draußen ist, sondern damit wir freie Persönlichkeiten werden. Nur dadurch, daß wir uns erhärten an dem, was zunächst gar nichts zu tun hat mit dem, wozu wir kommen, dadurch werden wir zur freien Persönlichkeit. Und das ist der Fortschritt von der Mondenzeit zur Erdenzeit, daß wir dazumal eben keine freien Wesen waren, sondern alles in uns als Imagination heraufstieg. Und jetzt müssen wir nach außen gelangen. Und dadurch, daß wir im Anschauen nun den geistigen Prozeß durchmachen, der darin besteht, daß wir lesen oder hören, dadurch werden wir zu freien Persönlichkeiten. Wenn man sagt, daß der Mensch sich seine Erkenntnisse erwirbt um der Erkenntnis willen, so ist das nicht ganz richtig. Der Mensch erwirbt sich seine Erkenntnisse, damit er ein freies persönliches Wesen wird. Das ist das eine, was wir ins Auge fassen wollen.

Das andere, was wir ins Auge fassen wollen, kann durch eine weitere Frage eingeleitet werden. Es kann die Frage entstehen: Ja, wozu denn überhaupt diese Wiederholungen der Außenwelt durch unsere Begriffe und Vorstellungen? Wozu denn das eigentlich? Warum wiederholt denn der Mensch in seinen Gedanken und Vorstellungen überhaupt noch einmal die Außenwelt, das kann doch die Außenwelt gar nicht interessieren, daß wir sie wiederholen! — Sie merken den Gedanken am genauesten, wenn Sie Ihr Denken auf das Folgende hinlenken: Ein Mensch ist da. Wenn er in der Jugend ermordet worden wäre, wäre er nicht da. Dadurch, daß er da ist, lebt außer dem, daß die Welt da ist, seine Erfahrungswelt in seinem Innern, gewissermaßen eine Wiederholung, ein Bild der Welt. Das könnte aber ganz fehlen, wenn er in der Jugend ermordet worden wäre. Das Außere würde sich dadurch nicht ändern. Wenn er eingreift, dann ist das etwas anderes, aber die Außenwelt, für die ist das, was in unserem reinen Erkennen lebt, nur eine reine Wiederholung. Wären wir Automaten und würden von außen her angeregt, auch noch das zu tun, was wir als Menschen zwischen Geburt und Tod vollbringen, dann würde unsere Erkenntnis vollständig überflüssig sein. Wir würden also noch das tun, was durch uns geschehen muß, und wir hätten in der Erkenntnis eine ganz überflüssige Parallelerscheinung. Daraus aber können Sie sich die Vorstellung bilden, daß der Mensch in seiner Erkenntnis etwas mit sich trägt, das zu der Natur, zu dem Universum eigentlich hinzukommt, und es kann der Natur, dem Universum ziemlich gleichgültig sein, daß da noch so etwas hinzukommt. Die Natur könnte sich ebensogut Automaten machen, die nicht mit Gedanken und Begriffen das, was vorgeht, verfolgen. Denn es ändert schließlich draußen nichts, ob wir die Ereignisse der Welt verfolgen, ob wir mit unseren Gedanken und Begriffen Abbilder schaffen oder nicht. Wenn Sie durch einen Photographenapparat eine Gegend aufnehmen, so ist außer der Gegend noch das Bild da, aber der Gegend ist es höchst gleichgültig, ob das Bild da ist oder nicht. Etwas ganz Ähnliches liegt eigentlich unseren Vorstellungen zugrunde. Sie kommen hinzu. Warum ist denn nicht die Natur so eingerichtet? — könnte man fragen. Wir alle, die wir uns schon so gewöhnt haben an das Denken, denen das Denken so liebgeworden ist, wir stellen diese Frage nicht mehr, weil uns das Denken etwas Gewohntes ist wie das Essen und Trinken; deshalb ist für uns diese Frage nicht vorhanden. Aber Sie wissen, wie viele Menschen draußen in der Welt sind, die ganz froh wären, wenn sie nicht zu denken brauchten, wenn sie wie Maschinen arbeiten könnten, denen das Denken zu schwer ist, die eigentlich jeden Gedanken fliehen. Nun, das ist wieder der Ausdruck der Frage: Ja, warum hat denn die Natur die Menschen nicht so veranlagt, daß sie das Denken nicht in ihrem Besitz haben? Einen Teil dieser Frage haben wir ja schon beantwortet. Die Menschen werden durch ihr Denken freie Persönlichkeiten. Aber solch eine Frage beantwortet sich immer auf mannigfaltige Weise. Es ist nicht das einzige, was uns zum Verständnis führen kann.

Nehmen wir an, wir wären so organisiert, daß wir als Kinder geboren würden, der Himmel gibt uns unseren Kopf, die Erde gibt uns unseren Leib, durch die Wesenheiten der Hierarchien, der Angeloi, Archangeloi und so weiter würden wir hingestellt, würden dasjenige tun, was wir zu tun haben, wir würden aber nicht dadurch, daß wir innerlich ein Seelenleben entwickeln mit all seinen Schmerzen und Qualen, das es oftmals bildet, abstrapaziert werden. Nehmen wir an, wir wären so; dann würde etwas Bedeutsames die Folge sein. Wir könnten nur dann so sein, wenn wir nur einmal geboren würden und einmal sterben würden, wenn es nicht wiederholte Erdenleben geben müßte. Eine Pflanze, welche wächst, ohne in der Blüte eine Frucht zu entwickeln, lebt einmal. Im Keime kann sie sich fortentwickeln. Dadurch, daß wir ein Seelenleben entwickeln, entwickeln wir den Keim für das nächste Erdenleben. Da drinnen liegt der Keim. Würden wir kein Seelenleben entwickeln mit den Erkenntnissen, würde unser Leben mit unserem irdischen Tode sein Ende haben müssen. Also nicht bloß eine Wiederholung dessen, was draußen ist, sondern die Zukunft tragen wir in uns, indem wir unser Seelenleben erkenntnismäßig gestalten. Das ist so bedeutsam. Alles das, was wir außer dem Erkenntnismäßigen an uns und mit uns tragen, das ist gewissermaßen so, daß die Vergangenheit an uns gearbeitet hat. Alles das, was wir an Erkenntnismäßigem in uns entwickeln, das stellt dar den realen Keim des Zukünftigen. In unserem Erkenntnismäßigen entwickelt sich in uns der reale Keim des Zukünftigen.

Und nun will ich einen Gedanken zum Schlusse anschlagen, der der Leitgedanke unserer nächsten Vorträge sein wird, die uns dann in wichtige Regionen des menschlichen Welt-Seins führen werden.

Wir tragen also in uns alles das, was unsere Erkenntnis ist, sei es das naivste Erkennen, sei es das abstrakte Erkennen - so furchtbar unterschieden sind die beiden nicht, man schätzt das nicht richtig ein -, wir tragen das in uns, tief unter der Oberfläche, aber übersinnlich, denn der Inhalt der Erkenntnis ist natürlich etwas Übersinnliches. Es ist in Wirklichkeit eine Summe von Kräften, die in uns ruht. Wir gehen durch die Pforte des Todes, was geschieht alsdann? Nun, ich habe es ja oftmals beschrieben, was geschieht, aber ich möchte jetzt vom Gesichtspunkt dieser Kräfte aus es noch einmal beschreiben. Wir bestehen als Menschen aus dem Leib und aus dem Kopf. Unser Kopf, er mag Ihnen noch so wertvoll sein, aber es gilt doch das von ihm: unser Kopf hat eigentlich «vertan». Ich rede immer von den Kräften, nicht von den äußeren Formen, und Sie können natürlich den Leib des Menschen verwesen lassen oder verbrennen, die Kraftform bleibt vorhanden, die zergeht nicht, die bleibt draußen vorhanden, auch das dem Körper zugrunde liegende Geistige. Aber der Kopf, der verschwindet. Es hilft nichts, Sie mögen ihn, wie gesagt, für ein noch so wertvolles Glied des Organismus halten, mit dem Kopf ist es nach dem Tode nichts Besonderes. Das bezieht sich selbstverständlich nicht auf den Seeleninhalt, sondern auf die äußere Form des Kopfes. Denn was eigentlich jetzt für den Himmel wichtig wird bei dem Durchgang zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt, das ist dasjenige, was Sie im letzten Erdenleben erst von der Erde bekommen haben: der übrige Leib. Der wird mit seinen Kräften in einen neuen Kopf umgewandelt in der Zeit zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt. Hier haben Sie den Kopf, da haben Sie den übrigen Leib. Dieser Kopf war ein Leib in Ihrem früheren Leben; Ihr jetziger Leib wird ein Kopf in Ihrem nächsten Leben. Und die Kräfte, die Sie im jetzigen Leben durch Ihren Kopf entwickeln, die wandeln die Kräfte Ihres Leibes zu einem neuen Kopf fürs nächste Leben um. Der Leib wird Ihnen von der Erde dazugegeben. Und der Kopf, den Sie jetzt tragen, das ist Ihr umgewandelter Leib aus dem vorigen Leben, denn Metamorphose gilt überall im Leben. Nicht nur, daß das Pflanzenblatt sich in das Blütenblatt verwandelt, nicht nur die Metamorphose der untersten Gestalt gilt, sondern die Metamorphose gilt auf alle Fälle. Ihr Leib ist ein noch nicht gewordener Kopf, Ihr Kopf ist ein umgewandelter Leib.

Also diesen Gedanken möchte ich anschlagen. Sie tragen jetzt Ihren Kopf an sich. Die Phrenologen studieren den Kopf nach seinen Formen, aber diese Phrenologie hat keinen großen Wert, wenn sie nicht auf Initiation beruht, weil jeder seinen eigenen Kopf hat. Es ist schon nicht anders - der Kopf ist das Erbe seines Leibes vom vorhergehenden Leben. Der Kopf jedes Menschen ist vom Kopf jedes anderen Menschen verschieden, und die typischen Eigenschaften, die man herausfindet, sind im Grunde genommen nur grobe Feststellungen. Denken Sie, daß dieser wunderbare Zusammenhang besteht: Der Mensch ist eine Doppelnatur, aber außer dem, daß er eine Doppelnatur ist, trägt er Vergangenheit und Zukunft auch schon in seiner äußeren Gestaltung an sich. Die Reinkarnation ist mit Händen zu greifen an unserem Haupte, denn was wir am Haupte geformt finden, es ist das Ergebnis des vorhergehenden Lebens. Der Kopf, den wir im nächsten Leben tragen werden, wird die Umwandlung unseres Leibes sein. Metamorphose ist überhaupt etwas, was dem Dasein zugrunde liegt, wenn man dieses Dasein in seinen Tiefen betrachtet. Man kann, wenn man solche Dinge überblickt, wie wir sie jetzt auseinandergesetzt haben, tief, tief hineinschauen in das Werden, in das Sein der Weltenwesen, der Menschheitswesen. Und ich wollte diesen Gedanken, der wie gesagt das Leitmotiv bilden wird der nächsten beiden Vorträge, anschlagen: wie hinüberwirkt die eine Inkarnation in die nächstfolgende, wie herüberwirkt auch die vorhergehende Inkarnation in die jetzige, indem eine Metamorphose besteht zwischen der Körperlichkeit des Menschen und der Kopflichkeit des Menschen, wenn ich so sagen darf.

Third Lecture

When we look back on what we have discussed over the past two days and consider the main conclusion, we see that human beings are essentially the expression of a dual nature. We have seen how everything that animates the human soul in waking consciousness can be traced back to influences and impressions which, when taken in a cosmic sense, are imprinted on the human being from the heavenly, from the universal. What lies at the foundation of certain deeper regions of human nature, what only rises up into consciousness in dreams in normal life, can be traced back to influences and impressions from the terrestrial, from the earthly in the narrower sense. When we look at the world in a spiritual scientific sense, then everything that appears to the senses must be seen as a real expression of the spiritual.

Now, the human being is indeed an expression of this dual nature in terms of his pictorial appearance, in terms of his sensory manifestation. This can best be understood by looking at the skeleton, which very clearly consists of two parts: the head, or skull, and the rest of the body, both of which are basically connected only by a thin string of bones. The head is actually only attached. It can be lifted off. This also gives outward, pictorial expression to that dual nature; for by having his head, his skull, his head, man has waking consciousness; by having the rest of nature, which is attached to the head in the skeleton, he has everything that takes place more or less in the subconscious and wells up in dreams, and then also because it glows, burns, and illuminates the ordinary waking consciousness in the creative imagination of the poet and the artist. Here, even if it is the noblest of earthly nature, earthly nature nevertheless plays a part through what is otherwise ordinary waking consciousness. Yesterday we saw how, from the consciousness of a certain cultural period, the Hebrew culture, we can point directly to how people had insights, detailed, thorough insights into the connection between human waking consciousness and supernatural processes, supernatural facts. We saw how what we might call the cosmic world of thought, which expresses itself in the movements of the stars, creates its image in what human beings have as their waking consciousness, which they have because they initially use the organ of their head for waking consciousness. We have considered this wonderful way in which human beings stand within the entire universe, in a sense simultaneously in heavenly and earthly realities.

If one wants to do justice to all that is connected with these serious, meaningful facts, one must free oneself from prejudices. And such an Ahrimanic prejudice is particularly prevalent among those who, in a certain sense, want to be mystics. It is the prejudice that expresses itself in a certain feeling and consists in saying: The earthly is worthless, it must be overcome at all costs; it is the crude, base substance of which a person who truly aspires to the spiritual world does not even speak; what we must strive for is the spiritual! Even if one often has the most confused ideas about this spiritual realm and perhaps forms only sensual images of it, one still feels this way. That is why I say that what is at stake is expressed more in a kind of feeling. But one will never be able to understand the essence of both the human being and the world if one wants to live only in this prejudiced feeling. For one can only have this feeling if one views the earth in a certain one-sided sense as a human being living on earth in a physical body, and from this view of the earth has the certainly justified longing for what is super-earthly and what must be experienced between death and a new birth. But you will never be able to have a complete understanding of the life between death and a new birth if you speak about earthly matters in the way I have just indicated. For, paradoxical as it may sound, it is true, and you will be able to see this clearly from certain cycles where you will find it described in detail: What comes to mind for people between birth and death, that is, for people in their physical bodies, when they speak of heaven, comes to mind for the dead, who stand between death and a new birth, for people living in spirit and soul, in such a way that they speak of the earth in the same sense. For those living in heaven, the hereafter is the earth; for them, the earth is the valuable thing they look upon. They speak of the earth as we speak of heaven. It is the land of their longing, to which they want to return in a new embodiment, the land for which they strive. And one gets a false impression of how the dead live if one does not take this into account.

I have often pointed out that one must not be pedantic and believe that the principle “everything is reversed in the spiritual realm” can simply be applied by saying that one imagines the spiritual world correctly when one imagines it as the opposite of the physical world. Nothing special will come of the abstract application of such a statement. The facts must be considered in detail, but it is true that this principle of reversal, as I have just indicated, applies to many things. For example, someone who lives a life of research in spiritual worlds may come to know a strange country, a country in which individual human beings find themselves among other human beings. The other people among whom these individuals find themselves are normal people, just like the believing earth people—I say the believing earth people. These are those who have a certain feeling for the heavenly, a certain feeling for the earthly. But among these others, there are individuals living in the land of which I speak who completely deny the earthly, deny all matter, all substance, who say that only the spiritual exists and that it is superstition to speak of matter. The country I am telling you about is not here in the physical world, but is a spiritual realm that can be discovered when one directs one's gaze to certain parts of the spiritual world, for example, from the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century. At that time, you all still lived in the spiritual world; one can say that, at least in the first part, we all still lived in the spiritual world and were, on average, people in the spiritual world who, as souls, had feelings about the heavenly realm in which we lived and about the earthly realm to which we aspired, which is the hereafter. But then there were some who considered talking about the earthly to be superstition, who claimed that only the spiritual existed and that everything earthly, everything material, was a dream. Yes, these people were then born, of course. They bore the names Ludwig Büchner, Ernst Haeckel, Carl Vogt, and so on. These people, whom you know well enough in terms of their lives in the physical world, are those who, precisely in their last stage of life in the physical world, declared everything material to be superstition and recognized the spiritual as the only reality, because that was what surrounded them and because they did not want to look at anything that was not around them, that was in the hereafter. You will ask: How is it that these people were born and gradually developed into souls who speak of matter as the only thing that exists? — You will ask that, but it should be understandable to you, because these people showed no understanding of matter before they were born, and that has remained with them; for whoever describes matter as absolute and not as something merely an expression of the spirit, understands nothing about matter, and one is not a materialist if one advocates materialism as the aforementioned personalities do; one is not a materialist by understanding the material as material, but precisely by not understanding the material as material. So in this respect they have not changed, in that they have no understanding of material life.

Here you can immediately see an area in which there is a complete reversal, a true reversal of the spiritual world in relation to what is believed in the physical world here based on appearances. But as I said, this principle must not be extended in an abstract way to everything. I say all this, especially about the otherworldly character of the earthly during our life between death and a new birth, so that the contrast expressed in ancient Greek mythology by the two words “Uranos” and “Gaia” is not understood as if one were absolutely valuable and the other absolutely inferior, but rather as two opposite poles of a single unity. Uranos is, in a sense, the circumference, and the polar opposite of the circumference is the center, Gaia. When the Greeks spoke of Uranos and Gaia, they did not initially think of the narrowly defined sexuality of human beings or of the earthly realm, but rather of the contrast we have now characterized—the heavenly and the earthly—they meant this contrast as such.

I had to explain this because otherwise we would not be able to understand what I am about to say. It is very difficult today to make certain deeper truths accessible to humanity. But we can touch upon them, and that is what we should do, as far as possible.

In connection with these considerations, which we must now pursue, I ask you to note very carefully in what sense the human being is of a dual nature, and how this dual nature is expressed outwardly in the physical structure of the human being through the fact that he consists of the head and the rest of the body. The human head receives its most important structure, its entire form, actually during the time between the last death and the new birth. Of course, the physical head is produced on earth; but that is not important. What is important is the form it takes, the way it is shaped, which is connected with forces that lie far back in time. The human being actually receives its head from heaven, for all the forces that are at work between death and a new birth are truly designed to form the human head. Even though the head must pass through physical birth and physical inheritance, man has his head from heaven. Only the rest of his body is from the earth. Thus, in terms of his physical form, man is a product of Uranus and Gaia: his head is the result of heavenly forces, and the rest of his body is the result of earthly forces, Uranus and Gaia.

Now man enters into existence, and when he is born, this is very strongly pronounced in him, so strongly that one can say: Something is placed into the physical world which, in terms of the head, is really an imprint of those forces that work in heaven, and there is the body, which is an image of the forces that work on earth. This is particularly pronounced when a human being has just been born. For those who can see through human beings with deep insight, there is a strong contrast between the head and the rest of the body. In small children, there really is a strong contrast. One only has to learn to observe such things impartially, and then one notices that there is a great, powerful contrast between the head, the Uranus realm of the human being, and the rest of the body, the Gaia realm of the human being.

Let us consider life up to the first significant turning point, up to about the age of seven, up to the change of teeth. We know that this is the first significant stage of human life. This period is very important, because now comes the paradox that is important to understand in the right way. For in this period between birth and the age of seven, or the change of teeth, the human being is actually viewed quite wrongly by those who look at him physically. I have often pointed this out from other points of view. Let us say briefly that in the first seven years of life, human beings are regarded as if they were already male or female. From a higher point of view, this is completely wrong. Only today's materialism holds this view, which is why today's materialism always regards expressions in the first seven years of life as sexual expressions, which they are not at all. A much healthier view will be one that knows that during the first seven years of life, the child is not yet a sexual being at all, but an asexual being. If I may express myself trivially, I would say that it only looks as if the human being is already male or female during the first seven years. And it looks that way because in what is solely available to materialism, in the physical realm, there is no real difference between what humans today mistakenly call male in the first seven years of life and what they later call male, and likewise what they call female. What comes later looks like a continuation of what is already there, but it is not at all. And now I really ask you to take what I have said very much into your feelings, so that you do not misunderstand it and, following the pattern of how things are done today in other areas, where people no longer judge objectively but only according to value judgments, immediately introduce value judgments where only objective things are meant.

What appears masculine in the first seven years — and here I ask you to consider what I said about Uranus and Gaia — is not masculine as such, but is only shaped externally in this way so that what would otherwise affect the head, the heavenly, continues to have an effect and shapes human beings and the human form according to the extraterrestrial, the heavenly. This makes it look like the male. It is not male at all, it is shaped according to Uranus, according to the extraterrestrial! I said: preferably, the human head is heavenly, the rest of the body earthly. But both the earthly has an infusion of the heavenly, and the heavenly has an infusion of the earthly. Everything interacts; it is just one or the other that predominates. I would say that in one type of human being, the heavenly overshadows the body, including the body outside the head, and makes it such that one says it is male. But this has nothing to do with gender; it is only one type of organization that is more Uranian, and another type of organization in other individuals is more terrestrial, Gaelic. Human beings are not gendered at all in the first seven years; that is Maya. They differ in that in one body the heavens have more influence, and in the other the earth has more influence. And I have already said that for a universal view of the world, the earthly is just as valuable as the heavenly, so that no value judgment can take hold, so that it cannot be believed that the feminine should be degraded in the Weininger way by being considered only earthly or Gaelic from a sublime mystical point of view. Each is the pole of the other, but this has nothing to do with gender.

Now, what takes place in the human being, in the human organization, during the first seven years? Everything I say must be understood as taking place primarily; the opposite is always there as well, but what I characterize is mainly what is there. You see, during the first seven years there are constant currents, forces acting from the rest of the organism toward the head. Certainly there are also currents from the head to the rest of the organism, but during this period they are weak in comparison with the strong currents that go from the body to the head. When the head grows during the first seven years, when it continues to develop, this is because the body actually sends its forces into the head; the body presses itself into the head during the first seven years, and the head adapts itself to the body's organization. This is the essential thing in human development, that during the first seven years the head adapts itself to the body's organization. This explains the peculiarity that can be observed if one has a keen sense of the transformation of the human face during the first seven years of life, this outpouring of the rest of the organization. Just notice how the face of a child is, and how it has changed completely after the change of teeth, when the whole body has, so to speak, poured into the facial expression.

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Then comes the period from about the seventh to the fourteenth year of life, the second phase of human life, until sexual maturity. Here the opposite takes place: a continuous flow of head forces into the organism, into the body; the body adapts itself to the head. It is very interesting to observe how a complete revolution takes place in the organism: a flow, a striving upward of the body into the head during the first seven years, which then comes to an end with the change of teeth, and then a reversal, a flow downward, a striving downward. And through this flow downward, this striving downward, the human being first becomes a sexual being. Only now does the human being become a sexual being. And what makes the initially heavenly or earthly organs into sexual organs comes from the head; it is spirit. The physical organs—one can say this quite bluntly—are not intended for sexuality at all; they are only adapted to sexuality. And anyone who claims that they were originally adapted to sexuality is judging only by outward appearances. They are such that some are adapted to the heavenly, others to the earthly. They are images. The sexual character is only imposed on them by what comes from the head stream from the seventh to the fourteenth year. Only then does the human being become a sexual being.

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It is extremely important to consider these things carefully, for we experience it every moment in practice today that people come with their smallest children and complain that they have sexual misconduct. This is not possible before the age of seven, because what is present at that time is not sexual at all, it has no such meaning. And a cure could not be achieved by medical means, but only in the normal way, by no longer calling these things by the wrong names and thereby covering them with false conceptual shells. Let us regain the, I would say, sacred innocence that the ancients had with regard to these things, who, with their still atavistic knowledge from the spiritual world, would never have thought of talking to children about sexuality. I have already pointed to these things from other points of view.

But if you take what we have been able to extract from the spiritual world in terms of meaningful truths about human beings and their connection with the earthly and heavenly worlds, then you will see even more clearly how a person like Weininger corresponds in caricature to certain justified ideas. For if he saw things as they have been presented here, he would be able to say with a certain justification: Human beings are placed in the physical world from the spiritual world in such a way that it is only through what their heads acquire during the first seven years here in the physical world that they transform the heavenly into the masculine and the earthly into the feminine. It will be our task later to return to certain currents and forces that are still important for human development in later years. Now it would be good to turn our attention to human development during the first fourteen years. Through such things you will begin to understand how true it is that outer life is actually a life in Maya, in the great deception. For it is truly an illusion, and nothing more than an illusion, that human beings are placed in the world as male and female. It is only the earthly element that they acquire with their heads during the first seven years that makes them sexual beings on earth.

Now, for those who take such things not only with their heads but also with the understanding of their whole hearts, a question must arise that cannot be easily dismissed: How is it that human beings live in Maya, in deception? Does this have any meaning? Is it not, after all, something that could make one sad that human beings live in deception? Would it not have been much more appropriate, one might say, for the deity and the gods not to let human beings live in deception at all, but to let them see the world in such a way that they did not first have to search for the truth behind appearances and did not need to live in deception? Why must humans live in deception in the first place? This question of why humans must live in deception could give rise to a very pessimistic worldview. Well, there are good reasons why human beings must live in deception; for if human beings were born into the truth from the outset, if the truth were innate in them, if they did not have to seek it, then human beings would never be able to become personalities, never be able to become free. Human beings can only attain freedom within the sphere of the earth. But they can only do this by becoming a personality in their earthly striving. The fact that they are initially confronted with what is still appearance, and that they must first seek the inner reality of this appearance, unleashes within them the forces that gradually, through many incarnations, make them free personalities. You can easily understand this by means of a comparison. Take any valuable book, say Dante's Divine Comedy. Theoretically, and not only theoretically, it would be quite conceivable that people today would come to know Dante's Divine Comedy in a completely different way than is the case. How do people today come to know Dante's Divine Comedy? Either by having it recited to them, by hearing it, that is, externally in sounds that have nothing to do with the content of the Divine Comedy, or by reading it. When they read it, they actually have nothing before them but signs that have nothing whatsoever to do with the content of the Divine Comedy. Theoretically, they could just as well be other signs. Yes, this is how people today learn the content of a valuable work. They learn it from the outside through recitation, but the speech has nothing to do with the content of the work as it sprang from Dante's mind; it is only an external mediation. And theoretically—but not only theoretically, I say expressly—it would also be possible for us to arrive at the content of the Divine Comedy in another way: from within, simply by the content rising up in our souls at a certain age, into our waking consciousness through a dream. This is not only theoretical, but it could very well be the case if the world were not arranged in such a way that we first had to pass through Maya. If we did not first have to pass through Maya, then the situation would be as follows: what has already been accomplished, say by Homer, Dante, Plato, and so on, we would one fine day see rising up like a dream. We would not need to acquire knowledge of it through external mediation. Raphael would not have had to paint his pictures, but only to grasp them vividly in his mind, and those who lived afterwards, without receiving anything other than a kind of direction toward Raphael, would be able to bring them forth from themselves.

What I am telling you is not even a hypothesis, but that is how it was for us on the moon, where everything was conveyed in this way. That is really how it was. On the moon, one did not learn to read; everything arose from within. It must have existed once, but then it rose from within. But one could not be free. You were completely like an automaton of ancient times. Ancient times brought everything into being within you. You couldn't become a free personality there. We don't acquire knowledge so that we can superfluously repeat what is already out there, but so that we can become free personalities. Only by hardening ourselves in what initially has nothing to do with what we are coming to, only then do we become free personalities. And that is the progress from the lunar period to the earth period, that we were not free beings then, but that everything arose in us as imagination. And now we must go outward. And by going through the spiritual process of looking, which consists of reading or listening, we become free personalities. When one says that human beings acquire knowledge for the sake of knowledge, this is not entirely correct. Human beings acquire knowledge in order to become free personal beings. That is the one thing we want to focus on.

The other thing we want to consider can be introduced by another question. The question may arise: Why, then, do we repeat the external world through our concepts and ideas? What is the point of this? Why does man repeat the external world in his thoughts and ideas? The external world cannot possibly be interested in our repeating it! — You will understand this thought most clearly if you direct your thinking to the following: A human being is here. If he had been murdered in his youth, he would not be here. By virtue of his being here, apart from the fact that the world is here, his world of experience lives within him, in a sense a repetition, an image of the world. But this could be completely absent if he had been murdered in his youth. The external world would not change as a result. If he intervenes, then that is something else, but for the external world, what lives in our pure cognition is only a pure repetition. If we were automatons and were stimulated from outside to do what we do as human beings between birth and death, then our cognition would be completely superfluous. We would still do what has to happen through us, and we would have a completely superfluous parallel phenomenon in our cognition. From this, however, you can form the idea that human beings carry something within their cognition that is actually added to nature, to the universe, and that it can be quite indifferent to nature, to the universe, that something like this is added. Nature could just as well make automata that do not follow what is happening with thoughts and concepts. For ultimately it makes no difference to the outside world whether we follow the events of the world, whether we create images with our thoughts and concepts or not. When you take a photograph of a landscape with a camera, the image is there in addition to the landscape, but the landscape is completely indifferent to whether the image is there or not. Something very similar actually underlies our ideas. They are added. Why isn't nature set up that way? — one might ask. All of us who have become so accustomed to thinking, who have grown so fond of thinking, no longer ask this question because thinking is as familiar to us as eating and drinking; therefore, this question does not exist for us. But you know how many people there are in the world who would be quite happy if they did not have to think, if they could work like machines, for whom thinking is too difficult, who actually flee from every thought. Well, that is again the expression of the question: Yes, why did nature not create humans in such a way that they do not possess the ability to think? We have already answered part of this question. Through their thinking, humans become free personalities. But such a question always has many answers. It is not the only thing that can lead us to understanding.

Let us assume that we were organized in such a way that we were born as children, heaven gave us our heads, earth gave us our bodies, and through the beings of the hierarchies, the angeloi, archangeloi, and so on, we were placed here to do what we have to do, but we would not develop an inner soul life with all its pains and torments which often forms it, would not be strained. Let us assume that we were like that; then something significant would be the result. We could only be like that if we were born only once and died only once, if there were no repeated earthly lives. A plant that grows without developing fruit in its blossom lives once. It can develop further in its germ. By developing a soul life, we develop the seed for the next earthly life. The seed lies within us. If we did not develop a soul life with knowledge, our life would have to end with our earthly death. So it is not merely a repetition of what is outside, but we carry the future within us by shaping our soul life through knowledge. This is so significant. Everything that we carry within us and with us apart from knowledge is, in a sense, the result of the past working on us. Everything that we develop within ourselves in terms of knowledge represents the real seed of the future. The real seed of the future develops within us in our knowledge.

And now I would like to conclude with a thought that will be the guiding principle of our next lectures, which will then lead us into important regions of human existence.

So we carry within us everything that is our knowledge, be it the most naive recognition or abstract recognition—the two are not so terribly different, one does not appreciate this properly—we carry this within us, deep beneath the surface, but supersensibly, for the content of knowledge is, of course, something supersensible. In reality, it is a sum of forces that rests within us. We pass through the gate of death, and what happens then? Well, I have often described what happens, but I would now like to describe it again from the point of view of these forces. As human beings, we consist of the body and the head. Our head, however valuable it may be to you, is actually “wasted.” I always speak of forces, not of external forms, and you can, of course, let the human body decay or burn, but the force form remains, it does not disappear, it remains outside, as does the spiritual element underlying the body. But the head disappears. It doesn't help if you consider it, as I said, to be a valuable part of the organism; after death, the head is nothing special. This does not refer to the content of the soul, of course, but to the external form of the head. For what actually becomes important for heaven during the transition between death and a new birth is what you received from the earth in your last earthly life: the remaining body. With its powers, it is transformed into a new head in the time between death and a new birth. Here you have the head, there you have the remaining body. This head was a body in your previous life; your present body will become a head in your next life. And the forces that you develop in your present life through your head transform the forces of your body into a new head for your next life. The body is added to you from the earth. And the head that you now carry is your transformed body from your previous life, for metamorphosis applies everywhere in life. Not only does the plant leaf transform into the petal, not only does metamorphosis apply to the lowest form, but metamorphosis applies in all cases. Your body is a head that has not yet become, your head is a transformed body.

So this is the idea I would like to put forward. You are now carrying your head on your body. Phrenologists study the head according to its shapes, but this phrenology has little value if it is not based on initiation, because everyone has their own head. It cannot be otherwise—the head is the legacy of the body from the previous life. The head of every human being is different from that of every other human being, and the typical characteristics that are discovered are basically only rough observations. Consider this wonderful connection: humans are dual in nature, but apart from being dual in nature, they also carry their past and future within their external form. Reincarnation is tangible in our heads, because what we find formed in our heads is the result of our previous life. The head we will carry in the next life will be the transformation of our body. Metamorphosis is something that underlies existence itself, if one considers this existence in its depths. When one surveys such things as we have now discussed, one can look deeply, deeply into the becoming, into the being of the world beings, of the human beings. And I wanted to raise this thought, which, as I said, will form the leitmotif of the next two lectures: how does one incarnation carry over into the next, how does the previous incarnation carry over into the present one, in that there is a metamorphosis between the physicality of the human being and the headiness of the human being, if I may say so.