The Riddle of Humanity
GA 170
13 August 1916, Dornach
Lecture VIII
The kind of truths we passed in review before our souls yesterday cannot be absorbed with an abstract, theoretical understanding. It is not just a matter of knowing that things are like this or like that. All the human consequences of these things must be inwardly comprehended, for they are very significant. Today I will sketch just a few of them. There is, of course, very much more that could be said along these lines, but we have to begin somewhere. At the very least, we must consider the direction in which such factual, spiritual-scientific presuppositions lead our thinking and our will.
Let us review yesterday's conclusions. The zones of the twelve senses can be seen as a kind of human zodiac. Flowing through all these sense-zones are the seven life processes: breathing, warming, nourishing, secretion, maintenance, growth and reproduction. (See drawing, Lecture Seven.)
To understand these things in their entirety we must be clear that the actual truth is very different from what our materialistic sciences teach us. They believe, for example, that the sense of taste and the related sense of smell are confined to the narrow limits of the tongue and the nasal mucous membrane. But this is not how things really are. The physical organs associated with the senses are more like the capital cities governing the realms of those senses. The realms corresponding to the senses are much more extended. I think that anyone who has applied a little self-observation to the sense of hearing, for example, will know that hearing involves much more of the organism than just the ears. A tone lives in much more of the organism than just the ear, and the other senses occupy similarly extended territories. Liver and spleen, for example, are perceptibly involved in taste and the related sense of smell; so they involve a wider area than materialistic science recognises. This being the case, you will also see that the sense-zones are intimately connected with the vital organs and with the life forces they continuously send streaming through the entire organism. It follows that the relationship between the sense-zones and the vital organs has a manifold influence on a person's inner constitution, on his state of being as regards spirit, soul and body. So we are justified in speaking, let us say, of the forces of secretion being in the sphere of the sense of sight, or of their interacting with the sphere of sight, or of an interaction between the spheres of growth and hearing—just as we speak in astronomy of Saturn being in the Ram or of the Sun standing in the Lion. Furthermore, each sense-zone can come into a relationship with one or the other of the life spheres, since the regions of the senses and the regions of life are related differently in different people. So there really are circumstances in the inner human world that reflect how things are out there in the starry heavens of the macrocosm.
You will therefore be right in supposing that the activities called up in us by the senses are relatively static in comparison with what goes on in the life processes and their central organs. Remember how we described the sense regions as a comparatively stable part of the human being. They are stabilised through being organised around a particular physical organ: the sense of sight around the eyes—even though it involves more besides—the sense of hearing around the ears, and so on. And remember how mobile the life processes are as they circulate uninterruptedly through the whole body, reaching every part of it. The life processes move through us.
If we consider what was said yesterday about how our sense experiences on Old Moon were more like life processes, we must conclude that human existence on Old Moon was altogether more mobile than that of our present Earth era. Moon man was more mobile, more inwardly mobile. Earth man really does relate to what he consciously experiences in the way the relatively fixed constellations of the zodiac relate to one another. During the Earth era the outer surface of man has become motionless, still, as the constellations of the zodiac are still. During the Moon phase, the present-day human senses contained a life and mobility such as that displayed by the planets of our present-day cosmos; for our planets' relationship to one another is constantly changing.
Moon man was capable of transformation, of metamorphosis. Now, I have often drawn your attention to the fact that when a person of today achieves the level of initiation that gives him access to imaginative knowledge, his conscious life becomes more mobile than that afforded by normal, earth-bound sense experience. In such cases everything again becomes mobile, but the mobility is experienced through super-sensible consciousness. And this is how the knowledge obtained from this sphere must be understood. I have often put before you the necessity of making our concepts and ideas more mobile in order to be able to enter into what super-sensible consciousness reveals to us. Concepts appropriate to the sensible world are shut up in their own little boxes and everyone likes to have them arranged prettily beside one another. But for spiritual science we need mobile concepts, concepts that can be transformed and metamorphosed, one into the other. In this you can see one of the consequences of the facts we have been describing.
Another consequence is the following: you will be able to see that a sense life that is as unperturbed and still as the zodiac is only possible for a human being living in the Earth sphere. The twelve sense-zones only are meaningful in the context of life as it is lived between birth and death in an earthly body. When it comes to life between death and birth, things are quite different. One remarkable difference is that the senses that are seen as higher, as far as life on earth goes, lose their higher status when we pass over the threshold of death into spiritual spheres. Just recall what I said in Occult Science about how the relationships between people change during the time between death, and a new birth, and how they are mediated in a much more intimate manner than is the case here on earth. There we do not need the ego sense which is essential to us on earth, nor do we need the senses of thought and speech as we need them on earth. On the other hand, we do need the transformed sense of hearing, but in a form that has been genuinely spiritualised. A spiritualised sense of hearing gives us access to the harmony of the spheres. That it is spiritualised is, however, already evident from the fact that over there we hear without the presence of physical air, whereas here the physical medium of the air must be present in order for us to hear anything. Furthermore, everything is heard in reverse, proceeding backwards towards its beginning. It is precisely because our earthly sense of hearing is dependent on the air that it is particularly difficult for us to imagine what it is like to hear things backwards. We run into difficulties trying to imagine a melody backwards. For spiritual perception this presents no problems at all.
Now, the sense of hearing is the borderline sense; in its spiritualised form it is the sense that most resembles the senses of the physical world. When we come to the sense of warmth as it is in the spiritual world, we already have a sense that is very changed; sight is even more altered; and the senses of smell and taste even more so, for they play an important role in the spiritual world. The very senses that here we call lower, play an important role in the spiritual world. But that role has been very, very spiritualised. A significant role is also played by the senses of balance and movement. But then, when we come to the sense of life we find that it is less significant. And the sense of touch has no special role at all.
So we could say that when death leads us over into the spiritual world the sun sets in the region ruled by the sense of hearing. That sense is located on the horizon of the spiritual world. The sense of hearing is more or less bisected by that horizon. Over yonder, the sun rises in the sense of hearing and then proceeds through the spiritualised senses of warmth, sight, taste and smell—all these are especially important for spiritual perception over there. There, the sense of balance not only reveals to us our inner state of balance, it also shows us how we are balanced with regard to the beings of the higher hierarchies into whose realms we are ascending. Thus the sense of balance has an important role to play; it guides us through the expanses of the cosmos. Here, it is hidden away in our physical organism as one of the lesser senses, but over there it has the important role of enabling us to sense whether we are poised in a state of equilibrium between an Archangel and an Angel, or between a Spirit of Personality and an Archangel, or between a Spirit of Form and an Angel. This is the sense that shows us how we are balanced among the various beings of the spiritual world. And the spiritualised sense of movement, which is now directed outwards, mediates between us and our movements—for in the spiritual world we are in constant movement. The sense of life, however, is no longer necessary because we are, so to speak, swimming in the totality of life. Like a swimmer in water, the spirit moves in the element of life.
Just below the horizon are the lower senses, the senses that lead earthly perception to the internal world of the organism. But when we die, the sun of our life descends to the constellations that are below the horizon just as the setting sun enters the constellations below the horizon. And when we are born again, our sun rises in those constellations—in the senses of touch, life, speech, thought, ego—that stand over us now and allow as to perceive this physical world of earthly existence.
And the life processes are even more spiritualised than these lower senses. More than a few persons who claim to represent a particularly lofty mystical point of view speak of the life processes as something ‘lower’. To be sure, they are low here, but what here is low is high in the spiritual world, for what lives in our organism is a reflection of what lives in the spiritual world. This is a very noteworthy statement. Outside us in the spiritual world there are significant spiritual beings whose nature is reflected within us—within the bounds of the zodiac of our senses through which the planets of our life processes move. So we can say: the four life processes of secretion, maintenance, growth and reproduction are reflections of what exists in the spiritual world—as are the processes of breathing, warming and nourishing. The fourfold process of secretion, maintaining, growth and reproduction mirrors a lofty region of the spiritual world. That region receives us after death and there we live and weave, spiritually preparing our organism for the next earthly incarnation. Everything in our physical organism that is comparatively low corresponds to something that is high and can only be perceived through the faculty of Imagination. There is a whole world that can be perceived through Imagination, through imaginative knowledge. This world that is accessible to imagination is reflected from beyond the constellations of the zodiac into the senses of the human organism. To picture this, imagine that

Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon are reflections of what exists beyond the limits of the zodiac: they have spiritual counterparts that exist there and the astronomical bodies we can observe within the bounds of the zodiac are only reflections of these counterparts.
And then there is yet another super-sensible region. It is beyond the limits of the human senses and perceptible only through the faculty of Inspiration. This is the world of Inspiration. The processes of breathing, warming and nourishing are a reflection of this world, just as Saturn, Jupiter and mars are reflections of their spiritual counterparts from beyond the limits of the zodiac. Moreover there is a profound relationship between what is out there in the cosmos and what, as lower nature, is present in man. These spiritual counterparts of the life processes actually exist. ...And this is how we should mark out the boundaries of the human senses and life processes.
Now we approach that which is higher than life, those true regions of the soul which are the home of human astrality and human egoity, of the I. We leave behind the world of the senses and the realms of space and time and really enter the spiritual world. Now on earth, because there is a certain connection between the twelve sense-zones and our I, it is possible for our I to live in the consciousness sustained by these sense-zones. Beneath this consciousness there is another, an astral consciousness which, in the present stage of human development, is intimately related to the human vital processes, to the sphere of life. The I is intimately related to the sphere of the senses; astral consciousness is intimately related to the sphere of life. Just as our knowledge of the zodiac comes through—or from within—our I, so knowledge of our life processes comes from astral consciousness. It is a form of awareness that is still subconscious in people of today: it is not apparent in normal circumstances, it still lies on the other side of the threshold. In physical existence such a knowing consists of an inner awareness of the life processes. Sometimes, in abnormal circumstances, the sphere of life is included in the sphere of consciousness; it is thrust up into normal consciousness. But for us this is a pathological state. It is an astonishing thing for our doctors and natural scientists to behold when the subconscious intrudes and allows what is normally hidden beneath our twelve-fold sense-awareness to emerge—when eruptions of the subconscious allow the planets to intrude their life into the sphere of the zodiac. Such a consciousness is appropriate when it has been cultivated and developed, really developed in the fashion that is described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. But if it has not been developed properly, it is pathological.
Recently, a book written by a doctor who is interested in these things has been published. Since he is unaware of any of the contents of spiritual science, his thinking is still wholly materialistic. But he is so free in his investigations that, especially more recently, he has actually worked his way into this realm. I am referring to Carl Ludwig Schleich11Carl Ludwig Schleich (1859 – 1922): Doctor, philosopher and poet. Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken, Berlin, 1916. and his book, The Mechanisms of Thought (Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken.) There you will find some interesting accounts of his experiences as a doctor. Let us look at one of the simplest of these: it concerns a woman who comes to him for a medical consultation. He suggests she sit down to wait for him. Just at that moment the wheel in a ventilator cover moves. Immediately she exclaims. ‘Oh, that is a huge fly that is going to bite me!’ And almost immediately after she has said this, her eye begins to swell. Soon the swelling has grown to the size of a hen's egg. The doctor calms her, saying the injury is not so bad and can soon be healed.
It is not possible to reach so deeply into the life sphere that something there actually changes, not if one is employing the consciousness that is contained in the human zodiac of the twelve senses. But we do affect the life sphere when the subconscious erupts into our usual daytime consciousness. The concepts and ideas that occupy our normal consciousness do not yet sink deeply enough into us to reach the depths of the life processes. Now and then, however, the life processes are stirred up and occasionally the ensuing wave is very strong. But with today's proper and normal, externally-orientated consciousness it is not possible—thank God!—for a person to affect the life processes, for otherwise people would make a real mess of themselves with some of the thoughts they entertain. Human thoughts are not strong enough to have this kind of effect. But if some of the ideas people harbour today were to well up out of their unconscious into the sphere of life, as did the ideas of the woman we were describing, then you would see some people walking about with extremely swollen faces and some with much worse problems, too. Thus you see that beneath our surface, which is connected with the zodiac, there is a subconscious world that is intimately connected with the life processes and can profoundly affect them in abnormal circumstances. For example, Schleich reports a case in which a young woman comes to the doctor and tells him that she has gone astray. She continues to insist on this, even after the medical examination shows it could not have been so. She will not tell with whom she has gone astray. But in the next few months she begins to show all the external and internal signs of an expectant mother. Later on, at the appropriate time, when the quasi-expectant mother is examined, the heartbeat of a child is discernible alongside her own. Everything proceeds quite normally—except that no child arrives in the ninth month! The tenth month comes and finally it is realised that something else is going on. At last they decide they must operate. When they do, there is nothing there, nothing at all, and there never has been! It was a hysterical pregnancy with all the physical symptoms of a normal pregnancy. Today's doctors are already describing this kind of thing, and it is good that they are doing so, for such things will force people to think of the human being in different terms from those in which they are accustomed to think.
Here is another case: a man comes to Schleich saying that he has stuck himself with a pen while working in his office. There is a slight scratch. Schleich examines it and finds nothing to be concerned about. But the man says, ‘Yes, but I can already feel blood poisoning in my arm and I know I shall die of it unless my arm is amputated.’ Schleich replies, ‘I cannot remove your arm when there is no problem there. It is certain that you will not die of blood poisoning.’ As a precaution, he cleanses the wound and then he dismisses the man. But he was still in such a state that Schleich, who is a good-hearted man, decides to visit him that evening. He finds the man still filled with the thought that he is bound to die. When his blood is tested later, there still is no sign of blood poisoning. Again Schleich reassures him; but later that night the man dies. He really dies! A death from purely psychic causes!
Now, I can assure you that a man cannot die as a result of the thoughts he forms under the influence of his inner zodiac-one certainly cannot die of such thoughts. Thoughts do not penetrate so deeply into the life processes. And the other case I just mentioned—I mean the hysterical pregnancy—cannot be the result of mere thoughts, any more than it is possible to die of the mere thought that you have blood poisoning.
When it comes to this last case, where imagined, but untrue, circumstances seem to have led to death, our present-day science must look to spiritual science for clarification. Perhaps we can look a little at this case and consider what really happened. We have a man who scratches himself with his pen while he is writing and then dies as a result of what he imagines around this event. Actually, something quite different happened. That man had an etheric body, and death was already present in his etheric body before he scratched himself. Death, therefore, was already expressed in his etheric body when he went into his office that morning, In other words, his etheric body had begun to accept into itself the processes that lead to death. But these were only transmitted to his physical body very gradually. And the man would not have acted so strangely if death had not already taken up residence in him. He just happened to scratch himself while this was going on within him, and the scratch was insignificant in itself. But through it, the thought that he was going to die was able to well up out of his subconscious life sphere. The external events were only the trimmings, only the outer show. But because the outer show was there, the whole thing was able to well up into his waking consciousness. So his death had nothing to do with the usual processes of forming imaginations that are part of our day-time consciousness, absolutely nothing; death was already present in him.
Such things as these will gradually force our natural scientists to enter more and more deeply into the substance of spiritual science. We are already dealing with something complicated when we consider the relationship between the planetary spheres and the life processes, or the zodiac and the zones of the senses. But things get even more complicated when we move on to consider the processes of consciousness that relate in various ways to these spheres: the I relating to the zodiac and the astral body relating to the planetary spheres within man, that mobile life-sphere within the human being. But if we continue to think as we think in the everyday physical world, using the powers of the zodiac within us, we shall be unable to approach matters that concern the mobile human life-sphere., nor shall we be able to approach the relationship of the I to the zodiac. Those things can only be approached when we have taught ourselves to think in entirely new ways.
In Knowledge of the Higher Worlds you are advised to imagine things backwards from time to time, to review things backwards. A backwards review involves picturing events as if they proceeded in the opposite direction from that in which they proceed in our normal world. Among other things, this picturing backwards gradually builds the spiritual forces that make one capable of entering a world that is the wrong way round when compared with the physical world. That is how the spiritual world is. It reverses many aspects of the physical world. I have often pointed out to you that it is not simply a matter of abstractly turning around what is in the physical world; among the powers that one needs to develop are the powers connected with the ability to imagine backwards. What is the consequence of this? Those people who do not want to see human culture dry up and who are trying to achieve a spiritually illumined view of the world are eventually forced to imagine a world in reverse. For spiritual consciousness only begins when the life processes or the sense processes are reversed and run backwards. Therefore people need to prepare for the future by getting accustomed to thinking backwards. Then they will begin to take hold of the spiritual world through this thinking backwards, just as they take hold of the physical world by means of thinking forwards. Our ability to imagine the physical world is a result of the direction of our thinking.
So, now that I have guided you through the human zodiac of the twelve sense-zones and through the seven planetary life-spheres, I can only proceed further if I introduce a completely different way of looking at things: a way of thinking that proceeds backwards.
Now, you are aware that our contemporaries are not particularly inclined to devote themselves to spiritual science and really absorb it. They reject it because they are accustomed to materialistic thinking. But for someone who has gone only a little way beyond the threshold of the spiritual world, it is just as foolish to assert that the world only goes forward, never backward, as it is to say that the sun only goes in one direction and can never return! Of course it comes back along this apparent path on the other side. (Steiner illustrated this with a drawing.)
It is easy to imagine that someone who is well and truly frozen into contemporary modes of thought might shrink in horror from thinking backwards and from imagining the world turned backwards. And yet without this world turned backwards there would not be any consciousness at all. For consciousness is already a kind of spiritual science—even though the materialists deny the fact. Consequently, this imagining backwards particularly horrifies our contemporaries. We could picture one of them asking himself, ‘Is it illogical to picture the course of the world backwards as well as forwards?’ And he could also come to the conclusion that it is not really illogical to follow a drama backwards starting from its fifth act, and that it is not illogical to follow the drama of world development backwards, either. Nevertheless, this is a terrible thing with which to confront contemporary habits of thought. Someone who lives entirely in present-day habits of thought, believes it is a fact that one cannot think the world backwards, and that it is a fact that the world does not move backwards. As soon as such a person stumbles across this question he senses that there is something special in it. One can imagine a solitary thinker wrestling with the problem of thinking backwards and drawing particular philosophical conclusions from the impossibility of thinking backwards.
One can make a further assumption. I have already drawn your attention to the fact that thinking backwards is especially difficult to imagine in the constellation in which the sun goes down, in the sense of hearing. Over the course of time, the sense of hearing has undergone some changes, particularly in relation to music. Historians do not usually notice these subtle changes, but they are more important for the inner human life than the grosser changes described in historical accounts. For example, it is of great significance for the transformation of hearing—which is already a relatively spiritual sense as far as the physical world goes—that the octave was experienced as a uniquely pleasant, sympathetic combination of tones during the Greco-Roman period, and that the fifth was particularly loved during the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In those days it was called the ‘sweet tone.’ During the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries the fifth was experienced in the way people experience the third today. So you see how our inner constitution changes over relatively short periods of time.
On the physical plane, a musical ear listens with deep satisfaction to things going in the one direction. So someone with an especially musical ear might well be repelled by the thought of going backwards, for music is one of the most profound things we have on the physical plane. Of course this could only apply to a time when materialism is at its height. Those who are not so musical will not feel this conflict so readily. But a musical person whose thinking is fundamentally materialistic can easily come to the conclusion that thinking backwards is simply beyond the scope of our human head. In this fashion he will resist the spiritual world. So we can assume that somewhere or other there is bound to be such a thinker.
Strangely enough, a book has been published recently: Kosmogonie, by Christian von Ehrenfels.12Christian von Ehrenfels (1859 – 1922): Philosopher. Kosmogonie, Jena, 1916. The cited passages are to be found on pages VII, VIII, 49-56. Its first chapter is called, ‘The “reversion”, a paradox of knowledge’. There, looking at it from many sides, in the fashion of present-day philosophy, Ehrenfels asks what it would be like to see the course of world events backwards—from the other side, the asymmetrical side, so to speak. He actually comes up with the idea of thinking things backwards, really backwards. He tries to deal with this paradox. He attempts to think some particular cases backwards. I would like to show you one of these as an example. He starts with a series of events going forwards, rather than backwards:
In the vertical world of the high mountains, moisture and frost break loose a chunk from a compact mass of rock. When the ice thaws, the chunk breaks free. It falls from the overhanging cliff wall, crashes on to a stony surface and shatters into many pieces. Following one of these pieces, we see it go raging down a lower slope shedding further splinters of stone as it collides with other stones, until it finally comes to rest on a slope. At last it has given up the whole of its kinetic energy in the form of warmth conveyed to the places where it collided with earth and stone, and to the air that resisted its motion.—Now how would this certainly not uncommon event look in the backwards world?
A stone is lying on a slope. Suddenly it is struck by apparently chaotic bursts of warmth coming from the earth beneath it. These combine in such an extraordinary fashion that they propel the stone diagonally upwards. The air offers no resistance. On the contrary, there are a series of extraordinary transactions: the air transmits some of its own warmth to the stone and thus gives it free passage, making way for it and encouraging it, with its accumulation of small but well-aimed gifts of warmth, on its diagonally ascending pathway. The stone collides with an overhanging stone. But this neither causes it to lose any fragment of itself, nor does it cause it to lose any of its enthusiasm for movement. In fact, the contrary is the case. Another little stone happens to arrive at the same place of impact, propelled by a collection of gusts of warmth from the earth. And, behold!—always under the influence of impulses of warmth-this small stone collides with our original stone. Their-apparently accidentally formed—irregular surfaces fit together so perfectly, and they meet with such force, that the powers of cohesion take effect and the two grow together to form one compact mass. Further bursts of warmth from the overhanging mountain with which they have collided direct them further on their upward, diagonal path, which they pursue with increased speed.
The bits of stone that earlier were broken apart are joined together again. The whole stone comes together, lying on the mountain cliff. The energies are brought once more into balance, all goes back into its original place, and so forth. This he describes with great exactitude, thinking the whole event backwards. He describes further examples, which he also thinks through backwards. One can see that he really plagues himself with this; he really strains at the yoke:
On a sunny winter's day, a hare makes its way through the snow, leaving its tracks behind it. In many places the wind immediately blows them away, but they are preserved along southerly stretches of path where the snow thaws in the sunshine during the day and freezes again at night. There they remain visible for many weeks until they disappear in the spring thaw. In the ‘backwards world’ the hare's prints would be the first thing to appear, but only a bit at a time, not all at once. At first they would show up in the frozen snow (more accurately, in the ice which is thawing into snow again), and then, after weeks, during which the imprints gradually get deeper and change into more accurate copies of the hare's paws, the prints also begin to appear on the connecting parts of path as gusts of warmth chase loose flakes of snow together—and the whole track is complete. Then the hare himself appears, tail foremost, head facing behind, and he is not moving along the line of the path—rather he is being dragged along in a direction contrary to the impulses of his muscles by the impact of gusts of warmth (always it is through warmth) and this is done so artfully that his paws always fall into the waiting paw-prints of the tracks. Nor do the wonders cease here: each time a paw comes out of a print, well-directed gusts of warmth fill it with loose snow. So well is this accomplished that the filled print exactly merges with the surrounding snowfield, whose faultlessly smooth surface covers the former tracks of the hare as if it had never been otherwise.
You can see how Schleich exerts himself. Now he goes further, saying: if it is difficult with the hare, how much more difficult will it be with an entire hunt:
It is easy to see that the same sort of unbelievable things occur as in the example from inorganic nature, only intensified to the point of being grotesque and uncanny. And the present organic example of the hare's tracks is relatively simple. Just imagine the tracks left behind in the snow, not by a single hare, but by an entire winter hunting party with all its hunters, drivers, hounds, and numerous deer, foxes and elk—imagine how these tracks would criss-cross and cover one another, and how sometimes one would step in the print of another, leaving untrodden patches in between, and so on. Now one must turn these events around and observe how the same type of gusts of warmth seem to guide each living creature through this chaos of apparently fragmentary tracks so that every foot or paw or hoof falls into a print that exactly matches it—the deer into one, elk into another, every hunter's shoe finding an imprint that exactly matches, and always moved, slid, pressed into it by these extraordinary gusts of warmth that issue from the earth, the air and from within the creatures themselves, so that everything matches perfectly. After all this one begins to get some bare notion of the extent of our concept of ‘leaving tracks’, as it applies to our right-way-up, right-way-round world.
You see how hard the man tries to arrive at the concepts he needs. This effort drags up some things of which people today are not conscious. You can see how naturally spiritual science can come into being, for men are longing for it in their souls. Schleich really struggles to come to some degree of understanding of these processes that run backwards. He really sweats over the matter—spiritually speaking. There truly is a thinker in him, a thinker who will not be denied. He declares that it is entirely logical to picture things in this fashion—logical, but unbelievable. For us, this simply means that he is going against his own habitual thinking and, ultimately, that he is completely unable to conceive of the spiritual world.
Ehrenfels concludes, ‘Let us go even further. Imagine that a backward world is actually forced upon us—that the relentless force of our experience actually compels us to deal with a real situation like our “backwards world”!’ Thus he imagines that he might really see his hare or his hunting party proceeding backwards out there in the physical world—the world which, for him, is the only reality. We are asked to imagine that we have been forced to enter a physical world in which all is really backwards:
How would we respond to such a world, how could we try to interpret it? Even if our experience repeatedly forced us to think, as we tried to think in the preceding pages, of a world in which the shapes of the future are sucked backwards, we would have to reject it as absurd.
This, he says, would be terrible. We would be confronted with a world which we could not and ought not think about! And this terrible world is the world Ehrenfels really would have to see if he were to enter the spiritual world. He imagines that it would be terrible if such a thing were to be forced upon him in the physical world!
Forms would take shape with apparent spontaneity. But we would have no alternative but to view them as only apparently spontaneous—and as actually being the result of teleological, intentional, preconceived combinations of material particles and their movements. And the same would hold for the extraordinary interplay of their paths as they converge and leave us with ever fewer and ever diminishing phenomena.
Thus he thinks the whole thing back to the beginnings of the earth in a Darwinian state of unity.
What could the goal of this creative power that sees ahead and plans ahead, possibly be? Can the sudden appearance of a form and its gradual transition into formlessness be the ultimate goal? No, and no again! The very opposite of this is what the goal of the whole must be.
Then he asks himself, ‘How it would feel to be confronted with such a world, to see such a world?’ To which he answers, ‘This world of experience could only be the grotesque joke of a demonic, cosmic power to whom we must deliver up everything but knowledge.’
At this point he stops himself; he cannot go any deeper into the matter. For the knowledge to which he clings consists simply of his old habits of thought. He can go no further. He feels that a world that has to be seen in reverse must be the grotesque production of some cosmic demon, of the devil; it would be the world of the devil. And he is afraid when confronted with what inevitably must seem to him to be the work of the devil. Here you have an example of how one soul experiences something I have often described: fear is what holds us back from the spiritual world. And Ehrenfels expresses this overtly: if he were to see a physical world that is similar to the spiritual world, he would view it as the paradoxical work of some devilish being. So he shrinks back in fear.
There must be some other, comprehensive, universal law that transcends the bounds of our world of experience! In other words: even if the backward world existed, ultimately we would not use backward principles to understand it.
What would the good Ehrenfels do if he were transported into a backward world that contrived to manifest itself to him physically? He would say, ‘Nay, I do not believe this; I will not allow it to be; I will picture it the other way around.’ And this is just what people do with the spiritual world; they really do not want to admit the existence of things that look different from what is presently in front of them.
We would regard this as an exception, as a special enclave, as a counter-stream to the great stream of all cosmic evolution—and yet we would continue to attribute to the evolution of the world those physiognomic features that we find believable.
Thus one would put one's foot down and say, ‘Nay, even though this world conjures up a demon for us, we will not believe in it. We will think about it in the way in which we are accustomed to think.’ There you see the whole story—of how a philosopher resists what has to come. It is helpful to notice such moments in human evolution. What spiritual science shows us must come, and that, my dear friends, that will most assuredly come. And even though people today resist the spiritual in their normal consciousness, as we have often discussed here, at deeper levels of their consciousness they are beginning to turn toward the spiritual. It is only that people are still pretending; they still deny it is there. It will not be long before it is impossible to continue denying the spirit. Men's thoughts are turning with a virtual compulsion towards the sort of things one can observe in Christian von Ehrenfels' Kosmogonie.
I wanted to talk about this book because it has just appeared and is bound to be discussed frequently in the near future. Even though it is written in a philosophical language that is difficult to understand, it will be discussed frequently. The discussions are likely to be very grotesque because it is difficult to grasp the implications of the book. So I wanted to speak to you here about Christian von Ehrenfel's Kosmogonie in order that what needs to be said about it is spoken about accurately for once. We are dealing with a philosopher who is a university professor and who has lectured in philosophy at the University of Prague for many years. This book appeared in 1915. In the foreword he speaks of his own path of development, acknowledging points on which he is indebted to certain earlier philosophers with whom he is more or less in agreement. At the conclusion of this foreword, having cited his indebtedness for one thing and another to the earlier philosophers, Franz Brentano and Meinong, he says the following:
On the other hand, my greatest burden of thanks lies in a direction that is far removed from what is generally recognised as the domain of philosophy.—Throughout my life I have devoted far more physical energy to becoming inwardly acquainted with German music than I have devoted to assimilating philosophical literature. (As a philosophy professor he presents us with this confession!) Nor do I regret this, looking back from the middle of the sixth decade of my life, (So you see, he is far beyond his fiftieth year) rather I attribute to this one of the sources of my philosophical productivity. (And he has only been productive as a philosopher!) For, even though Schopenhauer's account of music as being a unique objectification of the world of the will must probably be rejected, it nevertheless seems to me that his fundamental intentions go to the heart of the matter. Of all mortal beings, the revelations of the truly productive musician bring him nearest to the spirit of the cosmos. Those other ‘mortals’ who claim to understand this metaphysical language of music experience it as a duty of the highest order to translate this received meaning into a conceptual form that is accessible to the understanding of their fellow men.
If one understands religion to be a spiritual possession that bequeaths trust in the world, moral strength and inner power to its possessor, then you must say that German music has been my religion in a time in which humanity has been beset by agnosticism, the loss of metaphysics, and the loss of belief. This applies from the day—in the year 1880—I definitively separated myself from the dogmas of Catholicism, to those weeks in the spring of 1911 when the metaphysical teachings expressed in this book first began to reveal themselves to me.
And this metaphysics takes as its starting point the paradox of reversibility, the impossibility of reversing our ideas.
Yes, today German music is still my religion in the sense that even if all the arguments of my work were proven false, I would not fall victim to despair. The trust in the world in which this work originated would not desert me and I would remain convinced that I am essentially on the right path. I would remain convinced because German music would still be there, and the world that can produce such a thing must surely be essentially good and worthy of respect.
The music of the B Minor Mass, of the statue's visit in Don Giovanni, the Third, Fifth, Seventh and Ninth symphonies, the music of Tristan, The Ring, Parsifal—this music cannot be proven false, for it is a reality, a wellspring of life. Thanks be to its creators! And a salute to all those who are appointed to quench the thirst for eternity from its wondrous springs! The best that I have been fortunate enough to create—and I hold this present work to be my best—is nothing more than insignificant small change out of the riches that I have ‘received’ from that source—from music.
And I am convinced, my dear friends, that this philosopher's special way of relating to the spiritual world could only be found in a person who has Ehrenfels' spiritual kinship with the music of our materialistic age. There are deep inner relationships between everything that goes on in the human soul, even between things that seem to lie in quite different areas. Here I wanted to give you an example of the special way in which someone who is a believer—not just a listener, but a true believer—in the elements of modern music must relate to the habits of materialistic thinking and how he must allow them to flow through his soul. It is different for someone who is not such a musical believer. For if we are to gradually approach the riddles of life and the human riddles, we must investigate those mysterious relationships in the human soul that introduce so many harmonies and disharmonies into its life.
Achter Vortrag
Bei solcher Wahrheit, wie wir sie gestern vor unsere Seele treten ließen, handelt es sich nicht bloß darum, daß wir sie abstrakt-theoretisch in uns aufnehmen und gewissermaßen wissen, die Sachen sind so, sondern darum, daß wir uns wirklich durchdringen mit den Folgen, die diese Tatsachen für unser ganzes menschliches Leben haben. Und diese Folgen sind sehr bedeutsam. Ich will heute nur einiges skizzieren von dem, was ich so als Folgen bezeichnen möchte. Natürlich ließe sich vieles in derselben Richtung sagen, aber man muß ja an irgendeinem Punkte einmal anfangen, oder wenigstens eine Gedanken- und Willensströmung ins Auge fassen, die sich aus solchen tatsächlichen geisteswissenschaftlichen Voraussetzungen ergibt.
Führen wir uns noch einmal vor Augen, was wir gestern gemeint haben. Zwölf Sinnesbezirke können wir wie eine Art menschlichen Tierkreis betrachten. Strömend durch alle diese Sinnesbezirke haben wir dann die sieben Lebensströmungen: Atmung, Wärmung, Ernährung, Absonderung, Erhaltung, Wachstum, Reproduktion. (Siehe die Zeichnung Seite 113.)
Um die Sache vollständig zu verstehen, müssen wir uns klarmachen, daß die wirkliche Wahrheit eine ganz andere ist in bezug auf diese Dinge als das, was die materialistische Wissenschaft sagt. Die materialistische Wissenschaft denkt zum Beispiel, daß der Geschmackssinn und der ihm verwandte Geruchssinn nur an die engen Bezirke gebunden sind, welche in der Umgebung der Zunge und der Nasenschleimhaut sind. Aber das ist nicht der Fall. Die materiellen Organe für die Sinne sind nur gewissermaßen die Hauptstädte in dem Reiche der Sinne. Die betreffenden Reiche der Sinne breiten sich viel mehr aus. Und ich denke, daß zum Beispiel ein jeder, der nur einige Selbstbeobachtung hat für den Gehörsinn, wissen wird, daß gehört wird nicht nur eigentlich mit dem Ohre, sondern mit einem viel weiteren Bezirke des Organismus. Der Ton lebt in einem viel weiteren Bezirke des Organismus als nur im Ohr, ebenso leben die anderen Sinne in einem viel weiteren Bezirke. Der Geschmacks- und der ihm verwandte Geruchssinn leben zum Beispiel deutlich vernehmbar in Leber und Milz; sie breiten sich also weiter aus, als man gewöhnlich in der materialistischen Wissenschaft meint. Wenn aber das der Fall ist, dann werden Sie auch einsehen, daß zwischen den Lebensorganen, die ihre Lebenskräfte durch den ganzen Organismus immerfort strömen lassen, und den einzelnen Sinnesbezirken innige Beziehungen sind, so daß man sagen kann: Die innere Verfassung, die geistig-seelisch-leibliche Verfassung eines Menschen hängt in vieler Richtung davon ab, wie irgendein Lebensorgan sich zu den Sinnesbezirken stellt. Und wie wir in der Astronomie davon sprechen, daß der Saturn im Widder oder die Sonne im Löwen steht, so können wir auch davon sprechen, daß der Absonderungsimpuls des Lebens meinetwillen in der Sehsphäre liegt, mit der Sehsphäre etwas zu tun hat, oder daß der Wachstumsbezirk mit der Hörsphäre etwas zu tun hat. Aber es kann mit jeder Sphäre der eine oder andere Lebensbezirk etwas zu tun haben; denn die Lebensbezirke stehen bei den verschiedenen Menschen in verschiedenen Verhältnissen zu den Sinnesbezirken. Es finden da wirklich ähnliche Verhältnisse im Innern des Menschen statt wie draußen im Makrokosmos am Sternenhimmel.
Wenn Sie nun bedenken, daß die Sinnesbezirke etwas verhältnismäßig Stabiles im Menschen sind - sie sind stabilisiert dadurch, daß sie nach den materiellen Organen hintendieren, der Sehsinn nach den Augen hin, obwohl er einen weiteren Bezirk hat, der Gehörsinn nach dem Ohre hin und so weiter-, daß dagegen alle Lebensprozesse beweglich sind und den ganzen Leib fortwährend durchlaufen, durchkreisen, so werden Sie in all dem, was durch die Sinne im Menschen vorgeht, mit Recht etwas verhältnismäßig Ruhiges vermuten. In all dem, was durch die Lebensprozesse und die sie dirigierenden Organe vorgeht, werden Sie etwas Bewegliches vermuten, etwas, was im Menschen beweglich ist.
Wenn wir nun das berücksichtigen, was wir gestern gesagt haben, daß das Sinnesleben von heute mehr Lebensprozesse waren während der Mondenzeit, so kommen wir darauf, daß wir uns den Menschen während der Mondenzeit überhaupt in seinem ganzen Leben beweglicher vorstellen müssen als den Menschen während seiner jetzigen Erdenzeit. Beweglicher, innerlich beweglicher war der Mondenmensch. Der Erdenmensch verhält sich in bezug auf das, was er als Bewußtsein erlebt, in der Tat so, wie die im Verhältnis zueinander ruhigen Sternbilder des Tierkreises. Es ist an der Oberfläche des Menschen während der Erdenzeit ruhig geworden, wie es im Tierkreise ruhig ist. Es ist auf dem Monde in dem, was heute Sinnesleben ist, so beweglich gewesen im Menschen, wie es heute beweglich ist draußen im Kosmos in der Planetensphäre, wo die Planeten immer verschiedene Stellungen zueinander haben. Verwandelbar, metamorphosierbar war der Mensch während der Mondenzeit. Und ich habe ja oftmals darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß, wenn nun heute der Mensch durch Initiation wiederum aufrückt zu einer Erkenntnis, die zum Beispiel imaginativ ist, sein Bewußtseinsleben im Verhältnis zu dem gegenwärtigen Erden-Sinnesleben wiederum beweglich wird. Da bewegt sich wiederum alles; nur erlebt der Mensch es eben in einem übersinnlichen Bewußtsein. Und so müssen auch die Erkenntnisse aus dieser Sphäre heraus aufgenommen werden. Ich habe ja das oftmals auseinandergesetzt, wie wir unsere Begriffe, unsere Vorstellungen beweglicher machen müssen, wenn wir uns einleben in das, was durch das übersinnliche Bewußtsein erkannt wird. Die Begriffe der sinnlichen Welt sind wie in ein Schächtelchen eingeschlossen, und jeder will sie auch so haben, daß einer hübsch neben den anderen hingestellt ist, während man für die Geisteswissenschaft Begriffe braucht, die sich ineinander verwandeln, die beweglich sind, die einer in den anderen übergehen. Da sehen Sie etwas von den Folgen dessen, was wir als Tatsache anführen können.
Eine andere Folge ist diese: Sie werden einsehen, daß dieses ruhige Sinnesleben, das den Tierkreisbildern vergleichbar ist, nur stattfinden kann, wenn der Mensch in der Erdensphäre lebt. Die zwölf Sinnesbezirke haben ja eigentlich nur einen Sinn für das Leben im Erdenleibe, also zwischen der Geburt und dem Tod. Das Leben zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt ist wesentlich anders, und das merkwürdige ist: Diejenigen Sinnesbezirke, die wir als die höheren im Erdenleben ansehen, die verlieren diese Bedeutung des Höheren, wenn wir in die geistige Sphäre nach dem Tode übergetreten sind. Erinnern Sie sich, was in der «Geheimwissenschaft» von mir gesagt ist über die Beziehungen von Mensch zu Mensch in der Zeit zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt, wie diese Beziehungen auf eine viel innerlichere Weise vermittelt werden als hier auf der Erde. Wir brauchen dort nicht den Ichsinn so, wie wir ihn auf der Erde haben, wir brauchen auch nicht den Denksinn und auch nicht den Sprachsinn, wie wir ihn auf der Erde haben. Mehr dagegen brauchen wir schon den umgewandelten Hörsinn; aber der ist ins Geistige umgewandelt, der ist wirklich vergeistigt. Wir treten durch den vergeistigten Gehörsinn ein in die Sphärenmusik. Aber schon dadurch ist die Vergeistigung des Gehörsinns zu erkennen, daß wir alles, was hier durch ein ganz irdischsinnliches Medium, nämlich durch die physische Luft gehört wird, dort ohne physische Luft hören. Und außerdem hören wir alles umgekehrt, von rückwärts nach vorne laufend. Gerade weil der Gehörsinn hier auf der Erde an das physische Element der Luft gebunden ist, kann für den Gehörsinn am allerschwersten vorgestellt werden, daß man sich die Dinge wie in der Rückschau rückwärts vorstellt. Es bereitet einige Schwierigkeit, sich eine Melodie wirklich rückwärts vorzustellen. Es bereitet gar keine Schwierigkeit in der geistigen Auffassung. Aber der Gehörsinn steht gewissermaßen an der Grenze; im vergeistigten Zustande ist der Gehörsinn noch am ähnlichsten dem in der physischen Welt.
Kommen wir dann zum Wärmesinn, so ist der schon sehr verändert in der geistigen Welt, noch mehr verändert der Gesichtssinn, und noch mehr verändert der Geruchs- und Geschmackssinn, denn die spielen eine große Rolle in der geistigen Welt. Gerade das, was wir hier niedere Sinne nennen, spielt in der geistigen Welt eine große Rolle. Nur ist es eben sehr, sehr vergeistigt. Und auch noch der Gleichgewichts- und der Bewegungssinn spielen eine bedeutsame Rolle in der geistigen Welt. Wiederum eine geringere Rolle spielt der Lebenssinn, und gar keine besondere Rolle der Tastsinn.
Wir können also sagen: Wenn wir uns durch den Tod einleben in die geistige Welt, geht gewissermaßen die Sonne unter im Gehörsinn. Der steht an der Grenze des geistigen Horizontes. Der Gehörsinn wird gewissermaßen durchschnitten im Horizont, und drüben geht dieSonne auf im geistigen Gehörsinn, und geht dann durch die vergeistigten Sinne des Wärmesinns, des Gesichtssinns, des Geschmacks- und Geruchssinns, die drüben zur spirituellen Wahrnehmung ganz besonders wichtig sind. Und der Gleichgewichtssinn trägt uns durch die Weltenweiten, indem wir nicht nur innerlich ein Gleichgewicht wahrnehmen, sondern uns im Gleichgewicht fühlen zu den Wesen der höheren Hierarchien, in deren Gebiet wir aufsteigen. Der Gleichgewichtssinn spielt da eine große Rolle. Er ist versteckt, ein niederer Sinn in unserem physischen Organismus hier, dort spielt er eine große Rolle, denn durch ihn erkennen wir, ob wir im Gleichgewicht sind zwischen einem Archangelos und einem Angelos, oder zwischen einem Geist der Persönlichkeit und einem Erzengel, oder zwischen einem Geist der Form und einem Engel. Das Gleichgewicht, in dem wir sind zu den verschiedenen Wesen der geistigen Welt, wird uns gerade durch die vergeistigten niederen Sinne vermittelt. Und die Bewegungen, die wir machen — wir sind ja in den geistigen Welten fortwährend in Bewegung — vermittelt uns der jetzt nach auswärts gekehrte geistige Bewegungssinn. Den Lebenssinn brauchen wir nicht mehr, weil wir in allem Leben drinnen gewissermaßen schwimmen; es ist dasjenige Element, in dem wir uns bewegen als Geist, wie sich der Schwimmer im Wasser bewegt.
Gleichsam unter dem Horizonte sind die niederen Sinne, die hier im physischen Erdenleben nur für die inneren Wahrnehmungen im Organismus dienen. Aber so wie die Sonne, wenn sie untergeht, zu den Sternbildern unterhalb des Horizontes geht, so geht auch die Sonne unseres Lebens zu den Sternbildern unterhalb des Horizontes, wenn wir sterben. Und wenn wir wiedergeboren werden, geht sie auf zu den Sternbildern, die wir hier haben - Tastsinn, Lebenssinn, Sprachsinn, Denksinn, Ichsinn -, um dasjenige wahrzunehmen, was im Erdenleben in der physischen Welt ist.
Und noch vergeistigter als diese niederen Sinne sind die Lebensorgane. Gar mancher, der eine besonders hohe mystische Anschauungsweise vertreten will, redet von den «niederen» Lebensprozessen. Gewiß, sie sind hier niedrig, aber was hier niedrig ist, ist hoch in der geistigen Welt; denn was in unserem Organismus lebt, ist wie ein Spiegelbild dessen, was in der geistigen Welt lebt. Sehr merk würdig ist dieser Satz. Wenn Sie sich den Menschen gewissermaßen durch den Tierkreis seiner Sinne begrenzt denken, und die Sterne seiner Lebensorgane sich vorstellen, so gibt es außerhalb des Menschen in der geistigen Welt bedeutungsvolle geistige Wesenheiten, welche sich spiegeln im Menschen. Wir können sagen: Es gibt in der geistigen Welt etwas, das sich spiegelt in den vier Lebensprozessen, in der Absonderung, in der Erhaltung, in dem Wachstum, in der Reproduktion, und es gibt etwas in der geistigen Welt, das sich spiegelt in Atmung, Wärmung, Ernährung. Dasjenige, was sich spiegelt in der Vierheit Absonderung, Erhaltung, Wachstum, Reproduktion, das ist in der geistigen Welt ein Hohes, von dem werden wir aufgenommen, in dem leben und weben wir nach dem Tode, damit unser Organismus geistig vorbereitet werden kann für die nächste Inkarnation. Alles, was niedrig ist in unserem physischen Organismus, entspricht einem Hohen, das nur durch Imagination wahrgenommen werden kann. Da ist eine ganze Welt, die durch Imagination, durch imaginatives Erkennen wahrgenommen werden kann, eine Welt, die der Imagination gegeben ist, und die sich gewissermaßen spiegelt vom Jenseits des Tierkreises der Sinne in den menschlichen Organismus hinein. Es ist hier so, wie wenn Sie sich vorstellen würden, daß die Sonne, die Venus, der Merkur und der Mond Spiegelungen wären von etwas, was außerhalb des Tierkreises liegt; es gibt von Sonne, Venus, Merkur und Mond geistige Gegenbilder, die außerhalb des Tierkreises sind, und die sich innerhalb des Tierkreises nur in diesen Himmelskörpern spiegeln.

Dann gibt es wiederum außerhalb des Bezirks der menschlichen Sinne im Übersinnlichen etwas, was nur durch Inspiration wahrgenommen werden kann, eine Welt der Inspiration. Und das spiegelt sich in Atmung, Wärmung, Ernährung; so, wie wenn sich spiegeln würden Saturn, Jupiter, Mars von geistigen Gegenstücken von jenseits des Tierkreises. Und es ist eine tiefe Verwandtschaft zwischen dem, was da im Menschen als niedere Natur ist, und dem, was da draußen im Weltenall ist. Es gibt solche Gegenbilder der physischen Lebensprozesse. So können wir den Sinnesbereich des Menschen und den Lebensbereich abgrenzen.
Kommen wir jetzt zu dem, was höher ist als das Leben, in den eigentlichen Seelenbereich, wo wir das Astralische des Menschen haben und das Ichliche, das Ich, da kommen wir aus dem Sinnesgebiete, auch aus dem Raum- und Zeitgebiete, heraus, da kommen wir eben ins Geistige hinein. Nur weil ein gewisser Zusammenhang besteht zwischen unserem Ich hier auf der Erde und den zwölf Sinnesbezirken, lebt das Ich in dem Bewußtsein, das getragen wird durch die Sinnesbezirke. Unter diesem Bewußtsein ist nun ein solches anderes Bewußtsein, ein astralisches Bewußtsein, das so, wie der Mensch jetzt ist, eine innigere Beziehung hat zum Lebensreiche des Menschen, zu der Lebenssphäre. Das Ich hat seine innige Beziehung zur Sinnessphäre, das astralische Bewußtsein zum Lebensreich. So wie wir durch unser Ich, oder in unserem Ich wissen von unserem Tierkreis, so wissen wir durch unser astralisches Bewußtsein, das heute beim Menschen noch unterbewußt ist, von unseren Lebensprozessen. Das kann nur der Mensch sich heute noch nicht im normalen Zustande enthüllen, das liegt noch jenseits der Schwelle. Denn dieses Wissen ist im physischen Leben ein innerliches Wissen um die Lebensvorgänge. Nur in abnormen Zuständen geschieht es manchmal, daß das Bewußtsein das Lebensreich, die Lebenssphäre umfaßt, daß diese heraufschlägt in das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein. Das ist dann für den heutigen Menschen etwas Krankhaftes, und die Ärzte, die Naturforscher stehen staunend vor diesen krankhaften Ausbrüchen der menschlichen Natur, wenn das Bewußtsein, das da unten ist, das heute noch zugedeckt ist durch das zwölfgliedrige Bewußtsein, heraufschlägt, wenn die Planeten ihr Leben in den Tierkreis hineinschlagen können dadurch, daß gewissermaßen das Unterbewußtsein heraufschlägt. Es muß entwickelt werden, real entwickelt werden, so wie es beschrieben ist in «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten? »; dann ist es recht. Aber wenn es heraufschlägt ohne das, so ist es eben krankhaft.
Es ist in der letzten Zeit ein interessantes Buch erschienen von einem Arzt, der nun schon eingehen will auf solche Dinge. Es ist ihm noch alles Geisteswissenschaftliche verschlossen, er denkt noch ganz materialistisch. Aber er ist so frei in seinem Forschen, daß er sich, besonders in der letzten Zeit, auf diese Gebiete verlegt hat. Ich meine das Buch «Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken» von Carl Ludwig Schleich. Da finden Sie sehr interessante Mitteilungen aus der ärztlichen Praxis. Nehmen wir die einfachste Mitteilung, die da gegeben wird: Eine Dame kommt zu einem Arzte, will den Arzt konsultieren. Der sagt ihr, sie solle sich unterdes setzen. In dem Augenblick bewegt sich ein Windrädchen zum Hereinlassen von Luft, ein Ventilator. «Ach, das ist eine große Fliege», sagt sie, «die wird mich beißen.» Sehr bald, nachdem sie das ausgesprochen hat, fängt das Auge schon an, anzuschwellen. Nach einiger Zeit ergibt sich eine Geschwulst am Auge, die so groß ist wie ein Hühnerei. Der Arzt beruhigt sie, es sei nicht so schlimm, man könne den Fehler bald wieder ausbessern.
Mit demjenigen Bewußtsein, das in dem menschlichen Tierkreis an die zwölf Sinnesbezirke gebunden ist, kann der Mensch nicht so tief in die Lebenssphäre eingreifen, daß sich etwas in seiner Lebenssphäre verändert. Mit dem Unterbewußtsein, wenn es heraufschlägt in das gewöhnliche Tagesbewußtsein, da greift der Mensch in die Lebenssphäre hinein. Begriffe, Vorstellungen, wie wir sie im gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein haben, die gehen beim heutigen Menschen noch nicht hinunter in diese Tiefe der Lebensvorgänge. Nur wogt es zuweilen mehr oder weniger herauf, bisweilen sogar sehr stark. Aber mit dem, was richtiges normales Außenbewußtsein heute ist, kann — sagen wir Gott sei Dank - der Mensch noch nicht in seine Lebensprozesse eingreifen, sonst würde er sich durch so manchen Gedanken schön zurichten. Die menschlichen Gedanken sind nicht so stark, daß sie eingreifen können. Aber es werden heute schon Gedanken von den Menschen gehegt, wenn die in die Lebenssphäre eingreifen würden, wie dieser Gedanke der Dame, der aus dem Unterbewußtsein heraufgequollen ist in die Lebensvorgänge, da würden Sie sehen, wie die Menschen mit hochgeschwollenen Gesichtern herumgehen würden, und mit noch manch anderen viel schlimmeren Zuständen. Also da ist unter der Oberfläche des Menschen, die an den Tierkreis gebunden ist, ein Unterbewußstsein, das in innigerem Zusammenhange mit dem Lebensprozesse steht; das wirkt dann sehr weit in abnormen Zuständen. Schleich erzählt zum Beispiel einen sehr interessanten Fall: Ein junges Mädchen kommt zu einem Arzt, sagt, sie habe sich vergangen. Es ist nach dem ärztlichen Befund ausgeschlossen, aber sie behauptet es. Sie will nicht angeben, mit wem sie sich vergangen hat. In den nächsten Monaten wird sie richtig guter Hoffnung; alle Symptome stellen sich ein, die äußeren physisch sichtbaren ebenso wie die inneren. In der Zeit, in der man in späteren Monaten bereits den Herzschlag des Kindes hört, wenn man untersucht, hört man genau unterscheidbar neben dem Pulsschlag der quasi Wöchnerin den Herzschlag des Kindes. Es geht ganz richtig fort, nur daß im neunten Sonnenmonat kein Kind kommt! Es geht in den zehnten Monat hinein - man kommt endlich darauf, es muß etwas anderes sein. Es muß zur Operation geschritten werden. Es ist nichts da,gar nichts, es war überhaupt.nichts! Es war einehysterischeSchwangerschaft mit allen physischen Symptomfolgen. Das wird heute schon von dem Arzt beschrieben, und es ist gut, daß es beschrieben wird; denn diese Dinge werden dieMenschen zwingen, anders nachzudenken über die menschlichen Zusammenhänge, als sie es bisher getan haben.
Ein anderer Fall: Zu Schleich kommt ein Mann, der sich während des Tages in seinem Büro mit der Feder gestochen hat; er hat sich etwas geritzt. Schleich schaut es sich an — es ist nicht sehr erheblich. Der Mann sagt: «Ja, aber ich weiß, ich spüre es schon im Arm, das ist eine Blutvergiftung, der Arm muß amputiert werden, sonst muß ich an Blutvergiftung sterben.» Schleich erwidert: «Ich kann Ihnen doch nicht den Arm wegnehmen, wenn gar nichts da ist. Sie werden ganz gewiß nicht an Blutvergiftung sterben.» Zur Vorsicht saugt er ihm die Wunde noch aus und entläßt ihn. Der Mann war aber in einer solchen Verfassung, daß Schleich, der ein sehr guter Mensch ist, ihn am Abend noch besuchte. Der Patient ist nur von dem Gedanken erfüllt, daß er sterben muß. Aber auch nachdem später das Blut untersucht worden ist, hat sich nicht im geringsten etwas von einer Blutvergiftung ergeben. Schleich beruhigt ihn wiederum; aber in der Nacht stirbt der betreffende Mann. Er stirbt wirklich! Tod, bloß aus psychischen Gründen heraus! _
Nun, ich kann Ihnen die Versicherung geben, an den Gedanken, die der Mensch sich macht unter dem Einflusse seines Tierkreises, kann er nicht sterben, ganz gewiß nicht. Diese Gedanken reichen nicht so tief in die Lebensprozesse hinab. Und der andere Fall, den ich gerade vorhin erwähnt habe — ich meine die hysterische Schwangerschaft -, kann sich auch nicht durch bloße Gedanken ergeben, aber sterben kann man auch nicht an dem Gedanken, daß etwas Blutvergiftung sei.
Mit Bezug auf diesen letzten Fall, wo ein wirklicher Tod scheinbar aus der Einbildung heraus eingetreten ist, muß allerdings die gegenwärtige Wissenschaft die Aufklärung von der Geisteswissenschaft erwarten. Und vielleicht können wir gerade an diesem Fall ein wenig erwägen, wie die Sache eigentlich liegt. Wir haben es mit einem Mann zu tun, der sich ritzt mit einer Feder, mit der er geschrieben hat, und “ der scheinbar an der Einbildung, die er daraus schöpft, stirbt. Aber wir haben es noch mit etwas ganz anderem zu tun: Der Mann, der da stirbt, hat ja zugleich einen Ätherleib, in diesem Ätherleib war der Tod, bevor er sich geritzt hat, bereits darinnen. Da lebte der Tod drinnen. Also in dem Augenblicke, in dem er am Morgen in sein Büro gegangen war, war der Tod bereits in seinem Ätherleib ausgedrückt, das heißt der Ätherleib hatte diejenigen inneren Prozesse angenommen, die er annimmt, wenn man stirbt, nur haben sie sich sehr langsam in den physischen Leib hinein übertragen. Und die Ungeschicklichkeit, die der Mann begangen hat, die hätte er nicht begangen, wenn nicht der Tod schon in ihm gesessen hätte. Unter dem Einfluß dieser inneren Verfassung passierte es ihm, daß er sich diesen Stich gemacht hat, der ganz bedeutungslos war. Aber dadurch wiederum drängte sich aus seiner Lebenssphäre in seinem Unterbewußtsein heraus das Bewußtsein: ich sterbe. Das Äußere war nur eine äußerliche Verbrämung, nur eine Attrappe. Dadurch, daß die Attrappe da war, wogte das herauf ins Tagesbewußtsein. Mit dem im gewöhnlichen Tagesbewußtsein vorhandenen Prozeß der Einbildung hat der Tod nichts, absolut nichts zu tun; sondern der sitzt in ihm.
Durch diese Dinge werden die Naturforscher allmählich gezwungen werden, immer tiefer einzudringen in das, was Geisteswissenschaft zu geben vermag. Schon haben wir etwas Kompliziertes vor uns, wenn wir die Beziehung betrachten zwischen der Planetensphäre und dem Lebensprozeß, der Tierkreissphäre und den Sinnesgebieten. Aber noch komplizierter wird die Sache, wenn wir aufsteigen zu den Bewußtseinsvorgängen, wenn wir also in diejenigen Gebiete hineinkommen, die nur einen gewissen Zusammenhang haben mit diesen Sphären: das Ich mit dem Tierkreis, der astralische Leib mit der planetarischen Sphäre des Menschen, mit dieser beweglichen Lebenssphäre des Menschen. Aber das, was da in Verbindung ist mit der beweglichen Lebenssphäre des Menschen, und was vom Ich aus in Verbindung ist mit dem Tierkreis, dem kommen wir nicht nahe, wenn wir so vorstellen, wie wir in der gewöhnlichen physischen Welt vorstellen, wie wir durch den Tierkreis vorstellen; sondern dem kommen wir nur nahe, wenn wir versuchen, uns ein ganz anderes Vorstellungsvermögen anzueignen. Es wird in «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» geraten, zuweilen rückwärts vorzustellen, Rückschau zu machen. Rückschau bedeutet, daß man die Vorgänge, die in der Welt nach der einen Seite ablaufen, nach der anderen Seite vorstellt, zurück vorstellt.
Durch dieses Zurück-Vorstellen macht man neben manchem anderen allmählich die Geisteskräfte fähig, in eine der physischen Welt gegenüber verkehrte Welt hineinzukommen. Das ist die geistige Welt. Sie ist gegenüber der physischen Welt verkehrt in vieler Beziehung. Ich habe schon darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß man nicht einfach abstrakt umkehren darf, was in der physischen Welt ist, aber man muß unter den Kräften, die man ausbildet, auch diejenigen ausbilden, die sich an das Rückwärts-Vorstellen anschließen. Was folgt daraus? Daß die Menschen darauf angewiesen sind, wenn sie nicht ganz vertrocknen wollen in der Kultur, wenn sie sich in eine spirituelle Anschauungsweise der Welt hineinfinden wollen, gezwungen sein werden, eine verkehrte Welt vorzustellen. Denn das geistige Bewußtsein beginnt erst da, wo wirklich der Lebensprozeß oder der Sinnesprozeß sich umkehrt, wo der Prozeß rückwärts verläuft. Es werden sich die Menschen also gegen die Zukunft hin dazu bequemen müssen, rückwärts vorzustellen. Dann werden sie in dieses Rückwärts-Vorstellen die geistige Welt hineinkriegen, wie sie jetzt in das Vorwärts-Vorstellen die physische Welt hineinkriegen. Daß wir die physische Welt vorstellen können, rührt von der Richtung unseres Vorstellens her.
Also, wenn ich weitergehen wollte —- ich habe Sie nur von dem menschlichen 'Tierkreis, den zwölf Sinnessphären, durch die LebensPlanetensphäre geführt —, so müßte ich Sie in ein ganz anderes Vorstellen hineinverweisen: in ein rückwärts gerichtetes Vorstellen.
Nun wissen Sie ja, daß die Menschen der Gegenwart nicht sonderlich geneigt sind, Geisteswissenschaft aufzunehmen und wirklich zu durchdringen. Sie lehnen sie heute noch ab, denn sie sind gewöhnt an das materialistische Vorstellen. Für den, der nur ein wenig die Schwelle überschritten hat in die geistige Welt, ist die Behauptung, daß die Welt nur vorwärts geht und nicht zurück, ebenso töricht, wie wenn jemand behauptet: Die Sonne geht immer nach der einen Richtung, sie kann doch nicht zurückgehen! - Ja, sie geht wirklich auf der anderen Seite zurück, indem sie scheinbar diesen Weg (es wird gezeichnet) zurücklegt.
Wir können uns leicht denken, daß so ein richtiger, in die gegenwärtige Vorstellungsweise eingefrorener Mensch einen wahren Horror haben könnte vor dem Rückwärts-Vorstellen, vor dem Vorstellen der verkehrten Welt. Aber wenn es diese verkehrte Welt nicht geben würde, würde es überhaupt kein Bewußtsein geben. Aber Bewußtsein ist ja schon eine Geisteswissenschaft. Das leugnen die Materialisten. Solch ein Mensch der Gegenwart könnte also einen besonderen Horror haben vor dem Rückwärts-Vorstellen, und man könnte sich denken, daß er einmal die Frage aufwerfen würde: Ist es denn unlogisch, den Weltenlauf auch einmal rückwärts vorzustellen? - und daß er dann darauf kommen könnte: Unlogisch ist es ja gar nicht.- Es ist wahrhaftig nicht unlogisch, ein Drama von rückwärts, vom fünften Akt nach vorn, aufzudröseln, und ebensowenig ist es unlogisch, den Weltenlauf nach rückwärts zu verfolgen. Aber für die gegenwärtigen Denkgewohnheiten ist es etwas Furchtbares. Wenn nun ein Mensch, der ganz in den Denkgewohnheiten der Gegenwart lebt, solch eine Frage aufwirft, so könnte er gerade aus dieser Frage heraus — für ihn ist es eine Tatsache, daß man sich die Welt nicht rückwärts vorstellen kann, daß es ganz unglaublich ist, daß die Welt nach rückwärts geht — etwas Besonderes herauswittern. Man könnte sich also einmal einen einsamen Denker denken, der sich abschwitzte mit dem Problem des Rückwärts-Vorstellens, und aus der Unmöglichkeit des Rückwärts-Vorstellens aus den heutigen Denkgewohnheiten heraus besondere philosophische Schlüsse zöge.
Man kann noch eine weitere Vermutung haben. Ich habe Sie schon darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß es besonders in dem Sternbild, wo die Sonne untergeht, beim Gehörsinn schwer wird, rückwärts vorzustellen. Der Gehörsinn hat ja besonders in bezug auf das Musikalische manche Veränderung im Laufe der Zeiten erfahren. Diese feineren Veränderungen, die beobachten gewöhnlich die Historiker nicht, sie sind aber für das innere Leben der Menschen wichtiger als die groben Veränderungen, die in der Geschichte verzeichnet sind. Es ist zum Beispiel durchaus wichtig für die Veränderung des Gehörsinns, des vergeistigten, für die physische Welt schon vergeistigten Hörsinns, daß in der griechisch-lateinischen Kulturperiode die Oktave als ganz besonders angenehmer, sympathischer Tonzusammenklang empfunden wurde, daß im elften, zwölften, dreizehnten Jahrhundert die Quinte besonders beliebt geworden ist. Man nannte sie in diesen Zeiten den «süßen Ion». Dieselbe Empfindung, die heute der Mensch der Terz gegenüber hat, hatte er noch im zwölften, dreizehnten Jahrhundert der Quinte gegenüber. So ändern sich die Konstitutionen in verhältnismäßig kurzer Zeit.
Es könnte also sein, daß jemand, der ein besonders musikalisches Ohr hat, sich stoßen würde an dem Rückwärtsverlauf der Vorstellungen — denn die Musik gehört ja zum Allertiefsten, was wir hier auf dem physischen Plan haben! -, weil ein musikalisches Ohr gerade dadurch, daß es tief, mit tiefer Befriedigung, auf dem physischen Plan in der einen Richtung empfindet, Anstoß nimmt an dem Rück wärtsVorstellen. Natürlich kann das nur in einer Zeit sein, in der der Materialismus so hoch ist wie heute. Demjenigen, der nicht sehr musikalisch ist, wird dieser Zwiespalt nicht so leicht kommen. Aber ein musikalischer Mensch, der gründlich materialistisch ist seinen Denkgewohnheiten nach, der kann dadurch darauf geführt werden, daß er sagt: Das geht unmöglich mit diesem Menschenkopf zusammen, daß man rückwärts vorstellt. - In dieser Form sträubt er sich gegen die geistige Welt. Man könnte geradezu voraussetzen: irgendwo könnte es einen solchen Denker doch geben.
Kurioserweise ist in der letzten Zeit ein Buch erschienen: Christian von Ehrenfels, «Kosmogonie». Dieses Buch hat als erstes Kapitel: « ‹Die Reversion›, ein Paradoxon unserer Erkenntnis.» Da entwickelt Ehrenfels auf vielen Seiten, so wie es ein heutiger Philosoph macht, wie es wäre, wenn man probieren würde, die andere Seite, gleichsam die asymmetrische Seite des Weltenverlaufes sich vorzustellen, zurückzudenken. Er kommt wirklich einmal darauf, zurückzudenken, richtig zurückzudenken. Da versucht er, wie er mit diesem Paradoxon fertig werden könnte, und legt sich für besondere Fälle dieses Rück wärtsdenken vor. Eines möchte ich Ihnen als Beispiel für dieses Rück wärtsdenken anführen. Er nimmt zuerst einen nicht rückwärtsgehenden, sondern vorwärtsgehenden Verlauf an:
«In der aufrechten Welt löse sich, auf hoher Gebirgswand, infolge Feuchtigkeit und Frost ein Brocken von der kompakten Felsmasse los und verliere bei eintretendem Tauwetter das Gleichgewicht. Er stürzt an der überhängenden Wand herab, schlägt auf Felsgrund auf, zerschellt in viele Stücke. Eines dieser Stücke verfolgen wir, wie es den tieferen Abhang hinabkollert, beim Zusammenstoß mit Steinen noch mehrere Splitter verliert und endlich an einer Erdwelle liegen bleibt. Es hat alsdann seine gesamte kinetische Energie in Form von Erwärmungen der Erd- und Felsstellen, auf die es aufschlug, und der Luft, welche seiner Bewegung Widerstand bot, ausgegeben. — Wie würde nun dieser — gewiß nicht seltene — Vorgang in der verkehrten Welt sich ausnehmen?»
«Ein Stein liegt an einer Erdwelle. Plötzlich schießen die anscheinend chaotischen Wärmestöße seines Untergrundes in so seltsamer Weise zusammen, daß sie dem Stein einen starken Schwung nach schräg aufwärts erteilen. Die Luft bereitet ihm keinen Widerstand. Im Gegenteil. Infolge merkwürdiger Wärmetransaktionen aus ihrem eigenen Bestand macht sie ihm freie Bahn, weicht ihm von selbst bei seiner Bewegung nach schräg aufwärts aus und fördert diese Bewegung noch dazu durch kleine, aber zielstrebig sich summierende Wärmestöße. Der Stein prallt bei seiner Bewegung an einen Felsvorsprung. Er verliert aber dadurch weder einen Splitter seines Gefüges, noch einen Teil seiner Bewegungswucht. Im Gegenteil. Zufällig wird ein anderes Steinchen durch gesammelte Wärmestöße der Erde und der Luft im gleichen Moment auch an die Stelle des Anprallens geschleudert, und - siehe da! - Dieses Steinchen wird an unsern Stein — immer durch Wärmestöße — so nahe herangedrückt, und die - anscheinend regellos gebrochenen — Oberflächen dieser Stücke passen so minutiös genau ineinander, daß die Kräfte der Kohäsion in Wirksamkeit treten, das Steinchen an den Stein zu einer kompakten Masse anwächst, und der vergrößerte Brocken nun, gefördert durch anscheinend zielstrebige Wärmestöße aus dem Felsvorsprung, an welchen er anprallte, seinen Weg nach schräg aufwärts mit vergrößerter Geschwindigkeit fortsetzen kann.»
Wie früher der Stein in Stücke zerschellt ist, so kommen sie jetzt wieder zusammen. Das Ganze geht zusammen, legt sich wieder an den Felsvorsprung. Es gleicht sich wieder aus, geht wiederum zurück und so weiter. Das beschreibt er sehr genau. Also er denkt den Vorgang rückwärts. Noch mehrere solche Beispiele führt er an, wo er den Vorgang rückwärts denkt. Man sieht, er plagt sich furchtbar; er strengt sich furchtbar an.
«Ein Hase läuft an einem sonnigen Wintertag durch den Schnee und hinterläßt eine Fährte, welche an vielen Stellen alsbald durch den Wind wieder verweht wird, an einigen südlich geneigten Hängen jedoch, wo der Schnee unter dem Einfluß der Sonnenstrahlung auftaut und am Abend wieder gefriert, noch wochenlang zu sehen ist, bis sie endlich mit dem Eintritt der allgemeinen Schneeschmelze ganz verschwindet. — In der «verkehrten Welt» würde die Fährte des Hasen zuerst entstehen, aber nicht als Ganzes, sondern bruchstückweise, hier und dort, erst als undeutliche Einkerbungen in dem vereisten Schnee (oder vielmehr dem allmählich zu Schnee sich lockernden Eis), dann nach Wochen, während jene Einkerbungen sich allmählich vertiefen und in ihrer Form dem Abdruck von Hasenpfoten sich annähern, an den Zwischenstellen, dadurch, daß aus lockerem Schnee durch Wärmestöße Flocken herausgeschleudert werden, - bis endlich die ganze Zeile von Eindrücken fertig ist, und nun der Hase, den Kopf nach hinten und das Hinterteil voran, die Zeile — nicht abläuft — sondern, gegen den Zug seiner Muskeln, immer durch Wärmestöße entlang geschleudert wird, so kunstvoll, daß immer eine Pfote in das schon fertige Futteral der Fährte zu fallen kommt. - Des Wunders nicht genug: - So oft die Pfote aus diesem Futteral austritt, wird die Vertiefung durch scheinbar zielstrebige Wärmestöße so treffsicher mit lockerem Schnee angefüllt, daß volle Konformität mit der Umgebung sich einstellt, und über den von dem Hasen zurückgelegten Weg alsbald in tadelloser Glätte das Schneefeld sich breitet, als wäre es niemals anders gewesen.»
Sie sehen, er strengt sich an. Und nun sagt er sich noch: wenn er schon bei einem Hasen sich anstrengen muß, wie müßte er sich anstrengen, meint er, bei einer ganzen Treibjagd.
«Man merkt leicht: - es sind die wesentlich gleichen Unglaublichkeiten wie in den Beispielen aus der anorganischen Natur, nur ins Groteske, Ungeheuerliche gesteigert. - Und dieser Fall ist noch ein einfacher von Spurenbildung durch organische Wesen. Man vergegenwärtige sich etwa nur die Spuren, welche — nicht ein Hase, sondern eine ganze winterliche Treibjagd mit vielen Jägern, Treibern, Hunden, vielen Hasen, mehreren Rehen, Füchsen und Hirschen im Schnee hinterläßt, — wie diese Spuren sich kreuzen, decken, wie der eine die Spur des andern niedertritt, so daß stellenweise geglättete Flächen zurückbleiben usw. Man verkehre nun diese Vorgänge, — beachte, wie da, durch die anscheinend gleichartigen Ursachen von Wärmestößen aus dem Chaotischen, verschiedenartige Spurzeilen sich bilden und nun jedes Lebewesen gerade auf die ihm konforme Zeile, das Reh auf diese, der Hirsch auf jene, jeder Jäger auf die seinem Schuhwerk entsprechende Fährte gedrängt, geschoben, geworfen wird, immer durch die seltsam sich vereinigenden Wärmestöße aus der Erde, aus der Luft, aus dem Inneren der betreffenden Organismen, — und man erhält dann erst eine blasse Vorstellung von der Tragweite des Begriffes «Spurenbildung; in unserer aufrechten» — und nicht verkehrten — «Welt.»
Er strengt sich also sehr an, um Vorstellungen zu gewinnen, die er braucht. Sie drängen manches aus dem Unterbewußten des heutigen Menschen herauf. Sie sehen, wie naturgemäß es ist, daß Geisteswissenschaft entsteht, denn wie ich oft auch an anderen Beispielen gezeigt habe, es drängt in der Seele des Menschen dahin. Er müht sich ab, man kann schon sagen, wenn es auch geistig gemeint ist, er schwitzt sich ab, diese rückwärtsgehenden Prozesse wenigstens einigermaßen zu verstehen. Es ist also solch ein Denker da, denn er ist ein Denker, das kann nicht geleugnet werden. Logisch ist es durchaus möglich, das vorzustellen, aber unglaubwürdig, sagt er, ist es. Das heißt ja für uns, es widerspricht seinen Denkgewohnheiten, das heißt im letzten Ende: Er kann überhaupt nicht sich die geistige Welt vorstellen. Und nun schließt er: «Ja, mehr noch! - Versetzen wir uns in die Lage, ein Realitätenkomplex gleich der «verkehrten Welt> sei uns durch den unerbittlichen Zwang der Erfahrung als Tatsache wirklich aufgenötigt.»
Also der Mann versetzt sich noch in die Lage, so wie er seinen Hasen draußen in der physischen Welt wirklich sieht, oder seine Treibjagd, so könnte es einmal geschehen, daß er in der physischen Welt, die für ihn doch das einzig Wirkliche ist, das Umgekehrte sähe. Nehmen wir an, es werde einem aufgedrängt, man trete wirklich einmal in die physische Welt hinaus und es sei eine ganz verkehrte Welt da:
«Wie würden wir uns ihm gegenüber verhalten, wie ihn auszulegen versuchen? — Jenes - früher angedeutete -— Gedankenprojekt mit dem gestaltsaugenden Rückwirkungsprinzip in der Zukunft müßten wir, obgleich das Erfahrungsmaterial uns immer wieder dahin drängte, doch als absurd von uns weisen.»
Er sagt, es wäre doch schrecklich, wir könnten das nicht denken, dürften es nicht denken, und wir würden es sehen! Das stellt er sich vor, das Schreckliche, was er wirklich sehen müßte, wenn er in die geistige Welt hineinkommen würde. Das wäre nun etwas Schreckliches, wenn es ihm aufgedrängt würde in der physischen Welt, wie er sich es vorstellt!
«Es bliebe uns keine andere Wahl übrig: - Die scheinbar spontanen Gestaltungsanfänge (hie Menschen, dort Füchse, dort Rosen usw.) müßten wir als eben nur scheinbar spontan, tatsächlich vielmehr durch teleologische, zweckbewußt vorausberechnete Kollokationen der materiellen Partikel und ihrer Bewegungsrichtungen zustande gebracht beurteilen, — und ebenso das seltsame Spiel ihrer auf Gleitbahnen sich vollziehenden Konvergenz zu immer wenigeren und niedrigeren Gestaltfolgen.»
Also er denkt sich das Ganze zurück zu den Darwinischen Einheitsformen vom Anfang der Erde.
«Das Ziel aber dieser vorausschauenden, vorausrechnenden Schöpferkraft? - Kann die plötzliche Erweckung von Gestalt und ihre allmähliche Überleitung in Nichtgestalt ein letztes Ziel sein? - «Nein, und wieder nein! - Die Ziele des Ganzen müssen gegensätzlicher Art sein.»
Und nun frägt er sich: Wie würde mir eine solche Welt vorkommen, wenn ich sie wirklich sähe? Und darauf gibt er sich die Antwort: «Die Erfahrungswelt ist der groteske Scherz eines unbegreiflichen Weltdämons, dem alles an uns ausgeliefert ist, mit Ausnahme der Erkenntnis.»
Die behält er sich, denn da, sagt er, kann er nicht herein. Die Erkenntnisse sind seine Denkgewohnheiten, da kann er nicht herein, die behält er sich. Aber die Welt, die er verkehrt sehen müßte, die wäre das groteske Schauspiel eines Weltdämons, des Teufels; es wäre die teuflische Welt. Er fürchtet sich vor dem, was ihm als Teufel erscheinen müßte. - Da haben Sie einmal in einer Seele erlebt, was ich oftmals gesagt habe: Furcht vor der geistigen Welt ist es, was zurückhält. Er spricht es aus: er würde in dem Augenblick, wo er eine physische Welt sehen würde, die ähnlich wäre der geistigen Welt, dies für das Paradoxon eines teuflischen Wesens halten. So fürchtet er sich davor.
«jenseits der Grenzen unserer Erfahrungswelt muß ein anderes, umfassendes Weltgesetz walten!» - Das heißt: Selbst eine «verkehrte Welv würden wir letzten Endes nicht nach verkehrten Prinzipien aufzufassen uns bequemen.»
Was würde also der gute Ehrenfels tun, wenn er wirklich in solch eine Welt versetzt würde, die sich bequemen würde, für ihn physisch zu sein? Er würde sagen: Nein, die glaube ich nicht; ich will sie nach der anderen Seite vorstellen, ich will sie nicht gelten lassen. Und das tun ja die Leute auch mit der geistigen Welt; sie wollen sie wirklich nicht gelten lassen, wenn sie die Sachen anders sehen als in der Gegenwart.
«Wir würden sie (diese Welt) als eine Ausnahme, als eine Enklave, als einen Gegenstrom in dem großen Gesamtlauf des Weltgeschehens einschätzen, und diesem umfassenden Weltgeschehen würden wir doch wieder jene physiognomischen Züge erteilen, die uns an sich als glaubwürdig erscheinen.»
Also man würde sich hinstellen und sagen: Nein, diese Welt, die narrt uns zwar ein Dämon vor, aber wir glauben nicht an sie; wir stellen sie uns doch nach der anderen Seite vor; wir stellen sie uns so vor, wie wir es gewöhnt sind.
Da sehen Sie das ganze Sich-Entgegenstellen eines Philosophen gegen dasjenige, was kommen muß. Es ist gut, den Fortgang der Menschheitsentwickelung in solchen Punkten zu fassen. Es ist schon so, meine lieben Freunde, dasjenige, was sein muß nach der Geisteswissenschaft, das geschieht. Und wenn hier oftmals gezeigt worden ist aus den verschiedensten Symptomen, daß die Menschen sich auch heute noch in ihrem Oberbewußtsein gegen den Geist wehren, sie fangen an, unterbewußt zu ihm sich hinzuwenden. Sie machen sich nur noch etwas vor, sie leugnen ihn noch. Es wird nicht lange dauern, so werden sie ihn nicht mehr leugnen können, diesen Geist, denn schon werden sogar zwangsweise die Gedanken der Menschen dahin gerichtet, was man gerade an einem solchen Fall, wie an der «Kosmogonie» des Christian von Ehrenfels, sehen kann.
Ich wollte dieses Buch auch aus dem Grunde hier besprechen, weil es als ein eben erschienenes Buch in der nächsten Zeit ganz gewiß viel besprochen werden wird. Wenn es auch in einer Philosophensprache geschrieben ist, die schwer lesbar ist, wird es viel und wahrscheinlich überall in sehr grotesker Weise besprochen werden, weil man die Zusammenhänge doch nicht erfassen wird. Damit auch einmal dasjenige gesagt worden ist, was sachgemäß über dieses Buch gesagt werden muß, wollte ich in diesem Zusammenhange gerade auf die «Kosmogonie» von Christian von Ehrenfels aufmerksam machen. Wir haben es mit einem Philosophen zu tun, der Universitätsprofessor ist, der seit langen Jahren Philosophie an der Prager Universität vorgetragen hat. 1915 ist dieses Buch erschienen. Er spricht in der Vorrede zu diesem Buch über seinen Entwickelungsgang, welchen Philosophen älteren Datums er mehr oder weniger dies oder jenes zu verdanken hat, mit welchen er als Philosoph mehr oder weniger einverstanden ist. Am Schluß dieser Vorrede sagt er das Folgende, nachdem er angeführt hat, daß er Franz Brentano, Meinong, also den älteren Philosophen, dies oder jenes verdanke.
«Das Schwergewicht meiner Dankesschuld dagegen habe ich in eine Richtung zu weisen, welche nach allgemeiner Auffassung von Philosophie weit abliegt. - Ich habe in meinem Leben ein weit größeres Quantum an psychisischer Energie der innerlichen Aneignung der deutschen Musik zugewandt, als der Rezeption philosophischer Literatur.» — Dieses Bekenntnis legt er als Philosophieprofessor ab! - «Und ich bereue das nicht, gegenwärtig in der zweiten Hälfte des sechsten Dezenniums dieses Lebens stehend» - also er ist weit über fünfzig Jahre alt -— «sondern erblicke darin vielmehr eine der Quellen meiner Produktivität» — und er ist nur philosophisch produktiv! -— «Denn wenn Schopenhauers Deutung der Musik als einer besonderen Objektivation des Weltwillens in dieser Form auch wohl abzulehnen sein wird, so trifft sie doch, wie mich dünkt, ihrer Intention nach den Kern der Sache. Der wahrhaft produktive Musiker steht in seinen Offenbarungen dem Weltgeist näher als andere Sterbliche. - Wer von diesen «anderen» die metaphysische Sprache der Musik zu verstehen vermeint, der empfindet es als verantwortungsvollste Pflicht, den vernommenen Sinn nun für die Mitwelt in die ihr geläufigen begrifflichen Verständigungsmittel zu übersetzen.
Wenn man unter Religion ein geistiges Besitztum versteht, welches seinem Eigner Weltvertrauen, sittliche Kraft und inneren Halt erteilt, so ist die deutsche Musik mir Religion gewesen durch ein Menschenalter einer agnostischen, metaphysik- und glaubenslosen Zeit, von dem Tage, als ich mich innerlich endgiltig vom katholischen Dogma lossagte (im Jahre 1880), bis zu jenen Wochen (im Frühling 1911), in welchen mir die Umrisse der hier vorgetragenen metaphysischen Lehre aufgingen.»
Und diese metaphysische Lehre geht aus von dem Paradoxon der Reversion, von der Unmöglichkeit der Umkehrung der Vorstellungen.
«Ja, die deutsche Musik ist mir auch heute noch Religion in dem Sinn, daß ich, wenn mir alle Argumente dieses Werkes auch widerlegt würden, doch nicht der Verzweiflung verfiele, - doch überzeugt bliebe, mit dem Weltvertrauen, aus dem dieses Werk erwuchs, den wesentlich richtigen Pfad beschritten zu haben, - überzeugt, - weil es die deutsche Musik gibt. Denn eine Welt, die Solches hervorgebracht, muß ihrem innersten Wesen nach gut und vertrauenswürdig sein. i
Die Musik der H-moll-Messe, die Musik zum steinernen Gast, die dritte, die fünfte, die siebente, die neunte Symphonie, die Musik des Tristan, des Ringes, des Parsifal - diese Musik kann nicht widerlegt werden, denn sie ist Wirklichkeit, — quellendes Leben. - Dank ihren Schöpfern! — Heil allen, die aus ihrem Wunderborn den Durst nach Ewigem zu stillen berufen! - Das Beste, das jemals ich schaffen durfte und für das Beste halte ich dieses Werk - ist nur ein schwacher Entgelt der Fülle, die ich von dorther» - von der Musik - «empfing.»
Und ich bin überzeugt, meine lieben Freunde, daß diese besondere Art des Sich-Entgegenstellens der geistigen Welt gegenüber, wie es ein Philosoph unternimmt, nur bei einem so gearteten Geist sich finden kann, der so zur Musik steht in dieser materialistischen Zeit, wie Ehrenfels zur Musik steht. Denn was in der menschlichen Seele vorgeht, und wenn es auch scheinbar nach den verschiedensten Gebieten hin liegt, steht in einem tiefen inneren Zusammenhang. Hier wollte ich Ihnen ein Beispiel vorführen, wie andersartig ein Gläubiger, nicht bloß ein Hörer, ein Gläubiger des modernen musikalischen Elementes seine Seele durchleben lassen muß von den materialistischen Denkgewohnheiten als einer, der nicht als ein solcher Gläubiger gerade dem musikalischen Elemente gegenübersteht. Nur wenn man die geheimnisvollen Zusammenhänge in der menschlichen Seele untersucht, die so vieles hineinbringen in dieses menschliche Seelenleben von Harmonien und Disharmonien, kann man sich allmählich dem Lebens- und Menschenrätsel nähern.
Eighth Lecture
With truths such as those we allowed to enter our souls yesterday, it is not merely a matter of accepting them abstractly and theoretically and knowing, as it were, that things are so, but of truly penetrating ourselves with the consequences that these facts have for our entire human life. And these consequences are very significant. Today I want to sketch just a few of what I would call consequences. Of course, much could be said in the same vein, but one must start somewhere, or at least envisage a stream of thought and will that arises from such actual spiritual scientific premises.
Let us recall what we meant yesterday. We can regard the twelve sense regions as a kind of human zodiac. Flowing through all these sense regions are the seven life currents: breathing, warming, nutrition, secretion, maintenance, growth, and reproduction. (See the diagram on page 113.)
To understand the matter completely, we must realize that the real truth is quite different from what materialistic science says about these things. Materialistic science thinks, for example, that the sense of taste and the related sense of smell are bound only to the narrow regions around the tongue and the nasal mucosa. But that is not the case. The material organs of the senses are only, so to speak, the capitals of the realm of the senses. The realms of the senses extend much further. And I think that, for example, anyone who has only a little self-observation of the sense of hearing will know that hearing does not actually take place only with the ear, but with a much wider area of the organism. Sound lives in a much wider area of the organism than just in the ear, just as the other senses live in a much wider area. The sense of taste and the related sense of smell, for example, live clearly perceptibly in the liver and spleen; they therefore extend further than is usually thought in materialistic science. But if this is the case, then you will also understand that there are intimate relationships between the organs of life, which allow their life forces to flow continuously through the entire organism, and the individual sensory regions, so that one can say: The inner constitution, the spiritual-soul-physical constitution of a human being depends in many ways on how any organ of life relates to the sensory regions. And just as we speak in astronomy of Saturn being in Aries or the sun being in Leo, we can also speak of the impulse of separation in life lying in the sphere of sight, having something to do with the sphere of sight, or of the sphere of growth having something to do with the sphere of hearing. But each sphere can have something to do with one or the other sphere of life, because the spheres of life are in different relationships to the sensory spheres in different people. There are really similar relationships within the human being as there are outside in the macrocosm in the starry sky.
If you now consider that the sensory spheres are something relatively stable in the human being—they are stabilized by the fact that they tend toward the material organs, the sense of sight toward the eyes, although it has a wider sphere, the sense of hearing toward the ears, and so on— that, on the other hand, all life processes are mobile and continuously run through and circle the whole body, you will rightly suspect something relatively calm in everything that goes on through the senses in the human being. In everything that goes on through the life processes and the organs that direct them, you will suspect something mobile, something that is mobile in the human being.
If we now take into account what we said yesterday, that the sensory life of today was more life processes during the lunar period, we come to the conclusion that we must imagine human beings during the lunar period as being more mobile in their entire lives than human beings during their present earthly period. The lunar human being was more mobile, more mobile internally. In relation to what they experience as consciousness, earthly human beings behave in the same way as the constellations of the zodiac, which are stationary in relation to one another. During the Earth period, the surface of the human being has become calm, just as it is calm in the zodiac. On the moon, in what is now sense life, there was as much movement in human beings as there is now outside in the cosmos in the planetary sphere, where the planets always have different positions in relation to each other. During the lunar period, human beings were changeable, capable of metamorphosis. And I have often pointed out that when human beings today, through initiation, rise again to a level of knowledge that is, for example, imaginative, their consciousness becomes mobile again in relation to their present earthly sensory life. Everything moves again; only humans experience it in a supersensible consciousness. And so the insights from this sphere must also be taken up. I have often discussed how we must make our concepts and ideas more flexible when we become attuned to what is recognized through supersensible consciousness. The concepts of the sensory world are enclosed as if in a little box, and everyone wants them to remain there, neatly arranged one next to the other, whereas spiritual science requires concepts that transform into one another, that are flexible, that flow into one another. Here you can see some of the consequences of what we can present as fact.
Another consequence is this: you will see that this calm sensory life, which is comparable to the signs of the zodiac, can only take place when human beings live in the earthly sphere. The twelve sensory regions actually only have meaning for life in the earthly body, that is, between birth and death. Life between death and a new birth is essentially different, and the remarkable thing is: Those sense regions that we regard as the higher ones in earthly life lose this higher meaning when we pass into the spiritual sphere after death. Remember what I said in The Secret Science about the relationships between human beings in the time between death and a new birth, how these relationships are mediated in a much more inner way than here on earth. There we do not need the sense of self as we have it on earth, nor do we need the sense of thinking or the sense of speech as we have them on earth. On the other hand, we do need the transformed sense of hearing, but it is transformed into the spiritual realm; it is truly spiritualized. Through the spiritualized sense of hearing, we enter into the music of the spheres. But the spiritualization of the sense of hearing can already be recognized in the fact that we hear everything there without physical air, which here is heard through a completely earthly medium, namely through physical air. And besides, we hear everything in reverse, running from back to front. Precisely because the sense of hearing here on earth is bound to the physical element of air, it is most difficult for the sense of hearing to imagine things as if in retrospect, running backwards. It is somewhat difficult to really imagine a melody running backwards. It is not at all difficult in the spiritual realm. But the sense of hearing is, in a sense, at the boundary; in the spiritual state, the sense of hearing is still most similar to that in the physical world.
If we then come to the sense of warmth, this is already very different in the spiritual world, even more so the sense of sight, and even more so the senses of smell and taste, because these play a major role in the spiritual world. It is precisely what we call the lower senses here that play a major role in the spiritual world. It is just that they are very, very spiritualized. The senses of balance and movement also play a significant role in the spiritual world. The sense of life plays a lesser role, and the sense of touch plays no special role at all.
We can therefore say that when we settle into the spiritual world through death, the sun sets, so to speak, in the sense of hearing. It stands at the edge of the spiritual horizon. The sense of hearing is, so to speak, cut off at the horizon, and over there the sun rises in the spiritual sense of hearing, and then passes through the spiritualized senses of warmth, sight, taste, and smell, which are particularly important for spiritual perception over there. And the sense of balance carries us through the worlds, in that we not only perceive an inner balance, but also feel ourselves to be in balance with the beings of the higher hierarchies into whose realm we are ascending. The sense of balance plays a major role here. It is hidden, a lower sense in our physical organism here, but there it plays a major role, because through it we recognize whether we are in balance between an Archangelos and an Angelos, or between a spirit of personality and an archangel, or between a spirit of form and an angel. The balance we have with the various beings of the spiritual world is conveyed to us precisely through the spiritualized lower senses. And the movements we make—for we are constantly in motion in the spiritual worlds—are conveyed to us by the spiritual sense of movement, which is now turned outward. We no longer need the meaning of life because we are, as it were, swimming in all life; it is the element in which we move as spirits, just as a swimmer moves in water.
The lower senses are, as it were, below the horizon, serving here in physical earthly life only for inner perceptions in the organism. But just as the sun, when it sets, goes to the constellations below the horizon, so too does the sun of our life go to the constellations below the horizon when we die. And when we are reborn, it rises to the constellations we have here—the sense of touch, the sense of life, the sense of speech, the sense of thinking, the sense of the I—in order to perceive what is in the physical world in earthly life.
And even more spiritual than these lower senses are the organs of life. Many who wish to represent a particularly high mystical view speak of the “lower” life processes. Certainly, they are lower here, but what is lower here is higher in the spiritual world; for what lives in our organism is like a mirror image of what lives in the spiritual world. This statement is very remarkable. If you think of human beings as limited, in a sense, by the zodiac of their senses, and imagine the stars of their life organs, then there are meaningful spiritual beings outside of human beings in the spiritual world that are reflected in human beings. We can say: there is something in the spiritual world that is reflected in the four life processes, in separation, in preservation, in growth, in reproduction, and there is something in the spiritual world that is reflected in respiration, warming, and nutrition. That which is reflected in the fourfold process of separation, preservation, growth, and reproduction is something lofty in the spiritual world. We are taken up into it, and we live and breathe in it after death so that our organism can be spiritually prepared for the next incarnation. Everything that is low in our physical organism corresponds to something lofty that can only be perceived through imagination. There is a whole world that can be perceived through imagination, through imaginative cognition, a world that is given to the imagination and which, in a sense, is reflected from beyond the zodiac of the senses into the human organism. It is as if you were to imagine that the sun, Venus, Mercury, and the moon were reflections of something that lies outside the zodiac; there are spiritual counterparts of the sun, Venus, Mercury, and the moon that are outside the zodiac and are only reflected within the zodiac in these celestial bodies.

Then, outside the realm of the human senses, in the supersensible world, there is something that can only be perceived through inspiration, a world of inspiration. And this is reflected in breathing, warming, and nutrition, just as Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars are reflected by their spiritual counterparts beyond the zodiac. And there is a deep relationship between what is in humans as lower nature and what is out there in the universe. There are such counter-images of the physical life processes. In this way, we can distinguish between the sensory realm of humans and the realm of life.
Let us now turn to what is higher than life, to the actual realm of the soul, where we have the astral nature of the human being and the I, the ego. Here we leave the sensory realm, as well as the realm of space and time, and enter the spiritual realm. It is only because there is a certain connection between our ego here on earth and the twelve sensory regions that the ego lives in the consciousness that is carried by the sensory regions. Beneath this consciousness there is now another consciousness, an astral consciousness, which, as man is now, has a more intimate relationship with the realm of human life, with the sphere of life. The I has its intimate relationship with the sensory sphere, the astral consciousness with the realm of life. Just as we know about our zodiac through our I, or in our I, so we know about our life processes through our astral consciousness, which is still subconscious in human beings today. Only humans cannot yet reveal this to themselves in their normal state; it still lies beyond the threshold. For this knowledge is, in physical life, an inner knowledge of the processes of life. Only in abnormal states does consciousness sometimes encompass the realm of life, the sphere of life, so that it breaks through into ordinary consciousness. For people today, this is something pathological, and doctors and natural scientists stand in amazement before these pathological outbursts of human nature when the consciousness that lies beneath, which is still covered by the twelve-membered consciousness, breaks through, when the planets can strike their lives into the zodiac through the emergence, so to speak, of the subconscious. It must be developed, developed in reality, as described in How to Know Higher Worlds; then it is right. But if it emerges without this, then it is pathological.
An interesting book has recently been published by a doctor who now wants to go into such things. Everything spiritual is still closed to him; he still thinks in a completely materialistic way. But he is so free in his research that he has turned his attention to these areas, especially in recent times. I am referring to the book “Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken” (The Switchboard of Thoughts) by Carl Ludwig Schleich. There you will find very interesting reports from medical practice. Let's take the simplest report given there: A lady comes to a doctor to consult him. He tells her to sit down. At that moment, a small windmill for letting in air, a fan, moves. “Oh, that's a big fly,” she says, “it's going to bite me.” Very soon after she says this, her eye begins to swell. After a while, a swelling appears on her eye that is as big as a chicken egg. The doctor reassures her that it is not so bad and that the mistake can be corrected soon.
With the consciousness that is bound to the twelve sensory regions in the human zodiac, human beings cannot intervene so deeply in the sphere of life that anything in their sphere of life changes. With the subconscious, when it breaks through into ordinary daily consciousness, human beings intervene in the sphere of life. Concepts and ideas as we have them in ordinary consciousness do not yet reach down into the depths of life processes in modern human beings. They only surge up more or less from time to time, sometimes even very strongly. But with what is today's normal outer consciousness, human beings are not yet able — thank God — to intervene in their life processes, otherwise they would ruin themselves with many a thought. Human thoughts are not strong enough to intervene. But people today already entertain thoughts which, if they were to intervene in the sphere of life, such as the thought of the lady which welled up from the subconscious into the life processes, would cause people to walk around with swollen faces and in many other much worse conditions. So beneath the surface of human beings, which is bound to the zodiac, there is a subconscious that is more intimately connected with the life process; this then has a very far-reaching effect in abnormal states. Schleich, for example, recounts a very interesting case: A young girl comes to a doctor and says she has committed a sexual offense. According to the doctor's findings, this is impossible, but she insists. She does not want to say who she has committed the act with. Over the next few months, she becomes really hopeful; all the symptoms appear, both the external, physically visible ones and the internal ones. During the time when, in later months, you can already hear the heartbeat of the child when you examine her, you can hear the heartbeat of the child clearly distinguishable alongside the pulse of the quasi-pregnant woman. Everything proceeds normally, except that in the ninth lunar month, no child is born! The tenth month begins, and it is finally realized that something else must be going on. Surgery must be performed. There is nothing there, nothing at all, there was nothing! It was a hysterical pregnancy with all the physical symptoms. This is already described by doctors today, and it is good that it is described, because these things will force people to think differently about human relationships than they have done so far.
Another case: A man comes to Schleich who has stabbed himself with a pen in his office during the day; he has cut himself slightly. Schleich takes a look—it's not very serious. The man says, “Yes, but I can already feel it in my arm, it's blood poisoning, my arm has to be amputated, otherwise I'll die of blood poisoning.” Schleich replies, “I can't amputate your arm when there's nothing there. You're certainly not going to die of blood poisoning.” To be on the safe side, he sucks the wound and sends him away. But the man is in such a state that Schleich, who is a very good man, visits him in the evening. The patient is consumed by the thought that he is going to die. But even after the blood was examined later, there was no sign of blood poisoning. Schleich reassures him again, but during the night the man dies. He really dies! Death, purely for psychological reasons! _
Well, I can assure you that a person cannot die from the thoughts he has under the influence of his zodiac sign, certainly not. These thoughts do not reach so deeply into the life processes. And the other case I mentioned just now — I mean the hysterical pregnancy — cannot be caused by mere thoughts either, but one cannot die from the thought that there is blood poisoning.
With regard to this last case, where real death apparently occurred as a result of imagination, contemporary science must, however, await clarification from spiritual science. And perhaps this case in particular allows us to consider a little how things actually stand. We are dealing with a man who cuts himself with a pen he has been writing with and “apparently dies from the imagination he draws from this. But we are also dealing with something else entirely: the man who dies also has an etheric body, and death was already present in this etheric body before he cut himself. Death lived there. So at the moment he went into his office that morning, death was already expressed in his etheric body, that is, the etheric body had taken on those inner processes that it takes on when one dies, only they transferred very slowly into the physical body. And the clumsiness that the man committed, he would not have committed if death had not already been within him. Under the influence of this inner condition, he happened to give himself this stab, which was completely meaningless. But this in turn caused the consciousness “I am dying” to emerge from his life sphere into his subconscious. The exterior was only an external embellishment, only a dummy. Because the dummy was there, it rose up into the daytime consciousness. Death has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the process of imagination that is present in ordinary daytime consciousness; rather, it sits within him.
These things will gradually compel natural scientists to delve ever deeper into what spiritual science has to offer. We already have something complicated before us when we consider the relationship between the planetary sphere and the life process, the zodiacal sphere and the sensory realms. But the matter becomes even more complicated when we ascend to the processes of consciousness, when we enter those realms that have only a certain connection with these spheres: the I with the zodiac, the astral body with the planetary sphere of the human being, with this mobile sphere of human life. But what is connected with the moving sphere of human life, and what is connected from the ego with the zodiac, we cannot approach by imagining things as we do in the ordinary physical world, as we imagine through the zodiac; we can only approach it by trying to acquire a completely different faculty of imagination. In How to Know Higher Worlds, it is recommended to sometimes imagine things backwards, to look back. Looking back means imagining the processes that take place in the world on one side as taking place on the other side, imagining them backwards.
Through this backward thinking, among other things, one gradually enables the spiritual forces to enter a world that is opposite to the physical world. This is the spiritual world. It is opposite to the physical world in many respects. I have already pointed out that one cannot simply reverse what is in the physical world in an abstract way, but must also develop, among the forces one trains, those that are connected with backward thinking. What follows from this? That human beings, if they do not want to wither away completely in culture, if they want to find their way into a spiritual view of the world, will be compelled to imagine an inverted world. For spiritual consciousness begins only where the life process or the sensory process is truly reversed, where the process runs backwards. People will therefore have to resign themselves to imagining backwards in the future. Then they will be able to bring the spiritual world into this backward imagination, just as they now bring the physical world into their forward imagination. The fact that we can imagine the physical world stems from the direction of our imagination.
So, if I wanted to go further — I have only guided you through the human 'zodiac', the twelve sense spheres, through the life planet sphere — I would have to refer you to a completely different way of imagining: to backward-directed imagining.
Now you know that people today are not particularly inclined to accept spiritual science and really penetrate it. They still reject it today because they are accustomed to materialistic thinking. For those who have only slightly crossed the threshold into the spiritual world, the assertion that the world only moves forward and not backward is just as foolish as someone claiming that the sun always moves in one direction and cannot move backward. Yes, it really does move backward on the other side, seemingly traveling this path (it is drawn).
We can easily imagine that such a person, frozen in the present mode of thinking, might have a real horror of imagining the world in reverse, of imagining the world turned upside down. But if this upside-down world did not exist, there would be no consciousness at all. But consciousness is already a spiritual science. Materialists deny this. Such a person of the present could therefore have a particular horror of imagining things backwards, and one could imagine that he would one day raise the question: Is it illogical to imagine the course of the world backwards? And that they might then come to the conclusion: It is not illogical at all. It is truly not illogical to unravel a drama backwards, from the fifth act onwards, and it is just as illogical to follow the course of the world backwards. But for the current way of thinking, it is something terrible. If a person who lives entirely in the current way of thinking raises such a question, he could, precisely because of this question—for him it is a fact that one cannot imagine the world in reverse, that it is completely unbelievable that the world goes backwards—come up with something special. One could imagine a lonely thinker who sweats over the problem of backward thinking and draws special philosophical conclusions from the impossibility of backward thinking based on today's habits of thinking.
One can have yet another assumption. I have already pointed out to you that it is particularly difficult to imagine backward in the constellation where the sun sets, in relation to the sense of hearing. The sense of hearing has undergone many changes over time, especially in relation to music. These subtle changes are not usually observed by historians, but they are more important for the inner life of human beings than the gross changes recorded in history. For example, it is very important for the change in the sense of hearing, the spiritualized sense of hearing that has already been spiritualized for the physical world, that in the Greek-Latin cultural period the octave was perceived as a particularly pleasant, sympathetic harmony of tones, and that in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries the fifth became particularly popular. In those days, it was called the “sweet Ion.” The same feeling that people today have toward the third, they still had toward the fifth in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Thus, constitutions change in a relatively short time.
It could therefore be that someone with a particularly musical ear would be offended by the backward progression of ideas—for music belongs to the deepest realm of our physical plane!—because a musical ear, precisely because it perceives deeply and with deep satisfaction on the physical plane in one direction, takes offense at backward thinking. Of course, this can only be the case in a time when materialism is as prevalent as it is today. Those who are not very musical will not easily notice this contradiction. But a musical person who is thoroughly materialistic in their thinking habits may be led to say: It is impossible for the human mind to conceive of going backwards. In this form, they resist the spiritual world. One could almost assume that such a thinker must exist somewhere.
Curiously, a book has recently been published: Christian von Ehrenfels, “Kosmogonie” (Cosmogony). The first chapter of this book is entitled: “The Reversion, a Paradox of Our Knowledge.” In it, Ehrenfels spends many pages, as a modern philosopher would, developing what it would be like to try to imagine the other side, so to speak, the asymmetrical side of the course of the world, to think backwards. He actually comes to the conclusion that one must think backwards, really think backwards. He then attempts to come to terms with this paradox and proposes a special case of this backward thinking. I would like to give you one example of this backward thinking. He first assumes a forward rather than backward course of events:
"In the upright world, on a high mountain wall, a chunk of rock breaks away from the compact rock mass as a result of moisture and frost and loses its balance when the thaw sets in. It falls down the overhanging wall, hits the rocky ground, and shatters into many pieces. We follow one of these pieces as it tumbles down the steep slope, loses several splinters in collisions with stones, and finally comes to rest on a mound of earth. It has then expended all its kinetic energy in the form of heating the earth and rock where it struck and the air that resisted its movement. — How would this — certainly not uncommon — process look in the upside-down world?
"A stone lies on a mound of earth. Suddenly, the seemingly chaotic heat waves from its subsoil collide in such a strange way that they give the stone a strong upward momentum. The air offers no resistance. On the contrary. As a result of strange heat transactions from its own substance, it gives it free rein, automatically giving way to its upward diagonal movement and even promoting this movement through small but purposeful heat waves that add up. The stone hits a rocky outcrop as it moves. However, it loses neither a splinter of its structure nor any of its momentum. On the contrary. By chance, another small stone is thrown to the point of impact at the same moment by accumulated heat pulses from the earth and the air, and—lo and behold!—this small stone is pressed so close to our stone—again by heat pulses—and the—apparently irregularly broken—surfaces of these pieces fit so precisely into each other that the forces of cohesion come into effect, the small stone grows onto the stone to form a compact mass, and the enlarged chunk, propelled by seemingly purposeful heat waves from the rock ledge it collided with, can continue its path diagonally upward at increased speed.
Just as the stone was shattered into pieces before, so now they come together again. The whole thing comes together and settles back onto the rock ledge. It balances itself out again, goes back again, and so on. He describes this very precisely. So he thinks the process backwards. He gives several more examples where he thinks the process backwards. You can see that he is struggling terribly; he is trying very hard.
"On a sunny winter's day, a hare runs through the snow, leaving a trail that is soon blown away by the wind in many places, but on some south-facing slopes, where the snow melts under the influence of the sun's rays and freezes again in the evening, it can still be seen for weeks, until it finally disappears completely with the onset of the general snow melt. — In the “upside-down world,” the rabbit's tracks would first appear, but not as a whole, rather in fragments, here and there, first as indistinct indentations in the icy snow (or rather the ice gradually loosening into snow), then after weeks, as these indentations gradually deepen and take on the shape of hare paw prints, in the spaces between them, as flakes are thrown out of the loose snow by bursts of heat, - until finally the whole line of impressions is complete, and now the hare, head back and hindquarters forward, does not run along the line, but is propelled along it by bursts of heat, against the pull of its muscles, so skillfully that one paw always falls into the already finished case of the trail. - As if that were not enough: - every time the paw emerges from this case, the depression is filled with loose snow by seemingly purposeful bursts of heat so accurately that it blends in perfectly with its surroundings, and the snowfield soon spreads over the path taken by the hare in impeccable smoothness, as if it had never been there before.
You see, he's trying hard. And now he says to himself: if he has to try so hard with a hare, how hard would he have to try, he thinks, in a whole hunt.
"It is easy to see: these are essentially the same implausibilities as in the examples from inorganic nature, only heightened to the grotesque and monstrous. And this case is still a simple one of trace formation by organic beings. Just think of the tracks left behind in the snow not by a hare, but by an entire winter hunt with many hunters, beaters, dogs, numerous hares, several deer, foxes, and stags—how these tracks cross and overlap, how one tramples the tracks of another, leaving smooth patches in places, etc. Now reverse these processes—note how, through the apparently similar causes of heat waves from the chaotic, different lines of tracks are formed and now every living creature is pushed, shoved, thrown onto the line that suits it, the deer onto this one, the stag onto that one, each hunter onto the trail that corresponds to his footwear, always by the strangely unifying heat waves from the earth, from the air, from the interior of the organisms concerned, — and only then does one gain a faint idea of the significance of the concept of “trace formation” in our upright — and not inverted — “world.”
He therefore tries very hard to gain the ideas he needs. They push many things up from the subconscious of modern man. You see how natural it is that spiritual science arises, for, as I have often shown with other examples, it pushes its way up in the soul of man. He struggles, one might even say, albeit in a spiritual sense, he sweats to understand these backward processes at least to some extent. So here we have such a thinker, for he is a thinker, that cannot be denied. Logically, it is entirely possible to imagine this, but it is implausible, he says. For us, this means that it contradicts his way of thinking, which ultimately means that he cannot imagine the spiritual world at all. And now he concludes: “Yes, even more! Let us put ourselves in a situation where a complex reality similar to the ‘upside-down world’ is really forced upon us as fact by the inexorable compulsion of experience.”
So the man puts himself in the position of seeing his hare outside in the physical world as he really sees it, or his hunt, so that it could happen that he would see the opposite in the physical world, which is the only reality for him. Let us assume that we are forced to step out into the physical world and find that it is completely upside down:
“How would we behave toward it, how would we try to interpret it? — We would have to reject as absurd that thought project — mentioned earlier — with the gestalt-absorbing principle of retroactive effect in the future, even though the empirical material would repeatedly push us in that direction.”
He says it would be terrible if we couldn't think that, weren't allowed to think that, and we would see it! He imagines the terrible thing he would really have to see if he entered the spiritual world. It would be something terrible if it were imposed on him in the physical world as he imagines it!
"We would have no other choice: we would have to judge the seemingly spontaneous beginnings of creation (here humans, there foxes, there roses, etc.) would have to be judged as only seemingly spontaneous, but in fact brought about by teleological, purposefully calculated collocations of material particles and their directions of movement—and likewise the strange play of their convergence on gliding paths into ever fewer and lower sequences of forms.”
So he thinks the whole thing back to the Darwinian uniform forms from the beginning of the Earth.
"But what is the goal of this foresighted, calculating creative power? Can the sudden awakening of form and its gradual transition into non-form be the ultimate goal? “No, and again no! The goals of the whole must be of a contradictory nature.”
And now he asks himself: How would such a world appear to me if I really saw it? And he answers himself: “The world of experience is the grotesque joke of an incomprehensible world demon, to whom everything about us is surrendered, except for knowledge.”
He reserves that for himself, because, he says, he cannot enter there. His insights are his habits of thought, he cannot enter there, he reserves them for himself. But the world he would have to see upside down would be the grotesque spectacle of a world demon, the devil; it would be the devilish world. He is afraid of what would appear to him as the devil. Here you have experienced in one soul what I have often said: fear of the spiritual world is what holds us back. He says it out loud: the moment he saw a physical world that was similar to the spiritual world, he would consider it the paradox of a devilish being. So he is afraid of it.
“Beyond the limits of our experience, there must be another, comprehensive law of the world!” - That means: Even a “world turned upside down” would not ultimately be acceptable to us if it were based on upside-down principles.
So what would the good Ehrenfels do if he were really transported into such a world that would be acceptable to him as physical? He would say: No, I don't believe that; I want to imagine it the other way around, I don't want to accept it. And that's what people do with the spiritual world; they really don't want to accept it when they see things differently than they do in the present.
“We would regard it (this world) as an exception, as an enclave, as a countercurrent in the great overall course of world events, and we would again assign to this comprehensive world event those physiognomic features that seem credible to us.”
So one would stand there and say: No, this world is a demon's deception, but we do not believe in it; we imagine it to be the other way around; we imagine it to be what we are accustomed to.
There you see the whole opposition of a philosopher to what must come. It is good to grasp the progress of human development in such points. It is indeed so, my dear friends, that what must happen according to spiritual science does happen. And although it has often been shown here from the most diverse symptoms that people still resist the spirit in their superconsciousness, they are beginning to turn toward it subconsciously. They are only deceiving themselves; they are still denying it. It will not be long before they can no longer deny this spirit, for even now people's thoughts are being directed toward it, as can be seen in a case such as Christian von Ehrenfels's “Cosmogony.”
I also wanted to discuss this book here because, as a newly published work, it will certainly be much talked about in the near future. Even though it is written in philosophical language that is difficult to read, it will be discussed a great deal and probably everywhere in a very grotesque manner, because people will not be able to grasp the connections. In order to say what needs to be said about this book, I wanted to draw attention to Christian von Ehrenfels' Kosmogonie in this context. We are dealing with a philosopher who is a university professor and who has lectured on philosophy at the University of Prague for many years. This book was published in 1915. In the preface to this book, he talks about his development, which older philosophers he owes more or less to, and with which he more or less agrees as a philosopher. At the end of this preface, after mentioning that he owes this or that to Franz Brentano, Meinong, and other older philosophers, he says the following:
“The bulk of my debt of gratitude, however, must be directed in a direction that is far removed from the general view of philosophy. In my life, I have devoted far more of my mental energy to the inner appropriation of German music than to the reception of philosophical literature.” He makes this confession as a professor of philosophy! - “And I do not regret this, now that I am in the second half of the sixth decade of my life” — he is well over fifty years old — “but rather see it as one of the sources of my productivity” — and he is only philosophically productive! -— “For even if Schopenhauer's interpretation of music as a special objectification of the world will in this form be rejected, it nevertheless strikes me as hitting the core of the matter in its intention. The truly productive musician is closer to the world spirit in his revelations than other mortals. Whoever among these “others” claims to understand the metaphysical language of music feels it is his most responsible duty to translate the meaning he has heard into the conceptual means of communication familiar to his fellow human beings.”
If religion is understood as a spiritual possession that gives its owner confidence in the world, moral strength, and inner stability, then German music has been religion to me for a generation, during an agnostic, metaphysics- and faithless time, from the day I finally renounced Catholic dogma (in 1880) until those weeks (in the spring of 1911) when the outlines of the metaphysical doctrine presented here became clear to me."
And this metaphysical doctrine proceeds from the paradox of reversion, from the impossibility of reversing ideas.
"Yes, German music is still religion to me today in the sense that even if all the arguments of this work were refuted, I would not fall into despair, but would remain convinced, with the confidence in the world from which this work grew, that I had taken the essentially right path, convinced because German music exists. For a world that has produced such things must be good and trustworthy in its innermost being. i
The music of the Mass in B minor, the music for the stone guest, the third, fifth, seventh, and ninth symphonies, the music of Tristan, the Ring, Parsifal—this music cannot be refuted, for it is reality, gushing life. Thanks to its creators! Hail to all who are called to quench their thirst for the eternal from its miraculous source! The best I have ever been able to create, and what I consider the best, is only a poor reward for the abundance I have received from there—from music.
And I am convinced, my dear friends, that this particular way of confronting the spiritual world, as a philosopher does, can only be found in a mind that has the same relationship to music in this materialistic age as Ehrenfels has. For what goes on in the human soul, even if it appears to belong to the most diverse areas, is deeply interconnected. Here I wanted to give you an example of how differently a believer, not merely a listener, but a believer in the modern musical element, must let his soul be moved by materialistic habits of thought than someone who does not stand as such a believer in the musical element. Only by investigating the mysterious connections in the human soul, which bring so much harmony and disharmony into human life, can we gradually approach the mystery of life and of human beings.