| 161. Perception of the Nature of Thought
10 Jan 1915, Dornach Tr. Mabel Cotterell Rudolf Steiner |
|---|
| As we follow man's development on the physical plane from birth to death so we follow the development of philosophy by seeing a Being within it. When in this way we look at what Anthroposophy can be to us we reach the point of seeing in it not only a guide to knowledge but a guide to living Beings who surround us even though we are unaware of them. |
| And by feeling this, feeling it in the deepest part of his soul, our friend Christian Morgenstern could put into writing a beautiful sentiment, a true anthroposophical sentiment which shows how a soul can express itself which in its inmost being knows itself to be one with our Anthroposophy—not merely as with something giving us various facts of knowledge—but as something that gives us life. |
| It is a model example of how what is brought to us by Anthroposophy can become alive and grip our whole soul. 1. “The Ego perceived externally as Speech and Song, as creative fantasy, as inner experience.” |
| 161. Perception of the Nature of Thought
10 Jan 1915, Dornach Tr. Mabel Cotterell Rudolf Steiner |
|---|
Bearing in mind what we sought to study yesterday, let us consider how matters actually stand in regard to what we call man's Saturn evolution. If we remember the course of yesterday's lecture,1 we know that there is concealed within us, within our human being, something that was first implanted in us during the Saturn period, namely, the first rudiments of our physical bodily nature. What we have acquired from the ancient Saturn evolution can be met with nowhere today in the external world. In primeval ages the Saturn evolution arose and again passed away; it possessed characteristics, forces, which seek in vain if we look around us today. For even if we look out to the stars in cosmic space we do not at first find what prevailed within the old Saturn evolution. After this ancient Saturn evolution had died away, there came as you know, the Sun evolution and then the Moon evolution and today we are living in the Earth evolution. Three evolutionary periods have gone by. And all that formed their peculiar characteristics has passed away with them and is no more to be found in our field of vision. We can only find the characteristics of the Saturn evolution among the hidden occult activities which pulsate through the world. We can still, as it were, uncover the forces which at that time worked upon our physical body. If you recollect what was shown in my book Outline of Occult Science you are aware that there was an active co-operation at that time between the Spirits of Will and the Spirits of Personality. This co-operation still exists today though it cannot be discerned externally. We find it if we look into what we call our personal karma. Please note, my dear friends, that our personal karma is woven in such a way that what befalls us in successive earth lives is connected as cause and effect. The forces active in our personal stream of destiny cannot be investigated by the official Natural Scientist. He will find nothing among the forces disclosed in the field of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Physiology etc., which calls forth the connection of cause and effect that comes to expression in our personal karma. The laws prevailing there are withdrawn from physical observation as well as from the historical observation pursued today by the so-called cultural-scientist of a materialistic colouring. The modern investigation of historical evolution, the history which is written nowadays of Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, up to our own time, contains laws which have nothing to do with the forces active in our karma. Thus the historian, the modern materialistic scientist studying civilization does not discover the laws dependent on man's personal karma. History is looked upon as a continuous stream and no one considers to what extent historical evolution depends on the fact that human souls, for instance, who were personalities in ancient Roman times are present again today. The fact that they participate in current events and that the way in which they do so flows out of their personal karma finds no place in modern materialistically coloured history. If we seek therefore for forces having something of the nature-forces of old Saturn we have to go to the law of our personal karma. Only when we learn to read what is in the surrounding cosmos and not merely to observe it, do we gain an insight into how the laws of ancient Saturn are still in a certain way active. If we turn our attention to the ordering and out-streaming of the twelve Signs of the Zodiac as a cosmic script, and consider what radiating forces pour into human life from Aries, Taurus, Gemini etc., we are then thinking in the sense of forces which were Saturn forces. And if we try to bring personal karma into connection with the constellations which relate to the zodiacal signs, we are then living approximately in the sphere of that world-conception which must be employed for the laws of the ancient Saturn epoch. Thus nothing visible has remained, nothing that may be perceived, and yet there is still remaining an invisible element which may be interpreted out of the signs of the cosmos. Anyone who thought that Aries, Taurus, Gemini etc., made his destiny would be living under the same delusion as a man who had been sentenced by a certain legal passage and then conceived a special hatred of this paragraph in the law and believed that it had sent him to gaol. Just as little as a legal paragraph printed on the white page can sentence a man, can Aries, Taurus, or Gemini, bring about destiny. Yet one can read from the star-script the connection between the cosmos and human destiny. And thus we can say that what follows from the star script is a remainder of the ancient Saturn evolution, is indeed the ancient Saturn evolution become entirely spiritual, but leaving its signs behind in the star-script of the cosmos. When we proceed from the Old Saturn evolution to the Moon evolution we must be clear that at first there is nothing so directly (I said; at first, so directly) in our surrounding field of vision; external nature contains in the first place in the main no forces which resemble those of the Old Moon evolution. These forces of the Old Moon have also drawn back into concealment, but they have not yet become spiritual to the same degree as the Old Saturn laws. The Saturn laws have become so spiritual that we can only investigate them in the laws of our personal destiny, that is to say, quite outside space and time. When we observe human life as a whole we still find today these ancient Saturn laws, still find what cannot be seen when we confront a man in the physical world. We have said that in meeting man in the physical world, we have the physical body as coming from the Old Saturn evolution, the etheric from the Old Sun evolution; the astral body from the Old Moon, and the Ego. And when we look at man externally and observe his form it is solely this embodiment of the ego which is not a relic from other periods of evolution. It is the laws of Earth which prevail and are active when the ego fashions man for itself and embodies itself. The laws of the Moon evolution, the laws of the astral body have already withdrawn and are no longer outwardly active. Now if we encounter a man we shall say: “You, O Man, as you confront me as material man are an embodiment of the Ego. But deep in the background of your being lies your invisible personal destiny.” How this invisible human destiny is determined comes under the rule of ancient Saturn laws. There we are already appealing to something entirely spiritual when, from the earthly laws of the embodiment of the Ego, we look towards the ancient Saturn laws. If, however, we look from what stands before us in the human being towards what still prevails in him from the Old Moon laws we find something not so spiritual. But this too has withdrawn from the external activity of the world, this too is not directly under the active forces of Earth-existence. Where then must we seek for what has remained behind from the ancient Moon activity? We must we seek it protected and embedded, veiled from Earthly existence. For it is active in the period before man enters Earth existence through his physical birth, it is active before the external physical ray of light can penetrate his eye, it is active before he can first draw breath. It is active from the conception to birth, active in the embryonic life. I beg you expressly to notice, however, it is not active in that which develops from the ovum to the external physical human being; in what grows from the ovum, becoming greater and greater through continuous division, the forces of the Earth are working. But it is active in what exists only in the mother and dies away during the embryonic development, in what is lost with the birth and perishes. In all that envelops the earthly human being and cares for its nourishment before it is born, in all that ensheaths the growing human being and then falls away from it—in that rule the ancient Moon laws. And with this we have something that goes beyond the single human life, that forms a connection between the individual man and his ancestors and is included in the concept of heredity. Thus we see something that existed during the Old Moon evolution still playing an active part, though not in the external world. In the outer world it acts only, so to say, as a dying away in human development, as something that is overcome as soon as the human being draws the first active breath for earthly life. If one would study the laws of the Old Moon existence—or at any rate a part of them—purely physiologically and not clairvoyantly, the only way to do so today would be to study the laws at work in the sheaths surrounding the human embryo before it draws the first breath, enfolding it and nourishing it. What is there enclosed in the mother's body, what can only thrive during earthly evolution within the protecting sheath of the maternal body was the whole nature during the Old Moon evolution; it filled the whole field of vision. Thus there die not only beings in so far as they have a sheath-nature, but whole types of natural laws, and exist in succeeding ages solely as last remains. Now you will have to ask the question: How does it stand with what is derived from the Sun? Let us look at yesterday's diagram. We have seen that through all complications that appear here, we have to do with the complete human being, with his physical body, etheric body, astral body, Ego,—etheric body, astral body, ego,—astral body, ego, and with the ego itself.  All that is above the dividing line is really the hidden part of human nature. If we wish to study the laws underlying the foundation of the physical body we must look to super-sensible laws determining man's destiny. If we look towards that which rules in the astral body and finds its embodiment in the physical body, we have something that is not so spiritual, so super-sensible, but something that melts from the sense-perceptible into the super-sensible. For the part that falls away from the human embryo becomes so to say more and more atomistic. The nearer the human being approaches birth the more it dissolves materially and becomes increasingly spiritual. For that which is attached to the human being as astral body and etheric body has originated through the spiritualising of those parts of the embryonic sheaths which fall away. The question could now arise: how does it stand with regard to the Sun part? Can we find the Sun portion somewhere in the world? This too withdraws from sense perception. Whereas what we call karma, personal destiny, or, one might say, the Saturn part of man, lies in lofty spiritual regions, we have seen that we need not ascend so high in the case of the Moon part, for we found it still ensheathed in the sensible. Nor in the case of the Sun part need we ascend so high as for the Saturn part. One can still apprehend it but it is not easily recognised. I should like to give you an example of something where you can still recognise the Sun-part that is active, although attention can only be directed to it in a veiled way. Those of you who have acquainted yourselves with the new edition of my book, Riddles of Philosophy in Outline will have found that four periods in the development of Philosophy are distinguished. I have called the first period “The World-conceptions of the Greek Thinkers”. This lasted from 800 B.C.—in round numbers—or 600 B.C. to the birth of Christ, i.e. into the age of the origin of Christianity. A second period lasted from the rise of Christianity to about 800 – 900 A.D. up to the time of John Scotus Erigena. Then came a third period which I have called “the World-conception of the Middle Ages”, and which lasted from 800, 900 A.D. to 1600 A.D. And then there is the forth period up to our own time; we are just in this period. Eight-hundred year periods have been assigned to the history of philosophy, presented in such a way as was possible in a book meant for a public still quite unacquainted with Spiritual Science. The intention was to give everything that could stimulate the mind and let the spiritual structure of these periods work upon one. The characteristic of the first period consists in the fact that a transition is found from a very remarkable ancient thinking to what one can call the life of thought in ancient Greece. Our age has not made much progress in the understanding of such differences, the difference, for instance, between the thought life of our own time and that of ancient Greece. Our clumsy thinking believes that thought lived in an ancient Greek head just as it lives today in the head of modern man. Thought lived in Socrates, Plato, even in Aristotle quite differently from how it lives in present-day mankind; this present thought-life first awoke in the 7th, 6th century B.C. Before that there was no actual life of thought. As my book sets out, one can speak of a beginning, of a birth of thought-life in this age of ancient Greece. People have conceived that most curious ideas about the great philosophical figures of Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, etc. It has been pointed out, for instance, that Thales believed that the world originated out of water, Anaxagoras out of air, Heraclitus from fire. I have shown how these ancient philosophers formed their philosophies from the human temperament. They were not based on speculation, but Thales established water as the original ground of things because he was of a watery temperament; Heraclitus founded the fire-philosophy because he was of a fiery temperament and so on. You find that shown in detail in my book. Then comes the actual thought-life. And in the epoch described here the thought-life is still essentially different from that of modern times. The Greek thinker does not draw up thoughts from the depths of his soul, but thought is revealed to him just as external sound or colour is revealed to modern man. The Greek perceives the thought; he perceives it from outside and when we speak of Greek philosophy we must not speak of such a mode of thinking as is normal today, but of thought-perception. Thus in the first period we are concerned with thought-perception. Plato and Aristotle did not think in the way the modern philosopher thinks, they thought as today we see, perceive. They looked out into the world, as it were, and perceived the thoughts which they expound to us in their philosophies just as much as one perceives a symphony. They are thought-perceivers. The world reveals to them a thought-work; that is the essential character of the Greek thinker. And this perception of the thought-work of the world was brought to the highest pitch of perfection by the Greek thinker. If the philosophers of today believe that they understand what Plato and Aristotle perceived as a universal symphony of thoughts, that is only due to a childish stage of the modern philosopher. The modern philosophers have a long way to go before they can fully grasp what Aristotle represents as Entelechy, what he gives as the members of the human soul nature—Aesthetikon, Orektikon, Kinetikon etc. The inner activity of thinking, where one draws the thoughts out of oneself, where one must make subjective efforts in order to think, did not as yet exist in Greece. It is completely foolish to believe that Plato thought he perceived thoughts. To believe that Aristotle already thought in the modern sense, is nonsense ... he perceived thoughts. Modern man can hardly imagine what that is, for he makes no concepts of actual evolution. He gets slight goose-flesh if one tells him that Plato and Aristotle did not think at all in the modern sense, and yet it is a fact. In order that thinking in the modern sense might take root in the modern human soul, an impulse had to come that seized its inmost part, an impulse that has nothing to do with the thought-symphony in the surrounding world but which grips man's inmost being. This impulse came from Christ and hence this period of philosophy lasts up to the time of Christ. In the second period we are concerned with a thinking that is still not man's own individual thought, but is stimulated by the impulse coming from the external world. If you go through all the systems of thought of the philosophers of the second period up to the time of Scotus Erigena you will find everywhere how the Christ-Impulse rules in them. It is what has flowed out of Christ himself, one might say, that gives man the first stimulus to create thoughts from within outwards. This gave the stamp, the physiognomy of the patristic philosophy of the Church Fathers, the philosophy of Augustine and others up to Scotus Erigena. We can therefore say that we no longer have thought-perception, but thought-inspiration stimulated by the spirit. It was different again in the third period when the inner impulse proceeding from Christianity began to be seized by men themselves. In this third period man begins to be conscious that it is he who thinks. Plato and Aristotle did not think, but they could as little doubt that thought has a fully objective validity as a man seeing green on a tree can doubt that it has a fully objective validity. In the second period it was the intense belief in the Christ Impulse that gave certainty to the awakening thought. But then began the period when the human soul began to say: “Yes, it is actually you yourself who thinks, the thoughts rise up out of you.” The Christ-Impulse gradually faded and man became aware that the thoughts arose out of himself. It began to occur to him that perhaps he framed thoughts that had nothing at all to do with what is outside. Was it possible that the objective external world had nothing to do with his thoughts? Think of the great difference between this and the thoughts of Plato and Aristotle: Plato and Aristotle perceived thoughts and therefore they could not doubt that the thoughts were outside. Now, in the third period men became aware: ‘One creates thoughts oneself ... well, then, what have thoughts to do with objective existence outside?’ And so the need arose to give certainty to thinking,—to prove thinking as was said. Only in this period could it occur to Anselm of Canterbury, for instance, to create validity for the idea of God;—for one did not see thoughts as perception. In the former Greek thinking that would have been a complete nonsense, because at that time thoughts were perceived. How can one doubt that God exists when thoughts of the Godhead are as clearly to be seen outside as the greenness of the tree? Doubt first began in the third period when men became aware that they themselves produced the thoughts. The need arose to establish the connection of that which one thinks with that which is outside. In essentials this is the epoch of scholasticism—the becoming aware of the subjectivity of thinking. When you consider the whole thought-structure of Thomas Aquinas it stands entirely under the aegis of this epoch. The consciousness is present throughout; concepts are created within, concepts are linked together in the same way as the laws of subjectivity. Thus a support must be found for the idea that what is created inwardly also exists outside. There is still at first an appeal to traditional dogmatism, but there is no longer the same attachment to the Christ-Impulse as in the second period of philosophical development. Then comes the fourth evolutionary period; the independent rule of thought from the external thought-perception, the independent creation of thought from within: free creation of thought, that free creation that comes to light so magnificently in the thought-structures of Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Decartes, and their successors, Leibniz etc. If we follow up these edifices of thought we observe that they are produced entirely out of the inner being. And everywhere we find that these thinkers had an intense desire to prove that what they created in themselves had also real validity externally. Spinoza creates a wonderful ideal-edifice. But the question arises: Now is that all merely created within, in the human spirit, or has it a significance in the world outside? Giordano Bruno, and Leibniz create the monad which is supposed to be a reality. How does something thought out by man as monad exist at the same time as a reality in the outer world? All the questions which have arisen since the 16th, 17th century are concerned with the endeavour to bring free thought-creation into harmony with external world existence. Man feels isolated, abandoned by the world in his free thought creation. We are still standing in the midst of this. But now what is this whole diagram?  If we go back to the perception of thoughts which prevailed in the time of the old Greek philosophers then we must say: Philosophic thought in ancient Greece—in spite of the fact that it was the age of the intellectual or mind-soul in ancient Greece—was still a perceptive thinking, was still deeply influenced by the sentient soul, in fact by the sentient, the astral, body. It still clung to the external. The thinking of Thales, of the first philosopher was still influenced by the etheric body. They created their Water—Air—Fire—Philosophies out of their temperament, and the temperament lives in the etheric body. One can therefore say that the philosophy of the sentient body goes into the philosophy of the etheric body. Then we come into the Christian period. The Christ- Impulse penetrates into the sentient soul. Philosophy is experienced inwardly but in connection with what one can feel and believe; the influences of the sentient soul are present. In the third period, that of scholasticism, the intellectual or mind-soul is the essential element of philosophical development. Now the development of philosophy follows a different course from that of human evolution in general. And for the first time since the 16th century we now have philosophy coinciding with the general evolution of mankind, for we have the free thoughts ruling in the consciousness soul.—Consciousness soul! The magnificent example of how free thought prevails from the abstraction of existence up to the highest spirituality, how a thought-organism, leaving aside the world entirely, rules purely in itself, that is the philosophy of Hegel—the thought that lives solely in the consciousness. If you follow this scheme it is actually the part that I could not show in my book for the public, though it lies in it. And if you read the descriptions given of the separate epochs you will, if you are proper Anthroposophists, very clearly connect them with what I have written here (see diagram). There is thus a development corresponding to that of man himself: from the etheric body to the sentient body, to the sentient soul, to the intellectual soul, to the consciousness soul. We follow a path like the path of man's evolution, but differently regulated. It is not the path of human evolution, it is different. Beings are evolving and they make use of human forces in the sentient soul, in the intellectual soul etc. Through man and his works pass other beings with other laws than those of human development. You see—these are activities of the Sun-laws! Here we need not ascend to such super-sensible regions as when we investigate human destiny. It is in the philosophical development of mankind that we have an example of what remains from the Sun-laws. We had yesterday to write here Angeloi as corresponding to the etheric body (see diagram).  Such Angeloi evolve. And while men believe that they themselves philosophise, Sun-laws work in them—inasmuch as men bear within them what the Sun-evolution laid down in their physical and etheric bodies. And the laws of the Sun-existence, working from epoch to epoch, cause philosophy to become precisely what it is. Because they are Sun-laws, the Christ, the Being of the Sun, could also enter them during the second period. Preparation is made in the first period and then the Christ, the Sun-Being, becomes active in the second period. You see how everything is linked together. But inasmuch as the Christ, the Sun-Being, enters in, he comes into connection with an evolution which is not the human evolution, not man's earthly evolution, but actually Sun-evolution within Earth existence. Sun-evolution within Earth existence! Just think what we have actually reached in these reflections. We are considering the course of philosophical development, philosophical thought since the time of ancient Greece, and when we consider how this has evolved from philosopher to philosopher we say to ourselves: there are active within not earthly laws, but Sun laws! The laws which at that time held sway between the Spirits of Wisdom and the Archangels come to light again on earth in the philosophical search for wisdom. Read in the book Occult Science how the Spirits of Wisdom enter during the Sun-evolution. Now during earthly evolution they enter again not into what is new but into what has remained from the Sun-evolution. And man develops his philosophy not knowing that in this development the Spirits of Wisdom are pulsing through his soul. The Old Sun existence lives in the evolution of philosophy; it really and truly lives within something that has stayed behind, something that is connected with the Old Sun-evolution. Human beings, passing from generation to generation, evolve as external personalities in earthly evolution. But an evolution of philosophy goes through it from Thales up to our present time; the Sun-evolution lies within it. This gives opportunity for beings who have stayed behind to make use of the forces of philosophical evolution in order to carry on their ancient Sun existence; beings who remained behind during the Sun-evolution, who neglected at that time to go through the development that one can pass through in one's etheric body, sentient body, and sentient soul—in cooperation with Spirits of Wisdom and Archangeloi. These Spirits that missed their evolution during the Sun time can use man's philosophical evolution in order to be parasites within human evolution. They are Ahrimanic spirits! Ahrimanic spirits yield to the enticement of creeping parasitically into what men strive for in philosophy and so of furthering their own existence. Men can thus evolve philosophically but at the same time they are exposed to Ahrimanic, Mephistophelean spirits. You know that Ahriman and Lucifer are harmful spirits as long as one is not aware of them, as long as they work in secret. As long as they do not emerge and let men face them eye to eye spiritually Ahriman and Lucifer are harmful in one or another way. Let us suppose that a philosopher appears who develops thought of such a nature that one can grasp it in merely earth existence. He develops thoughts that can live through the instrument of earthly reasoning. That is Hegelian thought! It is pure thought, but only such as can be grasped with the instrument of the physical body and this as we know ends at death. Hegel has achieved thought that is the deepest which can be thought in earthly life—but which must lose its configuration with death. Hegel's tragedy lies in the fact that he did not realise he grasped the spirit in logic, in nature, in soul-life, but only the spirit that exists in the form of thought and does not accompany us when we go through death. To have put this clearly before his mind he would have had to say: If I could believe that what goes through thought, that is to say what I think about abstract being by means of logic, thoughts of nature, thoughts of the soul and up to philosophy—if I could believe that this leads me behind the scenes of existence than I should be deceived by Mephistopheles! This was realised by another: Goethe realised it and represented it in his Faust as the conflict of the thinker with Mephistopheles, with Ahriman. And in this fourth period of the evolution of philosophy we see how Ahriman presses into the Sun-evolution and how one has to face him consciously, really recognising and comprehending his nature. Hence today we are also standing at a turning point of the philosophical thought of the outer world. In order to avoid falling prey to the allurements of Ahriman and becoming mephistophelean wisdom, philosophy must get behind this wisdom, must understand what it is, must flow into the stream of Spiritual Science. Read the two chapters preceding the last one in the second volume of my Riddles of Philosophy. You will see that I tried to present the world concepts prevailing in the world, the philosophical concepts of the world, in order then in a concluding chapter to add A brief view of an Anthroposophy. There you will see how philosophy today in the free emancipated life of thought represents something which, to be sure, rises into the consciousness soul, but how this life, through the consciousness soul, must lay hold of what comes from Spirit itself, philosophically at first, otherwise philosophy must fall into decadence and die. Thus you see at least one example of the working of the Sun-evolution in human earthly life. I said that one could encounter these sun-laws if one studied the course of philosophical evolution, though one does not always recognise that it is sun-law which is active in it. This must be recognised by Spiritual Science. Just reflect that in reality a Being is evolving which little by little acquires the same members as man himself. If one were to go still farther back into ancient times one would find that not alone the etheric, but the physical body too gave rise to the forming of world concepts. It is difficult to give clear characteristics of the age that goes back beyond the 12th – 14th centuries B.C.; it lies before Homer, before historical times. But then something was evolving which is not man as man lives upon the earth. Something lives in history which passes through the etheric body, the sentient body etc., a real, actual Being. I said in my book that in the Grecian era thought was born. But in modern times it comes to actual self-consciousness in the consciousness soul: thought is an independent active Being. This could not of course be said in an exoteric book intended for the public. The anthroposophist will find it however if he reads the book and notes what was the prevailing trend of its presentation. It is not brought into it, but results of itself out of the very subject matter. You see from this that very many impulses of transformation as regards the spiritual life are coming forward in our time. For here we see something evolving that is like a human being except that it has a longer duration of life than an individual man. The individual man lives on the physical plane: for seven years he develops the physical body, for seven years the etheric body, for seven years the sentient body etc. The Being which evolves as philosophy (we call it by the abstract name ‘philosophy’) lives for 700 years in the etheric body, 700 – 800 years in the sentient body (the time is only approximate), 700 – 800 years in the sentient soul, 700 – 800 years in the intellectual or mind-soul and again 700 – 800 years in the consciousness soul. A Being evolves upwards of whom we can say: if we look at the very first beginnings of Grecian philosophy this Being has then just reached the stage of development which corresponds in mankind to puberty; as Being it is like man when he has reached the 14th – 16th year. Then it lives upwards to the time when a human being experiences the events between the 14th and 21st year; that is the age of Greek philosophy, Greek thought. Then comes the next 7 years, what man experiences from the age of 21 to 28; the Christ Impulse enters the development of philosophy. Then comes the period from Scotus Erigena up to the new age. This Being develops in the following 700 – 800 years what man develops between the ages of 28 and 35 years. And now we are living in the development of what man experiences in his consciousness soul: we are experiencing the consciousness soul of philosophy, of philosophical thought. Philosophy has actually come to the forties, only it is a Being that has much longer duration of life. One year in a man's life corresponds to a hundred years in the life of the Being of philosophy. So we see a Being passing through history for whom a century is a year; evolving in accordance with Sun-laws though one is not aware of it. And then only there lies further back another Being still more super-sensible than the Being that evolves as humanity except that a year is as long as a century. This Being that stands behind evolves in such a way that its external expression is our personal destiny, how we bear this through still longer periods, from incarnation to incarnation. Here stand the Spirits regulating our outer destiny and their life is of still longer duration than the life of those for whom we must say that a century corresponds to a year. So you see, it is as if we look there into differing ranges of Beings, and how, if we wished, we might even write the biography of a Being who stands spiritually as much higher than man as a 100 years is longer than a year. An attempt has been made to write the biography of a such a Being as had its puberty at the time of Thales and Anaxagoras, and has now reached the stage of its self-consciousness and since the 16th century has entered, so to say, into its ‘forties’. The biography of this Being has furnished a ‘History of Philosophy’.3 From this you see, however, how Spiritual Science gives vitality to what is otherwise abstract, and really animates it. What dry wood for instance, is the usual ‘History of Philosophy’! And what it can become when one knows that it is the biography of a Being which is interwoven in our existence, but evolves by Sun-laws instead of Earth-laws! It was my wish to add these thoughts to what we have been considering lately about the life-forces which arise in us when we look at Spiritual Science not as a theory but seek it in the guidance to living. And it is just through Spiritual Science that we find the living. What is so unalive, so dry, and withered as the history of philosophy comes to meet us out of the mist as though we looked up to it as a Goddess who descends from divine cloud-heights, whom we see young in ancient times, whom we see grow even if with the slowness where a century corresponds to a year of human life. Yet all this becomes living—the sun rises for us like the Sun within Earth existence itself. For just as the sun rises on the physical plane, so do we see the ancient Sun still radiate into the earthly world in a Being that has a longer lifetime than man. As we follow man's development on the physical plane from birth to death so we follow the development of philosophy by seeing a Being within it. When in this way we look at what Anthroposophy can be to us we reach the point of seeing in it not only a guide to knowledge but a guide to living Beings who surround us even though we are unaware of them. Yes, my dear friends, something of this was only felt by Christian Morgenstern. And by feeling this, feeling it in the deepest part of his soul, our friend Christian Morgenstern could put into writing a beautiful sentiment, a true anthroposophical sentiment which shows how a soul can express itself which in its inmost being knows itself to be one with our Anthroposophy—not merely as with something giving us various facts of knowledge—but as something that gives us life. In the wonderful poem Lucifer by Christian Morgenstern we have a wonderful example of this. The feeling of this poem lives entirely in the inspiration of which ones feels a breath when, as we have tried to show today, one finds the transition from the presentation of the idea in Anthroposophy to the grasping of living beings.
If the feeling in this poem leads you to reflect how alive something can becomes that is understood theoretically in Anthroposophy, so that, as it were, one can grasp the Beings who approach us out of the dark abyss of existence, if you take this poem, stimulated by feelings I wished to arouse through today's lecture, then you will see that this figure of Lucifer is really perceived, fashioned in a wonderful way. It is a model example of how what is brought to us by Anthroposophy can become alive and grip our whole soul.
|
| 350. Rhythms in the Cosmos and in the Human Being: Blood Circulation and Heartbeat — Mental Perception through the Lens of the Eye
06 Jun 1923, Dornach Tr. Automated Rudolf Steiner |
|---|
| Now, gentlemen, when you hear this, you may raise a question. You see, with our anthroposophy, it is always the case that our opponents think they are making the objections. But you know the objections long before. |
| That is why it is so nonsensical when people say of anthroposophy that it merely collects together what already existed. Nothing is collected together, but everything is newly investigated! |
| But, gentlemen, then something else will come out, which is what humanity fears most. Because, you see, once anthroposophy gets through – today you can't do anything; if you want to do something practically, all hell breaks loose; even if you just say things, the opposition arises immediately, as you are well aware – but once anthroposophy gets so far that it penetrates into our schools, that it asserts things everywhere, something else will come. |
| 350. Rhythms in the Cosmos and in the Human Being: Blood Circulation and Heartbeat — Mental Perception through the Lens of the Eye
06 Jun 1923, Dornach Tr. Automated Rudolf Steiner |
|---|
Good morning, gentlemen! Does anyone have any further questions? A question is asked regarding cataracts. The questioner says that he was in hospital in Basel in 1916 because of an inflammation of the iris, and that he received injections into the head. Now he would like to ask whether these injections could have had a harmful effect. Dr. Steiner: Have you noticed anything in yourself? Of course, it is out of the question that these injections could have caused a disease. These so-called flies, these phenomena you speak of, do not have to indicate any kind of serious illness, but come from something else. The injections have the peculiarity that they sometimes weaken the nearby muscles a little, and then you can no longer move the muscle as freely; the eye becomes a little stiff. When you focus on something, it doesn't come into focus properly, and that's where these 'gnats and flies' come from. So this often comes from a slight weakness in the adjustment, I would say. Why did you have the iris injections? Questioner: It was thought to be the vitreous humor. Dr. Steiner: It is always better to fight such things with other means, as long as possible, through inner means. Some things cannot be fought through inner means; then one tries to inject. But you don't need to worry about that. It's not necessary. Is there perhaps another question we can answer? Questioner: I would like to come back to the turning. I and also my colleagues noticed that when we talk about the heart, there is some ambiguity. I thought about how Doctor once drew for us how the Earth is connected to the moon and the fluid - I don't know if I'm expressing myself correctly =, the sun is around it. The heart is on the left side of the body. I would now like to ask whether the heart is actually connected to the whole world mechanism? Dr. Steiner: Here we have to recall various things that we have already discussed. I once said: In science today, people have completely wrong ideas about the heart. They think the heart is a kind of pump, and that the heart pumps blood all over the body. So they think: the heart contracts. When the heart contracts, it becomes smaller, holding less blood in itself. This pushes the blood through the veins, it is pushed into the body, and because the heart is elastic, it is thought to expand again. This brings the blood back again. — So today we attribute to the heart that it behaves like a pump, that it pumps blood throughout the body. You see, that is a completely wrong view. It is a view that stems from the materialistic age, which attributes everything to the mechanical, when one thinks that the heart should be a real mechanical pumping device that pumps blood throughout the body. In doing so, no consideration is given to how all of life takes place in a living being. I would like to draw your attention to one thing in this regard. There is a very small, lowly animal that actually consists only of a kind of tube. If I wanted to draw this animal, I would have to draw it something like this (see drawing): There would be a skin. Such a tube is the animal. Inside it is hollow, and there it is simply like a small harbor, a small cup. It still has little cilia, tiny hairs, with which it can move. This little animal lives in the water. It is called Hydra because it lives in the water. This little animal, Hydra, has the peculiarity that, when compared to higher animals or to humans, it is nothing more than a mere stomach. And this tube actually does nothing other than absorb all kinds of granules, that is, all kinds of food, that come near it and then digests them inside. So the little animal lives in the water; all kinds of nutrients swim in the water. The animal swims around, swims up to the nutrients, absorbs these nutrients, just like our stomach does; it also absorbs. Of course, this little animal does not have a pharynx or a mouth that prepares the nutrients. The Hydra simply absorbs these nutrients and digests them. The strange thing, however, is that it has the excretory organ, the anus, in the mouth at the same time. It also secretes through the mouth again immediately. So, everything is together in this little animal.  Now it is natural: if something wants to be a living being, especially an animal, it must not only eat – it must eat – but it must also breathe. And this little animal breathes with the outside of its skin. There are tiny holes all over it. These holes are found wherever there is organic matter, living matter. And it draws in the air it needs from the water through these holes. So you can say that this little animal, the Hydra, has an inside, a cavity with which it eats. On the outside, it has its respiratory organs. So the animal draws in the air, and the air also enters in the middle into this hollow space. The animal can eat and breathe. It is always busy with this. The animal swims around everywhere in the water, eats and breathes in the air from the water, which is also contained in the water. What will the materialistic person say? He will say: Well, this little animal simply consists of this skin. This skin, which has grown inside in such a way that it is a nutritional apparatus on the inside, and on the outside it is a respiratory apparatus. — That is what the materialist says. But we cannot say so, because we must consider that to be a highly superficial view and must say: No, this little animal also has an etheric body, in which it is enclosed, and also an astral body, in which it is also enclosed. It still has that, these are the invisible limbs, Now, gentlemen, can you prove by any means that the animal is also something invisible besides the visible? The materialist says: I take care of the visible, I do not take care of the invisible. The visible, that shows me a kind of stomach inside, on the outside it is a kind of lung, and I am satisfied with that. Now you can do something special with this animal. Not true, gentlemen, we don't wear gloves, but we still remember what it looks like. If you have a glove, you can turn it inside out. So imagine that the glove is brown on the outside for my sake and has a gray lining on the inside. If you now turn it around so that the gray is on the outside and the brown is on the inside, you have turned it over correctly; now the inside is on the outside and the outside is on the inside. You can cut off a finger and do the same with the individual finger. Then, when you cut off the finger and turn it around, you have something like this hydra. The hydra looks like a single finger. And the strange thing is: just as you can turn this fingerling around so that the inside is outside and the outside is inside, you can also turn this Hydra around. You can do that, you can really turn it around. And then what I have drawn here (in the drawing, $. 53) in red is on the outside and what I have drawn in blue-violet is now on the inside. But the hollow space is now also outside, and what used to be outside is now inside. And the strange thing about it is that now the Hydra suddenly starts swimming around again. It doesn't mind at all. It swims around in the water again, eating and breathing. She now eats the granules in this newly formed cavity and breathes through what used to be the stomach wall. So it doesn't bother Hydra at all. It doesn't harm her at all. She starts to eat with what she used to breathe with, and to breathe with what she used to eat with. Yes, gentlemen, if it were the case that it had only grown like this, and there was only a stomach inside and respiratory organs on the outside, the Hydra could do nothing but breathe in from the inside and start eating from the outside. But it doesn't do that. Instead, when it is turned around, it turns its stomach into lungs and its lungs into a stomach. Yes, now I would like to know how that would happen if there were nothing but a stomach and lungs! If you have a tool, a glove or whatever it is, you can turn it around if it is something external. If it is something internal, you cannot just turn it around, of course. So what is left of the etheric and astral body, the invisible, remains. And because that is there, the body of the hydra can simply be turned around. So you see: if you just look with a clear eye at what is actually going on in nature, you will immediately find out that the materialistic view must be absolutely wrong. So that one can say: That which actually eats and breathes is something invisible. And because the body of the Hydra is not constructed like ours, it does not have bones and muscles, but everything is one and the same substance, that is why the Hydra can use this one substance for everything. It is not true that we cannot turn our stomachs inside out because it is so specially formed, because we do not consist of the same material as the Hydra, but our materials are different. But inside our stomach must also breathe, and the air that we have in it, it draws in from the outside as well. So our stomach is already a kind of Hydra. From all these things, to which much more could be added, it is clear that even in the smallest animal we can prove that there is something invisible that underlies this animal. Now, gentlemen, from this you can see that when we speak of what actually moves our whole being, we come to the conclusion that it is something invisible. If you take the external movement when we walk, you will not come to the conclusion that it is your big toe that takes the step, but you will say: I walk, it is my will that causes me to walk. When the organs move within – and it is not only the heart that moves, for example, the intestines are constantly moving; the intestines move in waves, otherwise the chyme could not be digested; so within the human being everything is in motion, there are constant movements within. So when the organs move within, these movements are not caused by the material part within us, but they are caused by that which is invisible within us. So we have to say: the heart is not a pump, but the heart is moved by our astral body. - So we have an astral body, and it moves the heart, or rather because our real self is also in the astral body, we also move our heart with our self, and we move it in a very special way. If you look at the heart, as Mr. Burle quite rightly said, it is located on the left side of a normal person, not as strongly as one usually thinks, but it is located on the left side. And then the large veins come out of the heart here. The large artery and the other veins actually come out of the heart. Now it is like this: when I breathe in, for example, I nourish myself with oxygen, so to speak. When I breathe out, I breathe out carbon dioxide. When I have breathed out the carbon dioxide, I immediately feel an oxygen hunger. I want to breathe in again. Yes, that has nothing to do with my heart at first, but with my whole body. My whole body gets the oxygen hunger. When it gets oxygen hunger, it drives all its blood to move, because the blood must have oxygen. Through its astral body, the body sends the blood to where it can get the oxygen. Or suppose I am walking or working. Then the food burns up in me. I have already explained this to you. As a result, the blood becomes poor in nourishment. When one is working, the blood always becomes poor in nourishment. Now, what does the blood want? The blood wants to get nourishment again. The blood, as it were, seizes the nourishment that the stomach and intestines have absorbed. All of this, this hunger for air and food, sets the blood in motion. It is the blood that moves first, and the blood carries the heart with it. So it is not the heart that pumps the blood through the body, but the blood moves through the hunger for air and food, and this moves the heart. So we have to say that it is our invisible self that moves the heart. Now, gentlemen, when you hear this, you may raise a question. You see, with our anthroposophy, it is always the case that our opponents think they are making the objections. But you know the objections long before. You make them yourself beforehand. That is why I always draw your attention to the objections. You may object: Yes, what use is our heart if it does not pump blood through the body? If the blood moves, we might not need the heart, which is supposed to be carried along. Yes, you see, that is what people say who have no real understanding of the human body as a whole. There is a big difference between the human head and the rest of the human being. I have told you something about this difference before. Suppose you are walking or working. Yes, the head is not involved in that. The head sits with the rest of the body, like you sit in a carriage. You sit very still. The carriage has to move its wheels, the horses have to pull. But our hands and feet have to work, and the head sits inside as the one that does not work, right? Otherwise, we would somehow have to have ropes on our ears and use them to set the wheels on the machines in motion. We don't do that. The head doesn't work. Imagine if you could attach ropes to your hair – most people today could no longer do this because they are bald. That would be very bad for you. The head does not actually work, it sits quietly on the rest of our organism. But why is that? Yes, you see, the head is something completely different from the rest of the human being. The rest of the human being is a movement apparatus. The head is only to that extent a movement apparatus, as it participates in the movements and so forth; the movements work up into our head. But the head is not that which itself makes the movements. The head has sensory organs on the outside. That is where it perceives what is outside. But the head also perceives what is going on inside, only unconsciously in most people. If I want to look outside so that I know what is going on outside, I need my eyes. If I want to look inside, at the blood circulation, I need my heart. The heart is not just there to pump blood through the body, but is a sensory organ that perceives everything, like the whole head. We would know nothing about our blood circulation – of course, with our upper floors we know nothing about it either, but there must be knowledge in the head – if the head did not perceive our whole blood circulation through the heart. I have already told you how the liver is a perception organ. The lower movements, for example, are perceived by the liver. But the heart perceives all the movements of the whole person. This sets the heart in motion. Through the movements caused by the hunger for breathing and the hunger for food, the heart is set in motion. And from the movements of the heart, one can tell whether something in the body is in order or in disorder. Gentlemen, you can easily see that. What do you do when someone gets sick? The first thing is to take the person's pulse. Those who have developed the habit of recognizing the pulse can tell an enormous amount from the pulse beat. The pulse is truly a barometer of the entire state of health and illness. But the pulse is nothing more than the movements of the blood. What you do when you take a person's pulse is what the head is constantly doing. It is constantly sensing the whole blood circulation through the heart. In fact, everything that goes on in the body is sensed by the head through the heart.Now, imagine that someone has drunk an awful lot of alcohol on a particular evening and is, as they say, thoroughly drunk. This disrupts the entire blood circulation. The next day, the head notices through the heart: the entire blood circulation is out of order. The result is a hangover, a familiar headache. Yes, why is there a buzzing in the head? You see, when it's a nice day and I look around with my eyes, I have a nice impression. If it's awful weather out there, I have a bad impression. Yes, gentlemen, when everything is moving properly in the blood, the head has a good impression, everything is in order in the head. But when there is a storm in the blood – that is what happens when someone has been drunk in the evening – then the head has a stormy impression through the heart, everything is mixed up. So we only understand what the heart is when we know that the heart is actually the inner sense organ through which the head perceives everything that is going on in the body. If we look around us in the world, it turns out that the human being stands in relation to the whole world through his invisible part, through that which I have called his astral body. The most important stars in relation to which the human being stands are the sun and the moon. Now, the human head is mainly in relation to the sun, but the rest of the human being is actually in relation to the moon. And one can say that it is, of course, an awful superstition to think that something can be done with the current phases of the moon. But there is a rhythm in the human being that is also expressed in the blood and is similar to the lunar rhythm. Man orients himself to the whole world. And so it is also the case that the movement of the blood does not depend on food alone. When a person is completely healthy – after all, in a sense he is a free being – then in a sense he makes himself independent of the external forces of nature, and in a sense he also makes himself independent of the whole world. But the moment a person begins to feel a little ill, he becomes dependent on the whole world. Let us suppose that someone is ill and you can tell from their pulse. There is a huge difference for the person who can perceive it between the pulse in the morning and the pulse in the evening. You can tell a lot from the difference between the morning pulse and the evening pulse. But for certain sick people, there is also a big difference between the pulse at the full moon and the pulse at the new moon. Human beings are dependent. Even if they can make themselves independent when they are healthy, a certain dependency remains, and this is particularly evident when they are ill. So we have to say: in terms of what makes an impression on our hearts, we are already related to the movement of the heavenly bodies, namely the moon. We are related to the movement of the moon. — In this respect, a great deal of observation still needs to be done. I told you earlier that in a normal person, the heart is slightly shifted to the left. But just as there are left-handed people and most people are right-handed, doing everything with their right hand, there are also, curiously enough, right-handed people. There are people who do not have their heart on the left, but on the right side. Most of the time this is not noticed at all, because the difference is, of course, an internal one. If someone is left-handed, you notice it very quickly, but if their heart is shifted a little to the right instead of to the left, you don't notice it so quickly. But it would be interesting to examine precisely such people, who have their heart on the right side, to see how they are somewhat different in life than those who have their heart on the left side. A person whose heart is on the right side, that is, shifted to the right, is someone who actually always has to do certain things at a certain time of year or at a certain time of day. The right-heart person is much more dependent on the external environment than the left-heart person. And if the heart has only moved a little bit to the right – after all, it is not in the same place for everyone, but a little bit different for each person – if it is still on the left, but has moved a little bit to the right, then he immediately has the desire to align himself more with his surroundings. He immediately wants to do something special in spring, let's say, and something special in autumn. Of course, you can't always do that and then ruin yourself. People have no idea how they can ruin themselves. For example, in the case of children who have their hearts a little to the right, you have to proceed differently at school – it doesn't need to be noticed – than with those children who have their hearts in the right place. When a person's heart is to the right, they are then led to make much more use of their astral body. You see, gentlemen, that is the story: if someone works at a machine for a long time, you can say that in general the work becomes mechanical. It becomes more unpleasant because you yourself become a piece of the machine, but if you work at a machine for a long time, you do the movements and so on mechanically. Imagine that you are quite normally a real left-handed person. The father was also a left-handed person, the grandfather too, the great-grandfather too. It has slowly crept in. And when you are born as a son, you naturally make the same movement internally that your father and grandfather and great-grandfather have already made. It's as easy as if you've been working on a machine for a long time. If you are a right-hearted person, the position of your heart is not inherited from your father. As a rule, the father is not also a right-hearted person. That is not inherited. In that case, you have to start things over and over again from your astral body, so to speak. You don't have the whole inheritance in you. And the consequence of this is that such a person, who is a right-hearted person, has to apply much more inner strength to keep the whole blood circulation in order. And that is why such a right-hearted person is much more concerned with the external. The following is even possible. Suppose you are not a right-heart person at all, but a perfectly normal left-heart person. But if you become a ballet dancer – it happens to men too, but even more so to women – then ballet dancing also affects the heart. Now, ballet dancing is also very materialistic. But in ancient times, when people were encouraged to dance, for example in ancient Greece, the fact that they then incorporated movements that imitated the stars even pushed the heart a little to the right during their lifetime. Even today, dance still has a strong effect on the heart of a dancer, even though it has become materialistic, because it moves the heart a little to the right. And if one paid more attention to these things, one would see, when one dissects the human being after death, how the heart has stretched certain vessels apart. The fact that the person in question was a dancer is why the heart has been pushed a little to the right - you can still see that after death. This answers the question that Mr. Burle asked. It is answered by seeing that when man is more devoted to his astral body, he actually does not want to follow his usual blood circulation, but he wants to control it even more, and in doing so he indulges in movements that are more like the movements outside the earth, towards the moon. Can you understand that? (Answer: Yes!) So what you asked today, that it is very easy to see that a person has a certain longing to do this, is precisely because man's whole heart movement is controlled by the invisible part, that he then, I might say, slips a little over to the invisible and that he then actually directs himself according to the external and not merely according to the inner blood movement, which is directed towards breathing and nourishment. All these things can be explained if one really understands the human being. And now I would like to tell you something that is still a little bit related to what we discussed last time. Last time we saw: there inside the eye, there is this small lens (it is drawn). If a person has normal vision, then this small lens is transparent. If a person gets cataracts, then the lens becomes opaque. Salts are deposited. So we can say: In a healthy person, here in the eye – if that is the front of the eye – is the lens; it is transparent. In a person who is seriously ill, we have the lens in which salts have been deposited, making it opaque. Because the lens is transparent, the human being's astral body can see the world through the transparent lens. He sees everything in the world. When you get used to very, very intense thinking through things like the ones I have described in the booklet: “How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds”, there comes a moment when you can do something very special. But getting used to very intense thinking is not something people today want to do easily. Because people today do not withdraw completely into their own thinking, because they say: everything must be given to us from the outside; we must explore the secrets of the world from the outside. Of course, it is also uncomfortable, because you have to be very careful with this thinking. If you think very vividly, you have to be terribly careful, of course. But there comes a moment in life when you can do something very special. Not that I can lift a chair with my hand, everyone understands that because it happens all the time. But I can also leave my hand alone, not use it for what it usually does. What the lens of the eye does is not so much in the power of people. If you have an impression from the outside, well, then you look through your lens of the eye towards this impression. If you have no impression, then the lens of the eye remains still. But, gentlemen, just imagine someone who has really made an effort to think very hard. He is completely absorbed in his inner thoughts. He is not looking outwards, he is leaving his eye lens alone, just as you leave your hand alone when you are not using it. Yes, then the whole starry sky is reflected at the point where you would otherwise have the transparent lens with which you would otherwise see. That is, I would like to say, the downright wonderful thing about this method, which you develop in the way I have described in 'How to Know Higher Worlds', is that you learn to use the individual organs not only for the earth, but also for the other world. When salts have naturally deposited, the lens becomes thick and automatically opaque. When one reflects deeply, it remains transparent, but the person does not see through the lens, he does not look outwards. And from there it begins to illuminate the whole world from the lens. But then one sees the spiritual. And you see the whole starry sky in its true, inner meaning. This small place in man, where the lens is located, can teach you about everything you dare to say about stars and so on. You see, it is actually so wonderful with man that at the smallest point is the seat of knowledge that is tremendous. Those who are very healthy – of course, one does not need to wish this for any human being – even have this whole story easier, they do not have to exert themselves so much with their thinking. They only need to concentrate very little to be able to see inwardly when they have forgotten how to see outwardly. But this is what must always be emphasized when speaking of such higher knowledge: when speaking of such higher knowledge, it is always so obvious that one can, of course, exert oneself too much, and then, instead of higher knowledge, something can occur, such as, let us say, the disturbance of the lens. The lens can then become somewhat opaque due to this strong inner concentration, even if one does not become strong-minded, but something opaque. Therefore, in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” everything is described in such a way that a person can achieve what is discussed there, but without becoming ill as a result. No exercise should be described in such a way that it can make one ill. But this lens is the place in the human being that can actually reveal the entire spiritual world to us at the very back of the eye. And so we can say: you can see outwardly when everything is transparent in the eye. You can see inwardly when something is deliberately made opaque. Yes, gentlemen, this is something that can make it clear to you how knowledge of spiritual worlds actually arises. Knowledge of spiritual worlds arises precisely from the fact that one first finds in one's head the individual points that are not needed for ordinary activity, because they are at rest. Through the lens, one first gets to know the outer world. But one can train the whole body so that all possible uses of the senses are suspended for a moment. If, for example, one does not use the heart – blood circulation can continue, but one switches off the heart as a sense organ – then one begins to perceive the whole blood circulation. But then one does not just perceive the blood circulation. When you make your heart so that you can see through your body to the blood circulation, when you do not feel your heart inwardly and do not feel the pulse beat, but see through it, as you learn through the lens to see out into the world with your head, when you learn to see through yourself, then, gentlemen, you see not only the blood circulation, but you see the whole movement of the moon, everything that the moon does, and you see how the moon relates to the sun. And then you see the relationship of the heart to the sun and moon. You see, in the old days, all this was easier for people. They were not yet schooled to learn only from the outside world. They did not want to see everything in front of them. If you had taken a Greek, a person who had lived twenty-seven or twenty-eight hundred years ago, to the movies, he would not have watched the movie for long because he would have fainted. at the moment when the old Greek would have looked at it, inside him, but not just in one limb, but in the whole person, what you get when a limb falls asleep, when something presses on it. Not a real sleep would have come to the person, but this falling asleep of the whole person would have arisen if you had sat the old Greek in a cinema. He would have fainted from it, of course. The ancient Greek would not have been able to watch it at all, because at that moment his head would have received such a disturbance in the whole blood system through the heart that his whole body, not just individual limbs, would have fallen asleep, and the head would no longer have been able to control anything. He would have fainted. Man has become quite different from what he was in ancient times. Today, modern culture has caused such a disorderly blood circulation that people no longer faint in cinemas. If you have really studied spiritual science a little bit and then go to the movies, you have to pull yourself together very hard, otherwise you can still faint today. But it's not true, we are all human, and one takes on the characteristics of the other. And it is the case that people no longer have the blood circulation system of ancient times, like the ancient man. That is why the ancients could see more clearly into the circulatory system and could speak more easily of the sun and the moon than we can. We are cut off from it and must first reconnect to it through exercises. We must first properly restore the organs so that we can see. You see, the ancient Greeks could still understand when older people told them something about how things actually are on earth. We must not believe that everything handed down from ancient times is always superstition; it is just that in many cases later generations have transformed it to such an extent that it has become superstition. It is indeed strange how things that are quite reasonable at first simply become superstitions later on. When people no longer know how things should actually be done, then these things become superstitions. For example, the ancient Jews did not eat pork. Yes, they knew that, because of their race and the area in which they lived, pork made them weak. Then it later became superstition. The things that later become superstition always go back to earlier reasonable things. So we don't have to believe that what was previously available as old knowledge is always nonsense, but you can't always rely on the old because the old things have been falsified many times. That is why you have to research everything anew. That is why it is so nonsensical when people say of anthroposophy that it merely collects together what already existed. Nothing is collected together, but everything is newly investigated! And to those of you, gentlemen, who say: In Anthroposophy they only collect all kinds of old Gnostic stuff — just ask them where they can prove that the story of the eye lens is found as I told you last time and today, where you can find it in any book. You cannot find it because the story has been completely forgotten. Therefore, you can answer anyone who says that the things have been collected together: You are lying because you do not even know what is said there – that the whole view of the heart and so on is renewed. It is the case that everything is originally explored here and then comes to the whole person. And from such simple things as the fact that a person moves while dancing and turning, which I touched on last time and today, prompted by Herm Burle's question, one can see a lot. It can be understood. But, gentlemen, then something else will come out, which is what humanity fears most. Because, you see, once anthroposophy gets through – today you can't do anything; if you want to do something practically, all hell breaks loose; even if you just say things, the opposition arises immediately, as you are well aware – but once anthroposophy gets so far that it penetrates into our schools, that it asserts things everywhere, something else will come. Then people will know which movements are right for their health and their entire metabolic development and which are wrong. Then the time will come when work will be organized around the human being. Today, work is organized around machines. Today, people have to move in a way that those who discovered the machine find appropriate. Later, people will realize that what comes from the machines is not the main thing; the human being is the main thing. Therefore, there must only be such machines that are designed for man. This will only be possible once anthroposophy has been fully accepted. Then it will be possible to say: everything mechanical must be geared to man. But something is needed for this. First, one must understand that the heart is not a machine, but is directed towards the human being. Then one will also be able to find the basis for the outer machine that shapes it in such a way that it is directed towards the human being. But a science that has made itself so comfortable that it describes the heart as if the human being had only a pump in his blood circulation makes no conscience of making the machine so that the human being must adapt to it. Our whole false social situation is connected with this false view in science. And therefore one must understand that only a correct thinking about man must come first; only then can a correct social life begin. As long as one believes that the heart is a pump, one will not be able to adjust correctly in the outer life either. Only then, when one knows that the invisible man is higher than his heart, it is he who moves his heart, then one will also adjust the machines according to man. We must begin to realize this. Today people make it much too comfortable for themselves. They make it much too comfortable for themselves. What is most international today? The football game! I explained it to you the other day. But what is spiritual is always pushed together into small circles and so on. It fragments. Right, in Norway you can hear: Long live him! or you hear a German song sung when footballers (from Germany) are up. But otherwise people separate. What must be grasped is the spirit, but in such a way that it is grasped in the particular. Not that one speaks in general terms of spirit, spirit, but it must be grasped in the particular. We will continue the discussion next Saturday. |
| 349. The Life of Man on Earth and the Essence of Christianity: Dreaming, Death and Rebirth
09 Apr 1923, Dornach Tr. Automated Rudolf Steiner |
|---|
| You see, there are enemies and opponents of anthroposophy who say: Oh, they are just people who want to dream; they make all kinds of fantastic things up about the world. |
| You see, that is it, that anthroposophy is already a great human task and has a great social significance. Because all understanding will indeed go away. |
| That is already so. It does not occur to anthroposophy to convert individuals. Individuals cannot achieve anything, but many people can; and anthroposophy only wants to help many people acquire the right knowledge. |
| 349. The Life of Man on Earth and the Essence of Christianity: Dreaming, Death and Rebirth
09 Apr 1923, Dornach Tr. Automated Rudolf Steiner |
|---|
Let us now continue to try to elaborate on the things we have discussed in recent times. I told you more or less in general terms how the spiritual and soul life of man actually relates to the sensory and physical life. Now today I will elaborate on this further. I have already pointed out to you that if you want to know something about these things, you cannot say: Yes, the intellect that I have once and for all must decide everything, and what it cannot decide does not exist. One must always bear in mind that one has also undergone a development in ordinary life. Just imagine what it would be like if we had remained at the level of a three-year-old child! We would look at the world quite differently. A three-year-old child sees the world quite differently than an adult. The three-year-old child can be taught all kinds of things. After all, in terms of life, he is still asleep. The three-year-old child cannot even speak properly; he can be taught language. In any case, the three-year-old child is modest and not snooty. It is willing to be taught. It would probably not be so modest if it were not half asleep and said: Why should one learn? We already know everything! But today's man says: We already know everything; and since we cannot understand the spiritual soul with our minds, there is no such thing as a spiritual soul. Now, if I were to say as a three-year-old child: I don't want to learn anything more; if I say: Dad, Mom, and a few other things, like apples and so on, that's enough – that would be a child's point of view. But once you have acquired the common sense of an ordinary person, you can really develop something within yourself. And if you now further develop the ordinary powers of cognition that you have, then it comes about that you undergo just such a leap, I would say, as the one from a small child to an adult human being. All this depends, of course, on gaining insight and on incorporating it into the whole process of human development. Today, people cannot help but be snobbish in this regard and say: I already know everything, and what I don't know is none of my business. Today, people cannot help but say this because they have been educated from elementary school on to ascribe everything to reason, and to say of the other: Well, yes, one can believe in that, but one cannot recognize it. You see, you just have to be very clear about the fact that there really is such an awakening from ordinary everyday life to real knowledge, just as there is an awakening from sleeping and dreaming to ordinary life. You just have to realize that you can only really know something about the world when you see through what is happening from a higher point of view, just as you have to see through the dream from a waking point of view. One only realizes that a dream is not reality, that a dream is something that depends on waking life, when one can wake up. I told you the other day that if one could never wake up, one would consider what one dreams to be the only reality. But now let us see what a dream actually is. You see, gentlemen, people have thought an awful lot about dreams. But actually, everything that is said about dreams is basically just drivel. It really is drivel, because people can say: well, if the brain just vibrates a little, then the person is dreaming. Yes, but why does the brain only vibrate a little? — Well, what is said about dreams is actually a kind of proof. But if you are clear about the fact that the human being not only has this physical body, which you can see and touch in life, but that he also has the other aspects of his nature that I have drawn to your attention, that the human being also has an etheric body, an astral body and an ego, and if you then say to yourself: this very ego and this astral body are outside the physical body and the etheric body when you are asleep, then you can first of all explain to yourself why a person does not walk when they are asleep. They do not walk because the ego is not inside the physical body. You can also explain to yourself why a small child does not walk. Because the ego has not yet awakened in a small child. So you can explain to yourself why a person walks: he walks because the I slips into his physical body. You can also explain to yourself why a person does not think when asleep. He does not think because the astral body is not within his physical body. Doesn't that show you that you have to distinguish, so to speak, between the physical body and the etheric body, which are in bed, and the I and the astral body, which are outside during sleep. Now imagine what it is like when you wake up or fall asleep. When you fall asleep, it is the case that the I and the astral body are just going out. So there is also a state where they are half inside, half on their way out. Only later does the state come when the I and the astral body are completely outside. So there is also such a state where they are still half inside and already half outside. That is when you dream. Otherwise, you only believe that you are dreaming during the night. Actually, you only dream when you are falling asleep and when you are waking up. And what do you dream about then? Yes, you see, gentlemen, people believe that you dream because you use your brain when you are awake – so today's scholars say – but when you are asleep you only use your spinal cord. That's what people think. But these people are not able to observe at all! Take a real dream, for example. Take the dream of a fire. You dream of a whole fire; you dream of all kinds of things. And you wake up – someone yells outside: “Fire!” In reality, you perceived nothing else – you didn't know anything about fire and so on – so you heard this “Feurio!” half and half because your ear was open. Because you are accustomed to it, you associate this with fire, but it is half and half obscure. And what you dream about fire can be something completely different than what you see. For example, you may dream that the fire is coming from a volcanic eruption. You may dream something completely different. And when you dream about something that happened many years ago, you will know how confused the dream is. Perhaps as a small boy you had a small quarrel with someone. Now, years later, you dream about this quarrel. But you dream about it as if you had been beaten to death, or as if you had beaten the other person to death. The dream confuses everything. And you can perceive this confusion everywhere in the dream. Now, when we dream while falling asleep, the story remains confused. When we dream while waking up, it corrects itself because we really see what is there. We dreamt that someone is murdering us. He puts a ball in our mouth; afterwards he comes and works on us with some instrument – we wake up and unfortunately have a corner of the bedspread in our mouth. You see, the dream takes a small cause, adds a lot to it and confuses the story. For example, if the air is bad in the room where you sleep, you will experience what is known as the Alpdrücken. But you do not say to yourself in the dream: “The air is bad there, I can't get a good night's sleep there,” but you get the impression that an evil spirit is sitting on your chest and pressing down on you. You all know the legend of the Trut. This is based on the fact that one has got bad air into the lungs. The nightmare is based on this. What, then, is dreaming based on? Well, gentlemen, now let us take the waking dream. It is the case that the ego and the astral body are just slipping in and are not yet completely inside. These are the dreams of which we know the most. When you are completely inside your physical body, you look out of your eyes. But when you are not completely inside, you do not look out of your eyes. You have to imagine that when you enter your physical body, you turn around, as it were, and look out of your eyes. But if you are still half outside, you pass through your eyes, slipping through your eyes, and you see everything indistinctly. You then attach all kinds of confused fantasies to them. But when we enter our body during the night's sleep, we have nothing but these confused fantasies. And how do we sort them out? We can't sort them out. Only our body sorts them out for us. Otherwise, we would see the fire-breathing volcano Vesuvius every time we heard the word 'Feu' (fire) outside. Our eyes are so wonderfully constructed that we can only see the right thing through them. That is to say, we would only devote ourselves to all kinds of fantastic things throughout our lives if we were our body for the whole of life. It is the body that makes it possible for us to see life properly. So you see, when we look at ourselves outside of our body, we are actually inside our ego and our soul; we are fantasists who have all kinds of confused ideas in our minds, and all we need to do is realign ourselves in our body every morning when we wake up. It is thanks to our body that we see things in order. Actually, we are fantasists in our earthly lives. The dream shows us how we really are in our earthly lives. If you then come to really understand things, in the sense that you have awakened in a certain way with regard to your knowledge, you see even more clearly: in his life on earth, man is what he dreams. He is actually a fantasist, and he must always allow the body to correct him. And when he is completely asleep, he is actually quite unconscious. He cannot perceive anything of the world at all. Only when he has a piece of his body does he perceive the world fantastically. But just when you know that, you say to yourself: What is the dream then actually? What does the dream actually show us? The dream shows us that we actually know nothing about our body; because if we knew something, we could also see properly what is outside. We could recreate the eyes in our thoughts and in our spirit. But we cannot do that; we are dependent on our body giving us the power of the eyes. So the dream shows us how little we know about our body. But now you remember that I said the other day that we have to make this body ourselves. Inheritance is nothing. What is present when a person begins his existence on earth is, as I have explained to you, matter ground down to dust. First the soul-spiritual must enter into it. Man must first build up all his matter himself. When he understands the dream, he knows that he cannot do that. And when one comes to understand the dream, one learns something else. Think about how difficult it is to put yourself back in the first years of your childhood. Suddenly you remember an event that you know your mother didn't tell you about, but that you saw for yourself. For one person it falls in the third year, for another in the fourth year, and so on. Yes, gentlemen, before that you were really asleep, really asleep. But when you look at a three-year-old child who can actually still sleep properly – because you don't remember it, just as you don't remember ordinary sleep – when you look at this three-year-old child in relation to life, you can do something that you can't do later. I have already told you that the brain continues to develop until the permanent teeth have come through, until the seventh year. Look at the brain of a child who has just been born and the brain of a seven-year-old child. Something has happened to this seven-year-old child, something has worked on this brain. The brain itself cannot do anything. The brain is like a dynamo. A dynamo develops magnetism, and the whole factory movement depends on it. But the electric current must flow through it, otherwise the dynamo stands still. The brain stands still if the current of soul-life does not flow through it. In childhood the current of soul-life flows through the brain with much greater power, for the child works out the whole brain until the second change of teeth, and most of all in the very earliest years of life. That is why I told you that Jean Paul, who was a very clever man, said: A person learns much more in his first three years than in his three years at university. It is much more artful than what one ever has to work on externally later. We say to ourselves: Yes, we had that; we have lost that. Just when we became conscious, we lost this inner soul work. We no longer have that. And the one who comes to this realization notices that he can do it less and less. When you later gain the gift of looking back on life, it makes you feel quite dizzy about what has happened. Because when you were a fourteen-year-old boy, you might still have been able to do some of the things you did in abundance when you were a three-year-old child or even just when you were born. You could do the most when you were a three-year-old child; at fourteen you could do a lot less of it. When you turn thirty, you can still digest enough, but you can no longer work out anything. When you turn fifty or sixty, you have become a real donkey when it comes to the work of working out the human body. You only realize how big an ass you become in the course of your life! It is necessary to realize that you lose some of your wisdom during the twenty to thirty years of your lifetime. If you go through the period of thirty to forty years, you lose a lot more. And afterwards, you are already a terrible donkey in relation to everything you have to process internally. But when you start to realize this, when you acquire the ability to look back on your life, you are actually filled with respect for what a clever being you were as a very young child. You were once terribly ugly; but you can change everything if you were an ugly fellow. At fifteen, you can no longer make yourself beautiful. As a small child, you can do just that. All small children can do that. So it is important to realize what kind of donkey you have become in the course of your life. That is an important side of life. You don't become immodest, but a terribly modest person. You realize when you see it correctly: when you were a little child, you actually sat on the donkey and drove the donkey yourself. Now that you have become an old man, you have turned into a donkey yourself. — You see, you have to put it so drastically, otherwise nothing comes of it. In this way you also arrive at the meaning of the dream. You will have experienced it yourself; in a dream you can even think that you are the Emperor of China or something else. There are many other dreams. You can dream anything. But what does the dream show us? You just have to follow the dream to see how it changes in the course of your life. Infant dreams are quite wonderful. Infant dreams still show you that the child still has the powers within itself to shape its body. They are truly cosmic. The child dreams of what it has experienced before descending to earth, because these powers are still within it. It needs them to develop its brain. When you have this wonderfully designed brain, which is located in the upper skull (see drawing on page 152), then it has the eye, but here are the nerves that are needed to see. All this must be worked out in detail. It must be worked out in detail. Yes, gentlemen, you cannot work that out with earthly knowledge. With earthly knowledge you can work out machines here and there; but with earthly knowledge you cannot work out the brain. In the dreams of small children you can still see exactly: in their dreams they work out how their brain functions. Later on, dreams also become very strange if a person does not lead an orderly life; they become increasingly disorderly. And the fact that the dream is confused actually stems from the fact that one knows so little about one's physical body because one is not inside it. So that is the reason why we know so little about our physical body: because we have lost, transformed into foolishness, what we have received as wisdom when we descended into earthly life. When you wake up and say to yourself, “Well, if you believe everything you've dreamt now – that you're the emperor of China – then of course you're an ass.” But we ourselves can't do anything other than develop ass-like behavior because we don't have the body. Not being inside, we can't help but be confused by the dream. We have completely lost the ability that we had as small children to build up our body properly. It has to come to us from outside. When we wake up, it comes to us from outside. But when we come back down to earth, it doesn't come to us from outside. Then we encounter destroyed matter in the egg from outside. We have to build it up piece by piece. Yes, gentlemen, we have to learn all this between two earth lives. Between two earth lives we have to learn what the dreaming human being cannot do. You see, there are enemies and opponents of anthroposophy who say: Oh, they are just people who want to dream; they make all kinds of fantastic things up about the world. Yes, but anthroposophy consists precisely in the fact that we no longer rely on dreams, because dreams show that we cannot do what we can do when we enter into earthly life, when we enter with this dark, unconscious knowledge that we have as a small child. There we are clear about the fact that we have acquired this in a world that is not the world on earth, because in the world on earth we can only educate ourselves to become fantasists with regard to our actual self. However beautiful this world is, we can only educate ourselves to become fantasists with regard to our actual selves. We have to acquire our relationship to our body, our whole relationship to our body, in another world. Now I want to tell you that the one who sees through the whole thing and thus also sees how becoming an ass advances further and further knows: it is easy to lose this knowledge. Well, it is not much different than when someone takes an exam. When someone takes an exam, it often takes two years to pass it. But they forget it quickly, terribly quickly. This is also the case with the knowledge we need to build our body: we can forget it quickly. Only here the “quick” is somewhat different than with an exam or a test. The “quick” is our whole life on earth. When we have died, we have forgotten approximately what we brought down into physical life at our birth. Our lifetime is approximately the forgetting time. Now imagine that one of you has an experience of which he is aware: you are growing up as a child; you first remember something that happened, let's say, when I was four years old. Suppose he has already turned sixty and he remembers an event from when he was just four years old. Now it took him fifty-six years after those four years to forget, to forget inwardly. For fifty-six years, the forgetting became stronger and stronger. For fifty-six years, he became more and more of an ass. So how much more time did he need to forget what he still had until the age of four? Well, it took him so much more time than 4 in 56 contains: he needed fourteen times his first childhood to forget. When he reaches the age of sixty, it takes him fourteen times as long again to regain in the spiritual world what he has forgotten there. So he needs 60 times 14 years, 840 years. Then, in the spiritual world, he has acquired the ability to have something similar to what the small child had in its first four years, in order to build up. That means that after 840 years he can come to earth again. You can only calculate this with full responsibility, as I have written it on the board for you now, if you are really clear about it, if you can examine what lies in dreams, how dreams distance you more and more from the spiritual world. And you see, if someone walks around and at a certain time cannot enter his physical body at all, then he is a medium. If someone enters his physical body at the right time and uses it again, well, then he is a normal person. But if a person goes around in this state all the time, without the ego having entered the physical body – you can even walk around as a sleepwalker; you can even speak as a sleepwalker, or when you are lying in bed – then you need not be surprised; because if you, let us say, throw a ball, and everything is flat, it will roll on by itself. So under certain circumstances, when a person is not quite healthy, when everything goes easily for him, when his body is not quite firm, the activity that is otherwise conscious can still have an effect. But then the person is an automaton. A sleepwalker is not a human being, but an automaton. And one who speaks from sleep does not speak humanly either. Just try it: when someone speaks from sleep, you can hear the most stupid things, because he becomes an automaton and his ego and soul are not in his body.  But if this is only half the case, if a person is only half an automaton – the inward movement happens from behind, so that the person moves in from the back of the brain to the front – if a person only moves in halfway, then he can close his eyes, and then, because the optic nerves are at the back (on the right), he perceives something, but it is fantastic. And then he can also talk you into all kinds of fantasies, because, right, he doesn't see, but he gets images there. The sense of hearing is located there (center). And the sense of language is located there (left). He can talk you into anything there. The mediums speak from there, but they are not in the world. Therefore, nothing that the mediums say can be trusted, because they are half inside their physical body. Nothing at all is to be given to it. What the media say is just what man in his - I must use the expression again and again - in his donkey-like behavior perceives. Yes, gentlemen, but I have also heard of mediums who say really wonderful things. That is also true, the mediums also say wonderful things; but that is no wonder at all. Because, you see, when, for example, a strong earthquake strikes somewhere, the animals are the first to leave; the people stay and are destroyed by the earthquake. Animals are prophetic from the very beginning because the intellect is everywhere; they have not yet choked the intellect into themselves. So the medium is something that descends to the animal. It can do wonderful things, it can even say verses that are more beautiful than Goethe's verses — well, because it descends to the animal intellect. For someone who is to attain knowledge in the anthroposophical way, the opposite is the case. He must not only enter halfway, as in his dreams, but he must know everything as the other person knows it, and in addition, what one can know when one wakes up a second time. When one wakes up a second time, one gets an idea of what it is like. You say to yourself: Yes, if you have spent a little time getting to know people during your life on earth, it will help you after death. Then it will be easier for you after death to get to know the human body again. But what you have to get to know between death and a new birth is the inside of the human body. And here you must be clear about one thing: getting to know the world is a lot of work. Students sweat profusely when they have to get to know the external world, when they have to learn to calculate how the stars revolve and so on; when they have to learn to calculate what the Earth looked like when there were no present-day crabs and so on. There is a lot to learn. But, gentlemen, what has to be learned on earth about what lies outside of man is nothing compared to what has to be learned within man. Now you will say: Yes, but you do learn inwardly from the human being when the human being is dead; you learn everything from the human being. You cut up the human being and you learn from the corpse what the human being looks like internally. — But there is a big difference. With all the knowledge you gain from the corpse, you can never create a living human being. Of course, in order to create a living human being, conception is necessary. But at the moment of conception, the human being who has only just learned in the spiritual world between death and a new birth is also involved. One can only acquire knowledge on earth about that which is dead. One cannot acquire knowledge about that which is alive, or even about that which feels and thinks. And I would not have dared to write these figures down for you if it had not been for the higher knowledge that one can see how man during his life on earth moves further and further away from the spiritual world. When he grows old, he has gone furthest away. When he is still a child – let us assume that he dies at the age of sixteen – yes, then it is different when he remembers back to the age of four. He may die at the age of sixteen, remembering back twelve years, that is three times four, and if he has reached the age of sixteen, he actually only needs forty-eight years to reappear. It is true that you can do that in the calculation! But now we come across something very strange, gentlemen. This is this: you know, since ancient times, the patriarchal age has always been counted as about 72 years. When a person has reached the age of 72, the years beyond that are actually considered a gift. Isn't that right, that is the patriarchal age, 72 years. Now let us assume that such a patriarch was an excellent person, as there were some in ancient times. We, who are so inattentive today, remember very little from our childhood. But these people remembered things from the age of three or two. And then they had 70 years to forget their childhood wisdom, their extrasensory wisdom. That includes 35 times 2. So they go through a period in the spiritual world when they are 72 years old, remembering much further back than they can now, which is 35 times 72 years, or over 2000 years. You see, gentlemen, if you observe the sun in spring, it rises in the constellation of Pisces. Once upon a time, it rose in the constellation of Aries. The calendar still shows Aries as the point of sunrise. But that is not correct. The sun rose in the constellation of Aries until the 15th century. Then it was correctly stated that the sun rises in the constellation of Aries. And since then, astronomers have become lazy and they continue to do so, even though the sun no longer rises in the constellation of Aries, but in the constellation of Pisces. Let's assume that the constellation of Pisces has a certain size. There are twelve such constellations. When the sun rises next year, as I said, it will be somewhere in the constellation of Pisces on March 21. And when you observe it next year, it will have moved a little further, no longer coming up in the same place, and last year it was a little further back, also not coming up in the same place as this year. The sun takes a certain amount of time to pass through the constellation. At first it was at the very beginning of Pisces, and later, in the future, it will be at the end of Pisces. Then it will have advanced so far that it will no longer come out at Pisces, but at Aquarius. So now it passes through the constellation of Pisces, then later through the constellation of Aquarius, and even later through the constellation of Capricorn, and so on. For the sun to pass through such a constellation takes about as long as it takes a person, on average, when they have become very old, to come back. This means a great deal that the sun advances once from one constellation to another. I have explained in my “Occult Science” that this is connected with the way the sun behaves when man returns. And we may therefore assume that knowledge shows us that when a person dies now, he receives what he has to learn to rebuild his body from the effects of Pisces. And then he comes again when he can no longer learn from Pisces, but must learn from Aquarius. And then he comes again when he must learn from Capricorn. Then again from Sagittarius. And then again he comes when he must learn from Scorpio. And then again, when he has to learn from Libra; then Virgo, then Leo, then Cancer, then Gemini, then Taurus, then Aries. Then he comes back to the beginning. But of course he has learned a lot by then. He has gone around once in 25,815 years and has gone through about twelve earth lives, eleven to twelve earth lives. Someone might say: Yes, you are telling us that a person always learns what he needs on earth from a different constellation, a constellation that looks quite different. If you look up at the constellation of Pisces, it looks quite different from Aquarius or Capricorn and so on. Yes, but, gentlemen, imagine you were there, say, 800, 1000, 1500, 2000 years ago. It was quite different on Earth then. You would have led a completely different life. Perhaps you would have been some small, contented farmer, fattening up a paunch and becoming a very contented fellow. Now you are in the industrial labor movement. That is what you learned from the fish. Back then, when you would have fattened up your tummy and been a contented farmer, you would have learned that from the ram. So man learns what he goes through on earth precisely from the constellations. You see, now we are getting to the point where we can say that people gradually come around. So if you had been there in 825 AD, for example, in the 9th century, you would have been that little farmer with the big belly; now you have returned under the influence of Pisces. But if you go around, you will arrive at Pisces again after 25,815 years. But now you have learned so much that you no longer need to become what you were before, but you are now at a much higher level as a human being. You have to realize that after 25,815 years, when we want to go back to Earth, we will no longer have to go down to Earth like that, because we have learned everything in a corresponding constellation. And you see, this is where what I have already pointed out to you comes into consideration. Those who have learned geology in a very scholarly way today tell you: 25 million years ago, it was like this on Earth. Now, how do people come to the conclusion that 25 million years ago the Earth was a hot liquid body? I have also spoken to you about similar things, but not about such long periods of time. How do people come to this conclusion? They examine Niagara Falls, for example. The waterfall rushes down. Now they take the stone over which it has rolled and calculate how much of it is washed away in a year, and then they calculate how much of the stone has been washed away in a year, when the water was not yet bottled but was still present as vapor. And from that they get these 25 million years. It's just like when I examine a person's heart. Today is April 9. Let's examine the heart today, then again in a month, it will have changed a little bit; then again in a month, it will have changed a little bit again. And from these small changes, we calculate and come up with what the heart was like 300 years ago. But it hadn't existed yet. The calculation is correct. That is often the case with scientific calculations: the calculation is correct, but the things were not yet there. And so it is with what the earth looked like 25 million years ago. The calculation is exactly right, but the earth was not yet there. And so one then also calculates what the earth will be like after 25 million years. One just calculates in the other direction. But the earth will no longer exist then. Just as with the heart, which gets a little worse and worse every day, you can calculate what it will be like in 300 years, except that you will no longer be there as a physical person in 300 years. The calculations are quite correct. That is precisely the dazzling, the deceptive thing, that the calculations are terribly correct; but the human being does not last as long as the calculations indicate. When you reappear after 25,815 years, the Earth will have disintegrated in the meantime, and you will have had to find your way into the Earth in your successive lives anyway. The Earth is no longer there; you are freed from the Earth. You have ascended to a higher life. And so, if you really get to the bottom of it, you can scientifically penetrate the time when old legends still tell that man goes through a series of earthly lives, but then no longer needs to return to earth. Then he must have learned so much that he can now endure it without a physical body. But then man must gradually have come to no longer have such crazy dreams as today, and must no longer have distanced himself so far from the spiritual world. But you have come up with a very important result, gentlemen. You have to say to yourself: those people who resist becoming acquainted with the spiritual world do not want to let knowledge approach humanity. They want man to remain an ass on earth and not be able to return. Because he has already acquired something about man on earth, and something living at that, not just knowledge attached to dead matter, he is increasingly able to see through consciously after death what he has to go through. Then, when a person, as certain dark forces want, because he must become a donkey on earth, should also remain a donkey, then these dark forces tempt him to lose his spiritual existence altogether. They persuade him to believe in eternal bliss. But just as they persuade him to believe in bliss, they take away from him what is allotted to him. That is how one has to talk; it is something terrible! Therefore, anthroposophy must show man how he really is according to knowledge, so that he may gradually become able to enter the spiritual world again. You see, that is it, that anthroposophy is already a great human task and has a great social significance. Because all understanding will indeed go away. And because the intellect only wants to remain within, because human wisdom serves up what comes from the corpse, that is actually how it came about – not from something else – that humanity lives in such darkness and has no idea what to do. For example, in order to get out of the eternal congress image and so on, in order to get to something again, you have to really wake people up. But people hate to wake up. Because, when people sit down at meeting tables, it is not just about sitting down together, but about talking about something sensible; whereas people today are such that they do not even admit that they first have to wake up, have to make something of their minds flexible, so that they can also get a feeling for the social question again. Therefore, everything else is basically just a sticking plaster. But what is necessary is that people really come to an understanding of their inner being already on this earth, that they are prepared for what they have to do in the spiritual world. That is already so. It does not occur to anthroposophy to convert individuals. Individuals cannot achieve anything, but many people can; and anthroposophy only wants to help many people acquire the right knowledge. Then it will be possible to bring about better times on this earth. I wanted to tell you this too, gentlemen. Now I have to go to Zurich, St. Gallen and Winterthur. When I come back, I will continue with these lectures. Perhaps you can think of some questions you would like to ask. |