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Man and the World of Stars
GA 219
The Spiritual Communion of Mankind

31 December 1922, Dornach

V. Spiritual Knowledge is a True Communion, the Beginning of a Cosmic Cult Suitable for Men of the Present Age

The fire which destroyed the First Goetheanum was discovered one hour after this lecture had finished.

The day before yesterday I spoke of how the cycle of the year can also be found in man. I pointed out that the forces of Nature around us group themselves into a sort of time-organism which we call the cycle of a year, so that we can see, during the course of a year, the interaction and cooperation of occurrences which otherwise appear like isolated processes and facts in Nature.

Now the essential difference between this Nature-cycle and its image in man is that events which take place successively in a particular region of the Earth, take place concurrently in man. Man, it is true, taken as a whole, resembles the Earth-globe taken as a whole, inasmuch as when it is Winter in one hemisphere it is Summer in the other, and so forth. In the case of the Earth, however, if we take the Winter influences as they work in one region and the simultaneous Summer influences working in another region, the two flow away from one another and neither is disturbed or weakened in its operation by the other. But now consider how it is with man. When he is asleep, his physical and etheric bodies are in a kind of Summer condition—a budding and sprouting life. Spiritual sight shows us this budding and sprouting Summer condition of man's physical and etheric bodies during sleep, when the Ego and astral body are separated from them. We can say that while man is asleep, there is a kind of successive Spring and Summer condition in the physical and etheric organism which he has left behind. At the same time the Ego and astral body, which still co-operate in supporting the human organism as a whole, are in a sort of Winter condition. Thus here again there are simultaneous Summer and Winter conditions, but in man they are not turned away from one another; on the contrary, they work into one another. And it is the same in our waking life. As long as man is awake, his physical and etheric bodies are in a kind of Autumn and Winter condition. Their organic life is waning, so to speak. On the other hand, the Ego and the astral body, stirred by external impressions and by the thoughts to which these impressions give rise in man, are in full Summer or full Spring conditions. So that once more we find inner Spring, inner Summer and inner Winter working together in man, not turning away from one another, but irradiating each other.

This is what actually takes place, as disclosed by the researches of Spiritual Science. If we wished to compare the entire Earth with man in respect to Winter and Summer, we should have to turn the Summer in the one hemisphere right round and superimpose it on the Winter in the other hemisphere. Were this possible we should have actually what may be described as Summer conditions cancelling Winter conditions, and Winter conditions cancelling Summer conditions—producing a kind of equilibrium. Now this is an important fact, not yet realized by external science, which in consequence is bound to misunderstand the essential nature of man. For in man, Summer and Winter—if I may allow myself the expression, for it really corresponds to what actually takes place—cancel one another.

It is true that man bears surrounding Nature in himself, but its activities cancel one another and a condition sets in which actually brings the activities of Nature to a state of rest. Even as in a balance that has weights in either scale, the pointer will come to rest at a certain spot and will at that spot be affected neither by the weight to the right nor by the weight to the left, but there will be equilibrium in respect to the forces which otherwise affect the beam, so there is in man a counterpoise resulting from opposing natural forces.

Anyone who studies what I said very briefly in my book Riddles of the Soul, about man as a threefold being—studying it really carefully, as people are not yet accustomed to do—will find that what I am now going to say is true. Man is membered into an organism of nerves and senses, a rhythmic organism, and an organism of trunk, limbs and metabolism. These three organisms work together and into one another. We may say that the organism of nerves and senses has its principal activity in the head. But the whole of man is head, after a fashion, functionally. And the same may be said of the other systems. If we take the two outer organisms, that of the nerves and senses and that of the trunk, limbs and metabolic activities, we find an actual opposition between them which is very plainly visible to a spiritual-scientific anatomy and physiology. Say, for example, we are walking. There is motion in our limb-organism, movement in space. To this motion there corresponds in a certain portion of our nerves and senses organism, our head organism, a kind of rest, proportional to the amount of activity or movement in our limb organism. Please try to understand this correctly. I said: a proportional amount of rest. Rest is generally thought of as absolute. A person who is seated, is seated, and people do not notice the degree of intensity with which he sits! This is permissible in ordinary life, where there is no need to make such fine distinctions. But it is not permissible in dealing with the organism of nerves and senses. If we run fast, if our limb organism moves fast, then in our nerves and senses organism there is a stronger desire to be at rest than if we were sauntering along slowly. And everything that happens in our limb organism—or indeed in our metabolic organism, when, for example, the digestive fluids are being kept active by intestinal movements—produces a tendency to rest in our nerves and senses organism. The fact comes to expression externally, as we know.

The head, the principal seat of the nerves and senses organism, is a lazybones compared with the limb organism. It behaves much like a man who sits in a cab and lets himself be drawn along by the horse. The man is at rest; and so does our head sit quietly on the rest of our organism. The head is not even interested if, for instance, I wave my arms! When I wave my left arm, a tendency to rest is set up in the right half of my head. And to this tendency to rest is to be ascribed our ability to accompany our movements with thoughts and ideas. It is quite a mistaken notion of materialistic philosophy that ideas originate from movements in the nerves. On the contrary, if they are ideas about motion in space, they are caused by tendencies to rest in the nervous system. The nervous system quiets down; and because it becomes quiet and abates its vital activities, thoughts find their way into this state of rest and become real for us. Anyone who can look at man with the vision of Spiritual Science and see what happens when he thinks and when ideas occur to him, can never be a materialist, for he knows that in the very same measure that thoughts, in their nature as soul-and spirit substance, become active and busy—in the same measure do the nerves grow quiet, lose their vitality and energy and even become numb. The nervous system must cease its material activities before it can make room for the soul-and-spirit element of thought. This will help to show us why we have materialism at all. Materialism dates from the time when science no longer understood matter. For material science is characterized by a total inability to conceive the nature of material occurrences, which it therefore endows with a number of non-existent attributes!

So you see there are opposite conditions in man, tending towards equilibrium. Just as there are present at Midsummer natural forces and activities that are directly opposed to those of the depth of Winter, so do we find opposing forces in the human organism, which however hold each other in balance. Yet we shall not think quite correctly about these opposing forces which balance one another until we divide man once more by separating his middle system, the rhythmic system, into two halves, a rhythm of the breath and a rhythm of the blood-circulation—even this discrimination is not absolutely exact, but it is near enough for our purpose—and speak of an upper and lower rhythmic system. Between the upper and lower halves is that part of man which, because it is influenced and permeated from above and below by opposite natural forces, strives most energetically to maintain equilibrium. So that man is divided as it were into two halves, an upper and a lower. The upper half embraces the nerves and senses system which extends, of course, over the whole body. The state of things therefore which I have to picture, is on the one hand a nerves and senses system with a breathing system belonging to it, and on the other hand a trunk, limbs and metabolic system with a circulatory system of the blood belonging to it. These two main systems work in opposite directions and cancel one another.

The organ in man in which the adjustment takes place, in which there is a continual struggle upwards and downwards to maintain equilibrium, is the human heart—which is far from being a pump, as modern physiology would have it, for the purpose of pumping blood through the body! It is, on the contrary, the organ which keeps the upper and lower systems in equilibrium. Therefore even in man's outer physical organism we find an expression of the spiritual events taking place within him, when we observe how Summer and W inter conditions are incessantly offsetting one another within him.

On Earth, Winter can prevail in one region precisely because Summer does not occur at the same time. Otherwise the Summer would balance the Winter, that is to say, there would be neither Winter nor Summer but only equilibrium. This is the real state of things in man. Man is a part of Nature, but since the natural forces oppose each other in his organism they cancel one another and it is as though he were a part of Nature no longer. But for that very reason, man is a free being. Natural laws cannot be applied to him, for in him there is not one set of natural laws, but two, working against one another, and cancelling each other out. And in this realm where natural forces cancel one another are to be found the soul and spirit of man, unaffected by the working of Nature and only to be recognized in their obedience to the laws of soul and spirit.

From this you can see what a fundamental change of method is necessary when we come to the observation of man, and why a mere application of the external laws of Nature, which are orientated in one direction only, is of no use at all.

But now that we have set before us the true nature of man, let us see what results follow. We have seen that man cannot be understood unless he is regarded as bearing within him, as it were, a piece of Nature, in such a manner that the counteracting natural forces cancel one another; and if we examine this piece of Nature in man with the eyes of Spiritual Science, we find it to be penetrated as to the physical and etheric bodies during sleep by mineral and vegetable modes of activity, which are seen to be in the Summer condition. If we are now able to observe in the right way this budding, sprouting life, we may learn to understand its real significance.

When does this budding and sprouting take place? When the Ego and astral body are not present, when they are away during sleep. And whence comes this budding and sprouting process? That is precisely what spiritual vision shows us. Let us picture man asleep. His physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed. Spiritual vision sees them as soil, as mineral matter, out of which plant life is sprouting. It is a different form of plant life, of course, from the one we see around us, but recognizable as such by spiritual sight. Above gleam the Ego and astral body like a flame, unable to approach the physical and etheric. Sleeping man therefore is a sort of budding, sprouting plot of ground, with a gleaming Ego and astral body belonging to it, but detached.

And when man is awake? I must describe this state as follows. The mineral and vegetable portions are seen to be withering and collapsing, while the Ego and astral body gleam down into them, and as it were, burn them up. This is waking man, with the mineral matter crumbling within him. The mineral element of man crumbles during his waking hours. There is a sort of plant-like activity which, although quite different in appearance, gives a general and universal impression of autumn foliage, of drooping, withering leaves which are dying and vanishing; and all through this fading substance, big and little flames are gleaming and glowing. These big and little flames are the astral body and the Ego which are now living in the physical and etheric bodies. And then the question arises: What happens to these gleaming and glowing flames during sleep, when they are separated from the physical and etheric bodies?

When this problem is attacked by the methods of occult science we find the solution to be a consequence you could yourselves draw from a comparison of various descriptions that I have given from time to time. The power which drives away the flame and gleam of the Ego and astral body, and which is then actively at work in the budding and sprouting vegetative life of the summer-like, sleeping physical body, and also in its mineral element, causing even that too to evolve a kind of life, so that in the course of its infinitesimal subdividing, it looks like a mass of melting atoms, a continuous mobile mass, everywhere active, fluid-mineral and yet airlike, at all points permeated by sprouting life—what is this inner power? It is the reverberating wave of our life before birth, whose pulsations beat upon our physical and etheric bodies during sleep. When we are awake during earthly life we still the pulsating vibrations. So long as the flame and gleam of the Ego and astral body are united with the physical and etheric bodies, we annul those impulses which spring from an existence preceding our earthly life and which we experience during sleep, we bring them to quiescence. And now we learn for the first time, from an inspection of ourselves, how to regard external Nature in the right way. For all natural laws and energies affecting external vegetable and mineral Nature resemble that which is mineral and vegetable in ourselves, permeated with sprouting life, during sleep. And so this means that as our sleeping physical and etheric bodies point to our own past, to a spiritual life in which we lived before birth, so does all external Nature that is vegetable or mineral point to a past. As a matter of fact, if we are to comprehend aright the natural laws and forces of our external environment, exclusive of the animal element and physical man, we must recognize that they point to the Earth's past, to the dying-away of the Earth. And the thoughts we entertain about external Nature are really directed to the dying element in Earth existence.

Now if this decaying Earth-nature is to be brought to life so that it can receive impulses for the future, this can come about in no other way than it does in man, that is to say, by the insertion of soul and spirit into mineral and vegetable. In the case of the animals, the soul element enters in, and then with man, spirit enters in.

Looked at in this way, the whole world may be said to be divided into two parts. When we look out upon external Nature, in so far as this is mineral and vegetable—and these constitute the principal part of it—we can compare it only with our sleeping physical and etheric organism. When we consider external physical activities, we must admit that all of them depend upon the physical activities in mineral and vegetable matter. Consider the process of nourishment. It begins with the taking in of mineral and vegetable matter. The animal takes it a step further in preparing it as food for man. But all external Nature depends, so far as its physical and etheric activities are concerned, on such an order of things as we find in our sleeping physical and etheric organism. Now in man the Ego and astral organism which we bear within us, and which, during our waking moments while our physical and etheric organism is in its Winter sleep, is in a condition of Summer, being stimulated by the outer senses and the thoughts that form themselves—this Ego and astral organism balances in waking hours the Winter condition of the physical and etheric bodies.

And when we come to apply the methods of Spiritual Science to the cycle of the year, we find in it too a spiritual Summer condition belonging to its Winter and a spiritual Winter condition belonging to its Summer. These conditions do not, however, balance one another as they do in man. On the contrary, they express themselves in opposite hemispheres, so that on the Earth, physical Winter is strengthened by the Winter of the soul and spirit, and physical Summer by spiritual Summer. Nevertheless these occurrences point to the fact that all surrounding Nature bears within it its past and its future, even as man does.

We have actually the present only in waking hours in our physical body in respect to its activities and laws. For during the sleep of our physical and etheric bodies we experience the inworking of a past, a past moreover that was spent in the spiritual world. We find the same thing in the vegetable and mineral worlds as we see them before us and experience their effects upon us. They too are a result of past existence. And they only become present through the Earth being permeated with soul and spirit even as man is. And in the present is contained the germ of the future. But if it is true—and the description I have given you is true—that our physical and etheric organism is an expression of the past precisely when it is independent of the activities of the soul and spirit, then in order to find that which works over into the future we must look to our Ego and astral body; and for the Earth too we must seek the future in that which is spiritual.

Man has evolved to a point when, by help of forces which of course are quite elemental, he has brought the Ego and astral body into companionship with his physical and etheric bodies. The mineral and vegetable world has not yet accomplished this. The Earth's ego and astral body surround the Earth with soul and spirit but do not permeate her mineral and vegetable activities. The mineral nature of the Earth, as observed by us, shows itself unable to let soul and spirit enter into it, and able only to let them surround it with light. The vegetable nature shows itself also unable to admit soul, but in a certain way the upper parts of the plant may be said to be touched with soul and spirit. Spiritual Science gives us the following picture of a plant. If I draw it with the root below, the stem in the middle and the blossom above, then I have to represent it as in contact with the astral world through its blossom. The astral world does not penetrate the plant; it merely touches it, and this touching is the origin of the blossom. The astral substance surrounding the Earth touches the uppermost portion of the plant, and the flower appears. I have often spoken of this in an analogy (which must of course be received with proper delicacy), saying that the flowering of the plant is the kiss exchanged between the Sun's light and the plant. It is an astral influence in which there is no more than a ‘touching.’

So that when we look into surrounding Nature, we do not see in the mineral and vegetable kingdoms exactly what we see in man. In ourselves as man we behold a mineral nature, a plant nature, an astral nature and an Ego nature, all belonging to one another. (We will leave the animals out for the time being and speak of them on some future occasion.) But we have to see in the mineral and vegetable world themselves that on which physical activity essentially depends. These worlds show themselves, in external Nature, altogether lacking in astral thought, as well as in self-conscious spiritual intelligence which is the product of the Ego. The latter are not to be found in the world outside, neither in the mineral nor in the plant. For mineral and plant are fundamentally results of the past.

If we observe the Earth's crust and its vegetation aright, we shall look upon all the life of the Earth and say: You crystals, you mountains, you budding and sprouting plants, I see in you monuments of a living, creative past which is now in process of dying. But in man himself, if we are able to have the right insight into this dying element that draws its energy from pre-earthly existence and exhausts itself and dies away in the physical and etheric bodies—in man we see this physical and etheric organism permeated by an astral body and Ego throwing light across into the future and able to unfold freely, on a plane of balanced natural energies, a life of thought and ideation. It may be said that we see in man past and future side by side. In Nature on the other hand, so far as she is mineral or vegetable, we see only the past. That element which already functions as future during man's present, is the element that confers freedom upon him; and this freedom is not to be found in external Nature. If external Nature were doomed to remain just what her mineral and vegetable kingdoms make her, she would be doomed to die, in the same way that the mere physical and etheric organism of man perishes. Man's physical and etheric organisms die, but man does not, because the nature of the astral and Ego within him carries within it, not death but an arising, a coming into being.

If therefore external Nature is not to perish, she must be given that which man has through his astral body and his Ego. This means that as man through his astral body and his Ego has self-conscious ideas, he must, in order to ensure a future to the Earth, insert into the Earth too, the supersensible and invisible that he has within himself. Even as man must derive his reincarnation in another earth-life from that in him which is supersensible and invisible, since his dying physical and etheric bodies are powerless to confer it, so can no future arise for the Earth from the mineral and vegetable globe that surrounds us. Only when we place into the Earth that which she has not herself, only then can an Earth of the Future arise. And what is not there of itself on the Earth is principally the active thoughts of man, as they live and weave in his own Nature-organism, which holds always a balance and is on this account self-dependent. If he brings these independent thoughts to a real existence, he confers a future on the Earth. But he must first have them. Thoughts that we make in our ordinary knowledge of Nature—thoughts about that which is dying away, are mere reflections—not realities. But thoughts we receive from spiritual research are quickened in Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. If we accept them they become forms having independent existence in the life of the Earth.

Concerning these creative thoughts, I once said in my book entitled A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, that such thinking represents the spiritual form of communion among mankind. For as long as man gives himself up to his mirror-thoughts about external Nature, he does nothing but repeat the past. He lives in corpses of the Divine. When he himself brings life into his thoughts, then, giving and receiving communion through his own being, he allies himself with the element of Divine Spirit which permeates the world and assures its future.

Spiritual knowledge is thus a veritable communion, the beginning of a cosmic ritual that is right and fitting for the man of today, who is then able to grow because he begins to realize how he permeates his own physical and etheric organism with his astral body and Ego, and how, as he quickens the spirit in himself, he charms it also into the dead and dying matter that surrounds him. And a new experience is then his.

When he looks upon his own organism in its solid condition, he feels that it links him to the starry universe. In so far as the starry universe is a being at rest, maintaining, e.g. in the signs of the Zodiac a position at rest in relation to the Earth, man is connected in his physical organism with these constellations in space. But by allowing his powers of soul and spirit to pour into this ‘form picture’ in space, he himself changes the world.

Man is also traversed in like manner by streams of fluid. The etheric organism lives in the fluids and juices of the body. It is the etheric body that causes the blood to circulate and that brings into movement the other fluids and juices in man. Through this etheric organism he is brought into touch, if I may so express it, with the deeds of the stars, with the movements of the planets. Just as the resting pictures in the heaven of the fixed stars act upon, or stand in relation to, the solid structure of the human organism, so do the planetary movements of the system to which we belong stand in relation to the fluids in man.

But as the world presents itself to our immediate vision, it is a dead world. Man transforms it by means of his own spirit, when he shares his spirit with the world, by quickening his thoughts to Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition, thus fulfilling the spiritual Communion of mankind. It is important that man should become conscious of this. The more lively and alert this consciousness becomes, the more easily does man find the way to this spiritual Communion. I should like to give you today some words that may serve as a foundation for this consciousness, words which, when allowed to act rightly upon the soul—and this means, they must be made to live over and over again in the soul until the soul experiences to the full their moving, living meaning—will then bring something into existence in the human soul which transforms the dead environment with which man is connected into a living one, and quickens the past to life in order that from out of its death may arise the life of the future. This can only happen when man becomes aware of his connection with the Cosmos in the following way:

In Earth-activity—(I am imagining the earthly matter which I take into myself with that which fashions the solid structure of my organism.)

In Earth-activity draws near to me,
Given to me in substance-imaged form,
The Heavenly Being of the Stars.

For it is a fact that when we take something that serves us as food and look upon its form, then we find in it a copy of the constellations of the fixed stars. We take it into ourselves. With the substance of the Earth that is contained in Earth-activity, we take into us the being of the stars, the being of the heavens. But we must be conscious that we as human beings, by a deliberate, loving act of human will, transform that which has become matter, back again into spirit. In this manner we perform a real act of trans-substantiation. We become aware of our own part in the world and so the spiritual thought-life is quickened within us.

In Earth-activity draws near to me,
Given to me in substance-imaged form,
The Heavenly Being of the Stars.
In Willing I see them transformed with Love!

And when we think of that which we take into ourselves to permeate the fluid part of our organism, the circulation of the blood and juices, then that, in so far as it originates on Earth, is a copy not of the heavens or of the stars but of the deeds of the stars, that is to say, the movements of the planets. And I can become conscious how I spiritualize that, if I stand rightly in the world; and I can speak the following formula:

In Watery life stream into me,
Forming me through with power of substance-force,
The Heavenly Deeds of the Stars—

that is to say, the deeds of the planetary movements. And now:

In Feeling I see them transformed with Wisdom!

While I can see how in will the being of the stars changes lovingly into the spiritual content of the future, I can also see how in feeling a wise change takes place when I receive into me, in what permeates my fluid organism, a copy of heavenly deeds. Man can experience in this way in his will and in his feeling how he is placed into the world. Surrendering himself to the supreme direction of the universe that is all around him, he can carry out in living consciousness the act of trans-substantiation in the great temple of the Cosmos—standing within it as one who is celebrating a sacrifice in a purely spiritual way.

What would otherwise be mere abstract knowledge achieves a relationship of will and feeling to the world. The world becomes the Temple, the House of God. When man as knowing man summons up also powers of will and feeling, he becomes a sacrificing being. His fundamental relationship to the world rises from knowledge into cosmic ritual.

The first beginning of what must come to pass if Anthroposophy is to fulfil its mission in the world is that man's whole relationship to the world must be recognized to be one of cosmic ritual or cult.

I have wished to say this to you, as it were, as a beginning. Next Friday I will speak further about the nature of this ritual in its relation to a real knowledge of Nature. I appointed this lecture for this particular day with a special end in view. For today, when that being of Time which is given in the cycle of the year is brought before our souls, when this year, at any rate for outward perception and experience, comes to an end, we should realize the nature of our relationship to Time—how it rests with us out of the past to form and shape the future, to work actively for the future, in order to create in the spirit.

One of the poems recited this afternoon began with these words: “Every year finds new graves!” That is profoundly true. But equally true is it that every year finds new cradles. As this year touches the past, so does it also touch the future. And today it is man's first obligation to grasp this future, to reflect that the budding and sprouting life in the external world contains within it the seeds of death, and that we must seek for life with our own power of action. Every New Year is a symbol of this truth. If we see on the one hand the graves, let us behold on the other hand, self-renewing life waiting to receive the seed of the future into itself.

It is our great task this day to observe how in the world around us it is New Year's Eve—all is passing and disappearing and dying away; but how in the hearts of men who are conscious of their real manhood, of their divine humanity, there must be the mood of New Year, the mood of the beginning of a new era, of the uprising of new life. Let us not merely turn with a superficial festiveness from a symbolical New Year's Eve to a symbolical New Year's Day; but let us so turn our thoughts that they may indeed grow powerful and creative, as evolution requires them to be. Let us turn our thoughts away from the dying phenomena which confront us everywhere in modern civilization, like old graves, away from New Year's Eve to New Year's Day, to the day of the Cosmic New Year. But that day will never dawn till man himself decides to bring it to pass.

In Earth-activity draws near to me,
Given to me in substance-imaged form,
The Heavenly Being of the Stars—
In WILLING I see them transformed with love!

In Watery life stream into me,
Forming me through with power of substance-force,
The Heavenly Deeds of the Stars—
In FEELING I see them transformed with Wisdom.

Zwölfter Vortrag

Ich habe vorgestern davon gesprochen, wie man den Jahreskreislauf _ auch im Menschen finden kann. Ich habe aufmerksam darauf gemacht, wie die Naturwirkungen, die um uns herum sind, sich gewissermaßen in einem zeitlichen Organismus während eines Jahreskreislaufes abspielen, so daß man eine Art Zusammenwirken, Ineinanderwirken desjenigen schauen kann, was man sonst als einzelne Naturvorgänge, Naturtatsachen sich im Laufe eines Jahres abspielen sieht. Nun ist aber zwischen diesem Naturkreislaufe und seiner Abspiegelung im Menschen der wesentliche Unterschied, daß dasjenige, was für ein gewisses Erdengebiet sich nacheinander abspielt, im Menschen gleichzeitig ist. Zwar ist der Mensch als Ganzes dem Erdenganzen auch dadurch gleich, daß, wenn auf der einen Erdenhälfte Sommer ist, auf der andern Winter ist und so weiter. Aber bei der Erde ist es so, daß die entsprechenden Winterwirkungen einer Gegend und die Sommerwirkungen einer andern Gegend gewissermaßen dem weiten Weltenraume gegenüber voneinander getrennt stehen, so daß, wenn wir die Winterwirkungen einer Gegend, die Sommerwirkungen einer andern Gegend in ihrer Gleichzeitigkeit nehmen, sie auseinanderfließen, sich also gegenseitig in ihrem Dasein nicht irgendwie abschwächen, nicht stören.

Beim Menschen ist es aber so, daß, wenn er schlafend ist, sein physischer Leib und auch sein Ätherleib in einer Art Sommerzustand, in einem sprießenden, sprossenden Leben sind. Das geistige Schauen zeigt uns für den Schlaf, wenn das Ich und der astralische Leib getrennt sind vom physischen und vom Ätherleibe, diesen sprießenden, sprossenden Sommerzustand des physischen und Ätherleibes. Man kann schon sagen, während der Mensch schläft, ist in seinem zurückgelassenen physischen und Ätherorganismus aufeinanderfolgend eine Art Frühlings- und Sommerzustand. Aber sein nun doch mit diesem gesamten Menschenorganismus in Wechselwirkung stehender astralischer Leib und sein Ich sind zu derselben Zeit in einer Art Winterzustand. So daß hier gleichzeitig Sommer- und Winterzustand sind, daß sie aber ineinanderwirken, nicht also voneinander abgewendet sind, sondern ineinanderwirken. Ebenso ist es aber auch beim menschlichen Wachzustand. Wenn der Mensch wacht, sind sein physischer und sein ätherischer Leib in einer Art Herbst- und Winterzustand. Dagegen sind, angeregt durch die Eindrücke der Außenwelt, angeregt durch die Gedanken, die sich der Mensch über diese Außenwelt macht, der astralische Leib und die Ich-Organisation in einem vollen Sommer- oder vollen Frühlingszustand. Wiederum wirken da der innere Frühling, der innere Sommer und der innere Winter im Menschen zusammen, sind nicht voneinander abgewendet, sondern durchstrahlen sich.

Das ergibt sich tatsächlich der geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschung, daß gewissermaßen, wenn wir die Gesamterde voll mit dem Menschen vergleichen wollten mit Bezug auf die Vorgänge des Winters und des Sommers, wir die einander entgegengesetzten Erdenhälften umwenden müßten. Beim Menschen ist es so, wie wenn wir bei der Erde den Sommer der einen Hälfte durch Umwendung der Erde unmittelbar auffallen lassen würden auf den Winter der andern Hälfte. Dadurch aber würde tatsächlich etwas entstehen, was damit charakterisiert werden kann, daß man sagt: Die Winterwirkungen heben die Sommerwirkungen, die Sommerwirkungen die Winterwirkungen zu einer Art von Gleichgewichtszustand auf. Das ist ein wichtiges Ergebnis, zu dem bis heute die äußere Wissenschaft nicht gekommen ist und wodurch sie eigentlich die im Menschen wesende Natur ganz verkennen muß. Im Menschen ist das Naturwirken in der Tat so, daß Winter und Sommer - wenn ich dieser Ausdrücke mich bedienen darf, denn sie beziehen sich wirklich auf ein sie rechtfertigendes Geschehen -, daß Sommer- und Winterzustand einander aufheben.

Der Mensch trägt allerdings die ihn umgebende Natur in sich, aber die Wirkungen heben sich gegenseitig auf, und es tritt ein Zustand ein, der wirklich im Grunde genommen das Naturwirken im Menschen zur Ruhe bringt. Geradeso wie bei einer Waage, wenn sie an beiden Seiten mit Gewichten beschwert wird, in der Mitte des Waagebalkens ein Ruhepunkt ist, auf den weder die rechte noch die linke Kraftentwickelung wirkt, ein Gleichgewichtszustand in bezug auf das ist, was sonst auf den Waagebalken herunterziehend wirkt, so ist tatsächlich im Menschen eine Ausgeglichenheit entgegengesetzter Naturwirkungen.

Wer den dreigliedrigen Menschen betrachtet, so wie ich ihn im Anhange zu meinem Buche «Von Seelenrätseln» skizziert habe, wirklich richtig betrachtet, wie man es heute noch nicht gewöhnt ist, wird in der Tat folgendes finden. Wir gliedern den Menschen in eine NervenSinnesorganisation, in eine thythmische Organisation und in eine Stoffwechsel-Gliedmaßenorganisation. Diese drei Organisationen wirken ineinander. Man kann sagen, die Nerven-Sinnesorganisation wirkt hauptsächlich im Kopfe; aber der ganze Mensch ist in gewisser Beziehung funktionell wieder Kopf. Ebenso ist es mit den andern Systemen, der rhythmischen Organisation, der Gliedmaßen-Stoffwechselorganisation.

Nun können wir schematisch den Menschen etwa in folgender Art darstellen, wenn wir auf seine dreigliedrige Wesenheit Rücksicht nehmen. Wir haben also die Nerven-Sinnesorganisation, die rhythmische Organisation und die Gliedmaßen-Stoffwechselorganisation.

Nun ist in der Tat, wenn wir die beiden äußeren Organisationssysteme des Menschen nehmen, die Nerven-Sinnesorganisation und die Stoffwechsel-Gliedmaßenorganisation, ein Gegensatz zwischen beiden vorhanden, der sich für eine geisteswissenschaftliche Anatomie und Physiologie sehr deutlich zeigt. Wenn wir zum Beispiel gehen, so haben wir in unserem Gliedmaßenorganismus eine Bewegung, die sogar eine Bewegung im Raume ist. Dieser Bewegung entspricht in einem gewissen Teil unserer Nerven-Sinnesorganisation, in einem gewissen Teil unserer Kopforganisation eine Ruhe in demselben Maße, in dem die Gliedmaßenorganisation in Bewegung ist. Ich bitte Sie, den Versuch zu machen, die Sache richtig zu verstehen. Ich habe gesagt «in demselben Maße in Ruhe ist». Ruhe nimmt man gewöhnlich als einen absoluten Begriff. Wer sitzt, der sitzt, und man unterscheidet nicht, ob man mit mehr Intensität sitzt oder mit weniger Intensität. Man hat auch für das gewöhnliche Leben in einer gewissen Beziehung recht damit. Da unterscheiden sich diese Dinge nicht sehr stark voneinander.

Aber mit unserer Nerven-Sinnesorganisation ist es anders. Wenn wir schneller laufen, wenn wir mit unserer Gliedmaßenorganisation schneller laufen, so ist eine gewisse Ruhetendenz in unserer NervenSinnesorganisation, die als Ruhetendenz, als Ruhigbleibenwollen, stärker ist, als wenn wir langsam gehen. Und allem, was mit unserer Gliedmaßenorganisation vor sich geht, auch was mit unserer Stoffwechselorganisation vor sich geht, wenn zum Beispiel die Nahrungssäfte ihren Weg durch die Bewegung der Gedärme machen, entspricht eine Ruhetendenz in unserem Nerven-Sinnesorganismus. Es drückt sich das auch äußerlich aus.

Der Kopf, welcher der hauptsächlichste Sitz des Nerven-Sinnesorganismus ist, ist eigentlich in bezug auf unseren Gliedmaßenorganismus ein Faulpelz. Er benimmt sich ungefähr so, wie einer, der sich bequem in eine Droschke setzt und vom Pferde fahren läßt. Der bleibt ruhig. So ist unser Kopf fortwährend ruhig sitzend auf unserem übrigen Organismus. Es interessiert ihn nicht einmal, wenn ich zum Beispiel mit den Armen fuchtele. Da bewirkt das Fuchteln mit meinem linken Arm eine ruhige Tendenz in meiner rechten Kopfhälfte, wenn ich mit dem rechten Arme fuchtele, bewirkt das eine ruhige Tendenz in meiner linken Kopfhälfte. Und durch diese ruhige Tendenz ist es möglich, daß wir unsere Bewegungen mit Gedanken, mit Vorstellungen begleiten.

Es ist ganz unrichtig, wenn etwa eine materialistische Weltanschauung meint, Vorstellungen beruhen auf Nervenbewegungen. Sie beruhen im Gegenteil, wenn sie Vorstellungen von irgendeiner Bewegung im Raume sind, auf ruhigen Tendenzen des Nervensystems. Das Nervensystem beruhigt sich, und dadurch, daß sich das Nervensystem beruhigt, sich sogar in seiner Lebenstätigkeit abdämpft, dringen in diese Ruhe die Gedanken ein, werden wirklich. Wer am Menschen geisteswissenschaftlich zu beobachten vermag, was sich beim Denken, beim Vorstellen abspielt, der kann unmöglich Materialist werden, weil er weiß, daß in demselben Maße die Gedanken regsam und tätig wirken als geist-seelische Substanz, in dem gerade die Nerven ruhig werden und sogar an Lebensintensität verlieren, sogar abgelähmt werden. Das Nervensystem muß durch Aufhören seiner materiellen Tätigkeit dem Geist-Seelischen der Gedanken erst Platz machen. Gerade an solchen Dingen sehen wit, warum wir einen Materialismus haben. Wir haben einen Materialismus seit der Zeit, wo die . Wissenschaft die Materie nicht kennt. Das ist gerade das Charakteristische der materialistischen Wissenschaft, daß sie keine Ahnung hat von dem Wesen der materiellen Vorgänge und ihnen daher allerlei Dinge andichtet, die nicht da sind.

Da sehen Sie schon, wie entgegengesetzte Zustände, die aber nach einem Gleichgewichte tendieren, im Menschen vorhanden sind. Geradeso wie im Hochsommer entgegengesetzte Naturwirkungen im Verhältnisse zum Tiefwinter vorhanden sind, so verteilen sich auch auf den menschlichen Organismus entgegengesetzte Wirkungen, die aber einander das Gleichgewicht halten. Wir werden aber nur dann richtig über diese einander entgegengesetzten, einander das Gleichgewicht haltenden Wirkungen denken, wenn wir den Menschen noch in folgender Weise gliedern. Wenn wir sein mittleres System, sein rhythmisches System in zwei Teile gliedern, so unterscheiden wir im wesentlichen — es ist nicht ganz genau, aber im wesentlichen - den Atmungsrhythmus und den Blutzirkulationsrhythmus, und dann sprechen wir von einem oberen mittleren rhythmischen System und einem unteren mittleren rhythmischen System. Dann aber ist in der Mitte dieses rhythmischen Systems zwischen dem Oben und Unten diejenige Partie des Menschen, die am meisten zum Gleichgewicht strebt, weil sie von oben und unten in entgegengesetzter Weise von Naturwirkungen durchzogen, beeinflußt, beeindruckt wird.

Will ich daher in meine schematische Zeichnung hier diesen Tatbestand von den entgegengesetzten Naturwirkungen im Menschen einfügen, so muß ich diese schematische Zeichnung in der folgenden Weise (rot) ergänzen: ich habe in dem oberen Teil dieser Achterlinie schematisch umgrenzt die Naturwirkungen, welche in entgegengesetzter Art gerichtet sind als diejenigen Naturwirkungen, die ich umgrenzt habe mit dem unteren Teil der Achterlinie.

So zerfällt der Mensch gewissermaßen in zwei Hälften, in ein Oberes und in ein Unteres. Das Obere umfaßt das Nerven-Sinnessystem, das sich natürlich über den ganzen Menschen ausdehnt. Die Zeichnung ist schematisch. Manchmal muß man hier das «Oben» in der großen Zehe suchen, weil dort auch Nerven-Sinnesorgane sind. Also die Zeichnung ist schematisch, aber Sie werden sich leicht diese schematische Zeichnung auf die Wirklichkeit angewendet denken können. Ich habe also mir vorzustellen, wie auf der einen Seite das Nerven-Sinnessystem und dazugehörig im wesentlichen das Atmungssystem, auf der andern Seite das Blutzirkulationssystem und das Stoffwechsel-Gliedmaßensystem entgegengesetzte Naturwirkungen haben. Die heben sich gegenseitig auf.

Dasjenige Organ im Menschen, in dem der Ausgleich stattfindet, in dem eigentlich von unten nach oben und von oben nach unten fortwährend nach Gleichgewicht gestrebt wird, das ist das menschliche Herz, das nicht etwa im Sinne der heutigen Physiologie eine Pumpe ist, die das Blut durch den Leib pumpt, sondern welches darstellt das Gleichgewichtsorgan für das obere und untere System des Menschen. So daß sich auch im äußeren physischen Organismus des Menschen das, was geistig in ihm bewirkt wird, dadurch ausdrückt, daß immer gleichzeitig in ihm sich Sommer- und Winterwirkungen aufheben.

Auf irgendeinem Erdengebiete kann nur dadurch Winter sein, daß nicht gleichzeitig Sommer ist, sonst würde der Sommer den Winter in einen Gleichgewichtszustand bringen, das heißt, es wäre kein Sommer und kein Winter da, sondern ein Gleichgewichtszustand. So ist es aber wirklich im Menschen. Der Mensch ist in sich ein Stück Natur, aber weil die Naturwirkungen im menschlichen Organismus einander entgegengesetzt gerichtet sind, heben sie sich auf, und der Mensch ist so, wie wenn er gar nicht Natur wäre. Dadurch ist der Mensch aber ein freies Wesen. Man darf auf ihn nicht die Gesetze der Naturnotwendigkeit anwenden, denn es gibt nicht eine Naturnotwendigkeit, sondern zwei einander entgegengesetzt orientierte Naturwirkungen, und die heben sich im Menschen auf. Und in diesem Gebiete sich aufhebender Naturwirkungen ist nun das Geist-Seelische des Menschen, unbeeinflußt von den Naturwirkungen, und muß aus seiner eigenen Gesetzlichkeit heraus erkannt werden. Sie sehen daraus, wie wir zu fundamentaler umfassender Beobachtung gehen müssen, wenn wir den Menschen verstehen wollen, und wie eigentlich die bloße Anwendung der äußeren Naturgesetze, die immer nur nach einer Richtung orientiert sind, auf den Menschen nicht angängig ist.

Nun aber, nachdem wir uns auf der einen Seite die eigentliche menschliche Wesenheit vor die Seele gestellt haben, betrachten wir einmal, was das für eine Konsequenz hat. Man lernt den Menschen erst kennen, wenn man ihn so betrachtet: er trägt ein Stück Natur in sich, so daß sich die entgegengesetzten Naturwirkungen aufheben. Lernt man aber nun dieses Stück Natur durch geisteswissenschaftliche Anschauung kennen, so zeigt es sich für den Schlafzustand des Menschen in bezug auf den physischen und den Ätherleib als in sich durchdrungen von mineralischen und pflanzlichen Wirkungsweisen, die, wenn wir nur auf das hinschauen, was beim schlafenden Menschen im Bette zurückgeblieben ist, den sommerlichen Zustand darstellen. Aber jetzt lernt man dadurch, daß man in der richtigen Weise dieses sprieBende, sprossende Leben betrachten kann, es erst in seiner wahren Bedeutung kennen. Wann sprießt es, wann sproßt es? Wenn das Ich und der astralische Leib nicht dabei sind, wenn das Ich und der astralische Leib während des Schlafens draußen sind. Und woher kommt denn das Sprießen und Sprossen? Das zeigt sich gerade durch geisteswissenschaftliche Betrachtung.

Wenn ich Ihnen dies schematisch zeichnen wollte, so müßte ich es in folgender Art tun. Das wäre das Schema des schlafenden Menschen (hell, grün, gelb, rot). Die untere hell-grüne Linie ist der im Bette liegende physische Leib und der Ätherleib, der sich für die geisteswissenschaftliche Anschauung zeigt wie Erdboden, Mineralisches, aus dem heraussprießt das pflanzliche Leben, natürlich in anderer Form, aber erkennbar für die geisteswissenschaftliche Anschauung. Darüber glimmen wie eine Flamme, die sich nicht nähern kann, das Ich und der astralische Leib, dargestellt in der rot-gelben Linie, die darüber ist. Man hat also gewissermaßen, wenn man den Menschen im Schlafe betrachtet, sprießendes, sprossendes Erdenstück im Bette und zu ihm gehörendes, abgesondertes glimmendes Astral-Ichliches.

Wie ist es im Wachen? Nun, da müßte ich das Schema in folgender Weise (hell, rot, grün, gelb) gestalten: welkendes, untenliegendes Mineralisches, Pflanzliches, und gleichsam dieses Mineralische, Pflanzliche verbrennend, in es hineinglimmend, das AstralischIchliche. Da haben wir also den wachenden Menschen mit in sich zerbröckelndem Mineralischen. Es zerbröckelt das Mineralische während des Tagwachens im Menschen. Das vegetabilische Wirken macht gleichsam überall einen solchen Eindruck - wenn es auch ganz anders ausschaut — wie die Bäume im Herbste, wie die niederhängenden, welkenden Pflanzenblätter, alles ersterbend, abnehmend, aber wie von Flammen, von Flämmchen durchglüht und durchglimmt. Diese Flammen und Flämmchen, die das durchglühen und durchglimmen, sind der im physischen Leibe und Ätherleib lebende astralische Leib und das Ich. Und die Frage taucht auf: Ja, wie ist es denn nun eigentlich mit dem flammenden Glimmen während des Schlafes, wo es abgesondert ist im Ich und astralischen Leib von dem physischen und Ätherleibe?

Wenn man dem nun mit geisteswissenschaftlicher Forschung zu Leibe rückt - und das können Sie aus der Zusammenhaltung verschiedener Darstellungen, die ich im Laufe der Zeit gegeben habe, gewissermaßen sich selber als Konsequenz bilden -, so kommt man auf das Folgende. Dasjenige, was da zunächst vor allen Dingen das Flammen und Glimmen des Ich und astralischen Leibes herausstößt und was dann das sprießende, sprossende, vegetabilische Leben des sommerlichen, schlafenden physischen Leibes und dieses in sich auch eine Art Leben entwickelnde Mineralische anregt, was da bewirkt, daß die Bröselchen, möchte ich sagen, die Teilchen, das Atomisierende des Mineralischen im physischen Leibe wiederum so ausschaut, als ob sich die Atome auflösen würden, als ob sich aus dem Ganzen eine kontinuierliche, in sich bewegliche, überall regsame, mineralflüssigluftförmige Masse bildete, die überall von sprossendem Leben durchzogen ist — diese innere Kraft, die das bewirkt, was ist sie? Nun, das, was dadrinnen vibriert, während wir schlafen, im physischen und im Ätherleibe, das ist die noch nachklingende Welle unseres Lebens vom vorirdischen Dasein. Die bringen wir während unseres wachen Erdenlebens zum Stillstand.

Wenn dieses flammende Flimmern des astralischen Leibes und des Ichs eins sind mit dem physischen und Ätherleib, dann bringen wir jene Anregungen, die während des Schlafes aus dem vorirdischen Leben vorhanden sind, zur Ruhe. Und jetzt lernen wir erst aus dem, was wir an uns selber lernen, in richtiger Weise auf die äußere Natur hinzuschauen, lernen hinzuschauen auf diese äußere Natur so, daß wir uns sagen: Alles, was in der äußeren Natur regsam ist an Naturgesetzen, an Naturkräften im mineralischen und im vegetabilischen Leben, das ist gleich demjenigen, was in uns während des Schlafes mineralisches und vegetabilisches Leben ist, sommerliches, sprießendes, sprossendes Leben. -— Das heißt, gerade so, wie wir, wenn wir unseren schlafenden physischen und Ätherleib betrachten, auf unsere Vergangenheit gewiesen werden, auf das Geistleben, das wir im vorirdischen Dasein gehabt haben, so weist uns die äußere Natur, insofern sie mineralisch und vegetabilisch ist, hin auf die Vergangenheit.

Wenn wir richtig verstehen wollen die wirksamen Naturkräfte und Naturgesetze in der uns umgebenden Natur, mit Ausnahme des Tierischen und des Physisch-Menschlichen, dann müssen wir uns sagen: In den Naturgesetzen und Naturkräften werden wir hingewiesen auf die Vergangenheit der Erde, auf das Ersterben der Erde. - Wenn wir uns also Gedanken über die äußere Natur machen, so sind diese Gedanken gewidmet dem ersterbenden Elemente des Erdendaseins. Soll dieses ersterbende Erdendasein wiederum belebt werden, Zukunftsimpulse in sich haben, dann kann es nur auf dieselbe Weise geschehen, wie es beim Menschen geschieht, dadurch, daß sich in das Mineralische und Vegetabilische Seelisches und Geistiges hineinschieben. Seelisches schiebt sich bei den Tieren hinein, Geistiges dann beim Menschen.

Dadurch aber teilt sich uns das gesamte Weltenwesen eigentlich in zwei Glieder. Wir schauen in die äußere Natur hinaus, und insofern sie - und das ist die Hauptsache in der äußeren Natur — mineralischer und pflanzlicher Art ist, dürfen wir sie nur vergleichen mit unserem schlafenden physischen und ätherischen Organismus. Wenn wir auf die äußeren physischen Wirkungen sehen, so müssen wir uns auch sagen: Von diesen Wirkungen der äußeren Natur im Mineralischen und Vegetabilischen hängen auch alle andern physischen Wirkungen ab. - Denn wenn Sie die physischen Wirkungen ansehen, die sich an die Ernährung der Wesen knüpfen, so müssen Sie sagen: Es beginnt die Ernährung mit der Aufnahme der mineralischen und pflanzlichen Stoffe. Das Tier verarbeitet sie dann weiter mit der Ernährung für den Menschen. — Aber zunächst hängt alles, was äußere Natur ist, in ihren äußeren physischen und auch ätherischen Wirkungen von solcher Wesenheit ab, die wir in unserem schlafenden physischen und ätherischen Organismus finden. Was wir aber in uns tragen als das Ich und den astralischen Organismus, was zum Beispiel während des Wachzustandes — wo der physische und ätherische Organismus in ihrem Winterschlafe sind, wenn ich mich so ausdrücken darf, es ist natürlich paradox zu der Wirklichkeit, wie Sie verspüren - in dem Sommerzustand ist, angeregt durch die äußeren Sinneswirkungen und durch die sich bildenden Gedanken, das bildet mit dem Winterzustand des physischen und ätherischen Leibes ein Gleichgewicht.

Aber wer nun geisteswissenschaftlich zu Werke geht, findet, wenn auch das, was er beim Menschen in Gleichzeitigkeit zu denken hat, für den Zeitenjahreslauf getrennt ist, immer doch zu dem Winterzustand der Erde einen geistigen Sommerzustand dazugehörig, zu dem Sommerzustand einen geistigen Winterzustand. Nur daß diese auf der Erde nicht einen Gleichgewichtszustand bilden, sondern sich an entgegengesetzten Erdenhälften geltend machen, so daß bei der Erde es so ist, daß der physische Winterzustand gestärkt wird durch den seelisch-geistigen Winterzustand, der physische Sommerzustand verstärkt wird durch den geistigen Sommerzustand. Damit aber ist darauf hingedeutet, daß so, wie der Mensch seine Vergangenheit und seine Gegenwart in sich trägt, auch die ganze uns umgebende Natur ihre Vergangenheit und ihre Gegenwart in sich trägt.

Wir haben Gegenwart eigentlich nur in unserem physischen Leibe in bezug auf die ihn durchdringende Tätigkeit und Gesetzmäßigkeit, wenn wir wachen. Wir haben das Hereinwirken der Vergangenheit, und zwar einer Vergangenheit, die im Geistigen zugebracht worden ist, für den physischen und ätherischen Organismus im Schlafzustand. Das Entsprechende finden wir auch in der uns vorliegenden, auf uns wirkenden mineralischen und vegetabilischen Natur: sie sind im Grunde genommen die Ergebnisse vergangenen Daseins, und Gegenwart werden sie nur dadurch, daß die Erde ebenso umhüllt wird von Geistig-Seelischem, wie der Mensch durchdrungen wird von GeistigSeelischem. Und in der Gegenwatt ist bereits der Keim zur Zukunft.

Aber wenn es wahr ist - und es ist wahr, was ich Ihnen dargestellt habe -, daß wir im physischen und im ätherischen Organismus, gerade wenn sie unabhängig von geistig-seelischer Tätigkeit sind, Wirkungen der Vergangenheit in uns haben, dann dürfen wir das Hinüberwirken in die Zukunft nur in unserem Ich und in unserem astralischen Leibe suchen, dürfen aber auch für die Erde die Zukunft nur im Geistigen suchen.

Der Mensch ist heute so weit, daß er durch selbstverständliche elementarische Gewalten das Ich und den astralischen Leib hinzugesellt hat zum physischen und ätherischen Organismus. Die mineralische und pflanzliche Erdenwelt hat das noch nicht hinzugesellt. Sie umhüllen geistig und seelisch die Erde, aber sie durchdringen nicht die mineralische und vegetabilische Wirkungsweise der Erde. Die mineralische Wesenheit der Erde zeigt sich, so wie wit sie vor uns haben, wie etwas, das den Geist und die Seele nicht in sich hineinläßt, sondern sich nur umglimmen und umhüllen läßt von Geist und Seele.

Die pflanzliche Natur zeigt sich so, daß sie das Seelische auch nicht in sich hineinläßt, aber sich in ihren obersten Partien in gewisser Weise, ich möchte sagen, berührt mit dem Geistig-Seelischen. Denn für die geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung zeigt sich bei der Pflanze das Folgende: Wenn ich unten die Wurzel, in der Mitte den Stengel und oben die Blüte der Pflanze habe, so habe ich diese Blüte so anzusehen, daß sich in der Blüte die nach oben strebende Pflanze mit dem Astralischen berührt, das nicht in sie eindringt, aber sie berührt. Dadurch entsteht die Blüte, daß eine Berührung zwischen dem obersten Teil der Pflanze und dem Astralischen, das die Erde umhüllt, eintritt. Ich habe das öfters ausgesprochen in einem Vergleiche, der aber natürlich entsprechend dezent genommen werden muß, daß das Blühen der Pflanze im wesentlichen der Kuß ist, den die Sonne, das Sonnenlicht, mit der Pflanze selber austauscht. Das ist eine Astralwirkung, die aber ein bloßes Berühren ist.

Wenn wir also hinausschauen in die uns umgebende Natur, dann sehen wir nicht unmittelbar in dem Mineralischen, in dem Pflanzlichen dasselbe, was wir in uns als Menschen sehen. In uns als Menschen sehen wir zusammmengehörig eine mineralische Natur, eine pflanzliche Natur, eine astralische Natur, eine Ich-Natur. Die Tiere müssen wir jetzt abrechnen. Wir werden in der Zukunft noch über sie sprechen. Aber das, wovon die physischen Wirkungen im wesentlichen abhängen, müssen wir in der mineralischen und pflanzlichen Welt finden. Die zeigt sich uns, ich möchte sagen, in der äußeren Natur entblößt vom Astralgedanklichen und von dem, was Erlebnis des Ichs ist: dem selbstbewußten Geistsinn. Die sind nicht draußen, nicht im Mineralischen, nicht im Pflanzlichen. Das Mineralische und Pflanzliche sind im Grunde genommen Ergebnisse der Vergangenheit.

Wer richtig den mineralischen Boden, die heraussprießenden Pflanzen auf der Erde betrachtet, muß sich eigentlich gegenüber dem Erdenleben sagen: In euch Kristallformen, in euch Bergesgebilden, in euch sprießenden und sprossenden Pflanzen schaue ich die Denkmäler des einstmals Schaffenden, Lebenschaflenden, das ersterbend ist. Aber im Menschen selber — wenn wir in der richtigen Weise dieses Ersterbende zu gliedern verstehen, dieses aus dem vorirdischen Dasein Hereinkraftende und im physischen und ätherischen Leibe sich Ablähmende, Ersterbende — sehen wir den physischen und ätherischen Organismus von demjenigen durchsetzt, was in die Zukunft hinüberleuchtet von dem astralischen und Ich-Wesen, was als gedanklich vorstellungsgemäßes Leben sich auf der Gleichgewichtslage der Naturwirkungen in freier Weise im Menschen entfaltet.

Wir sehen gewissermaßen im Menschen nebeneinander Vergangenheit und Zukunft. Wenn wir in die Natur hineinschauen, insofern sie mineralisch und vegetabilisch ist, sehen wir bloße Vergangenheit. Dasjenige, was im Menschen schon in der Gegenwart als Zukunft wirkt, das gibt ihm gerade das Wesen der Freiheit. Dieses Wesen der Freiheit ist in der äußeren Natur nicht vorhanden. Wäre die äußere Natur dazu verurteilt, so zu bleiben, wie sie durch ihr mineralisches und pflanzliches Reich ist, so wäre sie auch dazu verurteilt, zu sterben, so wie der bloß physische und ätherische Organismus des Menschen stirbt im Weltenall. Der physische und der ätherische Organismus sterben, der Mensch stirbt nicht, weil die astralische Wesenheit und die Ich-Wesenheit in ihm nicht den Tod, sondern das Werden, das Entstehen in sich tragen.

Soll daher die äußere Natur nicht ersterben, dann muß ihr das gegeben werden, was der Mensch durch seinen astralischen und durch seinen Ich-Leib hat. Das heißt, da er durch seinen astralischen Leib und durch seinen Ich-Leib selbstbewußte Vorstellungen hat, so muß der Mensch, wenn er der sonst ersterbenden Erde die Zukunft sichern will, dasselbe in sie hineinstellen, was in ihm übersinnlich-unsichtbar ist. So wie er erwarten muß von dem, was in ihm übersinnlich und unsichtbar ist, die Wiederverkörperung in einem nächsten Erdendasein, dieses_nicht erwarten kann von seinem absterbenden physischen und ätherischen Leibe, so kann auch nicht von dem, was mineralische und pflanzliche Erdkugel ist und als solche uns umgibt, eine Zukunft der Erde entstehen. Einzig und allein, wenn wir in diese Erde hineinzustellen vermögen etwas, was sie nicht hat, kann eine Zukunfterde entstehen. Das, was nicht von selbst da ist auf der Erde, das sind die wirksamen Gedanken des Menschen, die in seinem durch den Gleichgewichtszustand von der äußeren Natur unabhängigen Organismus leben und weben. Verwirklicht er diese selbständigen Gedanken, dann gibt er der Erde Zukunft. Aber dazu muß er sie erst selber haben, diese selbständigen Gedanken, denn alle Gedanken, wie wir uns machen über das, was ersterbend in der gewöhnlichen Naturerkenntnis ist, sind Spiegelgedanken, sind keine Wirklichkeiten. Die Gedanken, die wir aufnehmen aus der Geistesforschung, werden belebt in Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition. Nehmen wir sie auf, dann sind sie selbständig im Erdenleben existierende Gebilde.

Von diesen schöpferischen Gedanken konnte ich einstmals in meinem kleinen Büchelchen über die Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung sagen: Dieses Denken stellt dar die geistige Form des Kommunizierens der Menschheit. -— Denn indem der Mensch sich überläßt seinen Spiegelgedanken über die äußere Natur, wiederholt er nur die Vergangenheit, lebt er in Leichnamen des Göttlichen. Indem er seine Gedanken selber belebt, verbindet er sich durch seine eigene Wesenheit, kommunizierend, die Kommunion empfangend, mit dem die Weltdurchdringenden, ihre Zukunft sichernden Göttlich-Geistigen.

So ist spirituelle Erkenntnis eine wirkliche Kommunion, der Beginn eines der Menschheit der Gegenwart gemäßen kosmischen Kultus, der dann wachsen kann dadurch, daß der Mensch nun gewahr wird, wie er seinen physisch-mineralischen und seinen vegetabilischen Organismus mit seinem astralischen und Ich-Organismus durchzieht, wie er dadurch, daß er in sich selber den Geist lebendig macht, nun auch in das, was sonst als Tootes, als Ersterbendes ihn umgibt, den Geist hineinbannt.

Da erlebt es dann der Mensch, daß, wenn er auf seinen in festem Zustand wirkenden Organismus hinsieht, er sich in diesem verbunden fühlt mit der Sternenwelt, insofern sie ruhendes Wesen ist. Insofern die Sternenwelt ruhendes Wesen ist, zum Beispiel sich in den Bildern des 'Tierkreises ruhig im Weltenraum zur Erde verhält, insofern ist der Mensch zusammenhängend mit seinem physischen Organismus mit diesen Formgebilden des Weltenraumes. Aber indem er in sie, in diese Formgebilde, einströmen läßt sein Geistig-Seelisches, wandelt er selber die Welt.

Ebenso ist der Mensch durchzogen von seinem Säftestrom. Im Säftestrom lebt schon der ätherische Organismus. Dasjenige, was das Blut in uns kreisen läßt, was die andern Säfte in uns in Bewegung bringt, ist der ätherische Organismus. Mit diesem ätherischen Organismus steht der Mensch nun in Verbindung, ich möchte sagen, mit den Sternentaten, mit der Bewegung der Planeten. Geradeso wie die ruhenden Bilder des Fixsternhimmels auf die in sich fixe Form des menschlichen Organismus wirken oder mit ihr in Beziehung stehen, so mit dem Säftestrom die Planetenbewegungen des Planetensystems, zu dem wir gehören.

Aber so, wie es im unmittelbaren Anblicke ist, ist das eine tote Welt. Der Mensch wandelt sie von seinem eigenen Geistigen aus, wenn er von seinem Geistigen der Welt mitteilt, indem er die Gedanken belebt zur Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition, indem er die geistige Kommunion der Menschheit vollführt.

Davon muß der Mensch zuerst ein Bewußtsein haben. Dieses Bewußtsein muß immer lebendiger und immer reger erhalten werden, dann findet der Mensch immer mehr und mehr den Weg zu dieser geistigen Kommunion.

Ich möchte Ihnen heute nur eine kleine Grundlage dafür geben, indem ich Ihnen zunächst mitteile jene Worte, die, wenn man sie richtig auf die Seele wirken läßt, wenn man sie immer wiederum in der Seele lebendig macht, so daß man ihren vollen Sinn, ihren beweglichen Sinn in der Seele erlebt, etwas in der Menschenseele entstehen lassen, wodurch das Tote in der Welt, mit dem der Mensch in Beziehung steht, sich in ein Lebendiges umwandelt, wodurch die Vergangenheit belebt wird, damit sie aus ihrer Totheit das Leben der Zukunft werden kann. Das kann nur geschehen, wenn man in folgender Weise sich seiner Zusammengehörigkeit mit dem Kosmos bewußt wird. Ich werde eine erste Formel aufschreiben nach dieser Richtung:

Es nahet mir im Erdenwirken

- ich stelle mir vor den Erdenstoff, den ich aufnehme mit demjenigen, was das feste Gebilde meines Organismus bildet

Es nahet mir im Erdenwirken,
In Stoffes Abbild mir gegeben,
Der Sterne Himmelswesen

Es ist ja so, daß, wenn wir hinschauen auf irgendein Gebilde der Erde, das wir als unsere Nahrung in uns aufnehmen, wir in ihm dann ein Abbild haben der ruhigen Sterngruppierungen. Das nehmen wir auf. Wir nehmen das Sternenwesen, das Himmelswesen in uns auf mit dem Stoff der Erde, der im Erdenwirken enthalten ist. Aber wir müssen uns bewußt sein, daß wir als Menschen in unserem Wollen, in unserem von Liebe durchzogenen Wollen dasjenige, was Stoff geworden ist, in Geist zurückwandeln, eine wirkliche Transsubstantiation vollziehen, wenn wir uns unseres Darinnenstehens in der Welt bewußt werden, so daß das gedanklich-geistige Leben in uns lebendig wird.

Es nahet mir im Erdenwirken,
In Stoffes Abbild mir gegeben,
Der Sterne Himmelswesen:
Ich seh’ im Wollen sie sich liebend wandeln.

Und wenn wir an dasjenige denken, was wir so aufnehmen, daß es unseren flüssigen Teil des Organismus durchdringt, die Säftewirkung, die Blutzirkulation, dann ist das, insofern es von der Erde herrührt, ein Abbild jetzt nicht des Himmels Wesen oder der Sterne Wesen, sondern der Sterne Taten, das heißt der Bewegungen der Planeten. Und ich kann mir bewußt werden, wie ich das vergeistige, wenn ich. richtig in der Welt darinnenstehe, durch folgende Formel:

Es dringen in mich im Wasserleben,
In Stoffes Kraftgewalt mich bildend,
Der Sterne Himmelstaten —

Das heißt die Taten der Planetenbewegungen. Und jetzt:

Ich seh’ im Fühlen sie sich weise wandeln.

Während ich der Sterne Wesen und Weben im Wollen sehen kann, wie es sich liebend wandelt in den spirituellen Gehalt der Zukunft, so sehe ich im Fühlen sich weise wandeln dasjenige, was mir hier auf der Erde gegeben wird, indem ich in dem, was meinen Säfteorganismus durchdringt, aufnehme das Abbild der Himmelstaten. So hineingestellt, kann der Mensch wollend und fühlend sich erleben. Hingegeben an das Allwalten des ihn umgebenden Weltendaseins, des kosmischen Daseins, kann er erleben dasjenige, was durch ihn ausgeführt wird in dem großen Tempel des Kosmos als Transsubstantiation, indem er opfernd darinnensteht in rein geistiger Art.

Was sonst nur abstrakte Erkenntnis wäre, wird zu einem fühlenden und wollenden Verhältnis zur Welt. Die Welt wird zum Tempel, die Welt wird zum Gotteshaus. Der erkennende Mensch, sich aufraffend im Fühlen und Wollen, er wird zum opfernden Wesen. Das Grundverhältnis des Menschen zur Welt steigt auf vom Erkennen zum Weltenkultus, zum kosmischen Kultus. Daß all dasjenige, was unser Verhältnis zur Welt ist, zunächst sich als kosmischer Kultus erkennt im Menscher;, das ist der erste Anfang dessen, was geschehen muß, wenn Anthroposophie ihre Mission in der Welt vollziehen soll.

Das wollte ich Ihnen zunächst als einen Anfang sagen. Fortsetzen dieses, was das Wesen des Kultischen im Verhältnis zum Naturerkennen ist, werde ich am nächsten Freitag. Heute wollte ich dies insbesondere sagen. Ich habe diesen Vortrag auf diesen Tag aus dem Grunde hintendiert, damit gerade heute dieser Inhalt herauskomme, weil ich meine, daß dann, wenn uns wiederum einmal jenes Wesen der Zeit vor die Seele tritt, das im Jahreskreislauf gegeben ist, wenn ein solcher Jahreskreislauf wenigstens für das äußere Anschauen, für das äußere Erleben sich vollendet, uns da zum Bewußtsein kommen soll, wie unser Verhältnis zur Zeit sich gestalten soll, wie wir aus der Vergangenheit heraus suchen sollen die Zukunft, wie wir wissen sollen, für die Zukunft zu schaffen, um das Geistige zu schöpfen.

Heute nachmittag fing eines der Gedichte, die rezitiert wurden, damit an: Jedes neue Jahr trifft neue Gräber. — Tief wahr ist es! Aber ebenso wahr ist es: Jedes neue Jahr trifft neue Wiegen. — Wie es Vergangenheit trifft, so trifft es Zukunft. Heute ist es vor allen Dingen an den Menschen, diese Zukunft zu erfassen, daran zu denken, daß das sprießende und sprossende Leben, wie es uns äußerlich entgegentritt, den Tod in sich enthält, daß wir aber das Leben aus unserer eigenen Tatkraft suchen müssen. Und jedes Jahres Erneuerung ist uns Symbolum dafür. Schauen wir, wenn wir auch mit Recht auf der einen Seite auf die Gräber schauen, auf der andern Seite auf das sich erneuernde Leben, das wartet, den Keim in die Zukunft in sich zu empfangen.

Das ist heute unsere große Aufgabe: zu bemerken, wie in der Welt Silvesterstimmung, Hingehendes, Absterbendes ist, wie aber im Herzen derjenigen Menschen, die sich ihres wahren Menschentums, ihres Gottesmenschentums bewußt werden, Neujahrsstimmung sein muß, Neuzeitstimmung, Auflebestimmung. Richten wir unsere Gedanken nicht nur in trivial-festlich philiströser Weise von dem symbolischen Silvester zu dem symbolischen Neujahr, richten wir sie, damit sie tatkräftig und schaffend werden, wie die Erdenentwickelung sie braucht, von dem, was uns jetzt überall im Zivilisationsleben als Absterbendes, als alte Gräber entgegentritt, vom Silvester hin zum Neujahr, zum Weltenneujahr! Das wird aber nur kommen, wenn der Mensch sich entschließt dazu, daran zu schaffen.

Es nahet mir im Erdenwirken,
In Stoffes Abbild mir gegeben,
Der Sterne Himmelswesen:
Ich seh’ im Wollen sie sich liebend wandeln.

Es dringen in mich im Wasserleben,
In Stoffes Kraftgewalt mich bildend,
Der Sterne Himmelstaten:
Ich seh’ im Fühlen sie sich weise wandeln.

Twelfth Lecture

The day before yesterday I spoke about how the annual cycle _ can also be found in human beings. I drew attention to how the effects of nature that are around us take place, as it were, in a temporal organism during a yearly cycle, so that one can see a kind of interplay, an interaction of what one otherwise sees taking place as individual natural processes, natural facts, in the course of a year. Now the essential difference between this natural cycle and its reflection in man is that what takes place one after the other in a certain area of the earth is simultaneous in man. It is true that the human being as a whole is also equal to the whole of the earth in that when it is summer on one half of the earth, it is winter on the other, and so on. But with the earth it is so that the corresponding winter effects of one region and the summer effects of another region are, so to speak, separated from each other in the wide world space, so that if we take the winter effects of one region and the summer effects of another region in their simultaneity, they flow apart, thus do not somehow weaken each other in their existence, do not disturb each other.

When man is asleep, however, his physical body and also his etheric body are in a kind of summer state, in a sprouting, budding life. Spiritual vision shows us that during sleep, when the ego and the astral body are separated from the physical and etheric bodies, the physical and etheric bodies are in this sprouting, budding summer state. One can already say that while the human being is asleep, there is a kind of spring and summer state in the physical and etheric organism he has left behind. But his astral body, which interacts with this entire human organism, and his ego are in a kind of winter state at the same time. So that the summer and winter states are here at the same time, but that they interact with each other, are not thus turned away from each other, but interact with each other. But it is the same with the human waking state. When man is awake, his physical and etheric bodies are in a kind of autumn and winter state. On the other hand, stimulated by the impressions of the outside world, stimulated by the thoughts that the human being has about this outside world, the astral body and the ego organization are in a full summer or full spring state. Again, the inner spring, the inner summer and the inner winter work together in the human being, are not turned away from each other, but radiate through each other.

This actually results from spiritual scientific research, that to a certain extent, if we wanted to fully compare the whole earth with the human being with regard to the processes of winter and summer, we would have to turn the opposite halves of the earth around. In the case of man it is as if we were to allow the summer of one half of the earth to fall directly on the winter of the other half by turning the earth around. But this would actually produce something that can be characterized by saying: The winter effects cancel out the summer effects, the summer effects cancel out the winter effects to a kind of state of equilibrium. This is an important result to which external science has not yet come, and as a result of which it must actually completely misjudge the nature existing in man. In man the working of nature is indeed such that winter and summer - if I may use these expressions, for they really refer to an event that justifies them - that summer and winter cancel each other out.

The human being does indeed carry the nature surrounding him within himself, but the effects cancel each other out and a state occurs that really basically brings the working of nature in the human being to rest. Just as on a balance, when weights are placed on both sides, there is a point of rest in the middle of the balance beam on which neither the right nor the left development of force acts, a state of equilibrium in relation to what otherwise pulls down on the balance beam, so there is actually a balance of opposing natural effects in man.

Whoever considers the tripartite human being, as I have sketched it in the appendix to my book “Of Soul Riddles”, really correctly, as one is not yet accustomed to do today, will indeed find the following. We divide the human being into a nervous-sensory organization, a rhythmic organization and a metabolic-limb organization. These three organizations interact with each other. One can say that the nervous-sensory organization works mainly in the head; but the whole human being is in a certain respect functionally the head again. It is the same with the other systems, the rhythmic organization, the metabolic organization of the limbs.

Now we can schematically represent the human being in the following way, if we take into account his tripartite nature. We thus have the nervous-sensory organization, the rhythmic organization and the limb-metabolic organization.

Now, if we take the two external organizational systems of man, the nervous-sensory organization and the metabolic-limb organization, there is indeed a contrast between the two, which is very clear for a spiritual-scientific anatomy and physiology. When we walk, for example, we have a movement in our limb organism that is even a movement in space. This movement corresponds in a certain part of our nervous-sensory organization, in a certain part of our head organization, to a rest to the same extent that the limb organization is in motion. I ask you to try to understand the matter correctly. I have said “is at rest to the same extent”. Rest is usually taken as an absolute concept. He who sits, sits, and one does not distinguish whether one sits with more intensity or with less intensity. In a certain respect, one is also right about this in ordinary life. These things are not very different from each other.

But it's different with our nervous-sensory organization. When we walk faster, when we walk faster with our limb organization, there is a certain resting tendency in our nerve-sense organization, which is stronger as a resting tendency, as wanting to remain calm, than when we walk slowly. And everything that goes on with our limb organization, also what goes on with our metabolic organization, for example when the food juices make their way through the movement of the intestines, corresponds to a resting tendency in our nervous-sensory organism. This is also expressed externally.

The head, which is the main seat of the nerve-sense organism, is actually a lazybones in relation to our limb organism. It behaves in much the same way as someone who sits comfortably in a hansom cab and lets himself be driven by a horse. He remains calm. So our head is constantly sitting quietly on the rest of our organism. It doesn't even care if I wave my arms, for example. Waving my left arm causes a calm tendency in the right side of my head, waving my right arm causes a calm tendency in the left side of my head. And this calm tendency makes it possible for us to accompany our movements with thoughts, with ideas.

It is quite incorrect for a materialistic view of the world to think that ideas are based on nerve movements. On the contrary, if they are conceptions of some movement in space, they are based on calm tendencies of the nervous system. The nervous system calms down, and because the nervous system calms down, even dampens down in its life activity, thoughts penetrate into this calm and become real. Whoever is able to observe in a spiritual-scientific way what takes place in thinking, in imagining, cannot possibly become a materialist, because he knows that thoughts are active and active as spiritual-soul substance to the same extent that the nerves become calm and even lose their intensity of life, even become paralyzed. By ceasing its material activity, the nervous system must first make room for the spiritual-soul substance of thought. It is precisely in such things that we see why we have materialism. We have had materialism since the time when science did not know matter. That is precisely the characteristic of materialistic science, that it has no idea of the nature of material processes and therefore ascribes to them all kinds of things that are not there.

There you can already see how opposite states, which nevertheless tend towards equilibrium, are present in man. Just as in high summer there are opposing natural effects in relation to low winter, so there are also opposing effects on the human organism, but they keep each other in balance. However, we can only think correctly about these opposing, mutually balancing effects if we divide the human being in the following way. If we divide his middle system, his rhythmic system, into two parts, we distinguish essentially - it is not quite exact, but essentially - the respiratory rhythm and the blood circulation rhythm, and then we speak of an upper middle rhythmic system and a lower middle rhythmic system. But then in the middle of this rhythmic system, between the top and bottom, is the part of the human being that strives most for balance, because it is pervaded, influenced and impressed by natural effects from above and below in opposite ways.

If I therefore want to include this fact of the opposing effects of nature in man in my schematic drawing here, I must supplement this schematic drawing in the following way (red): I have schematically delineated in the upper part of this figure-eight line the effects of nature that are directed in the opposite direction to those effects of nature that I have delineated with the lower part of the figure-eight line.

So the human being is divided into two halves, so to speak, into an upper and a lower. The upper half comprises the nervous-sensory system, which naturally extends over the whole human being. The drawing is schematic. Sometimes you have to look for the “upper” in the big toe, because there are also nerve-sense organs there. So the drawing is schematic, but you can easily imagine this schematic drawing applied to reality. So I have to imagine how, on the one hand, the nervous-sensory system and, essentially, the respiratory system, and on the other hand, the blood circulation system and the metabolic limb system have opposing natural effects. They cancel each other out.

The organ in the human being in which the balance takes place, in which balance is actually constantly striven for from below upwards and from above downwards, is the human heart, which is not a pump in the sense of today's physiology, which pumps the blood through the body, but which represents the organ of balance for the upper and lower system of the human being. So that also in the outer physical organism of man that which is spiritually effected in him is expressed by the fact that summer and winter effects always cancel each other out simultaneously in him.

On any area of earth there can only be winter because there is no summer at the same time, otherwise summer would bring winter into a state of equilibrium, that is, there would be no summer and no winter, but a state of equilibrium. But that is how it really is in man. Man is in himself a piece of nature, but because the effects of nature in the human organism are directed in opposite directions, they cancel each other out, and man is as if he were not nature at all. This, however, makes man a free being. One may not apply the laws of natural necessity to him, for there is not one natural necessity, but two oppositely oriented natural effects, and they cancel each other out in man. And it is in this realm of the cancelling effects of nature that the spirit-soul of man is uninfluenced by the effects of nature and must be recognized from its own lawfulness. You can see from this how we must go to fundamental, comprehensive observation if we want to understand man, and how the mere application of the external laws of nature, which are always oriented in only one direction, to man is actually inadequate.

But now that we have placed the actual human being in front of the soul, let us consider the consequences of this. You only get to know man when you look at him in this way: he carries a piece of nature within him, so that the opposing effects of nature cancel each other out. But if we get to know this piece of nature through spiritual-scientific observation, it shows itself to be permeated by mineral and vegetable modes of action in the sleeping state of man in relation to the physical and etheric body, which, if we look only at what remains in the sleeping man's bed, represent the summer state. But now, by being able to look at this sprouting, sprouting life in the right way, we get to know it in its true meaning. When does it sprout, when does it sprout? When the ego and the astral body are not present, when the ego and the astral body are outside during sleep. And where does the sprouting and sprouting come from? This is revealed by spiritual-scientific observation.

If I wanted to draw this schematically for you, I would have to do it in the following way. This would be the diagram of the sleeping human being (light, green, yellow, red). The lower light-green line is the physical body lying in bed and the etheric body, which appears to the spiritual-scientific view like soil, mineral matter, out of which sprouts plant life, naturally in a different form, but recognizable to the spiritual-scientific view. Above it, glowing like a flame that cannot approach, are the ego and the astral body, represented in the red-yellow line above it. Thus, if you look at the human being in sleep, you have, as it were, a sprouting, sprouting piece of earth in the bed and a separate, glowing astral ego belonging to it.

How is it in waking life? Well, there I would have to form the scheme in the following way (light, red, green, yellow): withering, underlying mineral, vegetable matter, and, as it were, burning this mineral, vegetable matter, glowing into it, the astral ego. So here we have the awake human being with the mineral crumbling into itself. The mineral crumbles in the human being during the waking hours. The vegetal activity makes such an impression everywhere - even if it looks quite different - like the trees in autumn, like the drooping, withering plant leaves, all first dying, diminishing, but as if glowing and glowing through with flames, with little flames. These flames and little flames that glow and glow through are the astral body and the ego living in the physical body and etheric body. And the question arises: Yes, what is it actually like with the flaming glow during sleep, where it is separated in the ego and astral body from the physical and etheric body?

If you now get to the bottom of this with spiritual-scientific research - and you can form your own conclusions to a certain extent from the combination of various descriptions that I have given over the course of time - then you come to the following. That which first of all pushes out the flames and glow of the ego and astral body and which then stimulates the sprouting, sprouting, vegetable life of the summery, sleeping physical body and this mineral body, which also develops a kind of life in itself, which causes the crumbs, I would like to say, the particles, the atomizing of the mineral in the physical body again looks as if the atoms were dissolving, as if a continuous, self-moving, everywhere moving, mineral-liquid-air-like mass were forming from the whole, which is pervaded everywhere by sprouting life - this inner force that brings this about, what is it? Well, that which vibrates within while we sleep, in the physical and in the etheric body, that is the still lingering wave of our life from our pre-earthly existence. We bring it to a standstill during our waking life on earth.

When this flaming flickering of the astral body and the ego are one with the physical and etheric body, then we bring to rest those stimuli that are present during sleep from the pre-earthly life. And only now do we learn from what we learn in ourselves to look at external nature in the right way, learn to look at this external nature in such a way that we say to ourselves: Everything that is active in external nature in terms of natural laws, in terms of natural forces in mineral and vegetable life, is the same as that which is mineral and vegetable life in us during sleep, summery, sprouting, budding life. -- That is, just as when we look at our sleeping physical and etheric body we are pointed to our past, to the spiritual life we had in pre-earthly existence, so outer nature, in so far as it is mineral and vegetable, points us to the past.

If we want to understand correctly the effective natural forces and natural laws in the nature surrounding us, with the exception of the animal and the physical-human, then we must say to ourselves: In the natural laws and natural forces we are pointed to the past of the earth, to the extinction of the earth. - So when we think about external nature, these thoughts are dedicated to the dying element of earthly existence. If this dying earthly existence is to be enlivened again, if it is to have future impulses in it, then it can only happen in the same way as it happens with human beings, by the soul and spirit pushing themselves into the mineral and vegetable. The soul pushes itself into the animals, the spiritual then into the human being.

Through this, however, the entire world being is actually divided into two parts. We look out into external nature, and in so far as it is - and this is the main thing in external nature - of a mineral and vegetable nature, we may only compare it with our sleeping physical and etheric organism. When we look at the external physical effects, we must also say to ourselves: All other physical effects also depend on these effects of external nature in the mineral and vegetable realms. - For if you look at the physical effects that are linked to the nutrition of the beings, you must say: Nutrition begins with the intake of mineral and vegetable substances. The animal then processes them further with the nutrition for the human being. - But first of all, everything that is external nature, in its external physical and etheric effects, depends on the essence that we find in our sleeping physical and etheric organism. But what we carry within us as the ego and the astral organism, for example, what is in the waking state - where the physical and etheric organism are in their winter sleep, if I may express myself thus, it is of course paradoxical to the reality, as you feel - in the summer state, stimulated by the external sensory effects and by the thoughts that form, this forms a balance with the winter state of the physical and etheric body.

But who now goes to work spiritually scientifically, finds, even if what he has to think in simultaneity with man is separate for the course of time, always nevertheless belonging to the winter state of the earth a spiritual summer state, to the summer state a spiritual winter state. Only that these do not form a state of equilibrium on earth, but assert themselves on opposite halves of the earth, so that with the earth it is so that the physical winter state is strengthened by the soul-spiritual winter state, the physical summer state is strengthened by the spiritual summer state. But this indicates that just as man carries his past and his present within him, so all of nature around us also carries its past and its present within it.

We actually only have the present in our physical body in relation to the activity and lawfulness that permeates it when we are awake. We have the influence of the past, namely a past that has been spent in the spiritual, for the physical and etheric organism when we are asleep. We also find the same thing in the mineral and vegetable nature that is present and has an effect on us: they are basically the results of past existence, and they only become present through the fact that the earth is enveloped by the spiritual-soul, just as the human being is permeated by the spiritual-soul. And in the present is already the seed of the future.

But if it is true - and it is true what I have shown you - that in the physical and etheric organism, especially when they are independent of spiritual-soul activity, we have effects of the past in us, then we may only seek the working over into the future in our ego and in our astral body, but we may also only seek the future for the earth in the spiritual.

Man today is so far that he has added the ego and the astral body to the physical and etheric organism through self-evident elementary powers. The mineral and vegetable world on earth has not yet added this. They envelop the earth spiritually and mentally, but they do not penetrate the mineral and vegetable workings of the earth. The mineral essence of the earth shows itself, as we have it before us, as something that does not let the spirit and the soul into itself, but only allows itself to be enveloped and enveloped by spirit and soul.

Plant nature shows itself in such a way that it does not allow the spiritual into itself either, but in its uppermost parts it touches itself in a certain way, I would like to say, with the spiritual-soul. For spiritual-scientific research reveals the following about the plant: If I have the root at the bottom, the stem in the middle and the blossom of the plant at the top, then I have to look at this blossom in such a way that in the blossom the upward striving plant touches the astral, which does not penetrate it, but touches it. This is how the blossom comes into being, that a contact occurs between the uppermost part of the plant and the astral that envelops the earth. I have often expressed this in a comparison, which of course must be taken with the appropriate discretion, that the blossoming of the plant is essentially the kiss that the sun, the sunlight, exchanges with the plant itself. This is an astral effect, but it is a mere touch.

So when we look out into the nature around us, we do not immediately see in the mineral, in the plant the same thing that we see in ourselves as human beings. In us as human beings we see together a mineral nature, a vegetable nature, an astral nature, an ego nature. We have to account for the animals now. We will talk about them in the future. But what the physical effects essentially depend on, we must find in the mineral and vegetable world. It shows itself to us, I might say, in external nature, stripped of the astral mind and of that which is the experience of the ego: the self-conscious spiritual sense. They are not outside, not in the mineral, not in the vegetable. The mineral and the vegetable are basically results of the past.

Whoever correctly observes the mineral soil, the sprouting plants on earth, must actually say to himself in relation to earthly life: In you crystal forms, in you mountain formations, in you sprouting and budding plants, I see the monuments of the once creative, life-creating, which is first dying. But in man himself - if we know how to divide this first dying in the right way, this first dying that forces its way in from the pre-earthly existence and paralyzes itself in the physical and etheric body - we see the physical and etheric organism permeated by that which shines into the future from the astral and ego being, which unfolds freely in man as thoughtful, imaginative life on the equilibrium of the effects of nature.

We see the past and the future side by side in man, so to speak. When we look into nature, insofar as it is mineral and vegetable, we see only the past. That which is already at work in man in the present as the future is precisely what gives him the essence of freedom. This essence of freedom is not present in external nature. If external nature were condemned to remain as it is through its mineral and vegetable kingdom, it would also be condemned to die, just as the merely physical and etheric organism of man dies in the universe. The physical and etheric organism die, man does not die, because the astral entity and the I-entity in him do not carry death, but rather becoming, coming into being.

If outer nature is therefore not to die, then it must be given what man has through his astral and ego body. That is, since he has self-conscious ideas through his astral body and through his ego-body, man must, if he wants to secure the future of the otherwise dying earth, put into it that which is supersensible-invisible in him. Just as he must expect the re-embodiment in a next earthly existence from that which is supersensible and invisible in him, but cannot expect this from his dying physical and etheric body, so also a future of the earth cannot arise from that which is mineral and vegetable earth sphere and as such surrounds us. Only if we are able to put something into this earth that it does not have can a future earth arise. That which is not there on earth by itself is the effective thoughts of man, which live and weave in his organism, which is independent of external nature due to its state of equilibrium. If he realizes these independent thoughts, then he gives the earth a future. But to do this he must first have them himself, these independent thoughts, for all the thoughts we have about what is first in the ordinary knowledge of nature are mirror thoughts, are not realities. The thoughts we take in from spiritual research are enlivened in imagination, inspiration, intuition. If we absorb them, then they are independently existing entities in earthly life.

Of these creative thoughts I was once able to say in my little booklet on the epistemology of Goethe's world view: "This thinking represents the spiritual form of humanity's communication. -- For by abandoning himself to his mirror-thoughts about external nature, man only repeats the past, he lives in corpses of the divine. By animating his thoughts himself, he connects himself through his own being, communicating, receiving communion, with the Divine-Spiritual that permeates the world and secures its future.

So spiritual knowledge is a real communion, the beginning of a cosmic cult in accordance with the humanity of the present, which can then grow through the fact that man now becomes aware of how he permeates his physical-mineral and vegetable organism with his astral and ego-organism, how he, by making the spirit alive in himself, now also banishes the spirit into that which otherwise surrounds him as dead, as first dying.

Then the human being experiences that when he looks at his organism working in a solid state, he feels connected with the starry world in so far as it is a resting being. In so far as the starry world is a being at rest, for example, in the images of the 'zodiac, it is at rest in world space in relation to the earth, in so far as man is connected with his physical organism with these formations of world space. But by letting his spiritual-soul flow into them, into these formations, he himself transforms the world.

In the same way, man is permeated by his stream of sap. The etheric organism already lives in the stream of juices. That which makes the blood circulate in us, that which sets the other humors in us in motion, is the etheric organism. With this etheric organism the human being is now in connection, I would like to say, with the acts of the stars, with the movement of the planets. Just as the stationary images of the fixed starry sky have an effect on the inherently fixed form of the human organism or are related to it, so the planetary movements of the planetary system to which we belong are related to the stream of matter.

But as it is in the immediate view, this is a dead world. Man transforms it from his own spiritual when he communicates from his spiritual to the world by enlivening thought to imagination, inspiration, intuition, by performing the spiritual communion of humanity.

Man must first have an awareness of this. This consciousness must be kept ever more alive and ever more active, then man will find more and more the way to this spiritual communion.

I would like to give you today only a small basis for this by first of all sharing with you those words which, if you let them have the right effect on the soul, if you make them alive again and again in the soul so that you experience their full meaning, their moving meaning in the soul, let something arise in the human soul through which the dead in the world, with which man stands in relationship, is transformed into a living, through which the past is enlivened so that it can become the life of the future out of its deadness. This can only happen if we become aware of our connection with the cosmos in the following way. I will write down a first formula along these lines:

I am approached in my work on earth

- I imagine the earth material that I absorb with that which forms the solid structure of my organism

I am approached in the earthly work,
Given to me in the image of matter,
The heavenly beings of the stars

It is so that when we look at any structure of the earth, which we take into us as our food, we then have in it an image of the quiet star groupings. We absorb this. We absorb the star being, the heavenly being within us with the material of the earth, which is contained in the earth's activity. But we must be aware that we as human beings, in our volition, in our volition infused with love, transform that which has become matter back into spirit, accomplish a real transubstantiation, when we become aware of our being in the world, so that the intellectual-spiritual life in us becomes alive.

I am approached in earthly work,
Given to me in the image of matter,
The heavenly beings of the stars:
I see them changing lovingly in my will.

And when we think of that which we absorb in such a way that it permeates our fluid part of the organism, the action of the juices, the circulation of the blood, then this, in so far as it comes from the earth, is now not an image of the heavenly beings or the beings of the stars, but of the deeds of the stars, that is, of the movements of the planets. And I can become aware of how I spiritualize this, if I am standing in the world correctly, through the following formula:

It penetrates me in the water life,
Forming me in the power of matter,
The heavenly deeds of the stars -

That is, the deeds of the planetary movements. And now:

I see them change wisely in feeling.

While I can see the being and weaving of the stars in my willing, how it lovingly transforms itself into the spiritual content of the future, I see in my feeling that which is given to me here on earth transforming itself wisely by absorbing the image of the heavenly deeds in that which permeates my organism of humors. Thus placed, man can experience himself willingly and feelingly. Surrendered to the omnipotence of the world existence surrounding him, the cosmic existence, he can experience that which is carried out through him in the great temple of the cosmos as transubstantiation by standing there sacrificially in a purely spiritual way.

What would otherwise only be abstract knowledge becomes a feeling and willing relationship to the world. The world becomes a temple, the world becomes a house of God. The cognizant human being, who is able to muster himself in feeling and willing, becomes a sacrificial being. Man's basic relationship to the world rises from cognition to world worship, to cosmic worship. That all that which is our relationship to the world first recognizes itself as cosmic cult in the human being is the first beginning of what must happen if anthroposophy is to accomplish its mission in the world.

I wanted to tell you this as a beginning. Next Friday I will continue with what the essence of the cultic is in relation to the recognition of nature. Today I wanted to say this in particular. I have postponed this lecture to this day for the very reason that this content should come out today, because I believe that when that essence of time, which is given in the cycle of the year, once again comes before our souls, when such a cycle of the year is completed at least for the external view, for the external experience, we should become aware of how our relationship to time should be shaped, how we should seek the future from the past, how we should know how to create for the future in order to create the spiritual.

This afternoon, one of the poems that was recited began with this: Every new year meets new graves. - It is deeply true! But it is equally true: Every new year meets new cradles. - As it meets the past, so it meets the future. Today it is above all up to people to grasp this future, to remember that the sprouting and budding life, as it confronts us outwardly, contains death within itself, but that we must seek life through our own energy. And every year's renewal is a symbol of this. Let us look, even if we rightly look at the graves on the one hand, on the other hand at the renewing life that is waiting to receive the seed of the future within itself.

This is our great task today: to notice how in the world there is a New Year's mood, a passing away, a dying away, but how in the hearts of those people who become aware of their true humanity, of their being a man of God, there must be a New Year's mood, a mood of renewal, a mood of revival. Let us not only direct our thoughts in a trivial, festive, philistine way from the symbolic New Year's Eve to the symbolic New Year, let us direct them, so that they become energetic and creative, as earthly development needs them, from that which now confronts us everywhere in civilized life as dying things, as old graves, from New Year's Eve to the New Year, to the World New Year! But that will only come if man decides to work on it.

I am approaching in my work on earth,
Given to me in the image of matter,
The heavenly beings of the stars:
I see them lovingly changing in my will.

They penetrate me in water life,
Forming me in the power of matter,
The heavenly deeds of the stars:
I see them change wisely in feeling.