270. Esoteric Lessons for the First Class I: Ninth Hour
22 Apr 1924, Dornach Tr. Frank Thomas Smith Rudolf Steiner |
---|
* We can, my dear friends, look up to the distant stars and let our vision rest upon what radiates down to us from the universe in the forms the constellations possess. When we immerse ourselves in the sublimity of what the vast universe offers, we will gain enhanced inner strength. |
[written on the blackboard:] O man, retain in your spirit's creativity The constellations' cosmological words. Summarizing: O man, recreate yourself through celestial wisdom. |
Piety O man, retain in your spirit's creativity The constellations' cosmological words. Bring to thinking life What as pure contemplation On the soul light-filled shine: Feeling and willing, And you are spirit Among pure spirits. |
270. Esoteric Lessons for the First Class I: Ninth Hour
22 Apr 1924, Dornach Tr. Frank Thomas Smith Rudolf Steiner |
|||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
First - without taking notes - let us be reminded of the admonition which directs human beings to the ancient holy words of knowledge:
* We can, my dear friends, look up to the distant stars and let our vision rest upon what radiates down to us from the universe in the forms the constellations possess. When we immerse ourselves in the sublimity of what the vast universe offers, we will gain enhanced inner strength. And especially for the strength to hold the soul separate from the body, we need to inwardly direct our gaze toward the heavenly bodies. By “inwardly” is meant the following: We have seen the stars so often and have stored the vision in our hearts and minds so that we no longer need to even look up at the heavenly bodies in order to make the powerful image of the star-embedded heaven's vault effective in our inner consciousness. If this picture arises from our own inner being, if the soul empowers itself to create it, then it will be able, through this empowered force, to liberate itself from its corporeality. And we can also observe all that radiates down and streams through us from the planets which circle the earth, and in their circling directly affect the earth's wind and weather. And when we again create a picture in our hearts of all this, the sensation of being integrated in the movement of the circling constitutes the second experience. And then when we are conscious of all that binds us to the earth, that we are heavy bodies among other heavy bodies. In other words what lives in us as a feeling of being bound to the earth becomes a facet of our soul, and it is the third aspect. And from these three inner experiences: what we have gained in luminous, radiant, living thought derived from the stars; and then when we merge with the path of our earth in the universe, merge with what the planets say to us meaningfully from space by their movements - so that having felt ourselves to be at rest in respect to the stars, now we feel ourselves to be set in movement through the cosmos itself. And thirdly, if we then feel ourselves bound to the earth by the force of the earth itself, then we will gradually and harmoniously be more and more able to make a beginning at entering into the spiritual world. And today everyone can make this beginning. This leads to the question: Why is it then that so few do so? The answer to this must be: most people don't want to experience things so intimately in order to enter into the spiritual world. They disdain experiencing so intimately. They prefer titillating experiences such as the spiritual world approaching them with all the characteristics of the sensory world. It would be easy to convince people about the spiritual world if for example a table from the spiritual world were to approach them. But there are no tables in the spiritual world, there are only spiritual beings in the spiritual world, and they must be perceived with what is spiritual in man. But spiritual is what we can read in the stars, what we can feel in the movements of the planets, what we can experience in the forces which hold us to the earth and make us people of the earth. Therefore whoever desires to understand in the right way must do so inwardly. With common sense we can understand all of anthroposophy, but to understand inwardly means to transfer more and more what is understood to inner life. Whoever wishes to do this must decide to undertake a really intimate exercise of these three sensations - or experiences, it doesn't matter what we call them. And now, my dear sisters and brothers, what is flowing to you from the spiritual world through this School wishes to speak to you about how by means of an intimate exercise you can become more aware of the connection of humanity with the world than you are accustomed to through normal consciousness. Firstly, we humans should in later life be more like we were to a great extent when we were children. As children we are almost all sensory organs: eyes, ears. The child experiences everything that happens in its environment as though its whole body were a sense organ. That's why he imitates everything, because everything continues to vibrate within him; and in the same way in which it vibrates within him, it seeks to emerge by means of the will. The child retains this characteristic only as long as we protect it from doing with its senses what we as adults do with them. The child develops this inner sensory capacity only as long as we carry it, protecting it so that it is not yet exposed to the forces of the earth. And it is really wonderful how the growing child's sensory-being is protected from the effects of the earth forces as long as this sensory-being is especially vital and alive. At the moment when the child stands on its feet and begins to move about is when its movements become susceptible to the earth's forces and it must find its own equilibrium, at that moment the intimate sensory-being ends. The human being of course does not remember back to this first stage of infancy, and therefore does not know what it means to feel his whole being as a sensory-organ. But we must, if we want to experience the human in us more and more, be able to feel and experience our whole human being as such a sensory organ. You grasp something, my dear sisters and brothers. It presses on you. You perceive the pressure. Or you perceive the texture of the surface you are touching. But in reality, you are continually touching in that you place your whole body from top to bottom on the earth and feel the earth under the soles of your feet. Only you are so used to it that you don't notice. When you begin to notice it, then you will first feel yourselves as human beings standing amidst the earth's forces. Therefore, the admonition at the threshold to the spiritual world. [written on the blackboard:]
[Certain essential words are underlined later, as described in the text. Trans.] Thus, we let the first stage of this inner experience work in us. Now we can feel ourselves as the ones touching, sensing. We can experience this touching, feel inwardly as the person doing the vibrant touching. When we advance enough to feel this touching itself, we are then not perceiving earth forces, but we begin to feel the vibrating water forces in us, the fluid forces which as blood and other liquids course through our bodies. And in these forces, we feel how all the fluids which course through our bodies are connected to the ether in the universe. [writing on the blackboard:]
If we only had earth forces to touch in our whole being, we would be constituted as something continually crumbling away. The water forces in us shape the form of the human body from the cosmic ether. Only the earth has influence over what is solid in us. But the whole wide world of ether has influence over the liquids in us . But then during the third stage we can immerse ourselves in what lives and weaves in the fluidity. We can feel it dimly, inwardly. When we feel our breathing, for example, we will realize how we are continually nurtured by the essence of breathing and of the air. We would be helpless children if we weren't continually nurtured by the forces of breathing flowing through us. [writing on the blackboard:]
And now if we have advanced to the third stage of inner experience, we can come to the fourth, if we feel inner warmth, and are attentive to our own fulfilling warmth which is in breath, which lives in everything air-forming within us. For only through what is air-forming in us is our warmth created. But what lives in us as warmth can be reached with thoughts. And here we have a most important secret of human nature. My dear sisters and brothers, you cannot reach with thought, but only with the sense of touch, how earth forces act on you and support you. You cannot reach with thought, but only with inner experience, how the water forces are your formative builders. You cannot reach with thought, but only with inner feeling, how the airy powers in you are your nurturers. You can be thankful for this nurturing, you can love these nurturers, but you cannot directly reach them with thought. But what man can reach by thought, by meditating on his warmth, is to experience himself as a being of warmth. The physician comes with a thermometer; he measures warmth from without. Just as warmth can differ on different places of the body, it is also different in the individual inner organs. You can direct your thoughts down to the individual organs and will find that the whole inner warmth-organism is differentiated. One can reach his own warmth organism with thought. But then, having done that, you have a specific feeling. This feeling, my dear sisters and brothers, will now be revealed to your souls. Imagine that you have achieved it, that in thought you have descended into your organism, reached the differentiating warmth - the warmth of the lungs, the warmth of the liver, the warmth of the heart, which are all God-spirit created entities within you. You achieve this with thought. Now for the first time you know what thought is. Before you didn't know what thought is. You know now that thought, by descending into what was before only warmth, turns the warmth into flame, into fire. For in ordinary life thought appears to you in its imperceptible inwardness as abstract thought. When you sink it down into your own body, the thought appears to you as luminous, radiantly penetrating into the lungs, into the heart, into the liver. Just as the light which goes out from your brow stretches downward, so does thought illumine the inner organs, differentiating itself into various nuances of color. One cannot merely say: I think through to the differentiations of my warmth; one must say: I enlighten myself by thinking through to the differentiations of my warmth. [writing on the blackboard:]
Everything in these eight lines can be summarized by letting what has been intimately worked through be summed up in your souls with the words: [On the blackboard each element is placed after the corresponding mantra-phrase.]
Thus, do you measure yourselves, radiate, strengthen yourselves in respect to the body. But note how this strengthening, this measuring of the mere physical extends to the moral: Here we have the support of man, the physical support. [In the first mantra sentence “support” is underlined.] Here we have the formative forces. [In the second mantra sentence “formers” is underlined.] Still somewhat physical, but permeated with the etheric. Here we have nurturer. [In the third mantra sentence “nurture” is underlined.] It already has a certain morality. Then as we ascend from water to air we feel that the beings who are in the air are permeated with morality. And in the fire, we have not only nurturer, but also helpers, [“helpers” in the fourth mantra sentence in underlined], comrades, beings similar to us. Just as we feel through to our bodies, we can also feel through to our souls. For this we must not concentrate on the elements, rather must we concentrate on what pulls the planets that circle the earth and pulls the air and sea currents along with it. We feel our physicality in our spirituality when we measure the body as has been explained; but we directly experience our soul-life. [written on the blackboard:]
It can also be summarized in the sentence:
We realize and experience the spiritual in us when we elevate the spirit to the stars, which reach us in their groupings and formations and become like a celestial script to us. If we preserve what is thus written in the starry heavens we will become aware of our own spirituality, that spirituality which doesn't speak about man personally, but about the entire universe. [written on the blackboard:]
Summarizing:
Not by vague generalities, not by vague sensations are we able to gradually extract our souls from our physical bodies and pass over to the universe, but rather by grasping the elements in the specified way, by the movement of the planets, by the meaning in the stars. We unite with the universe when we do this. And we will note that once the first part of the exercise is accomplished we feel a life in us, the life of the universe. [Alongside the first eight lines of the mantra is written:] Life Once we have finished the second part of the exercise we feel love towards the whole world. [Alongside the tenth and eleventh lines is written:] Love Once we have finished the third part we feel a sense of piety in us. [Alongside the thirteenth and fourteenth lines is written:] Piety And it really is an ascension from life through love to piety, to a truly religious cosmic sense which can be undergone through such mantric words. But if it is really undergone, if we really end up being pious through such an exercise, then the world ceases to be physical for us. Then we say to ourselves with total certainty: the physical in the world is only semblance, maya; the world is everywhere through and through spirit. As humans we belong to this spirit. And if we feel ourselves as spirit in the spirit-world, then we are beyond the threshold to the spiritual world. Then, however, once we are beyond the threshold to the spiritual world, we sense how here, on this side, our body holds thinking, feeling and willing together through its own bodily force; how at the moment we are body-free in our experiencing, thinking, feeling and willing are no longer one, but threefold. Then it is as though by binding ourselves to the earth-powers in water, air, fire, earth, that by sending our will to the earth we become one with the earth through our will. Furthermore, because we feel love in our souls for the movements of the planets, that is, for the spiritual beings who live therein, it is so that we experience the Powers circling cosmic space as feeling. And if we can say: the sun moves in the feeling of cosmic space, Mercury moves in the feeling of cosmic space, Mars moves in the feeling of cosmic space, then we have grasped feeling in its cosmic being separated from thinking and separated from willing. And if we are able to grasp thinking in such a way that thoughts are freed from physical existence, it is as though our thinking were to fly out to the [resting] stars and rest there themselves. [Translator's Note: in German the stars themselves can be referred to as “resting” stars, in contrast to the “wandering” or “moving” stars: the planets. In this lecture there is much play on words between the two concepts, which is necessarily lost in translation.] And we say to ourselves when we have arrived on the other side of the threshold: my thinking rests in the resting stars; my feeling moves in the wandering stars [planets]; my willing unites with the earth forces. So thinking, feeling, willing are separated in the cosmos. And they must be again joined together. Here on the earth man does not need to bind thinking, feeling and willing together, because they already are so due to the physical body being a unity. Thinking, feeling and willing would be constantly falling apart if they were not held together by the physical man, without his intention or awareness. Now though, on the other side of the threshold, they are divided so that thinking rests above with the stars, feeling circles with the planets, and willing unites with the forces of the earth. And with strong inner determination, with our own forces, we must bring them back together as a unity. In doing this we must experience thinking, feeling and willing in such a way that we can communicate to thinking, which has gone to the stars, something of feeling and willing; to feeling, which is circling with the planets, communicate something of thinking and willing; to willing, which is bound to the earth, something of thinking and feeling. This something we indeed can do using such a mantric formula. We must look up to the stars and with devotion say to ourselves: there is where your thinking lies. But I will bring the starry sky into movement; just as feeling likewise does for the planets, in spirit I will slowly move the starry sky. I feel myself attracted to the starry sky; I want to go up there and be at one with that star-filled heavens. Thus have I incorporated feeling and willing into thinking, which is bound to the stars. Then I look up to the planets and feel: In these planets [Ger. wandering stars] my own feeling wanders. But I will attempt to fix the moment as the stars [Ger. fixed stars] are fixed in place. And through my rhythmic system - to which heart and lungs belong - I will become as one with the entire planetary system. Then I have assigned thinking and willing to feeling. And when I become aware of how, through this mantric formula, I am bound to the earth as a human being, then I should add feeling and thinking to this being bound to the earth. In thought I should set the earth in motion so that like a planet I accompany it on its rounds without perceiving its weight: bound to it as if I were guiding the earth through cosmic space. Feeling is combined with willing. I add thinking to the mixture when I accompany the earth's movement in thought, but can bring it again to a standstill, thus making the earth itself a [fixed] star by my own meditating force of thought. When I carry out such a meditation again and again, I gradually come to feel myself as a human being outside my body in the cosmos. For this, my dear sisters and brothers, this mantric formula can work on the soul with special force. [written on the blackboard:]
(that is: as meditation, as contemplation)
Secondly:
Thirdly:
Only seen thus does the human body appear in its true form. What is gleaned from the spiritual world, what the initiate experiences in the spiritual world, if it is expressed in words, they are mantric words, and he who experiences them will be led into the spiritual world. Therefore, if you let the words work on your soul, they are a true guide to the spiritual world:
Then, my dear sisters and brothers, when what lies in these mantric words is clearer and clearer to you, then when you come again and again to these lessons it will be with greater understanding, that is, with ever greater cosmic experience that you will hear these words:
|
98. Nature and Spirit Beings — Their Effects in Our Visible World: The Influence of Other Worlds on the Earth I
08 Feb 1908, Stuttgart Tr. Antje Heymanns Rudolf Steiner |
---|
The higher stage of development of a Sun is that it unfolds into a Zodiac. A Zodiac consists of twelve constellations: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. |
Though the clairvoyant knows, that they have not simply been placed into space, but that their constellations correspond to spiritual beings who are grouped around in this belt in the sky. Once beings have completed their sun-existence, they will become such a Zodiac. |
With the advancement of Saturn to the Sun and to the Moon, the matter grouped itself together and the constellations lit up. Where did this Zodiac, that surrounded Saturn at that time come from, and which will vanish because it will have served its purpose as soon as our Sun becomes a Zodiac? |
98. Nature and Spirit Beings — Their Effects in Our Visible World: The Influence of Other Worlds on the Earth I
08 Feb 1908, Stuttgart Tr. Antje Heymanns Rudolf Steiner |
---|
Today, we want to look at some details of the occult world. Some of what will be said today will build on the observations we made last time. Some of it is meant to broaden your perspective in the direction we headed the last time, allowing us to see more and more how the space around us is alive and spiritualised by supersensible facts and supersensible beings. Last time,1 we observed how the different realms of nature that surround us—the mineral, the plant, and the animal kingdom—contain beings who we can call group-Egos. We have explained how underlying the animal world are group-Egos, self-contained individualities, or, one could say, personalities, who can be found on the astral plane and how they, as it were, encircle the Earth. We have seen how the plant-Egos are located in the centre of the Earth. We did not name a particular location where the group-Egos of the minerals are located, as they reside in the higher regions of Devachan. From this you will have seen that beings are constantly around us, through which we walk all the time, who penetrate us, and who live in the same space as we do. For example, an animal group-soul that belongs to a whole group of similarly shaped animals is able to pass through us. This is because in the astral the principle of penetration, of permeability, holds sway, in contrast to our physical world where the principle of impermeability prevails. First, I would like to add a note in order to expand on what was said before. Previously, you have seen that we have to think of a plant’s root as its head stuck in the ground; then the stem grows out of it and develops leaf by leaf, and so on. Depicted schematically, we would have to search for the group-Egos at the centre of the Earth. What we see with our eyes is the plant’s physical body. This is embedded into what we call the etheric body of the plant. What is the characteristic of the plant’s etheric body? Everything we know as the etheric body has, as a characteristic, the property of repetition. Where the etheric body as such is active, the principle of repetition rules. We see how in the plant, growth leaf by leaf is repeated. Why? Because underlying this repetition is the power of the etheric body. In a human being too, this principle of the etheric body holds sway. For example, we find it in the spinal cord, where it attaches itself ring by ring. Indeed, when the clairvoyant observes the plant in its entirety, he sees the etheric body underlying the whole plant, but above it, the plant is enveloped by astral clouds. Thus, we see the physical body of a plant, which consists of roots, leaves, and so on, saturated by the etheric body and surrounded from above by a kind of glow-light, or astral light. And the astral that works on the plant produces its completion in blossom and fruit. If the etheric body only had an effect, then the plant would endlessly unfold leaf by leaf; the astral body brings this to a close. The etheric body will be subdued, so to speak, by the astral. Clairvoyantly, we can see the Ego of the plant as if it were a sheath2 that extends to the centre of the Earth. When you approach the plant from the outside, you will first see only the physical and etheric bodies. The glow surrounding the plant is part of the astral atmosphere of the whole Earth. Thus, you can see how the spiritual, as it were, washes around the globe. The sequence of the spinal marrow vortices, is the effect of the etheric body principle that you have within yourself. This is brought to a close by the strongly intervening astral force which surrounds the spinal cord. As the astral body unfolds, the spinal vortices are closing themselves off as cranial bones. Thus, one could actually track the collaboration of the etheric with the astral everywhere in the world. Underlying this is a mystery, namely the secret that everything alive must be dampened, or, as it were, killed by the astral. The purpose of this killing in the astral is to bring the etheric to a close. If we imagine it as a powerful effect, then it is called Azote.3 Thinking spiritually, Azote means the force in the cosmos that prevents the etheric unfolding with an overabundant power without ever coming to an end. The call to that which is alive to become conscious, is based on the power of Azote, for without the astral there would be no consciousness. Everything spiritual also has its expression in the physical, just as for a spiritual observer all physical matter is nothing but the embodiment of the spirit. Spiritually speaking, we have now seen the collaboration of the continuously developing etheric, and the astral that holds back the etheric, and contained in the holding back is consciousness. If you observe the interaction of the two substances contained in our air, oxygen and nitrogen, you will find the physical expression of this as it applies to humans and animals. The oxygen in our air is the embodiment of the etheric, the great life-body of the Earth. You would devour yourself in a vehement life if you breathed only oxygen. You would be old right away after your birth, so to speak. Consciousness as such couldn’t develop in the way it exists for human beings and animals. Therefore, the developing life, the oxygen principle, must be subdued. It is being subdued by the admixture of nitrogen. This regulates and limits the effect of oxygen. If you only breathed nitrogen, you would die instantly. The interaction of both creates the balance that moderates life so that it can become conscious. The physical embodiment of Azote is the power that finds its expression in nitrogen. Thus, you are learning the spiritual background of what you continuously take in and what you give out. You now have an example of how all life comes into being through the establishment of a balance between opposing powers. This equilibrium between two powers can also be seen in the larger cosmos, for example in our solar system. Thus, we arrive at a chapter where we can point out that our solar system does not only represent a range of bodies of physical substance, but that all those bodies that belong to our system, are in the physical world solely as an expression of something spiritual. Just as you have a physical body that belongs to a soul, likewise, every planetary body belongs to something of “soul” and of “spirit”; and the spiritual sheaths of the individual world bodies are very varied. If one could look at our Earth clairvoyantly from the outside, one would see not only rocks, and so on, of material substance, as well as animal and human shapes walking around in between, but above all, the group-souls of plants, animals, and so on. This is already a spiritual population on our Earth. Furthermore, the clairvoyant would see the individual human souls, the folk-soul, and so on. In any case, one must not imagine the spirit of a celestial body simply as a sphere in space with a spirit and a soul, but rather as a complete spiritual population that forms an entity and resides on this celestial body. And all these individual spirits, group-souls and so on are, in a sense, subordinate to one we can call a leader. And all of this together corresponds to the total spirit of our Earth, to the one we call the Earth-spirit. Even from these hints, you can see that the spiritual life of a planet is complicated. We now endeavour to delve deeper and deeper into the details of the spiritual life of a planet. You must be patient; we will always progress a bit further. Today, we can follow our planetary system a bit further, remembering that our Earth was not always like it is now and that it only became so through slow evolution. As you are aware, Earth was a different planet prior to becoming Earth. We call the earlier embodiment of our Earth the “old Moon.” This is not our current Moon, which is only a fragment of it. Even earlier, the Earth was what we call the Sun-planet. This does not, once again, refer to the current Sun. Even earlier, our Earth was Saturn. What is the relationship of our current Sun to the old Sun, when our Earth was still the Sun? The position of the Sun in the cosmos was not like it is nowadays, because then a sun, separate from the Earth, did not exist. That which you all were at that time was the preparation for the current physical, etheric, and astral body that lived within the old Sun itself. The first rudiments of the physical body had been given on Saturn, the rudiments of the etheric body on the Sun, the rudiments of the astral body on the Moon, and then it is on the Earth that the Ego is added. If you put this together with the current state, then you will understand how you have lived on the old Sun. Your life consisted only of a physical and an etheric body. Your Ego was not yet in the body and neither was your astral body. If you wish to imagine the old Sun-life, you will gain an idea of this if you imagine that all of you here have suddenly fallen asleep. The physical and the etheric bodies will remain seated on the chairs, while the astral body and your Ego floats in the air above you. The conditions on the Sun were permanently like this—that’s how it used to be on the old Sun. You floated around the Sun, following behind your Ego and your astral body, governing and leading from above what was below. Your physical body, of course, was not like it is today. If you imagine it like today’s plants, you will gain an idea of what the physical body was like. Flesh, in the present sense, didn’t yet exist. What you had was a kind of plant life. But it was impossible for the Sun to hold onto such a shape because then an Earth with such human beings as you are today could never have emerged. During the transition to the Moon, those beings capable of bearing the solar existence needed to split off from the Earth, because the solar existence was swift and fast-paced. As a result, the Sun, with all of those substances that necessitated a fast-paced, rushing life, split itself off from the Earth. Hence, the Sun took along with it all those substances and beings that developed swiftly, and Earth was left behind with all those beings that were not able to cope with the rapid pace. The human being was one of those beings. The best of all beings and substances on the old Sun separated and took on a life of their own. We see, in the fiery, gaseous masses of the current Sun, the bodies of highly exalted beings, who have developed far beyond human beings. They are able to endure today’s Sun-existence because they are already so far advanced that they no longer need to live within a body. The Sun is an existence that developed out of a planetary existence—it is a fixed star, as it is called in occultism. A fixed star is an advanced planet that has ejected anything that couldn’t keep up. The higher entities have founded an existence for themselves on the fixed star. Each fixed star has arisen from a planet. Advancement, or upward movement, is also taking place in the cosmos. Our Earth, too, will go through the following embodiments: it will become Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. On Venus, Earth will have already reached a kind of fixed star existence. We will transform ourselves, together with the Earth, into beings of a higher kind, who will be able to endure the fixed star existence. As we have seen, a fixed star comes into being by a planet expelling its bad materials and beings and retaining the better substances and beings to lead them upwards to a more exalted existence. You might ask: if such a fixed star continues to advance upwards, what will become of it then? What will become of the Sun with all the sublime beings?—First of all, there is still a while to go, because what happens next will be that our Earth will once again unite with this Sun. But then there will be a further separation because our Earth will gradually become a fixed star. Once our Earth has reached its Venus or Vulcan-existence, then, what the Sun is today will also slowly have become something different. What will become of a Sun?—A sun becomes what we see today glittering down from the sky as the Zodiac. The higher stage of development of a Sun is that it unfolds into a Zodiac. A Zodiac consists of twelve constellations: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. For the materialistic astronomer, these are simply group pictures. Though the clairvoyant knows, that they have not simply been placed into space, but that their constellations correspond to spiritual beings who are grouped around in this belt in the sky. Once beings have completed their sun-existence, they will become such a Zodiac. This too goes through a kind of evolution. The Zodiac is known today as a particular spatial order of certain stars, which is related in a certain way to our life and existence—but it was not always this way. It has developed out of a type of nebulous substance. Imagine the old Saturn that once represented the Earth, then evolved into the Sun, the Moon, and finally became today’s Earth. Saturn was already surrounded by our Zodiac, but the stars in our Zodiac were not distinct then, and the matter was like foggy rain. With the advancement of Saturn to the Sun and to the Moon, the matter grouped itself together and the constellations lit up. Where did this Zodiac, that surrounded Saturn at that time come from, and which will vanish because it will have served its purpose as soon as our Sun becomes a Zodiac? Now, you can imagine that Saturn was preceded by other evolutionary stages. An earlier Sun, that shone above the earlier embodiments of our Earth when it was Saturn, had sacrificed itself and had become this Zodiac. When we look from an occult perspective at this Zodiac, we can see that it has only come about through a great sacrifice. Substances and beings that preceded our existence have sacrificed themselves and formed this Zodiac, initially as a nebulous formation of matter and then as a grouping of stars. That which was described to you as the creative entities of our beings, all of that was united with the old Zodiac when Earth was still Saturn. All those sublime beings, who had already passed through a higher stage before, had to work downwards; they streamed out the rudiments of the physical body. This is what exists as the secret of the genesis of the world: that all beings will ascend from beings that receive, to become beings that produce and create. It is the aim of beings to become creators. Once they have ascended from “receiving” to “giving”, the beings gather together in a Zodiac. The matter for the first rudiments of a human being’s physical body flowed from the Zodiac. Thus, we learn to look more and more into the cosmos and at what floats through it. And the physical bodies appear to us to be only the physical expression of higher spiritual beings. Those higher spiritual beings have exuded matter through their will. This is the powerful, magical work where the will becomes so strong that it can pour out substance. The substance that rained down out of these beings, who were called upon to create this matter on the old Saturn, has transformed itself over time into our present physical body. We call those exalted beings the Thrones or the Spirits of Will, who have developed to such a height that they were able to trickle down the cosmic rain that was the first rudiment of the physical human body. This is another new point we would like to capture, there will come a time when a confluence of all these viewpoints comes about. But one must have patience to discover all the details, so that by and by a more complete picture of the greatness of the cosmos emerges. We now move on from these global spaces to another chapter. We will return to that point in our Earth’s evolution where the Sun has separated itself off from our Earth—to where once, in the pre-historic past, the Sun and Earth were still forming one body. The Sun, together with the higher developed beings, left our Earth behind as a setting suitable for us slower-developing beings. The Sun then shone on the Earth from the outside. The Sun beings are sublime and powerful beings, but they are creative in a different way than the Thrones, the spirits of the Zodiac. What streams from the Sun to the Earth is light. This is also an enormous deed, but it is cosmically less than the trickling down of matter itself. What we call the Moon today was originally still united with the Earth. Our Moon was created by the shedding of less developed substances and beings that were still connected with the Earth. If Earth had kept the Moon in itself, then our development would also not have proceeded correctly. The development would have become too slow. Earth would have become, so to speak, mummified like a statue. Life would have perished. Too much would have been killed off, and eventually, the Earth would have become a field of the dead. That is why the Moon had to depart, and the Earth, which remained, was able to maintain balance. As a result, the Sun and Moon are now affecting the Earth from the outside; they maintain the Earth’s equilibrium so that human evolution can take place. Everything is kept in balance through opposing forces. Only by both opposing forces, those of the Sun and of the Moon influencing Earth, was the human Ego able to gain a foothold in mankind. And now recall our first elementary description of the human being. A human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an Ego. The Ego works on the astral body and transforms it into Manas, the etheric body into Buddhi, and the physical body into Atma or Spirit-Man. But it would have been impossible for this development to happen right from the start. Here, the Sentient Soul, the Rational Soul, and the Consciousness Soul had to insert themselves. These sheaths that lie between the human body—the physical, the etheric, and the astral body—and the spirit—Manas, Buddhi, and Atma, were temporary transformations. Now the Ego, at its level of spiritual development, integrates the Spirit-Self, Manas, into the astral body. Everything that happens now is purely the work of Manas or the Spirit-Self. But that was not long ago—we did not start doing this until the Atlantean era. However, it had been prepared earlier, albeit unconsciously, through the three middle sheaths: the Sentient Soul, the Rational Soul, and the Consciousness Soul. When the human being came over from the Moon to the Earth, he consisted of only three bodies: the physical, the etheric, and the astral body, and a bridge had to be built. The human being was not able to build such a bridge by himself; he needed help. In Lemurian and Atlantean times, work on it had already been done unconsciously, as you are now working consciously on this. First work was undertaken on the astral body, and the Sentient Soul emerged. Then work was done on the etheric body and the Rational Soul emerged. Finally, work was even done on the physical body out of which the Consciousness-Soul unfolded, which came about by enabling the physical body to drive its physical organs outwards. With this development, the clairvoyant stage of Atlantean consciousness transitioned into today’s consciousness. Thus, as a manifestation the Consciousness-Soul will be lit up last. Only in the old Atlantean times did man gain the maturity to work on himself. Who helped him during that time when the human being wanted to evolve out of a being that had a physical, etheric, and astral body into someone who possessed a Sentient-Soul, a Rational-Soul, and Consciousness-Soul? We will understand who helped when we look at our Earth-development, how it happened through the Sun, Moon, and so on. As you know, Earth has separated itself from the Sun and has sent out the Moon. The Sun had highly exalted beings who were so advanced creatively that they were able to send light into the cosmos. I have often mentioned that not only may one have to repeat a grade in school, but also in cosmic development. The human being had come so far as to be able to endure on Earth, and the higher beings had come so far that they could endure life on the Sun. The beings who live on the Sun today had a human existence previously. But during this initial development, some beings had fallen behind, for whom it was impossible to complete their set tasks. They could not yet readily live on the Sun. If they had gone there, they would have fared badly—the human being also would not have been able to endure it. However, these beings stood between the Sun-gods and human beings. For this reason, they had to obtain a different world body where the conditions were suitable for their existence. In fact, these beings were also taken care of during cosmic development. Even before our Sun separated Earth from itself, our Jupiter separated himself from the Sun at about the same time. Later, after the Sun had already released the Earth, our current Venus separated itself from the Sun, and even later, our current Mercury separated from the Sun. Thus, for those beings who had not kept up, planetary existence stages were created, and they now inhabit those planets. At the time when the Moon also separated from Earth, a very occult process took place in our karmic development, called the Passage of Mars through our Earth, which is very difficult to explain. Indeed this process is extremely difficult to explain because when the Earth was still connected with the Sun, the Mars substance was within the Earth. The Sun then separated itself from the Earth, and Mars stepped out, leaving behind the substance known as iron on Earth. Mars, too, became a location for those beings who had fallen behind. These Mars beings are the initiators of the development of the Sentient Soul. If they had not exerted their influence on our planet, then the Sentient Soul would not have been able to form itself. This illustrates to you the importance of those beings who we pointed out at the beginning of this lecture, and who spiritually belong to the physical substances of the solar system and stand in an interrelationship with what we have within ourselves. Just as the Sentient Soul has been stimulated by the Mars beings, so has the Rational Soul been stimulated by the Mercury beings, and the Consciousness Soul by the Jupiter beings. Already at the time when the Sentient Soul, the Rational Soul, and the Consciousness Soul were stimulated, the impulse was given to set Manas into motion. Because this too still needed an initial impulse. Once it was in flow, the human being could, so to speak, take his development into his own hands. This happened in the last third of Atlantean time. The initiators were those beings who resided on Venus. Thus, you will be able to gain an idea of the interactions between the various parts of our planetary system. We must remember that the human being has brought along his physical body, his etheric body, and his astral body. Then three more sheaths develop: the Sentient Soul, the Rational Soul, and the Consciousness Soul, and eventually Manas. The Consciousness Soul has its strength from Jupiter, the Rational Soul has its from Mercury, the Sentient Soul has its from Mars, and the Spirit-Self has received its impulse from Venus. Thus, you must look up at the relevant stars if you want to track down the forces within yourself. Man is a complicated being; he has come into being because the powers of the cosmos have converged within him. Finally, all of this shall be presented in a picture. Imagine, someone would see here on the wall a small Sun spectrum, a rainbow, i.e. the colours red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Imagine that this is not projected onto the wall but only visible in the sun-dust. This is what you would look at first. Then, when you investigate how this comes about, you would see how the sunlight enters the room through a crack and that through different contraptions, through a prism, or through another type of light-breaking substance, this spectrum, this “spectre” comes about. You cannot remove it, but if you take away the separate parts of it that are outside the spectrum, then the spectre disappears. Take the outer light away—gone is the ghost—take away the prism, the wall with the light—and the ghost disappears. It had formed itself purely as a result of outside influences. When a clairvoyant looks at a human being, it is the same with him as it is here with the spectrum. Man is actually nothing in and of himself, for what the clairvoyant sees, where the human being stands, are forces from Venus, from Mercury, and from Mars. Take away the Venus forces—and the human being vanishes. Take away the influences of Mercury and Mars—and the human being vanishes. The clairvoyant sees the human being as a convergence of cosmic forces. For the clairvoyant, the only thing that solely remains real in this spectre is the “Ego”. This working “Ego” is the true reality; it is the reason for everything flowing together; it works on the absorption of all such influences. Under the gaze of the clairvoyant, all converging streams disappear, leaving solely the “Ego” behind as the only truth. This Ego, that so few people nowadays recognise as reality, is the only thing that remains. What the physical perception considers to be a human being, is in reality only a ghost whose individual parts are held together by the almost magnetic force of the Ego. Everything about the human being, apart from the working Ego, is an optical illusion. Now we have gone through a thought process together. Please, now transform this into a feeling, because only then will this become truly valuable. Go through the world with this feeling. Imagine our earthly beings dissolved into ghosts, apart from the Egos working within. When you feel this, you feel what the materialistic mind calls existence, reality, dissolve like a mist, and you will see the true reality in the spiritual Ego. Only then will you feel something of what, in the Oriental world-view, is meant by the expression “Reality is Maya.” All other talk is just phrases. If one starts right away with the phrase, “The world is Maya”, then this is an absurdity. We do not even want to say the word Maya without first having gained this kind of sentiment through such an observation. You will now have gained a certain idea about what true occult training with its long preparation aims for. You see, it is actually quite a blatant phrase to tell people that existence is only an illusion. First, such contemplations need to proceed patiently and calmly so that the spiritual sensations become ignited. First, we all want to learn to pronounce the words we need in the proper way. To a large extent, our words are spoken only like empty sounds by people, whilst these words indeed, when they were spoken in those cultures where they originated from, were connected with deeply meaningful feelings. Such an observation that shows us what Maya is, and that shows us the true reality inside the illusion, first pours into our soul what we must extract as a feeling from Theosophy. Therefore, it is necessary that you not only leave with knowledge but also with an emotional tone, with this emotional colour that falls on such a word. In this way, the imaginative observation joins with what we take along into life, what lives within our soul as an emotion, as a feeling.
|
201. Man: Hieroglyph of the Universe: Lecture III
11 Apr 1920, Dornach Tr. George Adams, Mary Adams Rudolf Steiner |
---|
When we are aware of ourselves as Man standing on the Earth, surrounded by the planets and fixed stars, we begin to feel ourselves as part of all these; it is not a matter merely of drawing three dimensions at right angles, but of thinking concretely about the Cosmos and penetrating into the concrete reality of the dimensions. Now there is a series of constellations that is immediately evident to those who study the outer Universe at night-time, and has indeed always been seen when men have studied the stars. |
Now just as we can think of this plane on the blackboard, so we can also think of another at right angles to it. Let us think of a plane extending from the constellation Leo to that of Aquarius on the other side. Then we can go further and imagine a third plane at right angles again to this one, running from Taurus to Scorpio. |
Positions of the Earth alternate in respect to certain constellations, but they alternate always with day and night. How is it with Man? What does this alternation between waking and sleeping signify to us human beings? |
201. Man: Hieroglyph of the Universe: Lecture III
11 Apr 1920, Dornach Tr. George Adams, Mary Adams Rudolf Steiner |
---|
In these studies I wanted to draw your attention to certain things which can lead us back to a more concrete study of the Universe than is contained in the cosmogony of Copernicus. We must not forget that the Copernican cosmogony arose during the epoch after the middle of the fifteenth century when there was an increasing tendency towards an abstract conception of the Universe. It came indeed at a moment of time when the tendency to make everything abstract was at its height. We must also remember that it is essential now that we should get free of this tendency and bring to our thought about the Universe concepts that contain something more than mere abstract ideas. It is not a matter simply of constructing a cosmogony similar in kind to that of Copernicus, on slightly different lines. This was brought home to me in the questions arising out of the last lecture. For the point in these questions turned on the possibility of being able at once to draw lines that would give us a picture of the world—once more a picture in quite external abstractions. That of course is not what is wanted. What we have to do is to grasp in its spiritual nature all that is not man, in order to build a bridge from the spiritual in Man to the spiritual outside him. You must understand that here, at this particular time at all events, it cannot be our task to discuss a mathematical astronomy. That would necessitate beginning over again from the very rudiments; for the fundamental concepts employed to-day have their source in the whole materialistic mode of thinking in use since the middle of the fifteenth century. If we wanted to develop and complete the cosmogony we have sketched, it would be necessary to begin with the most elementary principles and elaborate them anew. The fate that befell Copernicanism came about, as we shall see, because of the strong tendency to abstraction, which may so easily lead to intellectual excesses. True Copernicanism is not really the same as that which it has become in the hands of the followers of Copernicus. Certain theories have been selected from Copernicanism which were quite in keeping with the ways of thought of the last few centuries, and from them the cosmogony now taught in all the schools has arisen. It is not my wish to do anything in the direction of a similar cosmogony, where, instead of the well-known ellipse in which the Sun is placed as one of the foci, and in which the Earth moves with an inclined axis, we simply put a screw-shaped line! What I want rather to do is to present the relation of Man to the Universe and it is in this direction that we will now pursue the matter further. I have tried to show you how, the moment one begins to pass to a more intensive experience of the three directions of space in one's own form, one realises how these directions differ in nature and kind from one another; it is only the faculty of mental abstraction in the head which makes these three dimensions abstract and does not distinguish between above and below, left and right, before and behind, but simply takes them as three lines. And a similar error would immediately again be incurred if one set out to build any other construction into space in a purely abstract way. The point at issue can be made clearer if for a moment we turn to something else. Let us consider colours. We will take colour once more as an example. Suppose we have a blue surface and, let us say, a yellow one. The conception of the world which, in its abstract thinking, gave rise to the Copernican cosmogony, has indeed succeeded in saying: “I see before me blue, I see before me yellow. That is due to the fact that some object has made an impression on me. This impression appears to me as yellow, as blue.” The point is that we should not begin to theorise in this way at all, saying: “Before me is yellow, before me is blue, and they make a certain impression upon me.” That is really just as if you were to treat the word PICTURE in the following way. Suppose you were to set about making deep researches into the word and think: “ ‘P’, something must be at the back of this; behind ‘P’ I must seek the vibrations which cause it. Then again, behind the ‘I’ there must be vibrations, and behind the ‘C’ more vibrations, and so on.” There is no sense in this. We find sense only when we unite the seven letters, connecting then one with another in their own plane, and read the whole word ‘Picture’; when we do not speculate as to what lies behind, but read the word—‘Picture’. So here too the point is that we should say: “This first surface makes me penetrate, as it were, behind it, makes me plunge into it. This other surface makes me turn away from it.” It is to these feelings into which the impression passes over that we must pay attention; then we come to something concrete. If we thus seek in the world outside what we experience inwardly, we come indeed to the feeling that we are not really within ourself at all, but that with our real Ego we are in the Universe, poured out into the Universe. Instead of searching behind the external Universe for ‘vibrations’, the atomists should seek for their own Ego behind the phenomena and then try to find out how their own Ego is placed into the outer Universe is, as it were, poured out into it. Just as with colour we should try to ascertain whether we feel we must plunge into it or whether we feel ourselves repelled by it, so, as regards the structure of our organism, we should feel how the three directions, above and below, forwards and backwards, right and left, differ concretely from one another; we should feel how differently we experience them inwardly, when we project ourselves into the Universe. When we are aware of ourselves as Man standing on the Earth, surrounded by the planets and fixed stars, we begin to feel ourselves as part of all these; it is not a matter merely of drawing three dimensions at right angles, but of thinking concretely about the Cosmos and penetrating into the concrete reality of the dimensions. Now there is a series of constellations that is immediately evident to those who study the outer Universe at night-time, and has indeed always been seen when men have studied the stars. It is what we call the Zodiac. It is immaterial whether we believe in the Ptolemaic or the Copernican system; if we follow the apparent course of the Sun it always seems to pass through the Zodiac in its yearly round. Now if we imagine ourselves placed into the Universe in a living way, we find that the Zodiac is of very great significance. We cannot conceive of any other Plane in celestial space as being of like value with the Zodiac, any more than we could conceive the plane which divides us in two and creates our symmetry, as being placed at random just anywhere. We then perceive the Zodiac as something through which a plane may be described. (Drawing.) Let us suppose this plane to be the plane of the blackboard, so that we have here the plane of the Zodiac; the plane of the Zodiac is just the plane of the blackboard. We shall then have one plane before us in Cosmic space, precisely as we imagined the three planes sketched in Man. That is certainly a plane of which we can say that it is fixed there for us. We see the Sun run its course through the Zodiac; we relate all the phenomena of the heavens to this plane. And we have here an analogy of an extra-human kind for what we must perceive and experience as planes in Man himself. Now when we draw the Symmetry plane in Man, and have on one side of the Symmetry-axis the liver organised in one way, and on the other side the stomach organised in a different way, we cannot think of such a fact without feeling at the same time some inner concrete relation; we cannot imagine mere lines of space lying there, but what is in the space must manifest definite forces of activity; it will not be a matter of indifference whether something is on the right or on the left. In the same way we must imagine that in the organisation of the Universe it is a matter of consequence whether a thing is above or below the Zodiac. We shall begin to think of Cosmic space—as we see it there, sown with stars—we shall begin to think of it as having form. Now just as we can think of this plane on the blackboard, so we can also think of another at right angles to it. Let us think of a plane extending from the constellation Leo to that of Aquarius on the other side. Then we can go further and imagine a third plane at right angles again to this one, running from Taurus to Scorpio. We have now three planes at right angles to one another in Cosmic space. These three planes are analogous to the three we have imagined described in Man. If we think of the plane we have denoted as that of Will—the plane namely which separates us behind and before—we have the plane of the Zodiac itself. If we think of the plane running from Taurus to Scorpio, we have the plane of Thinking; that is, our Thought Plane would be co-ordinated to this plane. And the third plane would be that of Feeling. Thus we have divided Cosmic space by means of three planes, just as we divided Man in our first lecture. What is primarily of importance is not simply to unlearn as quickly as possible the Copernican Cosmic system, but to enter into this concrete picture, to imagine Cosmic space itself so organised that one can distinguish in it three planes at right angles to one another, just as can be done in the case of Man. The next question to arise for us must be: Is really the whole of Man to be thought of as forming an integral part of what appears to us as an outer Cosmogony, in which Man is included? We emphasised in the last lecture that the Earth with the Sun and other planets progress in a spiral. Such a statement is, of course, merely diagrammatic, for the spiral line itself is curved. That however does not concern us here; what is important for us at the moment is that the Earth as we have seen, follows the Sun in such a spiral, and the question is whether Man too is so interwoven in this movement that he is absolutely compelled to take part in it in any case; for if that be so, if he absolutely must follow completely, then there is no place at all for free will or for moral activity on his part. Let us not forget that we began our study with this very question: how to build a bridge leading from pure natural necessity to morality, to what takes place under the impulse of free will. Here we can go no further if we rely only on the Copernican system; for what have we there? We picture the Earth upon which we stand; whether the Earth or the Sun goes rushing along is of no moment ... If Man is connected with all this in an absolute natural causality, it is impossible for him to develop free will. We must therefore put the question: Does the entire being of Man lie within this natural causality, or does the being of Man move up out of it at some point? We must not however put the question out of the mood of thought of the materialists of the nineteenth century, who remarked that so many people have died on Earth that it would not be possible to find room for all their souls. They wanted to know about the space required for souls. But the point in question really is: What meaning is there in asking about a place for souls? We must above all clearly understand that the full sense and meaning of the events in the Universe—and movement is also an event—only becomes clear to us when we grasp it in definite cases. We distinguish in some way what takes place in the four realms,—what is above and below the plane of the Zodiac (Will), and what is right and left of the plane of Feeling; or again, we can consider what lies on this or on the other side of the plane of Thinking. We feel that something is connected with this differentiation, something of Cosmic happening, namely, that which manifests in recapitulation, as we have it for instance in what we designate as the “course of the year”. And we must now ask in a concrete way: How can we find a connection between Man and the yearly course of the outer Universe? Well, first of all we find that when Man descends from the spiritual world into the physical, he passes through conception. He remains for about nine months in the embryonic condition—that is to say, three months less than the year's course. We might be inclined to call this a very irregular proceeding. In his evolution Man seems to show, even at the very genesis of his physical earthly existence, that he pays no attention to the course of Cosmic events outside. This is however not the case. If we have the faculty for observing the child during the first three months of his earthly existence, we find that these first three months—which make the year complete—manifest in a very true sense a continuation of his embryonic life; what takes place in the brain, as well as other things happening with the little child, can from a certain aspect be considered as still belonging to its embryonic life. Thus we can say that in a certain respect the first year of human development can after all be identified with the year's course. Then comes another year—or about a year. If we observe the child after the first year, we see that the second year is approximately the time of the growth of the milk teeth. We observe the child during the second year after its conception, and we find that this year corresponds on an average with the growth of the first teeth. Now let us ask, does this continue? No, it does not. The first ‘teething’ seems to represent an inner year of Man. And so it does, just as the first year is at the same time an inner year of Man. In the formation of the milk teeth, the Universe obviously works in the child. But then something different happens. In a space of time seven times as long—it is indeed far from completion even then, but at least it begins its activity during this period—in a period seven times as long from birth, the force which pushes out the second teeth is at work in the child. Here something occurs which we can not connect with the world's course but with something that is withdrawn out of it, and works from the inner being of the child. Here, then, we have a concrete instance. We have, first of all, in respect to one series of facts, the world organism projected into Man in the formation of his milk teeth. And then again, when we look at the permanent teeth, which grow forth from Man, we find that these are Man's own production. An inner human Cosmic system has placed them into the other Cosmic system. Here we have the first herald of Man's becoming free, in the fact that he engages in something which clearly shows his independence of the Universe; because although this process retains within it in Man's being the time-course of the Universe, Man has slowed it down within him, he has given the same process a different velocity, seven times as slow, thus taking seven times as long. Here we have the contrast between the inner being of Man and the outer being of the Universe. Another independence of the outer Universe is very clearly demonstrated in the alternation between sleeping and waking. Positions of the Earth alternate in respect to certain constellations, but they alternate always with day and night. How is it with Man? What does this alternation between waking and sleeping signify to us human beings? It means, roughly speaking, that we go about at one time with our Ego and astral body united with our etheric and physical bodies, and at another time with the Ego and the astral body separated from the etheric and physical bodies. Now a man in the present cycle of civilisation, especially one who calls himself a civilised man, is no longer entirely dependent in this respect on the cycle of Nature. The cycle of waking and sleeping, in its measure of time, seems to resemble the cycle of Nature; but there are persons at the present time—I have known such!—who turn night into day and day into night. In short, Man can wrest himself free from connection with the world's course. The sequence in him of the sleeping and waking states shows however that he still has within him a copy of this conformity to law. The same is true of many phenomena of the human being. When we observe how Man alternates between waking and sleeping, and Nature alternates between day and night, and how Man is still today bound to the alternation of waking and sleeping though not to that of day and night, we must say: Man was at one time, as regards his inner conditions, bound to the outer course of the Universe, but he has broken away from it. Civilised Man today has almost entirely broken away from the course of outer Nature. He is really returning to it when he perceives, when he discovers with his intellect, that it is better for him to sleep at night rather than by day. It is not the case however, that night takes possession of Man in such a way that he must under any circumstances sleep. No civilised man really feels: ‘Night makes me sleep, day wakes me up.’ At most, if night falls and a lecture is still going on here, the two facts taken together may perhaps affect some in such a way they experience an absolute demand of Nature that they should fall asleep. These however are incidents not necessarily involved in our cosmogony. Thus the point to observe is that Man has wrested himself away from the course of Nature, but that nevertheless in his periodicity he still shows a reflection of it. Let us see how transitions from one to the other condition manifest themselves. We may say that in our waking and sleeping we still distinctly show the course of Nature in picture, but that we have wrested ourselves free from it. In the appearance of the second teeth, we no longer show in chronological sequence a picture of the course of Nature such as is still expressed in the growth of the first teeth. When we receive our second teeth, a new course of Nature arises in us; for this is not in our control like sleeping and waking. Our free choice does not enter here. Here something appears belonging to Nature and yet not following the larger course of Nature, something which Man has for his own. And yet it is not within his free choice, it is inserted as a second natural organisation within the first. In all these things, I am speaking of quite simple everyday matters, but it is a question of noticing them in the right way. We must now say to ourselves: There is a certain natural ‘happening’, within which is interwoven the growth of the first teeth. Let us draw it in diagram. Within this natural event or process, as a part of the process, goes forward the formation of Man's first teeth. Then we have another natural happening, one of Man's own, not all within the general happening of the world—the growth of the second teeth (red). To draw it, we must present it as a different stream. Yet the difference is not yet clear in the drawing, they both look alike. The fact is, we must represent it in a quite different way if we want to depict the connection between the receiving of the first and second teeth; we must draw the first teeth seven times deeper in. If we draw them side by side, parallel, we have no picture of the relation of the first teeth to the second; we only get a picture of the force upon which the growth of the first teeth depends by drawing it encircled by another force, upon which the growth of the second teeth depends. Here, through the difference of velocity, the necessity arises for the movement to curve. Thus, when we say that there is a star somewhere in space with another circling round it ... then through the simple fact of the revolution, something qualitative arises—a creative activity. I might also say: we look at the growth of the first teeth and of the second; that must have something to do in Cosmic space, with certain forces, one of which circles round the other. I put this example before you, because from it you will see what it means to speak of concrete movements in space, and how empty is the kind of talk which says: Jupiter—or, it may be Saturn—is so and so many miles distant from the Sun and encircles it in such and such a line. That tells one nothing at all, it is an empty phrase. We can only know anything about facts like these when we unite some content with them, such as: the orbit of Jupiter is like this, the orbit of Saturn like that, and the revolution of the one serves the revolution of the other. I have here merely pointed out the necessity for certain definite processes and happenings. Some of you may say that they are difficult to understand. Or perhaps you will not say so, but will consider that there is no need to discuss them! Not until people learn to study such things will they be able to progress to a definite and clear view of the Universe. And then they will give up what is presented so superficially in Copernicanism—the conception of the celestial movements solely in lines. Rather should an impulse enter humanity which says: It is necessary to be clear first about our own most elementary experiences before turning our attention to the outer mysteries of the Universe. We only learn the significance of certain connections which we read from the stars, when we understand the corresponding processes in our organism; for what lies within our skin is no other than a reflection of the organism of the outer world. Thus if we draw a man in diagram, we have here the blood circulation (in diagram only) and we can trace its path. It is all in the inner being of Man. If we now go out into the Universe and look for the Sun, it is the Sun which corresponds to the heart within Man. What goes out from the heart through the body, or in point of fact out from the body to the heart, does in truth approximately resemble the movements connected with the course of the Sun. Instead of drawing abstract lines, we should look into the human being. Within his skin would be found what is outside in celestial space. Man too would be found to have his part in the Cosmic order. And, on the other hand, his independence of the Cosmic system would also be seen; and how he gains this independence little by little, as I have shown. We will speak further about this in the next lecture; for the present we must realise that we are dealing with it here merely in a diagrammatic way. Look at the principal course of the blood-vessels in the human organism. Seen from above it is like a looped line. Instead of drawing it, we should follow the hieroglyphs inscribed in our own selves; for then we would learn to understand the nature of the qualities in the Universe outside. This we can only do when we are able to recognise and experience livingly the fact of which I have also spoken in public lectures, the fact namely, that the heart does not work like a pump driving the blood through the body, but that the heart is moved by the circulation, which is itself a living thing, and the circulation is in its turn conditioned by the organs. The heart, as can be followed in embryology, is really nothing more than a product of the blood circulation. If we can understand what the heart is in the human body, we shall learn to understand also that the Sun is not, as Newton calls it, the general cable-pulley which sends its ropes (called the force of gravitation) towards the planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and so forth, drawing them by these unseen forces of attraction, or spraying out light to them, and the like; but that just as the movement of the heart is the product of the life-force of the circulation, so the Sun is no other than the product of the whole Planetary system. The Sun is the result, not the point of departure. The living co-operation of the solar system produces in the centre a hollow, which reflects as a mirror. That is the Sun! I have often said that the physicist would be greatly astonished if he could travel to the Sun and find there nothing of what he now imagines, but simply a hollow space; nay, even a hollow space of suction which annihilates everything within it. A space indeed that is less than hollow. A hollow space merely receives what is put into it; but the Sun is a hollow space of such a nature that anything brought to it is immediately absorbed and disappears. There in the Sun is not only nothing, but less than nothing. What shines to us in the light is the reflection of what first comes in from Cosmic space—just as the movement of the heart is, as it were, what is arrested there in the co-operation of the organs, in the blood-movement, through the activity of thirst and hunger and so forth. If we understand the processes in the inner being of the organism, we can also understand from them the processes in outer Cosmic space. The abstract dimensions of space are only there to enable us to follow up these things in an easy indolent way. If we wish to follow them up in conformity with the truth, we must try to experience ourselves inwardly, and then turn outwards with inner understanding. They understand the Sun who understand the human heart; and so it is with the rest of Man's inner being. Thus it is a matter of supreme moment to take the saying ‘Know Thyself’ seriously, and from that to pass on to the comprehension of the Universe. By a self-knowledge which embraces the whole Man, we shall understand the Universe outside Man. You see we cannot get on so quickly with the construction of a cosmogony! In order to make a few of the features of this cosmogony clear, we can draw a spiral; but this does not yet show the actual state of things. For to describe a few more features, we must make the spiral itself move spirally; we must make the line itself curve. And even then we have not come far, for in order to describe certain facts such as the difference between the growth of the first year's teeth and the growth of the seven years' teeth we must describe a displacement of the line itself. So you see that the construction of a Universe is not a thing that can be done very quickly. The wish to construct a cosmogony with a few lines must be relinquished, and man must learn to regard the present conception of the world as an absolute delusion. This is intended as a preparatory study for what I mean to say in the next lecture. It had to be rather more difficult; but when we have overcome these initial difficulties, we shall have constructed the preliminary conditions for uniting the three important domains of life—Nature, Morality and Religion—by means of two corresponding bridges. |
233a. The Easter Festival in relation to the Mysteries: Lecture II
21 Apr 1924, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
---|
Now with the epoch of materialism it has come about that of these far spaces of the Cosmos whose spiritual life is expressed in the forms of the constellations and in the movements of the wandering stars, nothing at all has remained in human consciousness save the external appearance of the stars, the calculation of their movements if they are planets, and so forth. |
It is an immeasurable, infinite multiplicity of spiritual beings who express themselves in the forms of the constellations, in the movements of the planets, in the radiating light of the stars, and so forth. All the multitude of spiritual beings who live in the stars are connected with the human being's inner life, just as the substances of the Earth environment available for human nourishment are connected with the physical man on Earth. |
Knowledge of this was contained in certain ancient Mysteries. They knew that constellations, relationships and movements of the planetary system belonging to our Earth were observed from the Moon and that the deeds of the Moon Beings were determined accordingly. |
233a. The Easter Festival in relation to the Mysteries: Lecture II
21 Apr 1924, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
---|
Continuing our subject of the last two lectures, I shall now indicate the astronomical aspect of the Easter Festival. To this end it will be first be necessary to touch upon some of the facts relating to the so-called secret of the Moon. In all ages, wherever there was knowledge of the Mystery Wisdom, men spoke of the secret of the Moon which was connected with the being of man, inasmuch as man himself, in his full nature, is connected with the whole Cosmos, just as he is connected, with respect to his physical body, with the Earth. Now with the epoch of materialism it has come about that of these far spaces of the Cosmos whose spiritual life is expressed in the forms of the constellations and in the movements of the wandering stars, nothing at all has remained in human consciousness save the external appearance of the stars, the calculation of their movements if they are planets, and so forth. To study these things in the way of modern astronomy is just as though one were to consider the outer measurements and proportions and conditions of movement of the human body in complete unconsciousness of the fact that a soul-and-spirit permeates this physical body. It is just as though one were to forget that in the proportions and movements of this body a soul-and-spirit comes to expression. Now in the human being a single soul-and-spirit gathered together in an Ego makes its appearance. But in the organism of the universe, spiritually seen and considered, it is not a single soul-and-spirit that comes to expression, but a multiplicity. It is an immeasurable, infinite multiplicity of spiritual beings who express themselves in the forms of the constellations, in the movements of the planets, in the radiating light of the stars, and so forth. All the multitude of spiritual beings who live in the stars are connected with the human being's inner life, just as the substances of the Earth environment available for human nourishment are connected with the physical man on Earth. And the first and nearest relationship of man to the great universe has to do with what we may call the secret of the Moon. Outwardly regarded, the Moon appears from the earthly aspect in constant metamorphosis. At the present moment we see the full disc of the Moon shining brightly. Then we see it differently and have to assume that it is partially illumined, half illumined, quarter illumined, and so on. Moreover there is that appearance of the Moon when it withdraws entirely from our external vision, the time we call the New Moon, and at length we have again the return to the Full Moon. Nowadays all this is explained as though the Moon were some material body moving out there in cosmic space, illumined in various directions by the Sun and thus showing itself to our vision in varying shapes and forms. But this by no means exhausts what the Moon is for the Earth and notably for humanity on Earth. For the Moon especially we must clearly understand the following.—When we look at something that represents itself to us so evidently in physical surfaces as the Full Moon, showing us a physical aspect, we see something altogether different in its appearance from what it is when it reveals itself as the New Moon. The New Moon, through all the cosmic relationships in which it stands, cannot reveal itself directly. We must now, however, imagine that in its influence the Moon is absent when it does not reveal itself as an outward phenomenon. At the times when through the whole world-relationships we become conscious of the appearance of the New Moon—at these times the Moon is present invisibly and for this very reason is present in a more spiritual way than when it appears to us in the physical light as the Full Moon. Thus the Moon is present, now in a fully physical way and now again in a fully spiritual way. We have indeed the perpetual rhythmic alternation between the physical manifestation and the spiritual manifestation of the Moon. To understand what this really means we must look back to the event which is described, for instance, in my book, Occult Science. The Moon was once within the Earth; it belonged to the Earth body. It went forth from the Earth body and became a satellite as we say, or accompanying planet of the Earth. It split off from the Earth and circles around the Earth. Now in the time when it was united with the Earth it influenced the human being from the Earth. Man was of course a very different being when he stood and evolved on an Earth which still had the Moon within its body. The Earth was impoverished by all that the Moon contains when the Moon went forth from it; and now from beneath, man is shaped and held fast by other forces, namely, by the Earth forces alone, no longer by the Earth-and-Moon forces together. On the other hand that which worked upon him from the Earth, from within outward when the Moon was still within the Earth, now works upon him from without inward, namely from the Moon. Thus we may say: The Moon forces once rayed through the human being, impinging first upon his limbs, upon his feet and legs and then streaming through him from below upwards. But since the Moon has left the Earth, the Moon forces work on him inversely, from the head downwards. And as a result the Moon forces now have a quite different task for man than they had before. How does this manifest itself? It manifests itself as follows. When man descends from the pre-earthly into this earthly life he undergoes certain definite experiences. He has passed through the time between death and a new birth. He has absolved, so far as his soul-and-spirit is concerned, all that must be absolved between death and a new birth, and now he prepares to descend to Earth to unite with the physical bodily nature that is given to him by the father and the mother. Yet before he can find the possibility for his Ego and astral body to unite with the physical, he must first clothe himself in an etheric body which he draws into him from the surrounding Cosmos. It is this process which has changed fundamentally since the time when the Moon left the Earth. Before the departure of the Moon, when man had absolved the life between death and a new birth and was approaching the Earth once more, he needed certain forces with which to attract and incorporate in the form of an etheric body around the Ego and astral body, the ether which is scattered through the whole universe. These forces which he received as he approached this earthly life, he received from the Moon which was then within the Earth. Since the Moon left the Earth man has received the forces which he needs to build his etheric body from outside the Earth, namely from the Moon which is now split off. Thus immediately before his entry into the earthly life man must have recourse to what lies inherent in the Moon forces, that is to say, to a cosmic principle, in order to build his etheric body. Now this etheric body must be built in such a way that it has, so to speak, an outer and an inner aspect. When man forms the outer aspect of this etheric body he needs the forces of the light, for along with other substances the etheric body is created above all out of the flowing light of the Cosmos. But Sunlight is useless for this purpose; Sunlight can provide no forces enabling the human body to form his etheric body. For this, the light shining from the Sun to the Moon and raying back again from the Moon is needed. And by this process of reflection the Sunlight is essentially transformed. In effect, all the light that rays forth from the Moon into the Cosmos contains the force whereby man as he descends is enabled to form the outer aspect of his etheric body. On the other hand all that rays forth spiritually from the Moon when it is a New Moon, all this rays out into the Cosmos the forces which man needs to form the inner aspect of his etheric body. This rhythm, therefore, of the external shining of the Moon and of its darkening enables man to form the outer and the inner side of his etheric body. Now what the Moon forces thus do for man essentially depends upon the fact that the Moon is not the mere physical body of which modern science tells its tales, but is permeated everywhere by spirituality. The Moon itself in fact contains a multitude of spiritual beings. I have often explained how these things are. The Moon once separated from the Earth. But it was not only physical matter that went forth into cosmic space. There were also those Beings who lived in ancient time upon the Earth, not in a physical body but in a spiritual form, the Beings who were the primeval Teachers of mankind. These too journeyed forth with the Moon into the Cosmos and there founded a kind of lunar colony. Thus we must distinguish in the Moon the physical and etheric from the soul-and-spirit, only that the soul-and-spirit is not a unity but a multiplicity of Beings. Now all the spiritual life in the Moon depends upon the way in which the Beings who inhabit it look out into the universe around. If I may express myself pictorially I would say: the spiritual Beings of the Moon turn their gaze to begin with on what for them is most important, namely, upon the wandering stars that belong to our planetary system. And all that happens on the Moon—including all that happens in order that man may properly receive the forces he needs to build up his etheric body—all this depends on the results of observation arrived at by the Beings in the Moon who, living as it were within the Moon, look out and observe around them the stars of our planetary system, Mercury, Sun, and so forth. Knowledge of this was contained in certain ancient Mysteries. They knew that constellations, relationships and movements of the planetary system belonging to our Earth were observed from the Moon and that the deeds of the Moon Beings were determined accordingly. They not only knew, but they expressed the fact; for they brought these Moon forces into the consciousness of mankind in relation to the forces of the other planets, taking the Moon, as it were, as the point whence the cosmic relationships connected with the forming of the human etheric body are determined. They did so in the days of the week: Moon—Monday. The Moon in its observation has to do with Mars—Mars day—Tuesday; with Mercury—Mercury day, Mercredi, Wednesday; with Jupiter—Jupiter is the Germanic Thor or Donar—Thursday. Then again with Venus, the Germanic Freya—Friday; and with Saturn Saturday, and at length with the Sun itself. The Sun cannot influence the forming of the etheric body with its own forces directly, but in the reflection from the Moon it plays its part—Sunday. Thus the facts related to the standpoint of the Moon were taken as the starting-point in bringing home the planetary system to the consciousness of man in the division of time. It was as though they meant to say in the ancient Mysteries: “Oh Man, remember that before you came down to the Earth you had need of the forces which are fashioned on the Moon when the Moon Beings look out upon the other Beings of the Planetary system. You owe to what the Moon receives from Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday . . . the peculiar configuration which your etheric body can assume when descending into this earthly life.” Thus we have on the one hand the rhythmic course of the Moon around our Earth through light and darkness, and on the other hand we have recorded in the consciousness of man the whole succession of the planets. And the Mysteries also proclaimed the knowledge that through the fact of the Moon Beings turning their gaze to Mars man receives the faculty of speech incorporated into his etheric body. Through the fact that the Moon Beings can turn their gaze to Mercury, man can receive the faculty of movement concentrated into his etheric body. To speak for a moment in terms of these Moon secrets, we may express in quite a different form how Eurythmy arises out of speech. We may say, Eurythmy is born from speech, when having discovered the mysteries of speech by letting the Moon Beings tell us the observations that they make when they gaze on Mars, we hear from them how these observations change when they now turn their gaze to Mercury. That is to say, when we transform the Mars experiences of the Moon Beings into their Mercury experiences we receive from the faculty of spoken sound in man the faculty of Eurythmy. This is the cosmic aspect of it. Then we come to that which permeates the human being with the faculty of wisdom. This we receive through the experiences of the Moon Beings with Jupiter. And that which flows through the human being by way of love and beauty in his soul, this we receive through the experiences of the Moon Beings with Venus. And what they experience by observing Saturn instils into the etheric body the inner warmth of soul which man requires. And at length we come to something that must be warded off as it were, which must be held aloof lest it should disturb and mar the forming of the etheric body. It is that which proceeds directly from the Sun before man's descent to Earth. Thus from the Sun—or the beholding of the Sun—proceed the forces from which the human being must be protected so that he may become a human being self-contained through the incorporation of the etheric body. Thus we learn to recognise what happens on the Moon and by this we also learn to recognise how the human etheric body is formed when man descends from the pre-earthly into this earthly life. These are the things that relate to the secret of the Moon. Such things as these can be told today; but in certain ancient Mysteries they were not merely told, they were consciously experienced. Men did not merely know these things; they inwardly discovered them. Monday Tuesday: Speech Wednesday: Movement Thursday: Wisdom Friday: Love, Beauty Saturday: Inner warmth of soul Sunday: Protecting forces (reflected from the Moon) By Initiation into the Mysteries of which I told you yesterday, man could get beyond the mere looking outward through the eyes or listening outward through the ears, to see and hear the physical earthly environment. He could free himself from his physical body and live in his etheric body. He could hold himself apart from the physical body and live in the etheric body only. And when he thus lived in the etheric body he lived with all the things of which I have just spoken, he lived not with the speech that is formed through the physical larynx but with the speech that resounds in Mars as cosmic speech. He moved in the way that Mercury guides the movements in the Cosmos; he moved not with the physical feet and legs but in the sense in which Mercury guides the movements of the human being. Nor did he have the wisdom that is acquired with such pains in childhood and adolescence, a wisdom which in this materialistic age is, to speak truly, an unwisdom. He lived directly within the wisdom of Jupiter; he lived in the wisdom of Jupiter because he could unite with the Moon Beings who observed Jupiter. When he was initiated in this way man was altogether within the Moon-radiating light. He had left the Earth. He was not a being of flesh and blood on Earth, he had gone away from the Earth and lived as a being in the Moon light. But this Moon light was configurated, differentiated, modified by what lived in the other planets of our planetary system. At the time of spiritual observations in such Mysteries man did indeed become a light being of the Moon. I do not mean it in a symbolic sense or conceived abstractly, but just as the ordinary man of today, if he has gone to Basle and come back again, is conscious of the reality of it, he knows he has experienced something quite real—so was man conscious of a reality when through the Initiation rite he had paid his visit to the Moon Beings. He knew that he had taken leave of his physical body for a while. With his soul and spirit he had gone out into the light-radiating spheres of the Moon Beings, clothed in a light body, and through his unison with the Moon Beings he had looked out into the far planetary spaces, he had really been able to observe all that could be revealed to him in the far spaces of the planetary system. And what did he see? This in the main—all the other things he observed too, but this he observed above all—he saw that from the Sun there come the forces of Beings who may have nothing to do with the form of the etheric body of man. He looked up to the Sun as to something that had a dissolving, destructive effect for the etheric body. By this experience he knew that the forces which were received by the Sun Beings must take their start not from the etheric body but from the higher members of man's nature, from the Ego and the astral body. The Sun forces must be allowed to work only upon these higher members. Thus he knew that for the human etheric body he cannot turn to the Sun, for the etheric body he must turn to the planets. It is for the astral body and especially for the human Ego that he will turn to the Sun. He knew that for the full inner force of the Ego, of the “I am”, he must go to the Sun. This was the second great experience in the Initiation that took its start from the Moon Mystery. This was the second thing. Man learned that for the etheric body he belongs to the planetary system, whereas for the inner force and permeation of his Ego above all and of his astral body, he must look up to the Sun. Such indeed was this initiation. Man himself became one with the Moonlight. But through the Moonlight life of his own being he gazed into the Sun. And now he said to himself: The Sun sends its light to the Moon because he may not give it to man directly. Thence we have the Moonlight in unison with the planetary forces and from these we build up our etheric body. This secret was known to him who was thus initiated. And so he knew to what extent he bore within him the force of the spiritual Sun, for he had seen it in his vision. He had gained a consciousness of how he bore the spiritual forces of the Sun within him, and this in effect was the degree of Initiation whereby man became a Christ-Bearer, that is to say, a bearer of the Sun Being, not a receiver of the Sun Being, but a bearer of the Sun Being. Just as the Moon itself when it is Full Moon is a bearer of Sunlight, so man became a bearer of the Christ, a Christophoros. This initiation whereby a man became Christophoros was an absolutely real experience. And now imagine this real experience whereby man sped away from the Earth and rose to the Light-Being as earthly man upon the way of Initiation—imagine this inner human Easter experience of former times transformed into a cosmic Festival. In later times men no longer knew that such a thing could happen. They no longer knew that man can really go forth from the earthly realm, unite himself with the Moon nature and from the Moon behold the Sun. But a certain remembrance of it had been preserved. This remembrance in effect was preserved in the Easter Festival. For the real way in which man can experience these things was not transmitted to the later, increasingly materialistic consciousness. In abstract idea however it was transmitted. Man no longer looked into himself and said: “I can unite myself with the Moonlight”, but he looked up to the Moon, to the Full Moon. Gazing upward to the Full Moon he said, not “I myself can evolve up yonder”, but “The Earth strives yonder”. When does it do so most of all? It is when the Springtime begins, when the forces that were hitherto with the seeds, with the plants within the Earth, stream forth from the surface of the Earth. On Earth they become plants, but they go further. They stream outward into the far spaces of the Cosmos. In the ancient Mysteries they used this image: When the forces of the Earth bear outward through stem and leaf of plant that which is raying forth from the Earth into the Cosmos, then man can most easily attain the Moon-Sun Initiation and become Christophoros. For then, as it were, he can float upward to the Moon—borne upward by the forces that in Springtime ray forth from Earth to Moon. Only he must enter into the Full Moonlight. All this afterwards became a remembrance but it grew abstract—“he must enter into the Full Moonlight”. Subconsciously therefore, no longer with the clear knowledge that this could become a human experience, it was conceived that something or other, not man himself, goes out towards the Full Moon, the first Full Moon after the beginning of Springtime. And what can this Full Moon of Springtime do? It looks out towards the Sun, that is to say it looks towards the first Sun-consecrated day, towards the first Sunday that follows after it. As in former times the Christophoros from his Moon standpoint looked out and gazed upon the Being of the Sun, so now the Moon looks to the Sun, that is to say, to its symbolisation in the Sunday. Thus we have first the beginning of Spring, the 21st of March. The forces of the Earth are sprouting forth into the universe. But we must await the coming of the right observer, namely, the Full Moon. 21st March—Full Moon—Sun day. And what does the Full Moon observe? He observes the Sun. We await the first Sun-day after the Full Moon and that is Easter Sunday. Thus all that is left of a real process of the Mysteries which many human beings often underwent in ancient Mysteries—all that has remained is an abstract fixation of time. And so it is indeed with this Easter Festival. Our present spiritual Festival of Easter represents an event in the Mysteries which was indeed everywhere enacted in the Springtime. But this is a different Mystery from the one I described the day before yesterday. The event in the Mysteries which I described the day before yesterday led the human being to understand the fact of death. I told you of how the idea of resurrection was brought home to man by such festivals as the Adonis Festival in Autumn time. It really led the human being into the experience of death and into the resurrection in the Spirit after about three days. This event of resurrection truly belongs to the Autumn time for the reasons which I explained in that lecture. The process which I have described today is a different one. It was celebrated or enacted in other Mysteries for certain Initiations, namely for the Sun and Moon Initiation. And this later process confronted the human being with the beginning of his life. Thus we look back to ancient times when the descent of man from pre-earthly life into this earthly life was recognised in certain Mysteries, while the ascent, the resurrection in the Spirit, was recognised in other Mysteries, namely in the Autumn Mysteries. In later days man was no longer able to penetrate the living reality of this his relationship to the Spiritual in the Cosmos. And at length things went so far that the Autumn Mysteries of resurrection were simply superimposed on the Springtime Mystery of the descent. The confusion that thus arose in the course of human evolution shows how deeply materialism worked in the course of time. For it not only created false opinions but brought mankind into real confusion with regard to those things which, if I may put it so, were once in sacred, holy order in the course of human earthly life. Once upon a time there was a sacred order in these things. As Autumn came near, mankind celebrated a Cosmic Festival, a Festival which pointed to a real process of the Mysteries. Nature, they said, is fading and dying away, Nature is laid waste. It is like the gradual death of man as to his physical life. But whereas when we look at Nature we see only the transitory at work in her, in men there lives the Eternal which we must now behold apart from what takes place in outer Nature, for we must behold it in the spirit as that which is resurrected after death in the spiritual world. And through the Mysteries of springtime it was made clear to man that Nature herself is overcome by the Spiritual; the spiritual works in again from the Cosmos, the Physical springs and sprouts forth from the Earth, because it is impelled by the Spiritual. This however was to lead man to remember, not how they passed through death into the Spiritual, but how they have come hither and descended out of the Spiritual. Just when Nature is springing and ascending, man was to remember his descent into the Physical; and again when Nature is declining man was to remember his ascent, his resurrection in the Spiritual. And indeed it infinitely deepened the life of the soul thus to experience how man is related to the Cosmos. These things varied according to the different regions of the Earth. In ancient times there were indeed some peoples who were more Autumn peoples, and others who were more Springtime peoples. Within the Autumn peoples there were the Mysteries of Adonis, while in the Springtime peoples there were other Mysteries related to what I have described today. And only those seekers after knowledge of whom it is truly related how they journeyed from place to place, from one Mystery to another, like Pythagoras, only they underwent the real totality of human experience. From a place of the Mysteries where they could behold the Autumn secret which is the real secret of the Sun, they wandered to another place where they could behold the Springtime secret, that is the secret of the Moon. Hence of the greatest Initiates of ancient times it is again and again related how they wandered from one place to another of the Mysteries. And we may truly say that those old Initiates in a certain sense experienced the year in their inner life, the year with its sacred Festivities. An old Initiate might say: “When I come to such and such a place where Adonis Festivals are celebrated, I behold the cosmic Autumn, the shining of the spiritual Sun in the beginning of the night of Winter.” And as he came to another place where the Springtime Mysteries were celebrated, he would say: “Now I shall witness the secret of the Moon.” Thus in his inner life he learned to know that which determines the whole meaning of the year. So you see our Easter Festival has in fact been burdened with things with which it ought not properly to have been burdened. It ought really to be a Festival of the “laying in the grave”, and as was the case in such festivals in relation to the spiritual part of man, so this Springtime Festival of the laying in the grave should at the same time be a Festival to stir man to work, a Festival such as a man of more strong and pristine impulses needs for the Summer season. The Easter Festival was indeed a Festival to summon man to work during the Summer. And the Autumn Resurrection Festival was for the spiritual world a Festival celebrated in the time when man departed from his work once more. But as he departed from his work he was to experience in his inmost being that which is most important for his soul and spirit. He was to become conscious of his eternal being as he gazed upon the resurrection in the spiritual world three days after death. Passing thus from earthly secrets to cosmic secrets, from earthly knowledge to cosmic knowledge, we may indeed recognise what I may call the inner structure in the order of our festivals throughout the year. But there are still many secrets that were hidden in these Mysteries which have disappeared. Tomorrow, as far as possible, I shall try to deepen these things still further, referring more nearly to certain places of the Mysteries. Thus I shall try to deepen what I explained to you today in our study of the relationships in the Heavens. |
233a. Easter as a Chapter in the Mystery Wisdom of Man: Lecture III
21 Apr 1924, Dornach Tr. Samuel P. Lockwood Rudolf Steiner |
---|
Now, it is a concomitant of the materialistic age that of the vast cosmos, which expresses its spirituality in the form of the fixed star constellations and the movements of the planets, nothing has remained in human consciousness but the outer appearance of the stars and the computation of their movements (if they are planets) and so forth. |
But spiritual observation discloses that the cosmic organism expresses itself, not in a unified psycho-spiritual entity, but in a multiplicity, an immeasurable, limitless multitude of spiritual beings that reveal themselves through the forms of the fixed star constellations, through the movements of the planets, through the light raying forth from the stars, and so on. |
It was ancient Mystery knowledge in some of the sanctuaries that the constellations and the movements in the planetary system were observed from the Moon, and the actions of the Moon beings determined accordingly. |
233a. Easter as a Chapter in the Mystery Wisdom of Man: Lecture III
21 Apr 1924, Dornach Tr. Samuel P. Lockwood Rudolf Steiner |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
In expanding today what we have been discussing in the previous lectures I should like to take up the astronomical aspect of the Easter Festival; and in order to do this it will be necessary to touch upon some of the facts referring to the so-called secret of the Moon. During all epochs in which people knew of the Mystery wisdom, the secret of the Moon was a familiar concept and was invariably associated with the being of man, in so far as the latter is related to the whole cosmos. We must keep clearly in mind that in his entirety man is related to the whole cosmos, just as he is connected with the Earth as regards his physical body. Now, it is a concomitant of the materialistic age that of the vast cosmos, which expresses its spirituality in the form of the fixed star constellations and the movements of the planets, nothing has remained in human consciousness but the outer appearance of the stars and the computation of their movements (if they are planets) and so forth. The manner in which astronomy is studied today is the same as it would be if one studied the relative measurements and the outer conditions of movement in the human organism, remaining unaware that a psycho-spiritual element pervades the physical organism and comes to expression in these measurements and conditions of movement. In the human being a unified psycho-spiritual element manifests itself, held together by the ego. But spiritual observation discloses that the cosmic organism expresses itself, not in a unified psycho-spiritual entity, but in a multiplicity, an immeasurable, limitless multitude of spiritual beings that reveal themselves through the forms of the fixed star constellations, through the movements of the planets, through the light raying forth from the stars, and so on. Inner man is related to this spiritual multiplicity in the stars as is physical man to Earth substances that can serve as nourishment. And man's closest connection with the universe has to do with what we can call the secret of the Moon. External observation of the Moon shows it to be in a state of metamorphosis as seen from the Earth. We see the full luminous face, we see it half-illuminated, then one-quarter—and there is also that stage in which it entirely withdraws from outer view, called the stage of new Moon. And then we have again the return to full Moon. All this is nowadays explained as though the Moon were merely some kind of a body moving about in cosmic space, illuminated by the Sun from different directions and hence presenting various aspects. But that does not exhaust what the Moon means to the Earth, and especially to Earth men. In the case of the Moon in particular we must understand that if we look out at something as readily perceptible in its physical surfaces as, say, the full Moon—that is, something that presents a physical aspect—this aspect embodies something totally different from what is inherent in a new Moon. True, the new Moon cannot achieve direct physical expression on account of correlated cosmic conditions; but we must not conclude that because it does not express itself as a physical phenomenon, it has no effect. When our knowledge of the firmament tells us that it is new Moon, this means that the Moon is present in an invisible but all the more spiritual way than when appearing as full Moon in physical light. So the Moon is present—now wholly physical, now wholly spiritual, and we have the rhythmic alternation of its physical and spiritual expression. And now, in order to understand the crux of the matter, we must recall a fact with which you are familiar from my Occult Science, an Outline, namely, that at one time the Moon was within the Earth: it was part of the Earth body. It passed out of the Earth and became a satellite, as the term goes. In other words, it split off from the Earth and now circles it. When it was one with the Earth its influences upon human beings were exerted from the Earth. Naturally, in the time when man existed and developed upon an Earth that still contained the Moon, he was a very different being. When this Moon withdrew, the Earth became poorer by exactly what the Moon represented; and henceforth the lower part of man was formed and held fast by the other forces—no longer by the Earth-and-Moon forces, but by the former only. On the other hand, the influences that emanated from within the Earth at the time it still contained the Moon now act upon man from without, from the Moon. We can put it this way: formerly the Moon forces came in contact first with the lower limbs—the feet and legs—and then streamed upward from below; but since the Moon withdrew from the Earth they act in the opposite direction, from the head downward. But this implies that the task of these forces has become a very different one, and the nature of this task comes into evidence in the experiences man has when he descends from the pre-earthly to the earthly life. When he has completed the period between death and a new birth and has absolved all the requirements of soul and spirit demanded during that period, he prepares to descend to Earth, to unite with the bodily-physical principle transmitted to him by his father and mother. But before it is possible for his ego and astral body to unite with the physical body he must provide himself with an etheric body, which he attracts from the surrounding cosmos. This process has radically changed since the Moon withdrew from the Earth. Before that time man needed forces, when approaching the Earth again, that would enable him to shape the all-pervading ether into the form of an etheric body around his ego and astral body. These forces he drew, as he approached the Earth, from the Moon which was then within it. He still does; but the point is that since the splitting off of the Moon they come to him from outside the Earth. This means that immediately before entering the Earth life he must appeal to the power of the Moon forces—that is, to something cosmic—if he would build his etheric body. This etheric body must be formed in such a way that it has, as it were, an outer side and an inner side. Let us think of it quite graphically, formed with an outer side and an inner side. When the outer side is being formed the forces of light are needed, for, like other things of substance, the etheric body is fashioned principally out of the flooding light of the cosmos. But sunlight cannot be employed for this purpose: it does not provide the forces that would enable man to build his etheric body. This calls for sunlight that is reflected by the Moon and thereby radically altered; and all the light coming to us from the Moon—in fact, all the light shining from the Moon into the cosmos—contains the forces that enable man to form the outer side of his etheric body when he descends to Earth. And on the other hand, the forces man needs to form the inner side of his etheric body are the spiritual emanations of the new Moon; so that his ability to form the outer and the inner side is related to this rhythm of the outer light and dark of the Moon. But all this that the Moon forces achieve for man, as it were, goes back to the fact that the Moon is truly not the mere physical body about which modern science tells us fairy tales, but a body wholly permeated by spirituality, comprising a multiplicity of spiritual beings. I have repeatedly explained that when the Moon withdrew from the Earth, it was not merely physical matter that streamed out into cosmic space: those ancient beings, man's primordial teachers, who lived on the Earth not in physical bodies but in a spiritual form, these passed with the Moon out into the universe and there founded a sort of Moon colony. We have therefore to distinguish between the physico-etheric and the psycho-spiritual constituents of the Moon, remembering that again the latter is not a unity but a multiplicity. Now, the entire life of this spirituality in the Moon depends upon the manner in which those beings observe cosmic conditions from their point of view, from the point of view of the Moon. Figuratively expressed: the spiritual beings of the Moon direct their gaze primarily to what is of greatest importance for them, to the planets of our orbit; and upon the inferences of these observations depends all that takes place on the Moon, as well as all that contributes to providing man in the right way with the forces needed for forming his etheric body. Certain of the Mysteries knew this. It was ancient Mystery knowledge in some of the sanctuaries that the constellations and the movements in the planetary system were observed from the Moon, and the actions of the Moon beings determined accordingly. This was expressed by relating, in human consciousness, the Moon with the forces of other planets, the Moon being the point from which are determined those cosmic contexts that are linked with the forming of the human etheric body. This is reflected in the names of the days of the week:
Thus we see how everything pertaining to the point of view of the Moon was brought into relation with all that tended to quicken man's awareness of the planets in connection with reckoning time. And the burden of the admonition given in the old Mysteries was something as follows: Remember, oh man, that before descending to Earth you needed forces engendered in the Moon by the act of the Moon-beings in observing the other planets. For the configuration of your etheric body, when you descended to earthly life, you are indebted to the Moon's share in what is expressed by Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and so forth. So on the one hand we have the rhythmical passage of the Moon through light and darkness in its course around the Earth, and on the other we find the whole sequence of the planets inscribed in human consciousness. The Mysteries even added the following: Due to the ability of the Moon-beings to behold Mars, the capacity for speech is organized into man's etheric body, and through their observation of Mercury, the capacity for movement is concentrated there. If we wish to employ these secrets of the Moon as a medium of expression, this can be done in an entirely different form: speech becomes eurythmy. It comes about as follows: if we study the secrets of speech by finding out what the Moon-beings observed when questioning Mars, and then discover what changes these observations undergo when the Moon-beings turn to Mercury, then speech becomes eurythmy. In other words, if we transform the Moon-beings' Mars experiences into their Mercury experiences, the human capacity for speech becomes the capacity for eurythmy. That expresses the matter cosmically. The current engendering in man the capacity for wisdom derives from the Moon-beings' experiences with Jupiter; what streams through the soul as love and beauty, from Venus; and that which permeates the etheric body with inner soul warmth is gained from the experience acquired by the Moon-beings' observation of Saturn. There remains that which must be kept away—pushed back, as it were—to prevent its interfering with the formation of the etheric body immediately before the descent to Earth: that which comes from the Sun. From the Sun—or from the observation of the Sun—derive the forces from which man must be protected if he is to become complete in himself through the integration of the etheric body—that is, through protective forces. It can be said that in this way we learn what occurs on the Moon, and at the same time we learn how the human etheric body is formed and constituted when man descends from the pre-earthly to the earthly existence. Those are the facts connected with the secret of the Moon. Nowadays we can recount such matters, but in certain of the older Mysteries they were not merely narrated but actually experienced. What I shall now write on the blackboard was not only known; it was an inner experience.
By means of initiation into the Mysteries, of which I spoke yesterday, it was possible to get beyond looking outward and listening outward with eyes and ears in the physical vicinity of the Earth. It was possible to become free of the physical body, to keep aloof from it, and to live only in the etheric body; and then the initiate lived with all that has been described. He did not live with the speech formed in the larynx, but with the speech resounding in Mars as cosmic language. He moved in conformity with the way in which Mercury guided the movements in the cosmos: not merely with feet and legs did he move, but in accord with the manner in which Mercury directs the movements of the human being. Nor did he possess that wisdom so laboriously acquired during childhood and early youth—really an unwisdom in the materialistic age—but he lived actually in the wisdom of Jupiter, because he could unite with the Moon-beings who observed Jupiter. This sort of initiation really meant that the mystic was wholly in the light shining from the Moon. He had left the Earth, no longer a creature of flesh and blood, and lived in moonlight modified by forces from the other planets. During these periods of spiritual observation he simply became a light-being of the Moon—not in a symbolical sense or in any way to be thought of as abstract, but rather, as a man might today go to Basel and back, fully conscious of a reality, knowing he had experienced something real. The mystic was equally conscious of reality when he was led through the initiation ritual to the Moon-beings. The initiate knew that for the time being he had taken leave of his physical body, that his soul and spirit had passed into the light-sphere of the Moon, and that he had borne a light-body; and because he had been united with the Moon-beings he had looked out into planetary space, truly able to behold what could be revealed in this vast realm. And what was that? Well, among other things, he observed principally that from the Sun there emanated the forces of beings that must not be allowed to intervene in the building of the human etheric body. The Sun appeared as something that tended to dissolve, destroy the etheric body; hence he knew that forces to be received by the Sun-beings must not proceed from his etheric body, but from his higher principles, from his ego and astral body. Only upon these must the Sun forces be allowed to act. So he knew that for the forming of his etheric body he must not look to the Sun but to the planets, and that he must turn to the Sun for his astral body and especially for his ego and its whole inner strength. The second point, then, that became manifest through this recurring initiation into the secret of the Moon was this, that in what pertained to his etheric body man belonged to the planets; but for the strengthening of his astral body and most of all his ego he must look to the Sun. This initiation was really of such a nature as to make the mystic one with the moonlight; but it was by means of his own moonlight existence that he looked into the Sun. And now he reflected as follows: the Sun sends its light to the Moon because this must not be imparted to man directly. The result is moonlight in conjunction with the planetary forces, and out of this the etheric body is formed.—That was the secret known to him who was initiated in this way. He also knew to what extent he bore within him the power of the spiritual Sun: he had seen it, become conscious of it; and this was the stage of initiation at which the initiate became a Christ bearer—that is, a Sun-being bearer, not a Sun-being recipient. Just as the Moon itself, when at full, is a sunlight bearer, so man became a Christ bearer, a christophoros. This initiation leading to the stage of christophoros was thus an absolutely real experience. Now imagine this actual experience through which the mystic sped away from the Earth, as it were, and ascended as an initiated Earth-man to the light-being; and imagine this inner, human Easter experience of former times transformed into a cosmic festival. In later ages men no longer knew that such things could happen; that man is really able to withdraw from Earth conditions, unite with those of the Moon, and from the Moon behold the Sun. But the memory of it was to be preserved, and this we have in the Easter Festival. The ability to experience all this did not pass over into the later consciousness that was becoming materialistic; instead it turned into an abstract conception. Men no longer looked inward and said, I can unite with the moonlight. They looked at the Moon, the full Moon, and said, It is not a question of my aspiring upward: it is the Earth that strives to ascend. And when is this effort at its height? When spring begins, when there burst forth from the surface of the Earth all the forces that had lain dormant in seeds and plants under the ground. On the Earth they become plants, but they go further: they stream out into cosmic space. The old Mysteries employed this image: man can most easily attain to the Moon-Sun initiation and become a christophoros in the season when the inner Earth forces, by means of the stems and leaves of plants, carry out of the ground what then streams forth from the Earth into the cosmos; for then he floats, as it were, on the forces that in spring ray out from the Earth and up to the Moon. But it must be the light of the full Moon. All this, then, became a memory, but it also became abstract ... It must be the light of the full Moon. ... Subconsciously, no longer with the clear knowledge that this could be a human experience, people imagined that something or other—not man himself—streamed toward the full Moon, the first one after the beginning of spring. And what can this full Moon do now? It beholds the Sun; that is, the first day dedicated to the Sun: the first succeeding Sunday. Just as once a christophoros, from the viewpoint of the Moon, beheld the Sun-being, so now the Moon beholds the Sun—that is, its symbolization in Sunday. We have the beginning of spring, March 21st, and the forces of the Earth are burgeoning forth into the universe. We must await the proper observer, the full Moon. March 21st—full Moon—Sunday. What does the Moon observe? The Sun; and the following Sunday is fixed as Easter Sunday. This is an abstract way of determining the date, surviving from a very real Mystery event that in former times frequently occurred for many men. That is actually what our present spring Easter Festival has come to be. It represents a Mystery act that has often been performed in spring; but it is not the one I described day before yesterday. The latter led man to a comprehension of the death event. I explained that the idea of resurrection, clarified by something like the Adonis celebration in the fall, really led men to the experience of death, to the spiritual resurrection after about three days; and this process of resurrection really belongs in the autumn, for the reasons I gave. The process I described today is a different one, performed in other Mysteries for certain initiations—those of the Sun and Moon; and this process confronted the neophyte with life's beginning. So you see, we can look back at a period in which certain Mysteries saw the descent of man from the pre-earthly to the earthly life, while others dwelt on the ascent in the spirit. But in later epochs, when the living substance of man's relation to the cosmic spirit could no longer be discerned, men went so far as simply to combine the autumn Mystery of the ascent with the spring Mystery of the descent into one festival. Thus the confusion manifesting itself in the course of human evolution is evidence of the gradual effect of materialism: not only has the latter engendered false beliefs, but it has completely confused men's minds concerning an issue that at one period of human events existed, I might say, in a sacred order that caused mankind at the approach of autumn to celebrate a cosmic festival. But this in turn pointed to a Mystery act that evoked the thought: Nature falls into barrenness, it wilts and dies away, and this is like the physical dying of man; but while in Nature only the perishable is seen to be active, there lives in man the eternal, which must now be observed spiritually, disregarding the course of Nature, as the element of resurrection in the spiritual world after death. The spring Mysteries made it clear that Nature is conquered by the spirit, that, in turn, the spirit acts out of the cosmos, and that matter germinates and sprouts from the ground because it is driven by the spirit. But this was intended to remind men—not of their passing into the spirit through death, but of their origin in the spirit, their descent from the spiritual world. Precisely where Nature begins to ascend, man was to remember his descent into the physical; and where Nature disintegrates, man was to contemplate his ascent, his spiritual resurrection. There is no doubt that such an understanding of man's relation to the cosmos intensified his soul life enormously. But this varied according to the locality. In olden times some were definitely inclined to be autumn peoples and others rather spring peoples. Among the former were to be found the Adonis Mysteries; among the latter, other Mysteries concerned with what I have set forth today. And only those seekers after wisdom of whom it is correctly reported that, like Pythagoras, they moved about from place to place, from one Mystery to another, only those enjoyed the fullness of human experience. They would pass from a sanctuary where they could participate in the autumn secret, which is really the Sun secret, to one where the spring secret was revealed, the Moon secret. For this reason it was reported again and again of the consummate old initiates that they traveled from one sanctuary to another. It can truly be said of these that they had a certain inner experience of the year and its festivals. An old initiate of that sort could say to himself, I come to a place where the Adonis Festivals are celebrated, and I can witness the cosmic autumn and the rays of the spiritual Sun at the beginning of winter's night; I wander to another, where the Mysteries of spring are observed, and I can behold the secret of the Moon.—Thus he acquired an inner knowledge of all that relates to the whole meaning of the year. You see, our Easter Festival has really had something saddled on it that is not right. It should really be a spring commemoration of burial; and this commemoration of burial in the spring should at the same time be an incentive to work, such as the more primitive man needed during the summer time: that is what such burial festivals were in their appeal to the human spirit. Easter was a festival of admonition regarding the work of summer, just as the autumn festival of the resurrection of the spiritual world was a festival celebrated in the season when the labor was completed. But it was of the utmost importance for man's soul and spirit that, when his work was finished, he should become aware of and inwardly experience the eternal in himself by contemplating the resurrection in the spiritual world, the days that follow upon death. In passing, then, from Earth secrets to cosmic secrets, from Earth wisdom to cosmic wisdom, we can come to know what I should like to call the inner structure of the order of the year, as indicated by the festivals. But much of what had been hidden in them has disappeared. Today I wanted to present this subject to you by considering the conditions of the firmament itself. Tomorrow I shall endeavor, as far as time permits, to penetrate still deeper into it in the light of certain Mystery sanctuaries. |
40. Introduction to a Eurhythmy Performance
29 Aug 1915, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
---|
True spiritual science does not try to find human laws from the constellations of stars but rather to find human laws as well as natural laws out of the spiritual. Although this spiritual science is again and again thrown together with nonsensical mystical strivings of modern times, it has no relationship to them at all. |
In every verse you find exactly the mood that corresponds to the constellation in question in the heavens. This is not all that is attempted, however; if you take certain verses you will be able to experience something else as well. |
40. Introduction to a Eurhythmy Performance
29 Aug 1915, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Before the presentation I would like to say a few words about how relationships can be seen in everything we are attempting—in everything that we attempt and in everything that emanates from what we attempt. Without doubt there is an intense longing in our time to gain the connection between the material life and the spiritual life. On the other hand, the possibilities for fulfilling such longings are not so easy to find, for, as I have emphasized on other occasions, very few Europeans today have a clear feeling of seeking the essential nature of the other worlds connected with and lying at the basis of our world. If you consider teachings that are offered today about poetry, about art, you will frequently notice how everything artistic leads back to something higher, and yet how difficult it is for people today really to sense the connection with this higher element. For this reason we may hope that as eurythmy becomes increasingly familiar, in the way we are attempting it, it will make more accessible from a totally human aspect what is needed in order to find the relationship between the human being and the spiritual worlds. You will often have heard from this or that group calling itself theosophical that an essential aspect of the soul life is based on becoming one with the great universal being that fills space and weaves through time. Although this longing for feeling oneself at one with the great universe is emphasized in theosophical circles with great enthusiasm and fervor, there is little inclination to take hold of the reality of this experience. Many today emphasize the form in which the extinction of the self was striven for in the Middle Ages—for example by Meister Eckhardt or Johannes Tauler—the feeling of being at one with the divinely permeated universe. Today, however, we are in a period in which this must be striven for concretely, in reality, a period in which something must really be done to lend confirmation to the great truth that the human being in his doing and his being can harmonize with the doing and being of the world. This is just what is being attempted tonight in what we will come to know through those who are pursuing this in the second phase of our eurythmy. I will only direct your attention very briefly to something that could be gathered from today's presentation. In the second presentation1 you have seen how something that moves and is at rest is presented as an image, so to speak, of what is in the universe: the twelve-foldness that exists in the universe as the Zodiac and the seven-foldness that exists in the universe as the sequence of the planets. You have also experienced how the resting quality of the images of the Zodiac in relation to the mobile quality of the planetary nature confronted you during the presentation. Such things are possible, of course, only if this spirit of feeling at one with the universe is inherent in the whole presentation. Thus an attempt has been made to do something in which there is a very intimate consonance between the spoken word—and not simply the spoken word but also the sensations revealed—and every single movement. It will gradually be understand that in this presentation the spoken word will be only one aspect contributing to the whole. Gradually it will be understood that if the movements are done in their fullness it will be possible to recognize from the movements what is being said, just as one can read the meaning in letters of the alphabet one is looking at. One need only have learned to read, and then gradually, when the whole system is developed, it will also be possible to read what is being presented here. One will be able to read not only in accordance with the letter, with the sound, but also in accordance with the meaning. To that end it is necessary that one have a concept of the inner experience corresponding with the meaning. As an earthly human being—wandering about aimlessly, as man does, with the beings who were cast into the abyss, into the earthly depths—a person generally, as a matter of course, errs with his thoughts and feelings during earthly existence. Yet he is able to raise himself aloft out of this erroneous thinking and feeling, to raise himself to what becomes for him, out of quiet movement, a firmer thinking or feeling. You see, the cosmos that confronts us to begin with as our solar system is only a special case. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was of God.” And in the cosmos we see the word as though congealed, the word at rest and the word in movement. One must feel it in the cosmos, however. I certainly hope that what is presented here will not be taken for all kinds of confused mysticism current today. We are not concerned here with imitating the methods of those modern astrologers who outdo all materialism with their methods, simply adding ignorant superstition to materialistic ignorance. We are concerned here instead with introducing the lawful relationships of a spiritual world that manifest in the human being just as in the cosmos. True spiritual science does not try to find human laws from the constellations of stars but rather to find human laws as well as natural laws out of the spiritual. Although this spiritual science is again and again thrown together with nonsensical mystical strivings of modern times, it has no relationship to them at all. Here, where in certain descriptions of the human being analogies with cosmic relationships are applied as the basis of a way of expression, it must be emphasized particularly that spiritual science does not wish to have anything to do with the dilettantism of modern astrologers and their crude revelations. Thus an attempt has been made to offer a sequence of feeling, sensing, and speaking, which, as it is presented, gives, as it were, another version of the inner soul-feeling in relation to what has flowed into the movements of our solar system. The structure of twelve verses, each with seven lines, corresponds, you could say, to the outer skeleton. If you take this attempt at a twelve/seven-membered poem, however, you will see that what wishes to reveal itself is present in every detail. If you take the mood in Cancer, for example, in which after the ascent there again follows the descent, where one has the feeling that the sun comes to rest for a moment—let us simply use this picture for now; many pictures could be used—there you will be able to feel something from the way in which the words within the Cancer verse are placed. Compare this, if you will, with the verse for Scorpio. In every verse you find exactly the mood that corresponds to the constellation in question in the heavens. This is not all that is attempted, however; if you take certain verses you will be able to experience something else as well. I will take one line from every verse, the line for the planet Mars:
Although in every single line the general mood of the verse is maintained, you will be able to discern the Mars mood in each of these lines taken from the sequence of seven lines; you will be able to discern what corresponds with Mars. Thus the ideal would actually be for someone, were he awakened from sleep and had one line read to him—“In becoming activity pauses”—to be able to say, “Ah, yes! Mars in Scorpio!” With another line, he would have to say, “Jupiter in Libra,” and so forth. You see, this is the opposite of any subjective arbitrariness. Being at one with the laws of the universe is really taken seriously. Here we do not merely proclaim that one should be at one with the universe; rather it is this being-at-one. We are attempting, at least, to realize this being-at-one. You will also have noticed that the gesture is held, for example, in a certain instance; you will have noticed how, as the sun circled around, the Libra mood was also beautifully maintained in the gesture, not in an affected way but only by virtue of the fact that the corresponding consonant sound is simply there. In the Libra mood you have seen everywhere the balance of the scales! It happened by itself that the gesture of Libra was maintained just there. These things occur entirely of their own accord if they are done correctly. What is actually being attempted in something like this? It is certainly something entirely different from mere whimsy! What is attempted is to maintain in real, inner comprehension what was carried out cosmically when our solar system was created. An attempt is made really to enter into it in mood, to enter into it in doing and in everything else; it could be said that what you have seen presented here offers the possibility of creating movement, as well as concepts steeped in movement, out of what can be expressed in the following phrase:
In the first presentation a world relationship was also attempted, but in a somewhat different way. There you will have seen that, portrayed precisely in movement, one is dealing with verses of four lines each and that the sun makes its twelve movements along an outer circle. There are also twelve verses, but on the outer circle the sun is represented as moving through the Zodiac. The eurythmists who stood in the middle circle expressed the planetary element, and the one who stood in the center expressed the lunar element, the moon. Thus you had sun, planets, and moon. And there was also the inner connection of the lines of verse and always the relationship of the first to the last line: the first line is always of a sun-like quality, the last of a moon-like quality. Just as the sunlight is reflected by the moon, so the last line is always a reflection. Thus it was attempted to develop the form out of the secrets of the universe, which can then be spoken as well as expressed eurythmically in movements. When, therefore, the time comes in which one learns to read these things, it will be known unequivocally, when seeing something like this, just what is brought to expression by such a complete system of movement. One can certainly believe that it is unnecessary to do something like this, but it is possible to have various opinions, isn't it? It is also possible to have the opinion that the human being could be dumb and need not speak. And if all human beings in this world were dumb and only a few began to speak, the others would consider speaking eminently superfluous. Such views are entirely relative, aren't they? It is only necessary to admit to the relativity of these views; then it will already be noticed that true progress in the development of humanity can be achieved only if a person engages himself in really drawing forth all the possibilities inherent in human nature. When those working in eurythmy are also in a position to teach what now forms the second phase of eurythmy—in addition to what meets your gaze macrocosmically and had certainly to be developed in that direction—you will see that the Auftakte [Auftakteis a German word which, when used in connection with eurythmy, refers to choreographed, lawful eurythmy movements that create an introductory mood but are done without the sounds corresponding directly to those movements being audible.] that we began with will certainly need to have musical accompaniment; [To accompany performance of the “Twelve Moods,” Jan Stuten composed a piece for small orchestra.] today there was only a silentAuftakt. You will see later that a microcosmic element will be added to the macrocosmic and that there will be presentations in which something will be brought to expression just as lawfully as in human speaking itself. Later you will see compositions of eurythmy in which you will notice that there arises at precisely the right place a labial sound, and then precisely at another right place a dental sound arises; what really takes place is what arises in another way in the human being in speaking, so that the human being comes to know himself in what is accomplished in eurythmy. You will also have noticed today that those working with eurythmy will gradually learn to teach that variations in the words, variations in the significance and meaning, come to expression in various ways. You will have noticed today that a concrete word is danced in a completely different way from an abstract word, that a verb suggesting an activity is danced in a different way from a verb suggesting a passive state or a verb suggesting duration, and so on. This connection, you could say, between the brain and the speech organism you will also find presented in eurythmy. I hope that the satire that follows will not be misunderstood. The mood coming to expression in it must not be missing where a serious spiritual scientific world view lies at the basis of one's way of life. We are certainly not toying with serious matters if we attempt to bring some humor into what is serious; in some circles that deem themselves mystical, every frivolity that assumes the caricatured mask of “spiritual depth” is considered serious, displaying itself in gestures of physical nobility and with tragically elongated faces that merely represent burlesque somersaults of spiritual life to one who really knows life. Whoever wants to be truly serious in the face of seriousness must be able to laugh about the ridiculous when the ridiculous deems itself serious. Whoever can find no humor in the humorous is also unable to be serious in the true sense when confronting what is serious. Especially where knowledge of the spirit is sought after, laughter must also be possible about the absurdities of certain “spirit seekers.” Otherwise they will make what is serious into something ridiculous among those who laugh because their laughing muscles begin to move whenever they don't understand something; or they will enrage those people who fly into a rage when they encounter something they have never “seen or heard before.”
|
349. The Life of Man on Earth and the Essence of Christianity: Sleeping and Waking – Life After Death – The Christ Being – The Two Jesus Children
21 Apr 1923, Dornach Tr. Automated Rudolf Steiner |
---|
But it does not depend only on the earth, but the constellation of stars in the sky sends out the forces that hold a country in a certain place. So it is not the fault of the earth. It is the star constellation. And you can always prove: when the situation has changed, the star constellation has changed – not the planets, of course, but the fixed stars. |
It is the same with countries that have come over the earth: they are held by the star constellations. So we must not only see spirit in people on earth, and on earth in general, but in the whole universe. |
349. The Life of Man on Earth and the Essence of Christianity: Sleeping and Waking – Life After Death – The Christ Being – The Two Jesus Children
21 Apr 1923, Dornach Tr. Automated Rudolf Steiner |
---|
Good morning, gentlemen! Have you thought of a question? Questioner: Doctor was kind enough to tell us what it is like when the spirit has left the body. The last lecture was very clear to me and my colleagues. But in “Theosophy” there is a sentence that says that when the spirit is separated from the body, the soul still retains desires. That is still a very hard nut for us to crack. I have another question, something completely different. Dr. Steiner: Very well, tell me the second question too. Questioner: By chance I came across a brochure by a Dr. Heuer. I assume that Dr. Steiner has read the brochure, so that we already know that. This Mr. Hauer presents Dr. Steiner as if he were saying nothing new, as if we already know everything that he says about anthroposophy, that we already know all of this. And then, among other things, he says that the most incredible thing about anthroposophy for him is the story of the two Jesus children. The questioner must also say, however, that this is also incomprehensible to him about the two Jesus children, how the one Jesus child comes from another world. Dr. Steiner: I also have the brochure, I just haven't cut it open yet. The questioner continues: If it is not immodest, he would like to ask the doctor to say something about the Jesus family. Further question: I have been asked by my colleagues in the last few days about the Christ-being. It would be very dear to me if the doctor could say something about the Christ-being. Dr. Steiner: Is there perhaps another question to be asked so that we can deal with it in context? Now, I would first like to address the first question about desires. The fact of the matter is this: if you look at what a person experiences differently from how a plant or a stone experiences things, then you will find that a person experiences their world of thoughts. A plant does not show that it has a world of thoughts. Thoughts are there, living in the plant. But to look for conscious thoughts in a plant would be nonsense. However, something remarkable has come about in the external way in which science partly proceeds today. Today there are all kinds of scholars, and since there are also those who cannot quite believe that there are only physical processes everywhere, that there are only mineral, inanimate processes, they at least assume that there is something spiritual. But since they know nothing about the spiritual itself, they say: the spiritual expresses itself in the fact that some being performs this or that. There are plants that behave in the strangest ways. For example, there is a plant called the “Venus flytrap” because of the way it behaves. This Venus flytrap has rosette leaves that bear a leaf blade at their broadened stem. It consists of two parts. There are three bristle-shaped outgrowths on both sides of the blade. When an insect alights on the leaf and touches these outgrowths, the two wings of the leaf fold together so quickly that the small insect is trapped. So that is how it is. Those who only talk about the soul in an external way and know nothing about it, they say: just as there is a soul in a human being, there is also a soul in a plant. I always have only one thing to say to these people: I know a little instrument into which you put a little bacon that has been browned a little: a mousetrap, and when the mouse sips the bacon, the mousetrap closes by itself. So anyone who draws conclusions from such things, as with the Venus flytrap, must assume that there is a soul, and should also say: the mousetrap has a soul because it also closes by itself. It always depends on the reasons for assuming the matter. You see, that is precisely the characteristic of anthroposophy: it starts from reasons in everything, whereas the others, if they do assume a soul, know nothing about the soul and ascribe a soul to a plant like this, when something similar happens to it as to a mousetrap when an insect comes near it. But in anthroposophy there is nothing of outward appearances that lead to it, but there is the real realization of the soul. Part of this realization of the soul is that man develops desires. It is desire when, for example, he is thirsty. When I am thirsty, I have the desire to drink water or something else. Now, fine; the thirst is satisfied by the water. All of this is desire, where you wish for something from within your organism, want something; that is always desire. You see, there is something people never think about. They do not think about the mental state that underlies when a person wakes up. Not true, when a person wakes up, now examine the people, how much more carbon dioxide in the blood and so on, that is, they examine only the physical conditions. But the truth is that man wakes up because he has desire for his physical body. When you fall asleep at night, you no longer have any desire for your physical body. It is completely filled with fatigue substances. There is no longer any good in there. The soul, that is, the ego and the astral body, want to recover outside of the physical body. In the morning, when the physical body has recovered, which the soul, which is outside the physical body, notices from the condition of the skin, because it is close to it, the soul goes back into the physical body because it desires to be inside the physical body as long as the physical body is able to live at all. So the soul has the desire throughout life to live inside the body. Take something else: you cut your finger and it hurts you. There is the finger (drawing $. 202). Now you cut into it, and it hurts you. What has happened? Yes, the physical body is torn a little bit apart. You can cut into the physical body, but not into the astral body. I will now draw the astral body into the physical body. If I draw it large, there is a gap where the astral body is. But it wants to be able to enter the place where the physical body is torn apart as well. It has the desire to be inside the body and cannot do so because the body is torn open. That is what the pain is all about. Now imagine that if the soul has this desire for the physical body throughout life, then something must happen after death. If as a child you develop the craving to eat as much sugar as possible, then you develop the craving to get sugar. And if at a certain stage in your life someone finds it useful for you to eat less sugar, you still have the craving for sugar. Let's say you have developed diabetes, and you are therefore no longer supposed to do it – yes, it takes a long time to get rid of that habit! You always have the craving for sugar and have to slowly get rid of it. You know, if someone drinks a lot, he develops a craving for it; he has to slowly wean himself off it. If someone eats opium, as I told you the other day, and they are weaned off it, they will go crazy with desire for the opium. Now, throughout life, there is a craving for the body in the ego and astral body. After death, the soul always wants to wake up back into the body. First it has to get out of this habit. This process takes about a third of the whole life. In fact, sleep takes a third of the whole life. On the first day after one has died, one wants to go back. You want to do what you did on the last day of your life; on the second day you want to do what you did on the day before that, and so it goes on. So you have to get rid of the desire for this third of your life. So after death you don't have any thirst or hunger cravings, but you do have a constant craving for everything you experienced through your physical body. After death, it is like this: you have grown fond of the area around your hometown all your life. You have always seen that. Yes, you have seen it through your physical body. Only a Turk believes that he has something much more beautiful in terms of meadows and flowers and so on after death than he has here on earth. So you have to get out of the habit of all that. And it is precisely this getting out of the habit that makes it necessary to say that the desires still remain. Is that not understandable? (Answer: Yes!) So after death, the desires for the physical body and for life in general remain, but not hunger and thirst, because for that you need a stomach; you no longer have that, you put it in the coffin. But after death, you still have the desire to see everything that you saw during your life. But now something else is added: after death, one can see just as little in the spiritual world, into which one has now entered, as a child here in the physical world can immediately see. One must first acquire this. One must first grow into the spiritual world. So that the first state after death, one third of life, consists of being still blind and deaf to the spiritual world, but still longing for the physical world. That occurs after two or three days, during which, as I have related, the dead person looks back. And only when he has given up that, does he grow into the spiritual world and can then perceive in a spiritual way. Then he no longer has any desire for the physical world. So anyone who can judge the soul's life can also judge what remains of the physical life. And of course it is not only pleasant things that remain. If someone had the desire to constantly beat people, the desire to beat people remains, and then he must slowly get out of the habit of doing so. These are the things that one can see. Anthroposophy is concerned with recognizing what can actually be seen of the soul, that is, what is actually visible. That is what it is all about. As for the other question, the question of Christ Jesus, we will deal with it today, so that nothing remains unsatisfied in you. However, I must first say something about history. I have told you about various conditions on Earth in very ancient times. Now it is like this: we have conditions on earth that are actually no older than about six to eight or nine thousand years, according to scientific observations, so let's say six to nine thousand years. I have already drawn your attention to this. Before that time, you could not go very far from here, because you would enter the so-called glacial region. Switzerland was where you can walk around today, all the way down, covered by glaciers. The glaciers flowed in valleys where the rivers are now; the Aare, the Reuss and so on are only the thin, diluted glacier streams that remain from the distant, distant past. But this period, in which a large part of Europe was covered by these glaciers, was preceded by a very different time. Because the earth is constantly – you just have to consider large periods of time – rising and falling, rising and falling. If, for example, there is sea here (he draws) and land up there, then this land is floating in the sea. All land floats in the sea. Can you imagine that? It is not that it goes down to the bottom, but that the land, all the lands, float in the sea. There is also sea under the lands. Now you will say: Why doesn't it float back and forth like a ship? I will tell you something else first. In fact, the countries are floating in the sea, but suppose it were Great Britain, England (it is drawn). England is an island. It actually floats in the sea, but it floats near Europe, and the distance does not change. But even according to scientific views, it was not always the same as it is now, but there were also times when the water went up over it. Then England was under the sea. If you crossed this bit of sea, you naturally came to the ground. So the thing is that there were times when England was under the sea. Yes, it's even like this: if you examine the soil of England, you will find certain fossilized animals in this soil. But they are not all the same. If you examine a piece of soil from England here and further up, you will find very different fossilized animals, and even further up there are yet again very different fossilized animals and even further up yet again very different fossilized animals. Four successive layers of fossilized animals can be found in the soil of England! Where do these fossilized animals come from? When the sea floods a land, the animals die. Their shells sink, and the animals are fossilized. If I find four successive layers in a soil, the land in question must have been flooded by the sea four times. A layer was always deposited there. And so it is found that the land of England has been four times above water and four times below. Four times England was above water, it rose again and again. Now you may ask: Why does such an island, which is actually floating in the water, not go back and forth like a ship? Yes, because it is not held by the earth. If it were only a matter of the earth, it is impossible to imagine how everything would be shaken up! England would soon be dashed against the coast of Norway, then it would be dashed against America and so on, and all the countries would be dashed against each other, if it only depended on the earth. But it does not depend only on the earth, but the constellation of stars in the sky sends out the forces that hold a country in a certain place. So it is not the fault of the earth. It is the star constellation. And you can always prove: when the situation has changed, the star constellation has changed – not the planets, of course, but the fixed stars. Those who do not want to know about this world do the same as people who say that the powers of thought come from the brain alone. If I have the soft ground and just make my footprints, and someone comes down from Mars for my sake and thinks that the footprints come from the earth, the earth sometimes throws up the sand, sometimes pulls it down – it is not at all the case, I pushed in from outside. And so the convolutions of my brain have also come from outside, from mental thinking. It is the same with countries that have come over the earth: they are held by the star constellations. So we must not only see spirit in people on earth, and on earth in general, but in the whole universe. Such things, gentlemen, just imagine, older people knew them, but in a completely different way than we do today. I will give you a proof. There is a great Greek philosopher who lived several centuries before the birth of Christ, his name was Plato. He knew a great deal. He tells us that one of the wisest of his countrymen, Solon, the lawgiver of Greece, was once a guest at the home of an Egyptian. The Egyptians were the more advanced people at that time; only the Greeks behaved more cleverly than we do. The Greeks revered the Egyptians, as we shall see, but they did not learn Egyptian, the ancient language of the Egyptians. The Greeks did not learn Egyptian! Our scholars must all learn Greek! The Greeks were much cleverer. We do not imitate what they did with it; but we do imitate their language. Our scholars become narrow-minded precisely because they do not grow into what is original to them on earth, but are distracted from what is peculiar to human beings by having to find their way into a very old language. Now, in Switzerland they are fighting against this; but it took a long time. Our boys, if they wanted to become doctors, first had their heads turned by having to learn Greek. I'm not saying this because I also had to learn it, I love the Greek language very much. But that's what some people should learn who want to get something out of it, but not those who want to become doctors or lawyers, and forget it again later in life. Plato recounts that Solon visited an Egyptian, who told him: “You Greeks may be an advanced people, but you are still children, for you know nothing of the fact that the lands are constantly being pulled out over the sea and submerging again, that upheavals are always taking place. The ancient Egyptians still knew it; the Greeks no longer knew it. Only Plato still knew it. He knew that there was land out there in the Atlantic Ocean, where ships now sail from Europe to America, that the west coast of Europe was connected to the east coast of America by land. But the old truths have been forgotten. And that was because people had even more unconscious knowledge. We have acquired abstract knowledge. We need that for our freedom. For people in those days were not free; but they knew more. And Lessing, I told you, gave something to the fact that these ancient people knew more than the later. So we come to say to ourselves: It is the case that there were ancient times when people, through their own nature, knew that there is a spiritual reality everywhere. People have known this for quite a long time. There is, for example, a Roman emperor, Julian, in the 4th century AD. This Julian was taught by people who still had some knowledge of Asian wisdom. And this Julian said: There is not one, but there are three suns. The first sun is the physical sun, the second is a soul sun, and the third sun is a spiritual sun. The first is visible to us, the other two are invisible. That is what Julian said. Now something very strange happened. Julianus was vilified throughout history because he did not believe in Christianity. But he believed in what people knew before Christianity. And when Julian once had to lead an Asian campaign, he was suddenly murdered. It was a kind of assassination attempt. But this assassination was carried out by those who hated him because he had appropriated the old knowledge. You must remember that even in ancient times, things were handled quite differently than they are today. The Egyptians were terribly clever people, as I have already mentioned. But they did not have a writing system like ours, they had a pictographic writing system. The word was always similar to what it meant. And the people who were scribes in Egypt were taught: Writing is something sacred; you must imitate things very faithfully. And do you know what happened to anyone who made a mistake in copying pictographs out of negligence? They were sentenced to death! Well, today people would look on in amazement if someone who made a spelling mistake were sentenced to death because of it. But human history does not go as one dreams it would. Indeed, the ancient Egyptians were wise and cruel in some respects. Of course there is progress in humanity. But just because writing was something so sacred to them, we must not deny that they were wise in other respects and knew things that are only now gradually emerging in anthroposophy, in a completely different way. They dreamt it, and we know it; it was a completely different way. Well, you see, Julianus was right. It is actually the case that just as you have soul and spirit in your body, so the sun has soul and spirit. That is precisely what the one who knows the soul says. He is not saying that the Venus flytrap has a soul, because it is nonsense to say that everything that moves in some purposeful way has a soul. But he knows that when the light shines, it has a soul, it moves soulfully; because he perceives that. And so it was known: the sun contains a living being. Now you know that it is said: In Palestine, at a certain time, Jesus of Nazareth was born. You see, gentlemen, Jesus of Nazareth grew up - you can actually verify today what is in the Gospels, so it is true - as a fairly simple boy. He was the son of a carpenter, a joiner. That's right. He grew up as a fairly simple boy. Now he still had a great deal of ancient wisdom. Therefore, it is based on truth that at the age of twelve he was able to answer the scholars very cleverly. It still happens today that a twelve-year-old boy gives more sensible answers than a “disinstructed” scholar! But from this it was clear that he was a very gifted boy. Now he grew up, and when he was thirty years old, something suddenly changed in him. That is a fact; something changed in him all of a sudden. What changed in him when Jesus was thirty years old? When Jesus was thirty years old, he suddenly realized, prepared by his earlier great knowledge, what was no longer known at the time, which only a few hidden scholars had from an ancient wisdom, of which Julian later found it. He realized through an older knowledge: The whole universe and the sun contain soul and spirit. He was imbued with what lived in the universe by knowing this. If you know it, you have it. Now in those days, in those times, people had to be taught things in pictures. What I am telling you today can only be expressed in this way from the 15th century onwards. Before that, we did not have these concepts. So it was expressed in such a way that it was said: a dove descended, and he received the Holy Spirit within him. Of course, those who were able to perceive it knew that something had happened to him. That is how they expressed it, and in one gospel it says: “Then a voice from heaven was heard: ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’.” Translated correctly: “This is my beloved Son, today I have given birth to him.” That means that what happened at the age of thirty was correctly understood as a second birth. With Jesus' birth, only Jesus was born, who was more talented than the others, but who did not yet have this feeling within him. This was felt to be something extraordinarily important. And that is the baptism of John in the Jordan. There was something that caused me great concern at the time. In science, there are such concerns, gentlemen! You had, as you know, the four Gospels, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Don't you think everyone knows today that these four Gospels contradict each other? If you start reading in the Gospel of Matthew and read about the family tree of Jesus, and compare it with the family tree of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, they contradict each other. People say: they contradict each other. But they don't think any further about why it contradicts itself. At most, they say: one invented it, the other invented it; one just invented something different from the other, that's why things can contradict each other. But that is not the case. It is like this: Goethe, for example, says of himself: “I have the stature of my father” — that is, he looked a lot like his father.
Now, maybe at the age of three, Goethe was not yet able to tell stories; but maybe at the age of nine he could. Then he had to say: “Beautiful, from my mother I have the desire to tell stories, it has been passed on to me from my mother, it has come into me from my mother. I tell you this because it will help you understand how my concern about the contradictions in the gospels has been resolved. Now I have taken these two gospels, the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Unless someone carelessly says that it is invented, no one can understand why these two things contradict each other. And I have now examined the spiritual science behind it and found that not just one boy was born, but two Jesus boys were born. Both boys had the name Jesus. There is no need to be surprised about that; for example, if a boy in Austria is named Joseph, then there is no surprise if another boy born at the same time is also named Joseph. There is no need to be surprised if two boys are named Seppl or Franz. So there was no reason to be surprised if two boys were named Jesus at the time. And both lived together until they were twelve years old. And then something strange happened: because they lived together, the gifts that one of them had suddenly appeared in the other. Just as a son can inherit from his mother, so one of the Jesus boys inherited gifts from the other. And the one Jesus boy, from whom the other had inherited the gift, did not live on, he died at twelve years of age, he died soon after. So the one was left and, through the shock that the other perished, had the wisdom of the other shine within him. This is precisely how he was able to shine before the scholars. His parents could say: Where did he get all that? — If you ascribe it to psychic influences, then that is also explainable. And such psychic influences simply exist. One of the Jesus boys did not have the wisdom until he was twelve; the other died, and the wisdom was transferred to the one Jesus boy, partly because of the shock of his death, partly because they were friendly with each other. And he went through the baptism in the Jordan. Two Jesus boys were born, not one. In the twelfth year, one of them died, and the other was suddenly awakened by this shocking event and gained the wisdom of the other. And then you find out: the one evangelist, Matthew, described the one Jesus boy for the childhood of Jesus, and the other, Luke, described the other Jesus boy. And so the two agree with each other. I didn't make that up. It was the result of my research. And that's why I'm talking about the two Jesus boys, precisely because of a certain science that the others don't have. And from this you can see that the same principles that are followed in natural science, that when the causes are there, the effects occur, are also followed in spiritual science. You don't just assume that you say: Well, yes, two people have invented something, the one Jesus child of Matthew is invented, the other Jesus child of Luke is invented. At the time when the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written, there was no question of such an invention at all. People spoke figuratively; but they did not invent anything, because the things were taken so seriously that a few centuries earlier in Egypt, anyone who wrote down something that was not true was sentenced to death. We cannot be so reckless as to say that people in earlier times invented anything. They expressed things in pictures, but it would never have occurred to them to invent anything. He who says that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke could have been invented is speaking as one who knows nothing. But that is what today's scholars and theologians say. Since they cannot explain the contradictions otherwise, they have to admit that they are contradictory. But the fact that we know there are two Jesus children, one the Jesus child of the Gospel of Matthew and the other the Jesus child of the Gospel of Luke, clarifies the story in the best possible way. Now Mr. Hauer, who is a private lecturer in Tübingen and also a traveling teacher, has come forward – speaking for anthroposophy does not bring in any money today, but speaking against anthroposophy does – and has come forward against anthroposophy, this Mr. Hauer now comes and finds: That is something strange. — Yes, gentlemen, it is of course something strange because no one has thought of it! It is of course something strange if I claim that there were not one but two Jesus children; one of whom died at the age of twelve. That is of course something strange, of course. There is no need to be surprised that it is something strange. But it is precisely because not everyone said it that it is strange. That is why Hauer finds it strange. This can be found on one page of Hauer's book. On the other page, you will find: Yes, Steiner says nothing that was not already known. Yes, gentlemen, what Mr. Hauer did not know, he finds strange. He complains about that. On the basis of what he has gleaned from somewhere — because the old wisdom has been had, and today it is of course recorded everywhere — I do not glean it, but he does! — he comes to the conclusion: Yes, Steiner says nothing that others have not already said. So you are at the mercy of these people. Whenever something needs to be said, they say: He says nothing new. If I write a geometry book, I naturally have to include the Pythagorean theorem; it was discovered by Pythagoras 600 years before the birth of Christ. Of course, if I have a number of new things in it, I must also have the Pythagorean theorem in it; today I will prove it somewhat differently, but it is in it. One cannot be reproached for that, that what was already there is rediscovered after it has been forgotten! And so it is that many of the things that spiritual science claims today, in a different way, because it is not the case in the same way, can be found in a different way in the writings of the ancient Gnostics, who are the writers of an ancient time. At the time when Christ was around, there were still such Gnostics, and even later. They wrote down such ancient wisdom, but not out of science, but out of ancient knowledge, not like anthroposophy. Now people compare what anthroposophy says and what the Gnostics say. This is a little bit like what happens with the Gnostics again, because it is true. And then they say: Well, he is saying nothing different from what the others have said! But with the two Jesus children, Mr. Hauer cannot say: Steiner came upon something that the others already knew! Because he has no idea that anyone has ever known that. I have not yet cut open the whole book, but what I have seen of it is full of such contradictions. It does not make sense at all when you compare one page with another. But that is how today's scholars do it. On the one hand they say: Others have said that many times before. - And on the other hand they say: He is not saying anything new, we already knew all that! Yes, but if they already knew all that, why are they grumbling about it? And on the other hand, when something comes that they didn't know, they find it incredible. But you see, after I had found this, really found it through spiritual research, of the two Jesus children who lived side by side until the twelfth year, I knew nothing but this, that it is a fact. Then we once saw a picture in Turin. The picture is very strange. It shows the mother of Jesus and two boys, one of whom is not John, because John is known from all the pictures where Jesus and John are together, but there are two boys in it who look quite similar, but still cannot be brothers, because they look alike, and yet not alike. It is quite clear that they are two little friends. Whoever first found that there were two Jesus children would then have to consider what this picture means. This picture was created relatively late in the centuries; but when it was still known that there were two Jesus children, an Italian painter painted the two Jesus children in one picture. If Hauer had known today that this was still the case from ancient knowledge, he would now say: Steiner simply saw the picture in Turin! He would say that he already knew that anyway. Then he would say at the same point: Steiner is not claiming anything new, he is only claiming the things that have been known anyway. - Such are people! It is actually quite dreadful when you look into these apparently stupid contradictions with which people today fight anthroposophy. On the one hand, what I say is supposed to be pure invention, invented by me. Now, let us assume that it is invented by me; but then the same person cannot say in the same book: He is not saying anything new! — Because he himself claims that I invented the things I say, and reproaches me for it. And then he says that others have known this all along. It is, in fact, sheer madness what is being done. Whereas if one really approaches the Christ event and investigates it as one otherwise investigates facts, then it becomes clear: this tremendous gift, which the boy Jesus already had, came about through the interaction between the two boys. I will prove to you that such an exchange can take place, unbeknownst to other people. Let me tell you about such a case. There was once a little girl who already had older siblings; these other siblings learned to speak quite well. This girl did not learn to speak properly at first; but a little later, when the other children learned to talk, she began to talk. But she spoke a language that none of the adults understood. She invented a language for herself. For example, she said “Papazzo,” and when she said “Papazzo,” she meant the dog. And in a similar way, she invented names for all the animals. These are scientific facts. These names are not found anywhere. Now this girl had a little brother after some time. And the little brother learned this language very quickly from his sister. And they spoke to each other in this language. The little brother died when he was twelve or so, and the sister stopped using this language and also learned the language of the others. She then married later and became a completely ordinary woman who told people that this was the case. She went through it herself. It is so. The two children communicated with each other in this language, talked to each other in this language; no one else understood it. Gentlemen, that can be the greatest wisdom! Only the two of them understood and agreed with each other. From this you can see how one is influenced by the other. Why should not the one Jesus boy, who died at the age of twelve, have known something that no one understood at all! You still experience that when you know the facts. So, nothing else is being claimed than what, in the most eminent sense, can also be truly scientific. Now, people who do not accept this as scientific are simply unable to piece together the facts. The person who knows that something like this exists, that two children speak this language that no adult understands and share spiritual things with each other in which the adults do not participate, he who understands this, he understands everything I say about the two Jesus children up to the twelfth year. And that this was an extraordinary event is not surprising. It does not happen every day. And in the form in which it happened, it has only happened once in the history of the earth, that this tremendous enlightenment comes to this man at the age of thirty. Now, you see, here the story of Christ is transformed into real science, into real knowledge. And you can't help it; it transforms itself through knowledge. Now you can say: All right, so at the age of twelve, Jesus was already enlightened to a certain extent by the other one who died. But at the age of thirty, yes, he suddenly became a different person again, which the evangelist expresses by saying: A dove flew down and settled on him. Yes, gentlemen, the fact is that he has become another. What has happened then? I have already explained to you: when a child is born, the germ is there. The spirit of the universe must act on the germ. It is no wonder that the spirit of the universe is at work there when it has even worked on the island of England, as we have seen. What happened to Jesus in his thirtieth year could not be explained from the earth. Just as a human being is created through fertilization, in that one thing influences the other, so at that time the whole universe had an influence on the thirty-year-old Jesus, fertilizing him with soul and spirit, and through this he became Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus, to put it better. For what does it mean? Christ means he who is enlightened. And Jesus is an ordinary name, as it was common in Palestine, just as today in Austria one is called Sepperl, Joseph, or in Switzerland so and so, where one also finds similar names in every house. So Jesus was the name of many, and he was called the Christ because this enlightenment occurred. Yes, gentlemen, when you read my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact,” you will find it demonstrated there: This enlightenment has been artificially produced in certain people before, only to a lesser extent. These were then called mystery ways. The difference between those who were educated in the highest wisdom in ancient times and the difference between them and Jesus Christ was that these mystery wise men were taught by others in the schools that were called mysteries in those days. With Jesus, it happened by itself. Therefore, it was a different process. In the ancient mysteries, those who ascended to the highest knowledge simply became “Christ”; just as today you need not be surprised if someone has studied until the age of twenty-five - before that he was the very ordinary Joseph Müller, but now he is suddenly a doctor. That is how one became a “Christ” in the old mysteries, although not in such an innocent, that is, simple way; because of course you can be the biggest idiot and still become a doctor at the age of twenty-five! That was not possible in the old mysteries; there it was a deep, deep wisdom. There you became the 'Christ'. It was a title given to the highest sages, as the title 'doctor' is given today after a certain course of study; only in those days, when it was done properly, it was real wisdom. And with the Christ it just came naturally. But that means that what was otherwise given by the earth, by people, was given from the farthest reaches of the universe. This only happened once. As a result, world history took a different turn. And no one can deny this secret, not even those who are not Christians, that world history has taken a different turn. The Romans did not take this into account, they did not know it. Christianity was founded in Asia Minor by Jesus Christ. At the same time, the Romans advanced from the old republican state to the empire, and they persecuted the Christians. The Christians had to make themselves catacombs underground. There they reflected on what their Christianity was. What was done above ground? The circuses were built, and people, the slaves, were tied to the pillars and burned as a spectacle for those sitting in the circus. That was above ground. And down in the catacombs, the Christians practiced their religion, which at that time was just for enslaved people. Religion just means connection - religere = to connect -; down there, the Christians practiced their religion. And what about a few centuries later? The Romans are no longer there in the old way. What they used to watch in the circuses for their own pleasure, the burning people, was gone, because the Christians had taken its place. That is how it is in the world. And so it will come to pass: those people who today speak as Dr. Hauer, whom you mentioned earlier, will be swept away. And that which today, though not physically but spiritually, must work in the catacombs, will indeed work! But one must only realize how it is a matter of real science; and how those who do not study much today are annoyed that something like this comes out! When I come back, I will be able to continue with that. But essentially, you will already have understood which path this is taking. |
218. Planetary Spheres and Their Influence on Mans Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds: Christ and the Metamorphoses of Karma
19 Nov 1922, London Tr. George Adams, Mary Adams Rudolf Steiner |
---|
When for example you are living in and with those spiritual Beings who have their physical reflection in the constellation of Aries, the Ram, you will work with the Hierarchies of Aries in forming your future head, which is indeed a Universe in itself. |
And while, upon the scene of Aries, you are at work with the Hierarchy of that constellation, meanwhile the planets are shining; as they shine physically down on to the Earth, so do they shine spiritually to the other side. Say for example that you have worked your way from Aries to the next constellation—Taurus, the Bull. While working with the Hierarchies in Taurus, you elaborate the region of your larynx in its connection with the lungs. |
218. Planetary Spheres and Their Influence on Mans Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds: Christ and the Metamorphoses of Karma
19 Nov 1922, London Tr. George Adams, Mary Adams Rudolf Steiner |
---|
To-day I would like to bring our recent studies to a certain conclusion. To begin with, as I may remind you, you are already aware what awaits the human being immediately after death. His physical body being laid aside, he is in a condition in which he can never be, in the prevailing consciousness of our time, during earthly life. Within and about him he has his I, his astral body and his ether-body. From birth till death, as you know, the ether-body remains united with the physical. Even in sleep it is only with the I and astral body that the human being is outside the physical,—and thus outside the etheric body too. Now, however, then for a short while after death (only a matter of days, you will remember), man still inhabits his etheric body—his body of formative forces—and he is thereby enabled to look back on the whole course of his past earthly life, which is in fact always contained in the etheric body. As I have mentioned in the recent public lectures, this can happen in Initiation too; when man is able to set the etheric body free, he beholds the entire vista of his earthly life. Yet it is not for long that we can retain the etheric body after death. Belonging as it does to the entire Cosmos, the ether-body is always wanting to expand. Even during life, if we lost hold of our physical body for a single instant, our ether-body would at once be tending—drawing as it were by an elastic power—to dissolve into the whole Cosmos. Only the physical body, in which it stays throughout our life, holds it together. And then when the physical body’s coherent power, is no longer ours, straightway the ether-body begins to expand, so much so that in a few days' time it is there for us no longer. It is as when you take a little drop of water; the drop is there before you; warm it and it evaporates and expands in all directions; then it is there no more—you can no longer see it. So does the ether-body expand into the Cosmos after death; after a very few days it is there no more. Initiation-wisdom shows that this can last only for few days. For by Initiation we are able—as it were, artificially—to make use of the ether-body even during earthly life. Though it remains in the physical body, we become able to disregard the latter, using the ether-body as such. At once we have the panorama of our earthly life until the given moment. Yet at the same time we see glistening and shining forth in our etheric body a reflection of the great Universe. The entire starry Heavens are there in the etheric body. Indeed you cannot ever see the ether-body apart from the physical without its showing you at once the starry world on every hand—the planets and the fixed stars too. It is the planets and the fixed stars which at long last receive our etheric body. Initiation-science shows that we can hold the pictures in our etheric body only for three or four days at the most; then they vanish, and to avoid being disconnected altogether we must return into our physical body before this happens, otherwise the ether-body will no longer hold together. And thus indeed, a few days after death the ether-body vanishes, we have it no longer. Yet we ourselves are thereby progressively received into the world of stars. At first, when divested of our ether-body, we feel like strangers amid the world of stars. Only the Moon, only the Lunar forces seem as it were familiar to us there. The Moon emerges on the one hand as in an after-image of its physical appearance. Yet at the same time we now begin to discover what kind of spiritual forces are connected with it. We realise how with the Moon the Jahve-power of the Universe is connected, as was explained in our last lecture. For the soul who has passed through the Gate of Death, the Moon is transformed, as it were, into a colony of spiritual Beings, and Jahve is their Leader. Now after death, we really learn to know what Initiation Science tells of, for pictures of these spiritual truths can be received by Initiation Science even into earthly life. We learn to know what it signifies that man on Earth must die. Yes, it is through the Moon—through the Jahve Powers—that we learn the significance of death. Looking at death from the earthly standpoint, we see the physical body of a human being rendered lifeless, while all the soul and spirit and the etheric life that filled it hitherto have disappeared. The physical body is received by the forces of the Earth, that is to say, the Elements,—earth and water if it is buried, or air and fire if cremated. The human physical body, laid aside by the human being who indwelt it, is now received by the forces of the Earth. Yet we must ask: What does it mean for the physical body to be thus laid aside by man and given over to destruction? Truth is: When man is born and has in him the force of childlike growth—nay, even before his birth, when, as an embryo in his mother's womb, as to the body he belongs already to the Earth—it is these very forces, made manifest as destroying forces when man dies, which help to build his body. The self-same forces which take leave of the human physical body at death, made manifest in death in that the physical body is disintegrated, play an essential part in building up this very body. Through his ethereal and subsequent astral experiences the man himself goes on into the Spiritual World, yet something of importance happens also here on Earth. From the physical body a spiritual apparition is released, emerging, as it were, out of the human body. While the real human being goes upon his way, here on the other hand, we might say, another being issues from the human body. Truly it is so when a human being dies. There lies his physical body the man himself is departing from it, and simultaneously another being leaves it. What is this other being? It is the forces of the Moon, living as they do also here on Earth. Concentrated though they be in the cosmic entity we call the Moon, the range of these forces extends far and wide, and on the Earth they are made manifest in the powers of Death. Moreover the powers of Death are at the same time those of Birth. They lead the human being into earthly life and are made manifest when he leaves it. We thus begin to realize the deep connection between birth and death. Take all the human beings who die in successive times. From each of them in turn the apparition of death, as it were, comes forth and joins a spiritual atmosphere which is there around the Earth no less than is the air we breathe. This spiritual atmosphere contains what death gives up and birth receives. From the very forces that soar upward, as it were, from human corpses, human beings in their turn, are born. Spiritually, our powers of growth are intimately connected with this sphere of death-force—or forces made manifest in death—which surrounds the Earth. Now, my dear friends, think of the following: These spiritual forces—at once of death and birth, as we have seen—are forces of the Moon, and into them is mingled all that the dead human being, all along the way from birth till death, accumulated by way of moral powers, moral values. Have you been good in any way,—in the sphere of these death-Moon-forces you will find, as it were, a specific being, imbued with inner force deriving from your goodness. Yet the same being is imbued with all that derives from your badness. It is a being we ourselves engender, all the time, while living on the Earth. Unaware of it as we are in our normal consciousness, we bear it in us. We leave it every night when we are sleeping, for in effect this entity remains in the physical body when we but go out of it in sleep. I told you, did I not, that our moral and religious feelings are left behind in sleep in the physical and ether-body? There too is left behind this real being which we ourselves give birth to during earthly life—the bearer of our Karma. This being now remains with us after death so long as we are in the realm of the Moon forces. Indeed, just because this being keeps us amid the Moon-forces, that is, in the near neighbourhood of Earth, during the first time after death we are obliged to remain connected with these Lunar forces and with our own Karma, so much so that we live again through all the deeds we did on Earth from birth till death. We have to live them through again in a spiritual form of being, three times as fast as we did on Earth. We live them through again in backward order. So do we spend a period of time after death, obliged to do things intimately connected with our earthly deeds. We are united, it is true, no longer through the physical body with the Moon-forces of death (for we have laid the physical body aside), and yet as beings of soul and spirit we are obliged to carry out deeds intimately connected with our deeds on Earth. And as we thus go through our life again in backward order, our Karma is ever more convincingly brought home to us. Yet with all this, my dear friends, you must remember to mostly judge spiritual matters in a spiritual way. If you were fond of a human being on the Earth, you may now be feeling: Today, alas, after his death, he will be living again through all that was bad or faulty in his actions! From your physical and earthly standpoint you are sorry for him. But if you asked the soul himself who has gone through the gate of death, whether he too judges it thus, he would answer: “No. I should not want to be undergoing this after-death life in any other way than with the judgment which is mine here and now, as a being of pure soul and spirit experiencing all things again, so to impress them ever more deeply into the true being of my soul. If I have been responsible for any deed which makes me appear a morally imperfect man, and if I were not to go through it all again deeply and inwardly as I am doing now, I should not feel the strong impulsion to make it good. I should not want to free myself from this my failing. Precisely by experiencing the deed all over again in soul and spirit, the urge is born in me to overcome it by a better action.” Not for anything in the world would the dead forgo this opportunity to make good again, for this alone will give him power to achieve his full humanity,—will give him strength to be made whole. In this respect you may be sure, even as a landscape looks very different seen from the valley or from a mountain-top, so life itself looks different seen from this physical world where we are now and from yonder side. Only too often the relationships of earthly life to the life after death, which after all transcends the physical, are misjudged for this reason. Think of another example, my dear friends. Maybe you are a really good anthroposophist, very keen on spiritual science, but you are living in the same house and in very close connection with someone else who detests it, who regards Anthroposophy as his greatest enemy. Now you may say, you are extremely sorry to be causing him so much pain by your attachment to what he detests. From the aspect of earthly life this may be rightly judged. Seen from the other side however, very often it turns out in such a case that it lay in the other person's Karma not to be able to come near to Anthroposophy owing to hindrances brought from a former life, making him in his head a very hater of it. As to his head, he simply cannot bear it. He becomes vexed and excited every time he hears tell of anthroposophical truths. Yet all the time, in his inmost heart he may not be averse to them at all, and when he dies it may well be that he has after death a very deep longing for Anthroposophy. Often therefore you will be doing just what is needed for one who hated it during earthly life, if after his death, you turn to him with thoughts derived from Anthroposophy, so as to bring them to him. Paradoxical as it may sound, not a few relatives who raged and stormed when another member of the family became [an] anthroposophist have become deeply attached to it after death. In this respect once more, you must take seriously what I said during my last sojourn here: we judge life very differently from yonder side than we do from this side. Yes, man becomes very different after his death. For you should also think of this: In physical and earthly life there is your brain inside the cavity of your skull; a little farther down there is the lung, and then the other organs. More outwardly, towards the surface of the body, there are your senses. Through all that is thus contained within the limits of your skin, you are enabled to perceive the outer world. Now after death you yourself go out into the world. At first the stars are only shining into your etheric body, but when the etheric body too has been laid aside, you will actually identify yourself with the stars. Before, you had in you a brain; now you will have in you the Spiritual essences of Venus, Mercury, the Sun, and so on. You can truly say: Even as on the Earth I had in me my lung, my heart, my kidneys and so forth, so Moon and Mercury and Sun are in me now. You in your inner being are at one with the great Universe. Do you imagine that the Universe will provide you with the same kind of perception and understanding as your brain does? The world will look very different to you now! The Earth itself looks different when we behold it from the Sun than when we ourselves are on Earth and looking upwards to the Sun. So then we undergo in all reality this backward recapitulation of our life, during which time we still remain in close connection with Moon and Mercury and Venus, while our relation to the more distant stars—to Mars and Jupiter and Saturn, and to the Fixed Stars above all—is as yet feebly developed. When we have thus retraced our actions all the way backward until birth, then do we judge them from the standpoint of the stars; and in our judgment of ourselves we are no longer merely looking backward now, but forward. We have the kind of judgment which tells us: You must do thus to balance out this action, and thus to balance out another action, and so on. We are immersed in the recapitulation of our life during the first twenty or thirty years after death, according to the age we reached,—it takes a third as long as earthly life. (Children who have died go through it quickly: while for very little children, you will easily conclude, it scarcely comes into question.) Connected still in soul and spirit with your past earthly life, you live it through again in backward sequence. And when at last you have arrived at birth, only the “memory” of it will remain with you. It is as though at this moment you were to lay aside yet another body. We are accustomed to say, we lay aside the astral body. What happens in reality is that the living action in which you were hitherto immersed is now transformed for you into a thought-picture,—only it is a consciousness pertaining to the stars that thinks it, whilst here on Earth an earthly consciousness was thinking. As you set forth now on your further way within the spiritual world you will be living with the Beings of whom the physical refulgence are the Sun and Moon and Stars. With the spiritual Beings of the Stars you will now live on. Moreover into this life amid the Stars you bear with you the memory of the Karmic entity you had to lay aside with your astral body. Once more, the “laying aside” means nothing else than that the life we were immersed and actively engaged in is but a memory to us now—a memory which we as cosmic Man take with us. Weighted with this memory—the legacy of our earthly life—we step forth into a purely spiritual world. * While undergoing the aforesaid recapitulation of his past earthly life, man is essentially within the planetary sphere. Advancing from the spiritual forces of the Moon to those of Venus, Mercury, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and at last Saturn,—living therefore between the spheres of Moon and Saturn, feeling within himself the Planetary Cosmos—throughout this time man is still undergoing the backward recapitulation of his recent Earth-life. A few days ago I was telling you of how the Moon- and Saturn-forces counteract each other. Whereas the Moon harbours the forces which bring man down into the earthly realm, seeking ever and again to hold him fast on Earth, Saturn on the other hand seeks to bear him out into the Universe of Stars. Yet we must understand this truly, for when man goes into the Universe of Stars between death and new birth, he is no longer seeing the physical reflection of the Stars; he is living now with the Beings, to whom the several Stars belong. When after death we have passed the sphere of Saturn, we become ripe to experience the pure spiritual world. In the book Theosophy this moment is described as the passage from the soul-world into Spirit-land. Trammeled however as he is by the memory of his past earthly life, man is unable to achieve the crossing by himself. He needs a helper in the spiritual world,—and of this too, you will recall, I was telling in recent lectures. In the age before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Initiates in the Mysteries could say to their disciples: If you have duly sent your religious offerings up into the spiritual world, you will be able to find the sublime Being of the Sun who goes with you from the time when you with yourself take leave of the Sun-sphere. He in His spiritual Being will accompany you to the other side, where, so to speak, the Sun shines spiritually outward into cosmic space, even as He himself shines physically down on to the Earth. The sublime Being of the Sun will then go with you; He will escort you to the Saturn sphere and farther out from thence into the sphere of Stars. The spiritual Sun will, as it were, be shining for you; thus and thus only will you win your passage from the soul-world into Spirit-land. Now through the Mystery of Golgotha it has grown different. The Being of the Sun came down to Earth,—took on a body in the Man, Jesus of Nazareth. By turning now in heart and mind and feeling to the Christ and to the Mystery of Golgotha, already here upon the Earth, man receives power that will enable him to get beyond the spheres of Sun and Saturn, so to gain entry into Spirit-land,—in other words, into the world of Stars. Then comes the state in which man undergoes his further life between death and new birth. If I am now to tell you more about this state, in the way man of present time—after the Mystery of Golgotha—can undergo it by virtue of the power of Christ which he has received, I must insert the following. In the first place I must point out what it really means, when we are out yonder in the world of Stars, in Spirit-land, for us to have the “memory” of our earthly life. The following will help you understand it. Getting beyond the Saturn sphere, we enter into what was named the Zodiac, in ancient world-conceptions. Though it was meant to typify the fixed-star-heavens as a whole—the Spirit-land, in other words—in the sum-total of the stars which constitute the Zodiac we have a comprehensive picture of the path which Man must undergo, to build from the entire Cosmos, with the help of the Beings of the Hierarchies, the Spirit-seed of his physical body for the next incarnation. If you should say: “Here upon Earth we have such interesting work to do, building up civilisation, working for our fellowmen and so on; how meagre it must be to be engaged only in forming a body for ourselves,” you would be making a great mistake. Nothing that you can ever do on Earth can be as great and manifold as what you have to do when from the starry worlds you build this temple of the Gods, the human body. This is by far the greater task and the more manifold. Nor do you merely make your own body for yourself. As we shall see in a moment, you really make it so that it belongs to mankind as a whole. Associated as you are by Karma with one human being or another, while building your new body you imbue it with the tendency to bring you together again in a beneficial way, so that you and they together can make good. You are working for mankind in a far higher degree out there than you are able to do while here on Earth. Now as to how you work amid the Stars, let me describe it in more detail, only remember please what I said before. Telling of yonder worlds sublime, I can speak only in pictures; the human concepts of our time are not so formed as to enable one to express it otherwise. In its entirety, once more, you have to build the spiritual seed of your next physical body. From the ingredients of the whole Universe you built it. When for example you are living in and with those spiritual Beings who have their physical reflection in the constellation of Aries, the Ram, you will work with the Hierarchies of Aries in forming your future head, which is indeed a Universe in itself. No matter how contracted here in the physical body, in your head you carry the entire Cosmos—the Cosmos seen from the aspect of Aries. And while, upon the scene of Aries, you are at work with the Hierarchy of that constellation, meanwhile the planets are shining; as they shine physically down on to the Earth, so do they shine spiritually to the other side. Say for example that you have worked your way from Aries to the next constellation—Taurus, the Bull. While working with the Hierarchies in Taurus, you elaborate the region of your larynx in its connection with the lungs. Mars in the meantime, from the planetary spheres, shines up into the sphere of Taurus, and in the movements of Mars there is expressed all that you did with your organs of speech, rightly or wrongly, while you were on the Earth. Every untruth which a man uttered shines at him spiritually from the planet Mars while he is working through the Taurus sphere. You may imagine therefore, what is the nature of the “memory” we there retain of our own deeds. We find it after death, written into the Universe—nay, as the very Logos, speaking from the Universe towards that other side of world-existence. Thus for the region of the speech-organs we have to work at our future body, hindered or helped according as we lied or told the truth. And so it is, to take another example, when we are going through the constellation of Leo. It is the Sun now that sheds spiritual light on all the imperfections of our heart—more or less deep or superficial as we have been in our feelings and in our sympathies and antipathies, belonging as these do to our temperament and blood-circulation while on Earth. So while we work and build at our future body, the language of the Planets, sounding into the cosmic spaces, utters forth the whole of our preceding life. It is so in deed and truth, strange as it may seem from an earthly standpoint. We watch the planetary movements from yonder side, even from without,—Mars for example moving in the face of Taurus. The movements form themselves into a cosmic writing, but the writing is not mute, it actually sounds into the Universe. Such is the writing of the Stars, by our own deeds inscribed into the cosmic spaces. Small wonder if on our return we prepare what will then be ours—the measure of our Karma. For we can only build the physical body for our future life under the ceaseless influence of this speaking of the Stars. So then we work our way through the spiritual realm. We spend the longer time upon this spiritual journey, the greater the proportion of our full consciousness in the past earthly life to the dim consciousness we had as a little child. For we are now in a state of consciousness transcending the consciousness we had on Earth, even as our earthly consciousness as grown-up men and women transcends the dreamy state of childhood. There are distinctly these three stages. If a man lived to the age of thirty and spent the first five years in the dream-consciousness of childhood, he will have lived in fuller consciousness six times as long. So now again he lives six times longer than his entire Earth-life in the still fuller consciousness which pertains to him out there amid the Stars. We understand it therefore quite simply: a child who dies will live only for a short time between death and new birth. The older a man grows, the longer must he spend there. For by his longer life on Earth his higher consciousness was darkened for a longer time,—I mean the higher-than-earthly consciousness which he underwent in the spiritual world after his former death. The longer this was darkened, the longer must he work to make it light again. For we must enter right fully into the light. When we are fully in the light, then comes the time between death and new birth which you will find described in one of the Mystery Plays as the midnight hour in the spiritual life of man. It is about the middle of the time between death and new birth. This is the time when our consciousness, amid the Beings of the Hierarchies in the spiritual world, is most steeped in Spiritual light. Yet at this very time we also experience most deeply: Down yonder in the planetary sphere is the abiding record of all that you, man, did. You may not abandon it, you cannot leave it thus,—so say we to ourselves—nor can you ever alter it while you are here; you can change it only by going down to Earth. And so the urge arises, to descend again to Earth,—to resolve, as it were, between Moon and Saturn. The forces of the Moon are drawing for us once again and we resolve to follow them, so to set forth on our returning journey. If a man grew to adult life in his last incarnation, it will be centuries later. The nearer we now come to the planetary sphere and notably to the spheres of Mercury, Venus and Moon, the more we lose the consciousness of community with the Beings of the Hierarchies. To tell it more precisely: the consciousness we enter into now contains only the revelations of these spiritual Beings, whereas we felt ourselves till lately living among them and within them. While preparing the human head of our next incarnation for example, we felt ourselves working, very intimately with them. Now they appear to us as if in pictures. Meanwhile the forces of the Moon arise within us. We feel once more: we are a being destined to live a life of our own. Although not yet in a physical body, we have a premonition of living in and by ourselves, a stranger to the Cosmos. No longer do we see the spiritual Beings as they really are; all that we now possess are the pictures of them. Whilst we are going through these pictures, the spiritual seed of the physical body which we were preparing falls ever farther from us and disappears. We are obliged to witness this: the spiritual seed has fallen from us; it has gone down into a physical mother and father, entering into the forces of generation, into the stream of generation upon the physical Earth. So it is in all reality. The physical body we also were preparing shrinks and contracts and falls into the streams of generation,—into a physical father and mother upon Earth,—while we ourselves as soul and spiritual being are left behind, feeling that we belong to what has fallen from us, yet cannot unite with it directly. In this condition—it is our only means of re-uniting with it—we now begin to draw to ourselves the forces of the Ether that are there throughout the Cosmos; we begin to form our ether-body. We do this when the spirit-seed of our physical body has already fallen from us and is down there on Earth, preparing the physical body in the mother's womb, while we are gathering the forces with which we form our ether-body. With this etheric body we then unite ourselves, when the human seed has already been for a time in the mother's womb. Such is the process of return to earthly life. We have been living with the pictures—no more than the pictures—of the spiritual Beings; now we incorporate what we can take into ourselves only through the forces of the Moon. What until now was but the “memory” of our own Karmic entity, we now take in as real effective forces, right into our ether-body. Therefore we afterwards appear on Earth in such a way that we of ourselves bring about the unfoldment of our destiny, our Karma. It is while passing through the Lunar forces that we conceive the longing thus to live and fulfil our Karma upon Earth. Such, my dear friends, is the cycle through which man lives from death till birth. First he experiences the ascent to independent consciousness within the spirit-sphere. Thereafter, this consciousness is gradually steeped again in twilight; the Spirit-sphere remains with him in pictures only, and he receives into himself the will to Karma. He comes back to Earth, to work once more in a physical body. So he goes on, till through a sequence of such Earth-lives he shall become capable of yet another metamorphosis, another mode of being. In present earthly time it is as I have been relating. In his descent from the starry spheres, man has the memory of his former Earth-existence and from this memory he now takes his start. Having prepared it for himself within the starry spheres, at his descent he now unites with his own physical body. But we are living now in a very important period of Earth-existence, the significance of which we can understand only if we first know what has just been related—how in the starry spheres we prepare and work and win for ourselves the physical body which we eventually put on when we come down again to Earth. For at this very point something of great significance is about to happen in our epoch. I will say more of it in the third part of the lecture. * I have often drawn attention to the fact that in the last third of the 19th century changes whose origin is in the spiritual world began to affect the whole course of human earthly life. The gates of knowledge were in a way opened to the spiritual world. If man is duly active on his own part he can now reach into the spiritual world with true cognition, whereas for many centuries before, while material knowledge was developing, this possibility had not been given. The change took place to begin with in the spiritual world, in that the Beings who had been leading hitherto were replaced by that spiritual Being who for his likeness in character to what is traditionally known by this name may be described as the Being of Michael. Michael, we may truly say, has taken over the Spiritual guidance of mankind. The fact that Michael is now entering the soul-life and spiritual life of mankind has its visible counterpart on Earth. An ever growing number of people begin to realize that man is livingly and constantly connected, not only through his physical body with the Earth, but through his soul and spirit with the spiritual world. Man is thus growing into conscious spiritual knowledge. This is the one aspect of the leadership of Michael, but there is also another. To be sincerely filled with spiritual knowledge also affects the human heart, the human soul. The more the light of Spiritual Science spreads, the less will it remain a mere theory; it will pour out into human feeling,—it will be present in the form of true human love, in ever widening circles. What, in effect, is the relation to the human being of all the learning and information accumulated in the last few centuries? It lives as knowledge in the human head; it does not reach the entire man,—it fails to flow from the head into the human being as a whole. Knowledge of this sort then becomes a kind of tumour in the soul. Failing to receive the proper forces from the rest of the human being, it gradually hardens. This is what happens when we merely grow more clever in our head, and the appropriate feelings, springing from the rest of our human being, no longer permeate our increasing cleverness. A kind of cancerous growth becomes established in our soul and spiritual life. The head itself cannot truly thrive if the whole human being is not living in the world with heartfelt love, and also willing what he loves. Yet man will never understand what the leadership of Michael intends unless he goes out to meet it with his own active contribution—unless he opens out his mind to spiritual enlightenment and becomes filled with the human love which springs from such enlightenment. When he does this, then also will he realize with ever growing comprehension the significance of Michael's leadership and guidance. The people of the Old Testament,—they too spoke of a leadership of Michael, and in so speaking they conceived Michael to be the servant of Jahve. Michael therefore, in the Old Testament times, worked with those spiritual forces which are the forces of Jahve. He was the minister of Jahve. He helped in the inexorable fight of which I spoke before—the fight with the Ahrimanic powers. In our age, on the other hand, Michael's leadership now begins to help regulate the historic destinies of mankind, it also is signifying that the word shall presently come true: the leadership of Christ will spread over the Earth. It is as though Michael goes before, bearing the light of spiritual knowledge, while after Him there comes the Christ, calling man to universal, all-embracing love. Now this entails a change not only for the Earth; it involves changes also for the life man undergoes between death and a new birth. Since ancient times of earthly evolution it has been as I today described it. The human being prepares the spiritual seed of his own physical body, which he takes over when he steps forth into his new life on Earth. Now however, since the Christ-Michael-leadership has begun, men will be able ever increasingly to make another important decision before they come down to Earth. Today as yet only a few will do so; a growing number will as time goes on. For spiritual knowledge sheds its light not only on the Earth, but out into the higher realms as well. Through the present leadership of Michael man will now learn to make a very significant decision at the moment when he has already taken on his Karma—taken it into his new ether-body—but is still only setting out upon the way into the physical. With the increasing spread of spiritual knowledge on the Earth and with man’s growing experience within himself of universal human love, the following possibility will arise for mankind in coming time. When at the point of descending into a next earthly life, man will be able to say to himself: ‘This is the body I have been preparing; yet, having sent it down to Earth and having now received my Karma into the ether-body which I have drawn together from the Cosmos, I see how it is with this Karma. Through something that I did in former lives I see that I have gravely hurt some other human being.’ For we are always in the danger of hurting others through the things we do. The light of judgment as to what we have done to another man will be particularly vivid at this moment when we are still living only in our ether-body, having not yet put on the physical. Here too in future time the light of Michael will be working, and the love of Christ. And we shall then be enabled to bring about a change in our decision,—namely to give to the other man the body we have been preparing, while we ourselves take on the body he prepared, whom we have injured. Such is the mighty transition which will be taking place from now onward in the spiritual life of men. It will be possible for us of our own decision to enter into the body prepared perforce by another human soul to whom we once did grievous harm; he on the other hand will be enabled to enter into the body we prepared. What we are able to achieve on Earth will thus bring about Karmic compensation in quite another way than heretofore. We human beings shall be able even to exchange our physical bodies. Indeed, the Earth could never reach her goal if this did not take place; mankind would never grow into a single whole. In preparation for future planetary embodiments of the Earth, a time must come in earthly evolution when it will be impossible for one individual to enjoy things on the Earth at the expense of another. As in a plant the single leaf or petal feels itself a member of the whole and shares—pictorially speaking—in the weal and woe of the whole plant, so must a future come for the planet Earth when one human being will not want to enjoy happiness at the expense of the whole, but man will feel a member of mankind. And it will be the true spiritual counterpart of this when we shall learn to prepare the physical body even for one another. We are in fact emerging from the epoch when each of us had so to speak, his own continuation to himself as to the physical body. In the new epoch that is now beginning—brought on by the present leadership of Michael—we shall work at the spirit-seeds of the physical bodies of men in such a way that one works for another. Moreover, as our incarnations of the Earth go on, this will lead even further. For in thus working for one another in the spirit, we shall prepare for a yet later time, to tell the character of which will sound completely strange and paradoxical, yet it is true. For in that more distant future, human souls even while on Earth will be able to go across into the bodies of those to whom they have done some special hurt and to receive the other soul into their own body. That will be when the Earth herself will have passed into quite new conditions. Yet it is also being prepared for by the actual and impending change of which I have been telling, and which is coming about in the spiritual world through the leadership of Michael. From this example you can see most vividly the essence of “ideal magic”. If while on Earth you are receptive to the illumination that comes from Spiritual Science, then you are truly helping on the leadership of Michael. Then you are helping on those spiritual forces which will enable men so to live for one another, that even in deciding upon the physical body they are to take, they will consider what is best for all mankind. When we are choosing our physical body, this will determine our decision. If you prepare for this event even now on Earth—prepare for it by the Wisdom-of-Man and by the Love-of-Man—what you are doing will have reality in the spiritual world. And this is true “ideal magic”. It is the true “white magic” as it was called in olden times, and into it mankind is now about to enter. I wanted to tell you of this most vital factor which has now come into the evolutionary pathway of mankind. We must not shrink for want of courage when it is needful to unveil facts of the spiritual world entering deep into the life of man. For the whole future of mankind depends on man's learning really to live with the spiritual world as naturally as on the Earth he lives with the physical. Mankind must learn to be at home again in the spiritual world as it was in the beginning, in primeval time. Only by doing so shall we be helping mankind's future. In the true sense we must understand the word of Christ: “My Kingdom is not of this world”. How then shall we understand it? Did He not after all come down to Earth? Should He not therefore have said: "My kingdom is of this world?" No, He did not say that, for He intended gradually to transform the Earth into a Kingdom that should not be utterly absorbed in earthly things, but should pass over, ever more and more, into a spiritual state. Christ's Kingdom is not as the Earth was until the Mystery of Golgotha, nor as it still continued, running on in the old lines as if by dint of inertia. The Spirit shall prevail upon the Earth,—such is His Kingdom! And this will come to pass when mankind truly comprehends the leadership of Michael. Nor is true comprehension proved in any other way than by the quest I have now indicated—the quest of spiritual illumination and of human, Christ-filled love. |
312. Spiritual Science and Medicine: Lecture XVIII
07 Apr 1920, Dornach Tr. Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
---|
Let us suppose a winter season, in which there is a powerful influence on the solar activity—and note please, not the operation of light, but the solar action—through the outer planets, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. A constellation of that description in the winter operates quite differently from the unimpeded action of the Sun, when Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are at a greater distance. |
Thus everyone with this disposition and resident in those parts of the earth under the special influence of the constellation in question, become liable to the complaints grouped as influenza and grippe. These conditions and factors must be in operation, in order to create favourable soil for such ailments as influenza. |
Now turn again to the regions outside the earth; let us assume that a special constellation results from the position of Sun and planets, which gives rise to a powerful reflection in the lower abdominal organs of man. |
312. Spiritual Science and Medicine: Lecture XVIII
07 Apr 1920, Dornach Tr. Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
---|
I think that it may after all be necessary to introduce into our medical and biological study what we might term an inquiry into tho real origins of pathological conditions. Of late there has been a cumulative tendency to disregard the origins proper, and to fix attention on superficial appearances and events. And with this superficiality is bound up the habit in current medicine and pathology of beginning the description of a disease by stating what bacillus caused the disease by invading the human organism. Of course it is very easy to refute arguments and objections against the invasion of micro-organisms, for the simple reason that we no longer need to point out that these micro-organisms really exist. And since they have different characteristics in different diseases, it is again quite comprehensible that stress is laid on these differences, and specific diseases linked with specific types of micro-organisms. Now an obvious error enters this whole point of view, namely, that attention is diverted from the primary element. Suppose that in the course of an illness, bacteria appear in considerable numbers in some bodily area. It is only natural that they should cause symptoms such as are the result of any foreign body in the organism, and that from the presence of these bacteria all manner of inflammations arise. But if all these results are ascribed wholly to the action of the bacteria, attention is actually directed only to the activity of these micro-organisms. Attention is thus drawn away from the true origin of the disease, for whenever lower organisms find suitable soil in the human frame for development, that soil has been made suitable by the real primary causes of the disease. And attention must be directed to the region of these primary causes. We must therefore return to the paths of thought we have already traversed and for a short time give them our attention. Consider the stratum of plant life that covers the earth's soil, i.e. the entire content of vegetation. We must understand that this flora which grows outwards from the soil towards cosmic space, is not only sent out from the earth, but is also drawn outwards by forces that are in continuous operation, and as essential to the growth of plants as the forces working from the earth itself. There is a constant interaction between the forces passing into the plant from the earth, and those acting on the plant from the cosmos outside the earth. What is the essential factor in this interaction that permeates our whole environment? Should these cosmic forces attain their full expression and take full possession of the plant, and should the planets not ensure that these forces can withdraw again, then the plant in its growth from the stalk to the blossom and seed would have the perpetual tendency to become animal. There is a tendency towards animalisation. But this tendency, which expresses Cosmic forces passing into the plant, is counteracted and balanced by the opposite tendency towards suppression of the plant-nature in mineralisation. I would thus emphasise the essential nature of plants: it holds the balance between the tendency to salification, to the deposit of mineral constituents within the vegetable substance, i.e., to mineralisation; and on the other hand to self-ignition, to animalisation. This is what is perpetually at work in external nature. This same counteraction, however, goes on, interiorised and centralised, in the human organism itself. By virtue of its lungs the human organism is a genuine earth in miniature, and all the pulmonary processes work downwards in the same manner as the forces of earth work upwards into the plant, passing from the earth to the plant's organisation. All that comes to meet the inner metabolism of the lungs, from the breathing and heart activity, has the same method of operation as the external cosmic forces. Now there is a special requirement of the human organism: all that is focused from out of the organism, in the heart's action, must be held apart from the forces that organise and concentrate themselves in the internal metabolism of the lungs. These two sets of activities may only interact through the barrier—if I may so express myself—of an etheric or even an astral diaphragm. They must be kept separate from one another. And so we come to the question: Does this diaphragm—and I only use the term in order to give a picture—really exist? Is there such a diaphragm, which prevents the activities of head, throat and lungs from blending with those of abdomen and breast, except through the external rhythm of the breath? Yes—there is such a diaphragm, and it is nothing less than the rhythm of breathing itself. Here you find the attunement of the upper with the lower sphere in man. What is termed rhythmic activity in man, the rhythmic pulsation, whose external physical manifestation is in the rhythm of the breathing, continues into the etheric and astral activities and holds apart the telluric forces of the upper human being, which centre in the lung, and the cosmic forces of the lower human being. The latter forces, with their expression ultimately in the heart, work upwards from below, just as cosmically they work from the periphery inwards, towards the earth's centre. Suppose now that this rhythm is disturbed and does not work normally. In that case, the symbolic diaphragm, to which I have referred—which has no physical existence, but which results from the interplay of the rhythms—is not in order. Then there may ensue a process analogous to excessive action of the earth on vegetation. If the earth's saline action on plants became excessive, the plants would become too mineral. And the result is that the etheric plant inserted into the lung, that grows out of the lung so to speak as the physical plant springs from the soil becomes the cause of pulmonary sclerosis. Thus we find that the trend of the plant towards mineralisation may become excessive even in the organism of man. And the contrary trend towards animalisation may also exceed normality. When this happens, a region is created in the upper portion of the organism which should not exist. In this region the affected organs are embedded as in an etheric sphere, and this favours the multiplication of what should not multiply in our organism, namely the minute forms of life between animal and plant. We need not trouble to inquire whence they come. We need only interest ourselves in the factors which create a favourable sphere of life for them. This favourable sphere of life should not exist for them. It should not arise as a specially enclosed sphere; it should permeate and operate throughout the whole organism. If it does so, it sustains the life of the whole organism. If it works only within a small enclosure, it becomes the appropriate medium for the presence and multiplication of little plant-animals, of microscopic forms of life, which can be detected in much—if not in all—that causes illness in man's upper organic sphere. So in going back to the rhythmic activity and its disturbance we must trace the emergence of a special area within the organism, and thus solve the riddle of the working of bacilli in it. But unless we go back to the spiritual causes, we shall not reach the solution of the riddle. Just the same processes as work on the life of plants—in the external sphere of the earth that is to say—are also at work in the same region on the external life of animals and of man. These forces here (see Diagram 27—orange) at work on animal and man, come from the extra-telluric cosmos, and are met and opposed by forces that come from within. The latter, coming from the interior of the earth, are localised in man in certain organs of the upper bodily sphere; whilst the forces that pour on to the earth from outside are localised in man in organs belonging to the lower bodily sphere, again, if I may so express myself, a dividing wall must be set up between the two forms of action. The regulation of this separation is normally achieved through the activity of the spleen, and in this connection we again find rhythm active in the human organism, but a rhythm different from that of respiration. The rhythm of the breath is in short pulsations, and it continues throughout life; it must be in order, if illnesses of the upper sphere—or such diseases as can affect that upper sphere only—are not to develop. Bear in mind that there may be illnesses which affect the upper sphere yet have their original in the lower—for the process of digestion extends both above and below. This we must clearly realise. We cannot picture man divided diagrammatically into compartments, but the various members interpenetrating one another. At the same time, there must be a barrier between that which works from above as though coming from the earth, and that which works upwards from below, as though from celestial space. For we do indeed send the forces of our lower sphere out against those of our upper, and there must be a regulated rhythm for each human individuality between these two sets of forces; a rhythm manifesting in a proper alternation between waking and sleeping. Every time we wake, there is in a certain way the one beat of this rhythm, and every time we sleep, there is the other beat. And this rhythm of waking-sleeping waking-sleeping, is intersected with other minor rhythmic oscillations which are due to the fact that in the waking state, we wake in our upper sphere but sleep in our lower. There is a continuous rhythmic systole interplay, between the upper and lower man, which is only captured so to speak in major rhythms through the alternation of waking and sleeping. Now suppose that the barrier set up by this rhythm between the upper and lower man is broken through. What happens in such a case? As a general rule, what happens is that the activities of the upper sphere break through into the lower. This means that an etheric breach takes place. The forces that should only act etherically in the upper organic sphere of man penetrate downward into the lower. It is a breaking through of more subtle forces; but by this fact a special area is created in the abdomen, which should not be localised there, but should permeate the whole body. The result is a species of poisoning, a toxication of the lower abdominal regions. The functions proper to the lower abdominal sphere can no longer be adequately performed under this intrusion of the upper sphere. Moreover, this new sphere creates a favourable condition for lower organisms of the type intermediate between animal and plant. So you may sum up as follows: Through the downward escape of forces from the upper sphere, something is provoked in man that becomes abdominal typhus. The creation of this atmosphere provides, as a by-product, the suitable soil for the typhus bacilli. In this way you have a clear-cut distinction between what is primary and what is secondary. You will realise that it is necessary to distinguish between the original causes of such illness and the secondary phenomena, which are simply inflammatory and due to the proliferation of legions of intestinal fauna—or flora, especially in the smaller intestine. All the physical manifestations include the working of the bacilli whether vegetable or animal—we need not trouble ourselves with their precise origin—for they could neither in the smaller intestine represent the reaction to this escape of the upper activities of the human organism into the lower activities. These physical manifestations include the working of the bacilli whether vegetable or animal—we need not trouble ourselves with their precise origin—for they could neither vegetate nor “animalise” if an atmosphere had not been suitably prepared. All this is a result, a secondary phenomenon. And the curative effect must be sought not in the treatment of the secondary manifestations but of the primary. We shall discuss this later, for it is only possible to speak about these things if one is in a position to trace their true causes. This is hardly possible within the boundaries of the official medicine of today for current medicine excludes a point of view that passes from the material process to that of the spirit. But beneath and behind all material existence, there is spirit. And you will easily envisage the symptomatology of typhus abdominalis if you keep in mind what has just been put before you. Remember that this particular disease is very often accompanied by disturbances of consciousness. The symptoms of pulmonary catarrh appear because the upper sphere is deprived of what emerges in the lower. In the same way, the organs mediating consciousness in the upper human sphere, can no longer work properly if what should be mediator to their activity has broken through into the lower sphere. If you once grasp this primary causation, you will have the whole picture of typhus abdominalis before you. The whole series of external and apparently independent symptoms, which otherwise are only perceived from without, so to speak, become so clearly evident that they might almost be painted in their inner relationships. And in certain circumstances, the human consciousness may be so strongly impressed that there arises an urge to objectify prophetically this picture before it portrays itself in the organism. In such cases, a person will feel compelled to depict or symbolise the elements of which his upper organic sphere is deprived, by painting blue spots of colour on the wall, and to represent the elements of which the lower sphere is deprived by spots of red. In the case of an individual with a belief that his vocation is art, as distinct from tailoring or shoemaking, but with little knowledge of the craftsmanship of painting, you may find that if at the same time he is robust enough to repress the constantly arising tendency to diseases of the lower abdomen, these diseased conditions are exteriorised and “thrown off” on wall or canvas, instead of developing internally. The paintings of the expressionist school supply examples of this remarkable activity. Examine much of what comes to light in these paintings, in the red and yellow colors; there you can trace the painter's condition in the lower abdominal sphere. And in the blue and blue-violet parts you can find a clue to his condition in the upper bodily sphere, in the lungs, and all that moves rhythmically upwards towards the head. If you study such things carefully, they will lead you to discover a remarkable harmony between the general type of action of a given individual and his internal organisation. You will be in a position to form a certain intuitive impression of the functional conditions of his body from his way of living and behaving. For as a matter of fact it is wholly erroneous to believe that the soul activity of a man in the external world, through actions and behaviour, is only connected with his nervous system. It is connected with the whole man, and is an image of the whole man. We can grasp intuitively in children how man's intellectual part behaves and how it strives towards the later age. We only have to consider, e.g., how somebody may be doomed in later life to cope with all the embarrassments of an arrested growth; and how in childhood he showed plainly that the forces that did not allow him to complete his growth make him clumsy and rough in his behaviour. From the way in which the child behaves, as for instance whether he puts his feet lightly on the ground or strongly, you may form an intuitive picture of the way of its growth. Numerous other manifestations suggest that the whole gesture and behaviour of the individual is nothing else than the interplay of internal organic parts, transferred into movement. It would indeed seem wise to include these subjects in the medical curriculum. When a medical student is about twenty the most favourable conditions obtain for this kind of knowledge. In the thirties one loses this gift; it becomes harder to enter into these things. But it is possible to educate and train oneself to enter into such intuitive knowledge. In spite of the devastating routine of the intermediate and later states of our university education, it is possible (by means of a return to the forces active in childhood) to train this insight into the human being. But if organised medical study attached due weight to the more intimate aspects of plastic anatomy and physiology, it would be of immense assistance in the whole treatment of mankind. So too must those diseases which can appear as epidemics be studied according to their primary causes. To take an example: in all persons with a disposition to disturbance and damage of the head and breast rhythms, which find their crudest expression in the respiratory rhythm, there is a tendency to be much affected by a certain atmospheric and extra-telluric conditions. Others again, in whom the respiratory system is congenitally sound, are able to resist such influences. Of course we must make allowances for additional influences, and other factors of a complicated kind, but this brief and bare outline may make the principle understood. Let us suppose a winter season, in which there is a powerful influence on the solar activity—and note please, not the operation of light, but the solar action—through the outer planets, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. A constellation of that description in the winter operates quite differently from the unimpeded action of the Sun, when Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are at a greater distance. In such a winter the atmospheric conditions will differ from the norm; and there will be a remarkable influence (on persons constitutionally so disposed) upon the rhythmical activity between chest and head, of which the most conspicuous is the act of breathing itself. We may state, however, that such cosmic conditions considerably strengthen the inclination to make this rhythm regular in people who have been born from sound conditions, and who are inwardly robust—though their external appearance may be very slight and delicate. In the case of such persons the respiratory rhythm is very well regulated and so also is the whole rhythm between chest and head. Such a stabilised inner rhythm is not easily disturbed from outside; serious injuries are required to affect it. But on persons with an irregularity of this rhythm, the external influences referred to work very strongly to disturb still more the already disturbed rhythm. Thus everyone with this disposition and resident in those parts of the earth under the special influence of the constellation in question, become liable to the complaints grouped as influenza and grippe. These conditions and factors must be in operation, in order to create favourable soil for such ailments as influenza. The following example is of a more complex nature. The whole rhythmic activity within man is a unity; although the one continuous rhythm which has its crudest expression in breathing, and that other and wider rhythm determined by the alternation of sleep and waking, form a separate unity in themselves. It may come to pass that owing to a weakness of the upper rhythm in breathing, that other and wider rhythm determined by the alternation of sleep and waking, form a separate unity in themselves. It may come to pass that owing to a weakness of the upper rhythm (between chest and head), the lower rhythm becomes relatively too pronounced. It follows that the upper process, already enfeebled and out of gear, is made more so by the powerful impact of the lower, which is focused in the splenetic function, as well as in others of which we shall treat later. If this lower rhythm is working too strongly upwards, it causes a tendency to a kind of hypertrophy of the upper digestive process, with all its sequelæ. Again a most favourable sphere is created for certain lower organisms. There ensue phenomena of inflammation and paralysis in the upper organisation, even rudiments of organic malformation, new organic formations; in short we have the picture of diphtheria. Diphtheria might be termed a sort of break through from below upwards, an inversion of the typhus breaking through from above downwards, and its main origin is as I have described. Of course, in all these conditions, the age of the individual must be taken into account. You need only keep in mind that during childhood the whole interaction of the upper and lower spheres, and of the rhythmic action that links the two, must differ widely from that of later life; e.g., during childhood there must be much more powerful and pronounced action of the upper human being upon the lower than in maturity. Actually the child “thinks” very much more than does the adult. This may sound strange but it is true; only, the thoughts of the child are not conscious thoughts, they are absorbed into the organism, manifesting in its growth and formation. Especially in the earliest years of life, thinking activity is used mainly for the formative processes of the growing body. Then there comes a stage wherein the body does not need to use up so much of the formative forces, and thus they are, as it were, dammed back, and become the fundamental forces of memory. So memory emerges only when the organism requires less formative force for itself. The forces which supply the organic foundation of memory are the transformed growth forces and formative forces plastically at work at the beginning of life. Everything is fundamentally based on metamorphosis. That which we observe as a spiritual element, is only the re-spiritualisation of what worked in a more bodily way when the spirit incarnated into the material. So it can be understood that there must be strong defensive forces in the child to cope with particular processes of the lower abdominal sphere. This sphere is the special scene of action for cosmic-celestial forces, that is to say, for extra-terrestrial forces. Now turn again to the regions outside the earth; let us assume that a special constellation results from the position of Sun and planets, which gives rise to a powerful reflection in the lower abdominal organs of man. What will be the result? It will be relatively unimportant in adults, for in them the upper and lower organic rhythms have reached a certain equipoise. But in children there will of necessity be a vigorous resistance to the cosmic conditions that seek a mirror and replica in the abdominal parts. So if the cosmic configurations act forcibly on the lower abdominal sphere in the child, the upper bodily sphere must defend itself with all its powers. From the convulsive exertion of powers which should not be used so much in the immature upper organic sphere, Cerebral Meningitis can result—Meningitis cerebro-spinalis epidemica. Here, then, you have an illustrative example of the influx of such diseases into man from extra-human nature. If you keep these origins in the background of your thought, as it were, you will be able to reconstruct the whole clinical picture of meningitis, including the typical rigidity of the muscles in the nape of the neck. For this strain and effort of the upper organic sphere in the child, is bound to lead to inflammatory states of the upper organs in the membranes of the brain and spinal cord, and these acute inflammations provoke the other symptoms typical of meningitis. We need above all to sharpen our perception for seeing and as a whole both as regards the interactions of his organic parts, and as regards the interactions of human functions with the external world, and even with the extra-terrestrial world. These hints are not meant to increase the meddling with horoscopes and so on, which I consider the greatest nonsense in the form it takes today; but we should realise the origin of the forces in question; such knowledge is necessary for the healing art. It is not so important to be able to trace this or that condition to the quartile aspect of such and such stars—that knowledge can sometimes help towards a cosmic diagnosis, but the main matter for us is to be able to cure. So tomorrow I propose to pass from our present inquiry to the consideration of substances in external nature that are defensive, i.e., contain defensive powers against the extra-telluric influences pouring into the human organism. It would seem necessary that this distinction between the upper and lower organic spheres in man should receive recognition in medicine, for I suggest that such recognition would promote greater co-operation within the profession in the interests of human health. Too often, a physician loses interest in man as a whole, if he specialises in one direction. Far be it from me to suggest that physicians should not specialise; the manifold technique evolved in the course of time, necessitates a certain amount of specialisation. But if specialisation has occurred, then, as an equipoise, the socialisation, the co-operation of the specialising experts should steadily increase. This becomes obvious if we study a condition on which a question has been put: Pyorrhœa alveolaris, the inflammation of the alveolar rim. If pyorrhœa develops, it is not solely owing to some local cause, as many suppose, but it is due to a tendency of the whole organism, a tendency localised only in the mouth and teeth. If it were accepted as part of the professional routine that dentists who observed the onset of this condition were somehow to suggest to physicians that the patient suffering from this particular alveolar inflammation was very probably also liable to diabetes, much good could be done. For that same process—already outlined in these lectures—which manifests as diabetes, is also (while it remains localised in the upper sphere and amenable to treatment) the germ of Pyorrhœa alveolaris. It is far too little realised that the lower sphere can, as it were, seize or invade the upper; and in consequence there is either an impoverishment or an undue augmentation of the one sphere or of the other. If the inflammatory tendency is first manifest in the upper sphere, one form of disease ensues; if first manifest in the lower sphere, there ensues its polar opposite. So very much depends on this knowledge. It will therefore also be readily understood that the whole etheric body, containing the forces of growth in man, must work differently in childhood and in maturity. In childhood, the etheric body must intervene much more in the physical functions; and must have organs as its direct points of attack, so to say. It is especially necessary in the foetal stage that the etheric body should have these points for direct working upon the physical; but the need persists in early childhood, when there is not only organic formation, but growth as well, and during growth the plastic activity must be exercised. Hence the need for organs such as the thymus gland, for instance (and even to some extent the thyroid as well); these have their greatest task in childhood, and then enter on a phase of regression, and if too much seized upon by the physical forces, degenerate during the retrogressive phase. During childhood, there must of necessity be a powerful chemism at work within the body, which is replaced, at a later stage, by the working of warmth. One might say that during the life of the individual, man passes through something of which the prismatic spectrum is a symbol: inasmuch as we observe the more strongly chemical extremity (blue and violet), and then the luminous portion (green and yellow), finally the other extremity, connected with heat (red). For man experiences constitutional changes of this nature and in this direction. (see Diagram 27). During childhood, the human being is more dependent on activities working chemically, then passes on to those which act through light, and those acting through warmth. The organs which enable the etheric body to promote the chemism in the physical body, are such glands as the thyroid and thymus. On the activity of these organs (to which in a certain sense the chemism is bound) there also depends the particular individual complexion and skin colouring—that is to say, on the etheric activity behind the physical organs. Among the functional offices of the adrenal glands is the determination of the complexion, and if the adrenals degenerate there must be changes in pigmentation in consequence. As an example you need only consider what is known as Addison's Disease, arising from degenerative conditions in the adrenal glands—when the whole skin becomes brown. All this strongly indicates a certain chemism in the human organism. It is at work more especially in the foetus, while the action of light has more importance after approximately fourteen years of age. And then appear the activities connected with the life of warmth. Here we have a most significant indication and gauge for the whole course of human life. The period of childhood, and before birth, especially the latter, the foetal stage, represents a certain predominance of the salt-process; early middle life is predominantly a mercurial process and later life and old age, in the relation referred to, represent a kind of sulphur process. This implies that in childhood most attention should be paid to the salt-process, in middle life to the mercurial, and in later life to the sulphuric or phosphoric, and these require regulation. Here again, if you realise this triad of organising chemism—organised light process, organised mercurial process and organised saline process at work in the human organism, you will gain a conception of the manner in which the whole of life works on man, organising him. The manner of life—not only the diet, but the whole habit and action of life—operates chemically on the child, impinging strongly upon the organism; the even more strong light process has such a great influence on the very young, that it sows a seed that may even manifest in disorders of the soul. In youth, man is most sensitively receptive to all the impressions of the external world. Whether at this stage of life we encounter an external world formed regardless of reason and logic, or one which is formed according to reason and logic, has a great significance for the whole constitution of the soul in later life. We shall go further into this in the next lecture, passing from the pathological aspects just considered, to the therapeutic. |
204. Man, Offspring of the World of Stars
05 May 1921, Dornach Tr. Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
---|
He prepares for his descent to the Earth and—since Jupiter takes a definite time to complete his orbit—he will choose a moment for his birth when the rays of Jupiter pour directly down upon him. In this way the heavenly constellations provide conditions into which a human being may be born—conditions which are determined by his previous earthly lives. |
Man is born on Earth into conditions determined by a constellation in the heavens, but he must equip himself with forces which make him independent of this constellation. |
204. Man, Offspring of the World of Stars
05 May 1921, Dornach Tr. Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The civilisation of the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch—the period of the development of the Mind Soul in humanity—was directed from the Greek Mysteries. In other words: the indications upon which the culture of the human mind was based issued from the Mystery-Sanctuaries which existed here and there in Asia Minor and Southern Europe. Now the secret of man's connection with the Sun was an essential part of these Mystery-teachings. From the book Theosophy we know that the Ego lights up within the Intellectual or Mind Soul and enters into possession of its full, inner force during the age of Consciousness, or Spiritual Soul. Now because the Ego of man was destined from a certain point of view to be awakened during the age of the culture of the mind or intellect, it was quite natural that the Mysteries of that age should have been concerned with the secrets of the Sun and their connection with the human Ego. In the book Riddles of Philosophy it is said that the Greek's life of thought consisted in an actual perceiving of the outer world. The Greek's thought was at the same time a perception, just as we today have a perception of colours or sounds. The thoughts and conceptions of the Greek were not brought into being merely by inner activity of the soul, but they were born as it were from the objects themselves. In this respect Goethe's thinking undoubtedly possessed qualities in common with Greek thought. This is quite clear from his famous conversation with Schiller. Schiller stated that Goethe's conceptions were not perceptions, but ideas, and to this Goethe retorted that he actually saw his ideas before him, that he perceived them objectively. The life of thought in Greece was associated with a very definite inner experience which arose when men looked at the world around them. They regarded the substance of the ideas which thus lit up before them as being the creation of the Sun. With the rising Sun they beheld the appearance in space of the life of ideas, and this life of ideas passed away again with the setting Sun. Men have now quite lost the faculty of perceiving and experiencing spirituality in the world around them. When the Sun rises they see only the phenomena of light and colour which there appear. And it is the same when the Sun sets in the red glow of evening. The Greeks felt that the world of ideas came to them at sunrise and passed away from them at sunset. They felt that in the darkness of the night they were bereft of the world of ideas. And when they looked at the sky, which seems to us to be blue, but for the colour of which the Greeks used a word which simply meant “darkness”, they felt that their world of ideas came to an end at the boundaries of visible space. Beyond this world of space the Greek divined the existence of other worlds—the worlds of the thoughts of the Gods, which he connected with light. These worlds seemed to him to be concentrated in the living Sun, and to withdraw during the night into the spaces of the dark firmament. Without some insight into this entirely different world of perception and experience, we cannot understand the further evolution of man's life of soul. This faculty of inwardly living perception functioned for a certain period of time, but then the most advanced representatives of the human race, those who still received their training in the Greek Mysteries, began to feel that their power to perceive the spiritual radiations from the living Sun in cosmic space was waning, and they saw salvation in the Mystery of Golgotha, inasmuch as the impulse coming from the Mystery of Golgotha made it possible for them to rekindle the light within their own being. And they tried now to experience the light by entering in spirit into the events connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. Now the intellect alone can give us no real knowledge of what has really come to pass in the life of humanity through the ages. A great and far-reaching metamorphosis took place in man's life of soul and must never be forgotten when we are studying the course of evolution. We who have been living in the era of the development of the Consciousness Soul since the beginning of the fifteenth century have in our inner, intellectual activity, only a shadowy reflection of the spirituality which pervaded the life of the mind in the fourth Post-Atlantean period of civilisation. And the task before us is to awaken a faculty of the soul which will quicken in this shadowy intellect of ours a living understanding of the universe. The shadow-intellect that is characteristic of all modern culture has fettered man to the Earth. He has eyes only for earthly things, particularly when he allows himself to be influenced by the claims of modern science. In our age it never occurs to man that his being belongs, not to the Earth alone, but to the Cosmos beyond the Earth. Knowledge of our connection with the Cosmos beyond the Earth—that is what we need above all to make our own. We take earthly life today as the basis of our ideas and concepts and build up a conception of the Universe in line with the conditions of this earthly life. But the picture of the Universe thus arising has been evolved by simply transferring earthly conditions to the world beyond the Earth. By means of spectro-analysis and other methods—admirable as they are in their way—a conception of the Sun has grown up which is really modelled wholly upon earthly conditions. Everyone is familiar with the appearance of luminous, incandescent gas, and this picture is then transferred to the Sun in the heavens. But we must learn to think of the Sun in the light of Spiritual Science. The Sun which the physicist believes to be a luminous body of gas out in cosmic space is spiritual through and through. The Sun receives the cosmic light and radiates it to the Earth, but the Sun is not physical at all. It is spiritual in its whole nature and being. The Greek was right when he felt that the Sun was connected with the development of his Ego, for the development of the Ego is associated with the intelligence and the faculty of forming ideas. The Greek conceived the rays of the Sun to be the power which kindled and quickened his Ego. His was still aware of the spirituality of the Cosmos, and to him the Sun was a living being, related to the human Ego in an absolutely concrete way. When a man says ‘ I ’ to himself, he experiences a force that is working within him, and the Greek, as he felt the working of this inner force, related it to the Sun. The Greek said to himself: Sun and Ego are the outer and inner aspects of one and the same being. The Sun out there in space is the Cosmic Ego. What lives within me is the human Ego. As a matter of fact, this experience still comes to those who have a deeper feeling for Nature. The experience is not nearly as vivid as it was in the days of Greece, but for all that it is still possible to become aware of the spiritual forces indwelling the rays of the Sun in springtime. There are people here and there who feel that the Ego is imbued with a new vigour when the rays of the Sun begin to shine down upon the Earth with greater strength. But this is a last faint echo, an outward shell of an experience that is dying out altogether in the abstract, shadowy intellectualism prevalent in every branch of civilised life today. The task before us is to begin once again to realise and understand the connection of the being of man with super-earthly existence. If we study and compare many things that are to be found in anthroposophical literature, we shall be able to understand the way in which the Sun is related to the Ego, and we shall also realise that the forces which stream down to the Earth from the Sun and from the Moon are entirely different in character and function. In a certain respect, Sun and Moon stand in polar antithesis. The forces streaming from the Sun enable the human being to become the bearer of an Ego. We owe to the rays of the Sun the power which moulds the human form into an image of the Ego. The forces which determine the human form from outside, even during the period of embryonic life, are the active forces of the Sun. While the embryo is developing in the mother's body, a great deal more is happening than modern science dreams of. Modern science is of the opinion that the forces all originate from the fertilised germ, but the truth is that the human embryo merely rests there in the body of the mother and is given form by the Sun forces. These Sun forces are, of course, associated with the Moon forces which are also working but in a different way. The Moon forces work above all in the inner, metabolic processes. We may therefore say: the Sun forces give form to the human being from outside. The Moon forces radiate outwards from within the metabolic process; they are centrifugal forces. This does not contradict the fact that these Moon forces are working, for instance, in the shaping and moulding of the human countenance. The Moon forces stream out from a centre in the metabolic system and work as it were by attraction upon the forming of the human face, differentiating the features, but there is an interplay between these Moon forces and the Sun forces. The organism that is connected with procreation is subject to the Sun forces. The whole being of man is involved in this way in the interplay between the forces of the Sun and the forces of the Moon. A distinction must be made, however, between the Moon forces that work in the inner processes of metabolism in man, and the forces that originate in the metabolic processes itself. The Moon forces stream into the metabolic process, but this metabolic process has forces of its own as well. And these are earthly forces. The substances and forces in the vegetable and other foodstuffs work in the human being by virtue of their own inherent nature. They work here as Earth forces. Metabolism is primarily an outcome of the working of Earth forces. If the substances of the foodstuffs were merely to unfold their own forces within the human organism, there would be nothing but a chaotic play of forces in man. The fact that these forces work without intermission to renew and upbuild the being of man, is due not to the Earth at all, but to the Moon. The human being is shaped from within outwards by the Moon, and from without inwards by the Sun. Because the rays of the Sun are received through the eye into the head-organisation. The Sun forces work within the organism as well, but for all that they are still working from outside. And so on the one hand the development and evolution of the Ego of man is dependent upon the forces of the Sun. Without the Sun, man could not be an Ego being living on the Earth; on the other hand there could be no such thing as propagation, there could be no human race without the Moon. It is the Sun which places man as an individual on the Earth, and it is the Moon that charms down the human race to Earth—the human race conceived here as one whole. The human race as the physical product of the generations is a product of the Moon forces which have worked in the generative process. As an individuality, however, man is the product of the Sun forces. If, therefore, we want to understand the human being and the human race as a whole, we cannot do so by studying merely those conditions which obtain on the Earth alone. The efforts of geologists to understand the being of man by investigating the nature of the Earth are all in vain. Man is not primarily a creation of the Earth. He receives his shape and form from the Cosmos; he is an offspring of the world of the stars, above all of Sun and Moon. From the Earth are derived only those forces which are contained in the substances of the Earth. These forces work outside the human being and also within him when they are introduced into his organism either through eating or drinking. But within the organism they are received into the realm of forces of a super-earthly nature. The processes that take place within the human being are by no means an affair of the Earth alone. They are through and through an affair of the world of stars. This is the kind of knowledge that we must struggle to reach once more. Think of the human being as he stands there before us in his physical body. This physical body takes in the foodstuffs from the outer world and the forces of the foodstuffs continue to work within the body. But the physical body is permeated by the astral body and in the astral body the Moon forces are actively at work. The Sun forces too play into the astral body. The etheric body is there in the middle, between physical and astral body. When we study the forces of foodstuffs, we find that, to begin with, they are active in the physical body and are then taken hold of by the astral body in which the influence of Sun and Moon are working. But between the physical body and astral body the etheric body is fulfilling its functions. The forces in the etheric body come, not from the Earth but from all directions of cosmic space. The products of the Earth, the substances which exist in the solid liquid or aeriform condition, are taken in by the human being and worked upon by the forces of Sun and Moon. But forces streaming in from all directions of cosmic space are also working in the human organism. The forces contained in the foodstuffs themselves come from the Earth, but from cosmic space the etheric forces stream in. These etheric forces also take hold of the foodstuffs and work upon them in such a way that they become inwardly responsive to light and also to warmth. We say, therefore: the human being is part of the Earth because he has a physical body. His etheric body relates him to the whole environment of the Earth. Through his astral body he is involved in the weaving forces of Sun and Moon. Now these influences of the Sun and Moon in the astral body are modified and differentiated in a high degree as they work upon the ‘upper’ man. By ‘upper’ man I mean, in this case, the part of the organism that is encircled and permeated by the bloodstream which passed upwards from the heart in the direction of the head. The ‘lower’ man, then, comprises the other part of the organism—that part which lies below the heart. Thus we have the upper part of man, including the head and everything that is organically connected with the head. The formation of this part of the organism is dependent, mainly, upon the Sun's influences. Its most important period of development is during embryonic life. The Sun's influences work upon the embryo in a very special way, but these influences continue to be active when the human being is born and is living in the physical world between birth and death. The astral influences working upon that part of the human organism which lies above the heart—speaking very roughly, for it would be necessary to go into more precise detail if we were describing the blood circulation—these astral influences are then modified by the influences of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. The planet Saturn circles round the Sun and sends forces to the Earth. These forces of Saturn work in the whole astral body of man, but above all in the part of the astral body which corresponds to the ‘upper’ man. They stream into the astral body, pervade it, and are the essential factor in bringing about a proper connection between the astral body and the physical body. When, for instance, a man cannot sleep properly, that is to say, when his astral body will not leave or come down again properly into his etheric and physical bodies or in some other way is not rightly connected with the physical body—this is due to an irregularity in the working of the Saturn forces. In other words, Saturn is the heavenly body which, by way of the human head, promotes and is responsible for setting up the proper relation of man's astral body to his etheric body and his physical body. And it is the Saturn forces too which mediate the connection of the astral body to the Ego, because of Saturn's relation to the Sun. Saturn's relation to the Sun is expressed in space and time inasmuch as Saturn accomplishes its orbit around the Sun in a period of thirty years. In the human being, the relationship of Saturn to the Sun is expressed in the connection of the Ego with the astral body and in the way in which the astral body is membered into the whole human organism. The connection of Saturn with the upper part of the astral body was regarded as a factor of great importance in ancient times. In the Egypto-Chaldean period, three or four thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Teachers and Sages of the Mysteries judged a human being according to his relation to Saturn—which was revealed by the date and time of his birth. For these Sages knew quite well that the position of Saturn in the heavens at the time of man's birth enabled his astral body either to function regularly or irregularly in his physical body. Knowledge of these influences played a very important part in olden days. But the onward progress of evolution is denoted precisely by the fact that in our age, which, as you know, began in the fifteenth century, we have to become free of these forces and influences. Please do not misunderstand me This does not mean that Saturn is not working in us nowadays. Naturally the Saturn forces work in us, just as they worked in the Ancients, but we must now learn to make ourselves free and independent of them. And do you know how we can make ourselves free? Nothing is worse than to give oneself over to the shadowy intellectualism of our age. If we do that, the Saturn forces run riot within us and give rise to the so-called nervous troubles that are so very prevalent in our time. When a man suffers from ‘nerves’ as we say, it is because his astral body is not properly connected with his physical organisation. This lies at the basis of the morbid nervous symptoms which are so common nowadays. Our striving should be to unfold real vision, to attain Imagination. If man can achieve nothing better than the forming of abstract concepts and ideas, nervous symptoms are bound to increase in severity, because this intellectual activity tends to alienate him from the influences of Saturn, which are still at work within his being. His astral body will be torn away from his nerves, and he will be driven more and more into a state of nervous tension and excitability. The nervous complaints of our age must be recognised in their cosmic aspect, for they are caused by an irregular working of the Saturn forces. Just as Saturn works chiefly in the upper part of the astral body and in the whole astral body inasmuch as the astral body is connected with the organism as a whole through the nervous system, so is Jupiter active in thinking. When a man thinks, one part of his astral body is active. It is pre-eminently the Jupiter forces in the astral body which strengthen the thinking faculty, and Jupiter is responsible for permeating the human brain with astral forces. Now the influences of Saturn continue throughout the whole of man's life. The beginning of a human life may really be said to consist of the first three periods of ten years. This is the period of growth, for as a matter of fact the activity of the growth forces does not wholly cease until after the thirtieth year. And our whole life and our health depend on how our astral body has developed during the thirty years. Saturn needs thirty years to complete its orbit around the Sun and this has its exact parallel in the life of man. The development of the faculty of thinking takes place essentially during the first twelve years of life. Again we find the parallelism in the orbit of the planet Jupiter. Just as Jupiter has to do with thinking, so has Mars to do with speech.
Mars works upon a still smaller part of the astral body than that with which Jupiter is concerned in connection with the thinking of man. And the development of the forces which finally express themselves in speech, is dependent upon the working of Mars within our being. Man learns to utter the first sounds of speech in a period which corresponds approximately to half the time required by Mars to complete its orbit around the Sun. We see, then, that the development of faculties situated primarily in the region of the human head is connected with the Saturn forces, the Jupiter forces, and the Mars forces. The forces of the three outer planets, therefore, work on within the astral body through the life of man. The Sun is connected more directly with the Ego, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars are concerned respectively with the behaviour and functioning of the astral body in the human organism, with the faculty of thinking and with the faculty of speaking. The Sun is connected with the Ego. And then we come to the inner planets, as they are sometimes called, the planets which are nearer the Earth and lie between the Earth and the Sun, whereas Saturn, Jupiter and Mars lie on the other side of the Sun. The forces of these inner planets are likewise connected with the being of man. We will take Mercury to begin with. Like the Moon, the centre, from which the Mercury forces work, lies in the inner being of man, and it is only in connection with the forming of the human countenance that Mercury works from outside. The Mercury forces work in the part of the human organism that lies below the region of the heart. From there these Mercury forces stream into the human organism. The working of the astral body in the breathing and circulatory functions of the human organism is regulated by Mercury. Mercury acts as the intermediary between the astral body and the rhythmic processes in the being of man. The Mercury forces act as the intermediary between the astral body and the rhythmic functions in the human organism. Because this is so, the Mercury forces intervene, as do the Moon forces, in the metabolic processes as a whole, but only in so far as the metabolic process is subject to rhythm and reacts in turn upon the rhythmic functions. We come next to Venus. Venus works pre-eminently in the etheric body of man. The cosmic forces chiefly active in the etheric body, therefore, are those of Venus. Then we come again to the Moon. The Moon forces in the human organism work in polar antithesis to the Sun forces. From within outwards the Moon forces lead substance over into the realm of the living and are therefore connected with procreation. The Moon stimulates not only the inner, reproductive processes of the organism, but the procreative process as well. Thus we have:
You see now in what way processes in the human organism are dependent upon the Cosmos. On the one side man is bound up with the earthly forces through his physical body. And on the other side he is bound up with his whole cosmic environment through the etheric body. The cosmic forces, however, work in different ways in his being as we have heard. This differentiation originates in the astral body in which the forces of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Moon are contained. By way of the Ego, the Sun works in man. Suppose that as the result of his earlier incarnations a man has within his being forces which predestine him to be a thinker in the earthly life upon which he is entering. He prepares for his descent to the Earth and—since Jupiter takes a definite time to complete his orbit—he will choose a moment for his birth when the rays of Jupiter pour directly down upon him. In this way the heavenly constellations provide conditions into which a human being may be born—conditions which are determined by his previous earthly lives. In the age of the Consciousness Soul, of course, it is the task of man gradually to make himself free of these conditions. But he must free himself from them in the right way. In speaking of the Saturn influences, I said that it is a question of trying to replace shadowy intellectualism by real Imagination. In the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds indications are given which, if they are followed, can make us independent of the cosmic forces, although none the less these cosmic forces continue to work in our being. Man is born on Earth into conditions determined by a constellation in the heavens, but he must equip himself with forces which make him independent of this constellation. It is to this kind of knowledge—a knowledge of man's connection with the Cosmos beyond the Earth—that our civilisation must attain. Man must learn to realise that the forces of heredity described by modern science are not the only forces at work in his organism. To imagine such a thing, my dear friends, is the purest nonsense. It is pure nonsense to think that the maternal organism contains those forces which are then transmitted by heredity and so build up a heart, a liver and the other organs. There would be no heart in the human organism if the Sun did not build it into the organism of man, neither would there be a liver if Venus did not place it into the organism. And so it is with each single organ. Their presence in the human organism is due to the working of cosmic forces. These are the things that humanity must once again learn to understand. Man must realise that the mysteries of his being cannot be explained by a science which deals merely with earthly phenomena. Around man live other creatures—and they too are not merely creatures of the Earth. It appears, to begin with, as if the minerals were entirely earthly in their nature. But in the minerals, too, changes have taken place which were due to the forces working in the cosmic environment of the Earth. The crystallised forms of the metals are all due to the play of forces from beyond the Earth. The metals were given shape and form at a time when the Earth's forces were not yet working in their full strength, but when cosmic forces were working in the Earth. The healing forces contained in the minerals, above all in the metals, are connected with the way in which these metals were formed within the Earth by the working of cosmic forces. In the first epoch of Post-Atlantean times, when the ancient Indian civilisation was at its prime, man felt and knew himself to be a citizen of the whole wide universe. Although he had not yet developed the forces which modern humanity is so proud to possess, he was in the true sense of the word, MAN. By the time of the Chaldean epoch, however, man's attention had already begun to be diverted from the Sun. He had become a kind of amphibium—a creature who is thankful when the rays of the Sun pour down upon it, and when it need not always be confined to its dark burrows in the pound. But in our time one cannot say that man even resembles a creature like the mole, for he is really much more like an earthworm who has eyes at most for what has first been sent out into space from the Earth and comes back again as rain. This is really all that men see in the way of forces from beyond the Earth. But this the earthworms also see! In his materialism today man has become an earthworm. He must rise above this earth state, but he can only do so by realising and knowing his connection with the Cosmos beyond the Earth. Our task therefore, is to raise ourselves above the earthworm state into which our civilisation has fallen, and bring a new spiritual life into being. |