The World of the Senses and the World of the Spirit
GA 134
1 January 1912, Hannover
Lecture VI
These lectures will perhaps have given you some idea of what a complicated being man is and from how many sides we must consider him if we would come near to his real nature. I want now to point to one more fact of evolution, and it is one that may be classed among the most significant of all the results we can arrive at when, with the help of clairvoyant research, we study the whole course of man's evolution—looking back over the period from very ancient times until to-day, and looking forward to what shall come for the race of man in the future. I have, in the course of these lectures, drawn your attention to a perception that man can acquire when he educates his faculty for knowledge in the way we described; when, that is to say, his soul in its efforts after knowledge enters into the moods we characterised as wonder, reverence, wisdom-filled harmony with the events of the world, and lastly, devotion and surrender to the whole world process. You will remember I explained how if the soul enters upon these moods or conditions, man's faculty of knowledge can gradually rise to a perception of two converse processes that are everywhere around him. Man learns to distinguish in his environment between what is becoming and what is dying away. He says to himself at every turn: Here I have to do with a process of becoming, something that will reach perfection only in the future, and here again, on the other hand, I encounter a gradual dying away, a gradual disappearing. We perceive the things of the world as existing in a region where everything is either coming into being or passing away. And I pointed out in particular how the human larynx is really an organ of the future, how it is called to be in the future something entirely different from what it is to-day. To-day it merely communicates to the outer world by means of the spoken word our inner moods and conditions, whereas in the future it will communicate what we ourselves are in our entirety; that is to say, it will serve for the procreation of the whole human being. It will be the reproductive organ of the future. A time will come when the larynx will not merely help man to express by means of the word what is in his heart and mind, but man will use the larynx to place his own self before the world; that is to say, the propagation of man will be intimately connected with the organ of the larynx.
Now in this complicated microcosm, in this complicated “little world” which we call “man,” for every such organ that is only as yet a seed and will later on in the future attain a higher degree of perfection, there is another corresponding organ which is gradually dwindling, gradually dying away. And the corresponding organ for the larynx is the organ of hearing. In proportion as the hearing apparatus little by little disappears, in proportion as it grows ever less and less, will the larynx grow more and more perfect and become more and more important. We can only estimate the greatness of this fact when we look back, with the help of the Akashic Records, into a far distant past of mankind and then from what our research reveals are in a position to form some conception of what the ear was once like. Great new vistas are opened up for a knowledge of the nature of man when we trace back the human ear to its original form. For in its present state this hearing apparatus of ours is no more than a shadow of what it once was. To-day it hears only tones of the physical plane, or words that express themselves in tones on the physical plane. But that is only a last remnant of what used to flow into man through the hearing; for through this hearing apparatus once flowed into man the mighty movements of the whole universe. And as to-day we hear earthly music with our ear, so in ancient times did world music, the music of the spheres, flow into man. And as to-day we men clothe words in tones, so in times past did the divine Word of the Worlds clothe itself in the music of the spheres—that Word of the Worlds of which the Gospel of St. John tells, the Logos, the divine Word. Into what we may call man's hearing in the old sense of the word, there flowed from the spiritual world a heavenly music, the music of the spheres, just as now into our hearing flows the human word and the earthly music, and within the music of the spheres was what the divine Spirits spoke. And as to-day man compels the air into forms with his word and his singing and his tone, so did the divine words and the divine music bring forth forms.
And now let us consider that most wonderful of all the forms created by Divine music. We may approach it in the following way. When to-day you give utterance to a word or even only to a vowel, let us say the sound “A”—then through this sound the possibility arises of creating a form in the air. It was in like manner that form entered into the world out of the cosmic Word, and the most precious of all these forms is man himself; man himself was created in his original state by being spoken out of the divine Word. “The Gods spake!” As to-day the air comes into forms through the word of man, so did our world come into its form through the Word of the Gods. And man is the most excellent of these forms. The organ of hearing was, of course, then infinitely more complicated than it is now. It is to-day quite shrunk and shriveled. To-day it is an external organ, penetrating only a limited distance into the brain, but once it extended inwards over the whole human being. And everywhere throughout man's being moved the paths of sound which spoke man into the world, as the utterance of the Word of God. Thus was man created—spiritually—through the organ of hearing, and in the future, when he has ascended again, he will have an ear that is quite small and rudimentary. The meaning and purpose of the ear will have completely gone. The ear is in a descending evolution; to compensate for this, however, the larynx, which is to-day only like a seed, will have developed to greater and greater beauty and perfection. And in its perfection it will speak out what man can bring forth for the world as the reproduction of his being, even as the Gods have spoken Man into the world as Their creation. So is the world process in a sense reversed. When we consider the whole human being as he stands before us we have to see in him the product of a descending evolution, and when we take an organ like the ear we find it has already reached a densification of the bony matter in the small bones of the ear, it is, as it were, in the last stage of descending evolution. The sense as such is disappearing. Man, however, is developing on into the world of spirituality, and his ascending organs are the bridges that carry him over into spirituality. Such is the relationship between the world of the senses and the world of the spirit. The world of the senses makes itself known to us in descending organs, and the world of the spirit in ascending organs.
And it is the same everywhere. In the whole world as it presents itself to our view we can follow in some way this becoming and dying. And it is important that we should learn to apply the idea to the other things in the world. It will teach us a great deal. Thus in the mineral world, for example, we can also find something that is in an ascending evolution, something that is to-day only at the seed stage. It is quicksilver. Quicksilver is a metal that will undergo transformations in the future but transformations that will lead to greater perfection. Quicksilver as metal has not yet pulverised all the forces that every substance possesses in the spiritual before it becomes substance at all. Powers that belong essentially to the nature of quicksilver still remain in the spiritual, and these it will in the future be able to bring forth and place into the world. It will assume new forms. Thus quicksilver corresponds in the world of the minerals to the human larynx, and also in a sense to the organ that is attached to the larynx—the lung. Other metals—copper, for example—are in a kind of descending evolution. Copper will, in the future, show itself as a metal that has no more inner spiritual forces to place out into the world, and that is consequently more and more obliged merely to split up and crumble to cosmic dust.
I have here set before you a few examples of connections which will in future increasingly become an object of study. Men will study more and more the relationships between the processes of becoming and of passing away in the several kingdoms of nature, and will learn to find—not through experiments and tests but through an Imaginative knowledge—relationships between particular metal substances and particular organs in the human body. And as a result substances whose effects are already partially known from external experience will, through Imagination, be able to be known in all their healing power, in all their reproductive and restorative power over the human body. All kinds of relationships and connections will be discovered between the several things and beings of the world.
Thus, man will come to recognise that the virtues which lie in the seed of a plant are differently connected with man than the virtues contained in the root. All that we find in the root of a plant corresponds in a manner to the human brain and to the nervous system belonging to the brain. [see Summary] It goes so far that in actual fact the eating of what is to be found in plant roots has a certain correspondence with the processes that take place in the brain and nervous system. So that if a man wants his brain and nervous system to be influenced from the physical side in its task as physical instrument for the life of the spirit, he receives with his nourishment the forces that live in the roots of plants. In a sense we may say that he lets think in him what he thus receives in food, he lets it do spiritual work in him, whilst if he is less inclined to eat of the root nature of plants it will be rather he himself who uses his brain and nervous system. You will see from this that if a person consumes a quantity of root food he is liable to become dependent in respect of his experiences as soul and spirit; because something objective and external works through him, his brain and nervous system surrender their own independence. And so if he wants it to be more himself who works in him, then he must diminish his consumption of roots. I am not, my dear friends, giving suggestions for any particular diet, I am merely informing you about facts of nature. And I warn you expressly not to set out to follow what I have said without further knowledge. Not every person is so far advanced as to be able to dispense with receiving the power of thought from something outside himself; and it may very easily happen that a man who is not ripe to leave it to his own soul-life to provide him with the power of thinking and feeling—it can easily happen that if such a man avoids eating roots he will fall into a sleepy condition, because his soul and spirit are not yet strong enough to evolve in themselves out of the spiritual those forces which are otherwise evolved in man quite objectively, and independently of his soul and spirit. The question of diet is always an individual question and depends entirely upon the whole manner and condition of the development of the person in question.
Again, what lives in the leaves of plants has a similar connection with the lungs of man, with all that belongs to the system of the lungs. Here we may find an indication of how a balance can be created, for example, in a person whose breathing system, owing to inherited tendencies or to some other condition, works too powerfully. It would be well in such a case to recommend the person not to eat much of what comes from the leaves of plants. There may be another person whose breathing system requires strengthening, and then we shall do well to advise him to eat freely of such food as comes from leaves. These things have their close connection also with the healing forces that are in the world in the several kingdoms of nature, for those parts of the individual plants which have a definite relationship to man's organs contain forces of healing for those regions of man's organism. Thus, roots contain great forces of healing for the nervous system, and leaves for the lung system.
The flowers of plants contain many healing forces for the kidney system, and seeds in a particular way for the heart, but only when the heart sets itself too strongly in opposition to the circulation of the blood. If the heart yields too easily to the circulation, then it is rather to the forces that are in the fruits, i.e. in the ripened seeds, that we must turn. These are some of the indications that result when we take into consideration that the moment we pass from man to surrounding nature all that presents itself to our senses in the world of nature is actually only the surface.
- Roots—Brain.
- Leaves—Lungs.
- Flowers—Kidneys.
- Seeds—Heart.
- Fruits—Blood system.
In the plants, what belongs to the world of the senses is only on the surface. Behind what reveals itself to sight and taste and smell are the soul-and-spirit forces of the plant. But these soul-and-spirit forces are not present in such a way that we could speak of each single plant as ensouled, in the same way that each single human being is ensouled. That is not the case. Whoever were to imagine it would be giving himself up to the same delusion as a man who thought that a single hair or the tip of the ear, or, let us say, a nose or a tooth, were ensouled. The whole human being is ensouled in his totality, and we only learn to look into the soul nature of man when we pass from the parts to the whole. And we must do the same in the case of every living thing. We must take care to observe it spiritually and see whether it is a part or in some sense a whole. All the various plants of the earth are by no means a whole for themselves; they are parts, they are members of a whole. And as a matter of fact we are only speaking of a reality when we speak of that to which the several plants belong, as parts belong to a whole. In the case of man we can see at once to what his teeth, his ears, his fingers belong; physically they belong to the whole organism. In the case of the plants we do not see with the eye that to which the single plant belongs, we cannot perceive it with a physical organ at all, for the moment we reach the whole we come into the realm of the spirit. The truth about the soul nature of the plant world is that it has the plants for its individual organs. There are, as a matter of fact, for our whole earth only a few beings who are, so to say, collected together in the earth and have as their single parts the plants, just as man has the hairs on his body.
We can, if we wish, refer to these beings as the group souls of the plants. We can say, when we go beyond what our senses can behold of the plant, that we come to the group souls of the plants, which are related to the single plant as a whole to a part. Altogether there are seven group souls—plant souls—belonging to the earth, and having in a way the centre of their being in the centre of the earth. So that it is not enough to conceive of the earth as this physical ball, but we have to think of it as penetrated by seven spheres varying in size and all having in the earth's centre their own spiritual centre. And then these spiritual beings impel the plants out of the earth. The root grows towards the centre of the earth, because what it really wants is to reach the centre of the earth, and it is only prevented from pushing right through by all the rest of the earth matter which stands in its way. Every plant root strives to penetrate to the centre of the earth, where is the centre of the spiritual being to which the plant belongs.

You see how extraordinarily important is the principle we laid down—to go always to the whole in the case of every being or creature, to see first whether it is a part or a whole. There are scientists in our days who look upon the plants as ensouled, but they look upon the individual plant in this way. That is no cleverer than if we were to call a tooth a man; both stand at the same mental level. Many people are ready to think, when they hear views like this put forward, that they are quite theosophical, just because the plants are regarded as having soul; but really all such talk on the part of science has no value at all for the future, the books are so much waste paper. To look for individual souls in the separate plants is to say: I will extract a tooth from a human being and look in it for a human soul. The plant soul is not to be found in the single plant but has its most important point in the centre of the earth, whither the root tends, for the root is that force in the plant which strives ever towards the most spiritual part of plant existence.
When we are considering a theme such as this we shall find, my dear friends, that we come across statements made from the standpoint of the present-day view of nature which can bring us near to the gateway of truth, but only to the same degree as Mephistopheles can bring Faust into the realm of the Mothers—namely, just to the outermost door and no further. For as little as Mephistopheles can go down with Faust into the realm of the Mothers, so little can present-day natural science enter into the spiritual. But as in a certain sense Mephistopheles gives the key, so does natural science. Natural science gives the key, but it does not want to enter itself, even as Mephistopheles does not want to enter himself into the realm of the Mothers. It is true in a sense that natural science gives us clues which, if we have acquired the mode of knowledge described in these lectures, can often bring our knowledge to the gateway of truth.
Natural science to-day, following the impulse of Darwin, has drawn—from observation of the world of the senses alone—an important conclusion; natural science speaks of the principle of the so-called “struggle for existence.” Who is not ready to see this struggle for existence all around him as long as he takes cognizance only of what the external world of the senses affords? Why, we meet with it at every turn. Think of the innumerable eggs laid by the creatures of the sea, how many are destroyed and perish, and how few actually grow up and become new creatures. There you have, apparently, a fearful struggle for existence. One could well begin to lament over it if one listened only to the world of the senses, and say: of the millions and billions of eggs so many, so very many, go under in the struggle for existence and so few survive. But this is only one side of a thought, my dear friends. Take hold now of the same thought at another end! In order to bring your thinking on in a certain direction, let me ask you to grasp the same thought at another point. You can also lament in a similar way over the struggle for existence in another connection. You can cast your eyes over a field of corn where so-and-so many ears are standing, each holding so-and-so many grains of corn, and you can ask the question: How many of these grains of corn are lost in some way or other and never fulfil their true purpose; and how few of them are planted again in the earth that they may become new plants of the same kind as the old ones? We can thus look over a field of corn that is promising a rich and plenteous harvest and say to ourselves: How much of all that sprouting life will perish without having attained its goal! Only a very few grains will be buried in the earth for new plants of the same kind to arise. Here again we have an instance, only in a rather different sphere from that of the sea-creatures, where also only a very few come to fulfilment.
But now let me ask you what would become of the human beings, who must eat something, if every single grain of corn were buried again in the earth? Let us suppose that it were possible—theoretically we can suppose anything—for such an abundant growth to take place that every single grain of corn could come up again; but we must also think of what would happen to the beings who have to find their nourishment from corn. Here we come to a strange pass; a belief that might appear justified when we look at the world of the senses is shaken. When we look at a field of corn in respect of its own physical existence we might seem quite justified in concluding that every single grain should grow into a whole plant. And yet the standpoint is perhaps false. Perhaps in the whole connection of things in the world we are not thinking correctly when we ascribe to each single grain of corn this aim and object, namely to grow into a whole plant. Perhaps there is nothing to justify us in saying that the grains of corn which serve other beings for food have somehow failed in their cosmic aim. Perhaps there is nothing that compels us to say that the eggs of the creatures of the sea have failed in their aim when they have not grown into fishes. It is in reality no more than human prejudice to suppose that every single seed ought to become again the same being. For we can only measure the tasks of the individual beings when we turn our eyes to the whole. And all the eggs that perish by the million in the sea every year, and do not grow into fish, provide food for other beings who are only not yet accessible to man's vision. And in very truth those spiritual substances which struggle their way through to existence and become the countless eggs of the sea that are apparently lost—they do not lament that they have missed their goal; for their goal is to be nourishment for other beings, to be received up into the very being of these other beings. Man stands outside with his intellect and imagines that only that has meaning which strives towards the goal which he, through his senses, is bound to see as the ultimate goal. But if we look at nature without prejudice and with an open mind we shall see in every single stage of every single being a certain perfection and fulfilment, and such perfection does not rest only in that which the being will eventually become, but is contained already in what it is.
These are some of the thoughts, acquired in occultism, which must take root in your heart and minds. And if you now turn away from the external world and look into your own soul you will observe that you have there in your soul a rich store of thoughts. Thoughts are perpetually streaming into your soul, perpetually lighting up within it; and only a very few of these thoughts are clearly grasped, only a very few become a conscious part of the human soul. When you go for a walk in the town, reflect how much enters your soul by way of your senses, and yet how little you observe in such a way that it becomes a permanent part of your soul-life. You are continually receiving impressions, and the sum of all the impressions you receive is related to the portion of them which becomes a permanent conscious possession of your soul as the great mass of fish spawn in the sea that is brought into being year by year is related to the proportion of it that actually grows into fish. You, as well, have to be forever going through this same process in your own soul, the process of bringing, over a vast region, only a very small quantity to fulfilment. And when man begins to lift the veil a little and gain some vision of the great flood of pictures of fantasy and of thought out of which he emerges when he emerges from sleep—the dream affords for many persons a last trace of the immeasurably rich life man leads in sleep—then he can come to realise that there is meaning in the fact that he receives so many impressions that do not come to clear consciousness. For the impressions that actually come to clear consciousness are lost to the inner work of man, they cannot work upon the system of the sense organs, nor the system of the glandular organs, nor the system of digestion, neither can they work upon the systems of nerves, muscles and bones. That which becomes conscious in the soul, and which present-day man carries in him as his conscious inner soul-content, has no more power to work upon the organism; its characteristic is that it is torn loose from the mother earth of the whole human being and thus comes into his consciousness. All the rest of the soul-content—which bears the same relation to these conscious thoughts and ideas as the many eggs do to the few that become fish—all the countless impressions that come into our soul from without and do not come into consciousness, work upon the whole human being.
Everything in his environment works continually upon man in his totality. The dream can sometimes teach you how far what lives on in your soul as conscious idea, how very far that is from being all that enters your soul; many other impressions are entering your soul all the time. You have only to give attention to such things and you will find they occur constantly in life. You dream of some situation. Perhaps you dream you are standing opposite a man who is talking with another man. You are standing there and making a third. In your dream you have a clear and exact picture of the countenance of the man opposite you. You say to yourself: “How do I come to have such a dream? It gives the impression of being concerned with people I know in physical life, it seems to relate itself to physical life. But where does it come from? I have never heard or seen this person.” And now you pursue it further; and when you examine carefully you find that a few days ago you were opposite this person in a railway carriage, only the whole experience passed by you without your consciousness being awakened. In spite of that, however, it entered deeply into your life. It is only owing to inexactitude of observation that people as a rule know nothing about these things.
The conceptions that dreams bring before us in this way are by no means the most important of the impressions that work upon the soul. The most important are quite other impressions. Think for a moment, my dear friends, how the process I described to you yesterday has been continually happening all the time in the evolution of humanity. By means of his bony system man has been continually producing Imaginations, by means of his muscular system he has been sending into the world Inspirations, and by means of his nervous system Intuitions. All these are now there in the world. The outstreamings that are evil, each man must himself receive back again and carry away through his destiny. But the rest builds up and takes form and is perpetually there in man's environment. In very deed all the Imaginations and Inspirations and Intuitions that man has given out into the earth world, even only since the Atlantean catastrophe, are present and are part of our environment. The good things man has given out—these the individual men do not need to take back again in the course of their Karma; but what they have sent out into the spiritual atmosphere of the earth all through the centuries of the successive epochs is actually present for the men who are now living on earth, just as much as the air is present for physical man. As man breathes physical air, as the air from his environment enters right inside him, so do the Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions that have been developed penetrate into man, and man partakes of them with his soul and spirit. And now it is important that man should develop a real relation to all this in his environment, that he should not meet what he has himself imparted to the earth in earlier epochs of its existence as if it were strange to him, as if he were unconnected with it. He can, however, only become connected with this spiritual content he has given to the earth when he gradually acquires the power to receive it into his soul.
How can this come about? When we come to make a deep study of the spiritual meaning of earth evolution we discover that in the time when post-Atlantean man had still something left of ancient clairvoyance, Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions were communicated in great abundance to the spiritual atmosphere of the earth. That was a time when spiritual substance was given forth in large measure. Since the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and especially from the present day onwards, we gradually send out less and less; what falls rather to us is to receive the old substance, for it is something with which we are intimately connected; we have the task to take up again into ourselves what has been sent out. That means it is required of man to replace an earlier spiritual outbreathing by a spiritual inbreathing. Man must grow ever more sensitive and receptive to the spiritual that is in the world. In ancient times that was not so necessary, for men of those olden times were able to put forth from them spiritual substance, they had, so to speak, a reserve store. But this reserve of spiritual substance has been so deeply drawn upon since the fourth post-Atlantean epoch that in future man will, in a sense, only be able to send out what he has first absorbed, what he has first inbreathed. In order that man may be able to take his place with full understanding in this new task in earth existence—to this end is Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science there in the world. When a man feels drawn to Anthroposophy it is not just that it takes his fancy as one among many other things in the world that take his fancy. He is drawn to Anthroposophy because it is intimately and deeply bound up with the whole of earth evolution, intimately bound up with the task that lies immediately before man to-day in evolution, namely to develop understanding for the spiritual all around him. For from the present time onwards it will be the case that those who do not develop understanding for the spirit behind the senses, for the world of the spirit behind the world of the senses, will be like men whose breathing system is so injured that they cannot take in air and they suffer from difficulty in breathing. To-day we still have left in our ideas a certain inheritance from primeval human wisdom, and we feed upon these old ideas. If, however, we are able to observe the evolution of mankind in modern times with the eye of the spirit we shall perceive that while discoveries abound in the field of the material and external, in the spiritual a kind of exhaustion shows itself, a strange poverty of spiritual content. New ideas, new concepts, arise less and less among mankind. It is only those who do not know of ancient concepts and who are always rediscovering the old for themselves—that is to say, their whole life long remain in a sense immature—who can imagine that it is possible for ideas to develop and mature in these days. No, the world of abstract ideas, the world of intellectual ideas is exhausted. There are no more new ideas springing up. The time of Thales marks the rise of intellectual ideas for Western thought. And now we stand at a kind of end; and philosophy as such, philosophy as a science of ideas, is at an end. Ideas and thoughts belong only to the physical plane, and man must learn to lift himself up to what lies beyond ideas and thought, that is, beyond the world of the physical plane. To begin with he will lift himself up to Imaginations. Imaginations will again become for him something real and actual. That will bring about a new fructification of the spiritual in mankind. That is why, my dear friends, Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science gives Imaginations of great and mighty world processes. Note how different from everything else of its kind is the description given of Saturn, Sun and Moon. Compare it with the abstract concepts of natural science. Everything in Spiritual Science has to be given in pictures, it has to be presented in such a way that it is not directly realisable in the external world of the senses. We say of Old Saturn that it had a condition of warmth, of warmth alone. That is sheer nonsense for the present-day world of the senses; for the world of the senses knows nothing of warmth substance as such. But what is nonsense for the world of the senses is truth for the world of the spirit, and the next step required of man in the near future is to live his way into the world of the spirit. Those who will not resolve to breathe the air of the spirit—and Spiritual Science has come into the world to make the soul of man susceptible to the air of the spirit—those who do not want to make themselves responsive to Spiritual Science will actually approach a condition of spiritual shortness of breath and spiritual exhaustion. One can already see many persons approaching this condition, and it leads on to a spiritual wasting and decline, to an actual “consumption” of the spirit.
Such would be the lot of men on earth if they wanted to stop short at the world of the senses. They would go into a spiritual decline. In the future development of civilisation there will be men full of sensitiveness for the spiritual, full of heart for all that Spiritual Science will give, and for the world of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition as it springs up spontaneously in the souls of men. So will it be for a part of humanity: they will have understanding and devotion for this world of the spirit. And it will be these men who will fulfil the task that is set before the earth in the near future. Others perhaps will be content with the world of the senses, not wanting to go beyond it, not wanting to go beyond that shadow picture which the conceptions of philosophy and of natural science afford. Such people are moving in the direction of spiritual shortness of breath, spiritual consumption, spiritual sickness and disease. They will become dried up in earth existence and not attain the goal that has been set for earth evolution. Evolution goes on, however, in such a way that each one is compelled to ask himself the question: Which way will you choose? In the future men will stand, as it were, on two paths, to the right and to the left. On one path will be those for whom the world of the senses alone is true, and on the other will be those for whom the world of the spiritual is the truth.
And since the senses, such as the ear, for example, will disappear, since at the end of the earth all the senses that belong to the earth will have completely disappeared, we can form some idea of what that consumption and wasting away will be like. If we abandon ourselves to the world of the senses we abandon ourselves to something which abandons man in the future of earth evolution. If we press through to the world of the spirit we develop ourselves in the direction of something that wills to come nearer and nearer to man in the future of earth evolution. If we want to express it in a symbol we may say that it is possible for man to stand there at the end of the earth evolution and to speak as Faust did when he had been blinded physically—(for man will be not only blinded to the world around him but deaf to it in addition, he will stand there blind and deaf and deprived of taste and smell)—he will be able to say with Faust: “But in my inmost spirit all is light—yes, and all is glorious ringing tones and words of men!” Thus will the man be able to speak who has turned to the world of the spirit. But the other, the man who wanted to remain at the world of the senses would be like a Faust who, after he was blinded, would be compelled to say: “Blind hast thou become without, and within shines no light of the spirit, darkness alone receives thee.”
Man has to choose between these two Faust natures in his relation to the future of the earth. For the first Faust would be one who had turned to the world of the spirit, whilst the second would be one who had turned to the world of the senses and had thereby become closely united with something of which man must feel that it is unsubstantial and unreal, and moreover that it robs him of his own reality and being. Thus does that appear which we set out to discover and bring from occult heights—thus does it appear, my dear friends, in its relation to the immediate daily life of man. I think I need not spend words in pointing out what moral principles and will impulses for present-day humanity can proceed from a real understanding of occult science.1Printed by C. F. Hodgson & Son, Ltd., 2 Newton St., London, W.C.2. For out of a rightly understood wisdom will a rightly understood goodness and virtue be born in the human heart. Let us strive after a real understanding of world evolution, let us seek after wisdom—and we shall find without fail that the child of wisdom will be love.
Sechster Vortrag
Sie werden vielleicht gerade aus diesen Vorträgen haben entnehmen können, ein wie kompliziertes Wesen der Mensch eigentlich ist und von wie vielerlei Seiten man den Menschen betrachten muß, wenn man seinem Wesen beikommen will. Es soll in diesem Augenblicke nur noch auf eine Tatsache hingewiesen werden, die sich gewissermaßen als eine der bedeutendsten Entwickelungstatsachen ergibt, wenn man an der Hand hellseherischer Forschung des Menschen Werdegang von sehr alten Zeiten bis heute und seine Aussichten in die Zukunft des Menschengeschlechtes hinein betrachtet. Ich habe Sie ja im Verlaufe der Vorträge darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß, wenn man sein Erkenntnisvermögen, seinen Erkenntnistrieb so erzieht, daß die menschliche Seele, während sie die Erkenntnis anstrebt, aufnimmt die Zustände, die wir bezeichnen können als Staunen, Verehrung, weisheitsvollen Einklang mit den Weltereignissen und Ergebenheit gegenüber allem Weltgeschehen, dann die Erkenntnis sich allmählich dazu aufschwingen kann, überall in dem, was uns umgibt, zu unterscheiden: Hier habe ich es mit einem Werdenden zu tun, mit einem, das erst in der Zukunft seine Vollkommenheit erlangen wird, und auf der anderen Seite habe ich es mit einem allmählich Ersterbenden, Hinschwindenden zu tun. In der Region des Entstehens und Vergehens nehmen wir ja solche Dinge wahr. Und es ist insbesondere darauf hingewiesen worden, wie der menschliche Kehlkopf eigentlich ein Zukunftsorgan ist, wie er dazu berufen ist, in der Zukunft etwas ganz und gar anderes zu sein, als er heute ist. Heute teilt er nur unsere inneren Zustände durch das Wort der Außenwelt mit, während er in der Zukunft mitteilen wird alles das, was wir selbst sind, das heißt, was zur Hervorbringung des ganzen Menschen dienen wird. Er wird das zukünftige Reproduktionsorgan sein. Der Mensch wird in der Zukunft nicht nur die Verfassung seines Gemütes durch das Wort zum Ausdruck bringen mit Hilfe des Kehlkopfes, sondern er wird sich selbst in die Welt hinein durch den Kehlkopf zur Darstellung bringen; das heißt, die Vermehrung des Menschen wird an das Organ des Kehlkopfes gebunden sein.
Nun gibt es in diesem komplizierten Mikrokosmos, in dieser komplizierten kleinen Welt, die wir als den Menschen bezeichnen, für ein jegliches Organ, das in dieser Weise gleichsam in seinem Samenzustande ist und in der Zukunft dann einen höheren Vollkommenheitsgrad erreichen wird, ein anderes Organ, welches dafür — sagen wir — in allmählicher Abnahme, im Hinsterben ist. Für den menschlichen Kehlkopf ist nun das entsprechende hinschwindende Organ der Gehörapparat. Und in demselben Maße, in dem der Gehörapparat für den Menschen immer mehr dahinschwinden wird, immer mehr abnehmen wird, in demselben Maße wird der Kehlkopf immer vollkommener und vollkommener werden, ein immer bedeutungsvolleres Organ werden. Die ganze Größe dieser Tatsache können wir nur dann ermessen, wenn wir sozusagen mit Hilfe der AkashaChronik in eine weite Vergangenheit des Menschen zurückblicken und dann aus dem, was wir da erforschen können, uns eine Vorstellung zu bilden in der Lage sind, was denn der Gehörapparat, das Ohr, einmal eigentlich war. Ungeheuer aufschließend für die Erkenntnis des menschlichen Wesens ist es, gerade das Ohr zurückzuverfolgen. Denn in seinem jetzigen Zustand ist dieser Gehörapparat des Menschen eigentlich, man möchte sagen, wirklich nur noch ein Schatten dessen, was er war. Dieser menschliche Gehörapparat hört heute nur die Töne oder die in Tönen sich ausdrückenden Worte des physischen Planes. Das ist gewissermaßen ein letzter Rest dessen, was durch das Gehör in den Menschen eingeflossen ist, ein letzter Rest davon; denn es flossen einstmals durch diesen Apparat ein die gewaltigen Bewegungen des ganzen Universums. Und wie wir heute nur irdische Musik durch das Ohr hören, so floß in den Menschen herein in alten Zeiten Weltenmusik, Sphärenmusik. Und wie wir heute die Worte in die Töne kleiden, so kleidete sich einstmals in die Sphärenmusik das göttliche Weltenwort, dasjenige, wovon das Johannes-Evangelium als dem göttlichen Weltenworte, dem Logos, kündet. Aus der geistigen Welt floß ein in alles, was im alten Sinn als Gehör bezeichnet werden kann, wie jetzt nur das menschliche Wort und die irdische Musik, so einst die himmlische, die Sphärenmusik, und innerhalb der Sphärenmusik das, was die göttlichen Geister sprachen. Und wie heute der Mensch durch sein Wort und durch seinen Gesang, durch seinen Ton die Luft in Formen zwingt, in Formen bringt, so brachten die göttlichen Worte und die göttliche Musik Formen hervor.
Und die kostbarste dieser Formen, die kann uns in der folgenden Weise vor die Seele treten. Betrachten Sie einmal, wenn Sie heute irgendein Wort, meinetwillen auch nur einen Vokal aussprechen, zum Beispiel das A, wie dann durch dieses A in die Luft eindringt die Möglichkeit, in dieser Luft eine Form zu bilden. So drang heraus aus dem Weltenwort in die Welt herein die Form, und die kostbarste dieser Formen ist der Mensch selber. Der Mensch selber in seinem Urzustande wurde erzeugt dadurch, daß er aus dem göttlichen Worte ausgesprochen wurde. Die Götter sprachen — und wie heute die Luft in Formen kommt durch des Menschen Wort, so kam unsere Welt in ihre Form hinein durch das Wort der Götter. Und der Mensch ist die kostbarste dieser Formen. Da war allerdings das Gehörorgan ein viel, viel komplizierteres noch. Jetzt ist es zusammengeschrumpft. Denn das, was Sie heute als äußeres Gehörorgan haben, was nur bis zu einer gewissen Tiefe in das Gehirn eindringt, das breitete sich von außen nach innen aus über die ganze menschliche Wesenheit. Und überall im Innern der menschlichen Wesenheit breiteten sich aus die Wellengänge, die den Menschen aus dem Gotteswort heraus in die Welt hineinsprachen. So ist der Mensch, als er noch spirituell erzeugt wurde, erzeugt worden durch das Gehörorgan, und so wird in der Zukunft der Mensch, wenn er wieder aufgestiegen sein wird, ein ganz rudimentäres, ein ganz zusammengeschrumpftes Ohr haben. Der Sinn des Ohres, er wird ganz und gar vergangen sein. Das Ohr ist in absteigender Bewegung; dafür aber wird zu höherem Glanze und höherer Vollkommenheit sich entwickelt haben das, was heute erst im Samenzustande ist, der Kehlkopf. Und in seiner Vollkommenheit wird es hinaussprechen das, was der Mensch für die Welt als die Wiederholung seines Wesens hervorbringen kann, wie die Götter den Menschen als ihr Geschöpf auf die Erde hereingesprochen haben. So kehrt sich der Weltengang in einer gewissen Weise um. Dieser ganze Mensch, wie wir ihn haben betrachten können, er ist so, eben wie er vor uns steht, das Produkt einer absteigenden Entwickelung, und wenn wir ein solches Organ wie das Ohr betrachten, so müssen wir uns überall sagen: Dieses Ohr, das es schon bis zu der inneren Verdichtung des Knochigen in den Gehörknöchelchen gebracht hat, dieses Ohr ist sozusagen im letzten Stadium absteigender Entwickelung. Der Sinn als solcher schwindet hin, der Mensch aber entwickelt sich in die Welt der Geistigkeit hinein, und seine aufsteigenden Organe sind die Brücken, die ihn hinaufleiten in die Geistigkeit. So verhält sich die Welt der Sinne zu der Welt des Geistes, indem die Welt der Sinne uns angezeigt wird durch lauter absterbende Organe, die Welt des Geistes durch aufsteigende Organe.
Und so ist es in aller Welt, insofern uns diese Welt gegeben ist. In aller Welt können wir verfolgen in einer gewissen Weise Werden und Vergehen. Und lehrreich ist es, anzuwenden die Idee, die uns über Werden und Vergehen gegeben wird, wichtig ist es, bedeutungsvoll, sie anzuwenden auf die übrige Welt. So ist uns zum Beispiel in der Welt des Mineralischen etwas gegeben, das auch in einer gewissen Weise in einer aufsteigenden Entwickelung ist, das jetzt in einer Art von Samenzustand ist. Und das ist das Quecksilber. Das Quecksilber ist ein Metall, das Verwandlungen durchmachen wird, aber Verwandlungen zum Vollkommenen. Das Quecksilber hat als Metall noch nicht alle diejenigen Kräfte pulverisiert, die ein jeder Stoff im Geistigen hat, bevor er Stoff wird. Es wird in der Zukunft noch Wesentliches aus seiner Spiritualität heraussetzen können und wird noch andere Formen annehmen können, so daß in der Welt des Mineralischen in gewisser Weise das Quecksilber dem menschlichen Kehlkopfe entspricht und auch in einer gewissen Weise dem Organ, dessen Anhangsorgan der Kehlkopf ist, der Lunge. Andere Metalle, sagen wir zum Beispiel das Kupfer, das ist dafür in einer Art absteigender Entwickelung. Das wird in der Zukunft so sich zeigen: Es hat nicht mehr innere spirituelle Kräfte, die es heraussetzen kann, sondern es muß immer mehr und mehr sich bloß zersplittern, bloß zerfallen, bloß zum Weltenstaube werden. Solche Zusammenhänge, wie sie jetzt eben angeführt worden sind mehr beispielsweise, die werden immer mehr und mehr von unserer jetzigen Zeit ab studiert werden. Man wird immer mehr die Verwandtschaft im Entstehen und Vergehen in den einzelnen Reichen der Natur studieren, wird darauf kommen, wie zum Beispiel nicht bloß durch Probieren, sondern durch die imaginative Erkenntnis eine gewisse Verwandtschaft metallischer Stoffe zu gewissen Organen des menschlichen Leibes gefunden werden kann, woraus sich dann ergeben wird, daß man diese Stoffe, deren Wirksamkeit ja aus der äußeren Erfahrung zum Teil bekannt ist, aus der Imagination heraus gerade in ihrer Heilkraft, in ihrer reproduktiven und restituierenden Kraft auch für den menschlichen Leib wird erkennen lernen. Überhaupt Verwandtschaften der einzelnen Wesenheiten werden sich in der mannigfaltigsten Art ergeben.
So wird man erkennen, daß an der Pflanze alles das, was im Samen ruht, was in der Samenkraft darinnen ist, in anderer Weise mit dem Menschen verwandt ist als das, was zum Beispiel in der Wurzel der Pflanze enthalten ist. Alles das, was in der Wurzel der Pflanze enthalten ist, das entspricht in einer gewissen Weise dem menschlichen Gehirn und dem sich anschließenden Nervensystem (siehe die Übersicht auf Seite 108). Und das geht so weit, daß in der Tat auch der Genuß von all dem, was in den Pflanzenwurzeln enthalten ist, eine gewisse Verwandtschaft hat mit den Prozessen, die sich in Gehirn und Nervensystem abspielen. So daß in einer gewissen Weise der Mensch, wenn er will, daß sein Gehirn und Nervensystem als physische Werkzeuge des Geisteslebens physisch beeinflußt werden sollen, dann dasjenige, was als Kräfte in den Wurzeln ist, mit den Nahrungsmitteln zu sich nimmt. Er läßt dann dasjenige, was er in sich aufnimmt, in einer gewissen Weise in sich denken, in sich geistige Arbeit verrichten, während er, wenn er weniger dazu neigt, sagen wir das wurzelhafte Wesen aufzunehmen, es dann mehr selber sein wird, seine Geistigkeit, welche das Gehirn und Nervensystem benutzt. Daraus ersehen Sie, daß viel Wurzel-Genuß den Menschen in bezug auf sein seelisch-geistiges Erleben unselbständig macht, weil das Objektive, das Äußere, durch ihn arbeitet, weil sozusagen das Gehirn und Nervensystem verselbständigt werden. Wenn der Mensch also in einem höheren Maße es selbst sein will, was in ihm arbeitet, dann muß er sich beschränken in bezug auf den Wurzel-Genuß. Meine lieben Freunde, das sind keine Anweisungen zu irgendeiner Diät, sondern nur Mitteilungen über die Tatsachen der Natur. Denn ich ermahne Sie ausdrücklich, sich nicht ohne weiteres an solche Regeln zu halten. Nicht jeder Mensch ist so weit, daß er nicht nötig hat, sich die Kraft des Denkens von dem Objektiven abnehmen zu lassen, und es kann sehr leicht geschehen, daß der Mensch, der noch nicht reif ist, sich die Kraft des Denkens und Empfindens von dem objektiven Seelenleben abnehmen zu lassen, dann, wenn er den Genuß von Wurzeln aus dem Pflanzenreich vermeidet, in eine Art schlafmützigen Zustand kommt, weil sein Spirituell-Psychisches noch nicht stark genug ist, um in sich die Kräfte aus dem Geistigen heraus zu entwickeln, die sonst eben objektiv, ohne Zutun des SpirituellPsychischen im Menschen entwickelt werden. So liegt die Sache. Alle Diät ist ganz individuell und ganz und gar abhängig von der Art und Weise, wie der Mensch in dieser oder jener Weise entwickelt ist.
Dasjenige, was zum Beispiel in den Blättern der Pflanze ist, das steht in einer ähnlichen Weise in einem Zusammenhange mit dem, was wir als Lunge ansehen können, und all dem, was zum Lungensystem gehört. Hier haben wir schon etwas, das uns darauf hinweist, wie eine Art Bilanz geschaffen werden kann in einem Menschen, von dem zum Beispiel gesagt werden kann, daß sein Atmungssystem durch seine vererbten Anlagen oder durch sonstige Verhältnisse im Übermaß von innen her erhalten ist. Bei dem wäre es gut, ihm abzuraten, in seiner Nahrung vorzugsweise das zu genießen, was die Blätter der Pflanze liefern. Demjenigen aber, dem: wir nachhelfen wollen in bezug auf sein Atmungssystem, sein Lungensystem, dem tun wir gut, anzuraten, möglichst viel Blättriges zu genießen. Diese Dinge hängen dann wieder zusammen mit den Heilkräften, die in der Welt in den einzelnen Reichen draußen sind, denn diejenigen Teile der einzelnen Pflanze, welche eine bestimmte Verwandtschaft zu solchen Organen haben, diese Teile der Pflanze sind es vorzugsweise, welche auch für diese Sphären, für diese Gebiete des menschlichen Organismus die Heilkräfte enthalten. So daß also Wurzeln von Pflanzen viele Heilkräfte enthalten in bezug auf das Nervensystem, Blätter viele Heilkräfte enthalten in bezug auf das Lungensystem. Blüten der Pflanzen enthalten viele Heilkräfte in bezug auf das Nierensystem zum Beispiel, und Samen der Pflanzen enthalten in einer gewissen Weise Heilkräfte in bezug auf das Herz, aber nur so in bezug auf das Herz, daß heilkräftig die Samenkräfte sind, wenn sozusagen das Herz sich der Blutzirkulation zu stark widerserzt. Wenn es der Blutzirkulation zu stark nachgibt, dann sind mehr die Kräfte, die in den Früchten sind, in dem ausgereiften Samen also, in Betracht zu ziehen.

Dies, sehen Sie, sind einzelne Andeutungen, die sich dann ergeben, wenn wir Rücksicht darauf nehmen, daß in dem Augenblick, wo wir vom Menschen hinausdringen in die uns umgebende Natur, dasjenige, was in dieser uns umgebenden Natur den Sinnen erscheint, was zur Sinneswelt gehört, eigentlich nur die Oberfläche ist. An den Pflanzen ist also das, was zur Sinneswelt gehört, nur das Oberflächliche; hinter dem, was dem Auge, dem Geschmacke, dem Geruche an der Pflanze erscheint, sind erst die geistig-seelischen Kräfte der Pflanze. Aber diese geistig-seelischen Kräfte der Pflanze sind nicht so in der Pflanze enthalten, daß wir etwa davon sprechen könnten, jede einzelne Pflanze wäre beseelt, wie jeder einzelne Mensch etwa beseelt ist. Das ist nicht der Fall. Derjenige, der glauben würde, jede einzelne Pflanze sei beseelt, der würde sich demselben Irrtum hingeben wie der, welcher glauben würde, jedes einzelne Haar oder das Ohrläppchen oder die Nase oder ein Zahn im Menschen sei beseelt. Der ganze Mensch ist beseelt, und wir erlangen einen Einblick in das Seelische des Menschen erst dann, wenn wir von seinen Teilen zum Ganzen gehen. Das müssen wir aber bei jeglichem Wesen tun. Wir müssen spirituell bei jeglichem Wesen sorgfältig darauf kommen, ob es Teil oder ob es in einer gewissen Weise Ganzes ist. Die sämtlichen Pflanzen der Erde sind nun keineswegs für sich ein Ganzes, sondern sie sind Teile, Glieder, und eigentlich sprechen wir voneinem Wirklichen nur, wenn wir von dem sprechen, zu dem die Pflanzen als Teile, als Glieder gehören. Beim Menschen sehen wir das auch physisch, wozu seine Zähne, wozu sein Ohrläppchen, wozu seine Finger gehören, wir sehen es physisch als den Gesamtorganismus. Bei den Pflanzen sehen wir das, wozu die einzelnen Pflanzen gehören, nicht mit dem physischen Auge, nehmen es nicht wahr mit einem physischen Organ, sondern da gelangen wir gleich vom Teil zum Ganzen, da kommen wir gleich ins Geistige hinein. Und im wesentlichen müssen wir sagen: Das Seelische der Pflanzenwelt ist ein solches, welches in den Pflanzen nur seine einzelnen Organe hat. Und eigentlich sind es nur wenige Wesen in unserem Erdenganzen, die gleichsam zusammengestopft in der Erde sind und die als ihre einzelnen Teile die Pflanzen haben, wie der Mensch seine Haare an sich trägt.
Wir können, wenn wir wollen, davon sprechen, daß, wenn wir über die Pflanze, insofern sie unseren Sinnen erscheint, hinausgehen, wir dann zu den Gruppenseelen der Pflanzen kommen, die sich zur Pflanze so verhalten wie das Ganze zum Teil. Im großen und ganzen gibt es sieben Gruppenseelen, die als Pflanzenseelen zur Erde gehören und alle im Erdmittelpunkt in einer gewissen Weise den Mittelpunkt ihres eigenen Wesens haben. So daß wir uns die Erde nicht nur als diesen physischen Ball vorstellen können, sondern diese Erde ist durchdrungen von sieben solchen mehr oder weniger großen oder kleinen Sphären, die alle im Mittelpunkt der Erde etwas haben wie einen eigenen geistigen Mittelpunkt. Und dann treiben diese geistigen Wesen die Pflanzen heraus aus der Erde. Die Wurzel wächst dem Mittelpunkt der Erde zu, weil sie eigentlich dahin will und nur durch die übrige Erdenmaterie abgehalten wird, bis zum Mittelpunkt vorzudringen. Jede Pflanzenwurzel hat das Bestreben, bis zum Mittelpunkte der Erde vorzudringen, wo der Mittelpunkt des geistigen Wesens ist, zu dem die Pflanze gehört. |
So sehen wir also, daß wir etwas außerordentlich Wichtiges haben in dem Grundsatz, daß wir immer zu dem Ganzen gehen müssen, daß wir bei einem jeden Wesen darauf sehen müssen, ob es 'Teil oder Ganzes ist. In der neueren Zeit sehen einige Naturforscher die Pflanzen wohl als beseelt an, aber sie sehen die einzelnen Pflanzen als beseelt an. Das ist nicht geistreicher, als wenn man einen Zahn einen Menschen nennen würde; das steht auf derselben geistigen Höhe. Und alles das, wovon gerade heute viele sagen: Das ist schon ganz Anthroposophie, denn die sehen die Pflanzen als beseelt an — das ist für die Zukunft nichts weiter als wissenschaftliche Makulatur. Denn in den Pflanzen einzelne individuelle Seelen suchen, das würde eben heißen: Ich reiße einem Menschen einen Zahn aus und suche darin die Menschenseele. Die Pflanzenseele haben wir nicht zu suchen in der einzelnen Pflanze, sondern so, daß sogar ihr Wichtigstes im Mittelpunkte der Erde ist, nach welchem die Wurzel als die nach dem geistigsten Teile des Pflanzendaseins strebende Kraft hinzielt.
Wenn Sie nun ein solches Reich ins Auge fassen, dann wird Ihnen vom Standpunkte der heutigen Naturanschauung allerdings schon etwas entgegentreten, was uns in einer gewissen Weise so weit an die Pforte der Wahrheit bringen kann, wie Mephistopheles den Faust ins Reich der Mütter bringt, nämlich just bis zum alleräußersten Tor, nicht hinein in das Reich der Mütter. Denn ebensowenig, wie Mephistopheles mit dem Faust in das Reich der Mütter herunter kann, ebensowenig kann die heutige Naturwissenschaft in das Geistige hinein. Aber wie in gewisser Weise der Mephistopheles den Schlüssel gibt, gibt die Naturwissenschaft schon auch den Schlüssel. Sie will nur nicht selber hinein, wie Mephistopheles selber auch nicht hinein will in das Reich der Mütter. Also in gewisser Weise gibt uns Naturwissenschaft heute Anhaltspunkte, die dann, wenn Sie das so erkennen, wie wir es charakterisiert haben in diesen Vorträgen, dieses Erkennen oftmals an die Pforte des Wahren bringen können.
So spricht die Naturwissenschaft der Gegenwart, indem sie sich von Darwin hat anregen lassen, bloß aus der Welt der Sinne einen wichtigen naturwissenschaftlichen Grundsatz abzuleiten, von dem sogenannten Kampf ums Dasein. Wer wollte diesen Kampf ums Dasein nicht überall bemerken, wenn er nur das, was zunächst die äußere Sinneswelt darbietet, ins Auge faßt? Oh, dieser Kampf ums Dasein tritt uns ja überall entgegen! Wir brauchen nur zu beachten, wie, sagen wir, unzählige Keime von Meerestieren in das Meer oder an den Strand abgelegt werden, wie viele da zugrunde gehen und wie wenige zu wirklichen Tieren sich auswachsen, wie wenig Keime also wiederum Tiere werden und wie die anderen alle zugrunde gehen. Da schon beginnt sozusagen ein scheinbar furchtbarer Kampf ums Dasein, und man könnte nun anfangen zu lamentieren, wenn man bloß auf die Welt der Sinne hörte, und sagen: Von den Millionen und Abermillionen Keimen gehen im Kampf ums Dasein so viele zugrunde und nur wenige kommen fort. — Aber dies ist nur die eine Seite eines Gedankens. Denn fassen wir diesen Gedanken einmal an einem anderen Ende an. Gleichsam um Ihr Denken in eine gewisse Richtung zu bringen, möchte ich Sie ermahnen, den Gedanken am anderen Ende anzufassen. Sie können auch in der folgenden Weise lamentieren über den Kampf ums Dasein: Sie können Ihren Blick richten auf ein Getreidefeld, wo so und so viele Ähren mit so und so vielen Körnern stehen, und können sich jetzt fragen: Wieviel geht von diesen Körnern, die in den Getreideähren sind, in irgendeiner Weise für sein eigentliches Ziel verloren, und wie wenig davon wird wiederum in die Erde gesenkt, um Neues zu werden in demselben Sinne, wie es das Alte war? — Wir senden also unseren Blick über ein Ährenfeld hin, das in üppiger Fruchtbarkeit sproßt und sprießt, und sagen uns: Wieviel von dem, was da sproßt und sprießt, wird vergehen, ohne seinen Zweck erreicht zu haben, und nur weniges wird in die Erde gesenkt, so daß neue Pflanzen der gleichen Art entstehen. Es ist da also auch so, nur ein wenig auf einem anderen Gebiete, wie bei den Meerestieren, wo auch nur wenig Keime zur Entfaltung kommen.
Aber jetzt möchte ich Sie einmal fragen, was mit den Menschen, die etwas essen müssen, werden sollte, wenn alle Getreidekörner wiederum in die Erde gesenkt würden? Nehmen wir an, es könnte sein — theoretisch kann man ja alles annehmen —, daß so viel wächst, daß alle Getreidekörner wieder aufgehen könnten. Aber denken wir dann, was mit denjenigen Wesen geschehen würde, welche sich vom Getreide ernähren müssen! Hier, sehen Sie, kommen wir an etwas sehr Merkwürdiges; hier kommen wir zu einer Erschütterung in bezug auf einen Glauben, der uns berechtigt erscheinen könnte, wenn wir die Welt der Sinne anschauen. Es könnte uns berechtigt erscheinen, wenn wir, sagen wir in bezug auf rein sinnliches Dasein ein Ährenfeld anschauen, daß ein jegliches Korn wieder eine ganze Pflanze werde. Aber der Gesichtspunkt ist vielleicht falsch. Vielleicht ist es im Gesamtzusammenhange der Welt gar nicht so, daß wir richtig denken, wenn wir einem jeglichen Samenkorn den Zweck zuschreiben, wiederum eine ganze Pflanze zu werden, sondern vielleicht ist es so, daß uns nichts berechtigt zu sagen, daß irgendwie diejenigen Körner ihren Weltenzweck verfehlt haben, welche anderen Wesen zur Nahrung dienen, ebensowenig, wie uns irgend etwas zwingt zu sagen, daß die Samen der Meeresfische ihren Zweck verfehlt haben, die nicht wiederum zu Fischen geworden sind. Es ist nämlich wirklich nur ein menschliches Vorurteil, daß ein jeglicher Same wiederum zu demselben Wesen werden solle. Denn die Aufgaben der Einzelwesen können wir nur ermessen, wenn wir wiederum den Blick auf das Ganze richten. Und wenn das, was alljährlich in millionenfacher Weise an Samen im Meere zugrunde geht, auch nicht zu Fischen wird, so dient es dafür anderen Wesenheiten, die der Mensch jetzt nur nicht überschaut, zur Nahrung, gibt sich anderen Wesenheiten hin. Und wahrhaftig, diejenigen geistigen Substanzen, die sich ins Dasein ringen in den scheinbar zugrunde gehenden Meeressamen, die lamentieren nicht, daß sie ihr Ziel nicht erreichen — um Nahrung zu sein für andere Wesen, aufgenommen zu werden von diesen anderen Wesen. Der Mensch, der ja mit seinem Verstande außen steht, der glaubt, daß nur alles das eine Bedeutung habe, was sozusagen zu dem Ziele hinstrebt, das er durch seine Sinne als das letzte Ziel ansehen muß. Ein vorurteilslos auf die Natur gerichteter Blick sieht in jedem Stadium eines jeden Wesens etwas Vollkommenes, und solche Vollkommenheit ruht nicht erst in dem, zu dem ein Wesen wird, sondern in dem, was es ist.
Das sind solche aus dem Okkultismus heraus gewonnene Gedanken, die in Ihnen angeschlagen werden müssen. Und wenn Sie jetzt von der Außenwelt zurückblicken auf die eigene Seele, dann werden Sie wahrnehmen, daß in dieser eigenen Seele eine Fülle von Gedanken ist, die fortwährend in diese Seele hereinströmen, fortwährend in dieser Seele aufleben, und wenige von diesen Gedanken nur werden klar gefaßt, wenige nur werden ein bewußter Teil der menschlichen Seele. Machen Sie irgendeinen Weg durch die Stadt und denken Sie daran, wie vieles da durch Ihre Sinne hereinfällt in Ihre Seele und wie wenig Sie es so beachten, daß es dann ein bleibender Bestandteil Ihres Seelenlebens wird. Sie nehmen fortwährend Eindrücke auf, und die Masse dieser Eindrücke, die Sie aufnehmen, verhält sich zu dem, was dann ein bleibender bewußter Besitz Ihrer Seele wird, geradeso, wie die große Menge der jährlich entstehenden Fischkeime im Meere sich zu dem verhält, was wirkliche, ausgewachsene Fische wird. Auch in Ihrem inneren Seelenleben müssen Sie auf dem Grund und Boden eines weiten Gebietes fortwährend die Prozedur ausführen, weniges nur zur Entfaltung kommen zu lassen. Und wenn der Mensch nur ein klein wenig dahinter kommt, aus welchem Flutenmeere von Phantasiegebilden und Vorstellungsgebilden er auftaucht, wenn er aus dem Schlafe auftaucht, wenn manchem Menschen noch der Traum eine letzte Spur zeigt von diesem ungeheuer reichen Leben, das der Mensch im Schlafzustande führt, dann kann er auch darauf kommen, daß es eine Bedeutung hat, wenn er so vieles in sich aufnimmt, was nicht zum deutlichen Bewußtsein kommt. Denn was zu einem deutlichen Bewußtsein kommt, das ist für die innere Arbeit des Menschen verloren, das arbeitet nicht mehr an dem System der Sinnesorgane, an dem System der Drüsenorgane, an dem System der Verdauung, an dem Nerven-, Muskel-, Knochensystem usw. Das, was in der Seele bewußt wird, was der heutige Mensch als bewußten inneren Seelengehalt in sich trägt, das arbeitet nicht mehr, das ist gerade dadurch charakterisiert, daß es losgerissen ist von dem Mutterboden des Gesamtmenschen und dadurch dem Menschen zum Bewußtsein kommt. Das, was sich verhält zu diesen bewußten Vorstellungen wie die vielen Samen zu den wenigen, die Fische werden, was da hereinkommt an ungeheuer vielen äußeren Eindrücken, aber nicht ins Bewußtsein hereinkommt, das arbeitet an dem Gesamtmenschen.
Es arbeitet also fortwährend an dem Gesamtmenschen dasjenige, was in seiner Umgebung ist. Sehen Sie, der Traum kann Sie manchmal auch darüber belehren, wie in der T’at nicht nur das in die Seele hereinzieht, was dann als bewußte Vorstellung fortlebt, sondern wie auch andere Eindrücke in die Seele hereinziehen. Sie brauchen nur zu achten auf solche Dinge, die sich tausendfach im Leben finden. Sie träumen irgendeine Situation: Sie stehen einem Menschen gegenüber, der mit einem anderen Menschen spricht. Sie stehen als Dritter da. Sie träumen ganz genau das Antlitz des betreffenden Menschen und so weiter. Sie sagen sich: Woher dieser Traum? Er macht so den Eindruck, als ob er sich mit Personen befaßte, die ich kenne im physischen Leben, er geht also auf den physischen Plan hinaus in seiner Anregung. Woher aber der Traum? Ich habe das nicht gehört, nicht gesehen. Und nun forschen Sie nach, und wenn Sie genau forschen, so können Sie finden, daß Sie vor ein paar Tagen doch den Menschen gegenübergestanden sind in einem Eisenbahnwagen, nur ist es damals unbewußt an Ihnen vorbeigegangen. Aber es lebt sich doch ein. Nur Ungenauigkeit in der Beobachtung macht es, daß die Menschen so etwas nicht wissen.
Nun sind allerdings solche Vorstellungen, die in dieser Weise der Traum uns vor Augen bringt, nicht die allerwichtigsten, die als Eindrücke auf die Seele wirken, sondern ganz andere. Denken Sie einmal daran, daß das, was Ihnen gestern vorgeführt worden ist, ja fortwährend geschehen ist in der Menschheitsentwickelung. Durch sein Knochensystem hat der Mensch fortwährend Imaginationen hervorgebracht, durch sein Muskelsystem fortwährend Inspirationen in die Welt geschickt, durch sein Nervensystem fortwährend Intuitionen. Das alles ist in der Welt. Das, was böse ist, muß der Mensch wiederum zurücknehmen und durch sein Schicksal abtragen. Aber das andere baut draußen auf und gestaltet, ist fortwährend in der Umgebung des Menschen da. Tatsächlich ist auch alles das, was, sagen wir, nur seit der atlantischen Katastrophe der Mensch an Imaginationen, an Inspirationen und Intuitionen in die Erdenwelt hinausgegeben hat, vorhanden und gehört zu unserer Umgebung. Das alles, insofern es ein Gutes war, was da die Menschen hervorgebracht haben, das brauchen die einzelnen Menschen nicht wieder in ihrem Karmaverlauf zurückzunehmen. Aber was sie so durch Jahrhunderte und Aberjahrhunderte in den aufeinanderfolgenden Epochen gleichsam hinausgesendet haben in die geistige Erdenatmosphäre, das ist wahrhaft für die Menschen, die jetzt weiterleben, ebenso vorhanden, wie die Luft für den physischen Menschen vorhanden ist. Wie der Mensch die physische Luft atmet, wie die Luft von seiner Umgebung in sein physisches Inneres dringt, so dringen in den Menschen herein die Dinge, die sich da entwickelt haben als Imaginationen, Inspirationen und Intuitionen, und der Mensch nimmt mit seinem SeelischGeistigen teil an alledem. Und nun ist das Wichtige, daß der Mensch nicht wesenlos dem gegenüberstehe, was er also in den früheren Epochen seines Erdendaseins der Erde selber mitgeteilt hat, daß er nicht unverwandt dem gegenüberstehen soll. Verwandt aber kann der Mensch nur werden dem, was er also als geistigen Inhalt der Erde einverleibt hat, wenn er sich allmählich die Fähigkeit erwirbt, in seine Seele diese Dinge hereinzunehmen.
Wie aber wird das gemacht? Sehen Sie, wenn man in den geistigen Sinn der Erdenentwickelung eindringt, dann zeigt sich, daß in den Zeiten, in denen die Menschen der nachatlantischen Zeit noch etwas von altem Hellsehen hatten, Imaginationen, Inspirationen und Intuitionen in einem ganz umfassenden Sinne der geistigen Erdatmosphäre mitgeteilt worden sind. Da war vorzugsweise die Zeit der Ausgabe von solchen spirituellen Substanzen. Seit der vierten nachatlantischen Periode, insbesondere aber von unserer Gegenwart an, kommen wir immer mehr und mehr dazu, weniger auszusenden, aber mehr darauf angewiesen zu sein, das Alte als ein uns Verwandtes aufzunehmen, das, was hinausgesendet worden ist, wiederum in uns hereinzunehmen. Das heißt, der Mensch ist angewiesen darauf, gleichsam einem früheren geistigen Ausatmungsprozeß einen geistigen Einatmungsprozeß entgegenzusetzen. Der Mensch muß immer empfindlicher und empfänglicher werden für das Geistige, das in der Welt vorhanden ist. |
Die alten Zeiten hatten das noch nicht so notwendig, weil sie Geistiges aus ihrem Innern heraussetzen konnten, sie hatten einen Reservefonds. Der ist aber seit der vierten nachatlantischen Kulturepoche so weit erschöpft, daß in der Zukunft nur immer das in gewisser Weise herausgesetzt werden kann, was zuerst eingeatmet, eingesogen wurde. Daß der Mensch in diese neue Mission seines Erdendaseins sich verständnisvoll hineinfinden könne, dazu ist ja gerade Anthroposophie oder Geisteswissenschaft da, welche den Menschen, die heute schon einen Zug zu ihr hin haben, wahrhaftig nicht aus dem Grunde gefällt, weil unter anderen Marotten eben auch diese geisteswissenschaftliche Marotte einmal in die Welt gekommen ist; sondern Geisteswissenschaft oder Anthroposophie hängt im Innersten zusammen mit der ganzen Erdenentwickelung, hängt damit zusammen, daß der Mensch darauf angewiesen ist, nach und nach Verständnis für das Geistige um sich herum zu entwickeln. Denn die Menschen, die von unserer jetzigen Zeit ab kein Verständnis entwickeln werden für den Geist hinter den Sinnen, für die geistige Welt hinter der Sinneswelt, sie werden denen gleichen, welche im physischen Leibe ihr Atmungssystem so verdorben haben, daß sie keine Luft bekommen können zum Atmen, daß sie an Atemnot leiden. Heute ist es’ noch so, weil ein gewisses Erbgut uralter menschlicher Weisheit in Begriffen geblieben ist, daß die Menschen von diesen alten Begriffen zehren. Wer aber mit geistigen Augen die Entwickelung der Menschheit in der letzten Zeit betrachtet, der wird wahrnehmen: Wieviel auch im äußeren Materiellen die Erfindungen und Entdeckungen sich häufen, geistiger Inhalt ist in einer gewissen Weise merkwürdig der Erschöpfung entgegengegangen. Neue Begriffe, neue Ideen, sie sprießen der Menschheit immer weniger. Nur diejenigen, welche die alten Ideen nicht kennen und immer das Alte gerade für sich wiederum entdecken, das heißt, die in gewisser Weise ihr ganzes Leben lang etwas unreif bleiben, nur die können glauben, daß jetzt neue Ideen als solche reifen können. Nein, die Welt der abstrakten Ideen, die Welt der Verstandesideen, sie hat sich erschöpft. Neue Ideen sprießen nicht mehr.
Bei Thales begann ein gewisses Entstehen der Verstandesideen für das abendländische Denken. Jetzt sind wir in gewisser Weise am Ende, und Philosophie ist als solche, als Ideenwissenschaft, am Ende. Der Mensch muß sich erheben lernen zu dem, was jenseits der Ideen und Gedanken, die ja auch nur dem physischen Plane angehören, was jenseits dieser Welt der Ideen liegt. Zunächst wird er sich erheben zu den Imaginationen. Die werden wiederum etwas Reales für ihn werden. Dann wird eine neue Befruchtung eintreten für das Geistige der Menschheit. Daher erfließen uns in der Geisteswissenschaft Imaginationen für wichtige Weltenvorgänge. Sehen Sie sich an, wie sich die Beschreibung von Saturn, Sonne und Mond von anderen Dingen unterscheidet, wie sich diese verhält zu den abstrakten Begriffen der anderen Wissenschaft. Bildhaft muß man alles geben, so daß es in der äußeren sinnlichen Welt nicht unmittelbar realisierbar ist. Von dem alten Saturn sagen wir, daß er einen bloßen Wärmezustand hat. Das ist Unsinn für die heutige Welt der Sinne, denn eine bloße Wärmesubstanz gibt es nirgends für die Welt der Sinne. Was aber Unsinn ist für die Welt der Sinne, ist Wahrheit für die Welt des Geistes, und hinein sich zu leben in die Welt des Geistes ist das, was dem Menschen unmittelbar obliegt in die nächste Zukunft hinein. Denn diejenigen, die sich nicht entschließen werden, die Luft des Geistes zu atmen, für welche die Menschenseele. durch Geisteswissenschaft, durch eine Wissenschaft, die über die der bloßen Sinne hinausgeht, empfänglich gemacht werden soll, diejenigen, die sich nicht empfänglich machen wollen für die geistige Wissenschaft, sie werden wirklich einem Zustande entgegengehen, den man in gewisser Weise für viele heute schon herankommen sieht: einer geistigen Atemnot und damit einer geistigen Erschöpfung, die dann weiterführt zu einer geistigen Auszehrung, zu einer geistigen Schwindsucht.
Das würde das Los der Menschen auf Erden sein, die nur bei der Sinneswelt verbleiben wollten, daß sie an geistiger Schwindsucht zugrunde gehen würden. So wird sich in der Zukunft die Kultur entwickeln, daß es Menschen geben wird voller Empfänglichkeit und Seelenhaftigkeit und Herz für die geistige Welt, für das, was zunächst als Geisteswissenschaft gegeben wird, für das, was dann ganz von selbst in den menschlichen Seelen entspringen wird als die Welt der Imagination, Inspiration und Intuition. So wird es sein mit dem einen Teil der Menschheit, daß er ein Verständnis und eine Hingabe haben wird für diese Welt des Geistes. Das werden diejenigen Menschen sein, welche die Aufgabe, die der Erde zunächst gesetzt ist, erfüllen werden. Andere Menschen werden vielleicht bleiben bei der Welt der Sinne, nicht vorrücken wollen über die Welt der Sinne und über das bloße Schattenbild der Sinneswelt, das in den philosophischen Begriffen, das in der äußeren Wissenschaft gegeben werden kann. Diese gehen entgegen geistiger Atemnot, geistiger Auszehrung, geistigem Siechtum, die vertrocknen innerhalb des Erdendaseins und erreichen nicht das, was der Erdenentwickelung als Ziel gestellt ist. Es muß aber die Entwickelung so geschehen, daß ein jeglicher die eigene Seele fragen muß: Welchen Weg wählst du? Gleichsam zur Linken und zur Rechten werden die Menschen stehen in der Zukunft — diejenigen, für die allein die Welt der Sinne Wahrheit sein wird, und diejenigen, für welche die Welt des Geistigen, des Spirituellen Wahrheit sein wird.
Da aber die Sinne, wie das Ohr des Menschen, dahinschwinden, da dem Menschen am Erdenende alle Erdensinne hingeschwunden sein werden, so können Sie jetzt eine Vorstellung davon bekommen, wie real jene Schwindsucht und Auszehrung zu verstehen ist. Verlassen wir uns auf die Welt der Sinne, so verlassen wir uns auf etwas, was den Menschen verläßt in der Zukunft der Erdenentwickelung. Dringen wir zur Welt des Geistes vor, so entwickeln wir uns zu dem, was immer mehr und mehr an den Menschen herankommen will in der Zukunft der Erdenentwickelung. Wenn wir ein Symbolum gebrauchen wollen, so können wir sagen: Der Mensch kann einmal dastehen am Ende der Erdenentwickelung und sprechen wie Faust, nachdem Faust äußerlich erblindet ist — denn er wird nicht nur dastehen, der Mensch, äußerlich erblindet, sondern äußerlich taub, äußerlich ohne Geschmack, äußerlich ohne Geruch — :: doch im Innern leuchtet helles Licht, doch im Innern tönt herrlichstes Menschentönen und Menschenwort. So wird der Mensch sagen können, der sich der Welt des Geistes zuwendet. Aber der andere, der bei der Welt der Sinne stehen bleiben wollte, wäre ein solcher Faust, der, nachdem er äußerlich erblindet ist, sich sagen müßte: Blind bist du im Äußeren geworden, doch im Innern leuchtet kein geistiges Licht, Finsternis nimmt dich allein auf. Zwischen diesen zwei Faustnaturen hat die Menschheit in bezug auf die Erdenzukunft zu wählen. Denn der erste Faust hätte sich zugewendet der Welt des Geistes, der andere Faust aber hätte sich zugewendet der Welt der Sinne und wäre damit verwandt geworden, verwandt mit dem, was der Mensch empfinden muß als das Wesenlose, das ihm all sein Wesen raubt. So nimmt sich das, was wir aus okkulten Höhen herunterholen wollen, für das unmittelbare Leben des Menschen aus. Und ich denke, man kann sich ersparen, in Worte zu fassen, was an moralischen Grundsätzen, was an Willensantrieben aus einem wirklichen Verständnis der okkulten Wissenschaft für die Menschen der Gegenwart erwachsen kann. Denn aus der richtig verstandenen Weisheit wird die richtig verstandene Tugend in dem Menschenherzen schon geboren werden. Streben wir nach wirklichem Verständnis der Weltentwickelung, suchen wir nach Weisheit, und es wird nicht fehlen, daß das Kind der Weisheit die Liebe sein wird. Das sollte in diesen Vorträgen auseinandergesetzt werden.
Sixth Lecture
You may have been able to gather from these lectures how complex human beings actually are and how many different sides there are to them if one wants to understand their nature. At this point, I would like to point out just one fact, which is, in a sense, one of the most significant developments that emerges when one examines the history of humankind from ancient times to the present day and the prospects for the future of the human race on the basis of clairvoyant research. I have already pointed out to you in the course of these lectures that if one educates one's faculty of knowledge, one's drive for knowledge, in such a way that the human soul, while striving for knowledge, takes in the states that we can describe as wonder, reverence, wise harmony with world events, and devotion to all world happenings, then knowledge can gradually rise to the level where it can distinguish everywhere in our surroundings: here I am dealing with something that is becoming, with something that will only attain its perfection in the future, and on the other hand, I am dealing with something that is gradually dying, fading away. We perceive such things in the realm of becoming and passing away. And it has been pointed out in particular how the human larynx is actually an organ of the future, how it is destined to be something completely different in the future than it is today. Today, it only communicates our inner states to the outside world through speech, while in the future it will communicate everything that we ourselves are, that is, what will serve to bring forth the whole human being. It will be the reproductive organ of the future. In the future, humans will not only express the state of their mind through speech with the help of the larynx, but they will also represent themselves in the world through the larynx; that is, the reproduction of humans will be linked to the organ of the larynx.
Now, in this complicated microcosm, in this complicated little world that we call the human being, for every organ that is, as it were, in its seed state and will then attain a higher degree of perfection in the future, there is another organ that is, let us say, in gradual decline, in the process of dying away. For the human larynx, the corresponding organ that is fading away is the hearing apparatus. And to the same extent that the hearing apparatus will fade away more and more for humans, to the same extent the larynx will become more and more perfect, an increasingly significant organ. We can only appreciate the full significance of this fact if we look back into the distant past of humankind with the help of the Akashic Records, so to speak, and then, based on what we can discover there, form a picture of what the hearing apparatus, the ear, once actually was. Tracing the development of the ear is incredibly revealing for our understanding of the human being. For in its present state, the human hearing apparatus is really, one might say, only a shadow of what it once was. Today, the human hearing apparatus hears only the sounds or the words expressed in sounds on the physical plane. This is, in a sense, the last remnant of what once flowed into human beings through the ear, a last remnant of it; for once upon a time, the mighty movements of the entire universe flowed through this apparatus. And just as we today hear only earthly music through the ear, so in ancient times the music of the worlds, the music of the spheres, flowed into human beings. And just as we today clothe words in sounds, so once upon a time the divine word of the world, that which the Gospel of John proclaims as the divine word of the world, the Logos, clothed itself in the music of the spheres. From the spiritual world, something flowed into everything that can be described in the old sense as hearing, as now only the human word and earthly music, so once the heavenly, the music of the spheres, and within the music of the spheres, what the divine spirits spoke. And just as today human beings, through their words and their singing, through their sounds, force the air into forms, bring it into forms, so the divine words and the divine music brought forth forms.
And the most precious of these forms can appear before our soul in the following way. Consider, when you utter any word today, even just a vowel, for example, the A, how through this A the possibility of forming a shape in the air enters the air. Thus, the form penetrated the world from the world word, and the most precious of these forms is man himself. Man himself in his original state was created by being spoken out of the divine word. The gods spoke — and just as today the air takes form through the human word, so our world took form through the word of the gods. And man is the most precious of these forms. At that time, however, the hearing organ was much, much more complicated. Now it has shrunk. For what you have today as the external hearing organ, which penetrates only to a certain depth into the brain, spread from the outside to the inside over the whole human being. And everywhere within the human being, waves spread out, speaking the words of God into the world. Thus, when man was still spiritually created, he was created through the hearing organ, and thus, in the future, when man has ascended again, he will have a very rudimentary, completely shrunken ear. The sense of hearing will have completely disappeared. The ear is in a descending movement; but in its place, what is now only in seed form, the larynx, will have developed to a higher splendor and perfection. And in its perfection it will speak forth what man can bring forth for the world as the repetition of his being, just as the gods spoke man into being on earth as their creature. Thus, in a certain sense, the course of the world is reversed. This whole human being, as we have been able to observe him, is just as he stands before us, the product of a descending development, and when we consider an organ such as the ear, we must say to ourselves everywhere: this ear, which has already brought about the inner condensation of the bone in the auditory ossicles, this ear is, so to speak, in the last stage of descending development. The sense as such is fading away, but the human being is developing into the world of spirituality, and his ascending organs are the bridges that lead him up into spirituality. This is how the world of the senses relates to the world of the spirit, in that the world of the senses is revealed to us through organs that are dying, while the world of the spirit is revealed through ascending organs.
And so it is in the whole world, insofar as this world is given to us. In the whole world we can follow, in a certain way, becoming and passing away. And it is instructive to apply the idea that is given to us about becoming and passing away; it is important and meaningful to apply it to the rest of the world. For example, in the mineral world we have been given something that is also in a certain sense in an ascending development, which is now in a kind of seed state. And that is mercury. Mercury is a metal that will undergo transformations, but transformations toward perfection. As a metal, mercury has not yet pulverized all the forces that every substance has in the spiritual realm before it becomes matter. In the future, it will be able to express essential aspects of its spirituality and take on other forms, so that in the mineral world, mercury corresponds in a certain way to the human larynx and also, in a certain way, to the organ of which the larynx is an appendage, the lung. Other metals, such as copper, for example, are in a kind of descending development. This will become apparent in the future: it will no longer have inner spiritual forces that it can express, but will increasingly have to fragment, disintegrate, and become world dust. Such connections, such as those just mentioned, will be studied more and more in our present time. People will study more and more the relationship between coming into being and passing away in the individual realms of nature, and will discover, for example, not merely through trial and error but through imaginative insight, that there is a certain relationship between metallic substances and certain organs of the human body. From this it will then follow that these substances, whose effectiveness is already known in part from external experience, from the imagination, precisely in their healing power, in their reproductive and restorative power for the human body. In general, relationships between individual entities will emerge in the most diverse ways.
Thus, one will recognize that everything in a plant that lies dormant in the seed, that is contained in the seed's power, is related to the human being in a different way than, for example, what is contained in the root of the plant. Everything contained in the root of the plant corresponds in a certain way to the human brain and the associated nervous system (see the overview on page 108). And this goes so far that in fact the enjoyment of everything contained in plant roots has a certain relationship to the processes that take place in the brain and nervous system. So that in a certain way, if a person wants their brain and nervous system, as physical tools of mental life, to be physically influenced, they consume the forces contained in the roots with their food. He then allows what he takes in to think within him in a certain way, to perform spiritual work within him, while if he is less inclined to take in the root-like essence, it will then be more himself, his spirituality, which uses the brain and nervous system. From this you can see that a lot of root enjoyment makes people dependent in terms of their soul and spiritual experience, because the objective, the external, works through them, because the brain and nervous system become independent, so to speak. So if people want to be themselves to a greater extent, what works within them, then they must restrict themselves in relation to root enjoyment. My dear friends, these are not instructions for any kind of diet, but only statements about the facts of nature. For I expressly urge you not to follow such rules without further ado. Not every person is so far advanced that they do not need to allow the power of thinking to be taken away from the objective, and it can very easily happen that a person who is not yet mature, who allows the power of thinking and feeling to be taken away from the objective soul life, when they avoid the enjoyment of roots from the plant kingdom, and they enter into a kind of sleepy state because their spiritual-psychic life is not yet strong enough to develop within themselves the forces from the spiritual realm that would otherwise develop objectively, without the intervention of the spiritual-psychic life in the human being. That is how it is. Every diet is entirely individual and depends entirely on the way in which the person is developed in this or that way.
What is in the leaves of a plant, for example, is related in a similar way to what we can see as the lungs and everything that belongs to the pulmonary system. Here we already have something that points to how a kind of balance can be created in a person who, for example, can be said to have an excessive respiratory system due to hereditary factors or other circumstances. It would be good to advise such a person not to eat foods that are mainly provided by the leaves of plants. However, if we want to help someone with their respiratory system, their lung system, we would do well to advise them to eat as many leafy foods as possible. These things are then connected with the healing powers that exist in the world in the individual kingdoms outside, because those parts of the individual plant that have a certain relationship to such organs are the parts of the plant that preferably contain the healing powers for these spheres, for these areas of the human organism. Thus, the roots of plants contain many healing powers in relation to the nervous system, and leaves contain many healing powers in relation to the pulmonary system. The flowers of plants contain many healing powers in relation to the renal system, for example, and the seeds of plants contain healing powers in relation to the heart in a certain way, but only in relation to the heart in such a way that the seed powers are healing when, so to speak, the heart resists the blood circulation too strongly. If it gives way too much to the blood circulation, then the powers that are in the fruits, that is, in the ripe seeds, are more to be considered.

These, you see, are individual indications that arise when we take into account that at the moment when we emerge from the human being into the nature surrounding us, what appears to the senses in this nature surrounding us, what belongs to the sensory world, is actually only the surface. In plants, therefore, what belongs to the sensory world is only the surface; behind what appears to the eye, taste, and smell in the plant are the spiritual-soul forces of the plant. But these spiritual-soul forces of the plant are not contained in the plant in such a way that we could say that each individual plant is animated, as each individual human being is animated. That is not the case. Anyone who believes that every single plant is animated would be making the same mistake as someone who believes that every single hair or earlobe or nose or tooth in a human being is animated. The whole human being is animated, and we only gain insight into the soul of the human being when we move from its parts to the whole. But we must do this with every being. We must carefully determine spiritually whether every being is a part or, in a certain sense, a whole. All the plants on earth are by no means a whole in themselves, but they are parts, members, and we actually speak of a reality only when we speak of that to which the plants belong as parts, as members. In humans, we see this physically as well: what his teeth belong to, what his earlobe belongs to, what his fingers belong to; we see it physically as the whole organism. In plants, we do not see what the individual plants belong to with the physical eye, we do not perceive it with a physical organ, but we go straight from the part to the whole, we enter directly into the spiritual realm. And essentially we must say: the soul of the plant world is such that it has only its individual organs in the plants. And actually there are only a few beings in our whole earth who are, as it were, crammed together in the earth and who have the plants as their individual parts, just as the human being has his hair on his body.
If we wish, we can say that when we go beyond the plant as it appears to our senses, we then come to the group souls of plants, which relate to the plant as the whole relates to the part. On the whole, there are seven group souls that belong to the earth as plant souls, and all of them have, in a certain sense, the center of their own being in the center of the earth. So we cannot imagine the earth as just this physical ball, but rather as permeated by seven such spheres of varying sizes, all of which have something like their own spiritual center in the center of the earth. And then these spiritual beings drive the plants out of the earth. The root grows toward the center of the earth because that is where it actually wants to go, and it is only prevented from reaching the center by the rest of the earth's matter. Every plant root strives to reach the center of the earth, where the center of the spiritual being to which the plant belongs is located.
So we see that we have something extremely important in the principle that we must always go to the whole, that we must look at every being to see whether it is a part or a whole. In recent times, some natural scientists have regarded plants as animated, but they regard individual plants as animated. That is no more spiritual than calling a tooth a human being; it is on the same spiritual level. And everything that many people say today, “That is pure anthroposophy, because they regard plants as animated,” will be nothing more than scientific waste paper in the future. For to seek individual souls in plants would mean tearing a tooth out of a human being and searching for the human soul in it. We do not seek the soul of a plant in the individual plant, but rather in such a way that even its most important part is at the center of the earth, toward which the root strives as the force seeking the most spiritual part of the plant's existence.
If you now contemplate such a realm, then from the standpoint of today's view of nature, something will indeed confront you that can bring us, in a certain sense, as far to the gates of truth as Mephistopheles brings Faust to the realm of the mothers, namely, to the very outer gate, but not into the realm of the mothers. For just as Mephistopheles cannot descend with Faust into the realm of the mothers, so today's natural science cannot enter into the spiritual realm. But just as Mephistopheles gives the key in a certain sense, so natural science also gives the key. It just does not want to enter itself, just as Mephistopheles himself does not want to enter the realm of the mothers. So in a certain sense, natural science today gives us clues which, if you recognize them as we have characterized them in these lectures, can often bring this recognition to the gates of truth.
This is how contemporary natural science speaks, inspired by Darwin, deriving an important scientific principle from the world of the senses alone, the so-called struggle for existence. Who would fail to notice this struggle for existence everywhere, if they only looked at what the external sensory world presents at first glance? Oh, this struggle for existence confronts us everywhere! We need only consider how, for example, countless seeds of sea creatures are deposited in the sea or on the beach, how many of them perish and how few grow into actual animals, how few seeds become animals and how all the others perish. There, as it were, begins a seemingly terrible struggle for existence, and one could now begin to lament, if one listened only to the world of the senses, and say: Of the millions and millions of germs, so many perish in the struggle for existence and only a few survive. — But this is only one side of the coin. Let us approach this thought from another angle. In order to steer your thinking in a certain direction, I would like to urge you to approach the thought from the other end. You can also lament the struggle for existence in the following way: you can look at a field of grain, where there are so many ears of corn with so many grains, and ask yourself: How much of these grains in the ears of corn is lost in some way for its actual purpose, and how little of it is returned to the earth to become something new in the same sense as the old? — So we cast our gaze over a field of ears of corn sprouting and sprouting in lush fertility, and say to ourselves: How much of what sprouts and shoots will perish without having achieved its purpose, and how little will sink into the earth so that new plants of the same kind can grow? It is the same here, only a little different, as with sea creatures, where only a few seeds develop.
But now I would like to ask you what would happen to people who need to eat if all the grains of corn were returned to the earth? Let us assume that it could be—theoretically, one can assume anything—that so much would grow that all the grains of corn could sprout again. But then think what would happen to those beings who have to feed on grain! Here, you see, we come to something very strange; here we come to a shock in relation to a belief that might seem justified to us when we look at the world of the senses. It might seem justified to us, when we look at a field of grain, for example, in terms of purely sensory existence, that every grain should become a whole plant again. But perhaps this point of view is wrong. Perhaps, in the overall context of the world, we are not thinking correctly when we attribute to every seed the purpose of becoming a whole plant again, but perhaps it is so nothing entitles us to say that those grains that serve as food for other beings have somehow failed to fulfill their purpose in the world, just as nothing compels us to say that the seeds of sea fish have failed to fulfill their purpose because they have not become fish again. For it is really only a human prejudice that every seed should become the same being again. For we can only assess the tasks of individual beings when we look at the whole picture. And if what perishes every year in millions of seeds in the sea does not become fish, it serves as food for other beings that humans cannot yet see, and gives itself to other beings. And truly, those spiritual substances that struggle into existence in the seemingly perishing sea seeds do not lament that they do not reach their goal — to be food for other beings, to be taken up by these other beings. Human beings, who stand outside with their intellect, believe that only those things have meaning which strive, as it were, toward the goal that they must regard as the ultimate goal through their senses. An unbiased view of nature sees something perfect in every stage of every being, and such perfection does not lie in what a being becomes, but in what it is.
These are thoughts derived from occultism that must be struck in you. And when you now look back from the outer world to your own soul, you will perceive that in this soul of your own there is a wealth of thoughts that continually flow into this soul, continually come to life in this soul, and only a few of these thoughts are clearly grasped, only a few become a conscious part of the human soul. Take any route through the city and think about how much falls into your soul through your senses and how little you pay attention to it, so that it becomes a lasting part of your soul life. You are constantly taking in impressions, and the mass of these impressions you take in is to what then becomes a lasting conscious possession of your soul just as the great mass of fish eggs produced each year in the sea is to what becomes real, grown fish. In your inner soul life, too, you must continually carry out the procedure of allowing only a few things to develop on the ground of a vast area. And if man can only slightly grasp the sea of fantasy and imagination from which he emerges when he awakens from sleep, when for some people dreams still show the last traces of the incredibly rich life that humans lead in their sleep, then they can also realize that it has meaning when they take in so much that does not come to their conscious awareness. For what comes to clear consciousness is lost to the inner workings of the human being; it no longer works on the system of the sense organs, on the system of the glandular organs, on the system of digestion, on the nervous, muscular, and skeletal systems, etc. That which becomes conscious in the soul, that which modern human beings carry within themselves as conscious inner soul content, no longer works; it is characterized precisely by the fact that it is torn away from the mother soil of the whole human being and thus comes to human consciousness. That which relates to these conscious ideas like the many seeds to the few that become fish, that which comes in as an enormous number of external impressions but does not enter consciousness, works on the whole human being.
So what is in the environment is constantly working on the whole human being. You see, dreams can sometimes teach you how it is that in the T'at, not only what lives on as conscious ideas enters the soul, but also how other impressions enter the soul. You only need to pay attention to such things, which are found a thousand times in life. You dream a certain situation: you are standing opposite a person who is talking to another person. You are standing there as a third person. You dream the face of the person in question very clearly, and so on. You say to yourself: Where did this dream come from? It gives the impression that it is about people I know in physical life, so its inspiration comes from the physical plane. But where did the dream come from? I didn't hear or see it. And now you investigate, and if you investigate carefully, you may find that a few days ago you did indeed stand opposite that person in a train carriage, only at the time it passed you by unnoticed. But it lives on. It is only inaccuracy in observation that prevents people from knowing such things.
Now, of course, such ideas as the dream presents to us in this way are not the most important ones that make an impression on the soul, but quite different ones. Think for a moment that what was presented to you yesterday has been happening continuously throughout human evolution. Through his skeletal system, man has continually produced imaginations; through his muscular system, he has continually sent inspirations into the world; through his nervous system, he has continually sent intuitions. All this is in the world. That which is evil, man must take back and carry away through his destiny. But the other part builds up and shapes the world outside and is continually present in man's environment. In fact, everything that humans have sent out into the earthly world in terms of imagination, inspiration, and intuition, let us say, since the Atlantean catastrophe, is present and belongs to our environment. Insofar as it was good, what humans have produced there does not need to be taken back by individual humans in their karmic process. But what they have sent out into the spiritual atmosphere of the earth over centuries and centuries in successive epochs is truly as present for the people who now live on as the air is present for the physical human being. Just as human beings breathe physical air, just as the air from their surroundings penetrates into their physical interior, so the things that have developed there as imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions penetrate into human beings, and human beings participate in all this with their soul and spirit. And now it is important that human beings do not stand opposite what they communicated to the earth itself in earlier epochs of their earthly existence as something insubstantial, that they do not stand opposite it as something unrelated. But human beings can only become related to what they have thus incorporated as the spiritual content of the earth if they gradually acquire the ability to take these things into their souls.
But how is this done? You see, when one penetrates into the spiritual meaning of the Earth's development, it becomes apparent that in the times when the people of the post-Atlantean era still had something of the old clairvoyance, imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions were communicated in a very comprehensive sense to the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth. That was the time when such spiritual substances were primarily given out. Since the fourth post-Atlantean period, but especially from our present time onward, we are increasingly sending out less and relying more on taking in the old as something related to us, taking back into ourselves what has been sent out. This means that human beings are dependent on countering a former spiritual exhalation process with a spiritual inhalation process, as it were. Human beings must become increasingly sensitive and receptive to the spiritual that is present in the world.
In ancient times, this was not so necessary because people were able to draw spiritual substance from within themselves; they had a reserve fund. However, since the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, this reserve has been so depleted that in the future, only that which has first been inhaled, absorbed, can be brought forth in a certain way. Anthroposophy, or spiritual science, is precisely what is needed to help human beings find their way into this new mission of their earthly existence with understanding. It is truly not because, among other fads, this spiritual scientific fad has come into the world that they are already attracted to it today. Rather, spiritual science or anthroposophy is truly necessary because who are already drawn to it today, not because this spiritual scientific quirk happened to come into the world among other quirks, but because spiritual science or anthroposophy is intimately connected with the entire evolution of the earth and with the fact that human beings are dependent on gradually developing an understanding of the spiritual world around them. For those who, from our present time onwards, do not develop an understanding of the spirit behind the senses, of the spiritual world behind the sensory world, will be like those who have so corrupted their respiratory system in their physical body that they cannot get air to breathe and suffer from respiratory distress. Today this is still the case because a certain heritage of ancient human wisdom has remained in concepts, and people feed on these old concepts. But anyone who looks at the development of humanity in recent times with spiritual eyes will perceive that, no matter how many inventions and discoveries accumulate in the outer material world, spiritual content has, in a certain sense, strangely come to an end. New concepts and new ideas are springing up less and less for humanity. Only those who do not know the old ideas and always rediscover the old for themselves, that is, those who in a certain sense remain somewhat immature throughout their lives, can believe that new ideas can now mature as such. No, the world of abstract ideas, the world of intellectual ideas, has exhausted itself. New ideas no longer spring forth.
With Thales, a certain emergence of intellectual ideas began for Western thinking. Now we are, in a sense, at the end, and philosophy as such, as a science of ideas, is at an end. Man must learn to rise to what lies beyond ideas and thoughts, which belong only to the physical plane, to what lies beyond this world of ideas. First, he will rise to the imaginations. These, in turn, will become something real for him. Then a new fertilization will occur for the spiritual life of humanity. That is why imaginations for important world processes flow to us in spiritual science. Look at how the description of Saturn, the sun, and the moon differs from other things, how it relates to the abstract concepts of other sciences. Everything must be given pictorially so that it cannot be immediately realized in the outer sensory world. We say that ancient Saturn has a mere state of warmth. This is nonsense for today's world of the senses, because a mere substance of warmth does not exist anywhere in the world of the senses. But what is nonsense for the world of the senses is truth for the world of the spirit, and living into the world of the spirit is what immediately lies ahead for human beings in the near future. For those who do not decide to breathe the air of the spirit, for which the human soul is to be made receptive through spiritual science, through a science that goes beyond the mere senses, those who do not want to make themselves receptive to spiritual science, will truly be heading toward a state that, in a certain sense, can already be seen approaching for many today: a spiritual suffocation and thus a spiritual exhaustion, which will then lead to spiritual emaciation, to spiritual consumption.
That would be the fate of people on earth who wanted to remain only in the sensory world, that they would perish from spiritual consumption. Culture will develop in the future in such a way that there will be people full of receptivity and soulfulness and heart for the spiritual world, for what is initially given as spiritual science, for what will then spring forth quite naturally in human souls as the world of imagination, inspiration, and intuition. This will be the case with one part of humanity, which will have an understanding and devotion to this world of the spirit. These will be the people who will fulfill the task that has been set for the earth in the first place. Other people will perhaps remain in the world of the senses, not wanting to advance beyond the world of the senses and beyond the mere shadow image of the sensory world that can be given in philosophical concepts and in outer science. These people are heading toward spiritual suffocation, spiritual exhaustion, spiritual decay; they will wither away within their earthly existence and will not attain the goal set for the development of the earth. But evolution must take place in such a way that each individual must ask his own soul: Which path will you choose? In the future, people will stand, as it were, on the left and on the right—those for whom the world of the senses alone will be truth, and those for whom the world of the spiritual will be truth.
But since the senses, like the human ear, will disappear, since at the end of life on earth all earthly senses will have disappeared, you can now get an idea of how real this consumption and wasting away is to be understood. If we rely on the world of the senses, we rely on something that will leave human beings in the future of Earth's development. If we advance into the world of the spirit, we develop into what will increasingly come closer to human beings in the future of Earth's development. If we want to use a symbol, we can say: Human beings may one day stand at the end of Earth's development and speak like Faust after he has become blind in the physical sense — for they will not only stand there blind in the physical sense, but also deaf in the physical sense, without taste in the physical sense, without smell in the physical sense — yet within them will shine a bright light, and within them will resound the most glorious human tones and human words. This is what the human being who turns toward the world of the spirit will be able to say. But the other, who wanted to remain in the world of the senses, would be like Faust who, after becoming blind outwardly, would have to say to himself: You have become blind outwardly, but no spiritual light shines within you; darkness alone surrounds you. Between these two Faust natures, humanity must choose with regard to the future of the earth. For the first Faust would have turned to the world of the spirit, but the other Faust would have turned to the world of the senses and would thus have become related to that which man must feel as the non-essential, which robs him of his entire being. This is what we want to bring down from occult heights for the immediate life of human beings. And I think we can spare ourselves the trouble of putting into words what moral principles and volitional impulses can arise for the people of the present from a real understanding of occult science. For from correctly understood wisdom, correctly understood virtue will already be born in the human heart. Let us strive for a real understanding of world development, let us seek wisdom, and the child of wisdom will surely be love. This is what should be discussed in these lectures.